Well, I’ve been informed I can screw around in a desert instead of doing plot, so let’s go!
Sandile!!!
It conceals itself in the sand and chomps down on the legs of any prey that unwarily walk over it. Its favorite food is Trapinch.
Trapinch….walks over other pokemon hiding in the sand?
My snorunt evolves.
Its prey is instantaneously frozen stiff by the cold air it exhales from its huge mouth. While they’re in that frozen state, it gobbles them up.
Also apparently I never got the yukionna pokemon…
The soul of a woman lost on a snowy mountain possessed an icicle, becoming this Pokemon. The food it most relishes is the souls of men.
Except it didn’t possess an icicle, did it – it was a perfectly normal snorunt until I mushed a dawn stone into the little pokemon’s face. And it’s not like all female snorunt start off possessed by a woman’s ghost, because they’re not /ghost and can evolve into the regular glacie, who is also not /ghost. It sounds more like the dawn stone allows the possession/straight up murders the snorunt and lets the ghost warp its corpse.
Which…actually might make sense. Why would a dawn stone be something good for an ice type whose pokedex entry even specifically says it “can only survive in cold areas”?
I wonder how many pokemon evolutions are really a brand-new pokemon taking over the old one.
While I’m here, my unpaid pokemon miners have plenty more stones for everyone.
Petilil to lilligant.
As soon as it finds a male to be its partner, the beautiful flower on its head darkens, droops, and withers away.
Really not sure I like the virginity undertones here.
Cottonee to whimsicott.
This Pokemon appears, riding upon the wind. But if the wind gusts up, it’ll blow the cotton on this Pokemon’s head clean off.
So…it’s designed to use the cotton to float on the wind, but also the cotton is so poorly attached it’s ripped off by a mere gust.
Well, I suppose that does fit with it being a grass type weak to air moves?
Also, my chansey evolves.
Its fluffy fur cat acts as a sensor, enabling it to read the feelings of people and Pokemon.
…I’ve really never thought of either being covered in a layer of fur, now that you mention it. I mean, blissey does have those fluffy protrusions, but this sounds like the smooth pink bits are also furred.
A gabite appears to the cry of a sandile, and then they start trying to beat each other up but failing because I think they both have sand veil.
Shiny objects are its passion. It can be found in its cave, scarcely moving, its gaze fixed on the jewels it’s amassed or Carbink it has caught.
Except carbink are fairies, so how does gabite easily bate them into its cave?
Hey, trapinch!
As it digs through the sand, its giant jaws crush any rocks that obstruct its path. It builds a funnel-shaped nest.
So how is it getting eaten by lurking sandile all the time?
Navigating is difficult due to how close the camera is, but I think I make it through the whole thing. I find a pillar with the psychic crystal in it, which is painfully anticlimatic and doesn’t even make sense – if they wanted walking through a desert to be a trial, then they should’ve reserved ground or at least fire for this one and something else could be the psychic trial.
Right, back to the plot. I find Lillie standing staring at a line of sitting Skull kids.
Lillie: You’re from Team Skull. What is it that you want from us?
Oh, Lillie, it is adorable you think so highly of them you expect a coherent reason.
Grunt A, who may or may not be the same as any of the previous As: Here they come! I heard about you numskulls at Aether. Do you really know a way to save our boy Guzma?!
Lillie, how dare you not say that I murdered them both. Listen: when people are never seen again, we say we murdered them as an example to anyone else who would oppose us. Got it?
Also, interesting how he’s “badass boss man dude” when he’s there and “our precious baby” when he’s not.
Grunt B, who I assume is not a previous B or in fact anybody we’ve seen before, because she is spikyboxing threats at Bonnibel: We can make you talk, even if we have to cut you to the bone!
And then she actually tries to act on it! She’s got a L44 formantis, which is a good lot higher than any of mine. But then, she’s only got that one.
…also it apparently just sucks. My L37 ribombee nearly oneshots it, takes almost no damage, then wins. Maybe she should’ve gotten an evolved form given how very far we are into the game at this point.
Grunt B: OK, so you cut me to the bone! Ouch!
And she sprints off. From that camera angle, we can see a slightly more competent person lurking in the wings. Maybe that other person might be smart enough to do something like take a hostage instead of challenging me head-on. Or try diplomacy, but like, either’s cool.
Grunt A, also spikyboxing his aggression and so again, presumably not someone who encountered Bonnibel before: Doesn’t matter! We’ll come after you with all our Pokemon at once then, li’l homeslice.
Oh game. Game game game. I have learned better than to fall for your promises.
Grunt A: We’ll give 200 percent to save our boy Guzma!
Will you really.
No, you’ll just fight me one on one. Of course. Can’t expect criminals to do anything less than scrupulously fair, after all.
Ah, but he’s actually got almost a full team! What the hell? If you’re going to do this, why did the last one have just one? Why not just give them all decent teams? Or, oh, is the idea that this is me fighting all of them, but them fighting one by one is represented with a single battle for some reason?
First is a boy salandit, L43. I swap my ribombee out for my marowak, weather the fire move easily, then bone club him to death. It does get off toxic…but Marowak immediately shakes the poison off.
L44 haunter, I swap to Deino, who gets hit hard but then wins with a single crunch.
L44 golbat, dashing my new hopes that each pokemon would be one level higher. Komala, I choose you! …and you lose, despite the fact the golbat wastes piles of turns on mean look and haze. I assume komala are supposed to be useable, but maybe like the psychic Elvis monkey, it’s more of a niche use. I finish the golbat off with my crabrawler.
