Comun

Koubou Issen, localized as Onefold Path of Light, is an idiom I can't find the etymology for. Its literal calque is "flashing ray of light" and its practical meaning is to change suddenly. The English idiom "In a flash" functions exactly the same way and with the same imagery.

Niga Byakutou, localized as Tread the Twofold Realm, is a quote from Sanshanyi: Simplified Explanation of the Amitayurdhyana Sutra. Its literal calque is "the white path has two rivers" and it refers to the path to reincarnating in paradise. The "two rivers" part refers to a river of fire symbolizing rage and a river of water symbolizing greed. The white path to Nirvana is surrounded by these two. Its description says that if you stay firm in this part while outrunning your pursuers, you'll reach Amitabha's Pure Land, teaching the lesson that even the one most plagued by world desires can cross to enlightenment if they devote themselves to their inner Buddha.

Vouch of legitimacy here (listed as Fadi Ayyad).

They're both pretty mid. Nikitich's is leagues better than Taigong's neither feel like they explore their characters in new or interesting ways.

Taigong's spends 100% of its time on a mission to defeat a powerful monster with a party of Fergus and Tomoe. It exists just to show Taigong being competent and says nothing new about the character. I blame the powerscalers for making Sakurai feel she needed to write something like this.

Nikitich's spends 20% of its time on a mission to defeat a powerful monster with a party of Setanta and Locusta. Automatically better because at least the Lilim Harlot duo has their usual fun bickering. For the other 80%, well, I just say Sakurai definitely watched Dungeon Meshi this season. Once the mission is complete, Nikitich asks not to fix the Singularity yet because she wants to make a dragon stew for Dobrynya's and Anastasia's twin daughters at Chaldea. They spend the bulk of the interlude hunting dragons and at the end, there's a big stew feast with Sakurai's darlings (Mash, the Tunguska cast, the Heian cast, the Lilim Harlot cast, and Mordred's usual friend group). In the feast, Nikitich acknowledges how she gave Fujimaru a dagger for Valentine's because that was the important thing to say, but now that the message was delivered, she can do something nicer like this to make Fujimaru feel loved.

Honorable mention) Onigashima

I already praised Ushi Gozen's characterization enough in the posts about her, but this one lose points because Ushi gets less good in her future appearances.

Honorable mention) Cjeste Pyramid Himeji Castle

Liz Love is a powerful and important universal constant but unfortunately, only one Eliza event was actually good.

Honorable mention) Nightingale's Christmas

Nightingale bias, she's still in the Servant top 3 after all this time. My hot take here is that despite Last Encore, this was actually Nursery Rhyme's best showing.

Honorable mention) Karna's Christmas

Vritra is fun in every scene she's in and you know I also love the rest of the India cast.

Honorable mention) Little Big Tengu

Consistently great humor, Kiichi has a solid personality, and I have way too many feelings about Taira no Kagekiyo.

Honorable mention) Ptolemy's Grail Front

Love the Investiture cast finally together, love Theseus, love Ephemeros. Simultaneously wins and loses a lot of points for Ephemeros's arc being just discount Goetia.

5) Arctic Summerworld

Characters I like were picked for the side cast (Erice, Asclepius, and Zetian). Characters I like were picked for the central cast (Skadi and Douman) and handled pretty well. Ibuki was a significant antagonist downgrade over Skadi, but she's decent overall.

4) Aeaea's Spring Breeze

Circe is our friend. I'm saying this on behalf of everyone in the world. Less universally, Jason and Arjuna are also my friend. This event also debuted the Greek flashback artstyle and that was really groundbreaking at the time.

3) Murder at the Kogetsukan

Somehow a solid orthodox murder mystery in my mobile game.

2) Gudaguda Ryouma's Close Call

There's a lot I don't care about in this event, but the wedding carries it so hard. And there is still a lot outside of it that I do care, like Okuni's past and personality, and Izou's big moment.

1) Chaldea Thriller Night

Two story updates a day was intense, but luckily the event came out when I had the time to experience it right. The mystery was handled with a lot of care and Xu Fu's characterization with triple as much.

For the already finished, I think I'll go with Steins;Gate and Ace Attorney Edgeworth Investigations 2. From the backlog, probably Umineko and Grisaia.

Yes for both. But this question is about a really broad medium. You gotta mention specific titles for a real answer.

