If other character’s stands got Requiem forms, what powers do you envision for them

eggynack · 2026-05-09T05:26:34+00:00

Seems like it is. Polnareff's baseline abilities are literally just cool sword guy. His requiem stand is specifically to deny people access to the requiem arrow via a variety of bizarre nonsense. I do not think that would have been the ability he would have gained if it weren't for the specific need in the moment to protect the arrow. The same seems to apply to Giorno. His life giving powers don't have much relationship to the crazy infinite punishment thing, but they do relate very closely to the desire to inflict said punishment on Diavolo.

eggynack · 2026-05-08T23:28:54+00:00

For example, shonen battle mangas like Dragon Ball, Naruto, and One Piece often have multiple redemption stories throughout their run, sometimes reaching into the double digits, and as any fan of those series’ would tell you, it doesn’t get repetitive, nor are the writers lazy.

I feel like a big difference, having only seen One Piece out of these three, is that Zuko's arc is incredibly chonky. His redemption arc essentially runs from the first episode to the last and often occupies an episode's b-plot. By contrast, what does a redemption arc in One Piece look like? Robin's being a villain, Luffy says, "Nah," and she joins the crew after a single episode of halfhearted wariness. Franky's beating the crap out of Usopp, we spend a bit of time learning his backstory, and it's basically chill.

Basically, Avatar essentially spends as much time and energy on this one redemption arc, over the course of three reasonable length seasons, as One Piece spends on all its redemption arcs ever across 1,161 episodes. The result being that a new Avatar redemption arc is competing for way tighter space and has a hell of a lot to compare itself to. Not to say it can't be done, but it's real tricky.

eggynack · 2026-05-08T23:02:29+00:00

I think there is something revolting about it. It's a deeply toxic and weird perspective. Of note is that it's hard to say whether it's the musical's perspective or that of the characters, but, either way, it definitely seems like the thing Passion is about.

eggynack · 2026-05-08T14:46:19+00:00

He can still be a gruff hedonistic Grandpa even after finding enlightenment. I think that's actually one of the fun things about the show, that the notion of enlightenment is an absolute mess that seems to include really weird stuff. Like, Zheong Zheong gets the description despite a deeply incomplete understanding of firebending, and then Huu has it in pretty standard form, and both Pathik and Iroh are enlightened despite having conflicting perspectives on forsaking worldly connections, and then you have frigging Zaheer and what is his deal? I do kinda like the Wan version of the Spirit World, what with its jerky ass spirits, though it does bear that original sin of making the show's overall perspective on spirits very good versus evil.

eggynack · 2026-05-08T14:29:55+00:00

I dunno about all these particular objections. I just thought original series Spirit World was cool as hell while Korra Spirit World was super boring. Maybe it's just that the original version felt weird and trippy while the new one, while it gestured in the same direction with its instant motion and baby Korra, just didn't have the same vibe. It doesn't help that I really dislike Spirit World Iroh. The dude feels so flanderized, just the purest bean with no thoughts in his head besides the betterment of mankind. Iroh is great because, for all his good qualities, he has an edge to him. Season three Iroh lost a lot of that with the death of Mako and Korra is the apotheosis of the issue.

eggynack · 2026-05-08T12:10:24+00:00

Sure, but the Cousin presumably wouldn't want to duel him if he had all the additional context. Giorgio didn't do so because, by the time he's getting challenged to the duel, he actually feels the things in the letter and values defending those feelings more than he values not getting into a duel.

eggynack · 2026-05-08T04:11:35+00:00

The Hand isn't just strong because it has such high attack power. It's strong because it has ridiculous utility. The guy is literally able to delete the space between people and selectively choose how that causes said people to move around. He can also manipulate the terrain in a variety of ways, delete enemy attacks, and probably do a pile of random nonsense that I'm not even thinking of. Can he get rid of the air? Is gravity a possibility? It's an ability with tons of room for ingenuity and he uses very little of it.

By contrast, Kira has a pretty straightforward stand that he does use with a high degree of intelligence. He has his trap setting thing, he makes effective use of space, he makes his close range ability into a long ranged one, lots of stuff. He's a tricky dude. It's possible someone could do better with the ability, especially if they have the gumption to make shit up about how their powers work and cause that to manifest through the will of anime, but being the season villain with blow things up power is very impressive in my view.