L44 raticate. I try to keep going with Crabrawler, but am oneshot myself. I swap to Ribombee, and that combined with the raticate’s decision to use nothing but double-edge leads me to victory. Then a mareanie. For lack of any good options, I decide to try my lurantis. She does do a good lot of damage with petal blizzard, but poison jab poisons her and the mareanie takes her out in the next turn. But does it know a single water move? I send out my marowak and find the answer is apparently no. Victory is mine.
Also Deino tries to learn work up: The user is roused, and its Attack and Sp. Atk stats increase. Can completely picture trainers baiting their deino with pointy sticks for the stat boost.
We return to the overworld to see four out of five Skull kids either lounging on the ground like cats pretending they totally mean to do that or else collapsed after I ordered my pokemon to assault them for their weakness in losing.
Grunt A, still spikyboxing despite seeing that nothing can stop Bonnibel: I’m not giving up, even though you beat me! I’m part of Team Skull! We’re thick as anything!
Plumeria: That’s enough. No one wants to see a sore loser.
Did you put a knife to Lillie’s throat while I was distracted???
No you’re just sitting way up there. Well, that’s fine too. I guess it’s just hard to appreciate levelheaded enemy team characters when nobody’s interested in the audacious spots.
She sends them on their way.
Plumeria: Hmmph. You, girlie… Lillie, right? You really ready to do this finally? To be honest, I’ve treated you really badly. Even if I was just doing the work the president told me to do, I shouldn’t have done all that.
Okay so if the idea is that much of Team Skull’s villainy stems from their association with Aether, we really needed NPC dialogue about how Skull’s been doing things that seem otherwise out of character – switching from generally trying to intimidate people to stealing pokemon, generally seeming more focused, etc), and also probably not have a cutscene devoted to an NPC telling us he promises to retrieve our body for burial after the kids in Po Town murder us. Just a thought!
Plumeria: Even if I apologize now, I know it’s probably too late for you to forgive me, though.
See, Guzma…he really likes the president. She’s the only adult who ever seemed to see how strong he was.
Lillie: The president… My mother is– She’s selfish. She lavishes her love only on those she deems worthy, not caring whether it is wanted or not.
Lillie, everyone only does stuff for those they find worthy. Some people have strict standards, some people think pretty much everybody is worthy, but by definition, you’ll do things for people you want to do things for.
Maybe there was an idea at some point that Lusamine’s particular standards of worthiness were also an issue, but it’s hard to find a common thread. She loves the ultrabeasts for some reason. It can’t be their strength. The iced pokemon she loves best are unevolved and so presumably lower level, the pokemon she’s cooing over in her introduction scene seem similarly unimpressive, and she claims she loved her kids up to the point they opposed her and human five year olds are not known for badassery. It might be their unattainability, except her iced faves are common pokemon and Aether’s frolicking zone is also full of common pokemon, and it’s her kids becoming less attainable that makes her reject them. (It’d have worked if she meant to keep Lillie and Nebby, and simply didn’t care about their actual happiness or not getting torturedness so long as they were there.) It certainly isn’t her ability to control them, which fits everything we’ve seen from her BUT her greatest obsession.
And because her standards don’t seem to be an issue, this is a weird reply. If Lusamine only loves those who are strong, then that’s precisely what Guzma signed up for. If Lusamine only loves those she can control, then she could well be pretending to respect Guzma’s strength to keep him tied to her, or sabotaging his attempts to become greater to ensure nobody else ever sees things that way. If she loves only the unattainable, then it almost fits – she can’t reciprocate love from someone else, because if you love her she no longer cares about you, and that’s what Lillie’s trying to warn against. But right now, it seems like Lusamine loves at random, not based on worthiness, and in that case whether she actually cares about Guzma is simply random – if no, that sucks, but just as easily could be yes.
Lillie: But I will save her. I still have something to tell her.
I’m starting to hope this is all some secret plan to flip her mom off and then leave her in the other dimension. It is ridiculous to go through that much effort to do that, but it’s less ridiculous than thinking there’s anything you can tell her that she’d actually hear. Anything said is for your own ears.
Lillie: And I think I can save Guzma as well.
Meanwhile, this might’ve actually worked as the primary. If Lillie feels kinship with Guzma getting sucked into her mother’s vortex of love-but-on-my-terms (and the way she talks about happy times with her mom should mean she completely gets her mom can make you love her while still being horribly abusive), then thinking he shouldn’t suffer for blindly following her mom into an alt dimension hell is quite reasonable, as is the fact that Guzma likely doesn’t view alt dimension hell as a glorious paradise of exactly what he was trying to get this whole time the way her mom does. Since she’s already committed to getting someone out who definitely needs help, it’d then be less weird she plans to try to contact her mom too.
Plumeria: You know…deep down, you’re kind of like the president.
Holy shit Plumeria that was uncalled for.
Plumeria: You’ve gone in a different direction, but I can tell you have the same strength in your convictions.
Okay, Lusamine’s “strength in her convictions” is “I want to hug you so I don’t care if you’re screaming in pain while I do so”. It isn’t moving hell and high water just to accomplish something, it’s an utter self-centered inability to care what anyone else is telling you because no one else matters in the first place.
What. The. Fuck. Plumeria.
Plumeria: Bring Guzma back, if you can. I know you’ve got no reason to help…but no one can make up for what they’ve done if they’re gone.
But she should! She should have a reason! She should feel kinship with other people her mom has used! Lillie has spent this whole game being sweetness and light, and we’re expected to believe she wants to actually save her mom, it should not be hard to sell the idea that she’d want to help someone else.
Plumeria: And you, Bonnibel. Looks like you were special after all. You didn’t just stand up to Team Skull. You even took on the darkness inside Aether.
