Note: I will be talking primarily about the anime community in this post and most of the terms used in this post will consequently reflect that, but I'm assuming it refers to reviewers of other media as well. If you want to replace every usage of "show" or "series" with "game" or "franchise" in your mind, please do so.
Part 1: On Why People Are Doing Reviews Wrong
The popular review style in the anime community seems to be to give a number for story, art, sound, characters, and enjoyment, and then average these scores into an overall score. I have no clue where exactly people came up with this format. I suspect that they stole it from Tristan "Arkada" Gallant, whose "Glass Reflections" is one of the more popular shows out there. If I recall correctly, Arkada himself swiped that from a friend, but said friend may have gotten it somewhere else. So I don't really know who came up with it. It doesn't really matter, because the entire system is bogus and bullshit anyway.
Reviews are always going to be tricky things, because they attempt to give an objective value to things that are generally fairly subjective. Maybe you hate a show's art or animation style, so you dock it points for that. But there are other people who might love it. Inferno Cop has atrocious animation, but for some, that's the appeal of the show. I think that the character designs in Seitokai Yakuindomo look terrible, but I'm sure that some people like them. Humor is a similarly subjective thing. To go back to Seitokai Yakuindomo, I've never gotten past an episode or two because I feel like just having "haha, sex!" as the punchline isn't clever and is just a cheap way of getting laughs. Other people love the show, though, so my opinion isn't going to matter to them. Every one of those categories is going to involve subjectivity. Not everyone is going to agree on everything.
And yet, those categories are often scored on 10-point--or even 100-point--scales (note: they will try to hide the fact that they are 100-point scales by using decimals. Do not be fooled. If the score includes an 8.1, that's actually 81/100). They use these scales because, presumably, the more granular your score is, the more accurate it must be. If you're giving a show an 8.3 instead of an 8.2, people assume you've done some serious research. After all, that extra .1 point must have come from somewhere. There's no way that the decision was arbitrary, right?
This is the biggest lie that review scores tell. The thing that both reviewers and people who read reviews seem to be unaware of is that a larger review scale makes scores less objective, not more. By adding more nuance to scoring, you introduce more subjectivity.
I've always hated 10-point scales because they feel arbitrary to me. In practice, people generally only use a few of the numbers anyway. Instead of 5/10 being average, anything that gets a 5/10 is generally seen as really bad. Everyone has a different definition of what a 10-point scale means. Sometimes, people will be willing to use all 10 numbers, at which point they get called out for being too strict. Other times, they inflate scores and avoid giving anything below a 7, which is how you end up with all those "10/10, it's okay" jokes that people add at the end of their reviews on Steam or what have you.
So stop doing this thing where you divide shows into several elements and give them all subjective ratings. All you're doing is making the review less clear and less cohesive. If you tell me that a show's story gets an 8, its art gets a 7, its sound gets a 6, the characters get a 7, and your personal enjoyment is an 8, that tells me literally nothing about the show. If the soundtrack is lackluster, does that mean that the rest of the elements are dragged down by it? Are entertaining characters enough to save a boring plot? None of these scores tell me whether the show as a whole is good or bad, so averaging them for some grand final score isn't going to tell me anything either.
Part 2: On How To Evaluate A Series Correctly
I think that a good reviewer will approach every series a bit differently, because not all shows can be compared to each other. Some of my favorite anime include JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, The Tatami Galaxy, Silver Spoon, and Nichijou, but I love all of them for wildly different reasons and I can't really say "this one is better than this one because it did X better."
Ultimately, to determine a show's quality, you need to start with this key question: What is this show trying to do, and did the show do it correctly? First, identify the purpose of a show. Is it supposed to make you think? Does it exist to provide an emotional, cathartic release? Is it just meant to be fun and entertaining? Once you've identified the purpose, evaluate how well it's able to live up to that. This is probably going to be a good indicator of what your final verdict is going to be.
After that, don't look at the same elements every time and give them a grade. Look at the show's strengths and look at its weaknesses. What's going to draw people to the show, and what's going to turn them away? And since these aren't always mutually exclusive, be sure to look at the elements that could be hit-or-miss. The fourth season of Arrested Development, for example, drastically changed the structure so that each episode focused on a single character, showing what they had been up to for the past few years and only gradually revealing how they were related. Some people (myself included) thought that this was a fantastic and innovative structure. Others hated it.
Reviews can be structured, but I feel like this hampers a review. It backs you into a corner that you won't allow yourself to deviate from. If you're only going to focus on certain types of shows, that's one thing, and with something like a video game, I understand that gameplay, story, visuals, etc. should all probably at least be touched on. But if you limit your structure, you're limiting your ability to experiment. I enjoy different things for different reasons. Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is exciting and inspiring. Mushishi is ethereal and calming. You need to bring those attitudes with you into your review.
In addition, you'll also have biases, and you need to bring those into your review as well. Yes, it means you're not being as objective, but you're going to have biases anyway, so you may as well be up front about them. I can't explain why I think that Silver Spoon is so great without touching on how I grew up in a farming community or that I spent time in rural Hokkaido. I can't talk about Welcome to the NHK without explaining how I was in a situation uncomfortably close to the protagonist's and how the message of "if you continue down this downward path, necessity will eventually force you to get a job or die" that the show gave me was actually somehow disturbingly encouraging and exactly what I needed to hear.
Every show is different, so you need to approach every show differently. Maybe a popular show needs to be taken down a peg. Maybe you need to hype up an underappreciated gem. Whatever it is, don't limit yourself to a restrictive style. Especially when that style is stolen from other people and requires you to give scores you don't know how to give to aspects that you don't know much about. Seriously, you don't want me talking about animation and direction because my reasoning for a score will always boil down to "I dunno, I thought it looked good."
Part 3: On Alternative Methods of Scoring
Don't.
No, seriously, you don't have to give something a score. All you need to do is explain what does or doesn't work. How you talk about a show is more important than actually scoring it. This also means that you have to actually have substance to your reviews, though. I've seen certain reviewers talk for minutes without actually saying anything of value.
But hey, some people feel like they can't break free of a rating system, so here are some other options.
I've seen a lot of scales represented in more practical terms,
such as "buy it, rent/stream it, skip it." I like ideas like that. But
no matter what you end up doing, make sure that you, at very least, have
some sort of rubric that you judge shows on. Have a way to describe each of your ratings and why a show would fit into them. Know who you would recommend a show to and why. Know who you wouldn't recommend it to.
As for systems themselves, start with a three-point system. Define things as good, neutral, or bad. If that's not something that works for you, expand it to a five-point system (the one I personally use) so that you can reward something that has that masterpiece quality to it, or to condemn something for being amateurish or downright offensive.
If you really want to add more nuance, try letter grades. That preserves the 5-point "terrible, bad, average, good, fantastic" scale in the form of A, B, C, D, and F, but it also allows you to add a + or - to say "I'm a bit on the fence about my rating."
If you're forced into a system you don't like, tweak a system that you do like so that it applies to it. Sometimes I do reviews on sites that force me to give a rating on a 100-point scale. I personally scale it so that I'm rating by intervals of 5, removing 100 (I could give a perfect score if I wanted but on a scale that granular I don't feel comfortable doing so) and 0 (everything at least deserves 5 points for existing). Then I divide it so that I know roughly where each series is going to fall. For example, 70-75 defines a good show that more people than not will enjoy, while 40-45 is more of a "guilty pleasure" show. I use benchmarks like this to define my entire scale, making it easier to give a rating that isn't as arbitrary.
In review (pun intended), don't make your scale bigger because you think it will make the review more objective. Don't feel like you have to structure yourself. Write a review because it's the right approach to take with a show. Look at the show relative to its peers rather than some nonexistant universal constant.
And please, whatever you do, don't score shows by averaging six categories. Seriously. That's stupid. Stop it.
Tuesday, September 1, 2015
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
Why You Shouldn't Read/Watch the Divergent Trilogy.
When the Divergent movie came out, my response was a resounding "huh." I'd read the books, and I thought they were pretty generic. I assumed it would go the way of so many adaptations before: it'd get a single movie that flopped and everyone would forget about them. But now it's gotten a second movie. And a third to complete the tri--oh, wait, no, four movies. Because of course they're splitting the last movie into two, as is popular these days.
