[DreadBringer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreamSword

To quote my friend after the movie and the grand total of 3 episodes that we watched tonight:

"Switchblade was right. I actually do regret this."

Just... man, way to botch immediately. Kiriya is definitely one thing(his backstory might've worked on Die, but me it made me hate him even more), but Asumu, alongside every other character, is totally flanderized. Add to that the fact that show essentially gives up on any sort of realistic pretense and basically becomes a cartoon, ontop of Armed Hibiki being the worst Final Form(for me anyway), and you have a recipe for a terrible time.

Thanks, Toei.

It's Inoue writing the 2nd half of Hibiki (and also iirc there's change on the production thing). Like what we discussed before as you said Hibiki doesn't need prototypical melodrama, that's the thing that existed in 2nd half (but the worst implementation of this was done by Yonemura). And true the characters got flanderized, there's Hinaka being fucking emotionally manipulative (with Todoroki reduced from merely airheaded into non-functional). Kiriya wasn't the only toxic character added, there's also Kogure who is self-centered, hypocritical, and self-righteous, far cry from how the Takeshi is supposed to act as a role model apart from fighter too (what Asumu learns from Hibiki even if it's not fighting), yet he got mostly character shilling from the cast... I watched the 2nd half with 2x speed btw, probably you should do the same if you'd not want to waste more time.

For it "turning into a cartoon", I'm relieved that you treat 1st half of Hibiki as having 'realistic pretense', as for the drama stuff above, some can think it's "unrealistic" if people would get along like in 1st half of Hibiki, the mindset where "realistic" (it'd be edgy instead) means people should be at each other's throats and produce conflcits because 'people are inherently assholes'. The more neutral change of the 2nd half was transporting the fights of the characters from forest to more urban area though.