EDIT: Holy Shit 19k Notes In 24 Hours On An Original Post Never Happened Before In My 10 Years On Here

DATS Rant: The Ultimate Spider-Man Is a Masterpiece

Hot take: The Ultimate Spider-Man is the most thematically cohesive Spider-Man show I’ve seen.

All the Youtubers who rag on this show always point to individual scenes and lines as dumb and claim that the show has bad writing because of them. Frankly, I’ve found myself despising the writing on several shows that have a lot of good scenes the fandom goes wild over because the show’s theming is broken or outright missing. coughMiraculouscough

The thing about theming is that it can really work to enforce what your story is about. If your themes don’t work, vanish or aren’t even a consideration, your story is thin. Many current stories struggle with theming, by which I mean things seem to happen without reason. I’m not talking about just kids’ media either, adult shows also seem to have events strung together more just to be shocking instead of in order to say something.

It’s actually pretty easy to do a show-wide theme like family, friendship, the horrors of war or how broken people often have broken relationships. You just need to bring it up every now and again. The problem seems to be story arcs with themes. This is because having a theme in a story means building events up to a certain conclusion that supports said theme. It means predictability and there seems to be a weird allergy for that going on.

The theming in The Ultimate Spider-Man is actually very visible in its handling of the Venom arc. Youtubers with no concept of theming don’t understand why Harry Osborn becomes Venom. Here’s the thing: Harry’s relationships with both Peter and his dad begin deteriorating as soon as Spider-Man shows up. It’s also without him knowing it, in the case of Peter. “Venom” means “poison”. Spider-Man poisons Harry’s relationships with his dad and Peter. It’s poetic.

This is why it’s important that Peter starts off disliking his new teammates. They’re often literally getting between him and Harry, just like Peter’s duty as Spider-Man is figuratively between them, pushing them apart.

This is also why Harry becomes Anti-Venom as part of the arc that leads up to Peter revealing his secret identity to Harry. “Anti-Venom” is basically another word for a counter-poison. Their relationship is being healed, the poison is being countered. Fittingly, the story where Harry becomes Anti-Venom is also the one where Norman Osborn gets redeemed.

Harry becomes the Anti-Spider-Man, then he becomes Venom, then he becomes Anti-Venom and then he becomes Harry again. That’s an arc, those are themes. This show is good.

Video version

Hilda by Duane Bryers

Whenever people bring up the "can X character beat Goku?" hypothetical, it always revolves around modern DB power, like SSJ4 and Ultra Instinct, which makes sense since theyre the recent top tier power levels in a shonen sense. but the fact is, Goku aint been at his A-game since OG DB. Since like, you gotta remember, Dragonball started as another Toriyama gag manga, similar to Dr Slump.

Goku is a gag character who transitioned to a shonen fighter since fighting was more fun.

THAT is terrifying. Goku can still apply to gag manga rules if he wants to. Bullets have no effect on him, but he will scream in agony if you hit him with a small rock.

Goku is like an anime Hannah Montana, best of both worlds, a jack of all trades. He can be a cheery funny gag character when he wants, and a serious fighting protagonist when he wants. Like, one of his most famous fighting styles is biting people. He bites Frieza, he bites Buu, he bites Beerus, he bites Whis.

Goku is one of the strongest fighters in all of anime, he can take the punch of a God, or all the condensed evil in hell and not even flinch, but his wife Chi Chi, Bulma and Arale can whoop his ass because its funny.

Basically the answer to any "can X character beat Goku?" revolves around the answer "would it be funny?"

Thanos from MCU? There's nothing funny there at all, Thanos loses.

SpongeBob? Incredibly funny, SpongeBob would blow a bubble that looks like a bus at Goku and he'd be launched back past the horizon and you'd see a nuclear explosion happen.

And like the most stereotypical ones of Saitama and Luffy, thats like a draw, they all have the half and half of shonen and funny. They beat the shit out of eachother and then the next scene is them bandaged and bruised in an Applebee's chowing down on endless appetizers together, then immediately back to fighting.

Happiness Will Come To You.

Adrien The Liar

wait. don’t go. I promise this isn’t salt. I have not been hacked. It’s me.

Hear me out.

Continua a leggere

RIP Akira Toriyama

Everyone should experience a Krampus festival at least once in their lifetime