That's when I said that it's time to speak out against this series. It's obviously more popular than I gave it credit for, and that's a bad thing, because I think the books are generic at best and ideologically dangerous at worst. So here's why you shouldn't support the Divergent Trilogy:
1. The books are generic
Remember how big Twilight got? Remember how that led to a slew of so many imitators that bookstores stocked "paranormal teen romance" sections? YA dystopias are going the same way. The popularity of The Hunger Games has led to an increased demand in the market for dystopias, and the Divergent Trilogy is just another one of these. They, unfortunately, bring very little new to the table. It's hard not to compare them to The Hunger Games, considering the first person present tense female narrator, or the "this is our world's future" premise, or the idea of people being segregated. And in the ways it, uh, "diverges" from similar stories? Genetic engineering? Wow, boring. Soooo boring.
2. The books are not well-written
It takes three books to justify the idea of splitting people into factions based on singular personality traits, and "genetic engineering" isn't really a good answer. It's a thought experiment, but one that is ultimately pointless because it's based on something that would never happen and doesn't even raise many important questions. What exactly is it trying to ask? "What do we become when we invest our identities in a single idea?" That's such an asinine question to ask. It's a flimsy premise that takes three books to get to the point, and by the time they get to the point, readers have already had two books to consider all the plot holes. The characters are largely one-dimensional by the very design of the system. Such mediocrity should not be encouraged with money.
3. It's a blatant cash-in
When the Harry Potter films the last book into two movies, they had six previous installments based on some pretty hefty books. Maybe it was an attempt to milk fans for more money, but it's just as reasonable to believe that it was an attempt to give fans a more complete experience. There were plenty of plot threads that needed wrapping up that had been built up over previous films. Since then, that's become the norm with adaptations, with movies being drug out and split into multiple parts for the sake of squeezing more money from consumers. Breaking Dawn, The Hobbit, Mockingjay...and now Allegiant. This pattern should not be supported. It's simply a way to milk a cash cow until it's dry, and filmmakers are going to continue doing it as long as we keep letting them.
4. They're ideologically dangerous
The Divergent Trilogy is mostly inoffensive for the first two books, but the third book has a lot of issues that seem downright dangerous. The plot of the third book focuses primarily on the people escaping the city discovering that being divergent marks a certain level of genetic healing, meaning those who aren't divergent aren't "healed." The scientists studying the city are considering using some sort of memory serum to reset the experiment, which understandably makes the group of escapees upset. The tone shifts to "how dare they tell us we're broken? We need to revolt!" Allegiant is very obviously aware of marginalized groups, as it includes some openly gay characters and there are themes that parallel the struggles of the gay community, but the context of the parallel and how it is ultimately handled both have major issues. First of all, the scientists are attempting to heal genetic damage, which has done major damage to the world. Most of the series up to this point has been "it's dangerous when you are reduced to just a few corruptible personality traits." But now, it's become the exact opposite: "you are fine as you are and don't let anyone else tell you differently." What happened to the earlier warnings? Have they suddenly become irrelevant? Allegiant completely ignores the possibility that who someone is could possibly be dangerous or harmful.
Secondly, the way the issue is handled is horribly dangerous and downright hypocritical. The issue is solved when the city group uses the memory serum on the scientists before they can use it on the city, and then fill in the gaps in their memories by telling them "this is what we want to do but we're going to pretend it's what you wanted to do." The message this sends is literally "if you think that a change you're attempting to affect is right, you should brainwash the people who disagree into agreeing with you." This is a terrible message to be sending. I don't have to explain why this is a dangerous ideology, do I?
And that's why you should not support the Divergent trilogy. Maybe you're still interested and want to check it out. Whatever. That's fine. I just ask that you borrow or pirate rather than give monetary support. There are certain things that should not be supported. And mediocre, money-grabbing, and ideologically dangerous series like the Divergent trilogy need to be sent messages.
That's when I said that it's time to speak out against this series. It's obviously more popular than I gave it credit for, and that's a bad thing, because I think the books are generic at best and ideologically dangerous at worst. So here's why you shouldn't support the Divergent Trilogy:
1. The books are generic
Remember how big Twilight got? Remember how that led to a slew of so many imitators that bookstores stocked "paranormal teen romance" sections? YA dystopias are going the same way. The popularity of The Hunger Games has led to an increased demand in the market for dystopias, and the Divergent Trilogy is just another one of these. They, unfortunately, bring very little new to the table. It's hard not to compare them to The Hunger Games, considering the first person present tense female narrator, or the "this is our world's future" premise, or the idea of people being segregated. And in the ways it, uh, "diverges" from similar stories? Genetic engineering? Wow, boring. Soooo boring.
2. The books are not well-written
It takes three books to justify the idea of splitting people into factions based on singular personality traits, and "genetic engineering" isn't really a good answer. It's a thought experiment, but one that is ultimately pointless because it's based on something that would never happen and doesn't even raise many important questions. What exactly is it trying to ask? "What do we become when we invest our identities in a single idea?" That's such an asinine question to ask. It's a flimsy premise that takes three books to get to the point, and by the time they get to the point, readers have already had two books to consider all the plot holes. The characters are largely one-dimensional by the very design of the system. Such mediocrity should not be encouraged with money.
3. It's a blatant cash-in
When the Harry Potter films the last book into two movies, they had six previous installments based on some pretty hefty books. Maybe it was an attempt to milk fans for more money, but it's just as reasonable to believe that it was an attempt to give fans a more complete experience. There were plenty of plot threads that needed wrapping up that had been built up over previous films. Since then, that's become the norm with adaptations, with movies being drug out and split into multiple parts for the sake of squeezing more money from consumers. Breaking Dawn, The Hobbit, Mockingjay...and now Allegiant. This pattern should not be supported. It's simply a way to milk a cash cow until it's dry, and filmmakers are going to continue doing it as long as we keep letting them.
4. They're ideologically dangerous
The Divergent Trilogy is mostly inoffensive for the first two books, but the third book has a lot of issues that seem downright dangerous. The plot of the third book focuses primarily on the people escaping the city discovering that being divergent marks a certain level of genetic healing, meaning those who aren't divergent aren't "healed." The scientists studying the city are considering using some sort of memory serum to reset the experiment, which understandably makes the group of escapees upset. The tone shifts to "how dare they tell us we're broken? We need to revolt!" Allegiant is very obviously aware of marginalized groups, as it includes some openly gay characters and there are themes that parallel the struggles of the gay community, but the context of the parallel and how it is ultimately handled both have major issues. First of all, the scientists are attempting to heal genetic damage, which has done major damage to the world. Most of the series up to this point has been "it's dangerous when you are reduced to just a few corruptible personality traits." But now, it's become the exact opposite: "you are fine as you are and don't let anyone else tell you differently." What happened to the earlier warnings? Have they suddenly become irrelevant? Allegiant completely ignores the possibility that who someone is could possibly be dangerous or harmful.
Secondly, the way the issue is handled is horribly dangerous and downright hypocritical. The issue is solved when the city group uses the memory serum on the scientists before they can use it on the city, and then fill in the gaps in their memories by telling them "this is what we want to do but we're going to pretend it's what you wanted to do." The message this sends is literally "if you think that a change you're attempting to affect is right, you should brainwash the people who disagree into agreeing with you." This is a terrible message to be sending. I don't have to explain why this is a dangerous ideology, do I?
And that's why you should not support the Divergent trilogy. Maybe you're still interested and want to check it out. Whatever. That's fine. I just ask that you borrow or pirate rather than give monetary support. There are certain things that should not be supported. And mediocre, money-grabbing, and ideologically dangerous series like the Divergent trilogy need to be sent messages.
Thursday, April 9, 2015
Psycho-Pass 2 Review
It's been too long since I've written something for this blog, and while I have maybe four or five half-finished posts that I haven't published yet because I plan to put more effort into them, I figured I'd toss off a quick anime review.
Let's talk about Psycho-Pass. Psycho-Pass is is a 2012 original anime by Gen Urobuchi of Puella Magi Madoka Magica and Fate/Zero fame. Urobuchi is one of my favorite anime writers, and I thought Psycho-Pass was incredible. It's a dystopian world where something called the Sibyl System controls crime by monitoring people's mental state and their criminal tendencies. Think Minority Report meets Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. It makes plenty of allusions to the works that it draws its inspiration from, from Plato to Shakespeare to Joseph Conrad and more. The series takes a look at what it means to be a human, how we should interact with a heavily digital society, and what relationship law and ethics should have.
