more an anti gripe but i dont have fid access so: "odazai shippers are freaks" damn if i knew shipping odazai was all it took to be a freak i wouldnt have spent the better part of a year carefully curating my tastes to be as freaky and weird as possible
The feeling of "I believe that people have a right to enjoy things I like in different ways from me and it's fine if they engage with it in ways I would not enjoy but every part of my soul is screaming that this person is Doing It Wrong."
When the most popular ship in your corner of the fandom ends up a NOTP b/c nobody writes the characters involved with your preferred characterisation -- or outright out-of-character to make them fit a ship trope they really, really aren't. Not all bickering means the character is a tsundere. Sometimes characters dislike each other and that's okay. EDIT: Also the way the rest of the cast is totally out-of-character to get these two characters whose dynamic is actually highly specific and not at all what the ship makes it out to be to "work easier", which is more the thing that annoys me than the prevalence of a ship I don't like. The whole ensemble suffers, every story involving that ship reads like it's about an entirely different series because the characterisation black hole around it is so strong. It's not just the ship, it's the way the fandom warps into a circle and even content not about them is smeared into streaks trying to accommodate it.
That's really too bad. I love me some stories about characters who actually really dislike each other and end up in each other's orbit anyway.
all the video essays i find on bleach are either people describing why bleach became irredeemably terrible after soul society or people defending bleach post-soul society. i can find videos about the themes of naruto and about its characters easily. but most of the bleach discourse seems to be entirely focused on whether or not it is trash that does not warrant examination. I'm really irritated by that. And with how much that supereyepatchwolf video gets treated like dogma. Including the bits which he has since apologized for as being misinformation due to his not understanding certain shit. The SJ ranking data being the big thing there.
The problem is so bad that someone who vocally Does Not Like Bleach had to make a fucking video essay about why he thinks the 'Bleach is bad and here's why' situation is bullshit. And how in general anime youtube has A Problem with being self deprecating about its genres to the point of saying stupid shit like 'My Hero Academia is not fundamentally a shonen battle series. It is a character study.' which is like saying us is not a horror film but instead a drama about the us economic situation
Oh goodness, that's such bullshit. It's a fun story. The characters are engaging. The hero is fundamentally a good person even though it makes his life miserable more often than not. That's a good portion of the actual main conflict, that Ichigo has a sense of morality that will not let him turn a blind eye in a world that's not fair and is run by people who aren't overly concerned about that. The people closest to him tend to be highly idealistic, and it's partially self selection but it's also because he brings that out in people. The battles are interesting. They have stakes that matter, and serve as journeys of self discovery because that's what good shounen battles tend to do. There is mystery and intrigue. If you go far enough forward, years and years in, you eventually realize that there are major plot hooks that go all the way back to the beginning. Of course it's not perfect or everyone's cup of tea, but it's not a bad story that people somehow manage to enjoy even though it sucks.
Ichigo gets a lot of shit for not being an active protagonist like Luffy and Naruto, on that note. He gets accused of not wanting anything or not having character development which just...baffles me? All the arcs are based around how Ichigo's drive to protect people grows and changes. And that's the thing he wants. It's just that the thing he wants isn't like. A thing that necessitates him going out and looking for trouble, per se. It's more 'a bad thing occurs, ichigo goes in to deal with the bad thing'. He's like...a firefighter. If the hose was a sword and the fire were spooky ghosts that want to cause universal destruction.
