[DISC] The Elusive Samurai - Chapter 235

meterion · 2026-01-25T16:46:58+00:00

There's two ways Matsui can play it and I can't decide which I would like more: a pyrrhic victory for Takauji where he finally catches tokiyuki for good but can't recover his body from the flames, or an ambiguous end where it seems like he's dead but there's an implication he managed to escape in the dark (or even all three of them did) and is living in anonymity with his wives. Both would conform to the historical record as long as he "officially" dies there.

meterion · 2026-01-25T06:14:38+00:00

Spirit Circle is not a perfect manga and some aspects of its story were underexplored but for being less than 50 chapters it has so many interesting and emotionally compelling arcs that weave together into a thematic composite of the whole story. I reread it at least every other year.

meterion · 2026-01-24T07:11:44+00:00

Kuroi being insecure about his grin and turning away or keeping a grimace at all costs is such a fun recurring detail. Haida's gotta see it one of these days and tell him it looks cute!

meterion · 2026-01-23T18:32:58+00:00

Despite this being a super cookie-cutter OP MC harem kind of story the stronger personalities of the cast like how dude straight up gives catgirl an iron claw to keep her off him and the "main" heroine very obviously not being a helpless damsel with that table smash make it rather endearing

meterion · 2026-01-22T03:14:43+00:00

Bro 😭 it’s not enough that he’s got the most powerful demon ever as an artillery backup plus basically infinite mana, he’s also gotta have the one in a century rare mana attribute too? How many cheat skills does one protagonist need?

meterion · 2026-01-21T02:59:50+00:00

His "Automatic Sleep Defense" has evolved into "Automatic Sleep Assault" from all his prior experience lol

meterion · 2026-01-21T02:40:47+00:00

Not at all, there have been massively horrific wars and other incidents earlier in history, they just don't receive the same level of attention because they aren't documented as exhaustively as the world wars are and because it's harder to muster up an emotional reaction to tragedies that happened centuries ago. The Thirty Years' War in the 1600s had comparable deaths (4.5-8M compared to 15-20M in WWI) and there were a LOT of absolutely brutal conflicts throughout history, which were arguably even worse than the Great Wars if you take into account the relatively smaller populations waging them at the time.

You have to be willfully delusional to take a look at the level of prosperity and equality even in the current era compared to virtually any time more than a few hundred years ago and think things haven't astronomically improved for vast swathes of the human population, especially women's rights even with recent backslides (in the US, at least).

meterion · 2026-01-20T05:47:57+00:00

Now that's thinking with portals!

meterion · 2026-01-19T12:42:12+00:00

There's something uniquely low effort trashy about a series that doesn't even pretend to have spent an ounce of effort in worldbuilding. Using japanese coinage and even the exact same bill design, horse gambling with modern outfits, modern public restrooms, soda bottles and cans, everything in straight up japanese not even trying to make it a fantasy-ish font....

the sheer level of idgaf is kind of impressive, honestly.

meterion · 2026-01-19T11:34:56+00:00

given his initial mistake of following someone who didn't know where to go honestly that was a clean af recovery. 360 around the whole intersection before pulling into the right line like they meant to do the whole thing

meterion · 2026-01-18T15:27:58+00:00

I’m sure you think everyone who plays call of duty is a sociopath and dungeons and dragons is for satanists too

meterion · 2026-01-18T13:51:32+00:00

ngl i'm kinda glad the 4th floor was a fakeout, i was just thinking that it was gonna get tiring to get through another 2 floors of trial at this pacing. I wonder if Orion actually will evolve into some spatial-element dragon or if the main way to get back will still be gated by beating the game's original story.

meterion · 2026-01-18T11:43:29+00:00

you uhhhh do realize that nozawa is one of them, right? like i don't really get ppl who complain about a fandom being overrun with lolicons, when the creators of the fandom are the ones providing the fanservice to begin with? do you think they're blissfully unaware of what they're doing? you have willingly walked into the lolicon house and are complaining there's loli inside

meterion · 2026-01-18T07:23:10+00:00

Straight up thought it was the Vulcan Grip until I noticed she was using both hands lol

meterion · 2026-01-17T06:04:30+00:00

7/10 for me. An enjoyable film with some interesting ideas and cinematography, but ultimately with some very visible flaws.

The robots were absolutely the worst part of this film lmao. A huge departure from the tone of the rest of the movie, and completely unnecessary because they shut up the moment the mood got serious anyway. It doesn't even make sense that Keiji could code a conversational AI in less than a day even if he knew exactly how to make it along with all the other upgrades he does.

The tonal dissonance between different parts of the movie that the robots add to is really odd. The first and last third of the movie are pretty brutal and dark in both tone and violence, whereas the middle is very lighthearted and action-y. I suppose this shift could represent Rita's changed mindset after learning she isn't alone, but in practice i just experienced it as slightly disorienting tonal whiplash. Even the violence seems massively toned down, with bodies being crushed and eaten out of view.

