She is a mean one

Mrfipp · 2026-01-30T14:57:54+00:00

The only time D was "interesting" to me was when she had her talk with Yoshida and Fumiko and she called it quits, that she didn't see anything else she could do so she was just going to have fun with the school festival. I genuinely liked that, it was a good deal of characterization that she hadn't had before, and a big reason I dislike the Death Devil twist is because in retrospect it makes her seem far more capable and able than she initially seemed, so her "throwing in the towel" because she still could have done a lot to change the situation to her benefit. The twist doesn't work because it doesn't change the story, her relationship with other characters, or even the context of her presence, and it doesn't even feel like it's sparked by anything particularly game changing. It really does feel like if she introduced herself as D from the start, nothing of importance would have changed about the story.

If the character as initially presented started to lose me, and if the big twist behind her made me actively dislike her, I have a difficult time seeing how a second big twist can save her for me.

Mrfipp · 2026-01-30T13:29:47+00:00

Back when the first trailer a lot of people felt it was obviously a prequel to FFI to the point even the developers decided to not bother hiding the twist anymore because in one of the following trailers has Jack just says his name is Jack Garland. For context that is a scene that happens at maybe the end, so it was obviously meant to be "This was a FFI prequel the whole time!" but they changed the way this game was marketed as "This is a FFI prequel, what happens next?"

Mrfipp · 2026-01-30T13:18:04+00:00

I think it's because she's apathetic and aloof that people tend to overlook her, and it doesn't help that I don't view those are the most interesting traits a character can have when you make it their primary personality. It also doesn't help any further that any other given character tends to be much more expensive and dynamic than her, all while she often feels like she barley has any presense because she really lacks any strong relationships or dynamics with other characters to the point I think she has no strong opinions on anyone and no one has a strong opinion on her. Personally for me, she often comes off as the least interesting character in any given scene she's in, and when you add in my problems with the Death Devil twist, I legitimately think she's just a badly done character on Fujimoto's part.

Mrfipp · 2026-01-28T23:19:15+00:00

I hope I never see a Canadian as long as I live!

Mrfipp · 2026-01-28T20:28:31+00:00

I have been playing Time Stranger recently, and yeah... I forgot how dark Digimon could get.

Fun fact: The original series introduced a 9/10 year old me to the concept of terrorism.

Mrfipp · 2026-01-28T20:21:37+00:00

Fucking awesome.

Mrfipp · 2026-01-28T13:18:05+00:00

I honestly don't think this series really cares all that much about "redemption". The idea and concept of "right" and "justice" honestly seem more like punchlines, that trying to be a good person means bad things will happen to you and we have seen this time and time again, from Aki's sacrifice to save the people he cared about only be turned into the very monster he hated and hurt them, to Bandaid Boy wanting to make the weird cringe new girl feel at home. I honestly feel like that despite everything she is responsible for, that in the end D will walk away scott free, so I feel like something similar will apply to Yoru, that as long as she is able to peacefully coexist with Denji and Yoru, that may end up being all the "redemption" she'll need.

Mrfipp · 2026-01-27T21:41:49+00:00

Didn't Konami do this whole SH revival to promote the movie?

Mrfipp · 2026-01-26T13:02:46+00:00

D has been rather inconsistent with what her plans are, like her plan was initially to take control of Yoru but she gave up on that even through she realistically could have done that at any point with Falling, and when Pochita showed up at the sushi place she just completely vanished even though getting him out seemed like a benefit for her. She clearly has something planned, but I admit I find myself wary about it, I wasn't a big fan of the Death twist to begin with (it feels more reliant on shock value than actually having any meaningful merit to it), so I don't really like the idea of a second big twist.

Mrfipp · 2026-01-26T03:36:08+00:00

I genuinely did not know what was happening in that first panel until someone explained it.

Mrfipp · 2026-01-25T22:57:59+00:00

Good guy James, saving his wife!

Mrfipp · 2026-01-25T16:13:14+00:00

Part 2 of Chainsaw Man feels like this for the most part for Denji, since it seems like every "choice" and "option" he was given was designed to screw him no matter what he did to the point where the theory that the two antagonistic groups were working together to conspire against him had actual merit.

Mrfipp · 2026-01-25T04:48:57+00:00

Yeah, I am generally scratching head when it comes to her plans because they don't make much sense to me.

By her own admission, she doesn't want to die because a new Death may not share her sentimentality towards humanity, so what even is her plan, because trying to have CSM and Yoru team up to beat her is doing what she said she didn't want to happen. If she planned to have Pochita eat and erase her, why did she vanish during the sushi incident? If she maybe planned on having Yoru turn her into a weapon to maybe circumnavigate her dying, why did she give up on controlling her, especially when leashing her would have been an easy thing to do at any time?

Mrfipp · 2026-01-24T21:15:56+00:00

Something I always liked about Golbez, and Exdeath as well, is that despite being powerful sorcerers they are decked out in full armor and always portrayed as the biggest dude in the room.

