Ki Sho Ten Ketsu

First I’ve made this playlist of a number of YT videos about Kishotenketsu, I haven’t actually watched all of them yet but the ones at the start I have.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4CWxmx4wepidrlF-PrpezIs-mVr3Q0Ls

In this post I’m going to talk about it in a few different ways.

First, as I've already said before, I think the common translation of Ten as “Twist” is unintentionally misleading. And one manifestation of that is how it’s applied to Attack on Titan.  Yes I think even Pause and Select is wrong in trying to argue the Kishotenketsu breakdown of Attack on Titan correlates to the official Season designations of the Anime.

This is largely driven by the confusion of Ten with being a plot twist, because Season 3 revolves around plot twists way more then the first two seasons.

The first 3 seasons were designated three seasons even though they functionally aired as 4 broadcast seasons and have slightly more than enough episodes to theoretically be divided into Five seasons because of the quirks of how it aired. I’m convinced the 5th Broadcast season was branded as the “Final Season” purely for marketing, because the Manga was about to end and they’d committed to adapting the rest of it. 

However, narratively speaking I believe the Ten begins when Reiner becomes the main POV protagonist for a while.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the Ten at least when applied to long form stories like this is about the story being very different then it was before.  And that if there is indeed a Plot Twist that causes it, that plot twist isn’t always part of the Ten but can often happen at the end of the Sho.

And one precedent for that is the Evangelion Rebuild films.  

One reason I think some people have trouble accepting the claim that the Three Act Structure isn’t as big in the East is because so many Anime film series are made as Trilogies, but honestly I think that kind of is just the Japanese Film industry mimicking Hollywood. Take the Mobile Suit Gundam 0079 Compilation films, they are a trilogy but I feel would clearly have worked much better as four films with the second beginning and ending with the Ramba Ral and Crowely Hamon arc.

And that’s why the Rebuild films are special, they are a true Kishotenketsu Tetralogy.  Evangelion 3.33 feels almost like itself a Reboot, but why everything is so different now is because of what happened at the end of 2.22.

And this also fits how I feel Kishotenkestsu very intentionally applies to the Wachowskis Speed Racer film from 2008.  Basically each of the film’s four races are the culminations of each of the four acts, with the film’s main “Twist” if you can call it that happening alongside the second race.

Like many who are aware of Kishotenketsu I often get annoyed when seeing some Normie YouTuber try to force the Three Act Structure or some other Western Structure derived from it (any proposed structure with an Odd number of parts is clearly just trying to stretch out the Three Act Structure) onto an Anime or Manga.  

However I also admit it’s not entirely wrong.  There are natural things that led to the Three Act Structure that can make it not limited to the West.  But I think the reverse is also true.  One video in that playlist argued Kishotenketsu is a Rhetorical device not a Story Structure, I disagree with the “not” part, or rather would add an “only” after it.  Both the Three Acts Model and Kishotenketsu can be viewed as lenses through which to look at stories that are not necessarily mutually exclusive.  After all most 12 episode Anime are either 4 Acts of 3 episodes each or 3 acts of 4 episodes each.

Still there is a Western Chauvinism I think in how often the Three Act Structure is imposed on Eastern stories rather than the other way around.  So I figured I should try to even that out.  I already mentioned Speed Racer but as an Anime Adaptation it’s certainly not independent of Eastern Influence, rather it shows how the Wachowskis did their research better then a lot of other Hollywood Anime Adaptations. The Cynic Clinic video at the start of my Playlist cites examples of people in Japan seeing Kishotenketsu in Frozen and Little Red Riding Hood. 

JustWrite has a video on how Batman Begins actually follows a Four Act Structure, but a differently defined one then Kishotenketsu.  And yet I can apply a Kishotenkestsu lens to it fairly easily by simply saying its midway point "Twist" is the introduction of The Batman to Gotham City.

Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace certainly can be broken down into four acts instead of the usual three based on what Planet the main cast is on, Naboo, Tatooine, Coruscant, and Naboo again.  The question is how plausible Kishotenketsu is? It could be in this context the Midway Point Twist is the existence of Darth Maul becoming known to the Jedi. 

