Super Eyepatch Wolf (anime youtuber)

As one youtube comment mentions, "these dialogues sound like they were written by Tommy Wiseau."

At any rate, this video was… something. Hearing Patch release all his pent-up frustration was both darkly hilarious and sad.

Like who the eff thought that players would want to go through hours of repetitive and stupid quests just to learn one move? Twice? How did Suzuki not consider that players might be bummed to have waited 19 years for a game that not only doesn’t conclude the story but doesn’t even advance it? What… Wha happun?

Comedy answer - Yakuza happened.

I've heard that the comparisons to Yakuza are a little misplaced since they're not trying to be the same thing.

They do have one important similarity in that they have an open world space where you can get into fights and do goofy side activities, but Shenmue is trying for a more meditative, slow-paced experience while Yakuza is a more melodramatic, high-stakes action story.

And what if that's exactly the problem? What if a meditative experience is very much incompatible with the sort of open-world design that Shenmue pioneered?

Going off SWE's impressions of the game, I don't necessarily think that's the problem with Shenmue 3, or at least, it has a lot of other issues that are unrelated and could have otherwise been fixed. Having repetitive unskippable cutscenes that play out constantly, terrible dialogue and voice acting, bland characterization, a poorly designed combat system with horrible input lag, etc aren't the result of wanting to create that type of experience, or at least they don't need to be.

Edited by Draghinazzo on Jul 25th 2020 at 3:59:37 PM

From everything I’ve seen of Shemue 3, the problem is that it’s just not well made at all.

Like it’s just crap, a lot of it is. Yakuza is at the very least well refined.

Edited by slimcoder on Jul 25th 2020 at 1:03:28 AM

Well, it's more like Shenmue was a highly experimental and ambitious game when it originally came out before a lot of this stuff was worked out properly. So even if it was kinda boring and had major issues, you could argue it was at least something different that offered some value to the medium.

But in 2019, after all the leaps and bounds the industry made in the following years of iterating, you can't just make the exact same thing without at least making some refinements to improve and modernize it. It doesn't have that "wow" factor anymore.

Edited by Draghinazzo on Jul 25th 2020 at 4:03:41 AM

The combat sounds awful. Why would anyone think that input lag is a good feature?

Not a Patch video (it’s by Thoughty2), but a nice complement to his Fake Martial Arts episode, I think. Thoughty uses some of the same examples too.

Edited by Lyendith on Aug 22nd 2020 at 12:38:39 PM

Are you tired of SEW’s wrestling videos yet? Well I’m not.

The time about the beauty of heels.

Patch is back to manga and anime for the first time in… forever? with a reevaluation of Bleach, as he considers his old video on the subject poorly done.

Edited by Lyendith on Sep 26th 2020 at 6:02:23 PM

I haven't watched the video yet, but the main issue with his old video was more the factual errors about popularity rankings and making conjectures based on his personal opinion about kubo's artistic choices (like saying that the lack of backgrounds was a sign that he stopped caring about the manga). I will maintain he was always right about Bleach losing its luster and becoming a worse series, I stopped really being invested in it during the latter part of hueco mundo.

EDIT: In fact, watching the video, he's actually more generous to the series than I would have been.

Reading the comments on twitter it seems like a lot of Bleach fans are still not happy with it, even though he specifically said that his opinion shouldn't be taken as fact and he doesn't want people using the video as a bludgeon against people who like Bleach.

Edited by Draghinazzo on Sep 26th 2020 at 3:20:25 PM

I think the video is extremely on point. My only disagreement is with his comment that the final face-off against Aizen feels "desperate and tense, and exactly as a final showdown should."

Maybe it works better on a reread, but back when it was coming out, I felt zero narrative tension. By that point, Aizen had become so obviously, ridiculously powerful, that only the the obviously, ridiculously powerful protagonist would be able to defeat him. And that Ichigo obviously would defeat him. Rendering all the other characters' attempts to defeat him totally weightless, and leading right into the anti-climax talked about in the video.

He's also right that fans need to be willing to criticize products they like, precisely because you dislike what it became.

That's what I mean, I still like Bleach even though it has issues but I wouldn't do something like that.

