User blog:SomeoneYouUsedToKnow/.-.-.-.-.-.

If you read my blog about Ep7, you'd know that I've been playing Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix, on Critical Mode.

And last friday, I broke my limits and achieved what I couldn't accomplish earlier: Defeat Sephiroth and Xemnas, and get the Ultima keyblade.

With Sephiroth it was accidental, but then I realized that despite just being Lv72, with just a pair of Combo+, a Finishing Plus, and Decisive Pumpkin, I took down like 2 whole bars of HP with a single combo. And while he hits hard, all of his attacks have obvious cues and simple ways to react to them.

>Spam Triangle at the beginning, and everytime the cue appears.

>He starts his flurry of slashes, Guard. Then Guard again before he finishes the combo since there's a pause midway that makes you drop the guard. After he finishes, counter and combo.

>He uses Shadow Flare, just Reflect.

>He uses the "Teleport, slash, vanish, repeat" series of attacks, I just used the aerial counterattack after the 1st hit. I end up hitting him before/while he lands the 2nd hit, making him flinch and stop. I just get down to the ground and land a combo in return.

>He uses Heartless Angel, just High Jump > Double Jump to him and land an air combo. Just like that, I beat him on like my 6th try. It was astonishingly easy once I looked back upon it, he didn't even get to use Meteor against me.

So I got the Fenrir keyblade, which has Negative Combo to reduce the number of hits before a finisher by 1. Combined with another Negative Combo, and deactivating all Combo+, I discovered that I could have an entire combo that consists of nothing but Finishers. I could destroy even the toughest, most unflinching foes without worrying about attacks bouncing off.

Except Org.XIII's Data copies, those I still can't get even close to beating them.

With Xemnas, the problem I had was that the moment the very final fight begins, he starts a flurry of attacks that deal tons of damage and don't give me a single break, and he doesn't even flinch if I hit him.

So I just decided to Spam Session, since one is invincible while using Limits. Everytime I finished, I used an Elixir to recover MP, then used it again. In like 2 minutes, I got Xemnas down to his last HP bar, he didn't even get to land a single hit on me.

As for Ultima....that was more dumbassity on my end. I was missing just 1 Orichalcum+...which was in a simple chest, in an area I had walked through countless times. I felt dumb once I found it, but at least I got Ultima so it's something.

In other news, this thing.

For newcomers to this thing, this is basically me, making an informal recap of what happened in the episode, while giving my thoughts about what happens. It also includes fancy color speak. 2 are particularly notable:

Red means truth, fact  in the eyes of the user, le me.

Blue means a guess, an hypothesis, a theory.

This was made before/during Tuesday, but is posted after the episode because when I post it, the Recent Activity page gets filled with all the images I use, which would spell Spoilers-Galore. I also have classes on Tuesday from 10am to 5:30pm with some lucky exceptions, and then I have to spend time uploading every pic I'm gonna use. It's time consuming, but it doesn't spoil everyone in one flash.

Not helping things is how my internet effectively crashed into a wall and reached near-0 Kb/s speeds just as I was uploading the images. If it wasn’t for that, this would’ve been done yesterday.

Also, just in case: This is written as I watch the ep, starting from before watching it.

Now, onto the episode. We start our day with:

Triumph (or Triumph!)
The lack of action in this Volume is really getting to people's nerves, from what I've seen.

Everyone, the moment this ep's thumbnail came out, erupted like a volcano, whose lava consists of "MAIDENBOWL, PLACE YOUR BETS" posts, myself included to an extent, while some doubted that there would even be a fight this episode, at least including Vernal and Cinder, since Cinder was ordered to convince Raven to cooperate and give them the Spring Maiden, not to kick her ass and take Vernal by force.

.....In hindsight, both responses are rather sad.

>Those so desperate for action that they will ignore that fact in hopes of getting a fight.

>Those so jaded by the lack of action that they don't expect to get a fight even when it would be cool.

Personally, I came into this ep expecting a fight. We already got a Maiden vs Ozpin fight in Vol.3, and despite lasting like 30 seconds,  it was amazing. This time, we could get a Maiden vs Maiden fight, with superior animation and special effects and everything.

CAN YOU IMAGINE HOW AMAZING IT WOULD LOOK?!?!?!

