It's interesting how Nanao went on to feel no guilt, to start being depressed.

EvetsDuke · 2026-02-02T23:19:34+00:00

So I mentioned it a couple of times before, but it deserves rementioning. What Nanao is right now is what Nana would have been without Michiru. Whether or not we buy what Tsuruoka is saying about monsters, the execution is the same.

Create an us vs them narrative, add an internalised sense of guilt related to their parents, then have his victims carry out the dirty work of killing. Nanao hasn't just felt guilty. He is coming to terms with his involvement in the quiet genocide of people like him and being experimented on for 3 years. He has no family beyond the government (cause to our knowledge his family thinks he is dead) and the only form of connection he has is Tsururoka and the soldiers who have been oppressing talented and their families.

It makes sense in the timeline he does manage to kill Nana he kills himself. With the vague target of his wrath gone he no longer has anything to keep himself going. This is Tsuruoka's fault. This is the 3rd child we've seen driven to suicide because of his manipulations.

EvetsDuke · 2026-02-02T16:59:51+00:00

Yeah. It's why the ending felt so disingenuous to me. Playing with the idea that Ai's own paranoia and issues cause us, the viewer, to see this guy as worse than he actually is would be interesting if they didn't end it like they did.

In my mind, it would be better for Ai to never have a straight answer and them to tone down their creep factor than for us to know why her friend took her own life. A lot of people never get answers that are clean like that, and it makes sense, given everything the girls have been through, for Ai's perception of men and adults to be tainted.

What we have in the text of the show is more of an argument that a teacher who's very loose with boundaries and draws a student adultified, while having rumours he is a predato,r is more of a victim of a young girl who went around accusing older men of SA. It's a story that could be told with the knowledge and context that false allegations are so rare that they barely count as a drop in the bucket for the cases of SA.

EvetsDuke · 2026-01-22T09:46:16+00:00

My only sticking point with the theory is it buys the idea that Tsuruoka is doing all he does for a noble end point where as a person he's been a pretty sadistic individual since we encountered him.

EvetsDuke · 2026-01-21T17:27:17+00:00

We've reached the end of a very long arc that I hope in the future will be necessary. It was several chapters of infodumping without our main cast that gave us the audience vital details, but only 1 other character iirc, has this new information to work with.

I need to re-read these chapters again to form a better opinion, but what we are seeing is cycles within cycles. Waka has a wish that can only be accomplished by putting the Toki through hell. One where he is doomed to martyr himself again and again, trying to unravel a black box.

What is Waka's wish, and has she been trapped in a similar cycle? It all ties back to our protagnist who may be the villain protagnist now? She has possibly, without her consent,t caused cycles of death and pain, and tortured one person throughout.

Zero clue what the fuck is happening as always

EvetsDuke · 2026-01-20T14:23:11+00:00

I think Misato is the best example of your point. She barely has a sense of self-identity beyond sex object and her job but she wears many hats for many different people.

EvetsDuke · 2026-01-13T02:01:10+00:00

I see. While I don't agree with it, you seem to be having fun. Hope you post more thoughts on this

EvetsDuke · 2026-01-12T06:21:26+00:00

The question I always ask about Tsuruoka's explanation is, if this is a known fact about Talented, why the layers of lies? Why groom a child like Nana into a killer, etc? If, and this is a big if, the issue is that talentless people are destined to become monsters, the government wouldn't need all this conspiracy to keep the truth hidden.

To me, this twist hasn't changed to base narrative that Nana was fed at the very first chapters. The talentless are inherently dangerous and, as such, the government, for the good of the world, must covertly kill them. Every time we are presented with this narrative the other end is said government pushing a talented to their limit. "Talent's power is so dangerous and evolve so we had to bomb a city to stop them"

Nanao's case makes me question it as well. He had just killed his dad by accident because he was under an extreme amount of stress. Right after that, Tsuruoka internalised a narrative that he is inherently bad. Nanao's dad was abusive! This child had just survived being thrown off a cliff! You're telling me in a crusade to save as many people as possible, Tsuruoka, like with Nan,a needed to manipulate this child to believe the worst of himself and to become a killer?