It turned out to be Team Skull anyway…plus aren’t you guys basically the same thing given apparently you were working together this whole time?
Plumeria: Looks like you’re the real deal. The realest Pokemon Trainer I’ve seen around.
Dot. Dot. Dot.
Plumeria: Take good care of our little princess here. This is my way of saying sorry, OK? Take it. It’s Poisonium Z.
While I remain disinterested in the mechanic, I am always willing to accept shiny things as tribute! Your offering pleases me.
Plumeria: Oh yeah…you got your first stone directly from Tapu Koko, didn’t you, Bonnibel? You’d better take care of it. That’s one special Z-Ring you’ve got there.
So…does she have a ring? Did she have a ring but then throw it away with the rest of the Skull kids in solidarity?
A Trainer is only a Trainer because of the Pokemon with them. If you ever forget that, you’ll bring the wrath of the tapu down upon yourself.
I have over a box of pokemon I’m swapping around, plus piles of pokemon I have just for the pokedex entry that I still keep instead of letting them go. The tapu evidently don’t give a fuck.
Plumeria: You should be fine, though.
And it’s not like I dislike the idea of being a noble trainer who cares about their pokemon! I love the idea Alola actually has more to pokemon training than just humans grabbing random animals and throwing them at each other, and the pokemon < humans < tapu pokemon setup is actually really intriguing. It’s good to want to do something to address the sketchier elements of the game, too – but you can’t do that by inventing something that should intervene if things are wrong, then let people keep playing the same as ever. If they never intervene, it’s impossible to believe that they would if things were actually wrong. (You also can’t characterize the bad people as those who hurt pokemon, because that just underlines that there really is no higher power preventing such abuse.)
Plumeria: I’m out of here.
Sorry, I know this isn’t your fault in particular. Honestly, the NPCs/worldbuiling connection has been quite good this game. Without the gotta-catch-em-all gameplay my avatar inevitably engages in, I think things are rather consistent. People respect the tapu and expect them to do things, but also aren’t sure quite how they work. “Don’t do this, or you’ll anger the tapu!” is a statement of faith, and it works so long as we assume even criminals want to skirt the limits rather than do anything too blatant.
Also, let me further thank you for not doing a pose with your crystal.
Lillie: I suppose even Team Skull is not all bad… Thanks for helping me again, Bonnibel. And here, let me thank your team, too! All right, Bonnibel! Let’s go to the altar! The Vast Poni Canyon lies ahead of us!
And she runs off. She really shouldn’t be running in front of the person in charge of dealing with wild pokemon attacks.
I find her standing by a dead tree next to Hapu and Mudsdale.
Hapu: Did everything go well?
Lillie: Yes, it did! Though Bonnibel had to help me out of all sorts of trouble, like usual.
Hapu: Nothing wrong with that. People cannot survive all on their own. They have got to help one another out.
Except actually, it’s pokemon doing all the work. So long as you have pokemon, a single human can survive just fine. Indeed, we’ve repeatedly seen Hapu all by herself except for her mudsdale. Unless we’ve just found the one character in all of pokemon canon to think pokemon are people, I think this is bullshit.
Hapu: Same for Pokemon, too.
And we have not. So yeah, humans helping humans somehow adds up to surviving fine, and pokemon helping pokemon, and nothing about across-species partnerships here despite that being the central game conceit.
Hapu: That is what my grandfather used to say.
He sounds like an asshole.
Mudsdale: Ni-hiii!
You can’t prove that wasn’t agreement.
Hapu: I would like to see this battling skill of yours, Bonnibel, that makes Lillie smile so.
Actually she’s usually like seconds away from tears when she sees me battling. She appears to have gotten a bit harder hearted, but now it’s more about putting aside human emotions to better emulate the ever-serene dittochild and obey the dictates of culture at large.
Hapu: Just so! It is my grand trial!
This being a “grand” trial is even more of a sick joke than usual.
Hapu: I may be young, but that does not mean that I will be outdone by any of those other kahunas! I am certain that my bonds with Mudsdale and the rest of my team are the closest you will find anywhere in Alola! Do you want to try to take me and my Pokemon on at our full strength?
Only if you’ll take on mine/I need to prepare first
Not really liking the phrasing there. Like, I get that it’s a rare moment of banter, but when most of these are about letting me claw some scraps of characterization out of the mandatory blank slate protagonist, I dislike getting locked into unfitting choices.
Hapu: I am Kahuna Hapu! And I have made the sparkling stone that the tapu entrusted me with into a Z-Ring of my own!
…okay, theory: at some point, the z-rings were divine intervention. Like how keystones are very thin on the ground. That’s why the Skull kiddos are jealous of mine and means Guzma not having one and spinning it as “because I’m so great I don’t need one” is transparently an attempt at boosting his fragile ego and not an odd bit of apparent unfairness. The other z-move users aren’t well integrated into the main storyline at all, and presumably were thrown in because they realized having one of the major gimmicks of this generation almost never happen was a bad idea. Collecting the crystals is about as ritualized as the rest of the island journey – a very few trainers will prove themselves worthy to the tapu later and get a z-ring that will let them actually use the damn things. What’s surprising isn’t getting my ring from a tapu, that’s actually normal, it’s getting the ring before I even start when normally you’re lucky to get one even long after.
Hapu’s continuing dialogue supports this: Having a Z-Ring like we do, Bonnibel, means that we battle with the tapu beside us. But also, there are random not-that-impressive trainers who don’t even sound particularly into pokemon training any longer scattered across the islands who also have one.
Hapu: This is the first grand trial of Kahuna Hapu! I will battle you with everything I have got!
Also, there’s been an awful lot of no contractions, hasn’t there? Like they ran out of time before they could do a final pass of the late game dialogue.
