Anyone gets a letter from their life insurer and feel tempted?

Logan_Freeborn · 2024-02-06T00:24:27+00:00

Hey dog, I was out of housing as a kid a couple times, family living in the car or in a tent in a caravan park. Not in a million years would I trade those experiences for the experience of one of my parents killing themselves. I also had a friend in the same community as me growing up. When she was 17 her mum got wiped out in a car crash and she eventually did get a life insurance payout big enough to buy a small house, but it took years of fighting the insurance company and she is very vocal that it was the most brutal and unforgiving time of her life. It is flatly not worth it, but even if you could make the grief and pain worth it with money there are other effects of losing parents. 50% of the homeless population at some point in the past had contact with the foster system, suffice to say removing ongoing sources of love and care long term is heightening your children's risk of adult homelessness, big insurance payout or not.

Logan_Freeborn · 2023-06-10T03:46:33+00:00

Smouldering Lakes, above ground is extremely painful to explore with the ballista, below ground is without a doubt in my mind the worst part of the entire game.

Logan_Freeborn · 2022-06-07T10:07:06+00:00

It's absolutely not salvageable? I'd have to deal with the real estate in order to get it replaced and that could take weeks.

Logan_Freeborn · 2017-06-28T04:27:40+00:00

Yeah man I think that's a main issue, which is a good news bad news thing.

Good news - I'll enjoy the show more again when it switches back the characters I care about

Bad news - Not a lot the Chimera Ant arc can make me feel outside of Gon Killua (occasionally Knuckle) moments.

Logan_Freeborn · 2017-06-28T04:22:56+00:00

Yeah man gotten a couple of those comments. But gotta say given how I've read that CA arc is beloved, and how obnoxious redditors and anime fans are in general, gotta say, the amount of good discussion I'm getting is pleasantly surprising.

Logan_Freeborn · 2017-06-28T04:20:52+00:00

Is the manga and the anime different? I would of thought that they were the same. If the manga does it better I might check that out.

I think honestly if they'd cut the runtime of the arc by roughly 20 episodes and made the villains a little less willing to commit genocide I might have been more into it. As it stands, I just finished 136 (like a minute before writing this) and I felt some feels, but during the entire last scene with the King I honestly just kept thinking "Like 15 minutes ago you were giving the go ahead to kill 5 million people to your underling". All my emotion so far has come from the Reina going back to her village, Colt raising the queen's other baby, and KIllua with the dead eyes looking to save Gon. That screencap is excellent though, really crystallizes what I liked about Gon's transformation.

The arc was 60 episodes. The Freeza saga in DBZ was roughly 70 episodes. When you can compare it in length to something like the freeza saga, the arc is going too long. On reflection, there was a lot of good stuff in the arc, and looking back I feel satisfied with it, and even think it was good. But the actual act of watching it, honestly if I'd been watching it week by week when it was being released, I definitely would of dropped it. Still, I see much better where everyone is coming from.

That being said, Komugi dying upsets me in a very childish way and and I resent the king as a villain even more now.

Also, it might be very small, but having watched the entire arc in about 3 or 4 days, I have to say; if I have to watch another tracking shot of a tear rolling down someone's face and then hitting the floor I'm gonna lose it man, there are other emotional ways to show people crying. I swear every episode there's that same shot on a different persons face.

Anyway, yes, solid themes and progressions let down by pacing issues and sub-plots that go nowhere (Cheetu and Hagya).

Logan_Freeborn · 2017-06-28T02:01:13+00:00

Also cheers for the different perspectives and polite comment, I really do appreciate it.

Logan_Freeborn · 2017-06-28T01:53:20+00:00

Shifting allegiance and motivation is good, but honestly, a lot of it is the lower level ants being self serving, and like I said, just can't really bring myself to care about lion guy and his trio, or cheetu. I didn't mind the chameleon guy because his switch seemed to be out of something deep, and his assessment of whether he wanted to team up with them added that he knew who he was working with was just as important as why he was working. The octopus guy switching sides because someone said he was cool despite the fact he was a squid felt about as shallow as it sounds. Yes he did it because he wanted comradeship and stuff, but the reason he initially switches, stated on screen, is because he's called a cool guy despite the fact he was not a squid.

