u/ventingandcrying

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End

This one follows an elf named Frieren who’s very monotone and doesn’t seem to care about much, including people. She just got back from her 10 year journey with her party to defeat the demon king. Like the full on journey of dungeons, monsters, villages, bosses, all the stuff you’d see in an RPG game. She’s not even the most famous in her party, that goes to Himmel the Hero who she didn’t care much about until he passes away (first episode, not spoilers). She’s had humans she’s known die on her before, but she didn’t realize how much she cared about this one until it’s too late. To try to understand her feelings, she goes on a journey retracing their steps of that 10 year journey where we get flashbacks of the places she’s revisiting. The show really leans on us not knowing everything that happened in the past and comparing it to the present when we do learn of it.

Jujutsu Kaisen

JJK also leans heavily on the audience not knowing the past, so much so that a good chunk of fans believe a JJK backstory spinoff or one-off or something would be really good. There’s so much unknown about Kenjaku and Sukuna’s backstories that I think works in the story’s favor, but the very little we do know and the implications in it are a whole story in themselves. Sukuna growing up being treated like a curse due to his appearance and rising to the king of curses, and Kenjaku’s 1000 year shenanigans trying to get the culling games to work. Jujutsu Kaisen is really set up on so much history imo that it feels like it fits this trope.

Kagurabachi

This one revolves around “The Seitei War” and the blacksmith who crafted the 6 enchanted blades which ended the war, Kunishige Rokuhira. Many years later, a mysterious group kills him and steals the 6 enchanted blades and Rokuhira’s son decides to track them all down. Now these blades are insanely powerful, at first they were like a power boost, but one of the wielders took its power to a literally genocidal level. The manga is currently in the Seitei War flashback arc right now, but for the first 112 chapters we follow Chihiro’s journey tracking down the blades while we hear differing opinions on Kunishige and the blades. Some people revere him and the blade wielders as heroes, while other’s can’t look away from the massive death toll they caused. All this works really well with us the audience, but also Chihiro not knowing the full history and watching him having to come up with his own opinion.

I love how much Fujimoto leaves unsaid with his characters and one of my favorites moments has to be here with the Death Devil reveal. With the Makima reveal, she showed us that she was lying to Denji and us the audience the whole time, but the Death Devil reveal is more interesting to me. During this conversation she seems to be telling us that she wasn’t lying throughout the story, at least not entirely, she genuinely seems to be trying to stop the prophecy. She says it multiple times through the story, she wants to enjoy and savor life to the fullest, which is why she hesitates here when Famine suggests being erased by Chainsaw Man. Much like the Control devil who wanted equal relationships, and the Blood devil who wanted to feel the warmth of blood, the Death devil wants the opposite of her namesake.

Then the question becomes why did she keep coming up with plans that did nothing but push the prophecy further? Well I think this moment with Famine already tells us everything we need to know, I think she literally just came up with these plans on the spot. The Control devil wanted a family, but kept trying to get it by trying to control Chainsaw Man. The Blood devil wanted to feel the warmth of blood, but kept drinking it instead. The Death devil, wanting to savor and experience life to the fullest, continuously pushed the world toward the apocalypse, because devils can’t help their base instincts even when trying to go against them. Whenever she thought up a plan, she wasn’t thinking far enough ahead because she was completely incapable, and as humanity got closer and closer to extinction that became more clear as we see here.

Jerry has some interesting lines in this episode that I can’t stop thinking about and Im sure it’s in relation to the themes I just can’t fit the pieces together in my head.

“You die and come back? You’re saying your grandfather lets you die over and over?” This scene is really interesting to think about when you remember that he made Mort free solo El Capitan which is what killed him. “I tried to make my son so strong he would never die!” Immediately made me think of Rick: “I do child proofing stuff while you’re asleep.” And it’s worth mentioning “As he falls, Mort doesn’t make a sound…” is also interesting when compared to our Morty who would be freaking out. I feel like all this is clearly related to the whole “I’m your dad” thing but I can’t quite figure it out.

And at the end of all this I come back to our Jerry, “Who’s a mad man? I’m a mad man” is very funny right after Alt Jerry is in the middle of calling him a mad man for letting Rick do all the stuff he does to Morty. He definitely puts his foot down more after the divorce now that Beth backs him up a little, but why does Jerry let Rick do pretty much whatever he wants?

Sorry if these are dumb questions, you have to have a certain level of intelligence to understand Rick and Morty

Idek if I’m allowed to make a post this long, it probably belongs on r/Jujutsushi but I already typed it out so oh well. Mods crucify me if you will.

