#ck critical

[jacksonseymour13]

Grief is important

I wish the writers ACTUALLY touched on the grief for Yoon,Axel, Tory and Johnny a bit more. We don't get a chance to see 3 characters cope over their losses AT ALL. No touches on Survivor's Guilt and sense of loss for these characters in Season 6.

We don't get a proper dive into what makes Axel's psyche tick or how his mental state has handled indirectly killing Kwon. Just 1 throw away line that indicates Silver has been aggressively pushing Axel to the breaking point for almost 2 decades(I assume Axel is in his early to mid 20s)

Yoon was Kwon's rival turned vitriolic acquaintance. We see a glimpse of how badly his death has affected him, besides we all know they weren't best friends or anything extremely close but the emotions were still there. Here's a guy he has kicked down for however many years. He probably feels guilt for being a factor to Kwon's rage and wouldn't want anybody to suffer such a sad fate. He's put on a bus by the writers and never seen again after 6x11 for reasons. Off topic but I really wish we got a fair rematch with Hawk and concluded their mini rivalry in a fair match. No Cobra Kai invasion and side plot with the students from both dojos having one last brawl. Nothing!

Anyway back to the grief complaint. Tory lost her mom and had a strange father/uncle-figure like relationship with Kreese. We get a great scene that encapsulates Peyton List's performance as a great actress but her arc to overcome her trauma and loss(that still feels random and for plot-sake) is kinda glossed over and distracted by her relationship with Robby. We skip over her grief and only have that 1 scene and maybe a few crumbs of Tory's loss affecting her performances in the Sekai Taikai. There's no closure or her expressing how much she misses her mom. Wtf happened to her brother? Where was his reaction? Just felt weird too with how the writers "kill off" Kreese but have no in-universe reaction to it. Nothing. I'm sure Tory would be sad if she found out later but that's AFTER the show. We don't get to see her reaction, all we're left to do is guess and assume which sucks. It wasn't hard to fill in extra 10 minutes to have that possibility of her finding out.

Now to close it with this fandom's favorite karate badass. Johnny Lawrence. Oh boy where do I start with my frustration with his trauma and grief that we were robbed of tapping into. Talk about endlessly teasing your fans just to pull that back. The set up was perfect and it all ended turning out to be nothing. We get a closure to Johnny and Kreese's arc that should have came off executed better but it just fell flat. There was two directions to go about this. Keep Kreese alive and be that final motivation instead of Daniel. Like a passing of torch moment so he has enough confidence(plot armor) to defeat Silver OR fully commit to killing his character off and have that be the catalyst to Johnny's mental nerf not this "I'm afraid of him" bullshit. That was so fucking stupid. Johnny was never afraid of Wolf and showed that when he boxed with him in the Sekai Taikai. Using his grief over Kreese's death was right there. Have him be in the lockeroom, a tv is playing then the news is dropped and he finds out that way right before the fight. He's spiraling over this and is just coming off of getting closure from Kreese and saying goodbye. Now your sensei is dead and what do you do? That's what should have thrown Johnny off. He can't focus and handle another big loss in his life despite all the shit he put him through. At the end of the day he never stopped caring. With all the back and forth on again/off again complex love Kreese had for Johnny. It would only be fair to confirm it was mutual since Johnny saved Kreese from Silver. Tying in the knot that he remembers Kreese to gain enough courage to defeat Silver. Everyone else would find out Kreese is dead from Johnny after one of the breaks from the fight but yeah

Safe to say I was disappointed with how the writers just brushed all this death off and treated them as meaningless plot devices with minimal impact or straight up none. Somebody please explain to me what the purpose of killing off Terry Silver? Tory's mom was a vehicle to push Tory back into a dark place. Kwon was a wake up call for Kreese to go on this forced redemption path. Kreese I guess needed to die to close his chapter and be redeemed in the fans eyes even though the characters themselves that he tormented aren't present or gain knowledge of it but Silver? I'm still scratching my damn head.

Shit how could I forget Kenny and Silver's wife back in Season 4. We don't get to see what their reactions are and how they handle his death. This is honestly why they should've done the death sooner so there's time to gauge how everyone feels. Maybe use one of the episodes where we see different reactions and the complex feelings involved some drama where one side is happy and the other is sad. I don't know, it just sucks.

[kathrahender]

Cobra Kai Ships Analysis

This might me controversial but-

Ali, Kumiko, Jessica >>>> Carmen, Amanda, Mike's wife.

