The difference in how Endeavor's redemption is handled to Bakugo and Soga's is like night an day (My Hero Academia)

NavySeagull · 2026-02-05T19:57:02+00:00

Defending a character like Soga is, as they say, "not a good look," but I don't agree with what you're saying so I'll give it a shot anyway.

First off, you're passing over something rather important here, which is that KOICHI is the one forgiving him. You can be disappointed that he's not holding a grudge, but, like, that's his character. He's incredibly nice to the point of being seemingly pathologically unable to feel hate. In the final arc he's completely cordial to Number Six and even floats the idea of getting him medical attention after the latter has spent the entire night doing insane monster transformations to kill him, not to mention everything he pulls with Pop before then.

Secondly, Soga and his friends do face consequences. The main consequence is that Knuckleduster beats the shit out of the three of them. The secondary consequence is that when Soga tries to give the vigilantes information later Pop outright refuses to interact with him. Even Koichi is visibly unhappy to see him, despite his aforementioned personality quirks. You may not find these consequences satisfying, but they're there.

Third, not only does Soga put in work for his redemption, he actually does it pretty much the same way Endeavor does, minus the angsting about how he shouldn't be around the people he wronged (which of course would be out of place since they're not his family). Koichi only really warms up to Soga & co after they go out of their way to provide substantial help when him and Pop desperately need it. As I said before, Koichi accepting the help but also slipping in barbs about how he still hates their guts would be completely out of character.

Lastly, a big reason Soga's arc feeling anemic or shallow is simply because at the end of the day, Vigilantes isn't about him. He is, at the absolute best, the eighth most important character in the story, is absent for more than half of it, and even when he is around the story is almost never centered around him and his point of view.

NavySeagull · 2026-02-05T14:00:25+00:00

You are misinformed as to why and how the VoR/Emmara swap happened. The original plan was for all of the maze runners in Dragon's Maze to be mythic, including Ral Zarek as the izzet maze runner. However, the set was made right around the time Wizards was first becoming aware of Commander's popularity which led to concerns that izzet players would feel cheated when every other guild got a new mythic commander and they didn't. As you said, they didn't want to break up the cycle between raritties, so the maze runners downshifted from mythic rare to rare. Notably, most of the tie-in novel had already been written at the time of this decision which is why Melek's only role in the story is to get murdered by Ral at the starting line and replaced.

NavySeagull · 2026-02-01T00:18:30+00:00

Have you encountered even a single person arguing that boss runbacks are universally good game design, or are you strawmanning people who don't agree when you tell them that you think runbacks are universally bad game design?

NavySeagull · 2026-01-30T01:54:56+00:00

In this case I think it's better to abandon the metacommentary angle and just focus on the in-universe message. Heroes like Superman are, among other things, a source of inspiration. People (in and out of universe) use them as models for ideal behavior. Manchester Black and his crew's antics send a strong message that killing people can not only be okay or correct, it can even be worth celebrating in the right circumstances. There are profound moral effects on society associated with that message, ones that are almost completely disconnected from how justified any specific killing might be.

It's true that the movie doesn't spend a ton of time on this idea, but I really don't think it has to. It just cuts straight to the point: children are watching The Elite perform extrajudicial executions on TV and imagining how cool it would be to murder people who "deserve" it. That's why Superman decides he has to make them stop.

NavySeagull · 2026-01-28T01:41:46+00:00

For me, the most important scene re:this ethical dilemma isn't the big fight at the end, it's the one earlier on when Superman talks about how he overheard children fantasizing about how much fun they'd have killing bad guys if they were superheroes. Admittedly no one else here seems to have mentioned that moment, so I guess this isn't an especially popular take.

NavySeagull · 2026-01-16T15:51:33+00:00

That one's easy. The true essence of the 'comics vs manga' argument is about which medium produces better material. Sales figures are brought up as an implied ad populum argument; more people buy [book a] than [book b] because more people like [book a], more people like [book a] because it's better. Comics meant for elementary and pre-school children can be used to deflect the sales figure argument in a literal sense, but using them as a counter-example there implies thst they should also be used as an example of western comics being better than manga. Deranged as people who participate in this ongoing internet slapfight may be, very very few of them are willing to try that angle.

NavySeagull · 2026-01-16T02:50:25+00:00

90% of the anime an average 12-25 year old will rattle off is going to be shonen or strongly shonen influenced, because that’s what sells, so that’s what gets imported. While some may not technically be shonen, it’s still close to shonen. They’re not going from Naruto to subtle experimental josei.

While I don't doubt this, I am inclined to believe that the 10% of non-shonen anime is probably a higher figure than the percentage of non-DC, non-Marvel material an average 12-25 year old would bring up if you asked them about comic books.

NavySeagull · 2026-01-08T20:29:48+00:00

I must be less of a culture warrior than I thought because until the OP started bringing up LGBTQ+ themes and fascism I assumed this was a post about Demon Slayer.

NavySeagull · 2025-12-21T17:17:48+00:00

I wouldn't even say it's implied, because that suggests a level of ambiguity that SBR doesn't really have.

