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Spiritus Nox posted:I'm really curious about what, if anything Shisui will be able to tell us about Suisho. In particular - was Suisho always Like This? Consider that 'Suisho' is a remixed version of Shisui's name. Seems almost certain that she's her Magiaconatus-produced doll girlfriend gone rogue.
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Sep 7, 2019 11:06
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Elephant Parade posted:imo it's kind of lame that Mangetsu's life problems are because she's a magic robot and not just because she's had a crappy life. like, it doesn't totally destroy her character or the series or anything, but it sort of retroactively makes her less interesting. I agree with Sindai on this one. Now that we're aware that Magiaconatus rewrites reality on a near-constant basis, and often does so in a way that fucks with the memories and perceptions of the mage-aspirants that are supposed to know the rules of the world/competition, almost everything we supposedly know as a fact of the setting is basically out the window. Nene and her sisters are theorizing that Mangetsu is a magic doll robot based on what they know, but what they know is inherently unreliable. The main source of "Mangetsu is an empty doll created to support Shingetsu" is Suishou, and Suishou is consistently a horrible nightmare of a being who relies heavily on psychologically debilitating her opponents(which makes sense, because magic in this setting is a function of willpower). "Mangetsu is a doll with no past created solely to help Shingetsu win the tournament that she hates" is way too neat and perfect of a line of psychological attack against both Mangetsu and Shingetsu for me to be willing to take Suishou at face value on that. We already saw proof in this episode that Suishou isn't flawless or infallible in her knowledge and judgment re: Shisui being able to gently caress her over long-term to let Quon win(which only failed because Quon had no reason to expect Suishou to not be human). Given they specifically drew attention to Mangetsu being able to feel pain while Suishou explicitly states she herself can't, I'm going to wager that if Mangetsu is a magical creation of Magiaconatus, she's a lot more human/less disposable than Suishou claims she is. Kanos fucked around with this message at 14:57 on Sep 7, 2019 |
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Sep 7, 2019 14:49
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The real way to win is probably to attack the Magiaconatus instead of each other. The elimination game just came about since nobody wanted the rest to possibly get power, or wanted to have the power solely for themself.
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Sep 7, 2019 15:24
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someone compared Shingetsu to Chirico Cuvie and Magiaconatus to Wiseman and not gonna lie I can totally see it.
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Sep 8, 2019 07:42
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Hmm, does anyone other than the participants see Suishou? I am wondering if Suishou is basically like Mangetsu in this episode except that she's been like that for many years.
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Sep 8, 2019 09:48
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Fangz posted:Hmm, does anyone other than the participants see Suishou? I am wondering if Suishou is basically like Mangetsu in this episode except that she's been like that for many years. As I said, I'm pretty sure that Suishou is Shisui's magical doll girlfriend in the same way that Mangetsu was created for Shingetsu. She's just older, more experienced, and has learned to game the system.
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Sep 8, 2019 12:39
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Darth Walrus posted:As I said, I'm pretty sure that Suishou is Shisui's magical doll girlfriend in the same way that Mangetsu was created for Shingetsu. She's just older, more experienced, and has learned to game the system. The Sui in Suisho/水晶 is Water, while the Sui in Shisui/四翠 means Green. Mangetsu and Shingetsu are full moon and new moon respectively. Suisho means crystal, FYI.
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Sep 8, 2019 13:07
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Darth Walrus posted:As I said, I'm pretty sure that Suishou is Shisui's magical doll girlfriend in the same way that Mangetsu was created for Shingetsu. She's just older, more experienced, and has learned to game the system. Darth Walrus posted:Consider that 'Suisho' is a remixed version of Shisui's name. Seems almost certain that she's her Magiaconatus-produced doll girlfriend gone rogue. Completely different 'sui's. Suisho is 水晶, Shisui is 四翠.
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Sep 8, 2019 13:11
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Hmmmmmm Crazy thought, but maybe people have Suishou's motivation entirely wrong? Like doesn't her actions make more sense if they were actually aimed at *helping* Shingetsu? Insofar as helping Shingetsu accomplish her wish of getting rid of magic? Like her attacks have not been focused at Shingetsu, but instead Kuon. She also riled up Anna to further isolate Shingetsu, and with the recent revelations again... Even her rooftop speech seems designed to get Shingetsu to hate magic and go through with her plan. There's that monologue where she says that a Princeps Mage has to get where she is through her scars... And if her belief is that humans shouldn't have magic, having magic be destroyed also accomplishes that.
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Sep 8, 2019 15:20
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Fangz posted:Hmmmmmm The only obvious wrinkle I see here is that it seems like revealing that Mangetsu is seemingly only sustained by magic is the sort of thing that would make Shingetsu less inclined to go through with her plan of ending all magic.