I mean like I ship Lawrusso but if they wanted THAT much to make Daniel and Johnny straight in Cobra Kai, Kumiko and Ali are RIGHT THERE. Sorry for everyone who ship Damanda or Jarmen, but I never saw the chemistry, I don't see the chemistry, and I never will. Like everytime there were romantic scenes between them I was thinking the whole time "Can we get onto more important things? Like karate? Pleaseee?" because I couldn't stand them. (Still can't)

First, I'm going to analyze (a little) Jarmen. We all know how was Johnny in Karate Kid, but we also know how he "changed" in Cobra Kai (yeah, sometimes there was null character development but at the end his rivalry with Daniel ended so I consider that character growth). And I'm pretty sure that it wasn't Carmen who changed him. It was Miguel, it was Robby, it was Daniel. Honestly, if Carmen didn't have a romance with him, do you think he wouldn't have changed??? The show was mostly about his relationship with Daniel and what happened since he lost the tournament. You can get Carmen out of the picture and it wouldn't have changed many things about the show. But with Ali in the picture? Oh, she would have make him want to be a better person (because Ali wouldn't date a "bad" version of him, she would only date him again if he proved he was worthy of dating her again). Besides, Ali (unlike Carmen) has a strong personality, she would have challenged him, he couldn't have been a passive love interest, and she would have confronted him about being a bad father to Robby (making him ALSO start to be a good father to his son). And apart from everything I've said, Ali knew Johnny since he was a teenager, so she knows him better than Carmen, and although their relationship didn't work in 1984, it could have bloom thirty years later with a little effort from both sides (mostly Johnny).

Now onto Darmanda. Unlike Danali, Damiko or Jarmen, we didn't see how Daniel and Amanda changed from being friends to become a couple (and later a marriage) and that, since the beginning, made me feel like something was missing. We saw how Daniel fell in love with Ali and how Daniel fell in love with Kumiko, but we didn't get to see that with Daniel and Amanda, making the ship lack the development that could have sold the ship to some of us. About their personalities: Unlike Carmen, Amanda had a strong personality (like Ali) which maybe could have made Damanda work in one of the movies of Karate Kid. But in Cobra Kai, Daniel didn't need someone challenging, someone defiant like Amanda. He didn't need someone confronting him about his rivalry with Johnny, Kreese or Terry, someone telling him that he was overreacting, or someone who didn't understand (or didn't try to understand) the trauma those rivalries caused to him. Daniel needed someone who didn't pressure him any further, who understood him and comforted him instead of saying that he needed to "let go of their karate rivalries". And Kumiko is a perfect love interest for him because of that. We all know how healthy was Damiko's dynamic in Karate Kid II, and Daniel needed that healthiness in Cobra Kai (at the beginning he could have dated Amanda, but later he could have divorced her and date Kumiko instead).

And thirdly, Mike and his wife. We don't know so many things about her wife, not even her appearance, and although I don't dislike this ship (unlike Jarmen or Damanda) because we didn't even see how their dynamic was, I still think there's a better option of a love interest for Mike than her. Since Mike changed after what happened in 1985 and became a better person, he could have started a relationship with Jessica Andrews. Their relationship in 1985 was a little bad because of what Mike did, but if Jessica saw Mike's change, she could have given him another chance. They could have started as friends who tried to find a common ground, and later they could have become a couple. Besides, if Mike dated Jessica, she could have stopped him from confronting Daniel when Terry burned Mike's furniture store (he could still have the furniture store, but maybe for different reasons than in the canon).

In conclusion: I think Daniel and Johnny's canon pairings in Cobra Kai were terrible and Damiko and Jali are better options.

[macchiatosdumptruck]

I'll actually never forgive CK for making a traumatized and neglected teen be the one to apologize to their absent parent for being difficult or whatever

[macchiatosdumptruck]

it's intriguing to me how people view the Fandom with the differences of the show being your first entry to the Fandom vs the movies. For me personally the movies were mine. The first karate kid movie was mine. My family rented the movie from Blockbusters and I loved it! Especially considering I was a lonely kid who was being bullied like Daniel, more so because I was a girl with autism and had a single mom(with taste for asshole boyfriends). So I related to both Daniel and Allie when dealing with an asshole guy like Johnny Lawrence. And when the movies would come on ABC family, I'd binge the series all the time. I loved it. So guess I'm kinda bias . It's funny/ironic when I first heard about Cobra kai, I was like who would want to watch a show about the asshole bully from first karate kid movie? The show has its good points and potential. But over all I guess I know why I'm so critical to Ck. The first karate kid movie is always in my head you know.

Yeah, it's interesting, because my first interaction was with the fandom, tbh. Then the show, then the movies.

Depending on how you are introduced to it really affects any sort of bias. It's not a surprise to me that many Daniel critical fans are fans of only the show, which has a bad habit of minimizing Johnny's actions from the first movie in an attempt to humanize him, and exaggerating Daniel's negative traits in an attempt to make things more morally grey.

Which, Ive said before they didn't need to do. A character doesn't need to have done only good things to be interesting or worth following. To have sympathy for. But it's something I see a lot of lately. With the way people consume media now I see less and less nuanced takes, or well meaning intellectual discussions, it's all about who's better, depending on whose favorite character is better.

It's as if certain writers don't trust audiences to be able to make their own decisions and opinions on the characters. Like people need to be told, "this person is good" or "this person is bad."

And the quickest way of doing that is to place them opposite someone and compare. Which is why it seems they tried to make Daniel a bit less likeable in the first season.

That's how we get takes like "Daniel is secretly rascist and a class traitor" where he does anything objectionable because someone has to be wrong for the other to be right.

For Johnny to be likable Daniel had to be unlikable, which is just blatantly untrue. But it's that sort of thinking that has led to reframing the original conflict. Reframing it as a rivalry.

