i love watching scissor seven bcs wdym seven is haunting his own narrative. he himself, is his own goal. he is his own plot armor and deus ex machina. he is his own limit. in terms of strength and powers, he is his own standard.
and yet, seven as of the end of season 5 is so clearly made up of everyone around him. the scissors from thirteen, which he occasionally dual wields just like she does, hechun's 7-day lock, ouyang zan's thumbs up martial arts, cheap hua's separated sandals kick. im sure theres more that i cant think of at the top of my head.
it's amazing, bcs as several assasins noted, he's not as fast as he was in his prime anymore. he no longer master the thousand demon dagger, i dont think he ever will. but it doesnt make him weaker, of course not. he has built connections, family and friends, and through them he has learned a lot more techniques.
he's not stronger than he was before, not yet. and if we're looking solely at his thousand demon dagger skills, then he never will be. but overall, with all sorts of moves and techniques, he's going to be stronger than he ever was. im so sure of that.
and thats all due to him and the time he finally get to make friends as an amnesiac in chicken island.
I love how TBHX name their episode titles. most of them are very well thought out and so cleverly chosen.
I'm gonna break down the ones that I find most interesting. The entirety of Lin Ling's 4 episode arc, Yang Cheng's 3 episodes arc, Ahu's single episode, and Ghostblade's 2 episodes. Hey, would you look at that, four-three-one-two!
no, for reasons i wont disclose, i will not discuss Wang Yi's arc before Ahu's.
We start at the beginning with Lin Ling. Throughout Lin Ling's arc, it started with him losing his identity, finding himself wrapped in a deadman's identity, and ends with him making a name and own identity for himself. The arc centers around people's Identity. Have I said Identity enough for you? And thus, each episodes in LL's arc is a name. An Identity. More specifically it explores his identity. Hence why it starts with Nice, the dead Identity he's using, and ends with The Commonner, himself.
Then there's Yang Cheng's arc. The amateur actor who is insecure and defined by the number at his wrist. His trust value starts at zero, and this is his story on how that number, after he waited for so long, finally grows. Thus his episodes is counting upwards. One Actor, Two E-Souls, and Three Seats. There's also a theater theming around what each episode is counting, reminding us where YC started from. A simple E-Soul Actor.
It doesn't have to cover multiple episodes. Ahu's single episode arc for example, is named Lie. I questioned why they chose that as the title, but the more i think about it, the more I like it. The episode afterall revolves a lie. Xinya's lie. One that Xinya spreads of Ahu's prowess. The lie that Ahu disregards, listening dismissively to Xinya's tirades or outright ignoring it. The lie that Ahu has to internalized to saved Xinya. The lie that Ahu made true. Because the truth of the episode, is that Ahu cares deeply for Xinya, despite his aloof attitude that lies and says he doesn't.
And then, there's Ghostblade's second episode called The Cure. The cure to what, you're asking? That is answered in the title of the first episode, his condition, Affective Disorder.
What's the cure? You asks once more. And to that I say, Fear particles.
There are several delibarate frames showing Ghostblade getting infected by fear from DJ Shindig's remains yet there doesn't seem to be any consequences to it. Or is there?
We know from DJ Shindig's first attack on the camp that Fear still affects him, even if it's not by much. He was crying too, he just wasnt paralyzed in his sadness like the others. So we know his infection wont show up as clear as others like Smile or DJ Shindig's infections.
It might manifest in other ways.... Such as making a sudden unexpected decision to protect, instead of assasinate Little Johnny. Why would he do that? I have no clue, fear is irrational after all. There is however, two things that might be able to explain his decision.
For the first one, its simply exemplefying a fear he already had. I'm going to take an excerpt from @subtextdecoder amazing essay here.
Later, he says: “Sheng knows that I'm not the one who wants him killed. So I hope he won't curse me in his death.” This line is key to understanding his psychology. He doesn’t enjoy killing. He sees it as a job, a task he dissociates from. But he still hopes the person dying won’t blame him, emotionally or spiritually.
The fact that Wang Yi hopes his victims wont blame him, or curse him, is a sign of guilt and moreover fear. Not fear of killing, but it's unclear what fear it is. It could simply be fear of the consequences that might follow, however that ends up, literally or spiritually. There is a part of him that knows killing people is wrong and he's scared of it. A fear made worse by the fear particles.