The inner demon trope usually represents the repressed emotions of the character. It’s pretty simple and pretty prevalent in a ton of stories, not just shonen but I’ll use Naruto as a quick example. He was discriminated against by the villagers as a child, so his dream is to become Hokage and make them respect him. The Nine Tailed Fox represents all his repressed anger and hatred for the village, so anytime he gets angry enough the inner demon starts slipping through and lashing out. With Yuji and Megumi it gets a bit messier and I want to see if I got it figured out.

Yuji has no family and no friends, he doesn’t even go to clubs after school, he’s only been in the occult club for a couple of months when the story starts. Point is Yuji is a loner and all he has is his grandad, and when his grandfather dies his last words are “help people.” That’s nice and noble, but still a selfish request which is why it is a curse on Yuji’s life. Part of Yuji knows this, but he doesn’t want to acknowledge it, so Sukuna comes in. Almost immediately he gets a chaotic selfish side that is the literal opposite helping people. He lives only for his own desires and all that exist to him are his pleasure and displeasure, so he represents Yuji repressing all his selfishness because of his grandad. Funnily enough, this could also represent Yuji unconsciously repressing his innate technique, Shrine, and an insane amount of cursed energy. Yuji switching against the finger bearer and Choso represent his frustration with losing and not being able to “help people” so all his repressed anger at that request comes out and lashes out at those same people he wanted to help earlier.

Megumi was abandoned by his dad and he assumes his mom too, and on top of that he’s being told that he essentially has to become a jujutsu sorcerer and work with Gojo if he wants to keep he and Tsumiki away from the Zenin clan. On top of all that, the technique he was born with has a built in suicide bomb, so his selfishness was also heavily snuffed out at the beginning. Because of how strong he is emotionally though, the world has a hard time breaking him. Yuji is distraught after the Shibuya incident while Megumi is able to keep going because he has Tsumiki to think about. Then he sees Tsumiki has already been taken over (Side note: In this trope, this means Tsumiki had her own inner demon she was dealing with that Megumi didn’t know about. I guess every incarnated sorcerer? Don’t think about it too hard), and this breaks him.

Now I have a hard time understanding how Sukuna switching from Yuji to Megumi fits into this. I get that thematically it shows that he and Yuji share the same curse so Yuji is the only one able to save him, but does that mean Yuji doesn’t have his selfishness anymore? Def want you guys thoughts on that one, but point is Megumi snaps, and unlike Yuji he’s not strong enough to snap back. It sort of implies that Yuji’s soul is stronger than Megumi’s, but Megumi decides he’s choosing the selfish path and he’s done helping people. He attacks his classmates, and to fall further into darkness he kills Tsumiki and Gojo and tries to kill his whole class.

Why does Megumi have a repressed desire to kill his sister and his teacher? This sort of implies that Tsumiki has incestuous feelings for Megumi which is funny and not uncommon for abandoned or traumatized children who would feel like they only have each other. I don’t get why he’d have a repressed desire to kill her, but I think I kinda get why he’d want to kill Gojo. To take the title of strongest from his teacher, to follow Gojo’s words and try to win WITH Mahoraga instead of murder suicide. And To sink further into darkness and retain his title of strongest he goes to kill everyone who challenges him.

The finale is Yuji seeing all this that Megumi is doing, and still trying to save him anyways. Yuji sees Megumi as himself at his lowest points, at his Shibuya Incident, and chooses to believe that Megumi can come back like he did, you are me. It gets messy trying to make it make sense with the whole soul punch thing tho. I think Yuji trying to talk to Sukuna in his domain is his way of trying to talk Megumi down and resolve it peacefully, but sees that he’s gonna have to beat him into submission. And him talking to Sukuna at the very end is him fully accepting his selfishness, this hatred that lives in him now, exemplified by how he now has Shrine, and he will have control over it. Even though Sukuna rejects him in the end, I think thematically Yuji still accepts that side of himself and lives with it now. Shown in Modulo when he makes the selfish decision to be alone fighting curses for eternity so he doesn’t have to watch his friends die.

Doing a huge binge watch/rewatch over and over and I noticed that in every episode, sometimes it’s the focus of the episode, or sometimes it’s just one line but every episode has some sort of emphasis put on the dynamics between family members.

Like here from the Night Family episode where they show Summer is the one who’s really in charge. It feels dumb to not notice at first but it’s obvious when she sighs and Rick gives in and lets everyone have a night person that she subtly controls him. Summer inherently understands how much Rick fears women emotionally and she uses that against him when she can. I can’t help but think back to season 3 when she was calling him her hero and stuff. The writers are really good at somehow keeping the status quo while having the characters actively grow and change.