She leads with a L47 dugtrio, which is about ten higher than anything I have, and I lose.
I rearrange my team. This time, I lead with my own L37 mudsdale, who highhorsepowers it to death as it wastes a turn on sandstorm. She then sends out a gastrodon, who gets a petal blizzard from Lurantis and counters with a tepid muddy water. Next is a flygon. While I don’t have any ice types, Lurantis does a good chunk of damage and I follow with my tsareena…who does another chunk before going down a failure. I send out Golisopod, who almost-but-doesn’t take Flygon out with first impression, but manages to stay just above half HP itself, then finishes things up nicely with a sucker punch. Finally, she sends out the mudsdale we’ve spent all game getting to know, who’s one solitary level higher than the others. I counter with Primarina. Hapu counters with the fact she can use z-moves. Still, Primarina did not die for nothing. She got Mudsdale most of the way down. Sadly, my other pokemon are physical hitters, so… In the end, it’s my own dragonhearted mudsdale that scrapes out a victory – as hidden power is a special move, and able to get off that last chunk of HP.
Hapu: Oho… You sure showed me. That was enjoyable.
It was a true challenge, wasn’t it?
Hapu: Looks like I cannot beat you even when I am not holding back… I appreciate this chance, Bonnibel. It has really taught me a few things. Take your Ground-type Z-Crystal then… This Groundium Z is yours!
Hapu: I will teach you the pose, too, so eyes up here!
Why? I’ve now received multiple crystals without anyone doing a stupid dance move at me. It’s obvious this isn’t a requirement. Admittedly, I haven’t checked to see if I can actually use them in battle, but it’s clear the game just wanted to get the fun actual game challenge parts out of the way as fast as possible and isn’t going to be revisiting anything about the crystals once the box is checked off.
Hapu: Phew… Well, I must applaud you, Lillie. You sure found a prodigious Trainer to befriend. Then go on with you two! Head straight through there and find the altar! The path to the shrine is through the canyon. You will find other Trainers in this place, though. They come for training. It will be a tough road. You will have to pitch in, too, Lillie. But if you two end up in any real trouble, Mudsdale and I will hasten to you.
If you’re so sure this is difficult, and you’re planning on just standing here in waiting the whole time in case we start screaming, why not just escort us?
Lillie: Thank you, Hapu. I’ll do my best!
Hapu then leaves. But somehow will still know if we’re in trouble.
Lillie waits at the dark mouth of the entrance.
This vast canyon… I wonder what we will find ahead. And what a mysterious statue, she adds of the pillar to the side. Do you think it means something? Generally works people are putting in public are meant to mean something, especially older ones where it’s a lot more work…and also this in particular looks like a sign. Oh yes! Bonnibel! Here, take this!
It’s a max revive. She then tells me it is one, and that she “found” it in Aether. When I– When I am ready, I am going to come after you, Bonnibel. I am going to catch up with you. And when I do, I’m going to become strong enough to save my mother and Nebby, too! Oh yes… But let me first make sure that Mudsdale and the rest of your team are ready for battle! Being together with your favorite Pokemon is even better when they’re all feeling their best!
The difference in Lillie is so sad.
Being together with your favorite Pokemon is even better when they’re all feeling their best! is the sort of mindless platitude you can imagine any of the healer NPCs chirping, before asking you to come back soon or whatever, nothing like how Lillie used to talk at the start of the game. even better. Because it’s always fun being with your favorite pokemon! Sure, it’s better if they’re healed, but it’s still pretty good being with them when five out of six have fainted and the last is on his final hitpoint, only even having that because he hung on from a blow that should’ve fainted him out of devotion to you.
This is supposed to be a good thing. Now Lillie isn’t upset when she sees pokemon battles. Now she’s on board with it. It’s so good. We’re all friends. What does it matter if we don’t care whether our love is wanted or not, whether our love is hurting others or not? They’re our favorites, and we want to be with them, and if they’re hurt in the process…well, we’ll heal them eventually, and that’ll be even better, and it being even better for us is our only reason to care at all.
Lillie smiles ◠‿◠ at Bonnibel as she says the same things everyone else says and Bonnibel as ever smiles back °‿°
and also probably not have a cutscene devoted to an NPC telling us he promises to retrieve our body for burial after the kids in Po Town murder us. Just a thought!
Pretty sure that’s 100% on Nanu’s personality rather than any indication of Team Skull’s ability.
You can’t do unreliable narrator NPCs without several reliable narration NPCs to balance them out, though, especially when the game has a flat difficulty and doesn’t do anything to distinguish between the enemy team and regular trainers. Unless he repeats the statement to another character and get corrected, or several other characters say that Team Skull talks big but has never actually done real harm, there’s nothing to contradict the idea that they’ve murdered people, or at least are willing to make the attempt. (Even Nanu being able to get in and out himself doesn’t, since they could easily decide that if the kahuna isn’t picking a fight with them, they’re not going to start anything either.)
I understand Lillie’s character arc less and less as time goes on. It’s really like you said last time about being a selfish character arc, while the character herself still has all the earmarks of being really kind and caring. I can’t tell if she’s supposed to end up being a trainer or not, but the signs seem to be pointing in that direction, seeing as every scene she’s chatting about how great trainers are.
She leads with a L47 dugtrio, which is about ten higher than anything I have, and I lose.
Ah, self-imposed difficulty. Never stop.
Sure, it’s better if they’re healed, but it’s still pretty good being with them when five out of six have fainted and the last is on his final hitpoint, only even having that because he hung on from a blow that should’ve fainted him out of devotion to you.
