Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Gushing Over Magical Girls
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Yuvelir
 Posts: 1575 |
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Reading the reviewer having a genuinely bad time with most of the show is also a form of fanservice.
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encrypted12345
Posts: 718 |
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I too await when the reviewer is mindbroken into giving an episode a high score. |
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DuskyPredator
 Posts: 15483 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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This is where I am sitting. I don't think it is just a bad thing that Utena got roped into it, because it is probably a good thing that a gay girl who had been sexually repressed up and to being naturally into BDSM would actually be able to explore that. Of course, there are the negative elements where a mascot is making her do so with including blackmail for whatever their motives are, and it isn't like the magical girls are consenting to be included in the bondage and touching (yet). Utena is an inexperienced kid, so she probably isn't doing everything right, like clearly there is nothing like a safe word. I guess outside of Utena does like them to have a way out in fighting back in the standard formula. |
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Hiroki not Takuya
 Posts: 2523 |
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DuskyPredator
Posts: 15483 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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In terms of new feelings rather than revealing true nature, do mean something like her attraction of women as new feelings rather than a "true nature" of sadism? An issue I kind of find in the framing lesbianism being okay, but sadism is like a moral bad thing, that she is a villain because she enjoys being a sadist, which I totally reject as some ignorance. My interpretation of the bad thing happening is that Utena's nature as a natural sadist is being taken advantage of to make her an effective villain, but her being into and being good at sadism shouldn't actually make her villainous. Granted a good deal of the humour is in there. A term I came across regarding when Utena was comforting Kiwi after the shocks is "aftercare", which apparently supposed to be a big part of the whole experience, that is meant to be more than just inflicting pain and such. I also don't think it is indicative of a lack of actually sexuality over self-esteem that Utena, especially outside of her Baiser persona, rejects sexual contact with Kiwi. She is an awkward teenager just starting to understand herself, so doesn't mean she wants to or is okay to just make out with her new friend that she did sadism play with. I would think that becoming Braiser probably doesn't supernaturally influence her mind, but still facilitates her to act as a more confident and sexual version of herself. And it is fine if she separates that from her normal identity, and if hanging out with Kiwi was at most a platonic date. |
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jr240483
 Posts: 4380 Location: New York City,New York,USA |
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i wouldnt say that. after all, other popular series from crunchyroll like watayuri (yuri is my job) & tenten kakumei (the magical revolution of the reincarnated princess) got zero english dubs while wataoshi (im im love with the villainess) did! meanwhile, HIDIVE gave Helck no dubs as of this moment! and if those series that are uber popular get no dubs, the odds of HIDIVE giving these two borderline hentai series like gushing & chained solider are very very very low at best! |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18210 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Yuri is My Job! was not even close to being "uber popular." In fact, its popularity rankings on both CR and MAL are very mediocre at best. You'd have a better complaint for The Magical Revolution, which did much better but is still only a mid-tier title on popularity. Even so, titles of lesser or equal popularity have gotten dubs. As for Helck, the only thing I can think of there is that it hemorrhaged its audience badly after a promising start, and that discouraged any plans to dub it. |
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ReasonableDaemon
Posts: 6 |
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This feels weird to write, given I'm usually bothered by this sort of thing, but in this specific case, I actually think there's genuinely a good narrative reason why they're younger than I would prefer, even while I remain completely open to the possibility that it was entirely by accident and none of it was intended by the author. That's because the story actually works weirdly well as a kinky bildungsroman, and part of it is because they are so young. I don't claim the universal experience, but I know I first figured out I was kinky extremely young (maybe 8 or 9 years old), and I've talked to many other kinky people and they tend to have first realized it quite young as well.