Maybe it’s just because I went back and watched season 1 but you can see these changes in all the characters. My other favorite is Jerry because his position in the family is so interesting. In season 1 and 2 no one respects Jerry, he’ll protest against what Rick wants to do and Rick will just do it anyway. After the divorce and get back together arc, Rick still mostly does whatever he wants, but he has to get Jerry’s permission first. In the death crystal episode when they make Rick ask first before taking Morty on an adventure, or the Beth has sex with her clone episode where at the beginning Jerry tells Rick to put on clothes and Rick responds “Yes patriarch.” Rick was essentially fighting Jerry for the position of patriarch of the family and lost. When he got Jerry and Beth divorced the family still chose him anyways, and he didn’t even have to do much except stay in his shitty apartment and miss them. These dynamics of how the family treats each other are the most interesting part of the show to me and Jerry’s dynamics are my favorite to explore.

Honorable mention to the time when Rick made him float and he almost died but insisted on figuring it out himself. “I AM THE GOD OF CHRISTMAS!”

caveat that these aren’t the most interesting questions in the world but when someone is giving you zero to work with there’s not much you can do. I just want someone who’s willing to put effort into the conversation already

I just realized we’ve seen the adults of the family revisit Doctor Wong, but we have yet to see Morty or Summer, the ones who the therapy was for, go back. If anything they’re the ones that truly need to talk about all the crazy shit they’ve seen across the multiverse. I mean these kids actively and casually commit murder every week

Even if it’s just a throwaway joke/mention of “Abuelita Sanchez” I’d be satisfied but it’s weird that his last name is Sanchez and it’s just never been brought up. It’s not like it matters a whole bunch but it’s weird that we’re coming up on season 10 and we know nothing about Rick’s parents or other family. Not even a “Rick’s weird random cousin” episode that almost all sitcoms have? I guess you don’t have to if you can just pull a random weird Rick from another dimension lol

I like that this show is so freeform that they can literally create an entire planet for their thought experiment. It was “President of the Planet” that got me lol. What would be some more cool thought experiment episodes?

General discussion/question I guess

I found it interesting to hear Morty use such a Rick-like phrase for no reason. I know there are tons of examples of Morty adopting some of Rick’s traits but I feel like this whole episode is Morty being his own version of Rick. He just hops into this dimension, destroys these people’s lives, and then leaves. It’s not like that was his intent at first, but he clearly started to adopt a “whatever it takes” mindset as the episode went on. Maybe people have been talking about this since the episode came out, but I just noticed it. This is like a peek into what Morty might be like when he’s older and/or Rick is gone.

Everytime we learn something about Yuji personality wise, he always makes me think that he’s so much more like Sukuna than most people realize. The only difference is that Yuji likes people and Sukuna doesn’t, but they’re both crazy. They both kinda just do whatever they want because they both believe in strength as a regulating factor in the world. “You don’t win because you’re right, you’re right because you won.” They both operate on the “since I’m strong I get to do what I want” mindset, if I’m in the wrong then I’ll lose simple as that, and that’s very interesting to view from Yuji’s perspective. Especially since multiple times since starting the story he has to face the fact that in terms of jujutsu he’s the weakest one there. The Detention Center finger bearer and the Choso fight are pretty good examples. He loses and determines that he’s actually weak and has to get stronger, if anything Sukuna coming out during those moments can be seen as Yuji’s frustration with being weak taking over his body.

Just a fun fact, apparently Yuji didn’t have a cellphone until joining Jujutsu High, so even though he was a friendly guy he didn’t actually have that many friends. For someone who likes people, he seems disinterested in most of the people around him until the story starts.

“Hey Yuji, what girls in class do you like?” Yuji, not even looking up from his book: “Idk, none of them?”

I really liked how the ending really emphasized how similar they were by having Butcher tell UE “I was never gonna change.” They were both abused as children and both grew to enjoy violence and causing others harm, what are some other similarities you guys notice?

Unless this has been talked about to death already idk I don’t check Reddit every day

But yeah Ego losing his temper and inadvertently destroying Blue Lock isn’t foreshadowing at all. Red Key INCOMING

I can’t stop thinking about this scene where Nikki clearly screams “It’s not me!” over and over. No one thought that was a bit weird and too specific after everything that happened? Maybe I can forgive the people who don’t know her that well, but Ian and Ashley (edit: I meant Sarah, who the hell is Ashley??) didn’t catch on that maybe Bear is doing something to Nikki and not that she’s just “going through something?” She stabbed her face with a bottle and they all just watched, I feel like there are more people that neglected Nikki than just Bear.

And now that I think about it, a lot of people have pointed out how it’s weird that Sarah texted Bear after this. She tried to steal Bear away from Nikki instead of even thinking about helping her, no one was there for Nikki in this movie.

Bonding through punching, an age old tale really

1. Windbreaker - Sakura vs Togame

2. Jujutsu Kaisen - Gojo vs Sukuna

3. Dragon Ball Z - Goku vs Vegeta

Essentially I wanna make this shortcut sometimes just pick any random song in my library instead of by smallest skip count. In my head that would feel like a true shuffle to me