I wrote a thing for MAL. I used to write these MAL article roundup posts but at some point they stopped making sense when I was writing primarily listicles. However the type of stuff I’ve been tasked to write has changed a little (a bit more attention grabbing, shocking headline type pieces), so it makes more sense to put up a post over here where I can get some comments. Plus it makes this blog look alive again!
Poor old Kabaneri. I stopped writing about it here right before Biba appeared and the show started to suck. At least I can leave those episodics around and pretend the show was always a fun action show like it was in the first half. MAL agreed judging by how the score plummeted from the low 8’s to the mid 7’s. That’s a pretty extreme drop.
The Cart Driver 
I actually found Biba to be so stupidly evil that it was kinda funny, like “these people are pretty much fucked but let’s drop a giant kabaneri hive mind just in case someone ACTUALLY survived the zombies”, but yeah, even then he still made the show weaker overall.
This has probably been asked or adressed in the past but is there any way to find just your MAL articles?
Asides from this?
http://thecartdriver.com/category/mal-article-roundup/
Not really.
Not really, sorry. However from now on I’ll post the articles over here
Thanks for the update.
Maybe its because you now write to MAL. So you are now bound by rules.
But this Kabaneri article is so tame in comparison to other Scamp-sama articles.
Where is Savage Scamp that showed us how shit Mahouka was? The Scamp that deeply analyzed every single part of a series that made or broke a series?
Biba is just part of the problem. But he definitely is the main reason the series failed. But for our god and savious Scamp to not point out the other flaws. MAL has tamed the beast. A sad day 😦
You are still the best blogger/reviewer IMO. But i miss the savagery of the past.
Thing is, I don’t think:
a) Scamp hates the show even half as much as Mahouka
b) Scamp thinks the series really “failed”
And, for the record, neither do I. Biba wasn’t the greatest, but its not like the series wasn’t mostly okay in the end.
Thus it’s rather pointless to ask for savagery in this case.
This pretty much. I still generally have fond memories of the show. I’m not being scathing because I don’t think it’s that bad. I wrote something pretty scathing about Big Order, let me find it…
Here you go!
“It’s like the Oregon Trail instead except of dysentery you have to watch out for steampunk zombies.”
I missed you.
Biba was really not a terribly engaging villain, and for me, that is a big make-or-break factor for how interesting an anime can be. He was just sort of the guy the protagonist has to kill. An origin story is not enough to push Biba beyond being a canvas the hero can splash his righteous anger all over.
We saw Griffith in a water fight with Guts for Christ’s sake. We definitely had the idea that Griffith might fart from time to time, but Biba… Just like so many anime villains, he was flat. Not even flat… That implies 2 dimensions.
idk I thought he had personality. There was a good idea there. It was just they made him do generically evil things which went against what was setting up to be an engaging character. Perhaps it’s just me and my idea for the character was better than what they were giving us
I was probably being too harsh because my annoyance with the average anime villain is very current. You put it well: “generically evil things.”
By luck or design, this kind of villain dilemma is neatly avoided throughout most of Attack on Titan because the antagonist is the environment itself, not just the Titans but the corruption of the system within the walls. It is a sort of pervasive menace everywhere that works just fine. I guess it work just fine in train world, too.
When Annie puts a face to some of the elements of evil in Titan, I saw the same problems. Annie is a pretty interesting character, but I had difficulties matching her motivation to her decisions.