Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: March comes in like a lion
|
Goto page Previous Next Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
| Author | Message | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11406 |
|
|||||||||
You'd think by now Nick would've realized this series is not meant to be viewed/evaluated as individual 25 min episodes, but as a series of vignettes that gradually reveal the shape of the whole game, move by move. If you had this on disk, the shifts in the storylines that he finds so irritating wouldn't matter at all, because you'd just be watching the series as it plays out, not as discrete units bound by the limits and demands of a television time-slot. That's why it has all the chapters in the eyecatches - those are the punctuation marks of the story, not the arbitrary bookends of the OP and ED. I think he would be much happier if he could watch it that way. |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
dark_bozu
 Posts: 208 |
|
|||||||||
Despite I have not. Like I said, the story isn't superficial and shounen-like. Nope, author have covered bulling arc in previous episode, now she shows Rei's work and his ordinary life in school. And sharp viewer would notice why episodes like Ramune were important - because of them we could feel Rei's saddness and happiness, when he understand that his friends from club would be graduated soon. I think you should already understand what comes after this. No spoilers, just wait until next episode. |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
Takkun4343
 Posts: 1512 Location: Englewood, Ohio |
|
|||||||||
|
>community score a near 5
>reviewer score a B Yeah, sounds about right. Really, the first teacher's mental breakdown and the second's BTFOing of Takagi's mother were enough to sell me on the episode. |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
Skyletv
Posts: 81 |
|
|||||||||
|
See the B...cries.
Last edited by Skyletv on Sun Jan 07, 2018 10:38 pm; edited 1 time in total |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
Blood-
 Bargain Hunter Posts: 23835 |
|
|||||||||
|
Frankly, I thought Akari's reaction to her encounter with Takagi's mother was what was "oversold." With Hina's teacher, we are dealing with a character we don't really know but there was nothing unpersuasive about the idea that this was a weak woman who, after multiple instances of having bullying disrupt her classes over the years, just couldn't hack it any more. I certainly believed that more than seeing Akari shuffle away like a 90-year-old woman, propped up by Hina, to end up in the nurse's office. It's true that Akari has never been portrayed as a hardass but by the same token we've never seen anything to indicate that she was so weak that an encounter like the one she had with Takagi's mother would send her into such a tailspin.
Oh and by the way, despite my opinion above, I still think the episode deserved more than a B. |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
BlueBeast33
Posts: 151 |
|
|||||||||
I mean...just about everywhere I go people are calling this one of the show's best episodes. I'm not really sure what else one could want from Hina's arc as we head towards it's conclusion. I guess I shouldn't be surprised though at this point that Nick feels this way. |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11406 |
|
|||||||||
I see the B...don't care. I honestly have never understood why people are sooo invested in the letter grade at all, even if it doesn't match the review itself. Is this some sort of carry over from high school trauma where grades went on your permanent record (that no one ever looks at after college applications)? If he'd given it a D I still wouldn't give a shit. It truly baffles me that so many people do. 
I had more sympathy for the teacher than Nick after this episode. She's an older woman who's probably spent her life under the Japanese mantra of "don't cause other people trouble" and in a society where that prime directive is starting to break down, she's totally unequipped to deal with people who do cause trouble. Finding herself the target and having her protective authority disintegrated before her eyes with no other tools on how to handle that is very plausible as a breaking point. Since teachers having nervous breakdowns and leaving school seems to be a recurring plot point, I have to wonder if this actually happens as often as anime makes it seem. But the principal/teacher was fabulous, and Hina was nothing less than amazing. Rei would've been so proud to see her. 
|
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
Skyletv
Posts: 81 |
|
|||||||||
I don't care either. Don't take it so seriously man. xD |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
dark_bozu
Posts: 208 |
|
|||||||||
|
Oh boy, why I still care about reviewer's score, when he still doesn't get the beauty of this show? I feel myself just like few years ago, when I was arguing with people that claim "Yuasa's Ping Pong is shit because it looks bad".
Oh, ok, let's see why it got B...
No, it wasn't.
Maybe because she's NOT used to rant? Maybe it's her first time in her life, considering how reserved and humble japanese usuaslly are. Of course it would looks clumsy, it's LOGICAL.
Nope, it was a weak woman, that couldn't have find a strength to bring bulling in her class down and choose to turn blind eye instead. Is it bad? Yes it is. Does it means that teacher as a person is bad? No, it's just means that she's weak. And THIS is the reason why she collapsed, she started to ranting, screaming, blaming the bully, acting as if she lost her mind, while being in a deep stress. And then she fainted. If you think that it was exaggerated, then read about "faint", or "synscope".
But it WAS a right question. While she's looks like the devil's advocate, she's a mother. And there's tons of mothers like that, that would fight to protect their child, even thought he/she might actually be a bully or criminal. Maybe they are blind, but I think that they are just trust their child. And you know, I think that it's right, which makes this scene even more interesting.