But also on the subject of Star Wars, each season of Andor is divided into 4 Arcs of 3 episodes each just like a lot of Anime.

I also think about how Superman The Movie and Superman II are meant to be telling one massive story across two movies and that kind of fits.  First Superman is introduced to the world, then stopping Luthor’s plan is the development, then the introduction of the Super Villains is the Ten and the eventual battle between them and Superman is the Ketsu. 

I recently rewatched It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World and concluded it too can be given a four act breakdown.  The first ends when the race properly starts after the failed negotiation on how to split up the money.  The Intermission breaks up Acts 2 and 3.  And Act four begins with the finding of the money.  

A number of DC and Marvel limited series that get referred to as Graphic Novels were originally published as 4 praters.  The Dark Knight Returns might actually the easiest to apply Kishotenketsu to. 

I added an update to my post about Spin Offs that start with no prior connection to the main cast arguing how they can fit one way of defining Kishotenketsu. And that also got me thinking how Phase One MCU can be viewed as following that kind of Kishotenketsu.  The first Iron Man film is the Ki, Iron Man 2 is the Sho, Thor and Captain America are the Ten and The Avengers is the Ketsu.  

I also got to thinking how one could make a standard Hollywood Trilogy into that by taking a setting or character only in the third film and making a prequel about them placed on the watch order between movies 2 and 3.  For the original Star Wars trilogy I guess the Ewoks would be the best option for that, (and there are Ewok focused Spin Offs but I don’t know where they hypothetically fit on the timeline). [Update: I guess a movie about the Bothans could also work if it also gives screen time to Admiral Ackbar and Mon Mothma.]  For The Dark Knight Trilogy an origin story for Anne Hathaway’s Catwoman would be the best bet.

Four Koma Manga like Azumanga Daioh are often cited as the perfect way to demonstrate Kishotenketsu on a micro level. But strangely never actually contrasting it to the standard Three Panel structure of American Newspaper Comics like Garfield.  It perhaps says something about my biases that I think the Azumanga Daioh girls in a Three Panel comic would look weird, but I think Four Koma gags with Garfield and Friends could work pretty well.

But I also notice Internet Memes and Web Comics tend to be Four Panels instead of Three (but you have to read them Right to Left unlike a Manga).  Is it possible that is because of how indirectly Japanese Comedy has influenced Internet Humor from very early on via Video Games and Anime and the sillier Godzilla movies?

The most infamous Four Panel Webcomic is arguably Loss, but honestly I’m having trouble even forcing it to fit Kishotenketsu.  It is more like Western Storytelling where the “Twist” happens in the last panel.  That’s not me dissing it, frankly I’m sick of the unfair hate that author has received and honestly I think it's a brilliant piece of wordless purely visual storytelling and the way people have abstracted it to mock it only further proves that.

However what I do think shockingly conforms to Kishotenketsu is a Prequel Meme, the one based on that Padme and Anakin scene from Attack of The Clones, “You’re Joking Right”.  Because I can easily argue that the Ten is the implication that Anakin isn’t Joking. 

I honestly am shocked that much of this wound up being about Star Wars.  Every time I think I’m out, they pull me back in. 

I’ve wondered if maybe Japan also has a more niche Six Act structure given how many OVA series (like Gunbuster, War in The Pocket, Tenchi Muyo and Murder Princess) and Anime Arcs (The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and the first arcs of A Certain Magical Index, Neon Genesis Evangelion and Sailor Moon SailorStars) I’ve observed play out over exactly 6 episodes (and the School Days Visual Novel is structured as 6 episodes). But then I think about how the Freytag’s Pyramid Five Act structure is just the Three Act structure with a couple extra steps, and suspect these Six Part stories have a similar relationship to Kishotenketsu, with it probably most often being the Sho and the Ten that get an extra episode each. 

That allows the Phase One MCU model to fit even better. I'd already split the Ten into two movies and now I can add The Incredible Hulk to the Sho rather than ignoring it.

Can I make the 6 episode George Lucas Saga fit? Maybe.  The Phantom Menace as an Introduction to everything obviously works, then we have two episodes covering the Clone Wars, then two episodes of following the next generation before Return of The Jedi brings everything together. 

