The Ruler of Nabari #11 — Censorship Unleashed
June 15th, 2008
Mmmmmm black bars.
Impressions:
Alright. I’m tired of waiting for a decent raw.
Good lord. When did giant black boxes covering absolutely everything become the new way to censor things? Can’t we just have a conveniently place tree branch? Or how about some shrubbery? What’s wrong with mosaics? I’m pretty sure I’d prefer them to just blacking out 4/5ths of the screen. Some of it was really silly too, since they drifted gore into the blackened areas as they moved the stills. It also did a great job of killing drama on key scenes, like when Gau was slashed. Nothing says "noble sacrifice" like a creepy disembodied floating head held aloft on a sea of black.
While we talking about that, twice this episode people managed to duck in front of sword slashes. As anybody who has ever played baseball can tell you, the power is at the tip of the the thing being swung, not a few feet closer. Besides which, with a full swing like that, Gau/Raikou’s mom should have been cut in half. Or I guess Raikou/his uncle were just swinging a good couple feet away from Raimei/his mother and were planning on whiffing entirely. Let’s also not mention how much easier and less stupid it would have been to just tackle someone, especially for his mother, moving from behind uncle to in front of him in order to be a martyr. And all this ignores the fact that these massively trained ninja warriors who can catch thrown knives in their fingertips can’t sense when another person is clumsily running around them.
Alright, a bit off track there, but the whole interposed sword-slash thing is one of my most hated cliches because of how damn little sense it makes. It’s up there with amnesia for things I want to disappear from plots everywhere and never ever ever return because 999 times out of a thousand, they’re used terribly.
Anyway, it was a relatively solid episode, and we got some brief decent action, so I can’t complain on that front. It was at least much better than the last 7 or so, but Raikou’s past kind of annoyed me. Alright, he’s not evil, he was just dragged along when his uncle got it into his crazy mind to usurp the clan for being too peaceful and ended up killing Raikou’s parents. In the ensuing power struggle of the factions fighting, Raimei walked in on Raikou finishing off dear old uncle which… A clearly indicating B… meant that Raikou had obviously killed everybody there. OOooooookay. Not quite certain the logical jump there or how Raimei missed all the other people fighting, but whatever.
Still, I could use a bit more antagonism here. I get the feeling that the end of the show is going to be every single person teaming up and going out to Denny’s fighting off the thingy in Miharu since every single person is evil for only an episode or two before their tragic and misunderstood past is revealed. Kotarou’s the evilest recurring character so far that has done anything besides go out for drinks, which is only really evil if he orders a dirty martini.
Preview:
Great. Back to the yaoi.
Posted in Nabari no Ou | 7 Comments »
Moar liek “yaoi unleashed’ amirite?