Psycho-Pass 2, which aired in 2014, is basically Psycho-Pass devoid of everything that made it great. It lack's Urobuchi's involvement, which probably should have been the first red flag. But that didn't necessarily mean it would have been bad. Maybe it could have had a solid storyline and good characters. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, many of the best characters from the first season were dead or indisposed and most the other established characters had to be left alone so that they could be used in the then-upcoming movie (which Gen Urobuchi was involved with). So the story had to be carried by the new cast members. Which were, uh...pretty awful.
Without going into too much detail since it involves spoilers for the first season, most of the cast was well-established and had at least some purpose in the story. I've always thought that characters were Urobuchi's strongest points. He doesn't write easily-identifiable and fun caricatures like you see in lots of anime. His characters have some subtlety and nuance to them, and viewers have to work a bit harder to understand them, but can enjoy them more fully if they put in that effort. The characters in PP2? They pretty much exist to drive the plot (which is...not great) or fill out the cast.
Of course, not all characters are necessarily bad at the beginning. At the beginning, I was still hopefully optimistic. Episode 4 is when I abandoned hope. A bunch of hostages are caught in a situation that causes their crime coefficients to rise to levels indicating that they are about to instigate violent crimes. Dominators, the weapons the police use, are set to stun and contain criminals at a certain level and set to kill at a certain level. It's a safety mechanism that protects the people so that lethal force isn't accidentally used. However, as these citizens all blindly rush out of the building in a panic, their crime coefficients elevated, the police massacre them all. Why is this happening? There's something highly abnormal about this. Have no situations like this ever happened before? One would think that the police have procedures for dealing with hostage situations in which victims might become temporarily stressed. But no, that scene needed to be there, because something needed to make she show feel edgy, since the new writer has confused that for being good.
The edginess continues through the series. One of the major plotlines is a villain in the force attempting to make Akane's psycho-pass darker. Why? What good does that do? Why Akane? There is literally no purpose to the plotline other than "it's dark."
Psycho-Pass 2 feels like a single arc of Psycho-Pass stretched out into 11 episodes. It had the potential to be good, but in order to fill time, it took far too long getting to the point, and when it finally did get to the point, the point turned out to contradict a lot of what had previously been established. In theory, the season boiled down to a variation of the God Paradox, i.e., "if God can do anything, can he create a boulder so heavy that he can't lift it?" In this case, the villain, Kamui, asked "if Sibyl is all-judging, how would it judge itself?"
In attempting to answer this question, Psycho-Pass 2 completely changes what "criminally asymptomatic" means, and gives a convoluted answer to the question in the process. The obvious answer, based on what the first season previously established, would be "it doesn't need to because Sibyl is the embodiment of the law and the law is above judgment." But Psycho-Pass 2 sets up a scenario where Sibyl fails to judge a man whose internal organs are a conglomerate of individuals, similar to how Sibyl itself operates. Let's ignore how absolutely stupid this is for a few moments and focus on how Sibyl reacts. Sibyl says "well, we'll judge each of the individuals that are part of you individually, and we'll also judge ourselves individually and eliminate the brains that are raising our crime coefficients." Except that shouldn't happen, because the Sibyl System consists of criminally asymptomatic brains that can't be judged by the Sibyl System. There should not be brains capable of raising its crime coefficient. But of course that shouldn't be surprising, since the writers of Psycho-Pass 2 seem to have no concept of what "criminally asymptomatic" means, considering that Togane is somehow considered criminally asymptomatic while simultaneously having the highest crime coefficient recorded. This is literally the opposite of what criminally asymptomatic has been established to mean. Criminally asymptomatic people have hues that don't match their actions. A murderer like season 1's Makishima is criminally asymptomatic because he has a clear psycho-pass, and I suppose a good person who somehow has a dark psycho-pass would also theoretically be criminally asymptomatic. But having a high crime coefficient is something you would expect from a character who killed puppies as a child. That's not hyperbole, by the way. There is a scene where we literally see Togane murdering puppies as a child. I mean, seriously? Is there a more heavy-handed yet also generic way to establish that he's evil?
Let's come back to our villain, Kamui: he was the only survivor of a plane crash as a child who was saved by surgery that put the organs of the other 184 students who did not survive the plane crash into his body. Let's ignore things like compatibility of blood types and just assume that this somehow works. The result is that he cannot be detected by the Sibyl System because...he's not one person or something. Also, the season is set up around this idea of judging a collective. A collective of brains is wholly different from a collective of organs. A collective of organs should not affect anything the show tries to portray it as affecting. People who have heart or kidney transplants do not undergo random personality changes because they have other people's organs in them. There's probably research to back this up, but I don't need it because it should be obvious to pretty much everyone that this very concept of this happening is absolutely fucking stupid.
So let's recap what exactly we've established with Psycho-Pass 2:
-It focuses more on being dark and edgy than making sense
-It contradicts things that have been previously established in the series
-It's built on a premise that is not only fallacious, but makes no logical sense, either.
There are plenty of other small things I could go into, but those three points alone are enough to condemn the show. Psycho-Pass was an incredibly thoughtful show that, despite sci-fi elements not necessarily grounded in reality, at least stayed consistent. Psycho-Pass 2 is basically Psycho-Pass devoid of everything that made Psycho-Pass good. Does that make Psycho-Pass 2 bad? I honestly can't tell, because I cannot divorce it from Psycho-Pass, and relative to Psycho-Pass, it's bad. But hey, at least Urobuchi's still involved in the movie! Hopefully it doesn't suck when it's finally released here.
Let's talk about Psycho-Pass. Psycho-Pass is is a 2012 original anime by Gen Urobuchi of Puella Magi Madoka Magica and Fate/Zero fame. Urobuchi is one of my favorite anime writers, and I thought Psycho-Pass was incredible. It's a dystopian world where something called the Sibyl System controls crime by monitoring people's mental state and their criminal tendencies. Think Minority Report meets Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. It makes plenty of allusions to the works that it draws its inspiration from, from Plato to Shakespeare to Joseph Conrad and more. The series takes a look at what it means to be a human, how we should interact with a heavily digital society, and what relationship law and ethics should have.
Psycho-Pass 2, which aired in 2014, is basically Psycho-Pass devoid of everything that made it great. It lack's Urobuchi's involvement, which probably should have been the first red flag. But that didn't necessarily mean it would have been bad. Maybe it could have had a solid storyline and good characters. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, many of the best characters from the first season were dead or indisposed and most the other established characters had to be left alone so that they could be used in the then-upcoming movie (which Gen Urobuchi was involved with). So the story had to be carried by the new cast members. Which were, uh...pretty awful.
Without going into too much detail since it involves spoilers for the first season, most of the cast was well-established and had at least some purpose in the story. I've always thought that characters were Urobuchi's strongest points. He doesn't write easily-identifiable and fun caricatures like you see in lots of anime. His characters have some subtlety and nuance to them, and viewers have to work a bit harder to understand them, but can enjoy them more fully if they put in that effort. The characters in PP2? They pretty much exist to drive the plot (which is...not great) or fill out the cast.
Of course, not all characters are necessarily bad at the beginning. At the beginning, I was still hopefully optimistic. Episode 4 is when I abandoned hope. A bunch of hostages are caught in a situation that causes their crime coefficients to rise to levels indicating that they are about to instigate violent crimes. Dominators, the weapons the police use, are set to stun and contain criminals at a certain level and set to kill at a certain level. It's a safety mechanism that protects the people so that lethal force isn't accidentally used. However, as these citizens all blindly rush out of the building in a panic, their crime coefficients elevated, the police massacre them all. Why is this happening? There's something highly abnormal about this. Have no situations like this ever happened before? One would think that the police have procedures for dealing with hostage situations in which victims might become temporarily stressed. But no, that scene needed to be there, because something needed to make she show feel edgy, since the new writer has confused that for being good.
The edginess continues through the series. One of the major plotlines is a villain in the force attempting to make Akane's psycho-pass darker. Why? What good does that do? Why Akane? There is literally no purpose to the plotline other than "it's dark."