Update February 2026: It seems season one of A Knight of The Seven Kingdoms will be 6 episodes, and episode 3 ended on a Twist. 

Someone on BookTube finally covered George MacDonald's Lilith and I observed from how they described the structure that it kinds of works as KiShoTenKetsu.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gu61VYRn_yE

I've also remembered once watching a YouTube video that says in the original Rocky the inciting incident happens at the halfway point.

Nebula in Avengers Endgame

Infinity War was the first Superhero movie to actually feel like an Event Comic as a movie.  It wasn't the first named after an Event Comic, but the Civil War movie is much smaller in scale then the Comic was, it felt like less then a normal Avengers movie not more.

Avengers Endgame however managed to feel even more like an Event Comic.  In truth both movies together are the Event, and the post credit scenes of Antman & The Wasp and Captain Marvel are the cinematic equivalent of the tie in Comics.

Endgame is something that does not work as a stand alone film, even Infinity War could kind of work on it's own.  But in Endgame things like most of the cast not being there till the final act yet being treated as of equal importance once they show up could never work as a stand alone film.  But in this case that isn't a bad thing, because the meaning it has is worth it.

Again, my experience with Comics are almost all DC ones, so I'm a weirdo loving these Marvel movies for recreating the experience I get from some of my favorite DC Comics.

No Event Comic actually succeeds in making every one of it's hundreds of characters equally important, you have to accept that sometimes your favorite character might get just a couple cool moments.  What can be interesting is how some Events are quite surprising in who gets to be important.

In the main DC Events the big three are always important, Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, for the MCU those are Iron Man, Captain America and Thor, and the Endgame Video Essays on YouTube I've seen so far have mainly been about how their meta arcs came to satisfying conclusions.

But after that things can seem random, like the group of heroes and villains the Monitor originally assembled for Crisis On Infinite Earths, or Power Girl and Superboy's importance to Infinite Crisis.  And in Endgame one example of that is Ant-Man's key role in how the resolution became possible.  But what's most fascinating to me is Nebula.

In the first two Guardians of The Galaxy films Nebula is an important supporting character, but still there mostly as an accessory to Gamora's character development and what their relationship infers to the audience about Thanos, and it's the same in Infinity War but with even less Screen-time.

But in Endgame she is now part of the core avengers team, we open with her having amusing interactions with Tony.  And now 2014-Gamora is basically just here to compliment Nebula's story.

I think that's a pretty interesting pay off if you're a fan of the character or of Karen Gillian.

A Game of Endings

Avengers Endgame was great, I've already seen it twice now so I know it can hold up, historically second viewings have always been my most critical ones.  I wanted to celebrate that good news before getting into what this post is actually about.

I haven't watched Game of Thrones since season 4, but after watching a plurality of Video Essays and rants about the ending I get the sense that I'm generally inclined agree with mostly all of the criticisms.  People hating on letting the North be independent makes me uncomfortable but that's no where near the main event of all the complaining.

There are however two things that are a part of this discussion I feel inclined to disagree with.

The fact that I've seen more then one person say they can't enjoy the early seasons they used to love anymore.  This is something I've already talked about more directly in the context of Anime, my fundamental disagreement with Glass Reflection's The Ending is Paramount video.

Thing is I've never really been disappointed by a bad or imperfect ending because I know better then to expect it to be great.  I know that the longer it takes to get to the ending the more impossible it is it'll feel truly satisfying.  But even in the case of a single season 24 episode show like Romeo+Juliet my frustration with the last two episodes cannot take away how much I loved the first 22.

I do love great endings when they happen, and Avengers Endgame manages to top even the Anime Endings I find highly satisfying (Code Geass R2 is still the best ending I've ever seen in Anime) because it managed to pull it off even though it was over a Decade in building.

In order for my overall opinion of something I started out liking to become even mediocre much less bad the decline has to begin very early.  In the case of Neon Genesis Evangelion it was as soon as Asuka came in things started to decline, the literal End of Evangelion being utterly irredeemable was not enough on it's own.

