Rudy Knight is the ultimate theory... if he IS the Knight, you can call yourself a genius... If he ISN'T the Knight, you can say it was all a joke theory because obviously the coded to die character wouldn't be the Knight. Every outcome ends up with a win for Rudy Knighters.
(I'm not a Rudy Knighter by the way.)
I think I lost the plot halfway through- If there IS an elimination it'll probably just pull a TPOT 19 and skip right to it though to try not to ruin the mood.
He claims that Fifteen and the Zeroes aren’t “responsible” enough to keep the Yoyleite in check, but who is he to decide that? It’s not like he’s had a good record of keeping it safe. I’d safe the Yoyleite being discretely hidden in a cabin and Fifteen attacking anyone who got close to it was probably as safe as it could get. (Also keep in mind they were just saved by these guys and shown hospitality, and the first thing they do is try to rob them-)
I mean, imagine this from Fifteen and the Zeroes perspective. This dangerous rock appears to be turning people into zombies, so you carefully secure it and put it onto your shelf for now, since it doesn’t seem to be doing any more damage. A while later, you find some unconscious guys in a dangerous area, so you rescue them and take them to your home. Then, the guys you save insult you, beat you up, steal the dangerous rock and proceeds to get you merked. I can somewhat understand Tennis Ball not trusting algebraliens with the yoyleite (even if they just saved you and showed no signs of malice), but the same can be said with Fifteen. Why would you trust these random people you just met with the dangerous rock you’ve been keeping safe, especially when they’ve shown no signs that you can trust them?
I don’t know, I get TB’s motive, but this just seemed like such an arrogant and prick move, especially with how prideful he sounded. “You’re not responsible enough, give it to someone who is”, mate you have had a track record of losing every piece of yoyleite you’ve laid your hands on where is this ego coming from 😭
Explanations :
Gerson : No explanation needed, bro is the GOAT.
Pink/ Mew Mew : It's impossible to damage her, and I doubt the Knight has the capacity to flirt with her or talk her into getting her body and soul to have a mental argument. Even if Pink only does 1 damage to the Knight each turn, it's still going to be 1 more than what the Knight can do to her.
Jevil : Similar to Mew Mew, Jevil himself states that he "cannot be killed". Unsure if this is supposed to be taken literally, but Jevil only tires on the pacifist route, not when fought violently so it could hold true. So if it is the case, then he can beat the Knight for the same reason as Mew Mew. He can do anything, after all.
Noelle : Specifically Weird Route Noelle. Snowgrave is the one attack that is noted to be fatal, I'm sure if Noelle really set her mind to it, she could defeat the Knight.
Omega Flowery : Might be a bit of a stretch, but that's why I put it in possibly. Flowery when tired in his base form could already match if not surpass the Knight in speed, outwit the Knight and hold his own against the Knight's blade for a good few moments. In his omega form he would have all of that and more, so if the power of friendship pulls through, he could do numbers. (I know someone's going to mention the Kris fight but Flowery himself mentions that he hesitated and we know Kris holds back in regular battles to do less damage.)
Rouxls : Okay hear me out, the Knight can ignore stat changes so that probably applies to Rouxls' rules as well, but FOR THE CHANCE THAT IT DOESN'T, Rouxls can just disable the Knight's ability to attack.
This is talking about the elimination by the way. Like Cary once said, “let’s try to keep BFDI casual”. I’ve seen people dislike not just the show as a whole because of this one elimination but also trash on other people’s favourite characters/ characters they voted. This show is viewer vote, you can’t expect everything to go your way. Just enjoy the show and vote who you want to vote. As a Marker fan and someone who wants Book out for already winning BFDIA, I’m not going to yell at a Book voter to switch, it’s their choice, you can’t control someone else’s opinion. It’s fine to be upset if your favourite character got out, but being this pissed about it and hating a character/ a character’s fans over one elimination is just kind of pathetic I can’t lie. People are acting like Liy and Winner are real people that just got brutally and tragically murdered.
