Naruto vs Bleach

Talk about all other fiction in this forum.

Naruto vs Bleach

Postby toushin » Thu Jul 24, 2014 9:20 pm

Spoiler alert
Despite what the title says this is a review of the Dark Titans series by Lathis and The Road to Cydonia by Cap'n Chryssalid. The name is based off of my own personal preferences which everyone might not agree on. Masashi Kishimoto is a great writer but he is really bad at characterization and as the series went on his tendency to focus on his favorite characters eventually took me off of the series. while I am a huge fan of all aspects of Tite Kubo. Lathis and Cap'n Chryssalid are kind of the same to me.


I’ll start with Latis The Titans and the Lost Boy is a great story. I haven’t read a lot of Ryoga centric fic which is why TTLB is the first fic that I read the reviews before reading it. Which honestly didn’t help that much as it seemed like Ranma haters haven and Lathis’ author notes didn’t feel me with confidence. However they got better as I read on so I gave it a try. TTLB Ryoga showed great depth and Character growth outside of just Ranma’s rival. despite his obvious bias for Ryoga, with maybe the exception of Shampoo he wrote all of the other characters quite fairly even Ranma. The pinnacle of Ryoga’s Character Development in TTLB was the fact that he realized that the world didn’t revolve around him and other people have problems as well. Other then a few disturbing elements about the neko-ken introduced that really didn’t go anywhere TTLB is a great read.

The problem comes with its sequel Dark Titans which to me seems like an entirely different story to paraphrase one of the review it seemed like Lathis spent the entirety of TTLB leading the characters up a cliff only to push them off and start over again. Character derailment in complete disorder in this fic. Not only was Ryoga back to blaming Ranma for all his problems (to the point of getting depressed when he couldn’t) but he also shrilled the other characters into familiar categories. Despite being a love interest Raven became Ranma, Terra became Akane (both bad mouth Ranma), and Starfire became Kasumi (the sweet girl that will just listen to his problems). As the story goes on it seems like Lathis is sacrificing Ryoga’s character development in order to supe him up doing many of the things he claims to hate in Ranma-centric God Mode sue fics. All in all he comes across more like Genma with his pension for telling half truths about his past that leave him in the best light.

Ranma is in the same light while Lathis made it very clear that Ranma wasn’t his favorite character he at least made an effort to characterize him fairly. While Lathis tries to write objectively he repeatedly shows his bias in his characterization. To again paraphrase another reviewer he knocks down Ryouga throughout the story only to have him rise at critical points hero. Yet he builds up Ranma throughout the story only to have him fall at critical points. Ranma was given a huge Idiot Ball in Big Trouble in Little Tokyo. This was mainly seen during his fight with Saico-Tek where Ranma stopped being able to utilize Batman Gambit and the Indy Ploy and suddenly became a complexity attic. This put him in mortal danger forcing him to be saved by the comic relief repeatedly, despite the fact that not only has he trained all his life to get out of such a situation but has survived similar and far worse situations. What makes this worse is that Ranma does this to himself by downplaying his strongest techniques like the Umisenken by equating it with a technique that he’s been able to do since the start of the series.

By having so many incidents one after another where Ranma can't quite pull it off, Lathis gives the reader the impression he doesn’t like Ranma. One or two incidents is cool. It happens. We dont always succeed. None constantly wins. But we do like to see someone who pulls it off occasionally.

You can easily see that he doesn’t like Ranma much. He tends to write him as a lackwit. Thankfully he’s toned that down. But he still tend to put Ranma in situations where he simply cannot win, and is useless. The readers pick up on this. Case in point. Ranma is helpless and someone else gets to finish off the badguy. It would be the same as BeastBoy showing up and taking out the Headmaster while Ryoga watched on. It doesnt matter how well or long Ranma fought, the fact that someone else had to step in and rescue not only Akane, but Ranma as well gives an impression that Lathis’ doesn’t care for the character. But, the Ranma never loses scenario is a simplistic end at best. That in itself would be fine. But because he has had mutliple other instances where Ranma is downplayed...

The Lieutenant also gets the cool "killer line": Daizo's smirk widened into a grin. “Guess that makes me just a good man.” A classic. Well done. Normally that pleasure is reserved for main character, ie Ranma. But here Ranma is helpless on the sidelines so it falls to another character. Okay, well maybe Ranma will get to say something witty, you know to save face. So instead he gets: "Still not able to remember whatever it was that was slipping her mind, she just shrugged it away for later. “Heh, if I ever gotta go through somethin' like that again . . . hell, I can't even think of anything funny to say to go with that . . .” By seeing this, Ranma is once again outshadowed in importance to the viewers.