The second Issue I have is everyone feeling so confident the eventual ending of the A Song of Ice and Fire books will be very well executed even if at first glance it looks like the same basic ending. I'm certain their ending will also be unsatisfying.  I'm not even confident the final book will ever get written at all.

It's possible of course that now people will praise the books' ending just for being different then how the show ended, or that even if it is genuinely better executed it'll be because it had the benefit of seeing how the show's ending was critiqued. Which means Martin should perhaps be eternally grateful the TV show ended how it did.

I do think Martin has a basic idea of where he wants the story to go, and maybe he gave the gist of it to the show's writers.  But his taking forever to write even the second to last book tells me he has no idea of how to actually get there.  And I feel the same way about Berserk, the insane confidence of some Otaku who think the Mangaka has some brilliant ending perfectly mapped out when it's taking him over 30 years to get there is laughable to me.

Meaning much of the core criticism of the show's ending could easily be equally applicable to the books, forcing the characters to a predetermined end even if it doesn't organically fit their journey, it's just the specifics that would be different.  This problem has never been unique to adaptations, Star Trek Voyager's finale had the same core issue, as SFDebris explained they stubbornly stuck to a finale they wrote at the same time they wrote the pilot.

Of course part of why I doubt I'd like the Books' ending any better is how for me Game of Thrones went wrong a lot sooner then it did for them.  I loved the first 2 seasons, even mostly liked season 3, which is more then enough to indefinitely give my mind an overall positive association for the brand.  But season 4 is where the show lost me.  Most people at the soonest see the very end of season 4 as the first warning sign, but overall it's when the show ran out of book material they started not liking it.

The show had some differences from the books even in season 1, and from what I've heard I think I'm inclined to like the show better in at least that season/book's case.  I mean superficially I'd have preferred the books much more over-sized Iron Throne, but the more meaningful changes I'm glad they changed.

So it seems like if anything I'm inclined to prefer the show to the books.

Many critics of the final season say they are not in concept against Dani's heel turn and they are confident Martin is going to "character develop" it better.  For me Dani being set up as a righteous leader is core to what I was liking, and the seeds of her ruthlessness being planted was part of why season 4 turned me off.

If Martin saw "The Return of the King" trope turning out to be a bad thing as the core of his deconstructive narrative, then he shouldn't have made that King a Queen, because to me choosing to "deconstruct" the Messianic Archetype when you give it to a woman is inherently sexist.  I crave seeing that narrative played straight but with a Queen and that's why I loved Krista/Historia's story-line in Seasons 2 and 3 of Attack on Titan.

So even if Dani turning evil genocidal maniac makes more sense in the books I would still inherently hate it.

Honestly I'd like it if it's Jon Snow who turns evil after finding out he was the rightful heir all along, that would be a far better deconstruction of that trope to me.  He's the one who's journey in the first 4 seasons seems like what modern audiences are inclined to consider the most acceptable version of that Trope, like Aragon as a Ranger but with even more humility and hardship.  So deconstructing the expectation that that inherently makes a good person much less a good leader would be far more subversive.   It'd also Subvert the show's internal expectation that the Starks are always good.

But like with the Dani debate you'd have to execute it properly and not make it seem like a switch was flipped out of nowhere.

The Future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe

 This entire post is kind of a Spoiler for Infinity War so....

Infinity War feels like an Event Comic

I like Event Comics, Crisis on Infinite Earths, Infinite Crisis, and Superman Our Worlds At War are among my favorite Comic Book stories.  I don't like how they've become overused, how it feels like there are no breaks between them now.  But they are a concept I can get behind and at least a few have been executed really well.  I want to read more of the ones I haven't gotten to yet, from Final Crisis to the ones the 90s had.

They are one aspect of what I love about Comics I figured would never get translated to film, not even in Animation.  And it amazes me that the world of Live Action Superhero films tried it and succeeded at it before any Animated project did.

I was never really buying that what The Avengers film was doing was so difficult.  In terms of the kind of narrative it is, it had absolutely been done before, we'd had movies about Superhero teams before, and X-Men was just as star studded.  And we'd seen them plenty in Animation.  The Avengers was only different in that they were a team of characters from prior movies, but we'd also had crossover films before.