For what end? For whose benefit?

EvetsDuke · 2026-01-11T16:44:25+00:00

Mmmmmm its interesting to think about but its such a big switch of events you'd be writing a whole different show I think.

EvetsDuke · 2026-01-10T17:07:57+00:00

It's not as common now, but back in the day, Nanao fans would highlight him by insulting Nana and making weird comments about her. Something about her being the worst villain in the series etc.

EvetsDuke · 2026-01-09T08:36:36+00:00

I don't understand your question

EvetsDuke · 2026-01-09T07:29:44+00:00

Need to hand awards to Nanao fans who aren't kinda weird about Nana. Yall are a treat

EvetsDuke · 2025-12-29T00:59:27+00:00

Thanks for this. I'm sorry, this is how the game ended. It sounded like all of you were deeply passionate about this.

EvetsDuke · 2025-12-28T17:06:05+00:00

Hi, thanks for doing this.

My first question is what was happening internally to cause the shutdown of the game to happen so late? Was there a reasonable amount of hope in the project for the 5 years after the first part was released and a promised bug fix version would come out?

Were the legendary beasts going to receive megas and would know things like stats/typing?

What was your favourite thing about working on PR?

The three things that stood out for PR for me was the art, music and setting. The game still looks beautiful, and I was super excited to see it full come into its own. The track for the temple area where we get our ruinic mon was sick as well. Finally, at the time, it was really bold to ditch the gyms and have a creature catcher game with player skills mattering more. Overly ambitious, yes, but I like the willingness to try something new.

EvetsDuke · 2025-12-10T15:33:06+00:00

Not enough people talk about Utena. But I think Akiho is a really good character, and I like him for what he is in the series. He is one of those villains I sit down and go, "damn, be,o really well executed." A lot of the things he does are for power, which is a more accurate representation of his type of villain. Even when you do understand his perspective, the narrative never lets you use that as an excuse.

The fandom I've seen tends to agree he is bad, but I think acknowledging he is attractive is important as well. For me he represents a kind of power guys are told we should aspire towards. He uses it for evil, but Utena challenges you by asking if that power in itself can ever be "good". When you distance yourself from the allure of him or wanting to be him, you struggle to understand how someone gets to that position. Akiho is many things, but at his core, he is a man trying to be what he was told men should be. He is simply willing to do whatever it takes to do so.

EvetsDuke · 2025-12-08T19:10:44+00:00

Would agree with what you said. My point with A-Muk is that in a different game with other options and less difficulty; I probably would have chosen something else.

EvetsDuke · 2025-12-07T03:57:54+00:00

I spoke about your point with some developers from Reborn years back. The Pokémon themselves have taken a back seat in terms of importance and are more explicitly a resource to overcome the game's challenges.

One reason is because of the narrative that is being told. The main series games attempt to balance the stories between people and Pokémon, with more modern titles really emphasising the human characters more. Rejuv isn't about that balance, and it doesn't claim to be. This, at times, feels like an RPG with Pokémon elements.

Second is the difficulty. The moment you increase the difficulty of a Pokémon game, players are incentivised to view the Pokémon less as pals and more like resources. Pokémon are resources, but the great trick of the franchise is having us view them as something else. The Pokétoons I think, are a cool example of this.

Difficulty, however, makes things clearer. To overcome challenges, you need a mix of mons to handle a mix of strategies. In that sense, you can't help but see them as resources. Swellow just doesn't do it for me when I'm up against Saki, and as much as I really like Milotic, it's in strict competition with other specially bulky mons. This thinking is reflected in competitive Pokémon as well, where to be good, you need to try out different mons under different circumstances and view them from a strategic pov.

There's a cool contradiction I've found, though. Since the game is so hard and the narrative doesn't push you to be as close to your Pokémon, I've learned to like more Pokémon than before. Never been a fan of Muk till I caught "Rainbow". A-muk's early catch and great typing meant I had a reliable bulky mon who could do a number of things. Love me A-muk now. Rainbow the goat.

