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Last edited by nobahn on Sat May 21, 2022 12:01 pm; edited 1 time in total

~~Jean-Karlo Lemus~~ Steve Jones wrote:

It's all the more interesting for all the ways it lets its female characters be flawed—let them make bad decisions, let them flex their abs at inappropriate times, let them punch an entire dragon to death, let them collapse spacetime into a singularity in their pursuit of true love. That's that good shit right there.

I love writing that's like that! Cool

The Fourth is not some kind of clan of aristocrats. It is more so like open group for everyone that does not like 3 class system and want to abolish the classes.

It really is great that EVERY CHARACTER IN THE OP (with the possible exception of the happy singing child who got shoved in an Iron Maiden and has had no lines thusfar) is a murderously dysfunctional lady. Flare might hate herself due to her job even more than Menou does, Momo and Ashuna choose violence always, Akari’s dearest wish is to let Menou kill her, and Manon definitely poisoned those sandwiches and probably uses the Iron Maidening a kid to make horrifying blood magic or something. I would run screaming in the other direction if I met any of them, and it is great to watch.

Quote:

Literally anyone wielding a Pure Concept is a threat to both the people around them and themselves. It's not a matter of "if" the power goes out of control, but "when.

No, it is a matter of if they use the Pure Concept power and how many times they do use it. And on that note, Akari is not crazy yet, despite her involuntary usage of it. I mention this, cause this point is not being made, and it seems to give Faust, Menou, and Momo some sort of moral imperative.

Faust and it's members are throwing the baby out with the bath water. They execute all summoned humans from Earth. They are not hunting for evil Earthers, they are not hunting guilty Earthers, and they are not hunting crazy Earthers. They are hunting and executing 'all' human beings summoned from Earth. The Pure Concept power doesn't make you or compel you to use it (though in Akari's case, it seems to be a survival mode, which is understandable for all living creatures, under threat of immediate death). So you can get away with chosing not to use it, or use it sparingly to save yourself.

And as Akari already knows there is an actual cost per use of the Pure Concept, one that is quite the negative to a well adjusted human being. So a normal and good person actually would have an incentive for not using the Pure Concept if they could help it, especially if they want a normal life and to have a future.

In the X-Men movies, who are we cheering for, is it the Government run Sentinels who hunt and kill all mutants (because they have powers and could be dangerous), or good mutants like the X-Men. The people and governments of this world have been summoning (kidnapping) people (including children) from Earth for a long time now. There should be some sense of guilt or responsibility for the actions of the summoners, but there isn't. Maybe that boy was a lost cause, but maybe they should have tried to teach him what happens to the user of the Pure Concept, and what happens to you ultimately, and to your victims when you go crazy. Much like how the people from the "From the New World" anime did to weed out the bad seeds who had power.

I am not looking for a pound of flesh from Menou and Momo, but there is a cost they are going to have to pay for their actions. I see Menou and Momo as victims of Faust, after all, you could easily say, that Menou and Momo were raised in KGB spy camps in the former Soviet Union. What was done to them was evil, so you can view them with empathy, but still hold them accountable for their actions. But considering this world is beyond our norms, we probably won't even get that. I even have more empathy for Momo, and I think Menou does to, which is why she puts up with Momo's actions. Sometimes you just live in hell, and you just have to make the best of things.

Which is why I think Akari cares so much for Menou. spoiler[She's been to the end of the road already, and doesn't like the destination.]

This isn't a criticism of the writing, but sometimes when I read these, I feel like I'm really out of my depth, since there are some popular franchises I haven't seen, I'm not a gamer, and I don't spend any time on Twitter and other social media engaging with the current memes and dialog on...everything. So I have to stop like every other sentence to hit up google to figure out what the references mean. Like, I've never heard "They're lesbians, Harold" before today, and though it requires no explanation, it was just weird to encounter it twice in one day, and then, thus motivated to look up the source, finding out it's like 7 years old. ::sigh::

And, don't get me wrong, they are clever references, but after pausing for the fifth time in eight paragraphs to look shit up, I kinda lose the thread. It got so bad that when I hit this sentence, "She even tries to help Momo fight off a dragon andan actual freaking demon off," the missing space made me think for a second that "andan" was some type of dragon. Laughing

The repetition of "off" didn't immediately help me parse the sentence either.

I'm pedaling as fast as I can, but I just can't keep up anymore. :/

TarsTarkas wrote:

Quote:

Literally anyone wielding a Pure Concept is a threat to both the people around them and themselves. It's not a matter of "if" the power goes out of control, but "when.

No, it is a matter of if they use the Pure Concept power and how many times they do use it. [...]

