Oh yeah I should...mine. Some of these will be long so I'll spoiler them. I'll post a week at a time, since I've done all these on tumblr (remember, if any of you are doing this there, tag them with "dpa month")
—How did you start reading DPA?
I’ve been a huge Pokemon fan for ages, literally longer than some of you have been alive, and I was really disappointed when Viz stopped translating Special and MPJ back in the day. So when I heard that a new series was coming out, I had to get my hands on it! I had no idea what it was like other than apparently it was pretty silly, but I liked volume 1 a lot.
But as it turned out, I’d read it before then! See, I had a CoroCoro issue that had a strange comic in it where “the boy hero” and “the new bad guy” battled on a rope bridge, so when volume 2 came out, it clicked. I’d read it before I read it!
—Favorite Hero
[SPOIL]This is easy—Mitsumi. Admittedly I didn’t like her at first, since she seemed kinda airheaded and weak. But when her past was revealed, especially her training methods and her fear of her own power, things made sense. Sending a Starly against an Onix lines up with how she was trained to come in at a disadvantage to make herself/her pokemon stronger. And her infrequent battling is because her strength and capacity for cruelty terrifies her. To seek victory in competition is to line with how she’d been raised to seek triumph at all cost and take what she needed from others. And she can’t give in to that, especially since she has what she needs now—and what she needs are things she could never take from anybody, because you can’t take friendship and love.
She tries to be normal, and I think her real self shines through more than she realizes. When she enthuses about the lottery, when she hangs out with Rowan (and gets drunk? I’ve never been sure if they were drunk or just reeeeeeally relaxed in the Skymin chapter), when Hareta does something silly, etc. But she doesn’t seem to think that she does. She’s trying to find her true self and it seems like that quest overtakes her sometimes so that she doesn’t see that she already has what she’s looking for.
There’s a single panel right near the end that nicely summarizes her tranformation. When she and the Galactics show up in the field, recall her position. She’s in front of them, leading them, and it’s such a powerful image. Even Cyrus, the man who she followed for so much of her life, is following her in turn. It’s become a turnaround, a real new beginning, and Mitsumi is ready to show them the way.
It’s a really inspirational story.[/SPOIL]
—Favorite Villain
[SPOIL]Well, Cyrus of course.
See, when I first played Pearl, I thought he was interesting and I felt bad for him, but I didn’t feel compelled to think much further.
But DPA is what hooked me. After his duality and inner turmoil was displayed as early as volume 2, it made me go back and examine the game. Surely I’d seen it there, but DPA made me *think* about it more, and soon, well…yeeeeeah.
Speaking just about his DPA incarnation, it’s pretty fascinating. He wants to create a world where “everyone can live smiling” yet says “emotions only cause pain”. He wants to battle and have fun, but can’t let himself, and in fact gets freaked out and paranoid when he finds himself enjoying something, with the reaction to destroy it as a distraction. He’s so terrified of what Hareta represents that he pursues Mitsumi—who he’d previously been content to let go—manipulates her back into joining them, and nearly destroys her life as a means of forcing Hareta to hate him. And why? Because a pure being can’t exist, Cyrus reasons, in an imperfect world. If the world can produce someone like Hareta, then it isn’t a lost cause. And if it isn’t, then everything Cyrus has ever believed and worked for is a falsehood. All those years, every crime he’s ever committed, for an illusion.
Of course, Hareta doesn’t relent. He can’t, not because of the world, but because of himself. And to hear that the boy still has sympathy for him, for a man who’s about to destroy the world, who’s done so many terrible things, that it stays Cyrus’s actions for several hours. He even tried to save Hareta himself—examine the panel where Saturn grabs him by the shoulder and tells him there’s no time. Cyrus is leaning away from him, and no time for what?
Of course, this and the subsequent scene revealing that Cyrus waited on the Spear Pillar for hours are almost comical in their futility. To do all that for someone he planned on killing from the getgo, something he even attempts upon their reunion, is an act of basically the heart of sentimentality.
And no matter what, his plan was for nothing. Everything he worked for was futile regardless, and he’s faced with the realization that he was no creator. He could only be a destroyer, wiping out everything with no hope of rebuilding it. And it terrifies him. The destruction of the chain had impacted him, but the chain could be rebuilt. But to know that the entire universe was about to end and it was entirely his fault, that his miscalculation and zeal, his absolute consumption with his own rightness, had blinded him to even the possibility of an error, shakes him to the very core. As much as he hates the flawed present world with every fiber of his being, even he would rather have that than nothing at all.
And to see that Hareta is fighting against all odds to save it, and to see that Mitsumi—who he’d given up for dead—has arrived with reinforcements, gives him a spark of hope. He’s still so overwhelmed that he can’t do much at all, and even can barely stand, but he shares his observation about Dialga’s powers, and he and Mitsumi lead their respective sides to aid Hareta in bringing an end to the destruction
Between Hareta’s will, Mitsumi’s emotion (though she and Hareta seem to switch these attributes at times), and Cyrus’s intelligence, they embody the three spirits of Sinnoh. I’m not sure if this was intentional, but it seems to fit.
