Posted by  |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
「こぼれおちる水」 (Koboreochiru Mizu)
“The Overflowing Water”
They really need to learn to stretch things out over multiple episodes.
A New Threat – Is This Really Necessary?
The new reveal: if a tarot card user meets their counterpart, they’ll both disappear. I have major problems with this. First of all, how long have they been fighting Daemonia? Even if the Daemonia were holding the 22 elemental counterparts back, if it’s been going on for anything like as long as the tarot have been around then I find it hard to believe that this has never happened before.
That’s a minor qualm though. The major problem I have is that the stakes are being dialed up from such a bullshit angle. Having the mortal danger come from a slow grinding down by the enemies they face all the time would have been gritty and real. It also could have come from a radically more powerful (but still otherwise “conventional”) Daemonia, which would have been horrific and electrifying without cheating anything. Here though, the mortal danger comes from a whole different type of enemy that seems specifically designed to make these particular characters suffer and die. It makes the whole thing feel artificial, instead of a natural turn of events that just happened to tell us a great story.
Let me put it this way – when a powerful enemy shows up to face the protagonists in similar stories, there’s always the chance the protagonist could die. The writer(s) make you believe that, they tease you about it, they make you doubt, and sometimes they actually go through with it. It’s the uncertainty that does it, because they could, they might, just maybe…but also they might not, until they wait, they just did/didn’t. Here though, everything screams “MAIN CHARACTERS WILL DIE!” Telegraphing it so clearly makes the watcher shield (hur hur hur) their heart from what they know is to come, and that cheated us out of any power in Ginka’s demise.
Be More Obvious
Seriously, that whole scene with Ginka’s father? Be more obvious. I have long said that spoilers – or more accurately, having it be fairly obvious what is going to happen – are not always bad. As a storyteller myself I’m ridiculously trope savvy, so I can regularly see plot points coming a mile away. It doesn’t ruin my enjoyment when they’re done well though, because if they make me care about the characters I’m either elated or dreading what is to come. Here though, even though Ginka is my favorite character (was…fuck me!), they made the death flags so obvious that it bordered on comical. Done well, it could have been powerful. As is, not so much.
The one thing they’re doing a good job of foreshadowing is whatever is going to happen between Luna and Akari. Luna is still giving off potential yandere vibes to me (possibly in the direction of the “corrupting” influence that is Seira), but whatever happens they’ve been hinting at it enough that I’m intrigued. I just wish they were doing that for everything, and not going from Daemonia-of-the-week to character-death-of-the-week.
The Death of Ginka
I’ve really said it all by this point. The final battle of Ginka vs Nega-Ginka was cool to watch, but I felt nothing, and when an event ends with all the (remaining) main characters crying, if you didn’t make me feel something then you done fucked up. Ginka was my favorite of the four, the balance that kept all the other broken and warped characters from collapsing…so of course that means she had to be the first to die. Guuuuh!
I do think some of Nega-Ginka’s dialogue will end up being important. She talked about combining, which makes me guess that instead of killing each other, it’s possibly for the light and dark to combine and become both, but probably in a way where the side that “wins” remains in control of the united body. I dunno, we’ll see. All I know is that if they’re going to off any more characters, they better go about it better than they did here. Ginka deserved better.
Looking Ahead
Looks like Luna is up on the chopping block next, or maybe just more exploration of her and Akari’s relationship.
tl;dr: @StiltsOutLoud – Ginka goes down & takes her counterpart with her. How inartfully done. She deserved better than this #geneitaiyou 08
Random thoughts:
- Chicken salad is not moe, Seira.
- I was wondering if someone else could destroy a user’s counterpart card, & then that question was answered. Apparently not.
- “Your attacks really hurt me a lot. I almost died!” Ginka, you are not helping right now.
- RIP, Ginka. You were best tarot girl to the end.
For more from yours truly, check out my blog on writing, art, and the book I’m working on at stiltsoutloud.com.
Full-length images: 06, 08, 10.
Preview
 |
 |
 |
I agree that they pushed it too hard without a decent build up for Ginka’s death. Luna’s raising flags all over the place with Akari too (and of course her reactions to Seira). The “combining” and the comments the crow and cat (and I trust them as much as Kyubey) have made makes it obvious to me that the black and white aspects of the Tarot aren’t as simple as they’ve been pushing. (Vorlons and Shaddows, urRu and Skeksis). One thing that isn’t clear to me is if this is similar to positive and anti particle annihilating each other or if the death of one (even if the other isn’t present) cause the same thing to happen.