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Sep 8, 2019 16:08
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Fangz posted:Hmmmmmm Having magic be destroyed means that *no one* has magic. Suishou seems to believe that humans aren't good enough for magic, not that magic itself is something that shouldn't exist. Suishou seems pretty cool with she, herself, having magic - and if she's a magical being as theorized, then no more magic means no more Suishou.
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Sep 8, 2019 16:11
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Spiritus Nox posted:The only obvious wrinkle I see here is that it seems like revealing that Mangetsu is seemingly only sustained by magic is the sort of thing that would make Shingetsu less inclined to go through with her plan of ending all magic. Well, firstly the secret was apparently going to come out regardless of her actions, and she was happy to keep the secret until that point. Like she doesn't reveal the secret to Shingetsu, she reveals it to *Mangetsu*. For the latter there's a logic in terms of driving Mangetsu away from Shingetsu and having her disappear, and without Nene's intervention she might have been successful. Kanos posted:Having magic be destroyed means that *no one* has magic. Suishou seems to believe that humans aren't good enough for magic, not that magic itself is something that shouldn't exist. Suishou seems pretty cool with she, herself, having magic - and if she's a magical being as theorized, then no more magic means no more Suishou. Right, so key to this theory is that self preservation isn't her goal, that this is a convoluted suicide plan. I mean maybe Shisui's soul sustains her so she's literally unable to die otherwise I mean it's a pretty wild theory but that's why its fun
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Sep 8, 2019 16:35
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Fangz posted:Right, so key to this theory is that self preservation isn't her goal, that this is a convoluted suicide plan. I mean maybe Shisui's soul sustains her so she's literally unable to die otherwise Well, Shisui's soul didn't seem irrevocably attached to her. She was prying it out to try to stop Shisui's plan before Quon chaos dunked her, and Quon casually pulled it out on a whim once Shisou was disabled. If Shisou simply wanted to die, she could have just, you know, let Quon kill her. Maybe give her a little hint. "Gut stab's not gonna work, dear, you're gonna need something bigger." Kanos fucked around with this message at 17:30 on Sep 8, 2019 |
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Sep 8, 2019 17:28
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Hmmm I'm not sure how much the show wants us to agree with Mangetsu this episode I mean part of this is that I don't agree with Mangetsu here. I mean I agree insofar as it would be wrong for her to be effectively a hostage and use her life to force Shingetsu to change her mission in life. But I also think that Mangetsu sets the idea of what Shingetsu wants on too high a pedestal and doesn't consider that there's a deeper thing that Shingetsu wants, and that Mangetsu consistently values herself too lowly. I guess there's two episodes left so maybe this arc isn't entirely over, but I kinda hope this series doesn't end like it seems right now... Fangz fucked around with this message at 21:23 on Sep 13, 2019 |
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Sep 13, 2019 21:09
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Maybe the subtitle of the series (Two Princeps) is spoiling the ending
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Sep 13, 2019 21:33
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I'd be really annoyed if the show ends with Mangetsu vanishing forever considering Suishou's whole evil lesbian shtick. Put those two things together and you wind up with pretty rough implications.
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Sep 14, 2019 00:10
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The Anna flashback stuff from when Shingetsu and Anna were Kids makes me think the show knows Mangetsu disappearing is not a healthy ending for Shingetsu and that Shingetsu will choose another path
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Sep 14, 2019 00:32
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I feel like if they were gonna go through with it, some of the Big Theme Talks they had this episode would have come in the finale. I wouldn't bet a house on it or anything, but y'know I am a little annoyed, albeit not super-surprised, that Shisui just has nothing to say about Suisho. She should still remember the Granbelm even if she doesn't remember Kuon, right? That's how it worked for Nene at least, so you'd expect Shisui to at least spare a thought for 'whatever happened to that creepy maybe-demon girl I was dating and apparently plotting to destroy?' Spiritus Nox fucked around with this message at 00:35 on Sep 14, 2019 |
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Sep 14, 2019 00:32
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I have considered the possibility that Mangetsu IS the Magiaconatus but doesn't know it because she's being told she's JUST a doll, which is why she can pull out so much power when stressed to her limits. I feel like the show is going to somehow end with Mangetsu being alive simply because eliminating magic may mean making the Magiaconatus human altogether, thus breaking everything and making Mangetsu real. Or atleast, a person that's like her that remembers little or nothing of the whole ordeal. It's ENTIRELY possible that thing has been wanting a friend too and is warping reality itself to get that. It's a stretch with how dark this show seems to want to go, but it wouldn't exactly suprise me if it happened that way. Diabetes Forecast fucked around with this message at 07:43 on Sep 14, 2019 |
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Sep 14, 2019 07:38
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Endorph posted:I'd be really annoyed if the show ends with Mangetsu vanishing forever considering Suishou's whole evil lesbian shtick. Put those two things together and you wind up with pretty rough implications.
