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The Stream - A Whole New World

Also, yea I know AtLA is not Japanese Anime and some people are morally opposed to anything that is not Japanese Anime. However, some day you might want to give it a chance. It is without a doubt one of the best written and most emotionally engrossing animated series I have seen, with a (mostly) very well developed and appealing main cast.

ChibiKangaroo wrote:

Also, yea I know AtLA is not Japanese Anime and some people are morally opposed to anything that is not Japanese Anime. However, some day you might want to give it a chance. It is without a doubt one of the best written and most emotionally engrossing animated series I have seen, with a (mostly) very well developed and appealing main cast.

I can't speak for Key, but as someone else who hasn't, and will not, watch AtlA, I just really don't give a good goddamn.

And I wish people would stop dragging it into these discussions.

Well, yes there has been one episode since that one, but just consider this: Generally, there tends to be SOME foreboding of a villain's evil master plan before the villain comes in front of the audience and gloats to us all about exactly how he/she is going to take over the world. . . I think it probably would have been nice to see someone impacted by the villain's evil plan before Episode 17 (there were 2 episodes before it) just to give us a sense of the impending doom of his villainy

Again, without that it comes off as if his ultimate evil plan is just a back burner thing while he focuses on his Asuna fantasy, particularly since every episode up till now has had a general plot line of spoiler["Will Kirito save Asuna before the villain rapes and/or marries her comatose body? Also, Kirito's sister is stacked and has the hots for him."] Now, personally I think they have already dramatically weakened the sense of doom by stalling on any demonstration of his evil plan.

When SAO first came out, it seemed to be presenting itself as action/adventure/mystery/fantasy type stuff. This makes sense since it is based on an action focused MMORPG. The death trap aspect of it also added in a sense of survival (without the horror). I'm not sure how you felt like that was never what the show was really about.

Also, yea I know AtLA is not Japanese Anime and some people are morally opposed to anything that is not Japanese Anime.

spoiler[Sugou is apparently entirely unaware that Kirito is in the game].

there has been no reason for Sugou to suspect that Kirito would even try ALO.

(though this is really just sloppy writing to prevent Kirito from undergoing any real difficulties at all)

No, I think you're entirely misunderstanding what's going on there. Pacifica is never portrayed as being all that bright; intuitive and socially adept, maybe, but definitely not bright, and that's a recurring characterization throughout the entire series. Besides, spoiler[the concepts being explained to her and her step-siblings - including about genetics and such - were utterly mind-blowing for someone coming from a Medieval-level technological background. Eirote made the comment at one point that Natalie had to explain it to her and the Beast Princess several times before they understood it, so any of the Casulls making sense of it all on the first or even second shot would have been a gross inconsistency. The repitition was entirely meant to demonstrate how far out of their league the humans were on comprehending the vast technology lost to them.] I have rewatched this series at least once a year since it first aired (it was the first TV series I ever saw entirely via fansubs, in fact) and have never gotten anything close to a "we're treating the audience like they're morons" vibe from it, nor has anyone else that I've ever talked to about the series.

Oh, would you get off it? Does it look like Kirito is not having any difficulties already in what he's doing? Even with skills already maxed out, it still takes a while to get a handle on the mechanics of a new game, learn the lay of the land, figure out how to solve a puzzle that's stumped people for a year and, contend with the built-in social problems of the setting, and have to do it all in what he believes is under a week.

rather amusing how bent out of shape people become concerning this show.

It amazes me how narrow-sighted you are. You think that because Scrapped Princess did it this way that means it was correct. You're so busy defending it you can't see how it could have handled this in a superior way. Same with Sword Art Online. The show handled the three hundred people one way and therefore you don't want to know how it could have been better handled. Writers often make mistakes and they usually take sub-optimum routes. Yet you trust in the writers so very, very much, even when opposing evidence is right there in front of you.

You are so busy defending the show that you miss how Kirito has to do all these impossible things in one week.

You're defending him on the hilarious basis that he isn't superman (or a Gary Stu) because spoiler[it takes him a whole day to learn how to master flying to a level better than almost everyone else, and a whole week to solve an unsolvable puzzle and defeat a god.]

And you get so incredibly overzealous about trying to pick shows apart and make big deals of things that aren't actually a problem (or at least not a big problem) that I'm amazed that you can still enjoy anything anime-related.

You don't even seem satisfied anymore when someone else is willing to admit that something has a minor problem - no, if that person doesn't see it like the major problem that you do, then it's not good enough. I have seen you do this repeatedly across multiple series threads, not just the ones in question here.

You also have interesting interpretations of what constitutes "opposing evidence."

To be sure I wasn't forgetting anything, I rewatched the two episodes of SP in question. Your description of what happened there does not at all jive with what I saw. You make it sound like the Casulls are being told the exact same thing over and over again, but they aren't. The full truth comes out in bits and pieces over the course of two episodes. The only times that repetition happens are when the details are spoken in highly technical terms that the Casulls would have no basis for comprehending - in other words, exactly like I was originally claiming. There is not the slightest hint in either of those episode of the audience being talked down to, as you claim - and if you're still going to insist that that's the case, I want to hear what exact quotes and scenes you're using to support your case here.

This is a case where you're trying to make something out of nothing and you will not get away with it. I suggest you find a different argument where you actually have a leg to stand on.

No, I'm wondering how he's going to accomplish all of that in one week, too, but I'm not so incredibly jaded that I can't enjoy the process of finding out.

See, what you and some of the other people who have ruthlessly slammed the series over this whole Gary Stu stuff don't seem to understand is that I (and I'm certain others) ultimately don't give a damn whether or not Kirito is a wish fulfillment character;

I only bother to speak out on this because people like you are using this as one of the primary angles to label this series as an irredeemable piece of crap and imply (or, in your case, outright say) that people who don't think so have no sense of taste or ability to determine quality in anime. And that irritates me.

Yeah, talk to me again about this when you actually have more than a vague notion of what you're talking about.

No, I want you to see it as a problem in the first place instead of defending it. I said that Scrapped Princess is still a good show after those two episodes, but you refuse to even acknowledge that it could have been better handled.

Really, though, it just comes down to the fact that I've liked what I've seen so far [of SAO] enough that I'm willing to overlook (most of) its flaws. It's still my top-priority view in any given week out of the 6/7 series I'm actively following.