The Akari/Luna thing is about the only plot thread giving me any emotional attachment to this show. I swear, if this doesn’t lead anywhere good… I’ll think of something to follow that through.
It is the most interesting one still floating about for me as well.
This show sucks. It tries to be edgy like Madoka Magica but you really don’t give 2 shits about the characters and everything is horribly hamfisted.
Can’t say I hate the show like you seem to but you’re spot on about everything else.
Aye, while I understand the sentiment, I wouldn’t be so harsh as all that. Not like Gen’ei killed your best friend or anything. Unless your best friend was Ginka. In which case, totally justified.
The anti-Ginka seems to be murmuring about “merging with Ginka” so it’s most likely that they are not dead but, they’ve combined into something else. There’s a possibility that the evil shota was tricking her, but I’m pretty sure there’s more to it. Since it was mentioned that they came from the same card, I imagine the evil shota is merging all of the cards together to complete the original tree of life, or something, for ultimate power.
With this in mind and more characters “dies” with their counterparts, it’s only a matter of time before Akari goes full friendship-mode and rescues everyone.
RIP Ginka! I’ll miss you. 🙁
This is the point where the show should have had us burst into tears, that we should have been feeling pain over the girls loss as if it was our own…
LO AND BEHOLD, THEY FUCKED IT UP!
I’m gonna be honest here and say that I’m not too hopeful at this point. Rushing a big revelation like that along with a major character death all in one episode just… No. A death of a character has no relevance if all that’s happening is someone is dying. Death is painful in real life because of the loss of everything attached to that person and all we have from Ginka is…
‘well, might as well die and get it overwith! Best to not trivialize your guys mission with having to fight the thing that could kill me! I mean, I could try and see if Akari might find a loop hole for this problem and bring to light some sort of MAJOR relevation like she probably will later on, but no, best for me to just die right now!’
And now I’m worried of some bullshit ‘All the losses have no relevance since everyone was saved!’ ending. I don’t want everything to be all happy go lucky but man, I’m tired of these production teams acting like these moments are DEEP and DRAMATIC but end up NOT being that because they have no weight to them.
This is why Madoka worked. Not because of brilliant characters (By some people’s standards, they were decent in mine) or originality or the lore, but because everything in Madoka’s decision had a HUGE FREAKING STRING/ROPE/CHAIN attached to it. Homura depended on it, magical girls depended on it, the entire fate of the world depended on it, that’s what made it WORK.
I hate that we’re probably looking at another ‘Guilty Crown’ here (Great ideas, poor execution) but I’m already 2/3rds of the way through, might as well sit and watch this plane crash.
Here’s hopes of a nice twist or surprise near the end that adds some significant meaning or weight to this show and it doesn’t turn out to be ‘grimdark magical girl cash in’. Or maybe it’ll go off the rails and we’ll see Akari ‘finish’ things but have some extremely painful loss that can never be recovered and there’s no hope after all. After all, if we can’t get a ‘good’ bad ending, might as well go with a HOPELESS bad ending, right? That’s what made movies like The Mist be so god damned brilliant (albeit that was a well written movie with great pacing, real tension and true horror) so maybe we can get another awesomely depressing, horrifying and hopeless ending.
Hoping for hopelessness… This is what this show has driven me to. Thanks Aniplex!
Consequences, that’s the key. If there are no consquences to the character’s decisions, then this all will have been for naught. I’m fine with Akari saving people, but it should be before they are lost. For those who are gone…well, don’t cheapen their passing by bringing them back.
P.S. I hated The Mist. That ending was total bullshit, just salt in the wound. I mean, if there was real and present danger then sure, but they just went and….guuuuhhhh, so stupid!!
I’m VERY prepared for the fact that we’re going to see Ginka’s death even more cheapened with say, her being revived in the end somehow. It would show a complete lack of intelligence AND a lack of balls on the show’s part if it went through with this…
As for The Mist, it is very much love it or hate it and honestly, it’s what I’d consider ‘true’ horror’ Not that like, it’s the only legitimate horror out there, but it’s an intensely horrible, upsetting, life shattering and ‘realistic’ approach I haven’t seen done in many other productions. Honestly, it seems like anything Frank Darabont touches turns to gold so I can only hope he’ll tackle another one of Stephen King’s works in the future.
