Wednesday, December 4, 2019

TWGOK CPT, Round 2, Match 4: Dokurou vs Shiori

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Today's Match is: Dokurou vs Shiori

Additional Information: Current Sub-Bracket, Overall Standings


But first, before we move onto the character profiles, let's announce the results from last time:

With an unprecedented, nail-bitingly close final score of 18-17, Ayumi wins by a hair at the finish line, and moves onto the Top Eight.

With Apollo now out of the tournament, I present you with her full icon, as well as the original art source from which it is cropped.

Now, without further ado... today's match:


Dokurou (Watchman)


Dokurou, the Watchman, literal girl of Keima's dreams, and... spoiler statute of limitations has run out, right? No? Well, if you've finished the manga, you can probably come up with a final title.

Dokurou Skull first appeared in the first chapter, and afterwards made frequent recurring appearances in her role as Chief of the Loose Souls Squad. Dokurou-in-the-flesh, on the other hand, first appeared in Heart of Jupiter Arc, during the cryptic dream sequences in the beginning, before formally debuting in her arc. As she's a pretty late-game character, it's natural that she doesn't really have merchandising or other cross-media appearances. She's still got some fan-art though.

Dokurou is very distinctive as a character, with a whole host of different aspects that make her unique and noteworthy. There are lots of interesting bread crumbs strewn throughout the story that you can link together, and I once made a post just about that. Rather than rehash that post, I'll be brief and just note —holy crap when she fights it's freaking brutal. There's the shock value of seeing gruesome violence in a series that's mostly had bloodless combat. There's the narrative purpose, where it connects to Dokurou's background and motivation for this entire arc. But what really sticks with me is just how impressively composed the scene where she fights the Vintage agents is. Dokurou's savage, raw fighting style. Vintage's incomprehensible screaming and panic rendered in a scratchy, alien alphabet. The way flashes of gunfire are what light the scene. How the cave's water is so muddy and dark that it's impossible to tell how much of it is blood. It's tense, frightening, and disturbing... and I love it.


Shiori Shiomiya


Shiori, the shy librarian (or shy-brarian, if you will), amateur novelist, Goddess Host of Minerva, and fourth conquest target.

Shiori has had an interesting history of popularity and appearances, being something of the original break-out popular character of the manga. Despite that, she took quite a while to make her re-appearance in Goddess Arc, might also be why the magazine version comes with the little comment: 'finally she appears' in 'FLAG. 124 Loverary'. Aside from pretty steady manga appearances afterwards, her initial conquest arc was expanded to 3 episodes in the anime, and she's got character songs and character covers which are worth a listen. Also as a Season One conquest target, some merchandising. Oh, and her Japanese VA is Kana Hanazawa, which fun bit of TWGOK trivia, an audio recording of her reading chapter 6 of the manga was included as limited edition bonus thing for the anime dvds.

There's a lot to love about Shiori. I adore her character interactions with Keima, in particular her story writing. I love the way anime has her say "Baka" and "Aho", with that brief build up of air, followed by the Balloon-like "pop!" of "Baka!", and the Tea-kettle wavering of her "Ahoooo!". It's so distinctive and endearing. Finally, I like the small touch of how, when Shiori resigns herself to the fact she doesn't have the courage to speak to others and laments that her voice can't reach anyone, Keima pulls her out of the darkness, and tells her "I'll give you the courage", directly replying to her, and showing that her voice can reach people.


So there we go: two key conquest targets, though separated quite far in time. Will Dokurou pull off a second upset? Can Shiori join Ayumi as the next Goddess Host in the top Eight?

So go ahead, cheer on your favourites, convince others to vote with you, and share in the sympathy when your favourites lose (it's a 32-character tournament, so by definition 31 characters aren't going to win, and half won't make it past the first round). Take the time (particularly in the first round) as a quasi-character-spotlight, giving you a reason to discuss, praise, and post relevant character fan-art.

Now Vote!


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Submitted December 04, 2019 at 10:11AM by Aquason https://ift.tt/364GEQT

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