Ranma's foe is Goku. Someone he has absolutely no chance in hell of beating. Hell, without Goku figuring it out, Ranma would be a bloody smear. Once again, Ranma is effectively useless. Oh sure, Lathis gave the impression that maybe Ranma might be able to figure his way out of it, but ultimately it was Goku and not Ranma who solved the problem. The Ranma never loses ending has been overdone to death. But the Ranma wins only cause someone else saved his ass ending is almost as bad.

As I said this aspect is resolved as the series goes on after Big Trouble in Little Tokyo gains back all of the more positive qualities seen more in the manga then the anime. He’s back to being able to dodge lightning, he helps Raven with her relationship problems and figured out that Terra has a crush on Ryoga he even starts creating new techniques. And as for Ryoga not only did we find out that the other’s never really took Ryoga’s rants about Ranma seriously and eventually called him out on them.

As I said Lathis’ is a lot like Masashi Kishimoto he is a great writer but his characterization makes it hard to read a time. Fortunately unlike Masashi Kishimoto this aspect of Lathis got better as the story went not worse.

The only characterization that I found truly horrible was Shampoo he just didn’t know how to write her in TTLB she was written with all of the negative aspects usually attributed to her in Fanon for example no or caring about nothing about Ranma other then the fact that he had defeated her. In DT he had fixed this making her far more intelligent and competent. However in an effort to force the match up between her and Mousse he had her become increasingly jealous and possessive of him even violently so to the point where she comes across more like Akane then herself.

Now for The Road to Cydonia and like with TTLB don’t take it is shorter then DT. Like many internet bloggers I find it easier to write more about the negative then the positive. Cap'n Chryssalid is a great writer unlike Lathis even though is the focus of the story everyone gets their fare share. The only problem I had was the Ranma/Akane matchup that seemed forced. The story, the characterizations, even the fight scenes are all perfect.

That’s my opinion of the two stories read separately and out of contexts. I can’t review Reflections Lost On A Dark Road because I haven’t it yet just its Tv trope, but even that puts Ryoga’s actions in DT understandable. It turns out that Ryoga feels extremely guilty about his actions in TTLB. So while his actions in become a lot more understandable.

People might disagree but Ryoga’s curse is his own fault, Ranma shares responsibility but the blame lays entirely on Ryoga’s shoulders. He was the one who issued a challenge over bread (and this was before we found out that Ranma would help Ryoga to and from school everyday), he was the one who ran off, he was the one who was four days late, he was the one who followed Ranma into an incredibly dangerous and unknown. Keep in mine he blamed Ranma long before he even knew that it was Ranma who knocked him in.

Ryoga is perfectly aware of this you’ll notice that Ryoga was only murderously angry until he found out that the red haired girl was Ranma. Blaming Ranma was his way of absolving his own guilt over his actions. Once he found out that Ranma did knock him into the spring that guilt went away and he stopped wanting Ranma dead and became the rival. A lot of Ryoga’s more darker moments start like this with him doing something stupid and impulses the yoiko hibiki incident, the love rod. This is why Ryoga seems to excel in dark fics as he is forced to realize that the world doesn’t revolve around him something both fics addressed. This knowledge makes DT (with the exception of Ranma’s characterization) a far more enjoyable read.
toushin
Chibi Sailor Senshi
Posts: 244
 

Re: Naruto vs Bleach

Postby Spica75 » Fri Jul 25, 2014 9:50 am

I’ll start with Latis The Titans and the Lost Boy is a great story.


Agreed.

The problem comes with its sequel Dark Titans which to me seems like an entirely different story to paraphrase one of the review it seemed like Lathis spent the entirety of TTLB leading the characters up a cliff only to push them off and start over again.


I wouldn´t say it was THAT bad, but i can see your point.

By having so many incidents one after another where Ranma can't quite pull it off, Lathis gives the reader the impression he doesn’t like Ranma. One or two incidents is cool. It happens. We dont always succeed. None constantly wins. But we do like to see someone who pulls it off occasionally.


Well, Ranma does have a tendency to fall for his own overconfidence...

By seeing this, Ranma is once again outshadowed in importance to the viewers.


That´s probably unfair. Ranma just doesn´t pull a rabbit out of his hat to suddenly be perfectly fine and dandy. It´s actually characterisation, he´s too "off" to be able to do something as usual.

But the Ranma wins only cause someone else saved his ass ending is almost as bad.