God, that is so… so shounen, honestly. I’m picturing like, Naruto or someone on his last legs, still screaming that he believes in his friends or what have you.
From what I understand, we’re supposed to see her as essentially damaged by her mother’s treatment to the point where she perceivess (wrongly, of course) training as similar to what her mother did to her.
Now, though, that she had time to walk around the world and meet various people, she came to understand that training is a perfectly wholesome activity. Sometimes things you love must be hurt for their own good. It makes them stronger, sturdier, and it allows you to achieve your goals and have fun doing it.
She isn’t selfish, her previous behavior was just too radical, she was coddling Nebby instead of letting him grow naturally.
Now, though, she sees the light. She will become a trainer, just like her best friend Bonnibel!
Aren’t you happy? =)
-_- Not particularly. And I ain’t about to kill every monster to make you happy, neither.
That said, I do sort of see the connection there, but I’m not sure. Maybe I’m getting a skewed version from Farla, who has priorities about pokemon health and safety that the development team clearly don’t.
We haven’t seen Lusamine be physically abusive, for one. I would understand if she’d kicked Lillie’s ass in an attempt to toughen her up, but Lillie has been very focused on the physical injury aspect of Pokemon battling, and while the emotional abuse she suffered is really serious, she doesn’t seem to associate that with training pokemon.
I guess, with the coddling, you can see that Lillie is motherly in a different sense than Lusamine – where Lusamine is the controlling, ambitious mother who pushes her children to excel, Lillie is the kind that coddles them, pretty much in reaction to her own upbringing.
Oh, come on, you’ve killed them all already once, what’s one more time? We have all the time in this world. =)
Well, the connection (and why I bring up Chara) is that trainers are good. It’s the axiome of the game because it’s not the kind of game that wants to make you feel bad while playing bad.
Therefore, any serious deviation from the trainer behavior that may put a bad light on it is bad and must be corrected by the end of the plot.
I do agree that the narrative is kinda confusing here, given it’s unclear exactly what Lusamine loves and what she wants from them, so speculating about Lillie is somewhat difficult.
I do feel that the idea of what she’s doing being coddling (and standing in opposite to her mother’s controlling behavior) in game’s view has merit, with the focus on physical side of things being just the easiest way to express it.
I suppose the idea also could be that she’s just sheltered, doesn’t know the ways of the world, which makes her weak. So then she learns that relying on your pokemon (instead of helpful servants who definitely don’t poison your tea) is the way to be strong.
Hm, could still tie it to her mother if the idea is that Lusamine treats pokemon as cute displays rather than murdermachines they are meant to be and Lillie’s getting over it.
From what I understand, we’re supposed to see her as essentially damaged by her mother’s treatment to the point where she perceivess (wrongly, of course) training as similar to what her mother did to her.
I think the idea is that Lusamine raised her to believe training itself is wrong, which is why rejecting Lusamine’s beliefs happens about the same time as she decides to become a trainer. That corsola happy that it’s no longer at risk of getting eaten by mareanie? That’s a corsola that isn’t battling to survive. And Lusamine is thrilled with this state of affairs. And Lusamine is evil.
Aether Paradise is a place where pokemon are protected from battles. Lillie grows up without a healthy diet of watching pokemon get beaten up while being told they’re just having fun, so when she comes to Alola it’s a big culture shock. Same setup as N, really – character grows up outside of a culture built around rationalizing this, is initially shocked, ultimately convinced.
God, that is so… so shounen, honestly. I’m picturing like, Naruto or someone on his last legs, still screaming that he believes in his friends or what have you.
Totally the idea, I’m sure. It just occurred to me that shonen stuff rarely has healing items – imagine Naruto sobbing that he’ll never give up while Sakura mumbles, “But I might need that antidote later…”. Removing in-battle healing would go such a long way to making this meaningful as opposed to self-refuting.
Healing being rare in shounen is typically a narrative device to make one of the female main characters *special*, from what I’ve read. Sakura is actually the example I would give in Naruto, in fact. Orihime in Bleach is another big example. You always have just one reliable (female) healer in the story. This increases the tension when they’re inevitably kidnapped/incapacitated.
Removing in-battle healing does sound like a pretty good idea. And maybe just do away with revives altogether.
It feels so wrong to just see Orihime thrown in with Sakura, even if the are technically the same cliche. Orihime is the the worst case execution, whereas in Naruto, the medical stuff was super important. The code of battlefields ethics also seem to forbid damsel-in-distressing. I haven’t completed the series though.
No, I feel you completely. Even within awful cliches, there is a lot of variation in execution. Like I can backpedal here and say that the medical corps was a really good part of the ninjaverse. It still doesn’t change the fact that it’s the age-old cliche of women as healers and supporters giving the male struggle more weight.
First time commenting (and I decide to pick this one?)
I do feel that it should be pointed out that medical ninjutsu isn’t as female-sphere as a lot of other examples of girls being able to heal boys after a battle so they’ll be ready to go for the next fight with a boy. Actually, when I think about it, most of the random background medical ninja seem to be men (usually being lead by an prominant woman).
The four most prominent medical ninjutsu users in the series are Tsunade, Shizune, Kabuto, and Sakura. While, admittedly, that is a 75% female ratio, take a moment to consider the abilities of each of the three who regularly engage in combat.
Tsunade is pretty much the physically strongest ninja in the entire series. I’m not even sure if anyone has the strength to be considered on Tsunade’s level by other characters. And the source of her strength is her medical ninjutsu. Medical ninjutsu requires extreme chakra control, which allows her to buff up her strength, and is also the source of the Yin Seal.
