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Shelf Life - Level Up

I think you're reading too much into my statement. I'm simply referring to the fact that a major contributing factor to "burnout" among a lot of people is that they devote quite a bit of time to watching titles they don't especially enjoy while trying to convince themselves that "it wasn't THAT bad...I guess..." My gripe with Mashimo and Bee Train isn't that they're "bad" so much as they're "not good." That I hope for them to be "good" suggests that their properties at least have potential. This potential is not being met in my opinion, and as far as I can tell never has been. Therefore, Bee Train is actually worse in my book than Gonzo! At least Gonzo made a few titles I liked!

--Anno's work on the original Gunbuster and Evangelion is generally held in higher regard than his subsequent follow-ups. In his heart, I'm pretty sure the guy knows he'll never make a new hit bigger than either, and so he'll PROBABLY be calling mulligans for the rest of his life and raking in the dough for it.

--I am not one of them, but it is not at all uncommon for people to wish that Oshii would go back to doing comedies instead of what he's been doing for the last decade and change. Their issue is not so much that he's delving into matters of SF and philosophy--heck, he's always done that, even in the comedy days--so much that he's largely repeating himself at this point. I do enjoy The Sky Crawlers, but even the most ardent Mamoru Oshii fans I know are beginning to find their patience wearing thin after Assault Girls (which I have not yet seen).

--The notion that Koichi Mashimo is trying to "do something different" is severely undermined when you look at his resume. I point out the stunning LACK of variety to this man's work: Noir, Avenger, Madlax, El Cazador de la Bruja, and now Phantom are all attempts on his part to do a dramatic interpretation of the "girls with guns" formula that made the original Dirty Pair an enduring hit. That is ten straight years of emotionless little girl assassins with amnesia--this would be the "moe" element you claim to not be present--teaming up with older female assassins. Ten years of uninspiring, antiseptic action choreography against generic "evil syndicate" antagonists. Ten years of characters who do little to defy their archetypes beyond exhibition of "otaku database" traits. Can you honestly claim that Mashimo is "trying to do something different" after the guy has basically called for do-overs of the exact same concept at least FIVE times in the past ten years? (Note that much of the above also applies to the .hack franchise, which I personally consider even WORSE than these shows I mentioned.)

--Your assessment that people disliked Blade of the Immortal because Bee Train/Mashimo "painted a dash of 'difference' into it" is similarly confounding. The reason the manga is so well-received in the US is that it's so unique in the first place. Samura's artwork is unlike any other manga released in the United States, and its depiction of of action and violence on the printed page is virtually unmatched outside of Berserk and Battle Angel Alita. The anime adaptation eliminated that unique artwork entirely, opting for a far less distinctive art style than the source material. Plus, much of the graphic violence was excised or drastically toned down. This is in fact more like "erasing" that dash of difference.

We can go back and forth about this forever, but I can see this isn't a reconcilable position. At the end of the day, my position is forever going to be that Koichi Mashimo once upon a time made some truly great anime that has stood the test of time: titles such as Dirty Pair Project EDEN, the original Dominion Tank Police OAVs, and The Irresponsible Captain Tylor to name a few. But somewhere along the line, his output took a sharp dive in quality and hasn't come close to its previous heights. I know this guy is capable of doing good work; I've seen it. But something changed between now and then, and I don't know what that is. All I can tell is that several of the extremely talented staff that worked with him on those earlier titles are no longer working on the Bee Train properties.

Captain Tylor was 18 years ago and people still remember it. Project EDEN was 25 years ago and people still remember it. What are the odds that people are going to remember Phantom: Requiem for the Phantom in that much time?

Yes, that is a real problem...but I suspect this is what happens when fans try to watch too much anime at the same time. They can't all be winners, so I definitely don't agree with the idea of watching anime out of a twisted sense of obligation instead of seeking some sort of entertainment value. Taking a break or just dropping a series is fair game. Granted, reviewers usually don't have that luxury, or do they?

I guess the real worth of said potential, at the end of the day, is how much of it comes true...but, inevitably, different kinds of people will tend to conclude the glass is half full (they got part of what they wanted) and others will say it's half empty (they didn't), depending on what -and exactly how much- they were expecting to begin with.

In the case of Bee Train, I can't deny that even Gonzo does have a better track record as far as I'm concerned. Still, I watched Phantom as more or less a supplement to the game, rather than from an entirely clean slate or expecting anything more than a distraction. I also didn't really have Noir or even its follow-ups, which I completely skipped, on my mind as a constant reminder or source of fatigue.

True, but then again Gundam Unicorn has the advantage of already having a solid storyline to work from thanks to the completed novels, as opposed to relying on a script written in a hurry. All those long months between each of the OVA releases certainly can't hurt either.

