weirdly, the first ten or so episodes of ranking of kings reminded me most of kaiba: a tragedy centered around royal succession and the price of immortality, with weird magitech and everyone betraying, manipulating or hiding their true intentions from each other (to excess, imo–the show erodes a lot of its credibility for pulling off twists by making nearly every named character either a secret good guy or secret bad guy). of course it doesn’t actually have kaiba’s class commentary or anything because we need to have Good Kings and Bad Kings but sure that’s fine. i think this part of the show is both more emotionally affecting and more fun. partway through one ep, the protagonist falls down a pit, meets a hermit who teaches him how to make sacrifices to the forest god, then threatens to sacrifice him before he runs off and then it never comes up again; later episodes don’t really make time for that sort of stuff because they drop the “going off on an adventure” thread really fast
then bojji powers up from pollyanna to shonen protagonist and the animation budget shifts from sign language during dialogue scenes (which owns) to everyone fighting each other, and that’s fine i guess, and the fights are good to look at, but it didn’t stick the landing for me. fighting shonen are fun to me when the good guys outsmart their opponents or do weird shit, instead here you take a shot every time somebody is saved by another guy showing up at the last moment or we cut back to somebody who only looked like they got owned and then you die of alcohol poisoning. nothing feels earned or particularly clever. the pacing is a mess with people only taking breaks from stabbing each other to deliver exposition or have traumatic flashbacks (which also involve stabbing each other). the antagonist’s tragic backstory hinges on a very obviously racist/nationalist allegory to the annexation of korea so that undercuts a lot of it too.
the forest god thing is actually foreshadowing for whatever happened between miranjo and the demon kid
the reward from the divine treasury for the #1 king that drives you insane is how the gods assert their control over humans now since they gave up on enslaving them
still thinking about this one because it’s so egregious. i’ve seen this show draw comparisons to steven universe online due to i guess a combo of art style and a superkid healing generational trauma through the power of friendship, and it’s a useful point of comparison. in SU the trauma is rooted in colonialism. in ranking of kings it’s “we uplifted this other nation to help fight in our wars, but their culture was based around deceit and betrayal, so they killed and drove us out and then lied about us doing war crimes.” i am not exaggerating lol. vile
The Tekken tri-shadows I might generously put down to trying to make the style resemble the Tekken 3 low-poly models through massive creative liberties with shading?
It kinda makes the 3D models look softer overall by contrast but it is distracting.
watched yukikaze, it kinda falls off a bit later but the first episode is like required viewing imo. emotionally and aesthetically cold and distant, extremely advanced and visually daring cgi (2002!) and smeared in blurry bloom like a frosted glass barrier. elliptical and rushed pacing/storytelling with little regard for inviting investment - it’s weird to watch something that is both so clearly a labor of love and so thoroughly detached. there’s some yaoi too!
i have never watched attack on titan but i gotta admit having your production fall apart to the degree that your final season is spread over 4 entire years is one of the funnies things ever