Edited by VeryMelon on Sep 26th 2020 at 12:16:39 PM

I binge read the series on a whim years ago and even on a first time read with no weekly pace to get there it still felt very emotionally unsatisfying and weightless to me as well.

To be honest my main issue isn't even that they disagree and try to offer counterarguments, but rather that a lot of them seem to insist that he's still spreading misinformation. And maybe in some cases that might be true, but to me, it more broadly reads as them disagreeing with his subjective assessment and them offering alternate and more flattering reads of the material is just ignoring the fact that SWE did not find the overall story, characterization, battles etc emotionally or thematically satisfying on a fundamental level and tried to offer reasons why that is. They are free to disagree but that doesn't mean he is spreading misinformation, that's just having a different opinion, which he was explicit about the fact it shouldn't be taken as a definitive take or an objective truth.

EDIT: Also, that music drop when he starts talking about the thousand year blood war arc was so good. Great music choice and editing.

Edited by Draghinazzo on Sep 26th 2020 at 4:31:45 PM

I must say I laughed when he pointed all the similarities between the Soul Society and Hueco Mundo arcs. I knew their structure was similar, but I didn’t realize it was to that extent.

I’m still fond of Ulquiorra and Grimmjow as characters though. And honestly, I thought the first half of the Fullbringer arc was a badly needed breath of fresh air that was kinda ruined by the return of the Shinigami. Expanding on the existence of other "temporary shinigami" like Ichigo wasn’t a bad idea either.

I agree. I was glad to see the focus shift back to Ichigo and his friends. I agree that the fullbringers were mostly undeveloped, but I felt that bringing back the shinigami to resolve the conflict was unsatisfying.

As I recall the Soul Reapers arrival at the end of Xcution was something executively mandated as Kubo was told to hurry up & bring in the Reapers again. Which if true does add in how sudden their inclusion is & how all the arrived Reapers are the most popular from a popularity poll standpoint.

Which does add in a sad precedent. Every time Kubo tried to majorly focus on Ichigo’s group of friends, he is always eventually told to bring back the Soul Reapers & they wind up stealing all the focus as a result.

unlike with Hiro Mashima, we know Kubo suffered from Executive Meddling and burnout, which is why i can excuse Bleach's quality drop (at least some of it), but not do the same with Fairy Tail

x5

I think that's rather dismissive of the criticism directed at Super Eyepatch Wolf. It's not some misinformation but a lot. And that always has been the biggest issues of his videos. It was the biggest issue of the previous Bleach video and several others. Critics of Super Eyepatch Wolf have pointed out that Super Eyepatch Wolf often gets stuff wrong that goes beyond surface level knowledge.

The Gell-Mann-Amnesia-Effect is in full effect here. If you are not knowledgeable about a topic, then you think Super Eyepatch Wolf is well informed, but if you are well-versed in a topic, then you know that he's talking bullshit. Someone once pointed out that his video on heroes isn't any worse quality-wise than many of his other videos. But the reason that it is regarded as one of the worst was because this time, his viewer base was pretty knowledgeable about a topic and able to call him out. That's not the case with many of his videos.

And here, Bleach fans of course are more knowledgeable than him and of course, they will call him out on the wrong information, he bases his arguments on. Like with at least two thirds of his "star fingers" there was foreshaodwing and set-up even in earlier arcs. The limiters or Yumichika's Shikai were set way before the reveals. And some stuff is completely wrong, like Yhwach having always controlled Ichigo.

Not the case, actually. The Shinigami arriving was set-up. The Fullbring arc also was focusing on Ichigo always thinking he and only he can protect everyone. The arc showed that without his allies he would be screwed and that he has to trust his friends. Admiteddly, the events of the final arc make Ichigo trusting Soul Society rather ironic.

I don't necessarily disagree that SWE has had a big problem with misinformation in his videos in the past. I suppose it's also possible that there's more misinformation in this video that passed me by, I've read Bleach in its entirety but it's been a while so there might be stuff I forgot.