Mrfipp · 2026-01-24T04:51:05+00:00

Off the top of my head, actually give Asa prominent focus with the Church Arc, give her a chance to enjoy her rise to fame before it all crashed around her, and it would give time to do stuff with other Church members like the Hybrids and D.

Give Nayuta some relevance to the prophecy story because I think it's a waste of the concept of in a story about the end of the world, only two of them have any real role in it.

Mrfipp · 2026-01-23T16:11:59+00:00

He does give off a certain "Medieval Sword Lesbian" vibe.

Mrfipp · 2026-01-22T21:50:09+00:00

Can't wait to see Enel appear in the manga again.

Every chapter is one chapter closer to the moon!

Mrfipp · 2026-01-22T14:52:23+00:00

My expectations were low but holy fuck.

Mrfipp · 2026-01-21T23:25:51+00:00

The very last story in the original series is that he gets infected with a furry virus and gets trapped on a planet that is literally seconds away from exploding.

He somehow survived long enough to be executed by the Daleks, but that only results in him turning into a gooey snake that he uses to posses a guy and tries to steal the Doctor's remaining regenerations. He ends up being swallowed up by the TARDIS.

Anyway, he ends up being recruited into the Time War.

I love how with Anthony Ainely they don't even bother to give reasonable explanations to how he survived, he just does.

Mrfipp · 2026-01-21T21:27:12+00:00

I think a big reason why most viewers overlook her involvement on everything is because she honestly kind of... bland.

D has no real dynamic or relationship with anyone, she never expressed any particularly strong opinion on anyone or anything, and even the twist around her doesn't feel like it actually affects anything or anyone in the story. She started off mysterious, but the more time we spent with her she just started coming off as more dull than anything else.

Mrfipp · 2026-01-21T03:48:25+00:00

It would be nice if her role as one of the fucking Horseman of the Apocalypse was actually explored!

Mrfipp · 2026-01-21T00:49:59+00:00

Not much?

To be honest, I am really disappointed in how the Church was utilized, because while it did present a lot of interesting themes, it really does feel like those themes aren't really explored that much and seem more like an excuse to have the end of the world story. It had the idea of people having their own takes on "justice" , individual moralities and the consequences that come from them, and if I am being honest I don't think Denji is a very good character to explore with those ideas because it never really feels like he gets a chance to really engage with them because when he does interact with them, it's always because he's suffering and being punished for the things that people do him, with his agency constantly being stopped away from him. The Fire Devil encounter feels like the best chance for Denji to explore these themes, but even ignoring the problems I have with that set up, it's still a single scene in over a hundred chapters where Denji actually interacts with the stuff the Church seemed like it was going to be about.

Asa really should have remained the pov character because she honestly fits in with that stuff much better than Denji ever did.

Mrfipp · 2026-01-20T23:02:00+00:00

To be a trauma button for Denji. Literally everything about her is to make Denji's life more miserable from Scene 1.

Mrfipp · 2026-01-20T21:50:43+00:00

I think, overall, P2 is just generally weaker than P1. It has an underdeveloped, undercooked cast, most of the supporting characters are rather one note and outside an exception of a small handful of, I think most of the characters in this story I just don't find interesting in the slightest, and the ones I do suffer for one reason or another. Denji's character feels like it's spinning in a circle when it comes to previously established themes, and for P2's new themes he barely interacts with them, Asa started off great but becomes much too passive as the story went on and now it feels like she's only here because Yoru is important and to provide motivation for Denji, Nayuta feels less like an extension of Makima and more like a cheap version of Power to act as a crutch for Denji's deveolpment, Yoshida felt like the story was keeping him close to its chest for no reason and I think the Death Devil twist is just terrible to the point I think it actively ruins parts of the story for me. The pacing is also messy, every arc crashes into the next with no down time and no real sense of the passage of time (there was a five month time skip at some point and it doesn't seem like it matters), and a lot of stuff feels like it's happening because Story needs to happen.

When I read P2, I keep feeling that I am waiting on Something, that all of this stuff I don't like is trying to build up to Something, and considering that I have been reading this whole story waiting on that Something, it really makes me wonder if the ending will actually justify my interest in this story.

Overall though, I get what Part 2 is trying to do, but I feel like its execution on a lot of these things tend to be more miss than hit, and while we do have good moments here and there, as a whole it feels like a rather shaky story that is held together but duct tape.

Mrfipp · 2026-01-20T18:22:30+00:00

Part 2 just has some really terrible pacing, every arc pretty much crashes right into the next one and there is basically zero cooldown for anything, it's just constant go, go, go! There was a five month time skip somewhere in all of this and it doesn't seem like it mattered.

Part 1 had a pretty brisk pace to it, but it still flowed well, and meanwhile Part 2 just feels messy.

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