Is this it? Is this really all Fridays will have to offer? I know Frieren Friday was guaranteed from the start, but that doesn’t mean other shows shouldn’t try! Oh well, let’s just get this over with.
Dark Moon: The Blood Altar
Sooha transfers into a prestigious school known for not allowing vampires in. Our heroine is overjoyed, because she thinks she can finally be herself. Y’see, she’s not a vampire… she’s just… she’s just… uh, what is she? The anime won’t tell us yet. All we know is that she has super strength, so people naturally assume she’s a vampire and thus discriminate against her. So her airtight logic is that since this school filters out vampires, no one will mistake her for one! Guess what? There be vampires. And immediately — before she’s even finished setting up her room — a cadre of vampire pretty boys takes an interest in Sooha.
Apparently, this show is based on some Korean boyband and their (to me) utterly terrible music, which explains the group dynamic. Even so, I never really understood the need for any sort of harem, especially when they single out one of the pretty boys as the guy. Heli’s the one who meets Sooha first, the one who gets the most one-on-one time, the one who gets to embrace her, the one who shares his secret first, so on and so forth. He just screams, “I’M THE PRIMARY LOVE INTEREST.” So what’s the point? Why not just focus on one dude and tell a single decent love story instead of a bunch of shallow, underdeveloped ones?
Instead, we get a bunch of boys that all feel the same except for the designated tsundere bitch boy in the corner. Solon’s the isolationist. He wants his pretty boy friends to himself, so he keeps trying to speak for them even though it’s blatantly obvious they’re against him. Why is he so dead set against Sooha? Because it’s just too dangerous to get involved with anyone outside of our group! Uh, so why are you even at this school then? Do you even hear the words that are coming out of your mouth? Just go hide in the mountains and be a hermit.
Nevertheless, Solon has to put up a token resistance against Sooha even though his efforts are absolutely pointless. Why? Because every single pretty boy confess to feeling a strange attraction towards Sooha. Again, what a strange narrative move. Not only is she looking for real friends, the point of these harem shows is to develop a true love connection, right? Well nothing screams authentic to me like feeling as though you’re under a spell. Seriously, if I asked my wife why she married me, and she said, “I dunno, it was like I was mind controlled,” I’d be pretty disappointed.
But yeah, that’s the first episode. No real conflict or anything. Just one super strong girl meeting and befriending a bunch of vampires.
HELL MODE: The Hardcore Gamer Dominates in Another World with Garbage Balancing
A “hardcore” gamer is disappointed when one of his games comes to an end after three mere years. Darn. He really wants a game that never ends, though. I actually play a couple of my own. As long as they keep adding decent story updates, I’ll keep chugging along. The problem with our protagonist, however, is that he’s only interested in the shittiest part about ongoing games: the exp grind. There are several ways that a non-competitive game can keep a player’s interest. You can, like I mentioned, keep adding to the story. This is my favorite option. I’ve been playing FFXIV for over a decade just for the story. I log in at the start of every expansion, run through the main story quests, then log off until the next expansion drops. What you can also do, however, is add a loot grind. With every new patch, you have new raid bosses to kill. Then after you kill them, you pray to the RNG gods for loot drops that will benefit your character. After months and months of painstakingly killing the same set of raid bosses over and over, you’ll finally earn yourself a full set of gear… so you can do it all over again when the next big update drops. This isn’t my cup of tea, but tons of gamers love it. This is what hardcore MMO players live for. Finally, there are shitters like our protagonist who just want to grind, grind, and grind for EXP. Not for a meaningful story, or even shiny gear that you can brag about, but simply EXP for character levels. Sheesh. This harkens back to the old days with games like Lineage II. I never played it myself, but I hear that it’s not very fun. But hold on, maybe once hero experiences hell mode first hand, he’ll undergo some character development.
During character creation, our hero chooses to be a summoner, but that comes with a price: you have to start out at rock bottom. Unlike a lot of isekai protagonists, our hero isn’t reborn into a filthy rich family. He isn’t a noble who starts off with land, property, and an oddly devoted maid who would kill herself for him. Nope, he is now Allen, the first son of a destitute family of serfs. All he can summon at first are pests like insects and rodents, but he eventually works his way to bigger, better creatures. But that’s not the important part. As Allen grows up, he has to watch his mother and father toil everyday in the fields just to feed him. When his mother gives birth to a second son, our isekai protagonist comes to a startling revelation: I might have been the suckiest loser to ever suck in my previous life, but I really wanna help my new parents out! He actually loves his new family. Good for him! But on the other hand, man, why didn’t he have this realization with his previous parents? Were they abusive? Did they neglect him? I mean, kudos to undergoing a bit of character development, but I’ll never get over how isekai protagonists blithely reject their previous life. Yeah, it sucked, but whose fault was that, hmmmm? Why were you broke, uneducated, and romantically inept, hmmm? Ah well. I hope his parents don’t tragically die or whatever. But other than that, I can’t really say I give a shit about Allen.