No wonder everyone wanted a fight. Now, into the episode.

1) A peaceful day at the Branwen Bandit Camp
Cinder is a smug bastard again...probably smugger........I'm not entirely happy about it.

I mean, she was always a smug ass back in V1-3, acting like everything was always going according to plan, nothing ever went wrong, and that they were utterly unstoppable.  She had no personality beyond being a smug asshole who was smug all the freaking time.

Then Silver Eyes happened, she got her Humble Pie, she got scarred and ended up a wimp mocked by absolutely everyone else on Salem's group. Between V4 and her first appearance in V5, I felt that she returned to being badass again, but she got humbled down and now instead of having a smug smile 24/7 that makes her face irritatingly punchable, she was now serious and more angry.

...And then this happens, and it just feels like  all her character development in Volume 1 was instantly reversed.

With family like her...
This might be a new record in the last few episodes. Discounting the opening, it's 8:35 whole minutes where the plot actually moves forward.

It's almost disgusting that we got no fight whatsoever. No Maidenbowl. Not even showing us Merc and Em kick some bandits before they get in the camp.

But at least our time wasn't entirely wasted.  It's a step forward.

B-I Confrontation
And that's it. We end up with a double tease, on top of the previous teases. In total:

1>Solgaleo vs Albains

2>Raven probably going to tell Qrow something.

3>Ozpin going to tell Qrow something.

2+3>Raven meeting the Compost King and probably laughing her ass off.

4>Blake vs Ilia

And that's before all the potential questions, like if Kali is even still alive.

Conclusions
I have to say,  this is THE best episode so far from a narrative standpoint in recent weeks, and probably the 2nd best episode so far after V5E2, by virtue of 1 thing:

IT. DID. NOT. WASTE. OUR. TIME.

For 99% of the episode, we don't have dragged-on scenes that serve no real purpose. The plot is always moving forward in this episode, starting from CAME and Raven reaching an agreement of sorts, then showing Ghira kicking ass before Blake and Sun reach the BellaManor, then cutting to Raven revealing she's going to doublecross Team CAME and take the Relic for herself, and finishing by having Blake and Ilia find each other and get ready to fight.

The most "unnecesary" moment in this episode is Oscar telling Qrow that Ozpin wants to speak with him,  yet it's so damn short that it doesn't waste our time at all and thus it's no real problem whatsoever.

On top of it, we actually did get an action scene this time as well.  Ghira's Semblance to make his every move exude masculinity did not fail to deliver this time either.

It wasn't even a slow-ass fight either, though not as fast as anything in V1-3. I watched much of the fight at literally 50% of the normal speed, and this still felt pretty fast at times.

....That said...

I'm pretty disappointed at how they missed such a great chance to show Merc and Em kick ass again. They skipped their entire ass-whoping of Jackass Steve and just jumped to their meeting with Raven. Such a waste.

The main problem though isn't the lost action, but the fact that as a result of the lost action, Merc and Em....well,  they feel like they were there just for the sake of being there. Like people Cinder hired to stand beside her and make her look cool. Since that's pretty much all they do.

More egregiously though, is that the same goes with Vernal. After displaying her powers, she also just stands there quietly. At multiple points she's even off-camera. The problem with her is that on one hand, it's understandable that Merc, Em or Vernal wouldn't speak much, if at all, they would just let their bosses discuss things without interrupting.

But Merc and Em are at least visible in multiple shots showing Team CAME, so we can see their reactions at the very least (and I have say, for every fuck Merc doesn't give Em gives out 3).  With Vernal...we don't. She doesn't show surprise or annoyance or anything, like Merc and Em do multiple times.

I'm rather disappointed with the Albains.

I mean, I expected them to actually...well, move, do some acrobatics, fight like martial artists or something. Considering how much the people under them move, in and out of fights.

...But instead they took a page out of Weiss and  just stood there, hardly moving from their spots, while just pointing their pointy sticks at Ghira and firing Dust spells. They don't even dab or something while at it to make it look cool.

Now, to be fair,  their Firestorm looked fucking cool. But still.

Also, what kind of Dust did Fennec use? It was White (despite what the past episode showed him using...) and that's supposed to be Wind. But the way it looked and acted, felt more like Steam to me.