Cyrus never recants his position. It’s entirely likely that he still believes that he was right. But he has something he’s never had before—hope. Examine the things he tells Mitsumi during volumes 4 and 5. That everyone is alone in the world, that friendship is a lie, that everyone must take what they need to survive. He raised her to believe these things because he himsef believed them. DPA does’t delve into his past like the games do, but in a way it doesn’t have to. We know so much from just that. This is more than a plan to him. This is his entire life that he has to reevaluate in the end.
And through accepting that, the story becomes so incredibly powerful. When he dissolves Team Galactic, it’s the last strike of his old life. He can move on now, something Mitsumi—now in the role of mentor—had already done. The two of them switch roles by the end, and the story of how that plays out is pretty much the story of the series. Hareta may be the main character, but he doesn’t really change at all. He’s almost a plot catalyst, with Mitsumi and Cyrus taking the primary impact of the storyline.
Of course, I could go on all day about Cyrusfeels.[/SPOIL]
—Favorite Chapter
Volume 5, Chapter 5—“Bonds Connect Across Space-Time…”
It really brings everything that’s happened so far to a head. Hareta’s quest for Dialga comes to an explosive end as he puts his life on the line to protect all existance, Mitsumi comes to a leadership role, using everything that’s happened to go between the sides and command some of the most powerful trainers in the region, as well as finally see her former overlord for the desperate young man he really is. And of course that’s from Cyrus coming to grips with his own imperfection, that everything he worked for was literally for nothing and now his only hope, the only hope for everything, lies in the boy he previously saw as his biggest threat. And that he’s not alone. None of them are, and they all put aside their differences for the greater good—the real greater good.
Plus it’s got massive TBHshipping. I frickin’ love TBHshipping. And here, Jupiter’s aid is vital, so that’s great too. Jupiter is woefully underused in everything but DPA so I love how well she’s used here.
And let’s face it, the scene where Palkia smashes the Master Ball is a hilarious way to avoid a capture. The part in the show where the crazed fisherman throws a Master Ball at the Whiscash that catches it on its tongue without triggering it is one of the funniest moments in the entire series, and this reminded me of that a lot.
I’m glad that the series continued from here, but it would have made a satisfying end if this had been the finale. It really had almost everything it needed.
—Things That I Wanted To See In DPA That Didn’t Happen
The number one thing that I wanted to see was the battle between Hareta and Cyrus. They never really did have one, not for fun like they were after. I thought for sure it would be the subject of the epilogue. And it really sort of breaks my heart that it didn’t happen, though of course it still could someday.
Other things I wanted to see:
-Hareta vs Volkner
-Rotomtimes! Bringing the one known figure from Charon’s past into play would have been ideal in a series focused around the power of friendship. And it would have made the spongy scientist’s denial of such things all the more horrifying.
-Cyrus’s grandfather. They go right near his house, after all, and the mood whiplash that would have inevitably unfolded (bemoaning his grandson’s spiral into madness, followed by, say, embarassing baby pictures!) would have fit perfectly into DPA’s storytelling style.
-Some back story for the commanders. We get nothing from any incarnation, and that’s disappointing.
-More Cynthia! She seriously doesn’t do much at all aside from flirt with Mitsumi and sit on a Galactic grunt.
-Include Looker’s Croagunk even if just for a single panel. It plays a relatively pivotal role in the game, after all.
-Regigigas having a continued purpose. It seemed to just *exist* after Hareta got it and didn’t really do anything befitting its status.
-Something about Hareta’s mother. Is she alive? Where is she?
Maybe Ihara has some answers. Idk.
—Favorite Pokemon
Hareta’s Regigigas. Though I hate how it was handled with its bizarre power and importance drop, it had the most distinct personality. Piplup was prideful and Minun was happy, but Regigigas was derpy and loyal and got flustered easily and in general took things in stride.
In general, that is. It tends to think in very simple terms, and its first impression of Mitsumi was that she was an enemy, so when it saw that she was overpowering Hareta, it tried to attack her directly. It was pretty gutsy of it to do so, and only comes off as cruel because we have a deeper understanding of the situation than dimwitted Regigigas could comprehend. For its level of understanding, it was the most logical conclusion.
—faaaaancasting!
Though I have different headvoices for Cyrus and Jupiter than they sounded like on the show, I can’t really affix any specific actors to them (though I do like the idea of Melodee Speviak as Jupiter).
Saturn though…Usually I don’t have him sounding like this, but in DPA I can’t shake the idea that he should sound like Zim. Go back to the scene at the lake in volume 3 and just try to read it, now that I’ve shared this with you, without imagining him addressing Cyrus as “my Tallest”.
Koya came to me almost immediately. When he talks to Mitsumi in the hallway, damn man. Ken Ichijouji’s voice is a requirement there, specifically Emperor Ken.
And that's the first week's worth! BTW, if anyone could alert Ihara to this it would be awesome. He's on Twitter as @ihashige