Why? It´s rarely used and it made sense in context. And i say that even though i think all traces of DB should be burned for being so dreadfully bad.

As I said Lathis’ is a lot like Masashi Kishimoto he is a great writer but his characterization makes it hard to read a time. Fortunately unlike Masashi Kishimoto this aspect of Lathis got better as the story went not worse.


You can say that again!

Now for The Road to Cydonia and like with TTLB don’t take it is shorter then DT. Like many internet bloggers I find it easier to write more about the negative then the positive. Cap'n Chryssalid is a great writer unlike Lathis even though is the focus of the story everyone gets their fare share. The only problem I had was the Ranma/Akane matchup that seemed forced. The story, the characterizations, even the fight scenes are all perfect.


Actually, i dropped Road to Cydonia, but i read all of Lathis TTLB stories. TRtC just couldn´t hold my interest, so personally i can most certainly not agree that CC is a better writer just like that.

I can’t review Reflections Lost On A Dark Road because I haven’t it yet just its Tv trope


It´s a mix of pretty good and not so good. I´ve read it through, but it felt derailed the further it got. There´s a lot of parts in it that are REALLY well written, but it doesn´t quite work as well as it should. Like how the right or wrong director can sometimes make a big difference for a movie.

People might disagree but Ryoga’s curse is his own fault, Ranma shares responsibility but the blame lays entirely on Ryoga’s shoulders.


Uh... He got knocked into the spring by Ranma. Yes he wouldn´t be there without his obsessive behaviour, but Ranma knocked him into the spring never the less.
Ryoga made the situation possible, but he had no part in how it ended.
That´s like blaming someone getting hit by a magically appearing car while walking across a street after they checked that no cars were nearby before walking across.

Blaming Ryoga for something he couldn´t actually influence, that´s just, weird.

Keep in mine he blamed Ranma long before he even knew that it was Ranma who knocked him in.


Oh, THAT was wrong of him, sure. That doesn´t make Ranma any less actually responsible.
Spica75
User avatar
Prism Power Senshi
Posts: 2399
 

Re: Naruto vs Bleach

Postby toushin » Wed Jun 03, 2015 10:18 am

If I can think of one phrase to describe this fanfic it’s character derailment. I went in the to reflections lost on a dark road expecting to see the characters from Dark Titans meet the characters from The Road to cydonia and that simply isn’t the case.

As the start the Titans come across as a little hypocritical and apathetic but this aspect of them just gets worse as the story goes on to the point that by the end with the exception of Cyborg and maybe Starfire they’re just unlikable. However they are still depicted as the morally superior but this is only possible by dumbing down the XCOM characters.

Spica75 wrote:It´s a mix of pretty good and not so good. I´ve read it through, but it felt derailed the further it got. There´s a lot of parts in it that are REALLY well written, but it doesn´t quite work as well as it should. Like how the right or wrong director can sometimes make a big difference for a movie.



Not that I’s all bad as the above states there are good parts. The story is great as well as the expansion of the universe and the techniques. There’s a lot of parts that are well written but it doesn’t work as well as it should. Characters should drive the plot, not be controlled by it. This problem is mainly focused on Ranma and Ryoga who come off as bad bash fic characters while everyone else are just generally derailed. Ranma just comes across as stupid while every word out of Ryoga’s mouth is hypocritical bull.

A great example would be the Just Won’t Die series where the only thing the Ranma in that fic has in common with the original is his name and appearance. While Ryoga act the same as he did in the beginning of the series despite being 80. while in Just Won’t die the writing made it charming and funny. Here since it is a continuation it is just infuriating (Ranma’s character has done a complete 180, and Ryoga seems to devolve with each sequal.



The worse of the worse however is Jinx who I’ve taken to calling the Gambling queen because she seems to be the catalyst for everything. The changes are suppose to make her come off as sympathetic but just make annoying as when every she is in the room everyone either gets dumber, weaker or more apathetic while she has become a complete self absorbed jerkass.

Finally the derailment creates numerous plot holes that makes reading not only a chore but insulting at times because they lamp[shade them so you don’t know if this is unintentional or if they are deliberately insulting you. In the end you just wonder what’s the point. Not only do the Titans seem to be having a horrible influence on Ryoga and he in turn them, but the changes made ruin the Dark Titans series. While it hard to see how the weakened dumbed down XCOM character can possibly survive the coming war.
toushin
Chibi Sailor Senshi
Posts: 244
 


Return to Fiction Discussion

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users

cron