Psycho-Pass 2 feels like a single arc of Psycho-Pass stretched out into 11 episodes. It had the potential to be good, but in order to fill time, it took far too long getting to the point, and when it finally did get to the point, the point turned out to contradict a lot of what had previously been established. In theory, the season boiled down to a variation of the God Paradox, i.e., "if God can do anything, can he create a boulder so heavy that he can't lift it?" In this case, the villain, Kamui, asked "if Sibyl is all-judging, how would it judge itself?"
In attempting to answer this question, Psycho-Pass 2 completely changes what "criminally asymptomatic" means, and gives a convoluted answer to the question in the process. The obvious answer, based on what the first season previously established, would be "it doesn't need to because Sibyl is the embodiment of the law and the law is above judgment." But Psycho-Pass 2 sets up a scenario where Sibyl fails to judge a man whose internal organs are a conglomerate of individuals, similar to how Sibyl itself operates. Let's ignore how absolutely stupid this is for a few moments and focus on how Sibyl reacts. Sibyl says "well, we'll judge each of the individuals that are part of you individually, and we'll also judge ourselves individually and eliminate the brains that are raising our crime coefficients." Except that shouldn't happen, because the Sibyl System consists of criminally asymptomatic brains that can't be judged by the Sibyl System. There should not be brains capable of raising its crime coefficient. But of course that shouldn't be surprising, since the writers of Psycho-Pass 2 seem to have no concept of what "criminally asymptomatic" means, considering that Togane is somehow considered criminally asymptomatic while simultaneously having the highest crime coefficient recorded. This is literally the opposite of what criminally asymptomatic has been established to mean. Criminally asymptomatic people have hues that don't match their actions. A murderer like season 1's Makishima is criminally asymptomatic because he has a clear psycho-pass, and I suppose a good person who somehow has a dark psycho-pass would also theoretically be criminally asymptomatic. But having a high crime coefficient is something you would expect from a character who killed puppies as a child. That's not hyperbole, by the way. There is a scene where we literally see Togane murdering puppies as a child. I mean, seriously? Is there a more heavy-handed yet also generic way to establish that he's evil?
Let's come back to our villain, Kamui: he was the only survivor of a plane crash as a child who was saved by surgery that put the organs of the other 184 students who did not survive the plane crash into his body. Let's ignore things like compatibility of blood types and just assume that this somehow works. The result is that he cannot be detected by the Sibyl System because...he's not one person or something. Also, the season is set up around this idea of judging a collective. A collective of brains is wholly different from a collective of organs. A collective of organs should not affect anything the show tries to portray it as affecting. People who have heart or kidney transplants do not undergo random personality changes because they have other people's organs in them. There's probably research to back this up, but I don't need it because it should be obvious to pretty much everyone that this very concept of this happening is absolutely fucking stupid.
So let's recap what exactly we've established with Psycho-Pass 2:
-It focuses more on being dark and edgy than making sense
-It contradicts things that have been previously established in the series
-It's built on a premise that is not only fallacious, but makes no logical sense, either.
There are plenty of other small things I could go into, but those three points alone are enough to condemn the show. Psycho-Pass was an incredibly thoughtful show that, despite sci-fi elements not necessarily grounded in reality, at least stayed consistent. Psycho-Pass 2 is basically Psycho-Pass devoid of everything that made Psycho-Pass good. Does that make Psycho-Pass 2 bad? I honestly can't tell, because I cannot divorce it from Psycho-Pass, and relative to Psycho-Pass, it's bad. But hey, at least Urobuchi's still involved in the movie! Hopefully it doesn't suck when it's finally released here.
Sunday, February 8, 2015
Gaming First Impressions: Life is Strange: Waif Hipster Bullshit
I quite enjoyed Telltale's The Walking Dead, both seasons 1 and 2. They were decent adventure games, but I wasn't really playing them for the gameplay. In fact, the gameplay was the worst part. I played them because I loved the decision-based story-driven narrative. Your choices affected things that happened later down the road--well, to an extent at least. It'd be difficult for every choice to make a huge impact on the narrative (if a key choice split the narrative into two notably different storylines, then just one key choice in each of the 5 episodes would result in 32 different endings), so some choices ultimately don't matter to the plot. The real appeal of the choices is that they give players agency over the story.
When Season 2 came out, a friend and I began playing at around the same time. We decided to chat through Steam as we played, reacting as the story unfolded, and then comparing the decisions we made afterwards. Sure, we made a lot of the same choices, but we also disagreed on what the best choice was at times. Being able to argue your choices was one of the most appealing parts of the game for me, because even if your choices don't matter, the act of making the choice in and of itself matters.
Life is Strange is a choice-driven adventure game like The Walking Dead, so the aforementioned friend recommended it to me when it came out and was kind enough to buy me the first episode so that we could share the experience again like we did with The Walking Dead. I played it and while the gameplay is similar to The Walking Dead, it's definitely a different experience. With one episode released and four more on the way, here are my thoughts.
The Plot
Max Caulfield, an 18-year-old student, moves back to her hometown of Arcadia Bay, Oregon after an absence of five years to attend Blackwell High School for its photography program. While in class, she has a strange vision of a storm by a lighthouse. While trying to calm her nerves from the dream in the bathroom, a student enters, exchanges a tense and heated conversation with a blue-haired girl who follows him, and then pulls a gun and shoots her. At this point, Max discovers that she has the power to rewind time and uses her power to stop the incident.
There are also some strange things in general going on at Blackwell. There's the Vortex Club, a group of cool kids with a vague purpose. There's the missing Rachel Amber and the missing person posters of her put up absolutely everywhere. There's the push for an installation of an intrusive surveillance system. And, of course, there's all sorts of general teenage drama added on top of all that.
A note that pretty much everything that follows this is a spoiler for the first episode, but not the rest of the game, so stop here or proceed as you will. I'll be talking about other stuff less specifically in the other sections, but I will still be talking about it.
Max discovers that the blue-haired girl whose life she saves and the person putting up all the posters of Rachel Amber are the same person: her former best friend Chloe, who she had cut off contact with after leaving five years ago. Chloe became close friends with Rachel after Max left, and Max agrees to help Chloe find her.
At the end, Max has another vision of an impending tornado threatening to destroy the town in roughly four days. She explains the vision, as well as her time traveling to Chloe.
The Good
There's a lot to like about Life is Strange. While the models and such have some issues, the art is really nice. The ending scene in particular is beautiful, with Max and Chloe looking out at the town from the lighthouse at sunset while snow begins falling. The game has a nice soundtrack that fits it well, and there are some solid storytelling and characters.
There's also a lot to like about the time reversal system. The ability to undo choices is a good one. Sometimes people make a certain choice expecting it to go a certain way, then find out that there was a disconnect between what the developers were trying to say and what they thought it meant. It also allows for plenty of delicious paranoia-based traps. There were four or five key choices in this first episode, and I think that with maybe a few exceptions, I would always make a choice, rewind time to make the other choice, decide I like my first choice better, and then later think "I should have made the other choice" after it was already too late to change it. It's a unique take on the genre and I really hope the game is able to capitalize on it in later episodes.
The thing that stands out to me most, though, is the themes. In addition to spirals (the tornado and the Vortex Club feature prominently, and the time-travel mechanic interface is shown as a spiral), there seems to be an important theme of security vs. freedom. The principal and Chloe's father both want to control information more through the installation of security systems, one girl early in the game is piloting a drone, and social media and technology in particular are given attention. While social media is obviously just a part of most teen's lives now, particular attention is paid to the dangers. One character asks to sketch Max and then explicitly forewarns her that he posts his sketches on Facebook. Another girl, however, takes a somewhat unflattering photo of Max without her permission and posts it to Facebook. Public and private technology-based discourse and information sharing are brought up in various ways, from sexting to digital piracy.
On the other side of the coin, there are a few free spirits rebelling against the system. Chloe is obviously a very counter-culture character, but one of the teachers at the school is petitioning against the security system. Graffiti, an anonymous form of discourse, is also prominently featured. And then there are the symbols of the birds and the butterflies. Winged animals are often used as examples for freedom, and while the butterfly pulls double duty (since the story deals with time travel it almost certainly alludes to the butterfly effect), near the end Max makes a comment after seeing some birds, envying how free they are. The security vs. freedom conflict is set up subtly enough that someone who isn't used to looking for things like that might overlook it, and it's nice to see that a choice-driven game is setting up a conflict between two opposing sides without being blatant about it.