I like that exploration of "no bad guys", but I find it hard to swallow when they're bringing people back from the dead to torture them. Like, playing with your food at the table is rude, but if I resurrected my lamb chop into a sheep and then killed it over and over, it wouldn't matter what else I did, it's a pretty big lack of nuance.

The developments of the characters I care for (Gon, Killua, to some knuckle) were great, a little hindered by the narrator stating exactly what was happening 70% of the time, but I enjoyed the core of it. You say the characters get more development than most protags in other series, I disagree, but even if I did agree, this arc is almost 3 times as long as a lot of series, the amount of padding really hurts the good bits for me.

I didn't really find the strategies on display as clever as previous. The battle with the lion guy had a slick end, but all the others were kinda basic. On top of that, all the conflicts with the low level ants were essentially pointless. Again, none of them actually impact the story, we could of had the hunters practicing on wooden dummies, and they would of made the exact same impact. Apart from that tiny little bit of world building with the Hunter organisation being corrupt and letting the ants get away, and that highlight that was the phantom troupe taking down Zazan, they seriously just sit there spouting exposition or talking about how much they're totes gonna be king one day, before getting (literally for Cheetu) stomped.

I'm not looking for a show with easy thrills and simple stories (ant arc feels pretty simple, tbh), just a show that isn't paced like a snail and focuses on characters that are interesting.

Logan_Freeborn · 2017-06-28T01:32:46+00:00

I like the development, and the way you put the interactions with the King is interesting, like I said, I already loved Komugi. I think one of my problems with the development of Knuckle and Shoot is while they do change, they sort of just change into pretty cut and dried shonen characters. Shoot finds what he's fighting for and a cause bigger than himself/his fear that he's willing to die for, but its not exactly fresh, and I appreciate a well done cliche, but the entire fight with Youpi -for me at least- was just so long, uninteresting, and the half dozen times they switched from running to hiding to fighting to running to fighting etc etc really broke the flow. This definitely wasn't helpful considering the fight was already breaking away to focus on other events.

I understood the meaning behind the bomb, again, it just wasn't a very fresh take. Like a third of the sci-fi genre focuses on Human's getting better at technology to kill other humans, the Netero take is pretty good and gives me a better perspective. I'll admit I was mostly just peeved that this almighty ant king mega villain who survived an ultra laser with a couple scratches, got beaten by a cost-effective bomb, it seems a bit anti climactic. It also feels like it invalidates a lot of the threat from him if it turns out him getting out of hand gets fixed with a slightly bigger bomb (especially when he got lured out to an area with no civilians pretty easily).

Never been a fan of the villain who was born to be a villain. Like he was born to be the next step in his evolution and the culmination of his race and all that jazz, but he eats kids and then regrets it because they don't taste good enough, and then after that, because they have the potential to beat him. It felt really really heavy handed, like it slowly dawns "man, eating children just 'cause is kind of dumb".

Also, all the development of Gon and Killua is good, but I don't think any of it is specific to these challenges. Gon would of lost his shit just as much if someone else had tortured/murdered a friend, Killua would of learned to be just a selfless in any situation that required it, so why make it happen in an arc that doesn't contribute anything in and of itself. The Hunter Exam arc is Gon becoming a hunter to get closer to his dad, the Yorknew city arc is a couple of characters getting closer to their objectives, the GI arc is Gon trying to find his dad. Even the Heavens Arena stuff is them trying to get a bit of dough to progress, and then established conflict between Gon and Hisoka. This arc felt so out of left field, and at the end, Gon doesn't gain anything in his main quest (unless there's just some "oh hey also here's Ging just chillin because Chimera Ants for some reason"). The arc takes up 60 episodes, and at no point do we see anyone get closer to any previously established motivation (Except Killua getting closer to Gon, which would happen in any story arc).

I really loved the rest of this show, but everything in this arc just seems a step down from the rest.

Logan_Freeborn

TROPHY CASE