The Mist was decent, it’s just that last part…
But we’re supposed to be talking about anime here, so anywhoooo
I haven’t been this utterly unfazed by an anime character’s death since a certain movie that shall not be titled here because spoilers and whatnot.
First, @Stilts, the reason they didn’t encounter this before (as I understand it) is that the “master anti-card” (Bear has the right idea in my opinion in terms of viewing this as a “matter vs. anti-matter” kind of thing) was making lesser copies of itself, and up until this point, they’ve just been fighting the “anti-cards” minions while the “master anti-card” safely hides away. Smart tactic on the “master anti-card” side. Real question is what prompted a change from a war of attrition strategy.
I’m going to take the road less traveled (at least by Stilts) in terms of foreshadowing. IMO, foreshadowing is a lot like salt. A little bit is good and enhances the flavor. Too much ruins the flavor, and extreme amounts can be deadly (seriously kids, do NOT eat a big bowl of salt). This isn’t the place for a debate about foreshadowing so I’ll leave it at that. Plus, we already had somewhat of a discussion about the effect of spoilers on viewing enjoyment (Foreshadowing had the same effect as a vague spoiler, it’s just self-contained).
I DO, however, agree that the show didn’t handle the situation as well as it could or should have done. Definitely too “Oh, BTW, if you ever run into your “anti-card” be sure to run away b/c you’ll die~ Thanks for the late notice on that. >_>
They didn’t even explain it well. The first thing I thought when they talked about it was – “OK, then just don’t include the counter-part card holder in the battle”. If “positive” card holder is 2000 miles away, will they still disappear? I guess that’s the case. If the cards are irrevocably linked together (i.e. destroy one and the other is destroyed as well automatically), can’t the user “give up” the card? They are passed down from one generation to the next. Point is that the concept was not only introduced too fast, but also too limited in scope/explanation. The presentation left a lot of unanswered questions and raised some in-universe credibility issues.
I can’t say that Ginka’s death wasn’t emotional b/c it kind of pissed me off (anger is an emotion after all). It was forced without question, and I do agree with Stilts in that forcing this kind of emotional “plot”, to be generous, either dilutes the effect or causes a different effect than intended. In my case it’s the latter of the two. This hasn’t been a good season for me in terms of “new” (i.e. non carry-over shows or sequels), and now there’s one more show I’m tempted to drop. *sigh* I REALLY hope this debacle can some how be reasonably resolved.
Bite your tongue, sir or madam! (Actually, no, don’t. That hurts.) I too think that foreshadowing is best done lightly rather than heavily. A storyteller must treat their readers/viewers/listeners like they’re sensibly intelligent human beings, or else there’s no thrill when you put the clues together and pick up on where the foreshadowing is leading you.
I agree with everything else though.
Hmmm… It seems that I have misread/misunderstood your comments/intention regarding foreshadowing. In that case, my mistake. In terms of story telling, FWIW, IMO I think there also needs to be a balance between foreshadowing and keeping some things a complete surprise. I really don’t want to know or be able to guess everything in advance.
Back to the topic at hand, I get the feeling that there is an increasing risk the show turns out to be nothing more than a bad Madoka Magica copy. If Ginka has such an abrupt, cursory end, what can we expect for the other heroines – apart from Akari (the last loli standing)? I am curious to see how they handle Ginka’s dad’s reaction to all of this (assuming they even show that).
Meh, what’s done is done. I honestly liked this show (and I’m not an Mahou Shoujo fan normally) until it “jumped the shark”… twice this episode. Probably fooling myself, but I still hold some hope that maybe the show can get back on a more reasonable track.
I doubt we’ll see Ginka’s dad again. After all, they destroyed each other, which probably means that Ginka will have the same fate as her uncle had in her father’s mind – she will disappear forever, with only her old friends to remember who she was.
@Stilts: Oh yeah…somehow forgot about that “minor” detail (hazards of posting late night I guess XD). The whole “disappear when you die” thing also blunts the emotional impact to some extent IMO. The only character I felt truly sorry for was Ginka’s dad, but this little twist on death solves that problem. He won’t know a thing.
