I was telling a friend earlier, but despite being a heterosexual harem-esque story, re:zero appeals a lot to queer people for various reasons. Obviously, it's just a very popular, well-written show and some of that will generically drive that interest, but I do think it has a lot of different elements that despite the show basically all fitting within a heterosexual framework, feel very validating to me.
Like as just one example, Beatrice's story arc in season 2 appeals a lot to me thematically.
The last thing before dying that her mother told her to do was to watch over and protect said mother's library until "that person", one suitable for inheriting their knowledge, comes to save her. This came gifted with a magic tome of wisdom that can read the owner's future and provide guidance on how best to reach their desired goals. She ends up seeing this tome as an extension of her mother and follows it religiously.
Beatrice never ends up finding "that person". Despite many trying, notably only men shown in the montages of the anime, she ends up turning them all away and stays bound to that library for 400 years, growing lonelier and depressed. She admits to Subaru that she has given up on finding that person and that the Tome of Wisdom has been blank for a long time, determining that she has no future.
Subaru offers to save her and she snaps at him, berating him in tears about where he's been for 400 years, about how awful she feels and how she has long given up. Then she pulls a hellish ultimatum on him, either put her first above anyone else or to kill her himself. He fails to answer such a question and she throws him out.
Subaru then gets to meet the spirit of said mother, Echidna, and being so distraught over Beatrice's situation, he prompts her about it. She says that she didn't have anyone particularly in mind to be "that person" and that she was deeply interested to see who Beatrice would specifically pick.
This all ends up reading to me as a big allegory for The Heterosexual Life Path and how cruel in concept it is. Daughter, please wait for your destined partner, one who you will know is suitable to inherit our wealth and the one who will put you first over everyone else. He will save you from your directionless life and finally bring you happiness. Dedicate your whole life to this goal. Oh, no one ever came? You gave up on it? Well I guess that's it. You have no future. Your life is over. It has no meaning.
Needless to say, but the resolution to this story is our protagonist convincing her to abandon that path. In the middle of the library engulfed in flame, Subaru convinces her to escape with him. That he will never be "that person", that she's strong enough to not need to be saved by any one guy, that he can support her without fulfilling that role, that she's been waiting for someone to convince of her that all this time. And she saves him (along with herself) from being burned alive in her own inheritance.
And since then she's never been happier. She's not a love interest; instead she's become something between our protagonist's daughter and his closest friend. She's his biggest confidant, she's the only way he can cast magic anymore, they are frequently attached at the hip and constantly being cute together. She has a much better relationship with other women, now that she doesn't feel in competition with them, particularly of Emilia who she was jealous for having both Puck and Subaru. This little girl is free from the weight of the heterosexual life her mother set out for her and it's the best thing that's ever happened to her.
Also concerning Rock is a Lady's Modesty, although I think Tina needs to sort of grow into her own in the band, I do just conceptually enjoy:
This princely girl that all the other girls fawn over was not actually being transgressive about gender; she was just forced into a socially accepted transgressive gender role.
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What inspires her is girls who transgress gender through rock AND get to fully express themselves.
I might normally side eye the "Masculine woman just need to accept her femininity", but the other band mates, the ones who inspire her are pretty masculine themselves. They like bringing up their cocks a lot in their shouting matches. It avoids saying masculinity isn't right for women AND focuses on the issue of "enforced gender roles are bad"
It was def enjoyable, but it was different from what my watchmate and I expected. It's kind of like if there was an episodic show about a supernatural specialist from monogatari, but very laid back. MC is like Oshino Meme, but less of an asshole, which in someways makes him a bit toothless.
But yeah it's kind of like a medical show where the doctor diagnoses an illness plaguing some not v distinct, japanese village people. There is basically no other recurring characters and no grounding overarching narrative so the series is really relying on the concept of the supernatural phenomena to be the driving engagement. To which it's overall p successful.
The people he is diagnosing often have v little agency in how the supernatural phenomena come into and stay in their lives. In some ways this can be nice, this is how medical issues in the real world often surface. However, it can also make for some not-super-engaging stories character-wise. As mentioned, we're mainly relying on the interesting supernatural situations to drive our engagement, so whenever that fails, that episode can be p boring or unsatisfying. In that ways it can be p hit or miss. "Ah another ear episode"
The lack of agency can also feel quite bad, particularly when there are a lot of episodes in a row that end on a bad note. Like, there's a million bad things that can happen to you out there that are outside your control. Those down batches stirred my thoughts along the lines of "What is this show really saying? Is it just peddling the idea of medical paranoia, but able to get away with it because all the scary medical problems are just supernatural". But then you'll hit a good/neutral batch and not be worried about it anymore.
Overall I think it's p decent, but not something anyone needs to see.
