WHAT HEY

I CAN'T BELIEVE WE STOPPED YESTERDAY RIGHT BEFORE AVAN'S INEXPLICABLE RETURN???

I'M LOSING MY FUCKING MIND

Me watching AF get increasingly more attached to Avan while a brick sails through the air like

HOW HARD HAVE YOU ALL BEEN WAITING FOR THIS

I FEEL LIKE A FUCKING CLOWN

it's frankly astounding that Avan coming back doesn't suck ass

I LITERALLY GRABBED HOLLY AND STARTED SHAKING HER

we paused to cook steak for dinner and have spent this entire time yelling at each other like, WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN HE'S NOT DEAD

when you mentioned where you stopped yesterday I was cackling in my heart

WHERE THE FUCK HAVE YOU BEEN, SIR

oh, you know,

around,

but yeah it's fucking incredible that they successfully land it, he haunts the narrative so well up to this point that suddenly unhaunting it could so easily have been a letdown

Hyunkel like, no, Leona, hiding in a corner is exactly how I'm truly feeling right now

love to see Killvearn losing his cool

honestly, bold of Killvearn to ever think that he could kill Avan when not even Avan could kill Avan

Hyunkel's so fucking cool

for a human, that must be a new record!!!

he's so goofy, I love him

He's having a great time having an adventure tire with the kids

we've stopped for today because Holly has toku tuesday, so now I am alone with my thoughts just like, man. can't believe I rotated Avan in my mind so quickly that it retroactively changed the course of history so that he didn't die

yeah i didn't realize HOW deep you were in the hole of avan setting fire to your brain chemistry until you were gonna do the hair meme with him

and then I was like oh AF doesn't know

oh this is gonna be GREAT

YEAH

I'm witnessing this live and it's glorious

anyway, here's a fun fact, I googled Avan for reference for the hairstyle meme, never imagining for a moment that there was any risk of spoilers in doing so, and of course the white outfit came up, and I was like, HUH. THAT'S SUSPICIOUS. I guess maybe that's an outfit he wore in between beating

Hadlar and starting the hero tutor gig and it'll show up in a flashback later???

lol

it would be insane if he came back from the dead somehow!!!

IT SURE WOULD BE, WOULDN'T IT

/honks clown nose repeatedly, I guess!!!

anyway now that you know: god I want Avan and Hyunckel to just. sit down and have a conversation at some point.

they have got some Shit to Process together.

you say a conversation, but I think it's just Avan gives Hyunkel a pat on the head and Hyunkel breaks down into a sobbing mess

if i had a nickel for every time I saw Dragon Quest: Adventure of Dai completely SNIPE a friend of mine from orbit with a character that was so obviously Their Shit it wasn't funny

i'd have two nickels

which isn't a LOT

but it's really, REALLY funny it happened twice

it IS very fun to watch Avan doing to AF what Hyunckel did to me

lyssie seeing the shot of hyunkle pouting in the rain and was immediately like

Sven, you'd have three nickels, because let me tell you, Holly is pointing at the screen like, it's my boy!!! every time Crocodine appears

okay that's true

holly AND eric are the #1 Crocodine Stan club

yeah literally the first session I came in, I looked at the OP and saw that shot of Hyunckel brooding in the rain and I was just like, ah

I See My Doom Has Been Written

like I know my tropes I know what that establishing shot of a character in an OP is communicating

lyssie like "this is the exact sort of thing that Teenage Lyssie would have lost their shit over" ([narrator voice] adult lyssie also lost their shit)

and even then he orbital lasered me so much harder than I expected

OKAY LISTEN,

the teenage self continues to live on in the adult self

Hyunkel isn't even my type of character and I'm always losing my shit over Hyunkel

he's the Ur-Angstboy

he knows exactly how cool he is and that amount of cool is very cool

i'm still not fucking over him just deadass going

"it's fine if i go to the super final dungeon even though like half my bones are broken"

"i'm immortal"

me: y'know that scans

he has all the HP

the only person who has more hp than hyunckel is crocodine

He's so cool....

the guy who is literally made to face-tank the most absurd hits in the entire show and laugh about it

Hyunkel like, if death was going to take me, it would've done it already

I also feel an immense joy every time Pop calls Crocodine Big Guy/Ossan... it's just so fondly casual

IT'S SO GOOD

Baran: he's alive, but he'll never fight again after that
Hyunkel, the next episode: fuck you, I'm gonna

especially when you look back over the full arc of the series and remember that the Crocodine fight was where Popp very nearly bailed entirely before getting his shit together

and now they're just super cool with each other

Yeah!!!! That one fight was such a big turning point for the both of them

yesss

Popp learning how brave and clever he could actually be, Crocodine realizing what side he needed to be on if he wanted to do cool honorable fights

Two things

1: I actually forgot the order of events a bit, and was assuming you had already gotten to the Avan reveal

thank GOD I didn't say anything about it

2: /rips off shirt to reveal a second shirt that says "CROCODINE FAN CLUB" on it

How can I get one of those shirts

I made two

the other is for you

We all have Crocodine Fan Shirts on, in our hearts

The dq item get jingle plays

the longer adventure of dai goes, and the more every single character gets these huge elaborate character arcs

the funnier it gets that Flazzard is just dead

the gang killed the shit out of him

really Flazzard is just the prototype for the Royal Guard, which means he was worth having

Flazzard's here to serve as an example of Hadlar's character growth

Zaboera is still here

Baran died in the arc before the finale

Flazzard kicked it in like, ep 12 of 100

He's not even the first guy they fought

to be fair he is the first guy they fought who didn't end up switching to their side

Zaboera is absurdly good at not being dead

considering how even the other villains hate him

zaboera's greatest skill is how to weasel his way out of getting immediately murdered by both his enemies and his allies

having reflected on it for a while, I think there are two main factors that make Avan's return land:
1) his personality hasn't changed
2) his role in the group has

... yeah, that scans

he's still the same ultracompetent benevolent weirdo he's always been, but he's not a deus ex machina coming back to fix things

he's reinforcements

he doesn't trivialize all of Dai's progress by still being miles ahead of him somehow, Dai passed him A While ago. he's developed a new skillset to be useful

additional factor that makes it land: he himself had no idea he could survive that megante, so everything he said and did in his previously thought to be final moments still holds the same weight instead of being retconned into hollow theater

right, he was as surprised when he woke up as anyone else was to see him alive