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[Flying Dice]

A minor nitpick about Balefire. Erasing stuff from before it existed is actually pretty much always a benefit, since it has a significant chance of saving the life of people on your side if used in a battle, and if you are throwing a laserbeam instadeath spell at enemies, you want them to die as fast as possible, even if that is before you attacked them.
Its real downside is that it damages reality.

The benefits were pretty much always hand-of-god author fiat, though. If you actually consider the implications, it's damned frightening even without the whole degrading the reality bit. Especially if you get into the paradoxes involved with killing someone with balefire right after they used balefire.

[Lord Shonus]

That, of course, is why it destroys reality in the first place. There is, of course, just one other counter to it.

[lemon10]

Even aside from the saving people's life, it would still be crazy useful in fights against other casters.
A) It cannot be blocked or diverted, as well as having a long range.
B) Once formed it is an instant(?) beam attack.
C) It kills almost *anything* it hits in one blow. Even if you are up against some nasty shadowspawn (darkhounds/myrddraal), they will die in a single casting. Beings that it cannot kill it still wounds (the mist in shadar logoth), which is far more then can be said for most other weaves.

Spoiler: Spoilery 4th importance (click to show/hide)

D) It is the only way to actually kill the forsaken and ensure they remain dead (not that anyone actually knows that, but still).

Even ignoring the benefit of retroactively killing enemies before they attack/kill your you/allies, it is still perhaps the best weapon to use against enemy casters, or against beings that lesser weaves are unable to dispatch easily if at all.

But the paradox's aren't really that annoying, especially since the universe sorts them out automatically. Yes, you might be confused after a battle is over, but that's pretty much the extent of its downsides if you ignore the fact that use damages reality.

[Furtuka]

>_> Isn't that from the Wheel of Time books? This is getting rather off topic.

[Flying Dice]

Even aside from the saving people's life, it would still be crazy useful in fights against other casters.
A) It cannot be blocked or diverted, as well as having a long range.
B) Once formed it is an instant(?) beam attack.
C) It kills almost *anything* it hits in one blow. Even if you are up against some nasty shadowspawn (darkhounds/myrddraal), they will die in a single casting. Beings that it cannot kill it still wounds (the mist in shadar logoth), which is far more then can be said for most other weaves.

Spoiler: Spoilery 4th importance (click to show/hide)

D) It is the only way to actually kill the forsaken and ensure they remain dead (not that anyone actually knows that, but still).

Even ignoring the benefit of retroactively killing enemies before they attack/kill your you/allies, it is still perhaps the best weapon to use against enemy casters, or against beings that lesser weaves are unable to dispatch easily if at all.

But the paradox's aren't really that annoying, especially since the universe sorts them out automatically. Yes, you might be confused after a battle is over, but that's pretty much the extent of its downsides if you ignore the fact that use damages reality.

Except for those repeated references to the last war against Shai'tan, where everyone on both sides, including the Forsaken/Chosen voluntarily stopped using it because the effects of so much balefire were fucking terrifying? When even those insane fuckers are scared of using it too much, that tells you something. Which is precisely the point: it's overpowered to an insane degree, but the problems with it are equally frightening.

>_> Isn't that from the Wheel of Time books? This is getting rather off topic.

The Wheel of Time would make for a great anime if done right, though I'm sort of scared to contemplate how long it would run once you added filler. It'd certainly beat out Legend of the Galactic Heroes on length with just the original material. You'd probably end up with an extra sixty or so episodes just of omakes and post-ending OVAs.

[Lord Shonus]

I don't know about that. The running time would probably average out to around a minute per page, since a huge amount of the text is descriptive. Large paragraphs telling you exactly what a room looks like would be covered in single frames.

[Flying Dice]

I don't know about that. The running time would probably average out to around a minute per page, since a huge amount of the text is descriptive. Large paragraphs telling you exactly what a room looks like would be covered in single frames.

And you're saying that it wouldn't be absolutely loaded with shots of people doing nothing in pretty places for looooong times? This specific sequence. I know deep down in my liver that that is exactly what would happen. Not to mention that there would be a shitload of Talking is a Free Action in the fights. Hell, just the will-they-or-won't-they between Mat and Tuon during that section of book 10 would probably be stretched out to an easy 6-7 episodes worth of screentime.

Granted, Jordan's obsession with description of places, dresses, and people that have already been described in detail seven times in the same volume alone is a large part of what bloated the series, but certainly not all of it. I don't even want to imagine how much dialogue would be invented based on his strange sort of gender naturalism that he constantly goes off about.