The Bad
That's not to say that Life is Strange is great, though. I knew literally nothing about the game before going into it, apart from it being episodic and decision-based, and my first thought when it started up was "wow, that wet hair texture looks awful." There's some noticeable failures on the parts of the models like hair clipping into necks at certain angles, and the voice acting isn't always stellar. And while the problem goes away quickly enough, the controls aren't always intuitive. When the game told me to look at a photo in the very beginning, I spent at least a minute attempting to follow the instructions without realizing that I was supposed to click on the word telling me how to interact with the object instead of the object itself. Overall, there weren't too many flat-out problems I had with the game, but there were considerably more things that should have worked better than they did, which I'll get to in this next session.
The Rest
A lot of the game swings around from legitimately enjoyable to a bit cringe-worthy (I'm sorry, was I supposed to find those selfie puns funny?), to somewhere in between.
The story is a bunch of stories I feel like I've heard before. It's got the whole "stranger in a familiar land" thing going on, and a large portion of the plot feels like it is literally The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. I'm just waiting for the scene where Warren asks Max on a date and she constantly rewinds time to try to get out of it so she doesn't have to face her feelings, or for when someone asks her "Max...have you been...time leaping?" And of course, it has tinges of absolutely every hipster-based story I've seen.
Then there's the characters. I have no clue how I'm supposed to feel about these characters. Sometimes they feel nuanced and fleshed-out, but sometimes they feel like they're just caricatures. What makes it worse is that some characters feel one way, some feel another way, and some feel like a bit of both. Chloe's father, the principal, and Nathan Prescott are obviously designed to be hated, making them feel two-dimensional. But when other characters are more nuanced, it makes it feel like one group or the other is just poorly written. Chloe is one of the more likable characters, but some of her actions are pretty inexcusable. Are we supposed to like those aspects of her character, or are we supposed to see her as more morally ambiguous? I don't know. It's either good writing or bad writing and it's hard to tell right now.
Most specifically I want to talk about Max because I have absolutely no idea what to make of her. Max almost seems to be designed to pander. It's like one or more developers said "these are things I love that I think that most of the target demographic will love." And they weren't wrong! I might not like photography, but I love a lot of books, anime, games, and TV shows Max mentions! It's probably because she likes things that I don't really care about that I'm able to see through her interests that I do love to the fact that she's very obviously designed to be lovable and/or identifiable. She has a lot of interests, and most people who would play Life is Strange are going to share at least one or two of them, but probably not all of them. I know that this is just how people work on a general level, but there's been so much effort put into making Max into a love letter to the things the developers enjoy and think that their audience will also enjoy that it feels a bit manipulative. Add in the fact that Max is our point-of-view character so we're seeing the entire game through this lens and it makes the whole game feel like--to borrow a phrase Victoria uses to describe Max's public image--waif hipster bullshit. Yeah, yeah, okay, we get it, Max is a socially awkward person who likes things we like. Can we talk about the story and not the merits of The X-Files?
That doesn't mean that it's bad, though. References are not inherently bad and in this case they didn't make me enjoy the game's merits any less. I'll still be playing through the other four episodes when they come out. It just makes it hard to form an objective opinion on the game's quality. Maybe all my griping really means is that I've reached the point of analytic viewing where I can't even turn it off even when I'm enjoying something. Oh well. We'll see in March when episode 2 comes out, I suppose.
When Season 2 came out, a friend and I began playing at around the same time. We decided to chat through Steam as we played, reacting as the story unfolded, and then comparing the decisions we made afterwards. Sure, we made a lot of the same choices, but we also disagreed on what the best choice was at times. Being able to argue your choices was one of the most appealing parts of the game for me, because even if your choices don't matter, the act of making the choice in and of itself matters.
Life is Strange is a choice-driven adventure game like The Walking Dead, so the aforementioned friend recommended it to me when it came out and was kind enough to buy me the first episode so that we could share the experience again like we did with The Walking Dead. I played it and while the gameplay is similar to The Walking Dead, it's definitely a different experience. With one episode released and four more on the way, here are my thoughts.
The Plot
Max Caulfield, an 18-year-old student, moves back to her hometown of Arcadia Bay, Oregon after an absence of five years to attend Blackwell High School for its photography program. While in class, she has a strange vision of a storm by a lighthouse. While trying to calm her nerves from the dream in the bathroom, a student enters, exchanges a tense and heated conversation with a blue-haired girl who follows him, and then pulls a gun and shoots her. At this point, Max discovers that she has the power to rewind time and uses her power to stop the incident.
There are also some strange things in general going on at Blackwell. There's the Vortex Club, a group of cool kids with a vague purpose. There's the missing Rachel Amber and the missing person posters of her put up absolutely everywhere. There's the push for an installation of an intrusive surveillance system. And, of course, there's all sorts of general teenage drama added on top of all that.
A note that pretty much everything that follows this is a spoiler for the first episode, but not the rest of the game, so stop here or proceed as you will. I'll be talking about other stuff less specifically in the other sections, but I will still be talking about it.
Max discovers that the blue-haired girl whose life she saves and the person putting up all the posters of Rachel Amber are the same person: her former best friend Chloe, who she had cut off contact with after leaving five years ago. Chloe became close friends with Rachel after Max left, and Max agrees to help Chloe find her.
At the end, Max has another vision of an impending tornado threatening to destroy the town in roughly four days. She explains the vision, as well as her time traveling to Chloe.
The Good
There's a lot to like about Life is Strange. While the models and such have some issues, the art is really nice. The ending scene in particular is beautiful, with Max and Chloe looking out at the town from the lighthouse at sunset while snow begins falling. The game has a nice soundtrack that fits it well, and there are some solid storytelling and characters.
There's also a lot to like about the time reversal system. The ability to undo choices is a good one. Sometimes people make a certain choice expecting it to go a certain way, then find out that there was a disconnect between what the developers were trying to say and what they thought it meant. It also allows for plenty of delicious paranoia-based traps. There were four or five key choices in this first episode, and I think that with maybe a few exceptions, I would always make a choice, rewind time to make the other choice, decide I like my first choice better, and then later think "I should have made the other choice" after it was already too late to change it. It's a unique take on the genre and I really hope the game is able to capitalize on it in later episodes.
The thing that stands out to me most, though, is the themes. In addition to spirals (the tornado and the Vortex Club feature prominently, and the time-travel mechanic interface is shown as a spiral), there seems to be an important theme of security vs. freedom. The principal and Chloe's father both want to control information more through the installation of security systems, one girl early in the game is piloting a drone, and social media and technology in particular are given attention. While social media is obviously just a part of most teen's lives now, particular attention is paid to the dangers. One character asks to sketch Max and then explicitly forewarns her that he posts his sketches on Facebook. Another girl, however, takes a somewhat unflattering photo of Max without her permission and posts it to Facebook. Public and private technology-based discourse and information sharing are brought up in various ways, from sexting to digital piracy.
On the other side of the coin, there are a few free spirits rebelling against the system. Chloe is obviously a very counter-culture character, but one of the teachers at the school is petitioning against the security system. Graffiti, an anonymous form of discourse, is also prominently featured. And then there are the symbols of the birds and the butterflies. Winged animals are often used as examples for freedom, and while the butterfly pulls double duty (since the story deals with time travel it almost certainly alludes to the butterfly effect), near the end Max makes a comment after seeing some birds, envying how free they are. The security vs. freedom conflict is set up subtly enough that someone who isn't used to looking for things like that might overlook it, and it's nice to see that a choice-driven game is setting up a conflict between two opposing sides without being blatant about it.
The Bad
That's not to say that Life is Strange is great, though. I knew literally nothing about the game before going into it, apart from it being episodic and decision-based, and my first thought when it started up was "wow, that wet hair texture looks awful." There's some noticeable failures on the parts of the models like hair clipping into necks at certain angles, and the voice acting isn't always stellar. And while the problem goes away quickly enough, the controls aren't always intuitive. When the game told me to look at a photo in the very beginning, I spent at least a minute attempting to follow the instructions without realizing that I was supposed to click on the word telling me how to interact with the object instead of the object itself. Overall, there weren't too many flat-out problems I had with the game, but there were considerably more things that should have worked better than they did, which I'll get to in this next session.
The Rest
A lot of the game swings around from legitimately enjoyable to a bit cringe-worthy (I'm sorry, was I supposed to find those selfie puns funny?), to somewhere in between.