I really rewatch, so I judge things mostly according to what my mindset was back when I experienced them. The closest I have to a proper answer here is how Katekyo Hitman Reborn and Fairy Tail were my least favorite manga around high school and years later I had a sudden "Oh, I understand this part now" realization about a few things a decade later.

Reborn's example is, unsurprisingly, about the final chapter. It made the extremely controversial decision of ending on Reborn musing about how Tsuna learned nothing and is still the same person he was in chapter 1, except with friends now. Everyone hated that because the overarching narrative provided plenty of evidence to the contrary and because if the statement was true, the manga would be calling itself a waste of the reader's time. That was a sentiment I shared immensely.

My random epiphany on this one was that the "Tsuna learned nothing" quote comes from the perspective of Reborn, the character who wanted to teach him to be a mob boss and a killer, so it's celebrating that Tsuna remained a good boy through and through. It's thematically consistent despite the poor communication. In hindsight, Reborn couldn't have ended any other way.

And Fairy Tail's case came from looking back at the series through the lens of its core theme of mourning. Zeref was the one character I always considered good despite the rest of the series, and his deal was ultimately that he got cursed because he failed to cope with his brother's death and the curse causes him to autokill everything around him until he learns to get over it. Throughout his long life, Zeref created many tools that were exploited by half of the villains that came before him, and looking in hindsight, all of those were tools meant to cheat and control death.

And these ideas delivered in one of the main villains are obviously reflected in the main characters as well. Gray kills and mourns his dad 3 times in addition to carrying the guilt of indirectly killing Ur because he had mourned his dad properly the first time. There's a timeskip that sorta only exists kill off Lucy's dad and make her deal with that. And most importantly to make FT feel thematically consistent, Natsu's initial goal to find his dragon dad is ultimately revealed to be a quest to finally accept he died.

Grief is a constant theme in the series, but its importance only becomes evident in the final arc. Which is not something I can complain about because the only reason I stuck with Fairy Tail until the end is because I liked Rave that much to trust it to have at least a great ending, and Rave is another manga whose main theme is prevalent but only gets super evident with the final arc. Maybe the great difference in enjoyment came down to simply reading Rave as a finished story and reading Fairy Tail as an ongoing story. Who knows?

Does that mean I like those two now? No. I never reread them, so my first experience is still what counts. But at least now I believe I have a more fair and good-faith perspective of their flaws. And maybe an interest in checking Eden's Zero after it finishes (I'm not checking if it already finished because I think this post is funnier if it already finished 3 years ago and I don't know about it).

No, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl is a figure that appears and pulls the protagonist out of their pre-existing problems, while all of Dantès's moments of significant extended presence are him pulling the protagonist out of problems that he caused in the first place. He is the same kind of fake as BB.

A Domain for what? Sukuna's kitchen or blood manipulation? For Sukuna's kitchen, he can share Sukuna's Enma seal. Enma is a judge of death and Itadori's arc has always been about observing deaths and determining what makes a death acceptable.

Blood manipulation is technically about making good out of the damage Kenjaku brought to his life, so it could be a gassho since Kenjaku's is an inverted gassho. But Itadori never talked at all about Kenjaku's presence in his life, so blood manipulation ends up being more about his relationship with Chousou. But family safety is a thing you can pray to pretty much any god, so I can't narrow this one down. No major deities are defined by their sibling relationships the way, say, Artemis and Apollo are in Greece.

I haven't played Gen 9 yet but I assume it's good because commentary on it is generally positive and because of the still consistent trend of odd-numbered generations being good and even-numbered generations being bad. I did check the Pokédex when the game came out and a lot of the new mons looked very appealing.

AZ is curious on all of its choices. Kalos has this big war background, so if the team chose not to cover that for the region's Legends game, it must be because they're really confident that the idea they have for it is better. I, personally, can't imagine what the gameplay loop will be like in a game centered around urban expansion. But Zygarde was really nice in Sun & Moon so I'm glad to see more things being done with him.

For the sudden Hakuno question, I think you mean their Pokémon party based on the context, but I don't remember doing Pokémon parties for Servants.

Anyway, Hakuno conveniently has 6 main Servants, so it's possible to make a party themed after them.

For an alternative more directly themed at Hakuno rather than their partners, you can have