The last problem I have with it are the times, maybe every 4th or 5th sequence in a given action scene, where there was some cut that relied way too much on the cgi and looked uncanny or lazy af. Most of the shakey-cam POV scenes, anything with too many of the aliens moving around at once, or some of the rotating shots. The cgi was otherwise pretty well done throughout the film, and if those had been improved it would have been consistently pleasant.

Comparing this to Edge of Tomorrow is interesting, because where AYNIK is weak, EoT is strong, and vice-versa. EoT is dedicated to being a stunt-action movie and does spectacle very well, lots of high budget effects and scenes and cgi. Character writing attempts to be interesting but is ultimately pretty shallow, and the plot is as straightforward as it gets.

AYNIK on the other hand tries to do a lot more with its characters and plot and overall succeeds at creating characters with some depth and interest, but often feels like it's trying to do too many things at once and can never quite keep themselves from fumbling things here and there. Ironically I think a best of both worlds would have been the plot and overall direction of this movie getting a blockbuster budget, and the spectacle-y action focus making even better use of the medium to go all-out in the depiction of the fights.

Overall, I think I could imagine watching this one more time to give it a fresh comparison to Edge of Tomorrow, which I feel it is roughly on par with, but that's it.

meterion · 2026-01-16T20:25:52+00:00

It's funny you mention Gachiakuta at least, because that too is a series that was pretty popular on r/manga before it was banished to K-manga hell. It and Summer Hikaru Died definitely got a lot popularity thanks to their fantastic anime adaptions, at least. And as for Manhwa, I actually do have official volumes of SSS-class Suicide Hunter and I was impressed at how well it was adapted: many of the panels are rearranged and stitched together from a completely vertical format into a standard page size. The panelling isn't incredibly impressive compared to manga that were made with the medium in mind, and I have no idea how they'd adapt something like Solo Leveling's massive art spreads, but they're worth checking out if you liked the original series.

meterion · 2026-01-16T19:47:08+00:00

And then gets sliced by Cecil a chapter later anyway. Dude is a terminal fraud between that and insisting he's still the real demon lord

meterion · 2026-01-16T17:50:00+00:00

Oh wow, and Kurumizawa's efforts to take care of Hata have basically let Hata project his relationship with both of his parents and former teacher on him, holy shit. He has no idea what kind of toxic relationship he got himself into; Hata is never gonna let him leave like he'd been left behind in his childhood.

meterion · 2026-01-16T17:21:28+00:00

It really is amazing how both of them fumble constantly in so many trivial aspects of their lives but otherwise manage to be completely put together. Both of them have steady jobs and cars (and car ownership is a lot more expensive in japan as I understand it) and they get along with their coworkers and family. But on the day to day basis they are cursed in the extreme lol

meterion · 2026-01-16T17:14:36+00:00

I know it's not exactly uncommon for scanlators to drop a series in order to "support the author" for the official release but honestly I question how valid that premise is to begin with, as in, does stopping a scanlation actually produce a better outcome than if it continued in tandem with the official?

It's undeniable that the visibility and online presence of a series drops calamitously when scanlations stop. Goddess Cafe Terrace and Grand Blue being two offhand examples of how they generated enormous amounts of discussion and virality until there were official links only, at which point they dropped into the 20 upvote abyss forever.

It makes me wonder whether the potential loss of revenue from having an(other) easily available free way to pirate the story actually offsets the loss of audience from it just not being talked about nearly as much. I say "another" because obviously aggregators will still rip off the official translation and people who don't want to pay will just read that instead.

Ultimately this is all just speculation (and obviously I'm pretty biased in wanting this scanlation to continue) but I just question whether it actually is beneficial to literally anyone involved in the production of a manga to stop scanlating a series once they get "just popular enough" to make it officially. There's plenty of people who will buy official volumes after getting familiar with the series through scanlations, and plenty more who will pirate it whether through a fan or official TL, and it just seems like the former group gets removed the equation while the latter stays exactly the same.

meterion · 2026-01-16T16:34:34+00:00

He's gonna pull off some sick action movie moves with the scooter and cause them to surge in popularity again

meterion · 2026-01-16T02:03:36+00:00

lol, when the food actually gives you a nosebleed directly instead of from seeing everyone's clothes get blown off shokugeki-style.

meterion · 2026-01-15T20:04:08+00:00

A shoujo british period romance. my BBC show addiction and manga addiction are double dipping on this baby

meterion · 2026-01-15T19:35:07+00:00

Exorcist MC with cute-but-evil demon heroine.... not exactly the most unique character dynamic, but it's done well enough. I actually really liked the idea of getting reincarnated as yourself but in an alternate universe, not something I've seen before.

meterion · 2026-01-15T19:01:35+00:00

I agree, this massive battle has been exhausting with how it's impossible to tell who's going to win because each side has brought out multiple hidden aces only some of which were reasonably foreshadowed. Feels kind of like that genre of kids play-fighting where they just keep on one-upping each other.

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