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Sep 15, 2019 01:03
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Anyway, I think Mangetsu's anxiety over being worthless and "not having anything" can be pretty clearly read as depression. With that in mind, I read her attempt to vanish at the end of the latest episode as a metaphor for suicide, complete with fake cheerfulness in the period leading up to the attempt (go back and look at all the weirdly-angled shots of Mangetsu smiling) and a literal note. I don't think the series is going to end with Mangetsu vanishing for real, because after this episode that would basically be saying "suicide is good if you're doing it to get rid of a societal problem"—and that's a ridiculous message because in the real world, there are no societal problems you can fix by committing suicide.* * First person to say "but what about lovely people in positions of power" gets the 2019 Most Irrelevant What-About Award Elephant Parade fucked around with this message at 01:13 on Sep 15, 2019 |
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Sep 15, 2019 01:10
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i binged episode 8-11 today to catch up and uhhhhh man i dunno what to even expect of or feel about this show anymore lol
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Sep 18, 2019 04:00
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It's definitely been my pleasant (well, for a certain value of 'pleasant') surprise show of the year. Really hope it sticks the landing.
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Sep 18, 2019 04:24
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I'm still not really sure what it's going for, in the big picture sense
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Sep 18, 2019 14:09
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Tales of Woe posted:I'm still not really sure what it's going for, in the big picture sense - Everyone has something (Mangetsu's arc) - Martyrdom isn't a fate you should aspire to (the current plot)
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Sep 18, 2019 15:32
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I really didn't care for that penultimate episode, to be quite honest. If we wind up more-or-less validating Mangetsu's deathwish by having her actually die (or merge with Shingetsu, don't you loving dare try to have it both ways like a weakling, show) then that's a drat near catastrophic failure of the writing IMO, but I also don't know how we pull back from that in a satisfying way now. Also Suisho was a lot of fun earlier in the show, but it feels like this ep stretched her character well past its breaking point. Having the fight with her take ALL episode and presumably at least some of the next takes away from the actual interesting personal dynamics the Getsus had - and while you *could* do interesting and sympathetic stuff with her character having been forced to fight in the Granbelm over and over and over, that's work the show needed to be putting in throughout her earlier appearances and chose not to. Just going by her onscreen appearances, there's no real strong reason to assume that Suisho has ever been primarily driven by any motives less selfish than "power" or "escape." The show needed to show us her having genuine feelings for Shisui but being forced to kill her, or something other than her manipulative evil mastermind routine she's kept up for literally the entire show now, for me to have any meaningful sympathy for her.
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Sep 21, 2019 00:10
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Spiritus Nox posted:I really didn't care for that penultimate episode, to be quite honest. She's been at this for a thousand years. She's not going to become attached to anyone, because she is completely burnt out. That's her whole thing - people only become interesting when they're impressive enough that she thinks that killing them might let her finally become a real girl. Magic is an addiction and an obsession, and she's been mowing down wave after wave of warped, deranged, and just plain awful people addicted to magic for centuries in a desperate attempt to prove to rear end in a top hat Magic Dad that she's better. That's her tragedy, that she's tied her self-worth to the standards of something that will never love her, and only uses her to make people into their worst selves.
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Sep 21, 2019 00:38
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Darth Walrus posted:She's been at this for a thousand years. She's not going to become attached to anyone, because she is completely burnt out. That's her whole thing - people only become interesting when they're impressive enough that she thinks that killing them might let her finally become a real girl. Magic is an addiction and an obsession, and she's been mowing down wave after wave of warped, deranged, and just plain awful people addicted to magic for centuries in a desperate attempt to prove to rear end in a top hat Magic Dad that she's better. That's her tragedy, that she's tied her self-worth to the standards of something that will never love her, and only uses her to make people into their worst selves. The problem with this, IMO, is that we've only seen her long, long, *long* after she broke, so she's completely one dimensional to us. I don't think there's any interest -especially in terms of storytelling- to be had in just having a vague notion of why someone is an rear end in a top hat right now when I've never ever gotten to see that person be anything other than that rear end in a top hat. There's no immediate emotional stake there, it's all academic. Like I *understand* Suisho's character, I just can't *invest* in it the way the show seems to be demanding that I do at a pretty critical juncture. Spiritus Nox fucked around with this message at 00:54 on Sep 21, 2019 |
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Sep 21, 2019 00:52
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Spiritus Nox posted:The problem with this, IMO, is that we've only seen her long, long, *long* after she broke, so she's completely one dimensional to us. I don't think there's any interest -especially in terms of storytelling- to be had in just having a vague notion of why someone is an rear end in a top hat right now when I've never ever gotten to see that person be anything other than that rear end in a top hat. We saw some of it in this episode. She's not just sone sadistic jokester treating all of this as a lark, she's extremely tired and extremely pissed. Her tragedy isn't that at some point, she was not an rear end in a top hat. It's that she was designed from the ground up as a monster who exists only to hurt people, and isn't even given any credit for doing the horrible job she was created for. Like, just own that you purpose-built a horrible murder-kid already and give her some goddamned praise for doing what you raised her to do and doing it well, christ.