Just one last thing I’ll put is the wise words of someone I saw say after the elimination: “I didn’t see this much support for Liy when TPOT 21 came out”
One of the most shocking eliminations, I don't think anyone possibly predicted this outcome. I expected Liy to get low votes but not the LEAST. You can't even blame the writers for this they gave her so much screentime in the last two challenges 😭
(They even showed Winner first so they looked like the one with the least votes- I thought Winner had less till I rewatched to check the actual vote counts)
“Oh, the boss in chapter 4 is so strong that your defeat is already predetermined” and then Gerson proceeds to go easy on us to train Susie and is one of the easiest secret bosses so far.
“Oh the secret boss in chapter 5 is so easily you’ll waste no effort beating them” proceeds to get bombed to the Angel’s Heaven by a fight matching the difficulty of the Roaring Knight.
This is assuming there is a rejoin after the ‘Defeat One’ saga, since it’s being hinted towards a lot. With the challenge being to actually defeat One, it’s likely the three deleted contestants will come back, along with the people in the EXIT reuniting with the other eliminated contestants. This is because if a rejoin were to happen, it wouldn’t make sense to not include like 9 contestants, and would simply make it unfair competition/ voting wise, and BFDI has always respected votes as one of the most important aspects of the show.
random thing I came up with, I thought the audio fit lol
This is my personal favourite scene in the finale, and I don’t think I’ve seen anyone talk about it, so I’m going to explain why it’s so peak and one of the best scenes in the episode, despite its short length.
First off, obviously, it’s extremely well shaded and drawn. Same goes for the rest of the episode, but I think the lighting in this scene is just stellar. The only source light coming from the window, every eliminated contestant/ failed debuter only being able to look out at the sun that they cannot experience for themselves, it’s just beautiful.
Secondly, this is closely related to the first point, but just the vibes of it all. It goes from seeing the contestants have fun and relax after the finale, but then shows us the rest of the cast. Forgotten, most of the characters not even caring enough to attempt to free them, every plea made throughout the episode ignored. It just shows how depressing it is in the LOL/TLC (or just being in an elimination area in general), even if it’s played off for laughs most of the time.
Finally it’s how it foreshadows IDFB, this focus on the characters being trapped, unable to be with everyone else leads to the goal of the next season : freeing everyone one by one. It’s subtle but I gotta love it.
Anyways hope y’all enjoyed my mini rant, I just love this scene so much, it makes me feel something that no other show or media has really made me feel, just the vibes, art and narrative perspective all flow and connect to each other so well.
Honestly not super happy with the way the background came out, but I suck at drawing backgrounds lol.
Might make a small bit of improvements over the course of the next few days? Probably only going to be minor tweaks though, since I can't help but always think something needs to be changed.
Tricks Alan into freeing him when he was pretty much in an almost impossible to escape situation
Is the one to figure out to use the internet to escape, saving both him and TDL
How he adapts to Victim's fight, even though he was pretty much powerless and at Victim's mercy. They disable his fire attacks? He freezes himself to have a solid form of defense. Victim utilises multiple weapons at once? TCO takes advantage of those weapons to cut the leash on him.
He almost immediately disconnects the headset upon realising what it does, honestly it was the best anyone could do in that situation.
He saw that there was unavoidable danger and gets into the safest place possible, the cage bunker, saving himself not only from TDL/ H4CK3R but the nuke as well.
Even without powers he's a smart boi. It's probably going to be how he helps defeat TDL, escaping even without powers due to how quickly he can react and adapt to situations.
