#benlongtext

[heartvisor]

there's also a vague train of thought i've had about the season about like, the themes of eating and cooking and philosophies re: food and relationships and humanity. like... as it relates to potential desires to monopolize or to nourish, as it passed along through relationships in the body as well as in one's habits, about things that are untouchable but that are still hungered for, etc

there's a general atmosphere about the boundaries of desires and how blurry and muddled that gets at times 💭 the way those sort of things can consume the beholder as well ("it is a kind of bondage, don't you think"--both the model and the artist being held by the act)

[heartvisor]

(some kuuga thoughts, series spoilers)

it's a smaller thing compared to other running themes in the season, but i really like the curiosity to some of the interactions between ichijou and rose lady.

she seems to recognize something when she sees him sometimes. i think a lot to when ichijou first sees her interact with gouma with her reaction to being told that he fought kuuga (she holds his face for a bit, with the intent of reaching past gouma to touch kuuga, to wonder at daguva). it feels very strange and unpredictable when you first see it, but with the whole of the context, it's a shockingly fond gesture.

they are both witness and herald to their respective partners. in the scene where they watch each other alone through that curtain of sparks, she feels almost to know him (like her).

[heartvisor]

that geed is a season themed around "genetics" and that it so thoroughly and insistently expresses the importance of "finding what is important" (though riku begins by feeling lost because he does not know his own origins, that when he eventually does, he is able to reject it precisely because of his forged connections and cultivated feelings) is very nice!

it's a very simple and an obvious sort of message, but i appreciate that it imparts it so wholeheartedly all the same.

the sort of textural sense to its expression is interesting. things feel a little more "bodily" here: that riku was biologically cultivated (described originally "a lump of flesh"), that the little stars are incubated within living beings, that fukuide converts capsules via a process of one of his own organs, etc.

it is sharply purposeful that a kind of functional view towards the individuals involved becomes precisely the antagonist's downfall, but that recognition of the physical in the first place helps communicate it especially well. in my opinion, it gives a tiny bit of visceral grounding and urgency--the sort of curious strangeness at being reminded that we are all also meat, after all.

[heartvisor]

blade and the themes of trepidation and fear regarding the body make the instances of happiness and triumph with the characters' made and loved selves feel so especially impactful

those first episodes really are pretty disorienting to watch, but the heavy anxiety in that early arc is revisited by some of the most important narrative beats in ways that are very interesting to me (the appearance of joker and the subsequent debut of wild card, as well as king form and that final transformation)...

[heartvisor]

as most people probably feel, i really liked the way they talked about shion being an alien in timeran. particularly as someone who is an immigrant, i thought it was nice to imagine that kinda "borderless" attitude being adopted on a societal level.

though simultaneously, i like that that sort of thing still did not prevent him from feeling personally alien at times. he is still--to himself, to others, in various other tangible and meaningful ways--an alien. for many reasons, he is also detached from a firm identity and condition of an origin. foreign from both the place he has come to be as well as the place he has come from--it made his loneliness and persistent desire for compassion feel particularly keen and meaningful as a part of his character.

[heartvisor]

i'm always struck by how simultaneously small and heavy it feels when these characters finally put words to their desires. they're ultimately such simple things (i want to be with you, i want you to be okay, i don't want you to fight anymore, you're precious to me,) that it becomes all the more horrible that the circumstances seemingly cannot allow them.

additionally, that final "chotto," from kido; since it is never completed, you can never be entirely sure of what he meant to say, but it calls to mind the moment ren meets eri after she wakes up ("chotto, kao ga yasashiku natta kana").

he's been so scared of these attachments this whole time and now, it all comes down on him. the silence that follows, you really do feel that there are no more words to be spoken.

[heartvisor]

hajime initially being vocally averse to people touching him (understandably so, he is very much in a difficult position re: his self and his body) but then later, those quiet moments where he approaches kenzaki to quietly reach out

seeing him initiate that attempted contact (the atmosphere of those gestures are so rare and sweet, even in the context of much of the rest of the franchise, it is quite stand-out) really expresses how much he comes to understand and value the kindness he has been shown. that he seeks to reciprocate, to return love, feels so special.

[heartvisor]

the character choice to have ryuji be "older" than masato is so...

like, the grief towards those realizations of "now i will be older than that person--who i looked up to, who was a guardian to me--ever will get to be." but to be faced with that with a seemingly live person, someone so close and so far still. the uncanniness suits how (in various ways) off-kilter these characters have found their lives.