The story is a bunch of stories I feel like I've heard before. It's got the whole "stranger in a familiar land" thing going on, and a large portion of the plot feels like it is literally The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. I'm just waiting for the scene where Warren asks Max on a date and she constantly rewinds time to try to get out of it so she doesn't have to face her feelings, or for when someone asks her "Max...have you been...time leaping?" And of course, it has tinges of absolutely every hipster-based story I've seen.
Then there's the characters. I have no clue how I'm supposed to feel about these characters. Sometimes they feel nuanced and fleshed-out, but sometimes they feel like they're just caricatures. What makes it worse is that some characters feel one way, some feel another way, and some feel like a bit of both. Chloe's father, the principal, and Nathan Prescott are obviously designed to be hated, making them feel two-dimensional. But when other characters are more nuanced, it makes it feel like one group or the other is just poorly written. Chloe is one of the more likable characters, but some of her actions are pretty inexcusable. Are we supposed to like those aspects of her character, or are we supposed to see her as more morally ambiguous? I don't know. It's either good writing or bad writing and it's hard to tell right now.
Most specifically I want to talk about Max because I have absolutely no idea what to make of her. Max almost seems to be designed to pander. It's like one or more developers said "these are things I love that I think that most of the target demographic will love." And they weren't wrong! I might not like photography, but I love a lot of books, anime, games, and TV shows Max mentions! It's probably because she likes things that I don't really care about that I'm able to see through her interests that I do love to the fact that she's very obviously designed to be lovable and/or identifiable. She has a lot of interests, and most people who would play Life is Strange are going to share at least one or two of them, but probably not all of them. I know that this is just how people work on a general level, but there's been so much effort put into making Max into a love letter to the things the developers enjoy and think that their audience will also enjoy that it feels a bit manipulative. Add in the fact that Max is our point-of-view character so we're seeing the entire game through this lens and it makes the whole game feel like--to borrow a phrase Victoria uses to describe Max's public image--waif hipster bullshit. Yeah, yeah, okay, we get it, Max is a socially awkward person who likes things we like. Can we talk about the story and not the merits of The X-Files?
That doesn't mean that it's bad, though. References are not inherently bad and in this case they didn't make me enjoy the game's merits any less. I'll still be playing through the other four episodes when they come out. It just makes it hard to form an objective opinion on the game's quality. Maybe all my griping really means is that I've reached the point of analytic viewing where I can't even turn it off even when I'm enjoying something. Oh well. We'll see in March when episode 2 comes out, I suppose.
Thursday, January 29, 2015
5 Anime From 2014 You May Have Overlooked
2014 was really the first year I started watching a lot of airing anime as opposed to just one or two shows, as well as listening to a lot of buzz surrounding the airing shows. Now the year is over and I've seen plenty of end-of-year lists touting which shows were worth watching the most. I've seen a lot of the same shows pop up. You had your mainstream hits like Space Dandy, Kill la Kill, Fate/Stay Night, and Parasyte. You had your cult hits like No Game No Life, Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun, Log Horizon, and Shirobako. There were mentions of shows that surprised everyone once they started airing, such as Barakamon and Bahamut. You even had some attention thrown to artsy shows like Ping Pong and Mushishi Zoku Shou. All of those were great, but I'm not here to talk about them.
If you want to read about the shows I just mentioned, just Google "best anime of 2014" and I'm sure you'll find a few lists that mention each of them. What I'm here to do is talk about some of my favorite shows from 2014 that were overlooked by the larger anime community. Sure, there were obviously plenty of viewers who probably enjoyed them to an extent, but these are, in my opinion, some really solid shows that just never generated that much buzz for whatever reason.
5. Soredemo Sekai wa Utsukushii/The World is Still Beautiful
I have to admit that I'm a sucker for a good romance, and if a show can actually pull a good romance off, it's one that has my attention. And unlike most romance, it has a fantasy setting! Admittedly, The World is Still Beautiful is kind of hit and miss, but it manages to craft a romance that isn't just "I have a crush on this person but am too busy blushing whenever they're around to do anything." This show opens with our protagonist, Nike, forced into a marriage with the cruel Sun King, Livius. Livius also happens to be a young boy (though, to be fair, one very mature for his age). Though she's not pleased with the arrangement, Nike decides to make the best of the situation and attempt to heal the pain Livius carries with him by showing him how, despite all the hardships humans have to face, the world can still be beautiful. The show begins with Nike and Livius resenting each other, but by the end, they legitimately love each other and it never once feels like their relationship was rushed or drawn out to get to that point.
Like I said, it's a bit hit-and-miss, though, which is probably why it never caught on with most people. Certain plot elements that get a lot of focus feel unimportant, it can feel a bit repetitive, and I don't think they actually go far enough with the relationship. Sure, Livius is really young and I can see how some people might find the relationship between someone of that age and a young adult to be a bit uncomfortable, but the relationship is portrayed tastefully, the two are married, are clearly in love with each other, and Livius seems to be mature enough to understand the birds and the bees. It legitimately seems to cheapen their relationship by explicitly stating that the two have never done more than kiss. But whatever. Still a fairly satisfying show, and while it might not be the greatest show out there and maybe isn't your thing, it's a romance worth checking out.
4. Gugure! Kokkuri-san
I've always liked shows that draw humor from the absurdity of the world the characters live in, such as Nichijou or Cromartie High School. Kokkuri-san is another one of these shows. It focuses on a stoic young girl named Kohina Ichimatsu (who claims to be a doll or synthetic lifeform) and the supernatural companions she collects. The main cast is rounded out by fox spirit Kokkuri-san (who acts as the straight man), dog spirit Inugami (who frequently swaps between male and female form and is worryingly obsessed with Kohina), and the lazy Tanuki drunkard Shigaraki. It's your standard enjoyable situational comedy from that point, with fun characters in fun situations rattling off fun dialogue. Like I mentioned, a lot of humor is derived from the strangeness--yet also cuteness--of the world and characters, such as Kohina's obsession with cheap cup noodles or the fact that one of the boys in her school is inexplicably an alien.
There are also some legitimately sweet or beautiful moments in addition to the comedy. Episode 10, for example, feels almost like an episode of Mushishi...if Mushishi were a comedy with a slightly raunchy sense of humor, at least.
I feel like this show was largely overlooked due to the sheer number of good comedies that came out in 2014. Denki-gai (which aired the same season) and Nozaki-kun (which aired the season before) ended up gaining much more attention, and quite a few shows not strictly classified as comedy (like Space Dandy, Kill la Kill, No Game No Life, or Barakamon) had a lot of strong comedic moments as well. But if you're looking for something that is both funny and cute, Kokkuri-san is definitely still worth a watch.
3. Danna ga Nani wo Itteiru ka Wakaranai Ken/I Can't Understand What My Husband is Saying
From romance, to comedy, to Danna ga Nani: a comedy focused on a romantic relationship. Office worker Kaoru marries the otaku Hajime, and while the show initially seems to be setting itself up as an otaku wish fulfillment--okay, well, that's admittedly kind of what it is, but it's also way more than that. At first, it seems like the show is about Kaoru's difficulties living with someone so obsessed with otaku culture, but as time goes on, we see that the two actually compliment each other very well. Yes, Hajime is constantly spewing pop culture references and using fanspeak that Kaoru doesn't always get, but she loves him and tries to accept and understand his hobbies even though she just doesn't "get" them. Kaoru herself is not always easy to get along with, what with her inability to cook, her devilish nature that emerges when she's drunk, and her occasional immature fits.
Sure, Danna ga Nani's references might be a bit inaccessible to more casual fans, but ultimately it can still be enjoyed as a story about a healthy relationship between two people who don't always understand each other, but are still in love. There's also a fun supporting cast that gets a fair amount of development. It's impressive they managed to flesh all this out in a 4-minute short. That's probably a large part of why Danna ga Nani was overlooked: in addition to the premise (which sounds generic and terrible), short series often don't garner as much attention, possibly because they're seen as having less content, and they're usually excluded from ranking lists. Which is a shame, because Danna ga Nani manages to pack a ton of humor and romance into less than an hour.