For the second one, I would like to point to this video analysis by JoshTheTourist Prod. who talked mostly about Ghostblade, but also about the parallel themes between Luo Li, Wang Yi, and Little Johnny's stories. All of them, in some other shape and forms, centers around the relationship between a father and child. Wang Yi, Prof. Luo and Ah Sheng on the father side, and Nuonuo, Luo Li and Little Johnny on the child side. Ghostblade here, is specifically put on the opposite sides of Little Johnny, the one he is meant to kill. Little Johnny, who is on the same side of Nuonuo, his daughter that he's trying hard to understand and protect. This is empathy. That's why he protected Little Johnny, because in his quest to understand Nuonuo, he gained empathy, at first it starts with empathy for Nuonuo, but maybe it spreads to Johnny himself, and maybe even to the deceased Ah Sheng.
Then again, this is all theorizing on my part.
The point is, Ghostblade was infected by fear particles before making irrational decisions. It's time to add 2 to 2 and gain 4. Ghostblade is driven by fear.
There's something that feels so ethically wrong about the IRL TBHX voting system that everytime I look at the current ranking, it hurts my soul.
On the surface, yes there is that dissapointment felt when my favorite hero isn't high in the ranking but dig deeper it's not exactly that certain heroes isn't ranking "high", it's more dissapointment that certain heroes aren't ranked where I wanted them to be. Where I think they should be.
I don't even have a definitive answer on where they should be. I just know where I don't want them to be.
I'm mostly fine with the current ranking but some of them are just.
Nice, broken-kintsugi-looking Nice, might have been melded together with fear. But he was brought back to life by trust-value, by us. Every single denial tweet saying "Nice survived, trust" and the votes that followed in the website brought him back. And yes, I know that the voting that decide S1 ending ended long ago, way back before we even knew Nice has died. But he's 3rd now. In the current poll, he's THIRD. He shouldn't be third, he should be dead. Suicide is not a solution, but it was Nice's choice. To take even that away from him, to reanimate his corpse with our trust. I can't look at his high ranking, with his cracked face and dead eyes on display, and be fine with it.
And E-Soul is currently 7th and it's weird bcs I like where the others currently are, and I don't want him to switch placements with anyone yet 7th is not the right spot.
I feel conflicted with E-Soul. I love Yang Cheng as a character, and I love his arc. Which is exactly why I once said I wanted him to lose in the rankings to see his face again. Drop in the rankings so badly he'll be Yang Cheng again and no longer E-Soul. But I was naive, his arc took place 5 years ago from present time. And after the ruins incident, I feel like Yang Cheng will never return yet I still love E-Soul so he may as well rank higher. It's a war on two sides of my thoughts. I want him to succeed, yet I can't determine my own definition of his success.
Long post, the point is, I love the voting from an artistic and community POV. Morally though? In my heart? I hate it.
crack theory but imagine X always being an introvert, very quiet and unassuming, sticking to the edges of the room in every party. yknow, basically he's a wallflower. wall-flower.
get it?
i mean as a nonnative english speaker i always thought of the term wallflower as being basically barely noticeable, hence blending in into the background, becoming part of the wallpaper. a wall flower. like X and his powers to jump in and out of walls, becom graffiti art in alleys and such.
like imagine thats how he gets his powers. just a bunch of his coworkers or fellow commuters being "huh, who just walked past me? hes so quiet its like he came out of the wall or something"
call it internalized ableism or whatever but i never thought seeing a representation my disability on screen matters much because... idk its just a speech impediment. it makes me sound funny, occasionally hard to understand, and was a cause of bullying in grade school. but its not like it destroys my daily life yknow, it doesnt stop me from making friends or do daily activities. so representation matters, but not to me, not for this specific thing.
and then i watched scissor seven, first in cn dub and later on i watched clips in english dub and it surprises me how much i enjoy it. not gonna lie the english dub of scissor seven is kinda ass. i think even most fans of the show would agree with me on that. the translation sometimes feels off and the tones arent quite right.
but seven can't roll his Rs. at first i thought this is a thing from the original cn dub, where he speaks mandarin or cantonese based on whether he currently remembers his past. the english dub sorta did a similar thing, where amnesiac seven would slur his words, lenghten vowels, sounds more laidback and such compared to the much more serious, strict, and succint killer seven. i thought his rhotacism would be a part of that. just another thing to show how seven is weaker after losing his memories.
its not though, seven still doesn't roll his Rs as killer seven. his Rs still slides weirdly in his mouth, blending into other consonants or was promptly cut off before it started. he's truly like me. he cant roll his Rs. his words are weird like me. i like it. thats the one thing this dub cant take away from me.
maybe representation truly is important for everyone. even if you dont realize it.
