Writing is pretty much the same as magic

[aliaspseudonym]

Alright! The next few episodes compose a disorganized excuse for a story arc where shobu beats a bunch of dudes and wins a junior championship; this'll get him in with the 'temple' who we have established are BAD GUYS and who hopefully have more threatening opponents than these guys.

Also, I'm switching critics ^-^ We're going with Umberto Eco now. We read an article from him about Casablanca explaining what makes a cult film. He explains the idea of a 'magic frame' or as he also calls is an intertextual archetype. A magic frame is a simple character type, or scene (or anything you can use in a story, really) that bypasses most of the brain and speaks directly to the viscera. In this way you can create something high and admirable even with such a fragmented film as Casablanca (and it is fragmented. It's almost like the writer's couldn't decide what genre they wanted to do... so they simply brought in all of them. And with so much magic jammed into one movie it couldn't help but become a cult object.)

Examples are abundant. The hero stands alone in a high place, staring into space as the wind blows: a powerful symbol of solitary strength (someone in class pointed out that this even gets used with the heroine in Pride and Prejudice.) The cornered and doomed army rallies one final time and charges into the thick of the enemy to die in a blaze of glory. The bitter, battle-hardened man finds hope and redemption in the love of a woman (this is the default plot for action movies.) And, taking one from Casablanca itself, the sly and world-weary hero redeems himself by giving up the chance to be with the woman he loves so that she can be happy. Or, if it's a line, I'll be endlessly quoted. Memes are about evenly divided into things than invoke this sort of magic and things that are just stupid-funny (the ultimate gesture of defiance in 300 being an example of the first, and the terrible line readings from Troll 2 being the second.)

All magic frames invoke a sort of deja vu in the viewer or reader. You've seen them a million times before, but what makes them magic rather than merely cliche is that, even if you'd never seen it happen, the scene would work. There's a good reason that the old stories are so old; they are a part of us.

Anyway now I attempt to apply this to a children's card game >.> The plot is largely preserved from the original japanese series and I suspect Eco will not be kind to it. I should mention that no matter how dumb the plot gets the dubbers have managed to keep the show entertaining by making fun of it and with clever announcer banter.

Shobu enters a junior championship, apparently his first. He has a pointless duel with a huge gorilla looking guy. It is mentioned that people might seen shobu's deck and use that knowledge against him but goes nowhere and shobu just destroys the guy so there was no point.

We then blur through the prelims, shobu winning all of his matches easily.

His next opponent is... a small monkey person on stilts. This is kinda funny, I guess, but the dumb-to-funny ratio is unacceptably high. No archetypes have really emerged, except Shobu as 'the hero.' Shobu's match with the money (who is apparently related to that gorilla) is actually unexpectedly tense and manages to generate some interest. Shobu wins, obviously.

Next episode we kinda ignore the tournament to focus on a guy with big blue hair. He is the reigning champion of something or other. He is going to have an exhibition match with a chinese guy who has a fried rice theme and makes constant food puns.

Blue hair makes his entrance by jumping off a diving board and sort of gently floating to the ground in front of the dueling table. They're trying to invoke some kind of archetype but I just wondered if he was supposed to be able to fly for some reason.

The point of this episode is that the chinese guy uses fire cards just like Shobu does, and in fact seems to have EXACTLY the same deck as shobu. Thus, watching the match, shobu is metaphorically dueling with the blue-hair guy through the chinese guy. It's a fairly close game but there's never any doubt that blue-hair will crush the chinese guy. Shobu takes his metaphorical defeat well and jumps into the dueling area to announce that he's going to challenge blue-hair. Blue hair is sorta trying to invoke the Bored Champion who has reached the top of the game and secretly wishes he had a rival of his level to make it fun again, but he doesn't pull it off very well.


UGH EPISODE SEVEN. Worst episode so far. In this one, shobu is set to battle the red-headed loser from before. Unfortunatly shobu has already beaten this guy even though he cheated that time. They try to establish him as a threat this time by having him... cheat more. Seriously his best attempt is an idiotic snake-dance that we're supposed to believe hypnotizes shobu. Platic Cow has to seriously drag out the first part of the episode and cram a million filler jokes in everywhere to save this one. Overall they fail to invoke anything but mild nausea in me.

Next episode next fight. Shobu's next opponent is that green-haired guy who lost to the evil guy earlier. And has TOTALLY NOT had his soul or will to play sucked out by the way, I guess we've just given up on that plot point. Shobu has not actually beaten this guy so there's a chance for some tension going it, but it never comes to anything.

The real tension in this episode is on green-hair's side. The EVIL temple people want him to switch his deck for a different one (which is cheating and means throwing aside all the soul-searching he's done since his defeat at the evil guys hands) because they don't think he can defeat shobu with his own deck. This is pulled off fairly effectively and even right up until the end. It invokes an Important Choice and until the very end I wasn't sure which way he would swing. He chooses to fight fair and on his own terms, which means he'll get kicked out of the temple but means that whether he wins or loses at least he fought with honour.

Unfortunately after going through all that he doesn't even get a decent shot at beating shobu >.> The duel went exactly according to the established formula. Kind of a let down. Shobu makes friends with greenhair afterward, which is kinda an anime cliche but I'll let it slide because, after all, greenhair has just made a tough decision to play fair, so it's not like it was the defeat that somehow caused him to change sides (as is all too often the case.)

And that's all for the tournament! Shobu wins, what a surprise. Next he has to go deal with this 'temple.' Maybe we'll even get a REASON for why they're so evil >.>

Comments

[feathertail]

They're evil because THIS! IS! DUEL MASTERS!!!