2. Nobunaga Concerto
Who isn't sick of the Sengoku period by this point? We've had the Sengoku period where everyone's genderflipped (The Ambition of Oda Nobuna), the Sengoku period with Pokemon (Pokemon Conquest), a version of the Sengoku period that involves horses with handlebars and tailpipes and guys who fight with six swords at once, and just prior to Nobunaga Concerto, we had Nobunagun and Nobunaga the Fool. And yet it was this one that really stood out to me. First, it doesn't use a "Sengoku period but there's a difference" gimmick. Instead, it's more or less a straight alternate history. High school student Saburou accidentally finds himself transported back in time to the Sengoku period, where he meets a sickly Oda Nobunaga. As Saburou looks near-identical to Nobunaga, the man asks him to take his place. Saburou, however, is not particularly familiar with history, and while he has a history book that helps guide him in the beginning, the book gets destroyed and Saburou begins making the same decisions Nobunaga made on his own. If the viewer is vaguely familiar with the history of this period, the main appeal of the show becomes the dramatic irony. For example, it's made relatively clear who Hideyoshi is due to a few offhand comments, so viewers instead begin wondering how the man becomes Hideyoshi. And all the while, Saburou's 21st century mannerisms along with his own eccentricities make his transformation into the warlord known as Oda Nobunaga a fun one.
So why did this one get overlooked? Probably partially due to Nobunaga fatigue (seriously, you can't avoid him), probably partially because it began airing later into the season, and probably partially due to the art and animation style. I don't have much of an eye for animation, but it looks like all the characters are 3D models painted over to look 2D? I don't know, if you know what RWBY is, it's similar to that. See for yourself what it looks like in the ED (which is great, incidentally). Personally, I liked the animation because I thought it made it look vaguely like a period painting, but I know that plenty of people disliked it. It's a shame how few people gave this show a second thought, though.
1. Bokura wa Minna Kawaisou/The Kawai Complex Guide to Manors and Hostel Behavior
I honestly have no clue how this show wasn't one that got talked about a lot, which is a shame because it was easily one of my favorite shows of the year.
Bokura wa Minna Kawaisou is a play on words meaning "we all live in the Kawai apartments" or "we are all pitiful," and that describes the show pretty well. It's about a group of weird, pathetic people who all live in the same apartment complex. Our protagonist is a high school student named Usa, who develops a crush on the adorable introverted bookworm named Ritsu, whose family owns the complex. Unfortunately, in addition to both Usa and Ritsu's awkwardness, Usa has to deal with his masochistic roommate Shiro, the always unlucky-in-love Mayumi, and the devilish Sayaka. It's part comedy and part romance and it looks absolutely beautiful.
Seriously, do yourself a favor by checking this one out. Fun characters, good romance, cute situations, beautiful art and animation...I honestly don't see why this one didn't get more love. Go. Go watch it.
Well, hopefully I've given you some new shows to check out. I hope you enjoyed them as much as I did.
Barakamon was sweet and adorable and unexpected but everyone's already talked about how Barakamon was sweet and adorable and unexpected.
If you want to read about the shows I just mentioned, just Google "best anime of 2014" and I'm sure you'll find a few lists that mention each of them. What I'm here to do is talk about some of my favorite shows from 2014 that were overlooked by the larger anime community. Sure, there were obviously plenty of viewers who probably enjoyed them to an extent, but these are, in my opinion, some really solid shows that just never generated that much buzz for whatever reason.
5. Soredemo Sekai wa Utsukushii/The World is Still Beautiful
I have to admit that I'm a sucker for a good romance, and if a show can actually pull a good romance off, it's one that has my attention. And unlike most romance, it has a fantasy setting! Admittedly, The World is Still Beautiful is kind of hit and miss, but it manages to craft a romance that isn't just "I have a crush on this person but am too busy blushing whenever they're around to do anything." This show opens with our protagonist, Nike, forced into a marriage with the cruel Sun King, Livius. Livius also happens to be a young boy (though, to be fair, one very mature for his age). Though she's not pleased with the arrangement, Nike decides to make the best of the situation and attempt to heal the pain Livius carries with him by showing him how, despite all the hardships humans have to face, the world can still be beautiful. The show begins with Nike and Livius resenting each other, but by the end, they legitimately love each other and it never once feels like their relationship was rushed or drawn out to get to that point.
Like I said, it's a bit hit-and-miss, though, which is probably why it never caught on with most people. Certain plot elements that get a lot of focus feel unimportant, it can feel a bit repetitive, and I don't think they actually go far enough with the relationship. Sure, Livius is really young and I can see how some people might find the relationship between someone of that age and a young adult to be a bit uncomfortable, but the relationship is portrayed tastefully, the two are married, are clearly in love with each other, and Livius seems to be mature enough to understand the birds and the bees. It legitimately seems to cheapen their relationship by explicitly stating that the two have never done more than kiss. But whatever. Still a fairly satisfying show, and while it might not be the greatest show out there and maybe isn't your thing, it's a romance worth checking out.
4. Gugure! Kokkuri-san
I've always liked shows that draw humor from the absurdity of the world the characters live in, such as Nichijou or Cromartie High School. Kokkuri-san is another one of these shows. It focuses on a stoic young girl named Kohina Ichimatsu (who claims to be a doll or synthetic lifeform) and the supernatural companions she collects. The main cast is rounded out by fox spirit Kokkuri-san (who acts as the straight man), dog spirit Inugami (who frequently swaps between male and female form and is worryingly obsessed with Kohina), and the lazy Tanuki drunkard Shigaraki. It's your standard enjoyable situational comedy from that point, with fun characters in fun situations rattling off fun dialogue. Like I mentioned, a lot of humor is derived from the strangeness--yet also cuteness--of the world and characters, such as Kohina's obsession with cheap cup noodles or the fact that one of the boys in her school is inexplicably an alien.
There are also some legitimately sweet or beautiful moments in addition to the comedy. Episode 10, for example, feels almost like an episode of Mushishi...if Mushishi were a comedy with a slightly raunchy sense of humor, at least.
I feel like this show was largely overlooked due to the sheer number of good comedies that came out in 2014. Denki-gai (which aired the same season) and Nozaki-kun (which aired the season before) ended up gaining much more attention, and quite a few shows not strictly classified as comedy (like Space Dandy, Kill la Kill, No Game No Life, or Barakamon) had a lot of strong comedic moments as well. But if you're looking for something that is both funny and cute, Kokkuri-san is definitely still worth a watch.
3. Danna ga Nani wo Itteiru ka Wakaranai Ken/I Can't Understand What My Husband is Saying
From romance, to comedy, to Danna ga Nani: a comedy focused on a romantic relationship. Office worker Kaoru marries the otaku Hajime, and while the show initially seems to be setting itself up as an otaku wish fulfillment--okay, well, that's admittedly kind of what it is, but it's also way more than that. At first, it seems like the show is about Kaoru's difficulties living with someone so obsessed with otaku culture, but as time goes on, we see that the two actually compliment each other very well. Yes, Hajime is constantly spewing pop culture references and using fanspeak that Kaoru doesn't always get, but she loves him and tries to accept and understand his hobbies even though she just doesn't "get" them. Kaoru herself is not always easy to get along with, what with her inability to cook, her devilish nature that emerges when she's drunk, and her occasional immature fits.
Sure, Danna ga Nani's references might be a bit inaccessible to more casual fans, but ultimately it can still be enjoyed as a story about a healthy relationship between two people who don't always understand each other, but are still in love. There's also a fun supporting cast that gets a fair amount of development. It's impressive they managed to flesh all this out in a 4-minute short. That's probably a large part of why Danna ga Nani was overlooked: in addition to the premise (which sounds generic and terrible), short series often don't garner as much attention, possibly because they're seen as having less content, and they're usually excluded from ranking lists. Which is a shame, because Danna ga Nani manages to pack a ton of humor and romance into less than an hour.
2. Nobunaga Concerto
Who isn't sick of the Sengoku period by this point? We've had the Sengoku period where everyone's genderflipped (The Ambition of Oda Nobuna), the Sengoku period with Pokemon (Pokemon Conquest), a version of the Sengoku period that involves horses with handlebars and tailpipes and guys who fight with six swords at once, and just prior to Nobunaga Concerto, we had Nobunagun and Nobunaga the Fool. And yet it was this one that really stood out to me. First, it doesn't use a "Sengoku period but there's a difference" gimmick. Instead, it's more or less a straight alternate history. High school student Saburou accidentally finds himself transported back in time to the Sengoku period, where he meets a sickly Oda Nobunaga. As Saburou looks near-identical to Nobunaga, the man asks him to take his place. Saburou, however, is not particularly familiar with history, and while he has a history book that helps guide him in the beginning, the book gets destroyed and Saburou begins making the same decisions Nobunaga made on his own. If the viewer is vaguely familiar with the history of this period, the main appeal of the show becomes the dramatic irony. For example, it's made relatively clear who Hideyoshi is due to a few offhand comments, so viewers instead begin wondering how the man becomes Hideyoshi. And all the while, Saburou's 21st century mannerisms along with his own eccentricities make his transformation into the warlord known as Oda Nobunaga a fun one.