It also raises some additional event resolution questions, but at this point probably best put them aside and and see how things pan out next episode. Anyway, thanks for the replies,
Hey maybe Ginka’s death will be like the deaths in Blassreiter and she will be back in a few episodes, highly kind of doubting it :p
Given the shows only about 12-13eps long, I’m still surprised the writers are still keeping the identity & goals of the bad guys somewhat secret at this point. 8 eps in, and I’m still calling the villian ‘the blue-haired-boy’.
Hey, at least they finally gave him a name.
Don’t ask me what it is because I didn’t care enough to notice.
I was under the assumption that the boy was an agent of the Cerebrum group, not that he was Cerebrum itself. That said I wonder how his goals intertwine with the politician’s.
Seems like the proverbial “shit hit the fan”
Regardless what, Madoka vibes were there but the latter was better.
So with Sayaka (where’s Kyoko) gone, what would Homura and the rest do?
And by this point, I have little hope in this series. Ginka was my favorite of the magical girls, and I didn’t feel emotional at all during her death. The episode itself felt very rushed, and I can’t stand how they just randomly threw in, ‘Oh, if you meet your evil counterpart then you’ll disappear’ without foreshadowing it AT ALL in earlier episodes.
Cerebrum(?) is certainly doing a good job at being an evil shota if it’s episode 8 and he’s still managed to keep his intentions a secret. The only things that are keeping me interested are him and Luna’s yandere vibes.
(It’s getting harder and harder each episode trying to defend this series from being a Madoka Magica knock-off. I’m just going to give up now.)
Not gonna lie, but I didn’t notice the death flags, as I was under the impression that none of that would happen to the main cast at this point of the anime.
Guess I was wrong. Now the death flags will become obvious to me.
Just speculating, but Akari could be a combined sun.
Bad execution, despite being an orignal anime
Being an original doesn’t ensure good execution, alas. It’s truthfully a lot harder to execute from nothing than it is to adapt something that has already proven successful, it’s just that those who get to create original anime are usually already skilled enough to have an outsized chance of success. We didn’t get so lucky in this case.
by the next episode title it seems we will see luna and akari counterpart card so this mean they will have to fight the sun and the moon i hope luna wont die.also i was sad when ginka died because we seen all her backstory and had personal but i glad she died as warrior with a smile.now i wonder how luna yandere counterpart will looks like in the next episode
I am afraid the death flags were a little too obvious this time. More importantly, I dont see Ginka, the most common-sense character with a healthy self preservation instinct go out in this way. Seira with her knight templar (T) mentality, yes. Luna, if needed to save Akari, yes. But not my food enjoying, down to earth Ginka!
She had to confront her anti-Ginka.
It was her tragic fate as a Temperance(bringing together opposites).
I agree with you Stilts, I’m a bit disappointed with the choice to introduce the anti-cards. It seems like a cheat they needed to make things more … dangerous. Unfortunately, that danger now feels forced instead of a natural progression of the show – not happy about that.
As for the whole “combining” thing the anti-Ginka kept talking about… I feel like this may be another cheat. It delivers a possible “escape” route for the other girls to not meet the same end as Ginka; almost like they wanted to try and balance the gravity of Ginka’s death with hope. Unfortunately, her death didn’t feel heavy in light of first half of the episode, and the plot now seems confused: should we kill our main characters or not? I kind of feel like they haven’t made a solid decision yet and poor Ginka was a test subject for their wishy-washy plot.
In the end, I may be angry at this episode but I still hold some hope for the future episodes. I’ve invested enough time into the series to build up an interest to see how it ends and where the characters end up. And hopefully, the next episodes will be more like the first episode that I felt worked really well.
The plot has been reduced down to a checklist. That, or they’ll find another way, in which case Ginka’s death was rushed and entirely avoidable. I’m not sure which is worse
I was kind of glad one of them got killed. Granted, we could feel it coming. They tried to hard to brace us
I’m glad they did the flashbacks. I thought these little girls were like 8 years old. Turns out you dont get the tarot-elemental powers til you turn 13 apparently. So I’m guessing they’re around 14-15.
This show has its good points but also has its’ bad points. I still watch it and will continue to do so. I still think those animals are lame (raven, etc). The little bunny looking medic girls feel out of place and useless. The cast is just way too large. Everyone is just a bit too cute. Ugh!
I’m thinking the ED gives away she just gets transported to the tree but more powerful because she fused with the daemonia card.
Or something.
I like this show, but not as much as some others, I think they need to slow down, stretch it out, otherwise this will be over before you know it.
I do like the opening scene music though.