Faust and it's members are throwing the baby out with the bath water. They execute all summoned humans from Earth. They are not hunting for evil Earthers, they are not hunting guilty Earthers, and they are not hunting crazy Earthers. They are hunting and executing 'all' human beings summoned from Earth. The Pure Concept power doesn't make you or compel you to use it (though in Akari's case, it seems to be a survival mode, which is understandable for all living creatures, under threat of immediate death). So you can get away with chosing not to use it, or use it sparingly to save yourself.[/spoiler]

It's not like there were four big continental disasters that devastated the world or anything. People who develop Pure Concepts have abolute control over them, ignore Menou's village getting whited out. Sure, it's totally possible that the kid with a chip on his shoulder that can nullify anything won't use his power at all, it's not like the show doesn't frame the exact opposite as being true. Rolling Eyes

nobahn wrote:

Jean-Karlo Lemus wrote:

It's all the more interesting for all the ways it lets its female characters be flawed—let them make bad decisions, let them flex their abs at inappropriate times, let them punch an entire dragon to death, let them collapse spacetime into a singularity in their pursuit of true love. That's that good shit right there.

I love writing that's like that! Cool

For the record, I didn't say that--my buddy Steve did. Just wanted credit where it was due. But Steve is absolutely right.

FinalVentCard wrote:

It's not like there were four big continental disasters that devastated the world or anything. People who develop Pure Concepts have abolute control over them, ignore Menou's village getting whited out. Sure, it's totally possible that the kid with a chip on his shoulder that can nullify anything won't use his power at all, it's not like the show doesn't frame the exact opposite as being true. Rolling Eyes

That kid with a chip on his shoulder did not ask to be kidnapped (involuntary summoned) from his home, his family, his friends, and his world; and be wisked away to a strange new world with none of the real world skills and experience needed to survive in this world. Not to mention that being summoned to this world means that you are automatically given a death sentence. Since Faust seems to be able to tell when a spoiler[summoning ritual has been conducted] you are already on the fast track to be executed. It really is a no win situation for the summoned. It doesn't matter if you are a good person, it doesn't matter if you don't use your power, and it doesn't matter if you want a normal life. Faust and its members are going to kill you anyway.

Even after all those continental disasters, and those disasters who are currently sealed away, the powers to be of this world continue to involuntarily summon (kidnap) people from our world to use their Pure Concepts for their own nations and/or organizations. Who exactly should we be rooting for? Our people or this world's people. Who is ultimately to blame for all these disasters? For me the blame lies solely with the summoning world. I as sure the summoners kept the summoned from knowing what the usage of their Pure Concept does to them, until it was too late. If you knew you would lose your humanity over time and turn insane by continually using your power, would you really use your powers. At the end of the road, you wouldn't really be you anymore.

This world takes no responsibility for its actions and has no empathy for its victims. Their solution to this problem is to kill them all, because it is the easiest solution. Because the people of Earth don't deserve a little hard work by the denizen's of this world to try and save some of the summoned, to give them a place and a future in this world. Because at the end of the day, the summoned are the victims, at least, until they turn insane. As the saying goes, "We create our own monsters".

Another thought on this, what if, the governments of Earth found out what was happening to its citizens, and that the kidnapped people of Earth were being executed for the crime of being victims of kidnapping. Would we, the people of Earth, be downplaying what is happening to our own people. Would we really be siding with the people of the summoners. I think human nature, would lie the blame solely at the feet of the people of the summoning world and their terrible treatment of our people. After all, as soon as they are summoned to this world, they are targeted for execution.

TarsTarkas wrote:

And on that note, Akari is not crazy yet, despite her involuntary usage of it. I mention this, cause this point is not being made, and it seems to give Faust, Menou, and Momo some sort of moral imperative.

She isn't crazy but she has spoiler[locked their world in a time loop, preventing the entire population from living their lives.]

TarsTarkas wrote:

The people and governments of this world have been summoning (kidnapping) people (including children) from Earth for a long time now. There should be some sense of guilt or responsibility for the actions of the summoners, but there isn't.

This literally does happen, the king and other Noblesse involved in the summoning were all prosecuted. And then in a later episode spoiler[the Faust member involved got executed.]

Amy192 wrote:

This literally does happen, the king and other Noblesse involved in the summoning were all prosecuted. And then in a later episode spoiler[the Faust member involved got executed.]

Yes you are right, and I perhaps should have rephrased it differently, as I did not mean the summoners themselves, but rather the collective guilt and collective responsibility of their society. Because the summoned are blameless in their summoning, yet are executed because they were summoned.

I mean, it’s inherently (as presented now, I’d lay any money there’s eventually a twist that CAN remove a Pure Concept or send a Lost One back to their original world) a no-win situation for all involved. The Faust as an organization, we have at least been led to believe, don’t summon people. They in fact outlaw summoning people, and it appears to carry a death sentence in its own right for people who get caught summoning anyway. (Or if the specific sentence wasn’t stated outright, it did seem to be implied to be on the table - and not even a king is exempt from that judgment.)