So why did this one get overlooked? Probably partially due to Nobunaga fatigue (seriously, you can't avoid him), probably partially because it began airing later into the season, and probably partially due to the art and animation style. I don't have much of an eye for animation, but it looks like all the characters are 3D models painted over to look 2D? I don't know, if you know what RWBY is, it's similar to that. See for yourself what it looks like in the ED (which is great, incidentally). Personally, I liked the animation because I thought it made it look vaguely like a period painting, but I know that plenty of people disliked it. It's a shame how few people gave this show a second thought, though.
1. Bokura wa Minna Kawaisou/The Kawai Complex Guide to Manors and Hostel Behavior
I honestly have no clue how this show wasn't one that got talked about a lot, which is a shame because it was easily one of my favorite shows of the year.
Bokura wa Minna Kawaisou is a play on words meaning "we all live in the Kawai apartments" or "we are all pitiful," and that describes the show pretty well. It's about a group of weird, pathetic people who all live in the same apartment complex. Our protagonist is a high school student named Usa, who develops a crush on the adorable introverted bookworm named Ritsu, whose family owns the complex. Unfortunately, in addition to both Usa and Ritsu's awkwardness, Usa has to deal with his masochistic roommate Shiro, the always unlucky-in-love Mayumi, and the devilish Sayaka. It's part comedy and part romance and it looks absolutely beautiful.
Seriously, do yourself a favor by checking this one out. Fun characters, good romance, cute situations, beautiful art and animation...I honestly don't see why this one didn't get more love. Go. Go watch it.
Well, hopefully I've given you some new shows to check out. I hope you enjoyed them as much as I did.
Thursday, April 3, 2014
Anime Reflections: Attack on Titan
I started watching Attack on Titan (or “Shingeki no Kyojin,” as some will insist) a while ago, at which point I blogged about my first impressions. It’s worth noting that those first impressions covered the first eight episodes. This is very important because the events at the end of the eight episodes that I vaguely alluded to were a huge turning point in the show—one that ultimately affected my opinions on the show.
I feel that, overall, the show was mediocre. Not flat-out bad, but it had a lot of problems dragging it down. Of course, as it’s near impossible to explain why without going into specifics, the rest of this post will be filled with spoilers from the first eight episodes.
The first eight episodes of Attack on Titan were very strong. You get to see firsthand the devastation the Titans have wrought. You see how quickly they turn the protagonists’ lives upside down. Then, at the end of episode five, Eren Jaeger (who, up to this point, we have been led to believe is our protagonist) is killed while attempting to save his friend Armin. The show then focuses on his adopted sister Mikasa, Armin, and the rest of the recruits in their first battle. During this time the show begins delving into a theme: the idea that the world is cruel and only the strongest are able to survive. I mentioned this theme in my first impressions post as what seemed to be the overarching theme of the show.
After focusing on Mikasa and Armin for a few episodes, a mysterious Titan begins attacking other Titans. This Titan is revealed in the eighth episode to be a transformed Eren.
This is the moment where the show begins to take a downward spiral. Some things that go wrong:
1. The next six episodes are horribly paced. The two things of note that happen are that Eren moves a rock to block a hole in the wall and is eventually brought into the Scouting Legion. The rest consists of people going “OH NO GUYS EREN’S A TITAN WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO” over and over. It’s not even approached from different angles. It’s just a Mexican Standoff that lacks tension because it’s made fairly obvious that the protagonists will come out on top. While the show does pick up a bit afterwards, it failed to really catch my attention again until the very last episode.
2. Eren can shift back and forth between his human and Titan form. This singlehandedly destroys the theme that existed for the first eight episodes. Suddenly, the humans have a feasible way to fight back. They have a somewhat controllable weapon capable of defeating dozens of Titans. Instead of fighting against the impossible, they’re merely fighting against the unlikely. It cheapens the brutality of the first episodes.
3. Eren also reassumes his role as protagonist. Eren was a spectacular protagonist for the first part of the show. We were really able to feel his helplessness at his personal loss and his determination to fight these odds, no matter how personal. That’s exactly why his death was so powerful: because his rage and determination carried him through, even though he wasn’t the most capable recruit. However, that impact is lost after he becomes a Titan. This would not be as bad if he did not remain a static character. Instead, he ceases to develop. His entire character becomes “I want to destroy all the Titans” with a dash of “I don’t fully understand how this power works” thrown in. He ceases to become relatable, but remains a straightforward and simple character.
4. The other characters are also a problem. The show introduces them in groups and spends very little time actually focusing on them. There are a few who are relatively notable, but everyone else just seems to be there to pad out a roster. When you combine the fact that the characters are so underdeveloped with the nature of the show, you quickly realize that these people are most likely cannon fodder. It’s like George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones series: there are plenty of characters, but you can’t bring yourself to fully care about many of them because they could die at any moment. However, unlike ASoIaF, which takes a great amount of time (perhaps too much time) developing all the characters before Martin kills them off, Attack on Titan is content to just sort of let them exist.
Those are the main issues I have with Attack on Titan at the moment. I have other things I could complain about, but the show needs to be complete before I make a judgment. The two big things right now is that there are a lot of hazy character motivations that make no sense (which I won’t go into in detail because they contain a few things I’ve pieced together from manga spoilers) and that questions are being raised faster than they can be answered. While Attack on Titan is very good at stringing its viewers along with red herrings (which is one of its strong points), it also tends to completely forget about plot points. Early on, Eren has a vision (though from when is uncertain) of his father injecting him with something and giving him a key to his basement, which seems to contain something very important. The first season never touches on this occurrence again. According to friends who read the manga, they’re still waiting on answers regarding the key as well.
Attack on Titan definitely gave me and interesting world full of fun mysteries. What it didn’t give me, however, were good characters, well-paced structure, consistent themes, or, ultimately, a reason to care.
Monday, March 31, 2014
Writing: Don’t Shoot The Messenger’s revised edition!
So, uh…hi. Call me The Messenger. I’m a normal guy working an IT job. Pretty straightforward work, if you discount the fact that I’m working for a cult worshiping some sharp-dressed dimension-warper. So yeah, when I say my coworkers are insane, I mean it literally.
They tell me to lie low and pretend I’m a good little sheep, buying into what they say. Then they bring me the names of dead people to enter into a database, with no context of who they are or why they died. They can’t keep me in the dark forever, though. I’ll figure out what’s going on here eventually. Keep a record of what I find, just in case something happens to me. Maybe I can put together the pieces and get the word out, even if it’s just one person. Maybe that person will be you.
But if you don’t like what you find? Don’t get mad at me. I’m just calling things like I see them.
Don’t Shoot The Messenger.
If you know me and haven’t just stumbled across this blog, here are some things you might know about me, ordered from most likely to least likely:
I am a fan of the Slender Man Mythos. I have written several works set within the mythos. One of these works was called Don’t Shoot The Messenger. And now, I’m completely overhauling DSTM and putting it in a more accessible and publishable format.
This rewrite isn’t finished yet, but I have a fair amount of content and a definite plan. Of course, I’d normally hold of on posting something like this unless it was still in the conceptual phase or until things were more set in stone, but there’s something that’s happened that’s made me decide to blog about it briefly: the story is currently a serial publication in my university’s web paper. You can read the first part here if you want. The rest (when it’s published) will probably be under the “Arts & Entertainment” category.
This is a pretty big thing for me, as it gives me the chance to grow my audience a little bit. So naturally, I’ve been shamelessly promoting it anywhere I can. Or “networking,” Yeah, I think “networking” is the professional term for that.
I’m planning on releasing the story as an e-book once I’ve finished it. Until now, though, I’ll hope you’ll join me on my journey as I once again enter the world of business suits, weaboos, and 21st century psycho cults.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)