I scoffed and still scoff at the idea that Civil War proved you needed the emotional investment of the prior movies to make a Versus film work.  I remain of the opposite mindset, a Verses story is only acceptable to me when it's how they meet.  And so for all my issues with Batman V Superman I still maintain it to be a better Verses movie.

But the unique feeling of an Event Comic, especially one that felt built up to for years as Infinite Crisis did in 2005, is what you truly can't do without a Shared Universe.

Cause you see I've never read a Justice League or Teen Titans comic truly caring if the continuity between the team and solo stories lined up, it's nice when they do and some such references exist.  But all you need to do is look at is Dick Grayson's love life to see that those respective writings teams weren't actually on the same page.  And so that's why the animated ones worked just fine as stand alone films.

It's the event Comics that when handled well feel like everything in many prior comic story-lines were building up to it in some way or another.  Both the solos and the team ups.  Bringing together events from different corners of the universe, and in a sense different genres.  And that is where Infinity War has truly justified the MCU.  I don't agree with everything in today's Mother's Basement video, but it's still a good break down.  Thanos Is the Protagonist - How Infinity War Works.

It juggles it's cast well, has interactions between established characters I never would have thought of, like Bucky and Rocket.  And while the story was scattered for much of it, everything was basically brought together by the end.

The good Event comics are ones where the basic story absolutely does work with only the actual limited series.  But reading the tie-in comics can still feel like they add to it in meaningful yet not required ways and isn't just an excuse to put the event's name on the cover.  And that is the one aspect Infinity War can't really have an equivalent for.  Some might compare what's going on in the TV shows that I don't watch anymore, but at the end of the day even they will be events set before or after it, not another angle on during it like Teen Titans Life and Death is for Infinite Crisis.

But that's the only factor really missing, yes it's scale is still smaller compared to any true Crisis, but the other DC events I've read are on the same scale as Infinity War or below it.

That's the weird thing, in terms of Comics I'm mainly a DC fan, but am loving this MCU film for evoking similar feelings in me as some of my favorite DC Comics.

What is similar to that is the lead in story-lines.  Of the many that lead into Infinite Crisis, I feel only Identity Crisis and OMAC Project even come close to being required reading, they make a good trilogy.  But others add it, like Villains United, the entire Geoff Johns Teen Titans run, the Powergirl and Supergirl story-lines (the latter spinning out of Superman/Batman: Public Enemies), JLA Crisis of Conscience, Superman: Sacrifice.  And that's just stuff I took an interest in, fans of other DC comics from 2003-2005 could list many more.  (I left out a lot of Batverse stuff that also comes out of War Games which is it's own can of worms I have complicated feelings on.)

The other thing I like about having a proper shared universe are what I call not the small things but the medium things.  Things that are less then a full team up but more then a mere throw away reference or brief cameo.  These things are why Spiderman Homecoming worked, the one aspect of Spiderman as a teenage Superhero missing from the pre MCU films was him a teenage Superhero in a world with adult Superheroes.  That's the role Tony Stark plays in it.  And the one reason something like a Tim Drake Robin solo film I figured could never be made was that his comics rarely have Batman gone eternity, they are solo adventures but still of an active sidekick.  And I assumed you can't have a movie with Batman that isn't going to be Batman.  But Spiderman Homecoming tells me that maybe they can make a Robin movie work some day, with Ben Affleck having the same amount of screen time as RDJr did here.

The true sign of the MCU's victory over DC is that certain DC fans like myself feel like what I want from DC is being provided by Marvel.

The Avengers did NOT actually need those prior films in order to work

You may be thinking I'm contradicting an earlier post of mine here.  There I was talking about how Marvel needed to make the public consider Iron Man, Thor and Captain America to be big deals so that their being in a film together could be a huge deal.  DC doesn't need to do that, just as the new Spiderman doesn't need a solo film for him being in Civil War to be a big deal.  Audiences will care about Spiderman being in a film with the MCU heroes regardless of it not being the same Spiderman they already know.

