against my better judgment, here's a Plunderer sideblog. for more information, click here.
mostly edits and manga coloring. definitely lots of screaming about Pele and Lynn. beware falling spoilers.
👏 in this house, we appreciate Elizabeth Maxwell and Austin Tindle. 👏
Okay, this has actually annoyed me enough that I’m going to talk about it here: Plunderer has a death problem.
Spoilers for chapter 75 under the read more.
I want to emphasize beforehand that I am a big fan of hopeful narratives. I can’t do the grimdark canons where everything is terrible. Attack on Titan was never my jam, I can’t get into The Walking Dead, and Game of Thrones wasn’t my cuppa for those reasons.
(this is not a post to talk about those series, they are just examples and if you like them, that is very cool and more power to you! if you do not like them, hey it’s all good. anyway.)
Which isn’t to say that characters shouldn’t die ever. Narratively speaking, character death has a purpose. It makes an impact on your reader! Conversely, interesting things can come about narratively if that death is undone. However, if it’s undone one too many times, death begins to lose all meaning.
Death in Plunderer has lost all meaning to me.
Tokikaze’s death and resurrection packed a hell of a punch. Meeting him in the past and growing to love him, only to discover that 1) he’s Hina’s dad, 2) Licht killed him, and 3) his death is haunting Licht was a huge gut punch. Licht resolving his feelings after that was a big turning point in the series, when he takes off his mask and resolves to be with Hina. That’s why it’s particularly shocking when Tokikaze comes in from out of nowhere as the “King of the Abyss” and positions himself against Licht. The story is propelled forward and the characters have more room to grow.
Furthermore, it doesn’t seem like -- to be frank -- an asspull for a Baron to have survived something like that. We’re told from the start that they’re durable as hell and we see it firsthand with Licht and Sonohara in the first 40 chapters. It’s not a stretch to imagine that Tokikaze would have survived and lived in this harsh environment and spent nearly 300 years away from Licht and the others, especially since his driving force was living on for his classmates who were long gone.
Needless to say, I was on board with this development. Narratively speaking, it was set up well! All the pieces were laid out on the board, and one could question whether or not Tokikaze was really did since the people who’d told us he was weren’t exactly the most reliable narrators.
I do also want to briefly note Pelmo, although the narrative straight up tells us with her “they will meet again.” Following through on that and using Pelmo to help the reader learn about the Abyss was honestly pretty damn good.
I don’t consider her to be cheating death because we’re told from the get-go to question it.
But then, there were Lightning and Xialou, the other two Grand Generals along with Robert du Vanvich. We didn’t really get to know them before Robert ran them through; their importance came about later in flashbacks of Robert’s as he fought with Jail.
And honestly, I loved this. I loved how Minazuki fleshed them out as characters and the complexity of it all. Robert became vastly more interesting when he was no longer just a cardboard cutout villain but rather, someone who struggled with an inferiority complex, someone who couldn’t just say what he wanted, someone who let all of that envy drive him up the wall. And even though he loved Lightning and Xialou and they were both incredibly important to him, he betrayed them for what he felt was the bigger picture. And then, in the end, Robert is left with regret and despair.
It’s Jail’s conviction that pulls him out of it. And, I mean, Plunderer is a series about characters who do awful things and then find a way to move past it and better themselves. Licht commited mass murder in the past to prevent other people from killing. Douan is literally a child murderer and the biggest asshole to ever live. The very nature of Pele’s work is to stab people in the back. On a smaller (?) scale, Jail was absurdly rigid and blinded by duty, refusing to bend in any fashion before eventually determining what his conviction meant to him. Robert is no different. He reminisces on his past with Xialou and Lightning, before everything went to shit with him, as he decides to move forward with Jail and Nana.
And then oopsie guess what Xialou and Lightning aren’t dead and come in at the last minute to save him.
I kind of hate it exactly for the above reasons. They’re good characters and would it have been nice to see more of them? Yes. Was it entirely necessary? Not really. And it cheapens Robert’s development -- he didn’t really kill them, it’s fine! He’s not really as bad as the rest of Gefangnis! It’s fine! But it just. I can’t express my disappointment enough. And I think part of it is that the narrative led us to believe that they were dead, eliciting these feelings from the reader with the flashbacks, only to yank the rug out from under us. There wasn’t any mention (if I remember correctly, and someone please correct me if I’m wrong!) of Robert dumping them in the Abyss. Even an exchange like, “hey what happened to those bodies?” “oh I took care of that, it’s fine” and a slightly shady look would have helped.
but we are very clearly told “no they dead.” Granted, it’s by Robert and it could be an attempt at obfuscating the truth, but come on.
come on.
It just feels cheap.
And then there’s Class A. Leaving Class A behind is one of Licht’s biggest regrets and something that drives him forward. The death of Class A is a traumatic event for Tokikaze that isolated him and spurred his negative character development. It sucked that they died! We got to know them in the flashback arc! A couple of them even had some amount of character! But the most important thing was that we understood just how important they were to the characters that we, the reader, love. We can see how Tokikaze grew cold after their sacrifice, how leaving them behind would mess Licht up.
and then oops all barons.
Basically, in chapter 75, Hina has Nana send her back in time and she gives the Baron vials that she snatched from her mom’s old lab to Class A just before they go off to kill themselves. After she comes back, Class A shows up alive and well because they didn’t have to eat which means they didn’t have to die because they weren’t taking up resources. But, because they didn’t want to mess with the timeline, they still let everything play out as it would have.
so. remember this?
remember that?
jk they’re all alive also they’re barons they’ve been alive for 300 years.
Again, yeah, rereading I can see how in theory, you could see the misdirect. In theory. But at this point, it’s adding up quite a bit. The worst part is, this moment could have been really cool if we hadn’t already had some inexplicable resurrections. Instead, it not only cheapens everything surrounding the Class A lore, but death in this series has pretty much lost all meaning.
anyway I’m fully expecting someone to walk in with Charles like “what, she’s fine, what corpse, we put a bandage on her booboo and it’s all good.”
"Against my better judgement" is how I feel with Plunderer too 😔 It's so cheesey and trope heavy but by god do I love (almost) all the characters
oops I didn't see this until now.
that's it, that's the series. I love it and I hate it, it can be so pretty and beautifully written and then Licht turns around and plants his face in some titties and I sigh deeply.
romaincrisis
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