Edited by Draghinazzo on Sep 26th 2020 at 11:02:00 AM

Yeah, that's the other side of the coin. Then again, Twitter and youtube comments aren't exactly the place for profound arguments. They can be, but often than not they're not. The subreddit Bleach could be, but when the anime ended, it started to die until the end of the end of the manga when it really died. Then, its cadavar started to rot when the novels were finished and now its infested with maggots. I'm just glad though that this video won't be treated like the gospel of truth the previous one was. Opinions are certainly more divided on this one.

As for his critcism, it's true Bleach wasn't much of a strategy manga. Though when the focus was more on tactics, it did pretty well. But I think that Bleach was never about that. I once read a comment that put it down pretty well. Bleach is not a technical manga, but rather a poetic one. It's about clashes of ideologies, symbolism and emotions than tactics and strategies. They made a comparison with Hunter x Hunter, cause both had a villain with the ability to see (and change?) the future. Wheras Hunter x Hunter focused on the technical aspects, the ins and outs of the ability and how it worked to a minute detail, Bleach focused on what the ability meant and how it represented the idea of fatalism and the fight against inevitible deity.

Neither approach is better or worse though given how the manga community can be obsessed with hard facts, numbers, or power levels, the former approach is more liked, I think. Like, in any given manga community I've seen countless analyses on power, strength or abilities but comparatively little analysis on the psychology or symbolism of fights, characters or abilities.

I think when it comes to Bleach whether you like it or not boils down to four/five factors:

- How much you care about strategy or themes in a fight

- How well you can connect with the characters

- If you are "4th level" reader (that's a term coined by Kubo about reader's ability and motivation to find the very hidden bits and pieces of foreshadowing and set up)

- How well you can keep up with the trolling

- If you are more lenient with the later parts because of Kubo's illness and the existence of novels.

Edit: Did you remove the later parts of your post? Now it looks like I'm talking to ghosts .

Edited by bandersnitch on Sep 26th 2020 at 7:16:04 AM

Sorry about that, I thought maybe my post sounded a bit too confrontational and that maybe I was not being entirely fair to judge what was a valid criticism of the video and what wasn't since my knowledge of bleach plot points is a bit rusty, so i edited my post.

EDIT: Personally, I am lenient with the story to an extent since I know kubo was literally killing himself working on it and a lot of what happened wasn't necessarily his fault but the combination of exhaustion/creative block and editorial suggestions steering the story in maybe not the best direction.

Edited by Draghinazzo on Sep 26th 2020 at 11:26:38 AM

Not sure why you edited your post, you made a fair point.

Anyway, I think that’s what Patch was getting at. The lack of strategy and reliance on new powers popping up wasn’t a problem when the fights told a story he could get invested in between characters he knew well enough… but it became one when the fights started to involve more and more characters he knew very little about or that didn’t really have personal/ideological stakes in those fights (at least not ones that were developed).

And it’s hard to deny there were a lot of fights like that in the post-SS parts.

I think you largely misunderstood the criticism towards the technical aspects of the fights. I think SEW actually agrees a fight doesn't need to be super tactical to be good. He mentioned a lot how much of he liked the Soul Society arc, including the fights, multiple of which he praised a lot, even though they largely still lacked in this department. The problem arrives when there isn't anything else to drive the fight forward. And that is the problem with the latter fights, the characters weren't developed enough to make the emotional aspect of the fight satisfying, thus the fact the fight is also quite bad technically is more obvious as there is little else you can look at.

Also, just because you want to be lenient due the author begin sick doesn't mean you are able to enjoy a story. Like, yeah, it suck the guy was being overworked (as it suck the manga industry often overwork its talents) and he definitively doesn't deserve a lot of the hate he receives from the haters. But the story is still boring and disappointing in the end of the day.

Speaking for myself, I remember realizing around the Kempachi fight that the fights were actually quite bad and nonsensical. But I still enjoyed the manga quite a lot, because the characters were interesting enough to keep me going. I didn't care too much Kempachi and Ichigo's skill levels were inconsistent and weird the writing surrounding it was good enough. But then the Arrancars were almost universally boring and I stopped caring. I mean, to be fair to Kubo, he did make the 2 most important Arrancar interesting enough, but it is still a massive downgrade compared to the Soul Society.

Edited by Heatth on Sep 26th 2020 at 12:11:51 PM