If it's pandering to anyone, that would be nostalgic UC fans who wish for the return of bygone times, instead of trying to reach the specific audience that is currently expected to watch Wing, SEED or 00 on TV every week. We're talking about two different business models here.

However, I think this is actually a good thing since Unicorn isn't just a simple tribute to the past, in and of itself, but genuinely good and interesting enough to appeal to a more mainstream audience where both fans, non-fans and others can potentially be included.

You could say so. Again, I've already conceded that they're two shows I watched for different reasons.

enurtsol wrote:

Ah, ya guys are weak. Nothing clears the system than the occasional flame war or two.

I enjoy flame wars as much as the next guy, but I want to argue with a person that will listen to what I say, and show some respect.

I used to not care about what critics thought, but you know what? They DID persevere through it all, so their careful consideration should be at the very least, thought about.

Heck, after watching Phantom, I thought Noir and Madlax were inferior in terms of story quality.

Which is why I would never compare the two. Black Lagoon, tosses some ideas around... then blasts them away(spoiler[Man... they could've done something great with Rock teaching Revy that you can't fight ideas with bullets]).
It will be memorable because it's very nature is unlike anime(similar to Kite).
Not because it's a hardhitting masterpiece.

Also Gundam 00 basically tried to do what Gundam Seed did which was update a previous series. In this case instead of following Wing as closely as Seed followed MSG and Zeta, the second season borrowed heavily from Zeta.

Anime World Order wrote:

I'm simply referring to the fact that a major contributing factor to "burnout" among a lot of people is that they devote quite a bit of time to watching titles they don't especially enjoy while trying to convince themselves that "it wasn't THAT bad...I guess..."

Yes, that is a real problem...but I suspect this is what happens when fans try to watch too much anime at the same time. They can't all be winners, so I definitely don't agree with the idea of watching anime out of a twisted sense of obligation instead of seeking some sort of entertainment value. Taking a break or just dropping a series is fair game. Granted, reviewers usually don't have that luxury, or do they?

To use what I believe to be a fairly apt hypothetical analogy: it's as though there were large quantities of people declaring themselves to be colossal fans of the Akira Kurosawa movie "Ran," yet had no interest in William Shakespeare's "King Lear" and downplayed or ignored the structural/narrative similarities between the two works. Perhaps some would give Lear a chance but find it not to their liking because what they mainly like about Ran is the medieval Japanese setting and the samurai battles. The Shakespeare fans would be understandably cross, and over the course of a decade of this would eventually give up trying to point out the obvious and instead start feeling resentment towards "Ran" and its fans. This action in turn leads to people generally not wanting to ever bother with Shakespeare on account that it's super-old and the people who like that stuff appear to all be crazy jerks anyway.

There's some real nice discussion here. It's nice to even more sentiment about how well Unicorn works as an introduction; for awhile I was wondering if I was mostly lonely in thinking so. Well, I've said it before and say it again...it'll be a good day when it's on DVD and finally accessible for most people.

Charred Knight wrote:

Also Gundam 00 basically tried to do what Gundam Seed did which was update a previous series. In this case instead of following Wing as closely as Seed followed MSG and Zeta, the second season borrowed heavily from Zeta.

Hmm, I wouldn't say that 00 has the "parallelism" that Daryl speaks of when it comes to Zeta in the way that Seed and Wing have it for Mobile Suit Gundam. The inclusion of a corrupt task force is not lost on me, but the themes and ideas that the two deal in are very distinct. There's even less parallelism going on for the characters; it's a pretty easy call to say Kira Yamato is Seed's Amuro, but good luck picking out an obvious Kamille or Quattro out of 00. While the two eventually diverge considerably, the closest cousin to 00 is definitely Wing given certain plot points and certainly given the starting premises of both shows. Ironically, director Mizushima had never seen it.

For the record, I'm the type of fan who loves Wing, SEED, and 00.
I mean, robots are cool.
But if they're not being piloted by a hot boy, who really cares?

Kira Yamato is Seed's Amuro

JackCox wrote:

Just because a show is slow, that doesn't mean it's intelligent. Witness the oeuvre of Bee Train, for instance. But plenty of naive people get sucked in by shows that appeal to undergraduate intellectual vanity, to the extent that it's practically an anime genre in itself!

How to do it: Just take your cookie-cutter standard anime, slow the plotting to one third speed, make the colour palette gloomy and/or grainy, have characters speak pretentious platitudes in halting monotones, and have an "ambiguous" (i.e. nonsensical) and "existential" (i.e. meaningless) ending. Presto - instant masterpiece. I mean, if you like this as a style, just say so, but don't insist it's because you're just so much smarter and more sensitive than everybody else.