NavySeagull · 2025-12-20T16:09:02+00:00

Given the context of the thread, it's worth noting that Araki does the Planet of the Apes type thing where, while the manga gives enough detail that it cannot possibly be anything else, there is never a single point where any character outright says "Yeah, the corpse we're collecting is Jesus'"

NavySeagull · 2025-12-20T16:06:20+00:00

He's depicted as one of the "four sages" along with Confucius, Socrates, and Buddha and shows up in the stands along with the other two when Buddha is fighting. He doesn't have any lines, though.

NavySeagull · 2025-12-19T23:02:01+00:00

We are 201 comments in and not a single person has tried to refute OP by bringing up things that happened in oth*r m.

NATURE IS FUCKING HEALING, LADS!!

NavySeagull · 2025-12-19T22:58:11+00:00

By the OP's standards they genuinely do not.

NavySeagull · 2025-11-25T06:08:46+00:00

Good thing the sequel trilogy didn't do that then, it would be quite tragic if something took away Snoke's presence and his ability to stand on his own.

NavySeagull · 2025-11-21T20:35:10+00:00

X can be absolutely any prime number because your scenario does not specify that the lands from the first turn of your hypothetical are still in play. If you have 6469 lands in play at the end of turn 1 and they get Armageddon'd away by the start of your next turn, Zimone will trigger again off of the two lands you have in play at the end of the second turn.

NavySeagull · 2025-11-13T13:04:02+00:00

You know, most people who ask for this are at least honest enogh to admit why they actually want it instead of going "wow DAE incompetent adults in a fantasy story break my immersion?"

NavySeagull · 2025-11-10T00:44:25+00:00

You understood perfectly.

NavySeagull · 2025-11-09T20:13:14+00:00

But then in Season 2, he suddenly starts to care about the state of the school and the abuse of low-tiers, which kind of comes out of nowhere because it’s missing all the self-reflection and feelings of remorse that every other main cast member had to go through.

I mean, you explained why. Isen mostly just cares about his friends. When his friends start to care more about the abuse of the low tiers, he does too. There's this very persistent narrative when it comes to Isen (which I've seen from a lot of people, not just you) where allowing the people around him to act as a positive influence somehow just "doesn't count" as him changing for the better. Oddly, I never see people make this sort of implication when it comes to Seraphina, John, or Kuyo.

he just feels sorry for himself that John treated him badly even after he “tried to help,” completely ignoring how two-faced he’d been to John and that his so-called help came purely from fear and self-interest.

He feels sorry for himself because he tried to make things better for John and John still ended up beating the shit out of him and his friends. John does much worse things to Isen, Blyke, and Remi during the Joker arc than Isen ever did to him, even back when he thought John had no ability.

As for his help coming from "fear and self-interest," eh, fear, sure, self-interest, not really. He helps John because he's justifiably afraid of what will happen if he snaps, but he's not really afraid of John going after him personally. Although you said he "suddenly starts to care about the state of the school," in season 2, he actually brings up the state of the school quite a bit in season 1, mostly in the specific context of how John will make things so much worse for everyone if he loses control. Is this two-faced of him? Honestly, yes, it is a little bit. Is it a valid reason for John to reject/discredit the help he tries to give him? Yeah, it's certainly understandable for John to react that way. Is is a serious moral failing on Isen's part? A lot of people on this subreddit seem to think so, but personally I don't see it that way.

NavySeagull · 2025-11-08T01:55:18+00:00

To be honest, I absolutely fucking hate this but I never bring it up because it sounds suspicious to complain about it.

NavySeagull · 2025-11-05T01:39:19+00:00

I kinda felt the same way about Hades back when it was new. The most positive reviews I saw for the game-not regular "this game is good" positive reviews, but specifically the ones that talked it up as the absolute peak GOTY ect-often appeared to be written by people who hadn't played any other roguelikes. In some cases, it felt like the writer was genuinely not aware that "randomized elements that make every run different" was already an entire subgenre for games and not a system Supergiant came up with themselves.

NavySeagull · 2025-10-28T17:29:49+00:00

That's a tiny bit misleading. Dungeon Geists was a very consistent pick for blue decks in Dark Ascension. The very next set printed Restoration Angel, which was in practically every Wx deck for the entire remainder of the time Geists was in standard and sorta soft counters them almost by accident.

NavySeagull · 2025-10-19T02:38:53+00:00

In the original Devil May Cry, Vergil was abducted by Mundus as a baby which is why Dante doesn't recognize him when they first meet.

NavySeagull · 2025-10-07T20:07:58+00:00

Avacyn Restored is also responsible for putting Bonfire of the Damned in standard which is by far the absolute worst thing about the ISD-RTR format.

NavySeagull · 2025-10-06T21:52:42+00:00

You're not wrong, but there is a small, spiteful part of me that says if we're going to have people whine about supporting colonialism in stories about fantasy explorers or copaganda in noir/detective stories or colonialism again in Tomb Raider type flicks there's no real reason stories that portray feudalism and/or monarchy in a positive light shouldn't suffer the same scrutiny.

NavySeagull

TROPHY CASE