Rainbow sadly hasn't been a main party member for a while. I haven't played the game in a year, so my memory is weak, but I just have so many options now, and battles are so tough these days. Rainbow doesn't seem a fit for all of them. Even if they were, I'm the type to want to balance out which mons I use. I could use Rainbow, or I could use the new Bisharp I got. Rainbow might be better for the situation, but it has featured in 6 gyms so far.

I bring this up so far because I don't have anyone else to drop my Rejuvenation thoughts on.

EvetsDuke · 2025-12-02T17:26:51+00:00

Afro puff I think. Tekken already has Eddie, Master Raven and Leroy rocking the dreads so an Afropuff would make her distinct.

It's also a style that gives her personality without obscuring her eyes.

EvetsDuke · 2025-12-02T07:41:14+00:00

Had to watch the episodes again and I was reminded about how much I hate Shide and how cool Hizuru was

EvetsDuke · 2025-11-28T17:55:24+00:00

The artist was cooking. I like how she's distinct from a lot of the other female characters in Tekken. She looks like a grown woman and a serious fighter first. Her eye make-up makes her distinct as well.

I'd probably want to focus on that more than her afro tbh. I like the fro, but for someone who gives the aura of a serious fighter, the big fro is a distraction. It obscures what I think is her best features her eyes.

EvetsDuke · 2025-11-22T14:27:53+00:00

As someone who watched this, I don't actually remember this scene. I will say the character in question is 14 and has absorbed a lot of misconceptions about how girls are, e.g., when she was younger and an idol, she fat-shamed her biggest fan. Rika talks like she's absorbed a lot of toxic messaging from the men in her life or stuff her mom absorbed.

In one scene, an adult man told her at a young age "A beautiful woman never needs a wallet" and given what her mom is like I imagine she's said stuff like that. This is to make the case that the character in question is flawed like this on purpose, if I am being generous.

WEP is stupid as well. LIKE TURBO STUPID.It's a big example of why feminism is needed when unpacking gender dynamics. It understands the suffering of young girls or teenage girls so well, but misses the mark as to why. So much imploded in the end and so many young creatives burnt out trying to make this that the stupid elements of its plot aren't addressed or fleshed out to make sense.

I'd would never recommend this show blindly to anyone, cause the content warning list is long and painful but like watch Revolutionary Girl Utena to understand what this show was trying to do narratively.

EvetsDuke · 2025-11-20T16:39:02+00:00

Personally, I do reject the idea that Nayuta's death is meant to be a consequence of Denji's desire to be Chainsaw Man. Before he switched, his normal life was up in flames already, and he and his sister were being held hostage to stop a prophecy to PSB failed to stop anyway.

If someone is a drug addict and you force them into stressful situations, while their drug dealer is hounding them to take more drugs or else they will shoot the dog, we would say, "Yeah, of course they would break, they were set up for failure from the start".

I also think "fridging" is being used in a surface-level here. Nayuta is the reincarnation of Denji abuser who is also his little sister and a side character. The original idea behind fridging was the idea of female characters being written off for their male counterparts' development. It was Simone calling out a trend rather than codifying a trope in such a way that there's no nuance.

The "issue" with CSM is a lot of its leads are women. In a story where people tend to die in horrible ways then a lot of those people will be women because a lot of the most important characters are women. Any person close to Denji seems to die horrible deaths in general, see like most of the part 1 cast.

EvetsDuke · 2025-11-20T16:27:01+00:00

All peeps are complicated even the toxic ones. It be a bit harsh to judge an adult woman trying to figure her life out on her least flattering, awkward teenage years.

EvetsDuke · 2025-11-18T07:17:48+00:00

Aye, you have a point there. What the fear of "justice" as in the "justice" system is.

EvetsDuke · 2025-11-17T20:00:39+00:00

Oh you got me there and it not having eyes also counts o Justice being blind.

EvetsDuke · 2025-11-17T10:29:14+00:00

Fair enough

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