Kabuto’s medical ninjutsu talent isn’t as heavily focused upon as Tsunade’s, but his is also pretty substantial. He’s probably number two after her. Most of his “medical” ninjutsu is directly applicable to combat (examples being his chakra scapel hand technique and the thing he uses on Tsunade to rewire her nervous system). When I think about it, most his actual medical skill is stuff like herbs and salves and stuff like that.
And finally, Sakura… Not really much to say about her personally. Her medical ninjutsu basically makes her Tsunade Lite, sorry (especially in Boruto). And as an aside, writing this, I realized that this might have something to do with the “men strength/women finesse” dichotomy but I do find it interesting that in this case, the chakra control of the women actually directly converts into physical finesse and the man’s fighting style far more finesse-focused.
And Orihime’s powers are actually pretty cool. Shame about the rest of her character. Unfortunately for her, powers like her offensive ability (remember when she had one of those?) are about as useful as one-hit-kill spells in a jRPG. Anyone you’d want to use them on can just ignore them (even ignoring the fact that her personality makes it by far the least useful of her powers even without that narrative limitation).
Anyway, that’s just my two cents on it. Sorry if I’ve said something horrible on accident (I’m nowhere near as good at expressing this kind of stuff as most of the people on this site), but I just wanted to point out… well, this. Like I said, I’m not good at expressing this kind of stuff. I guess the takeaway is that medical ninjutsu is cool and Tsunade is cool?
Welcome! As far as it goes, this isn’t even a weird thing to chip in on.
Like I expressed to Septentrion, the medical corps does have a lot more going on for it and I ultimately did like their design. I think, ultimately, they still fit the cliche, but not in as blatant or painful a way as Orihime.
most of the random background medical ninja seem to be men (usually being lead by an prominant woman)
This is kind of a separate issue, but 99% of the time, when you have an army of sorts, the faceless extras will be all-male. I did ignore them for the purposes of the example.
The ‘prominent woman’ is the important part here. Like you said, 75% of the named medical ninja, i.e. actual characters, are women, and the male is not particularly shown in a healing capacity (Kabuto, like his master, is sort of a perversion of his original job).
It is still really good that Sakura and Tsunade were both tough and relevant in combat (at least until Shonen Power Escalation rendered basically everyone useless). That’s basically the complaint about Orihime – she had nothing going for her beyond being a healer and being the love interest. Avoiding that pitfall puts the Naruto medical ninja way above.
Sorry if I’ve said something horrible on accident
You haven’t, no worries.
I guess the takeaway is that medical ninjutsu is cool and Tsunade is cool?
Yeah, I’ll take that. I think the final judgment is that it was a great use of the cliche.
I actually meant it more in the way of “I’m going to introduce myself with a really long rambling post about battle anime”. Of all the points I’ve thought “you know, I should post this”, it was this particular one? What a weirdo, am I right?
I don’t think I’m going so far as claiming that they don’t fit the cliche, actually. Shounen battle anime is pretty bad overall in this regard. Its saying something that I feel Naruto is actually one of the better series when it comes to this kind of stuff, which really isn’t saying much. At least Tsunade only becomes useless when everyone who isn’t Naruto or a sharingan user does and not because she’s a woman.
I considered bringing up the “all background characters are male” thing but I felt it complicated my actual point (and that I’d put my foot in my mouth trying). Would you consider it better or worse than an all-female medical corps? (Of course, in an ideal world, it wouldn’t be either, but I’m curious, and I feel as if a large part of the reason the Medical Corps are all-male is because Kishimoto basically just populated it with variations of a single male design. Which doesn’t explain why he didn’t just make variations of a female design as well, but that’s my series as to why we got what we got.)
She had nothing going for her besides being a healer and being the love interest.
Now I got to ask… how do you feel about the Designated Love Interest of Naruto, Hinata?
You haven’t, no worries.
Worrying is just what I do. Even now, my immediate response to this was “give it some more time”. But if I do say something terrible, point it out and I’ll try to explain what not-terrible thing I actually meant.
I think the final judgement is that it was a great use of the cliche.
Sure, why not? Let’s go with that. I’m the kind of guy who watches a lot of bad stuff because he likes watching bad stuff (gee I wonder why I’m here) but I feel like a lot of it is stuff that the reviewers on this site would quit in disgust. I’ve got a pretty high tolerance for bad, I guess.
But this is actually something that personally bothers me a lot. Unlike a lot (all of?) the reviewers on this site, I happen to be male, so I’ve never had personal experience with wanting more representation (especially in my battle anime). But I actually prefer battle manga with more female heavy casts. My favourite characters in battle anime usually tend to be the girls, even if they’re not as well written as the guys (though it might be that I just like the idea of what the character could be). Even if its not a fanservice heavy series about lesbian magical girls, which probably makes up the majority of shows mostly about girls in fighting tournaments.
Though, with that in mind, reading something on this site a few days ago (I think it was the post about the trainer sprites in ORAS) made me think “huh, you know, I should go back and finish Teppu now that I’ve got more time”. You’d think it was the post about how Teppu is a good series that people should read, but nope.
Though, these two things combined (plus the fact that I am currently two-thirds through the review of Graceling) make me wonder: In that review, Farla complains about the main character’s power being changed from “killing” to “fighting” to “survival” because it makes it a passive skill to defend her. I’m curious how y’all feel about, well, not exactly that (I get why she disliked that, especially with how reactionary the character in question is), but female characters who are more focused on defence than offence as an active combat strategy? Things like girls with massive defence stats in RPGs, like a Denfender-type class in D&D 4e or the Mighty Glacier archetype in fighting games. Or, since there are Exalted people here, Lunar Exalts with a focus on soak. Definitely Lunar Exalts with a focus on soak.