Had an edh game yesterday where a player had a gamewinning board, but I was about to kill her exactly with commander damage to prevent that UNTIL a separate player who hadn't been doing much this game offered to kill my attacking creature to get a draw with the ahead player after she took out the players that weren't them (and then it proceeded to played out like that inmediately).
When asked why he did that, the guy who offered the draw said he wasn't aiming to win, but to not lose. This is a weird gameplay goal, but not one I'm entirely opposed to. However, thinking on it, this kinda ups his threat level significantly to anyone who wants to win. Because as opposed to an opponent who's also trying to win, one that's trying to not lose will team up with anyone for just a draw offer.
The usual edh 4-player free-for-all game usually plays out like a balancing act. One player gets ahead by wide margin and the rest of the table focuses on dealing with them to set things back to a neutral position. This is because it's very difficult to defeat someone with a strong lead one-on-one, but it's very easy to do three-on-one. This, in general, helps even out the winrate of decks with disparate power levels and makes for, in my opinion, games that are on average more fun.
That balancing act is broken when there's someone who is willing to draw with the leader just to not lose. This is because a 2v2 where one of the sides has a player with a strong lead is v similarly difficult to overcome as the 1v1 version. This weights games a lot more in favor of the strongest decks; they always have a back up plan when ahead if they ever think that can't push through the rest of the table.
So as long as you aren't ahead, the person who only doesn't want to lose is a big threat to you no matter their board position. By primarily not wanting to lose, you are encouraging people to attack you more, and that's funny to me. Not entirely, but it's almost self-defeating in a way.
This week's rock is a lady's modesty was more of an in-betweener kinda episode, focused on school life and whatnot, but damn did it nail it's point really well.
An episode of Lily feeling fake and not good enough for this school, looking for a glimmer of hope that someone like her used to go here and was successful, and she got completely slapped with frustration and alienation. That alum hit her with the class difference AND the opposing personality. Kind of the pinnacle of both because what secured her noble maiden was just raw money given to the school and she threw out any musical passions she may have had just because her father asked her.
Like, no, Lily, the real you will never have a place here.
Because this is anime, before this episode, there was still an air of "one day, they could radicalize some other girls and change the status quo". I mean, there's 4 rich girls' who are cool with it, Lily's sister is interested, etc. But this ep was a firm "No." to anything along those lines.
Which is nice! That felt pretty real. Even in it's ridiculousness, this show is very real where it needs to be emotionally. The vent guitar session afterwards also felt like the point Lily went "No, I can't live without this anymore". Like, in contrast to the start of the series where she was rejecting Oto because she was 100% in on living the fake life, now that playing guitar has become so core to her identity and she has the pleasure of expressing that regularly in secret, 100% fake life is impossible. Living without any guitar is basically being dead to her.
This is the coolest a character has been to me in a long time, and it looks like he's about to piss his pants
Bell Cranel, I never thought I'd be feeling this strongly about you or your series when i dropped it during the spin off season in 2017, but here I am feeling like this is one of the rawest displays of heroism in anime. And it's specifically because you're in the middle of an identity crisis, you're defying your heroes, you're scared and shaking, you don't know how this is going to turn out AND YET you did it anyways because you couldn't accept anything else, even at your lowest.
Alice is finally full into the mix, Lily has thrown away her qualms with putting up an act around her. Was surprised when Alice was there, but just rolled with it without even thinking. Also, lmao at Alice clearly starting to ship the band
and maybe something more.
Regardless, with that Staff badge, Alice is basically part of the hero's party now. It's only a matter of time before she's their manager. I enjoy that although she's so young (or maybe because she's so young), she can spot bullshit a mile away and can call it out, both with that singer from the festival and these streamer guys.
This episode also dodged my worst fears about making this just a boys vs girls thing. The gender's aren't critical to this conflict at all, but they'll certainly play a part, which is what I wanted. The boyband's fans are clearly biased against them because they're women and Lily bringing out a chair when the boy leader starts threatening her little sister.
And yet the actual conflict doesn't have anything to do with that, it has to do with how these boys aren't taking this seriously. They're just well off streamers who are doing this for fun, and that was exactly the wrong thing to come into contact with Lily after last episode.
Also, the conflict between Oto and Lily is just so good. That further showed me that the story is taking this v seriously.
So yeah, excited for the last episode. I sort of had this show at a 7/10 for most of it, but without noticing I think it's bumped up to an 8/10 for me. Hope to hell that they do more of it in the future, I'd watch every episode.
Other thing Rock is a Lady's Modesty does that I appreciate: even though Lily and Oto are the real stars of the show and the other 2 haven't gotten much time yet, each pairing has a solid relationship dynamic.
This is the bare minimum for any 4-man band kinda deal, but i still appreciate it; it's one of the core appeals of this cast structure whether it's in music or fantasy adventuring.
It's telling that weakest dynamic is between the two newest characters. Even the weakest link just needs time.