[Lord Shonus]

I don't know about that. The running time would probably average out to around a minute per page, since a huge amount of the text is descriptive. Large paragraphs telling you exactly what a room looks like would be covered in single frames.

And you're saying that it wouldn't be absolutely loaded with shots of people doing nothing in pretty places for looooong times? This specific sequence. I know deep down in my liver that that is exactly what would happen. Not to mention that there would be a shitload of Talking is a Free Action in the fights. Hell, just the will-they-or-won't-they between Mat and Tuon during that section of book 10 would probably be stretched out to an easy 6-7 episodes worth of screentime.

There'd be a fair bit of that sort of thing, but I think it would be MORE than balanced out buy so many things taking much, much less time to play out on the screen than the page. It isn't just the constant descriptions (critical for remembering things when you have hundreds of pages between appearances, in my opinion), but the fighting as well, due to the detailed listings of combat moves. I can't remember the specific scene, but I sat down once and worked out just how long one of the fights which went on for several pages actually would have taken. As a rough estmate, it lasted half a minute.

[kaenneth]

I tried reading the wheel of time series, but once Balefire was introduced, I quit, I didn't want to deal with lazy cheap plot-invalidation bullshit like that.

[Lord Shonus]

It is, if anything, the exact opposite of "lazy cheap plot-invalidation bullshit." At least half the plot only exists due to balefire. It is a weapon, an extremely dangerous and deadly weapon that gets thrown about recklessly by major players on both sides. Nothing more or less.

[i2amroy]

IMO this is the core problem with shonen, and it stems in no small part from the genre being more-or-less all about power fantasies for tweenaged boys. When an author starts with that power escalation, they've doomed themselves to writing shit, because if you get into a Lensman arms race with individuals, sooner or later you'll arrive at the point where everything about the premise is batshit insane in the worst possible way. Especially when it devolves to characters asspulling random I WIN moves, or worse, antagonists who aren't actually a challenge and just have a stupid gimmick or keep running away.

This is exactly why the best series are always those where the characters don't so much get more powerful, but rather just get more clever, and lot of the fun of the series comes from introducing a bad guy with some crazy power you would never figure out, and watching the main character trying to figure out what exactly their power is while trying to figure how to use their small power to counter it. Take a look at a lot of the sub-plots in Toaru Majutsu no Index and it's side story stuff. (Not so much in the direct main story, once you involve Touma a lot of the story lines boil down to "run in, get beat up, and punch-out the invincible bad guy". The side stories and background characters tend to prove much more versatile). Nobody ever really "levels up" in those series, they just learn how to use their powers to counter whatever is happening with the new bad guy's powers.
On a Wheel of time anime I think it could turn out to be either really good or really bad, depending on a how exactly is was changed to script form. On the note of length I'd like to point out that even if you cut the length of each book in half due to just empty descriptions and whatnot, the length of each one still comes out to around 400-600 pages. I think that while it might not be quite the 100+ episode length, it would still have quite a substantial length.

On the note of balefire I think they handled it pretty well. It's a very powerful weapon, but other then Rand (who seems to whip it out at the drop of a hat) most of the characters seem to treat it like the weapon that it is.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Though I'm pretty sure Rand had figured out that balefire was the only way to permanently kill the Forsaken by the end of it, which might explain why he was so willing to use it (and the fact that he was very insane for quite a while; not caring about the fabric of the universe other then that it still exists makes you more likely to use things that hurt it).

It doesn't just become some magic "super-special attack that automatically wins" type thing at all, but retains its seriousness right up through the last book.

[Leafsnail]

I think Wheel of Time is pretty unambiguously Not An Anime.

[Neonivek]

I think Wheel of Time is pretty unambiguously Not An Anime.

I think when it was brought in earlier it was being used as an example of "ultimate power macguffin" being used right or wrong... I forget.

[MadMalkavian]

So, has anyone here seen Linebarrels of Iron or Birdy the Mighty:Decode? I am considering purchasing one or the other as soon as I am somehow able to afford such a thing and would like to know if there are any valid opinions that could be said on either anime.

[Flying Dice]

I think Wheel of Time is pretty unambiguously Not An Anime.

I think when it was brought in earlier it was being used as an example of "ultimate power macguffin" being used right or wrong... I forget.

Yeah, I originally brought up balefire as an example of an obscenely powerful thing that has an equally obscene downside, as a contrast to the typical shonen trend where characters get powerups with a drawback like "OMG it makes me look evil" or "Oh hey I had to spend two whole days learning how to not be a complete chucklefuck with it".