i think i can finally express properly the reason why darlifra’s recent lore reveals have disappointed me so.
for almost 20 episodes we were following the lives of this group of teenage pilots. the story’s mysteries were related to things that are connected to them, such as why do they pilot franxx’es the way they do, what is their future, why aren’t they allowed to meet with adults and so on.
and then we have our big reveal, which technically answers these questions, but in the least satisfying way. because we’re basically told that none of it was actually of any importance as we are presented with a grand ancient conflict between a pre-human earthling race and space invaders. to make it even worse, we now realize that the “bad guys” our central group of characters was fighting against all this time weren’t actually bad.
basically, this development ruins the entire plot building that was done previously, making the characters and their issues look tiny and insignificant compared to the galactic war between two forces, one of which was the antagonist throughout the series and another is literally newly introduced. both are unfamiliar to the viewer, making it hard to care for their conflict at all.
it’s like someone switched the channel in the middle of a movie. the only great thing about this development is that it illustrates perfectly how making your story more grandiose and epic doesn’t guarantee that it will become better.
Still doesn’t work.
A. Them never meeting the adults does have an impact because now they can NEVER do that. A chance to meet the people they were protecting and understand something about themselves is just…gone, leaving them with question they’ll never know the answer to, a lot like real life.
B. We already know why they pilot them the way they do and it was made that way to enforce the idea of bonds being important to the heroes and to life in egeneral.
C. Their future has ALWAYS been uncertain and unforgiving as everything gets shaken up on an almost regular basis. And even so, that’s STILL a major focus because the VIRM want to take away any future they may have.
D. The Klauxosaurs were never ‘bad’ in the first place. They were treated as something akin to animals, beasts that needed to eb put down than an evil force. Even then, ever since Episode 13, the show has been setting up the APE as the bad guys and the VIRM is still them.
E. Then why was such a huge focus of the lastest episode being Hiro and Zero Two’s relationship? Why was the big shocking moment they saved for the final moment NOT the VIRM escaping or anything like that but rather Zero Two possibly dying right in front of Hiro?
F. Yeah but you actually haven’t DONE anything. The three points you brought up before are all either fine or still existing, the fourth seems to come from a fundamental misunderstanding about the show and the fifth one…makes no sense unless you view this through collectivist thinking, which the show isn’t based on.
If anything, this emphasizes that some compliants aren’t issues with the show but rather incompatibility with the viewer.
“Man, these kids who now understand their reason for their existence and are faced with the consequences of a large-scale battle they never wanted anything to do with are completely uninvolved with the story now and all those things foreshadowing these events were totally unimportant and meaningless now, even though 80% of it was completely and totally foreseeable if you were paying attention. Y’know, like that development that explained the adults were at a stage where most of them were basically husks of people primed to ascend from their body because they get all their emotional and mental well being from strategic medically induced emotions provided by a special pod bed and they never left it because they’re effectively immortal. Or the reveal earlier on of humanoid like beings within the Klaxosaur cores that looked a lot like someone was piloting them. Or the whole set up of the kids gradually learning about survival and showing interest of exploring Old World cities and villages to learn more about humans before the ruin of Earth. Or the intentionally framed pseudo-religious framing of Papa and APE as artibiters of all things good and acceptable and faith in those in charge gradually dropping. Or the gradual misalignment of select APE officials teetering away from the others showing the true people in power weren’t even APE, but the Grand Papa himself. Man, these developments are all totally foreign to the viewer and everything we’ve been slowly building towards was completely and totally out of left field.
i know i was a cuck for longposting about a stupid bad anime but you guys are so much worse jeez
Aw. Your description said you’re down to argue and mine says I reply to things I find interesting. I thought our interests would align here.
“Wow, you pointed out my statements about this thing you like that I don’t like were wrong, what a cuck!” -Someone trying to sound smart and failing miserably
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