Bullying is wrong. That's not a hot take.

A character can do something wrong and still be complex. We don't need to erase the wrongdoing.

What Johnny did was wrong. That doesn't mean that he as a character is bad, or that he can't learn or move on. There is a really quick moment towards the end where he seems to really respect Daniel, "you're alright LaRusso" and realize that he had been acting inappropriately that they have seemingly cut from canon? That is crazy because that is the entire basis for the show for me.

Knowing nothing of the movies and only interacting with fandom made me shocked when I watched the first movie due to truly how brutal it was. Because instead of "here's the pov of the antagonist" I was led to believe that "he actually wasn't the antagonist at all " and that's blatantly incorrect when you look at the movie.

And, yes, a large part of why he acted the way he did was because he was under the influence of Kreese, who has now become the ultimate antagonist for the series, but that doesn't mean he wasn't hurtful in his own right.

Many fans have spoken about how seasons one and two were their favorite for his character because I feel like those were the seasons that showed him as an actual person. They allowed him to admit when he fucked up. He still fucked up, tbh. But then they also allowed him to learn from that. In his own, slow, stubborn way. It made him feel like an actual person worth getting to know. It made viewers excited to see him take steps towards accountability.

And then the show got more popular, especially with certain types of fans, (known in online spaces as cobros) and that stopped. ( But also with some fans who seemed less interested in the characters as themselves and more for the possible shipping potential. Who, yes, I have noticed, are usually younger.)

It shifted to "he actually never did anything wrong to begin with."

Which then shifted to "if you acknowledge his wrongdoings you don't actually like the character and you're a bad fan."

And I understand because it's easy to get defensive when someone is being critical of a character you love.

The show was never meant to undo the movies. They are a series. You can choose to interact with only one of them, but as it stands they should be seen side by side. And originally, the trilogy had been meant to be the only source of canon. Hell, originally, before they knew what a hit it would be, only the first movie was meant to be canon.

Anyways, it's all led to some pretty childish infighting that has pitting fans of characters against one another.

[macchiatosdumptruck]

Love to hear your opinion, but as a daniel larusso fan I over all hate the family cobra kai wrote for Daniel. Hate it. They're just spoiled brats and annoying to me. I cried when I heard about the karate thing with Daniel and no one understanding or even knowing about his trauma and past. Personally for me if Daniel has to have a wife it should have been Kumiko. If he has to have one. She's the female character. Like I was so pissed of when Amanda knew nothing about. Like really that's how the writers are going to do Daniel? Not even going to have his family know why hes reacting like this and just make him seem crazy to even! I feel like I could come to terms with Daniel's job and life style(because really car salesmen through me for a loop honestly), if it wasn't used to purposely make Johnny look better. I wish the writers could have given Daniel his happy ending before Johnny could have came into his life again to mess everything up. Sorry if your an Amanda fan. It's just my opinion.

I love Amanda, tbh. I love that she's just as unhinged and bitchy, (but also kind) as Daniel is. I think they really even each other out and work well together.

(a bit from the end that I'm posting here as well)

I respect your opinion,and I understand being critical of media, but I will politely request no character or ship bashing, and to keep it as an intellectual discussion.

But I did watch the show first before watching the original trilogy so I may have a bit of a bias.

I think Ali and Daniel were really cute, and had that sort of puppy love.

Kumiko was Daniel's first true love I think. And Ralph has said that he always thought that Daniel and Kumiko were going to get together. I would love to see what that universe looks like. What their day to day domestic schedule is like.

I tend to headcanon Daniel as being more of a house husband. He stays home and takes care of the house and the pets, (I go back and forth on whether or not they would've had kids. Maybe after Kumiko's dance career slowed down. )

But I love Amanda. I love damanda too, as a ship.

I wasn't a big fan of Anthony at first but his character grew on me. And Sam just gets an insane amount of hate that I don't have time for and will not listen to.

I also thought it was confusing to me as to why Amanda didn't take Daniel seriously about his Terry trauma, or why he wouldn't tell her of him earlier. But I don't think that's on herx I think that's some unfortunately bad writing. It just doesn't make sense to me because I feel like as a woman, she would understand that feeling of having her worries brushed aside, of being told she was imagining things or overreacting.

I do though, think that when we view it through a male lens, if Daniel tried to explain this to other men, it makes sense he would get that treatment, and then convince him that it wasn't worth it to tell people his truth. (And we see, sadly, that he is proven right)

So I can see how it would be that he may not have told Amanda, but I still think they really fumbled her writing for that bit.

I never used to understand why they made Daniel a car salesman, other than he must have been doing it as a way to stay close with Miyagi. I think that's why it's so popular to headcanon Daniel as starting out as a mechanic because it makes much more sense to me that he would enjoy working with his hands.

I respect your opinion,and I understand being critical of media, but I will politely request no character or ship bashing, and to keep it as an intellectual discussion.

Then again, he does like to talk. So I can see how he would've gotten into the business, but I doubt it was his intention going in. I can also see him being a teacher. It's clearly very fulfilling for him.