Actually, Akari was fine, if you talk about her health/mind condition. Hina just took a hint that Akari is not able to answer Takagi's mother and suffering in search for the answer. So she stepped in and brought her sister into nursery room. I love how this scene was performed - I literally FELT the Akari's despair. Imho, this is the strongest point of adaptation - shaft knows how to make viewers felt the character's emotions. |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
myskaros
 Posts: 600 Location: J-Novel Club |
|
|||||||||
I agree with this. I don't think Akari was shown as weak - rather the opposite. She's a fundamentally nice person who's dealing with a stressful situation while being verbally cornered by a hostile woman and experiencing an overflow of emotional frustration and logical pressure. She basically had too many things she wanted to say, then overheated, which I think is much more consistent with her character than exploding in irrational anger. I used to get this way when I got mad - my mind was thinking too fast and coming up with too many possible responses that I would just end up stuttering something incomprehensible. I love the new teacher though (is he the principal? I totally don't remember him), he just cuts through all the bullshit. @dark_bozu: I don't agree that "trusting in your child" is in and of itself the correct rationale. Blind trust is exactly the reason Takagi feels like she can get away with bullying, because she's never doing anything "wrong" and her mother supports her unconditionally. Takagi needs to learn that things won't always go her way, and her mother's refusal to see the truth just means that when she ultimately falls, she's going to fall hard. |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
dark_bozu
Posts: 208 |
|
|||||||||
I know that Takagi is an antagonist in this situation, but try to think about the whole situation from the mother perspective. Why she would doubt her own child, when there's no reason to do it? She've good grades, there's no complain about her behaviour, nor does she have any problem with police. While I feel sympathetic toward Chiho and Hina and almost cried when I read this story in manga, I must admit, that Takagi's mother acting as most of mothers would and I don't think that it's wrong, because the parents should always help and trust their child. Yes, I know, I know that Takagi is wrong in this situation, but what if there would be another situation, when one child is false accused to be a criminal, when she or he hadn't done a thing? The most heartbreaking thing to this child would be if his own parents won't trust him (her). |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11406 |
|
|||||||||
If you were the only one who mentioned the grade, I wouldn't have said anything. But you're not. Three posts mentioned it for this episode alone. A couple of threads were pretty much derailed last season with complaints about the grades, and there are people ranting as we speak about grades/ratings in the Preview Guide. I have no problem with people vociferously disagreeing with reviews, and have done my fair share of that. But for reasons that are beyond me, people really, really do care about the letter grade itself, as if it actually means anything, even though each reviewer's criteria for assigning those grades are as individualized as their opinions. I wish they'd completely dispense with the grades and just let the reviews speak for themselves. |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
vonPeterhof
Posts: 729 |
|
|||||||||
|
@dark_bozu I'm not sure how your counter-arguments address Nick's complaints, as to me it seemed like the words "oversold", "clumsy" and "wasn't really seeded by the narrative" were referring to the visual execution of the sequences rather than the narrative justifications for the characters' actions and/or events shown on screen. That point is reinforced by specific complaints about "shifts like the screen's turn to all red and black", and even mentioned in the part of the second quotation you left out:
Then there's this bit right before the fourth quote:
I loved the episode (if you have to know, yes I did give it the full five stars), but even I felt roughly the same way about the execution of the scene with the teacher's rant (at one point I nearly burst out laughing because I was reminded of the scene from Another where a teacher loses it and spoiler[stabs himself in the throat in front of his students] for no apparent reason, as far as the viewer could tell at that moment), and while Nick didn't specify what exactly he didn't like about Takagi's mother's rant, I did feel like it laid it a little too thick in portraying her as a cartoonish villain, even if we are meant to see the scene from Hina's and/or Akari's perspective. Those visual excesses ultimately did little to sully my final impression of the episode as a whole, but I can see how they could be a disappointment for someone who pays more attention to visual expression than I do. |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 23835 |
|
|||||||||
If a reviewer says that an episode is just a touch above middling and I feel that an episode has been very good, I feel it is worth commenting on the discrepancy in views. Isn't that the point of a thread like this? To comment on stuff the reviewer has written? Giving a letter grade of B when I think A- is more appropriate is the exact same thing, just really pithy in nature. It still bears commenting on if a poster feels like it. I guess you are unfamiliar with the concept that fans of a show tend not to be happy if a reviewer depreciates its value, regardless of whether that is via a sentence, a paragraph or even... yes... a letter grade?
Oh come on. The opposite of weak is strong. Do you really believe that Akari showed strength? Go back and watch her shuffle like like a 90-year-old woman, propped up by Hina. She has to be taken to the nurse's office, for Pete's sake. That is not anything remotely resembling strength. I feel they were gilding lily with Akari and heavy-handedly slathered on the pathos. But even if you don't feel that way, it is a huge stretch not to acknowledge that Akari showed weakness. If it had been a simple matter of Akari being too flustered to respond and Hina lead her away just to collect herself, I could have bought that. But the show clearly demonstrated that Akari was virtually made physically ill by the encounter... and primarily because she couldn't come up with "proof" that Hina was telling the truth. don't think I'm wildly offbase for finding that a bit preposterous. |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
dark_bozu
Posts: 208 |
|
|||||||||
Oh, yeah, she's weak because she can't find words that would prove her position  .
She's trying to defend her sister, this isn't what weakling do. Yeah, she struggles, but this is what ALL people do in those situations in real life - it's nearly impossible to find an evidence of bulling, unless you caught bullies red-handed. And this shows her strength, because she hadn't give up. |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group