This is the question: Inevitability, or innovation?
That is to say, the whole anime/card-game declaration of a super power really does seem an amusingly inevitable innovation of an inevitable and probably overused joke.
Or perhaps it is not a question of innovation per se, but simple jealousy, rationalized and potentially with formed reaction, because I didn’t think of it first.
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Weiner Zach. Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. 16 April 2015.
No, really, we got nothin’ on this one, except to say that there are testifiable merits in binge-watching. In truth, having to wait from week to week in order to follow the story can be trying; there is a difference in the way these stories are told.
Which stands out because there are many who would advise aspiring writers toward what seems at first glance a cookie-cutter assertion of in medias res, and each with their own variations on just how it should be done. And the market numbers driving this outlook are most certainly straightforward; there is a reason certain forms strongly resembling tropes work so well.
Nor is the alternative in this case without its tropes and clichés. But where the shape and rhythm can slip by unnoticed in a quick hit like FLCL, the early episodes of Durarara!! can try the patience. They’re not bad episodes, but structured to a specific purpose.
Nonetheless, for so nearly sycophantic an ode to Ikebukuro, the Brain’s Base team really did work out a functional, compelling story that at some point genuinely overcomes the absurdity that few storytelling media can create. Headless love, and such. Yeah. Never mind. Just, you know, watch. When you’ve got the time. It’s worth it.
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Image note: Top―Major players in Durarara!! (L-R): Izaya Orihara, Masaomi Kida, Mikado Ryugamine, Anri Sonohara, Shizuo Hewajima. Left―Just another one of those. Don’t look at us, we just found this thing along the way.
You know, we could almost consider this one a Valentine’s Day joke, too, but you’d have to click the link to figure out why.
And, hey, would that be a trick up the sleeve or an ace in the hole?
(Detail of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, by Zach Weiner, 13 February 2015.)
The phrase helps, some days.
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Image note: Frames from FLCL epsiode 4, “Full Swing”, despite the erroneous filename.
This Is 