The Faust are also stuck with a bunch of unwilling interreality travelers whose powers are extremely powerful, way more dangerous than the users would think, not always under their control, and will slowly corrupt the user’s mind while also growing stronger. These powers have caused four separate events that can wipe out entire CONTINENTS and linger for centuries. And despite there being a continent made of salt proving this isn’t PURELY a power play by the church, people keep summoning otherworlders in bids for power. The church can neither remove the superpowers, nor stabilize them so they don’t corrupt minds, nor send the kids home. (Or again, that’s the official line.) All three Pure Concepts we’ve seen so far have activated automatically when their wielder was lethally injured, too… which, because everyone in this world apparently has more ambition or bloodlust than sense and these kids are also good material for magical workings, was probably likely to happen even if the Executioners weren’t around, and may also occur if the wielder’s dying of NATURAL causes for all we know (but people in the setting likely do.) In other words, even if a well-adjusted kid gets summoned and actively tries NOT to use their power, there’s still a very good chance they end up dying and wiping out a city in the process. And that assumes that the girl in Menou’s flashbacks only lost control because of the whole spoiler[botched partial blanching] thing, rather than accidentally setting off powers and killing people being a very real risk for any given Lost One. I suspect it is.

Is this fair to the kids? Of course not! But it’s not fair to people going about their lives in this world that they might die horribly and without warning because the nobles and the church are playing political games again, either. Waiting until a Lost One snaps means at least one person, likely more, WILL get killed in the process, and as far as we’ve been presented that’s a ‘when,’ not an ‘if.’ As it currently stands, I don’t think any faction in the show is meant to be read as ‘good,’ since commoners are non-entities, the church and nobles are both complicit in killing kids for having the bad luck to be summoned, and what we’ve seen so far of the Fourth Caste is intrigue and putting a child whose only lines have been singing to herself in an Iron Maiden. The entire power structure needs toppling and the knowledge of summoning Japanese teenagers lost. But until then, all options end in death and the only question is ‘how much.’

I do think it’s inevitable that Menou’s going to realize there ARE methods being covered up to non-lethally deal with Lost Ones, and that she DIDN’T actually have to kill all those teenagers. The narrative just begs for that reveal. She remains sympathetic because she’s aware that she can’t be a good person while participating in this broken system, and any lives she may have saved were bought with blood. But in the meantime, the conceit is cathartic to anyone who’s had to watch a bunch of mediocre isekai and there’s enough to this world told in an interesting way (and cool enough fight scenes) to draw people in on that and the promise of lesbian angst alone. I HAVEN’T watched enough mediocre isekai to cheer for another bland entitled OP teenager getting killed by his first party member instead of hanging around being entitled and bland, but as a ladyish person who likes ladies I do enjoy very violent lesbians angsting about how they’re developing feelings for their mark.

Regalli wrote:

I and what we’ve seen so far of the Fourth Caste is intrigue and putting a child whose only lines have been singing to herself in an Iron Maiden.

There were also those terrorists on the train.

Responses to Mitsuki have either been a weird reverence for existence with people clamouring for him to come back for revenge or a just as weird hatred for him as if his mere presence sucked the life out of the show. The kid was neither that great nor that bad, I have no idea why I keep seeing people get off to him being knifed in the head. That being said, while his hangups pre-isekai was going to make him prime fodder for his pure concept, this column kind of phrases it like he just always had that inclination to be an edgelord when I'm fairly certain the show says that last bit of obsession with wiping away people he hated and then everything in general was his pure concept talking just like how the girl from the second half of the episode suddenly started blabbering about "white".

Akari herself is a weird one because she's, uh, definitely not sane. Her sense of morality and blasé attitude towards her own death is kind of far removed from all concept of normalcy. She's just single-mindedly devoted to helping Menou out with killing her.

A great review for an awesome show that is fated to do really poorly because boys can't handle the girls ruling it.

Mami-kouga wrote:

The kid was neither that great nor that bad, I have no idea why I keep seeing people get off to him being knifed in the head.

I mean -- I don't think it has anything to do with him, specifically. It's exactly because he seemed like yet another fairly bland, not very interesting (whether good or bad), self-insert isekai protagonist, that many people were excited to see him axed (er, knifed). He's a stand-in for the show murdering/aggressively upending the usual isekai tropes, or at least one of the more central and annoying ones.

The Pandemonium arc is pretty good, the main protagonists have been introduced - the Fourth, Manon & the strange singing girl sacrificed in the iron maiden, pandemonium....

Akari is paying for using her power by erasing memories of her previous life and also locking away memories of her time loops so not to affect the current loop.

You can bet the "dreams" are flashbacks to failed loops...

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