For me it was watching the pretty magician's assistant get chained up, for others it was watching Totally Spies, or Maid Marian in Robin Hood, or countless other nominally not-kinky avenues. And from that perspective, 14 is almost a little old for that first realization that your tastes might have a bit of a kink in them (which is not to say that I think they should be any younger than they already are, because I'd still prefer them to be older, on balance.) To really build up the parallels requires more than just what's in the anime, so consider the things behind spoilers to be for the manga up to chapter 55. Consider: A youth who previously considered themselves fairly normal suddenly becomes aware that they have some unusual desires. There is an initial point where the experience is basically "holy shit what is wrong with me," but if they get past that point without turning back, they start to reach the point where how hot it is to them overrides their formative morals. Without anyone to talk to about such things in your normal life, they find companionship with strangers, who sometimes have the same tendencies as them, or other times have opposite but complementary tendencies (Kiwi). Neither of them really know what you're doing, but there is often a strong attachment, and in the case of a matching dom and sub, they'll often jump in too deep at first, because neither of them really know their limits (Utena, Azul and Kiwi). spoiler[All the while, they were probably drawn in, at least at first, by famous figures in the kink space (Vena), even when it later is revealed that they were not actually trustworthy. As they give in more and more to their urges, it's common that they might they eventually go too far (Utena going berserk mode), and become filled with regret. If they don't give it up there, there's often a period of introspection of what went wrong where, and sometimes the answer is a bad influence (Utena's mental battle against herself where she eventually come to the conclusion that both her more rational and her more lusty sides were being manipulated by Vena, and begins to plan against them).] spoiler[As they come to the conclusion that they can no longer trust that mentor, they begin to develop their own sense of morality, even if it's a kinky morality, and even if it means becoming an enemy of the very person that first brought them into the scene. That's about as far as the manga has gotten on that paticular journey, but if Utena's ultimate super mode is triggered by the sublime dominant bliss of accepting a truly consensual kinky relationship with either Kiwi, Sayo, or both, I'm prepared to call MahoAko a masterpiece, even if one with some flaws.] Like I said, I'd be surprised if all of that was intentional, but what it is to me is relatable, intensely so. I know people joke about being just like x anime character fr fr, but I basically never expected to watch a show and feel like I'm watching someone go down a path I don't regret as a whole, but make mistakes I do still regret. I especially never expected that it would be an ecchi comedy with uncomfortably young leads for how they're depicted, and I'm not at all saying it's not that. The reviewer compares it negatively to Nana to Kaoru, and I can to a degree understand why, but NtK to me actually felt far less real to me (the base manga is...ok, I guess, but something about the framing where it's set up as more of a transactional thing without real emotions behind it, but actually there are extremely obviously real emotions behind it but no one wants to talk about them just rubbed me the wrong way. I also have an enormous red flag regarding a spinoff of it that makes me roll my eyes at the suggestion that that mangaka has a better grasp on consensual BDSM than any other mangaka.) MahoAko, by comparison, is a complete off-the-wall mess, but a mess in a way that actually makes it feel more authentic to me. Getting through puberty is a messy enough time for the vanillas, getting through puberty while coming to terms with the fact that you fantasize about locking collars on women's necks and treating them like property is far messier, even and especially because no matter how much you try and clarify to vanilla people that it's only in the context of informed and mutually consensual roleplay, you know how easy it would be for them to think that's just an excuse and you're really a serial killer or something. And from that perspective, I think having such young leads genuinely does add something to the storytelling. Not enough that I wouldn't rather it star late blooming kinksters instead, but enough that it comes off to me as something more than pure fanservice for a particular type of fan I'm usually not in agreement with. And to preemptively respond to a very true point, yes, from my point of view as well there's absolutely issues with consent, or rather the lack thereof, in MahoAko. Absoutely, they're dumb kids getting in too deep with each other without the proper precautions, and I don't dispute it, though I will point out that while that's extremely dangerous, it's also an extremely common mistake, not just with inexperienced doms that have bad role models, but also with inexperienced subs that either don't understand their limits or think they don't have any and so don't set a safeword in the first place, or who are so afraid of disappoint their dom that they don't safeword even when they could and should. The thing I will point out, however, is that I have literally never not had issues with consent in Japanese BDSM media, to the point that I genuinely wonder if it might be a true cultural difference; I don't claim to know for sure one way or the other, I've never been in Japanese kink circles, but I do know that even between two different English speaking cultures there can often be surprising differences for what counts as sufficient consent. And while I don't claim to have seen an exhaustive list or anything, as you can probably understand, BDSM is an area of interest of mine, and Japan produces quite a bit of BDSM content, and off the top of my head the only time I've seen a safeword come up is in Nana to Kaoru, and it's not in any of Nana and Kaoru's breathers, and it's far worse than anything in MahoAko. It shows up in the Last Year spinoff, and it's a sub safewording and the older and supposedly more experienced dom not just ignores it but actively flaunts it, because he thinks the best way to make a point he wants to make to a less experienced sub and dom is to do a literal explicit consent violation by doing a feigned consent violation with neither the sub nor the dom aware of it beforehand. The dumb kids in MahoAko are making a mess of consent because they don't know what they're doing and it makes me want to sit them down and explain RACK to them so they can go live their best kinky lives. The supposedly experienced dom ignoring an explicit safeword from a less experienced sub makes me want to, at bare minimum, throw him in prison for life, and thus any suggestion that NtK's mangaka is somehow better at consent than anyone else falls absolutely flat on its face from my perspective. (Don't even get me started on all the isekai with slavery, they're so bad at understanding not just the ethics but also the appeal of BDSM that I don't even consider them BDSM material at all, they're vanilla wish fulfillment at best.) |
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Takkun4343
 Posts: 1505 Location: Englewood, Ohio |
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This week's episode was oddly wholesome, at least for the type of show it is. I was expecting the other shoe to drop regarding Korisu's home life/relationship with her mother, and I'm so relieved that there wasn't any catch to be had with it.