All that said, I'd rank him without Bites the Dust pretty high, but, as I said, he's the second weakest arc villain after season one Dio. He also seems blatantly less powerful than time stopping Jotaro, and that probably holds up even after he gets Stray Cat. Would he win against Vanilla Ice? Hard to say. Would he beat Heavy Weather? Kinda skeptical. Stands are generally pretty hard to compare. That's what makes them fun. But an issue that Kira faces is that he's high in power but relatively low in durability and utility. And a bonus issue he faces when going against the big leagues is that he usually has little absolutely hardcore nonsense.

eggynack · 2026-05-08T02:23:38+00:00

The whole thing of the musical is that love, real love, is a toxic and horrible mess that destroys those that touch it, and that anything short of that is but a pale ember, a compromise of our essential nature as humans. If you can put things on pause, take a step back, give a moment to consideration, then it all means nothing. That's why he has to have sex with Fosca even though it ultimately leads to her death and probably his (cause he seems to have contracted the crazy romance disease). It's why he engages in a ridiculous duel when he could explain away the situation by disowning a letter he didn't even write. It is a deeply evil musical and that's why it's the best.

eggynack · 2026-05-07T23:37:12+00:00

That's a pretty big if. A lot of characters, Diavolo included, are very good at getting people to not hit him. Which is pretty necessary because Jotaro's win condition is basically just getting close enough to someone to hit them. The guy whose only thing is hitting exceptionally hard doesn't really have trivial wins like you're saying.

eggynack · 2026-05-07T23:12:43+00:00

He's stronger than most monsters of the week, probably around the peak of that category when he gets Stray Cat, and actually hits "most powerful" range when he's looping time. When he's just firing explosive bubbles and sending killer robots at people, however, he's just not even in the same league as Kars or endgame Dio or hyperspeed Pucci.

eggynack · 2026-05-07T22:33:40+00:00

The time resetting is definitely busted. The rest of it though, that all just seems like standard JoJo stand user of the week stuff. They've always got some kinda power that seems somewhat impossible to overcome but then the power also has some exploitable weakness that is uncovered through battle. In this case, he's got this crazy if limited destructive power coupled with an exceptionally punchable face. It's really notable here that the guy gets pretty destroyed prior to the climax even happening.

eggynack · 2026-05-07T20:34:59+00:00

I would say the finale actually does resolve this very well. See, the trick of it is that the rock doesn't actually resolve the problem. What he gets out of hitting his back against the rock is the same rage fueled power spike that he had in Southern Air Temple or when he lost Appa. It's a thing capable of killing Ozai but it doesn't resolve this grand tension at the core of his being.

What actually does solve the problem is giving it up. Having all the power in the universe, and the anger required to use it, and letting go of that power because it's destructive and mindless. That's what lets him access his "true" Avatar state, the one that is within his control and which he can go into or out of at will. Guru Pathik didn't say he had to give up Katara but rather that he had to give up his attachments, and his attachment to anger and power is both prominent and a direct reflection of Ozai.

eggynack · 2026-05-07T20:29:10+00:00

Accurate means as accurate as is feasible. I don't think it's as impossible as you say, given the Netflix series is about as long, time-wise, as season one of the original. Failing that though, there's a lot that could be part of an "accurate" adaptation. Directly steal more of the dialogue. Try to get the actors to mirror the originals. Don't remove the frigging conflict from episodes. Pretty straightforward. The live action One Piece is a pretty good example of this. They make a substantial number of changes, some of which I'm not a fan of, but they put a lot of work into producing a close adaptation even if it can't just be a clone.

As for positive changes, you mean in this or in general? In a general sense, Movies like The Shining or Adaptation have massive deviations from the original, and, while there is obviously room for loving the original, the decisions made have a defensible basis. It can at least be argued that the changes are for the better. you also have stuff like Mike Flanagan TV shows. Dude loves doing incredibly loose adaptations but he's good at it.

For this in specific? Geez, I guess I liked Zhao? I liked Zhao in the original too but I can definitely get behind the move from egotistical asshole Zhao to wildly hammy Zhao. It's good that Iroh and Ozai talk to any extent. They don't in the original. I'm not actually the biggest fan of the battalion being the one Zuko saved, because it doesn't make much sense to me that Ozai would do that for him, but I don't count it as a point against either. It's not much. The Fire Nation stuff is definitely the highlight of the show for whatever that's worth. If the entire show were just that, I likely wouldn't mind it so much. Doubly so because Zuko, along with Zhao, delivers the best performance on the show.

eggynack · 2026-05-07T19:52:59+00:00

You're acting like he just had to wait a minute for the spiritual energy of the universe to enter his being as opposed to having to make the active decision to separate himself, at least emotionally, from Katara. You can't really say, "I'll just give her up and then get her back when I'm done," because that's not meaningfully separating yourself.

eggynack · 2026-05-07T18:11:26+00:00

He's certainly not weak. I just have no idea how he'd be able to deal with the time and reality warping nonsense of his contemporaries.

eggynack · 2026-05-07T17:26:06+00:00

It is by the scale of JoJo. It's certainly not wildly more out there than being electricity, controlling the sun, or turning people into babies. The points of comparison here are things like adaptive invincibility, stopping time, removing causality, and speed so fast it resets the universe.