This is more of a question for Farla specifically, but what exactly about the Graceling example made it different from a Lunar exalt with all the survival-focused charms (though obviously it is, I’m just looking for specifics)? Was it just the fact that it was originally the proactive “killing”(/”fighting”) and was then reduced to being a passive trait to keep her safe (at which point, say no more, I totally understand the complaint, because c’mon YA novels) or was there more to it than that? Would it have been better if her grace was always “the ability to not die no matter how much you killed her” or “the ability to survive in the wild” (and have her fighting talent be totally acquired through training, I suppose)?
And, on that note, you refer to her as “raised by wolves” a lot, for obvious reasons. How do you feel about a “girl raised by wolves has to learn how to people because now she’s living with people” plot? Not specifically a boy/love interest teaching/telling her how to emote (because, again, that one’s obviously bad), but more along the lines of society teaching her how to be a part of society. It’s not really relevant to Katsa specifically since she knows how to be part of society and just doesn’t care (maybe more relevant for Katniss since her father basically raised her in the woods), but in general, would that help any?
What with the talk about SAO:A going on in another comment chain at the time of this writing, I can’t help but be reminded of the time Klein had to explain to Kirito that he was sad that his friends died. If only Peeta was more like Klein. The Hunger Games’s romance plot would’ve been so much more tolerable.
And wow this has gotten really long and rambly and I’ve sidetracked like four times so I’m gonna cut it off here. I want to make sure I ultimately stay on topic in this comment reply to Pokemon Moon Day 39.
Would you consider it better or worse than an all-female medical corps?
It’s a catch-22. One falls into male being the default. The other perpetuates stereotypes about what women should do or what they’re capable of. I guess I’d say make them all women, since the male squad carries the extra implication that an equal number of women are just at home cleaning or whatever.
Now I got to ask… how do you feel about the Designated Love Interest of Naruto, Hinata?
There’s a low bar for designated love interests, and I think she clears it pretty well. She was shown to be a person with her own problems outside her infatuation, and she had good character growth that led to good character moments. Her narrative arc was about overcoming her own insecurities and learning how to deal with her family’s negative attitude towards her, and I am all for that.
But if I do say something terrible, point it out and I’ll try to explain what not-terrible thing I actually meant.
Mm. Misunderstandings are one thing; it’s when we willfully say something bad that we really have a problem. Either way, the solution is the same: acknowledge, apologize, adjust. It’s just harder for one than the other.
Unlike a lot (all of?) the reviewers on this site, I happen to be male
I’m male, and yeah, same, pretty much. There’s media you/I consume that’s going to put people off, here and elsewhere. If you feel bad about it, that’s a guilty pleasure, I guess, but it’s better for you to feel that way than it is to mindlessly consume it and think everything is copacetic. There is room to both like something and understand that parts of it are harmful.
Anyway we’re rapidly reaching the point where I’m clueless about these things, despite being a reader of this blog for like three years, and I know like nothing about the second half of your comment, so, yeah, welcome, don’t be too self-flagellating or you’ll go crazy, etc. etc.
Tsunade is pretty much the physically strongest ninja in the entire series. I’m not even sure if anyone has the strength to be considered on Tsunade’s level by other characters
Well…literal strength, yes.
Naruto is an interesting case because I really don’t get the sense the author has anything against women, and there’s every sense that there’s no sexism whatsoever among the ninja….but there’s still such a gulf between the male and female characters.
The idea of the medical ninja being super brawlers is a great idea, except in Naruto ninja power is about the awesome techniques which are all way better than punching real hard. (And indeed, Naruto and Sasuke both get their own personal magic punch that outclasses her regular punches.) And we’re told the super strength requires incredible technical control, but the female characters who get it then proceed to stop using the incredible technical control for any of the awesome techniques. (…and while I don’t remember where Tsunade’s official power level was set to, we’re told at the very beginning that Naruto has mostest chakra, Sasuke has a fuckton of chakra, and Sakura is just scraping by on technical precision, then that anyone can learn technical precision but chakra you’re born with. And they’re meant to parallel the older trio.)
If you separated out male and female characters, you end up with two different settings – one is a medium powered setting full of characters using abilities in interesting ways, and one is an over-nine-thousand fest. I like that Naruto universe better, but when the female characters are put up against the male ones, the difference is stark.
(If they hadn’t been set to have massive differences in power from the beginnings, it could’ve been so great. Sakura being the tank while Naruto ran distraction duty to funnel opponents to her and Sasuke handled the glass cannon threats trying to snipe them would’ve been an awesome setup.)
It’s a catch-22.
That’s basically what I was getting at, though I didn’t think to label it as such, though there are enough female ninja (both important and background) that I could at least pretend the medic-ninja’s wife is off doing some other ninja job, especially since it seems like ninja tend to marry ninja.
There’s a low bar for designated love interests, and I think she clears it pretty well.
Agreed. Hinata was probably my favourite female character in Naruto, and probably one of the top five overall, for those reasons. Not many female characters in Naruto get character arcs like that. I think it worked because, although she did draw strength from a male character, it didn’t actually have anything to do with the love interest role or him just telling her what to do or feel so it didn’t have that YA feel to it. Hinata used Naruto as an example of what she wanted to be more like. It’s only about 70 chapters in (at the end of her fight with Neji) that he even realizes all this has been going on in the background. I’m not even sure he ever did anything directly to help her along her narrative arc by the end of the series. The closest that comes to mind is when he meets her on his way to the chuunin exam finals and says he used to think of her as dark and gloomy but that he thinks her newfound determination is actually pretty cool.