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Hiroki not Takuya
Posts: 2523 |
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To the last part first, that may well be. To the first part, I did not intend making a good/bad contrast between lesbianism and sadism, just that her actions have been more indicative of the former and yes, those seem to be new feelings. I'm not convinced yet of her being an actual sadist because what she has said of her motivation does not line up with what I would understand leading to being a real sadist, though I suspect ReasonableDaemon could elucidate. Relative to the "feelings" vs "nature" distinction, what I am pointing out is that just because Utena has experienced excitement in a situation or when given stimulation doesn't necessarily make her X or reveal that she is X. To reasonably make those sort of assessments requires considering multiple behaviors and seeing a pattern, not just one. |
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ReasonableDaemon
Posts: 6 |
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Well, there's sort of two things going on here. For one, sadism is a much more complicated thing than it's made out to be in most media. It's not simply a matter of more pain inflicted = more pleasure, and it's not as if all types of pain are the same. I for instance don't actually get any pleasure purely from inflicting physical injury, I actually rather dislike it. However, what I do get pleasure from is how some submissives and/or masochists respond to physical pain (which arguably could be said to be more of a dominance thing, and that's how I usually think of it myself.) However, there's other types of pain that are more appealing.
From a certain point of view, denial, edging, ruining, and overstimulation are all forms of pain, even if they don't cause actual physical injury. Likewise humiliation or emotional pain can be a fun spice to a given scene, though that is another example of how it gets complicated, as I have my own standards of what counts as degrading and what does not, and anything that feels too degrading to me I won't do. (This, incidentally, is one of many reasons why proper kink negotiation is important, because just because I don't think something is degrading, that doesn't mean the submissive doesn't either. Or, alternatively, the sub may have a kink for degradation, and while I have my own blacklist of types of humiliation I won't do, there might be something that's on my whitelist that is still degrading enough to trigger the sub's fetish.) Secondly though, you'll note that I never once used the word sadist in my first post. I'm actually mostly in agreement that Utena isn't much of a sadist, even if I use a more expansive definition like I was talking about above. What she is, however, is a natural dominant. It's understandable to mix the two up, since in the her first showing she leaned pretty heavily on sadistic techniques, but you'll notice in subsequent showings there's often no pain inflicted at all. The real appeal for her is really the feeling of control, of being able to do whatever she wants, and a spanking or whipping or electrocution is just one expression of that control, not an end in and of itself. That's why just blindfolding Azul and toying with her gets her so excited. And getting back to the "feelings" vs "nature" distinction, that ability to find what makes someone submissive and poke and prod it in just the right way until they're putty in your hands is not something a beginner can manage by chance. The only ways to do it are either experience, which she doesn't have at the start of the series, or pure natural dominant talent, and in my opinion she's had the latter since the start. And as the series goes on, you'll see more and more examples of it as well. This also makes it obvious why she simply leaves after she wins: if she were truly a sadist only interested in causing as much pain as possible, it would make sense to capture Tres Magia and continue as long as she wanted to. But when the thrill is taking control, once you have control, merely perpetuating it isn't as enticing. She'd rather let them go, let them get even stronger, and then try and do it again the next time. |
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Takkun4343
Posts: 1505 Location: Englewood, Ohio |
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Kiwi: "So I had this really bad dream last night where Korisu-chan locked me up in horny jail..."
Utena: "That wasn't a dream, that actually happened." Kiwi: "So you were in a tub with your thing hangin' out?" Utena: "Now that was a dream." |
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yeehaw
 Posts: 426 |
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Wait, did the reviewer just casually call Lewis Caroll a pedophile?
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bassgs435
 Posts: 274 |
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And the manga creator and anime staff for MahoAko, yes. |
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TanyaTheEvil
 Posts: 331 |
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I am really liking the anime and I am all caught up on the manga as well. The anime really brings to life all the characters
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