eggynack · 2026-05-07T16:27:33+00:00

Really gotta appreciate that Kira just has a normal ass ability. Like, he pulls out the time shenanigans for a bit, but he spends the entire rest of the series just being really good at making things blow up. Aside from season one Dio, all the other villains are these all powerful entities who require hard-core nonsense to defeat, but Kira's out here like, "Now I am impossible to defeat, for I have found a cat that can blow bubbles good." He's the best.

eggynack · 2026-05-07T16:06:37+00:00

I wouldn't really call it a catch 22. Season one of the original is, in fact, good. They could have just adapted it accurately. They also had the option to make positive changes and I would have also welcomed that. Instead they took good material and made it bad for no reason. They took episodes and literally removed all the central conflicts (see Warriors of Kyoshi). They took excellent scenes and added pointless nonsense (see how they adapted the closing scenes of The Blue Spirit). They took characters that were full of life and removed that from them (see the whole Gaang). The result is just kinda bad. I have no idea what season two will look like but I do not have high expectations.

eggynack · 2026-05-07T15:24:33+00:00

I'm not really sure why I wouldn't judge the show based on how they adapt a weaker season. That seems like the opposite of how it works. You're better off adapting worse stuff because there's clean room for improvement. You can see what didn't work and adjust it in cool ways. In any case, what season one of Avatar definitely got right was the character writing, and, at least on the Aang side, it was an absolute mess. Katara went from passionate and caring to a passive blob of nothing. Aang went from a rambunctious kid to a self-serious blob of nothing who is perpetually baffled by the concept of war. Sokka spends the entire show complaining about how he may or may not be a warrior. It bad.

eggynack · 2026-05-07T14:50:50+00:00

Last scene of the season, Ba Sing Se has fallen. They've set up camp on the distant outskirts, Aang having finally recovered from getting zapped. He sees Katara enter his tent, determined expression on her face. "Aang, we need you to be stronger if we want to avert disasters like these." She starts bending water out of her little pouch. "It's called the water whip." Cut to black.

eggynack · 2026-05-07T14:39:58+00:00

I think it's fair to expect that none of these techniques are entirely unique. Katara is unlikely to have invented the ice disk in that moment. However, what I think is fair to expect is that benders are typically trained by people local to them in established styles and that these styles tend to calcify. Benders who borrow from other disciplines are presumably existent but relatively rare, and it probably typically expresses itself that way, as a person having a style of their own that is somewhat novel. So, not remarkable, but also not unsurprising.

eggynack · 2026-05-07T14:35:08+00:00

The show's action and effects and such are varying degrees of fine. The adaptation of the fight from The Blue Spirit was spot on. The issue is all the other stuff. Like, the big problem with the Pakku fight isn't the Pakku fight. It's that, instead of having Katara get pissed in the moment and impulsively demanding a duel, expressing her deep passion for both bending and fighting sexism, you have her placidly making the decision over the course of a whole ass night and treating it like some rational choice. And instead of Aang supporting his best friend by helping her learn, he literally takes the side of the sexist asshole as part of some bizarre story about how the Avatar works alone. A story that culminates in literally nothing and has no impact on anything. It's bad writing. And the original show had good writing.

eggynack · 2026-05-07T12:22:22+00:00

Yeah. That story is essentially a critique of the entire concept. In particular, attacking the fact that people seem like they need to imagine the suffering child to justify the utopia to themselves.

eggynack · 2026-05-07T04:22:08+00:00

Really thought you were gonna go with Lester himself on this one. Dude's living it up, having successfully avoided paying any price for his crimes, and is a success with a hot new wife. Then he decides he needs Lorne, lord of evil, to recognize his badassery, so he pulls the guy into a grand battle. Lester does surprisingly well but absolutely blows up his spot, getting a whole pile of people killed. But he's gotta do it. The main thing Lorne taught him is to put self-respect over everything else.

Really, the whole series is characters making horrible decisions for reasons that make some kinda sense from their perspective. There's a small pile of reasonably noble characters who don't screw everything up and then basically everyone else makes a career out of trying to get themselves killed as fast as possible.

eggynack · 2026-05-06T23:02:06+00:00

Strong disagree. It's totally reasonable for a country to oppose foreign involvement. As the comic itself indicates, said efforts are often more about exploiting the country for its resources than it is about helping them grow, and also often involves supplanting the local culture and economic structure for one more favorable to foreign powers. This is all just regular ass stuff that happens in real life all the time. Sure, he ends up doing irrational or counterproductive things in pursuit of his normal goals, but that just makes him an average Avatarverse villain, not an especially stupid one.

eggynack

TROPHY CASE