… I am conflicted on my feelings on the recent tpot episode… a common critique is that there are wayyy too many plot lines in which I totally agree, I don’t know how they’re gonna wrap everything up cleanly in just 3 episodes considering what our first of the batcg is like… and I assume there’s gonna be more considering how many were sidelined or exempt from the episode you can always tell they’re struggling with how fast paced it is it was bouncing for group to group and I had a hard time paying attention at times and while there’s technically a lot of stuff happening it still feels like nones doing anything like really most groups would function pretty much the same if you removed or replaced some party members which is really unfortunate cause one think I love about bfdi is how fun and unique the characters are and how they play off of eachother but that was largely sacrificed in favor of action and plot moments
another popular criticism I agree with is how it’s really annoying that one was nerfed so hard all the fanon ( ane even the canon ) explanations don’t really add up or excuse it for me like yes she “ didn’t want a repeat of three” but the number can EXPLODE PLANETS AT WILL??? I’m sure she could teleport to X or temporarily immobilize him without truly hurting him and definitely not killing him??? This is why it’s really dangerous adding super mega powerful characters or devices in your story that are frequent / easy to access and have little to no drawbacks or consequences because you can get yourself in a writing trap where you have to make it fair for the other characters but at the same time it realistically wouldn’t make sense for this all powerful being to just be thrown around. This is especially dire in a case like bfdi where it’s meant to be a really serious moment so you can’t even excuse their lack of abilities in favor of comedy. As someone who has to deal with super powerful ( and one particularly all powerful one ) in the object show I’m working on I know how hard it is to deal with this especially with how one has been hyped up to be some super mysterious and threatening antagonist it’s disappointing she’s this easy to deal with… and yes while she truly is a pathetic person deep down, I really don’t think that’s what JNJ were aiming to show when they had her failing all this episode
the episode also had weird tone issues aswell, while I think it generally kept a sorta desolate theme throughout, there where scenes where it felt overly silly and cartoony which gave me pretty bad whiplash when I snapped back to the serious stuff, a particular scene was the 15 death scene, because this should be treated way more seriously than it was, fifteen literally died and the algebraliens in universe are already sensitive to death and don’t know if they’ll be revived but it’s turned into a comedic moment, while yes one of the zeros seems see the weight of the situation saying something along the lines of “ well there goes our entire purpose “ it’s still framed comedically and honestly confused me, this in turn affected scenes that were supposed to be serious as the whole time one was chasing x, two, liy and whoever I was just dumbfounded by how easily they were hurting and avoiding her, even that last moment with liy just made me cringe this isn’t a new issue with tpot but it’s still disappointing as I can tell this is meant to feel really hyped and climatic but it just lands flat or confusingly
a surprising hi-light of this episode was three! While a lot of people criticized her for being edgy and cringe, and while she definitely was edgy and kinda cringe I actually thought her characterization was really interesting! To see her go from a cherry, friendly, extrovert who seemed like a semi-leader to the algebraliens to me turn into someone so irritable, isolated, hot tempered, and traumatized because of the actions of a single selfish person is really cool to me, she’s constantly glitching ( anyone else think she kinda sounded like ragatha in the TADC pilot 👀👀👀👀 ) and presumably in a lot of pain all because of one, it’s also interesting how disoriented she seems like she jumps so quick to conclusions and honestly acts like one with her violent outbursts, I especially loved her little confused “ huh did I get them “ moment after she shor her huge blast thingy at 6 and the crew cause she really seemed out of it, they’re definitely not themself right now. I think it’ll be really interesting when her and one interact again cause oh boy will it get heated. Ones main motivation seems pretty selfless and reasonable in a vacuum, she wants to fix three after she basically permanently(?) disabled her but with the added story and character context aswell as her other motivations makes it truly a selfish motivation. While I don’t think she hates three or wants her to suffer, I doubt she actually wants to just fix three, in reality I think she wants to erase everything that happened in their short-lived relationship; she thinks if she fixes three they’ll instantly forgive her and forget about what happened and be her friend again, maybe not exactly that but I’m sure she really just wants to rfix her to repair her relationship with her and the other algebraliens not out of some actual need to atone for what she did… but seeing the state threes in right now and how aggressive she is at even the mentioning of one, that is definitely not what’s gonna happen, and as a selfish person, I don’t think one will want to accept that actually fixing what she did wrong involves sacrificing herself and her relationships ( which is exactly why I think she’s a really good parallel to pencil and a good foil to leafy )
Sorry I sound really pretentious um those are some of my thoughts about tpot 23 this is not structured at all very rambley but that’s just how I write my thoughts out one last little note I really think TPOT should step away from action for a bit and focus on their characters more cause I feel that’s what’s often getting in the way and that’s also where they really thrive plus if you have 500 crazy high stakes action scenes in every single episode they eventually start to kinda lose their meaning and hype overall I need to watch it again but I’d say it’s a 6.5/10 episode has some cool concepts and strong ideas / moments but it’s way too cluttered with little focus and nonsensical story choices I might make a more stuctered rant if I rewatch it but I don’t feel like doing that rn ok bye