Here I'm talking about story, if the story and/or plot of Avengers had needed you to have seen those prior films to get what's going on it would have been a bad film, if that's how you write connected stories you should be writing a TV show, not blockbuster motion pictures.  Whedon had already directed both and understood the difference.

Rarely you can make 2 or 3 films that feel like one big film, like LOTR or The Hobbit though I feel they overdid it with The Hobbit,  But those are very special cases, and LOTR was already like that in The Books, it was 1 giant book published as 3, I disagree with those who feel it should have been 6 movies based on the 6 books the books are divided into, none of those would have felt like a satisfying movie to me.

The trend of splitting the last films of these YA Novel based franchises in two I feel hurts those films.

The Avengers drew on events that came before, but it also tells us in that film everything we need to know.  We don't have a movie depicting the events with the "Mad King" referenced back to constantly on Game of Thrones, if the prior MCU films hadn't existed, those references would be the same as that.

Having seen the other films adds to Avengers enjoyment like reading The Hobbit and The Silmarilion adds to Lord of The Rings, but you do not actually need to know those stories to follow LOTR, you don't even actually need the information from the Appendices, they're just a fun bonus.

Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope actually was a sequel made without the prior films, and we followed it just fine, the Prequels existence now adds depth to the OT films allowing me to enjoy them more as a Prequel fan then I ever did before.  But they worked on their own.  If The Force Awakens is written in a way where you won't understand it if you hadn't seen the prior films, even just the OT, it will fail.

So when people act like Batman V Superman or Justice League can't work without establishing the characters first, my thought is, no you're an idiot.  Whether or not the characters were established first, if you need to have seen other films to follow those films or get who the characters in them are, or why they're doing what they're doing, they would be poorly made films.

You do not need to have seen Batman Begins to understand The Dark Knight, in fact TDK doesn't even really draw on the events of Begins at all.  Rises does draw on the events of both prior films, but it still tells us on it's own everything we need to know.

A number of animated Justice League and Superman/Batman films have worked without any shared continuity to solo adventures.  And they have less screen-time to work with.  Some but not all recycle voice actors already affiliated with those characters.  That however is a superficial connection that could have gone either way.  That is also how I refute the "too many characters" nonsense.

BvS and JLA better be the same way, or else I will dislike them regardless of whether or not the films explaining what I don't understand exist.  Same goes for future MCU films, they better not get carried away with what a shared universe means.

Even in the Comics themselves, many hate on Infinite Crisis for how it feels like you need to read 20 other story-lines to know what's going on.  I love Infinite Crisis but I feel it's dependence on the other story-lines is overstated (I've only read not even half of it's tie ins and understand it just fine), plus comics are by nature a more blatantly serialized medium then film, like TV shows are.  But still that complaint exists, and I wouldn't want a film version of Infinite Crisis to be done the same way.  Civil War was in many ways Marvel's Infinite Crisis, as is Infinity War, so they better be careful.

DC Superheroes don't need an intorduction

Doesn't matter if the versions of them seen in Batman Vs Superman: Dawn of Justice are new, even the most casual film goer knows Batman like the back of their hand.

And while the others haven't had successful movies of their own yet, they've still been cultural Icons for longer then Marvel as we know it has existed, especially Wonder Woman. The Flash is on his second Live action TV show. And their Animated incarnations are what multiple generations have grown up on, while Marvel animated only ever really hit it off in the 90s.

And people are acting like Marvel has done no introducing characters in others people's films first. They have done plenty, but it's taken till Phase 3 (which is still yet future) for anyone introduced as a side character to get a solo film (and those will be ones introduced in Phase 3). DC isn't going to waste the time they spend introducing future leads in supporting roles.

DC doesn't need Marvel's strategy. The Avengers big three had never had anything good in Live Action before the MCU, only their number 4 player had. So the MCU had to introduce those Characters altogether, not just those incarnations.

Meanwhile Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman have actors who are cultural Icons solely for playing them. Affleck and Gadot only need to differentiate themselves from what came before, and they can do so in only a few scenes each. They don't need to establish the character altogether.

And It'll be the same with The Flash more or less. The rest are in their importance the same as all the marvel characters who will be guest stars before getting their own film.