Oh, and when Naruto decides Neji needs to get his ass handed to him, its not because he feels the need to protect Hinata because she’s a girl or anything, its because he finds shitting on that newfound determination absolutely unacceptable. Her gender never even remotely factors into it.
If you feel bad about it, that’s a guilty pleasure
I wouldn’t exactly say I feel bad about watching it, overall, for the same reason the reviewers on this site probably don’t feel bad about reading The Hunger Games or whatever. It’s just, when I tear into them, its a lot less academic than the norm for here. I’ve got some guilty pleasures, but liking Sword Art Online isn’t one of them. Now, liking the hunt for new reasons why Sword Art Online is bad, that’s another story… When I was defending it from someone mindlessly hating on it because, I knew I had a problem. But it’s not very hard to find criticisms with that series, so why would anyone feel the need to make up a reason it’s bad?
There is room to both like something and understand that parts of it are harmful.
I will be the first person to say that I like something but by no means does that make it good. Most of what I like, I wouldn’t really consider good. In fact, the opposite is true. I probably like it precisely because of how bad I think it is. It took me a day or two to answer someone asking me to name a manga that I enjoyed that I thought was actually good and not just so bad it became surreal, and I only thought of the answer because I stumbled across a bookmark that reminded me of it.
Don’t be too self-flagellating or you’ll go crazy.
I’m not, usually, except for the ocassional self-deprecating gag. But, for the time being, I am taking a lot of time to write these comments and checking their language because I don’t want to accidentally say something in a way I don’t mean. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I think I’m going to get pounced on if I do, I’d just rather avoid creating the issue in the first place. The fact I can’t edit them after the fact doesn’t help. But because no one here knows me personally, I wanted to get it out there that I’m not trying to start something, especially since this thread is the site’s first exposure to me.
I even avoided making a comment on how the word “crazy” is in my name.
And after making the joke about how I wanted to stick to the topic of the post, I read a bit of the post (the comment just caught by eye in the sidebar, I haven’t been reading this series because I haven’t played a pokemon past Gen 3 or even seen an LP, and this seems more like a player’s thoughts and opinions about the game than something to be enjoyed without context), and I think I found the answer for why Frostlass evolves with a dawn stone.
On a gut feeling, I checked the Japanese names on Bulbapedia. The stone’s name translates to “awakening stone”. It seems like they wanted to have a set that played on the sun/moon theme, and could easily rename them since the dusk stone is “darkness stone” in Japanese and “dawn” has awakening connotations in English.
But now I have to check how many pokemon from Sun and Moon evolve with sun stones or moon stones.
The Graceling thing was mostly the setup. It wasn’t just the bait and switch, but also the fact she’s all OH THANK GOD IT’S SURVIVAL NOT FIGHTING BECAUSE IF IT WAS FIGHTING I’D BE SO RIGHT TO KEEP HATING MYSELF AND A TOTAL FREAK FOR BEING A GIRL WHO FIGHTS!!! and the story doesn’t even make sense with it being survival because being super good at all fighting ever and having superhuman control of how hard you hit isn’t a survival trait, but it’s got to be survival because she’s not some fighter freak-girl, ew.
Lunars, meanwhile, are totally awesome because they start out at surviving and then use that survival to fight. Female characters who defend/soak and actually get bloody and cut up and exhausted instead of having to be model pretty 24/7? Great, we need more. My favorite scene with Sakura was early on when she’s trying to defend her team, popping in and out with a string of perfect substitution jutsu until they expect it, then taking the hit so she could close the distance. So clever! So brave! So tough! So…completely ineffectual because she still gets taken out easily and then Sasuke wakes up and solos the group through sheer overpoweredness. Dammit, Sasuke.
Really, much of what I want is novelty and competence – female characters who specialize in “defend” should get to successfully defend, instead of not existing or being treated as inept attackers or only fighting when their opponent has some way of nullifying their defense, just like female characters who specialize in “attack” need to stop getting treated like inept defenders and always getting knocked out of the fight before they can do much damage.
And, on that note, you refer to her as “raised by wolves” a lot, for obvious reasons. How do you feel about a “girl raised by wolves has to learn how to people because now she’s living with people” plot?
What actually annoys me is that these characters weren’t raised by wolves and/or are behaving cutely damaged in ways that wouldn’t line up with that. (There was another book series I read where it was all look!!! this girl!!! she’s so mistrustful and wolfy!!! look at her doing super obvious weird animallike things to indicate her discomfort!!! when she was raised as a slave and should be a grandmaster at looking completely ordinary no matter how bad her internal panic attacks.) Getting literally raised apart from society and then coming in is so different from being at the bottom of the pecking order – someone like that should be incredibly aware of other people because other people have so much power over them!
Sad trauma girls should have realistic behavior for being sad trauma girls (Kyoko’s food issues vs Katniss’ food issues). Meanwhile, if people want raised by wolves characters, by god, have them literally raised by wolves! Have them have no idea how things work because there’s no way they could, not because shooting arrows takes the same brainspace as learning how to emotion. I wouldn’t even mind love interest teaching emotions at that point – somebody’s got to because wolves don’t have higher thought processes.
I’ve tried about ten times to post my response now, and either the site is eating it, it’s getting caught in the spam filter, or going over some length limit or something. As much as its killing me to not reply in obnoxious depth to the two reponses I got from Farla, I think I’m going to give up for now.
Short version: I agree with you on Naruto, and thank you for the extra explanation over Graceling (and the better explanations for what I was trying to say). I had some things to elaborate on (like the gulf between men and women in Naruto is almost certainly due to the nature of writing in a young boy’s manga and editoral mandate), but I’m keeping this short just in case that’s the cause of my problem because it only seems to be this specific post I can’t reply to.