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Sep 21, 2019 01:02
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some extremely subtle imagery this week
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Sep 21, 2019 01:03
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increasingly concerned that Mangetsu really is going to end up martyring herself, but the cross thing might just be an illustration of her attitude/mental state
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Sep 21, 2019 01:04
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Darth Walrus posted:We saw some of it in this episode. She's not just sone sadistic jokester treating all of this as a lark, she's extremely tired and extremely pissed. Her tragedy isn't that at some point, she was not an rear end in a top hat. It's that she was designed from the ground up as a monster who exists only to hurt people, and isn't even given any credit for doing the horrible job she was created for. Like, just own that you purpose-built a horrible murder-kid already and give her some goddamned praise for doing what you raised her to do and doing it well, christ. Except that she is that sadistic joker, as far as we can tell. Being Tired and Pissed, like, sucks, I guess, but there's no indication that how she's acting now is any different from how she's ever acted other than maybe being a bit more irritable about it. And if she's never done or felt anything meaningfully different than what she's shown us, then she's too one dimensional for me to really identify her as a person - and if she's not a person then why do I give a poo poo? Answer: I don't!
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Sep 21, 2019 01:07
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Spiritus Nox posted:Except that she is that sadistic joker, as far as we can tell. Being Tired and Pissed, like, sucks, I guess, but there's no indication that how she's acting now is any different from how she's ever acted other than maybe being a bit more irritable about it. And if she's never done or felt anything meaningfully different than what she's shown us, then she's too one dimensional for me to really identify her as a person - and if she's not a person then why do I give a poo poo? Answer: I don't! Hence the 'just'. The whole point is the existential horror of someone who is, to all intents and purposes, a fully sapient being getting assigned a job that should not be for sapient beings. She tries to find joy in it, and variety, but it's all pretty soul-killing stuff (she's literally spent hundreds of years only interacting with humans while her master is bringing out the worst in them, and then said master telling her she's still less deserving of its love than they are even after she does everything it asks of her flawlessly) and it's the only thing she can do because she owes her entire existence to Magiaconatus. She's a sadistic jokester because it's the only conceivable coping strategy she has, and mostly, she just wants this poo poo to be over.
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Sep 21, 2019 01:26
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Darth Walrus posted:all intents and purposes, a fully sapient being There's our issue. She doesn't *feel* like a fully sapient being to me because she's been so one dimensional in all of her screen time. So even though I can academically understand on some level "okay that would kind of suck, I guess", the show hasn't put in the work to give her condition any emotional stakes or grounding at all. Like even now I have no sense at all of what Suisho would want if she weren't bound to the Granbelm, beyond POWER Spiritus Nox fucked around with this message at 01:41 on Sep 21, 2019 |
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Sep 21, 2019 01:37
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Spiritus Nox posted:There's our issue. She doesn't *feel* like a fully sapient being to me because she's been so one dimensional in all of her screen time. So even though I can academically understand on some level "okay that would kind of suck, I guess", the show hasn't put in the work to give her condition any emotional stakes or grounding at all. That's the point. She never had a chance to decide that. She was born and then locked in a war machine, and has never known anything else. She doesn't exist to people who haven't already had their minds, bodies, and/or souls warped horribly by Magiaconatus. This is a really big part of what makes Shingetsu better than Magiaconatus - when she created a life, she tried to give it a life outside being useful to her, and so Mangetsu got friends, happy memories, simple pleasures, and a chance to do something for herself, whereas Suishou just got layer upon layer of coping mechanisms for life in her cell.
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Sep 21, 2019 01:53
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I can muster some sympathy of Suishou, she got a pretty raw deal.
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Sep 21, 2019 05:12
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final episode is up early on crunchy
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Sep 26, 2019 21:40
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Tales of Woe posted:final episode is up early on crunchy wait what today?
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Sep 26, 2019 21:47
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Spiritus Nox posted:wait what today? Yep. It's up right now.
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Sep 26, 2019 21:51
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I'm loving glad for the final scene
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Sep 26, 2019 22:24
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