Just to be clear, I've been a fan of Alan Becker for a lonnnnng time, and these critiques are mainly for AvA 13 as an episode rather than Animator vs Animation as a whole. Also want to make this clear as well that even though I'm going to be criticising it's writing, it is in no way the fault of the animation, I think everyone can agree that it was peak. Anyways, time to see if I get flamed for my opinions ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
So first off, one glaring issue I think the episode has, and I've seen a lot of posts about this too, it's that H4CK3R's power is incredibly inconsistent. We've been shown that not only can he deactivate other people's powers but he can also put them to sleep in an instant. Yet he doesn't do this to TDL at all? Some argue that he had to be in close contact with TDL to use these abilities or that he needs to make contact for a long time, but H4CK3R HAS gone physical with TDL in the fight, landing many punches and he put TSC to sleep in an instant, so it's not really an excuse. Not being experienced isn't really a reason either since we're shown that he knows how to use his abilities and activated TSC's powers right before the fight. I think the main issue is that H4CK3R has the 'Atom Eve' issue in terms of power. In case you don't know, Atom Eve is a character in Invincible who can alter the molecular structure of ANYTHING as long as it isn't a living thing. Both Atom Eve and H4CK3R have the most versatile abilities and SHOULD be the most powerful characters in their respective shows, but they are held back by the writers, making them lose fights that they definitely could have won. To top this off, it seems like this wasn't even a challenge for TDL, TDL mocking H4CK3R by the end and offering him a hand up. Don't get me wrong, I really like TDL but with H4CK3R and the abilities he's displayed, he should have been able to defeat him.
Secondly, how TCO was handled was... not the best to say the least. TCO as a character is complex, and his whole relationship to the plot and Victim is that he took the life of someone he loved, that even though TCO had changed, his past actuons still had consequences both for him and the people he hurt. Only for the blame to suddenly be passed onto TDL? TDL being the one to kill Mitsi was a theory at one point, but many brushed it off, since it would just make TCO innocent and make him needing to face consequences pointless, not to mention being generally lazy writing (This isn't me exaggerating or anything I've seen almost these exact comments on theory posts about TDL killing Mitsi). It just makes TDL not function that well as a character imo, it turns him into just this pure evil scapegoat for the blame to be passed onto for anything that happened in the past.
Now we have Mitsi... good ol Mitsi. Personally I think reviving her was honestly a good idea, and her basically having no soul at first and basically being TDL's puppet was chilling. I don't have any issues with that, only until we got to the part where Victim, in his dying breath frees Mitsi from TDL's control. Don't get me wrong, it's poetic, both lovers seeing each other die, but how does that work??? Maybe it's the power of love (in all honesty I wouldn't mind it that much if it were the case, I'll admit it I'm a sucker for wholesome stuff), but the spark he shoots from his hand implies it's something to do with his hack powers. Then why didn't he do so before? Why is he suddenly able to free Mitsi now? I think this is another issue that can be linked back to problem one, Victim's powers are so vague that he seemingly can do anything but also nothing at the same time because of plot.
Those were my main issues I wanted to get off my chest, the rest of these aren't really problems per se, just nitpicks, so feel free to skip this section if you're actually reading the entire post (if you are, thanks!). Something that I thought was kind of unnecessary was putting all the code and text for anything and everything, specifically saying "Mitsi was killed by The Dark Lord" in her program. It just felt like spoon feeding spoons at that point, since they literally show us the memories of Mitsi getting exploded by TDL both before and after. Also revealing that Mitsi is going to be revived in the thumbnail is certainly something. Like I said, not really an issue, but it does feel kind of spoilery to the point where when I first saw the thumbnail online before the episode aired, I thought it was fake since I thought "No way they would reveal something THAT big in the thumbnail."
Anyways those were just my thoughts. If you read this entire post and still disagree, that's completely fine! I'm just glad you took the time to get where I was coming from. The writing of 'The Machine' just kind of disappointed me I guess, especially following the amazing episode that was 'Victim' and the really good episode that is 'Hacker'. Still, like I said, regardless of writing the animation is still definitely at it's best right now! Anyways, feel free to share any thoughts or discussion, sorry for the giant yap lmao.
It’s when Morty is telling ‘Ted’ that Rick is so happy. It’s not true, like some of the other stuff he’s saying, but this is the one thing where he can’t even fake a smile for because of how miserable he knows Rick is.
Sorry if this didn’t make sense, just wanted to write about it because even though I’m not 100% sure how to explain it, it hits the soul