...............huh I had no idea there was such discourse. That discourse makes no sense. Ichigo wants to protect his important people. That's what he's always wanted to do. He has a clear defining reason for it with the death of his mother when he was a young child. He protected Chad. He got into the Shinigami mess to protect his sisters. If you meet him, he will probably protect you. But he's also a teenager who gets in street fights. He doesn't have a strong life plan. I think he doesn't fit into his surroundings well enough to make one. There just isn't any obvious dream position available in his everyday life that would be likely to fulfill his most important desires while letting him be anything like himself. Exactly what does a street fighter-by-necessity with a slightly spotty reputation who does well in school but isn't fired up about grades and wants to protect his sisters and friends more than anything dream of becoming in a modern day Japanese town? Vigilante doesn't even really work, because that usually involves fighting on behalf of strangers at the cost of possibly putting your closest people in more danger. And while he seems to enjoy fighting and he's very good at it, he doesn't actually seem excited about violence. He's definitely not afraid of it, but I'd have a hard time believing he likes it beyond maybe the adrenaline high and satisfaction of performing an art well. So his most outstanding skills are physical, but he would get the most satisfaction from things that let him stay close to home and not bring unwanted attention. He'd probably be heck of a father or children's sports coach. I'm not sure we really need an anime protagonist in series that isn't a parody declaring I WILL BECOME THE MOST FATHEREST FATHER WHO EVER DAD. Especially one who's still a teenager working through school. Jumping the gun a bit there. I don't think he isn't growing or changing. I do think it often comes in the form of him having to define and reaffirm his core values constantly, because nobody likes those core values. They want him to stop and be something less disruptive. Well at least they think they do. I'm really not sure they'd actually appreciate what Ichigo would probably become if he ever stopped being so unshakably grounded in what he believes must be right, provided they had enough time to form opinions about anything at all.
Honestly I think a lot of the complaints about him as a character are coming from people who expect a Luffy or Naruto kind of protagonist for a shonen battle series. He's not out there going 'I want to be the pirate king!' or whatever in the fuck. There's a lot of characters like that in the genre. Especially as heads of series. So some people see it and go 'Ichigo doesn't want anything' because he is fundamentally not the same kind of protagonist. Though I think the most annoying criticism I've seen of his wants was to the tune of 'wanting to protect people doesn't mean anything because everyone wants to do that'. Which is stupid. A relatable desire that a lot of people have is good. Very good. It's part of why Naruto works. Naruto's wanting to be Hokage isn't really some sort of grand fantasy thing. I mean. On a level it is. But like if one breaks it down, what Naruto wants to do is like the equivalent of getting the best grades and winning a cool contest and then everyone HAVING to respect you. 'Hokage' can be easily replaced with some other real world thing. Naruto wants to be accepted and respected, instead of be treated like ass for so much as breathing. Ichigo's desire is similar. It's a real world thing with real world equivalences that is relatable and can grab at particular readers/watchers really hard.
Naruto wants to be president. Well, he wants what president meant back when it didn't conjure images of the foulest sweet potato to ever take office. It's a perfectly respectable dream, and yes, very relatable. The interesting thing about Ichigo's drive to protect people in contrast with characters who want a specific symbol of achievement is that he already knows exactly what failure would mean, there is no limit to how many times over he could fail, and each time would be completely, uniquely terrible. He also won't have the same kind of shifts in relationship to his goal. He already knows his motivation and what it has to do with his damage, which makes him actually pretty emotionally aware for a shounen protagonist. With protagonists who have an achievement goal, as they grow as characters, they're usually gonna have to explore what the achievement means to them, realize it has many facets they weren't aware of, and perhaps even reevaluate whether it's a positive direction for them or will fulfill them the way they'd imagined. If Ichigo ever seriously begins to rethink his goal on the grounds that it was naive or wonder if it's actually worth it, that will be him cracking at the foundations. If Ichigo's relationship with his goal changes too much, it will probably be the gruesome end of him, everyone he cares about, and unimaginable numbers of bystanders. His challenge is to keep the faith against ever more overwhelming and sophisticated manifestations of hopelessness. Holding a steady position through any wild shift of circumstances is not a static activity. That is an extremely bizarre criticism about protecting people being something everyone wants. It doesn't even hold up in-universe. Yeah, that's probably something most people really do want. Which is why all of Soul Society was just stampeding to Rukia's aid..? These goals, whether it's to be Hokage or protect people, are not just something the protagonist wants. It's something the protagonist believes utterly that they must accomplish, and has the audacity to also believe that they can, against all odds and no matter how many people tell them about those odds.
I'll be honest, I hate fbyleths outfit because it is SO inexplicably naked and different from mbyleths outfit for no reason other than fanservice if BOTH of them were wearing booty shorts and fishnets it would be fine
I initially hated it for that reason but then came to love it dearly because it is such a ridiculous ass outfit. Especially when compared to the guy who just looks impossibly boring by comparison. At least he can wear other things to spice him up a bit, but my options are fashion disaster that exists for fanservice and boring mcboringman. one of these options is superior Granted, I am someone who bought the DLC exclusively to put Edelgard in a maid outfit and call her Maidelgard.
