Anime Discussion Thread - Page 6329

The side-plot surrounding the circumstances of Konatsu's first child were not only completely unnecessary to the story in the first place, but increasingly stupid the more they developed it.

The beginning where they just decided to tell us "hey by the way she was angry with life and decided to have a child randomly" was weird as fuck and - again - COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY TO THE STORY. Furthermore they undermine the agency and integrity of the character we had come to know (and root for) as a strong-ish, pigheaded vengeful woman. Turns out no she's just an emotional floozey who doesn't know what to do with her life and had a baby just cuz. DAE wiminz r illogiculz?!?!? You were looking forward to seeing an arc of her coming to terms with the past and opening up to Yotaro? LOL fuck you here's a fucking baby for no reason! Great fucking writing, way to ruin your own fucking characters lady. The part where she justifies it by saying she wanted her dad to have a grandson feels weak at best, in hindsight.

The part where they decide to introduce the mafia boss and red herring you into believing he's the dad is, once again COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY TO THE STORY and fairly annoying to watch. Yes they reuse the mafia boss later in the story, but he doesn't really contribute anything meaningful or significant. That entire part could have been cut out and we would've gotten a more cohesive story as a result.

Finally, and by far most egregiously (I may have been willing to overlook all of the above if it weren't for this)... the fact that they dig up this unnecessary side-plot again at the very end for one last shocking plot twist that no one asked for and makes absolutely no sense. Turns out our main character whom we've followed for the entirety of the show and was 60-70 years old was the father all along.

WHAT?!?

Are you fucking kidding me? Is this just a social experiment bro?

That makes no fucking sense!

That completely contradicts and undermines FUCKING EVERYTHING about their relationship that we've seen for the last 8 hours of this anime. It completely undermines the entirety Konatsu's character, as well as Yakumo's stoic resignation to be forever hated in order to "protect" her from the truth. Literally the only time we are ever shown anything remotely positive between the two (since her parents' death) is once her son is already like 6 years old. Everything else has seemingly been nothing but anger on one side vs fake apathy im-doing-this-for-your-sake-but-you-cant-know on the other. Also in that scene in the cafe she blames it on youth. Lady you were in your fucking 30s when you did it, there was a 10 year timeskip between Yotaro showing up and you randomly deciding to have a child.

It actually makes no sense. And it makes no sense that anyone above a middle school reading level would find this side-plot to be anything but hamfisted, OBJECTIVELY BAD, fucking hack writing with no purpose but to shock, but to impress the idiots who don't know any better.

I swear to fucking god, what is it with josei mangaka and the obsession to have the girl in their stories randomly fuck their father figures who are more than double their age?! I mean Usagi Drop's manga certainly was something, but even that seems infinitely more reasonable and believable compared to this fucking garbage. And at least it tried to build up to it in a sensible manner rather than just dropping a contrived plot twist out of nowhere for shock effect. Yet people give that one far more shit whereas this is universally loved and people pretend that it has zero flaws? PARDON FUCKING ME!?

Yes I'm fucking angry.

And yes I loved season one. I don't know if I can say that I hate season two, but jesus christ that made me so fucking mad.
I haven't been so mad watching an anime since Psycho-Pass 2 was an absolute dumpster fire of a trainwreck that ruined every single good thing about its predecessor.

The fact that I can't even remember that makes me think that the show probably didn't make a huge fuss about it or only dropped hints instead of confirming it outright. I have searched for a post of mine on MAL for the last episode and I didn't post, which can only mean I didn't think it was a focus of the story or pressed in my face.

The other subplots could have been better or left out, I agree. However, I didn't feel like they were hurting the main story too much. At least not as much as it did for you. I would probably have to rewatch it to give more details but I remember the relationship between Yakumo and Konatsu to be far more nuanced than what you described.

In retrospect, the show wasn't that good when it was focusing on Yotaro and Konatsu. The former was okay. He did grow on me a bit as s2 went on. The latter was mostly forgettable. Her story had some interesting potential, but you're right in that basically none of it was delivered on.

Love it or hate it, Yakumo is the emotional core of the series, and any subplot that doesn't involve him is almost pointless. I don't remember what happened at the start of s2, but I can definitely tell you about the end of Yakumo.

Basically, I think the only reason s2 works at all is because s1 was legitimately good. Without a connection to Yakumo, the story is nothing.

For starters, it's about Wakaba or Waka-chan. I realize that the whole anime was centered around her, aka nothing would've happened if she lived, however, the amount of Wakaba thrown in our face felt suffocating at times. I agree that for the first half, it seemed ok. Lots of flashbacks here and there, repeated ones too etc... but then they even had a whole episode that just strung them all together. Like, look, yes, yes, things are only as they are because of her and she's someone that should definitely be looked upon fondly and reminded of, but it felt like it became excessive.

Then once it feels like the anime got the right amount in there, we get thrown another curveball that is Akane, who looks like Wakaba and can act like her, with Kou even saying that he imagines that she'll be like this at that age at one point. Question is, why? If you want to have Akane that badly and imo, you shouldn't have to, why not have her live a little far away, but have them bump into each other at random and develop things from there. What are the chances of someone looking exactly like Wakaba moving in next door to you? They talked about Wakaba guiding her to them and whatever, just feels really dramatic on the author's part and I feel like having someone come in that looks different, but has similar characteristics would've worked better.

Another thing was the way they made her some prophetic person. Like, this was never established anywhere aside from her saying "you know how my dreams/vision always come true". I'm sorry, but you're 11 years old and this is the first time we hear about this. Why should we just accept this at face value? I think that they could've delayed her death for several episodes and at least established some of these indirectly. The way people threw themselves at her visions blindly was kinda bad, aka Akaishi quitting his pitching to become a catcher, but connections are important after all.

Something else that I feel a lot of anime do is the way things roll. It's always similar and it's done in other sports anime as well. Team gets together, they lose 1 season for whatever reason, fight or beat evil coach then eventually win finals or go to Koushien in the last year. I realize part of it is team building and going through obstacles, but would it actually kill an anime to break that mold? Finally, I also wish they actually went further than just getting to the Koushien. Why can't we see how Kou and Aoba's relationship develops or how they far they make it in the Koushien? Sure, that was the primary goal after all, but so many anime seem to stop at that point. Guess there's no point in going further if you battled the best team and accomplished the main goal, aka Wakaba's dream here.