.................Also, an epiphany right as I was writing this section. Anyone got a nice pic of Merc's "Airballs" from V3? To compare them with Fennec's puny "Airball".

I would say I hate Raven as a character, but that was clear enough already in this blog. Because seriously, she's such a selfish asshole, that...mmm...I wonder how it'd be if she actually did ransom Weiss back to Jacques and the two of them met. Because seriously, <font style="color:#DC143C"> they are just perfect for each other :

Birds of a Feather:

>They are both shitty parents who do everything, including questionable things, thinking of the group they belong to (The Schnee/SDC, the Branwen Tribe), while ignoring their actual family in the process (The actual Schnees, Qrow and Yang) with little, if any, fucks given.

>They both have a high-rank at what they do. Jacques is the CEO of the world's biggest Dust-working company, Raven is a renowned Bandit Queen that no one wants to mess with.

>They both have kind of a temper and quickly switched to a more angry and threatening tone when their daughters showed "defiance" (Jacques with Weiss twice or thrice in V4, Raven with Yang during their talk in V5E4).

>They both distrust an Academy's Headmaster of notable position that they have a direct relation to (Jacques is "friends" with Ironwood, but sees how Woody there is going insane. Raven and Ozpin, just watch V5E6).

>And more simply, they are both assholes.

Opposites Attract:

>Raven is a badass, Jacques...........he isn't.

>Perfectly-contrasting colors: White/Blue and Black/Red.

>Raven has a Grimm Mask like the WF, who Jacques most certainly hates.

>Perfectly-opposite social standings (Bandit Queen vs CEO of renowned company).

>Jacques makes money legitimately, Raven.....not so much.

>Jacques is obsessed with public opinion, Raven doesn't seem to give a damn about that.

>Raven travels around. Jacques...doesn't seem to move much, if anything he's against the idea of moving out of Atlas.

Seriously, if this ship has a name, I wanna hear it. They are both assholes, and I despise Raven so far, but this ship is one of the best I've ever imagined.

Speaking of Raven, I wonder if she'll actually die in this Volume. I wouldn't like it since we haven't gotten a Tai-Raven scene yet <font style="color:#DC143C"> and we desperately need one, but if it happens, I'd like it to be in one of these 2 karmic ways:

1>She did everything for her tribe, including killing, pillaging, and maybe even almost dooming the world. Cue the Branwen Tribe sans maybe Qrow, all being killed by Salem, with the reality hammering Raven on the head before she follows.

2>She's a god-awful mother, who completely abandoned her child all her life and treated her badly when they finally met. Then X happens and she's on the edge of death, the only one who could actually save her is Yang...and Yang simply walks away and leaves her to her fate.

<font style="color:#DC143C">She can't go out like Roman did. She's one of the most unsympathetic characters in this entire show, she's even more unsympathetic than Jacques is by virtue of not having any real excuses for her behaviour beyond "THE TRIBE, THE TRIBE, THE TRIBE", and the only people less sympathetic than Raven are either 1-dimensional assholes, like Cardin, or just insane, like Adam.

And, that's pretty much it.

We got no Maidenbowl or were even shown some small bit of bandit ass-kicking. We did get to see more GhirAction, but still, no Fall vs Spring Combat.

Considering that Raven could've indeed at least tried and did have a chance (Cinder > Vernal, but I feel Raven+Vernal > Cinder, and Merc+Em < Raven), if you're one of the likely-thousands who were completely disappointed by this, <font style="color:#DC143C"> you have my full sympathy.

That said, <font style="color:#DC143C"> this was a good episode in an overall sense. Minimal wasted time, we got some action, the plot moves forward, this is how the last 4-so episodes should've been.

If the next 5 episodes keep this up, this Volume might just redeem itself in my eyes. <font style="color:#DC143C"> This isn't a step forward, this is a JUMP forward.

FUNNY V5E9 PICS!!! :D
On one hand, I got very few this time, and not necesarily High-Quality ones.

On the other hand, rewatching scenes at 50% made me see that the characters make quite the weird faces at certain frames. Not necesarily funny ones, but still. Might as well try it when the episode goes on Youtube, see for yourself, see what you get. I think YT's player actually allows one to play videos at 0.25x speed.

Not included: Fennec's amazing, glorious face right before he's hit by the WF girl.

Because a single image is not enough to reflect such beautiful sight.