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REVIEW: Comic Artist and His Assistants Episodes 1-12 Streaming

First post for me on this site, and its gonna be a hum-dinger!!

I'm not sure I understand the hate on this title? It was aimed at a generally male oriented audience, it was light hearted and yes it was funny...... SHOCK!!

I read the review, then re-read it and got the distinct impression the PC police were at work.

I think this show acheived what it set out to be.. if a panty flash is too much for you to handle then there are WAY too many titles you won't be able to handle.... best quit now before you come across the fapping shinji/asuka scene in Eva and your head explodes...

Ok with the funnies out of the way..

In Summary...
Not a great series, but not a bad one either.
In comparision with most of the forgettable titles currently coming out each season this one is surprisingly memorable.

Have at it folks...

No one is treated or portrayed well in this series.

Here's the problem with your line of thought: when we're talking about, say, Bronies, "gamers", or other fandoms, we're talking about toxic groups. We're talking about people who cry foul for being called out for making jokes out of sexual harrassment, or for actually sexually harrassing women, or for generally being uber-unpleasant. The "NOT ALL X" argument is intolerable because when it comes to non-toxic Bronies or whatever, they're saying "Well, I don't really have much to do with Princess Molestia, don't lump me in with them!". Except that they don't do much to fix what is toxic behavior.

With feminists? Lots of talk is made about "feminist extremists" and their strange, hurtful ways and how they devalue feminist arguments... except that they tend to be unfounded or anecdotal. The worst people can come up with tend to be very silly Tumblr posts that are danged far-removed from Feminism in the same way that playing Cribbage is far removed from playing Magic: The Gathering.

Comic Artist plays it off as harmless fun--and that's a messed-up attitude to have towards sexual harassment.

relatively newbie voice actors

What I think no one has addressed about this review is that it is no secret that this series was done with a low budget, relatively newbie voice actors, 15 minutes segments, simple shading/backgrounds, etc. Just like in hollywood you have movies with blockbuster budgets (titanic, the avengers, etc.), normal movies and B movies, in anime production is the same and this series would be in the B movies categories, new or average talent was involved in its creation. So I think the review was too harsh knowing full well this was done on the cheap.

mangamuscle wrote:

relatively newbie voice actors

Yoshitsugu Matsuoka, Saori Hayami, Rie Kugimiya and Yuka Iguchi are all esablished, big name VAs.

Critics don't usually give free passes to things just because they were made on the cheap, and I don't think they should, either.

Besides, there are far too many good works made on tiny budgets for that to even be a valid excuse for an anime's failure.

Quote:

Besides, there are far too many good works made on tiny budgets for that to even be a valid excuse for an anime's failure.

What is your measure for failure? On the comedy side, it made me laugh, so it was far from a failure. If you are talking about disc sales, would you mind sharing with us the list of 15 minutes (or less) animes that you would call a success? Because by the way you talk, the list must be quite long.

A review is an evaluation of a final artistic product--the conditions under which it was made are largely irrelevant to the person making the evaluation, except maybe if they're curious about the creative process. It doesn't change the final outcome, though. There are lots of ways for things to go wrong while a show is being made--maybe they didn't have a big budget, or maybe one of the writers quit, or maybe they didn't get the airtime for the amount of episodes they wanted, so the show turns out bad. But, as far as the critic is concerned, it's still bad regardless of the reason, right?

I can't believe that I actually have to explain this, but we're not talking about my measure for failure (or yours, for that matter). We're talking about Carl's. He's the one reviewing the anime, and he clearly thinks that the anime in question is poorly written and shoddily made. You're attempting to argue that a responsible critic would have said something along the lines of "well, it's poorly written and shoddily made, but since it had production problems X, Y, and Z, we should embrace it as better than it actually is," and I'm simply saying that that's patently absurd and not something that any critic should do.

A review is an evaluation of a final artistic product--the conditions under which it was made are largely irrelevant to the person making the evaluation, except maybe if they're curious about the creative process. It doesn't change the final outcome, though. There are lots of ways for things to go wrong while a show is being made--maybe they didn't have a big budget, or maybe one of the writers quit, or maybe they didn't get the airtime for the amount of episodes they wanted, so the show turns out bad. But, as far as the critic is concerned, it's still bad regardless of the reason, right?

Levitz9 wrote:

Comic Artist plays it off as harmless fun--and that's a messed-up attitude to have towards sexual harassment.

That is a messed up idea towards comedy in general, plain and simple. If you continue with that line of thinking, you can say the same about death, that is a way too serious to be laughed at. TBT here in Mexico we laugh at death and even have a day in the calendar for that. Maybe you are trying to say that The Comic Artist and His Assistants is an apology towards sexual harassment, but again that is a messed up attitude, after watching it I got a good laugh, never crossed my mind the idea of "hmm, let's harass some ladies at the workplace since it looks like fun" the same I do not go punching people after playing some Street Fighter video game.

Does this means that everybody will feel this series is funny? Of course not, comedy is a very tricky genre; but some people will do.

Here's the problem with using sexual harrassment as a joke, though: people are scarred by this, every day, in real life. This is something that people deal with, and have to live with. It's not a quirky joke for them, and neither is having to report it to authorities, nor having to deal with negative attitudes from people who think "they brought it on themselves".

Unless there's a good point to the joke, you really shouldn't use this because this is a big, touchy issue for people--much less base yourself off of the argument that "it's just a harmless joke".

There's a difference between a holiday that celebrates death with deep cultural ties and a show that makes a joke out of a crime that people suffer under daily and have a hard time finding support for.

That's a horribly limiting requirement for comedy and humor. Have you seen "Blazing Saddles" or "The Producers" (Mel Brooks classics)? Those films run roughshod over all manner of painful issues (historical and personal).

Requiring there to be some obviously mechanical pedagogical purpose to the humor is really losing one of the strengths of humor to begin with. And transgressing "big, touchy issues" is one of the points of comedy.

Levitz9 wrote:

Here's the problem with using sexual harrassment as a joke, though: people are scarred by this, every day, in real life. This is something that people deal with, and have to live with. It's not a quirky joke for them, and neither is having to report it to authorities, nor having to deal with negative attitudes from people who think "they brought it on themselves". Unless there's a good point to the joke, you really shouldn't use this because this is a big, touchy issue for people--much less base yourself off of the argument that "it's just a harmless joke". There's a difference between a holiday that celebrates death with deep cultural ties and a show that makes a joke out of a crime that people suffer under daily and have a hard time finding support for.

That's a horribly limiting requirement for comedy and humor. Have you seen "Blazing Saddles" or "The Producers" (Mel Brooks classics)? Those films run roughshod over all manner of painful issues (historical and personal).

Requiring there to be some obviously mechanical pedagogical purpose to the humor is really losing one of the strengths of humor to begin with. And transgressing "big, touchy issues" is one of the points of comedy.

I'm sure the reviewer of this show and the commenters supporting him won't agree with this statement, but here goes anyway: this show is utterly harmless and no real people were harmed in the animating of it.