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I don't really want to get involved in this probably perpetual flamewar, but I'd just like to say that I pretty much completely agree with the review for episode 20. This show was great for a while, but slipped a bit recently, and we've just hit the dumbest climax imaginable; the review already explained why. I was kind of stupefied by how pointless and tell-don't-show and female-characters-need-not-apply it was.

I guess this is why Shirou is an unpopular character, at least with some people? We seem to have reached the point in the story where his presence ruins everything...

Reposting this because the arguments about this review are getting increasingly personal and nasty again.

Zac wrote:

Megiddo wrote:

This 'review' probably provided more page views than any other review for this season, so I'm sure ANN is elated.

Nah. Most of the daily streaming reviews do pretty well; we don't have to worry about traffic for them, and we don't "plan" to have controversial opinions in order to boost traffic.

People like to throw out the whole "oh you're just doing this for clickbait!" thing to devalue or dismiss the opinion being offered, but after doing this for 15 years, I can tell you it's never worth it. These forum explosions and the amount of abuse the writer takes across the internet are enormous demoralizing headaches. But this is how the writer feels about the show; my alternative is to actively censor her opinion in order not to rile up hardcore Type-moon fans, or people who get angry and upset at any criticism that dares mention how the female characters are treated and if that's good or bad.

Ultimately I have to side with allowing the author to be honest. If I thought for a second she were being disingenuous or doing this just to generate traffic I'd have shut it down long ago and she wouldn't be working for us anymore. But this is how she really feels, and I think it's a pretty well-considered piece.

That having been said, I didn't edit this myself and didn't see it before it went up - the editing duties for Daily Streaming reviews are handled by two people, myself and Hope, and Gabriella is assigned to Hope. While I think a lot of the criticism I'm seeing in here is a very typical Gamergate-style takedown of any criticism that can be interpreted as "feminist" - and not something I'm inclined to agree with - I do actually agree with two points:

1. This review is, unfortunately, too long and

2. The discussion of larger themes about masculinity and gender are so much larger in scope than a single-episode review requires that they belonged in a separate opinion piece.

Were I to turn back the clock and could've seen this before it published, I'd have asked Gabriella to separate the sections that explicitly discuss overall themes that the entire show is tackling and save those for a thinkpiece on the series as a whole. Moving forward this is what she'll be asked to do - I don't think what she's saying is somehow inappropriate or unfounded (whether I agree with any of it or not is irrelevant), but it does belong in its own space.

I don't and will never apologize for publishing criticism that comes from a feminist angle - it's just as valid and worth reading as any other opinion. But for those disappointed that this episode review felt very off-topic, we'll do better moving forward.

Thank you Zac for tackling this issue.

Everyone, please read HarriedHarriet's post on page 89. It's criticism that makes sense, it's well-thought out, it refrains from condescending to or insulting anyone and it's basically one of the best posts in this entire thread.

If you don't like the review (I don't, either) and want to let the reviewer know why (I don't know if she's even going through this thread anymore, understandably), do it like him/her.

Just try to keep it a bit more condensed Razz

If I can reply to HarriedHarriet, the thing I took away from that post the most is the idea that she feels personally insulted by Gabriella, and is being told "you're a bad person for liking this show". That the review stoops to insulting the audience. It doesn't. I say this having made the colossally blockheaded mistake of writing pieces like that in the past, and summarily having my rear end handed to me over and over again for years afterward as a result.

The idea that this review is personally admonishing you, the reader, for the flaws she sees in the show - that's projection. Gabriella doesn't say anything of the sort; if you consume media criticism that has a social component, interpreting it as a personal attack when it doesn't agree with you is a good way to 1. stress yourself out and 2. misinterpret the writer's intention 100% of the time.

It is the writer's responsibility to make sure their words don't insinuate that you're a bad person for enjoying the show they're reviewing; there is nothing in the piece that even remotely comes close to saying such a thing. If there were I'd have removed it and told Gabriella that in no uncertain terms is she to ever insinuate that the people who enjoy a show are [whatever unflattering thing]. But she didn't. It isn't in there.

Like I said, I get where plenty of the criticism of this piece is coming from and I agree with some of it. But the idea that she is personally attacking you by taking this show apart on a thematic level and laying the pieces out, explaining what they meant to her and why - that's baseless, to me. I don't see it in the writing and I don't see it in her response.

Hope and Gabriella have also both been told to be less flip about posting something they're aware might be controversial in the future. I understand what they did and why they did it - it's the desire to joke around on Twitter to relieve the stress of expressing a personal opinion you think might be controversial or might bring the wrath of dedicated fans down on you. There's no ill will, it isn't the "secret truth" of this review, it's lighthearted acknowledgement that they know this might call down the thunder, and it did. But joking around about it that way only further antagonizes an already difficult situation, so they have been instructed to relax with the Twitter jokes about this sort of thing moving forward.

because some people have been bringing it up, I don’t think that Fate/Zero is “feminist.” At no point in the review do I say that it is. Both F/Z and F/SN are complicated works in how they relate to women. I was pointing out one way in which F/Z’s study of idealism was aided by its portrayal of women. I believe that F/SN’s study fails in part because it doesn’t do something similar.

As a feminist, I dislike what F/SN is doing to its female characters. At the same time, I don’t want to tack on evaluations like “feminist” or “antifeminist” to works that are very much not about the female experience. Both shows are very much about men. I just believe that F/Z is smart in how it uses women and that F/SN isn’t. These points are open to debate.

Thank you for taking the time out to reply to me Zac. I honestly appreciate it a lot. ...Yeah, now that you mention it, I likely projected without realizing it both due to my anxiety and the fact I was stressed and upset. I'm sorry about that. While I probably needed to get my thoughts off my chest due to the mounting stress, giving that implication wasn't right on my part, and I apologize for that. That was my mistake. I'm glad at least my other points aside from that were useful to people. I'm honestly surprised I got the positive reception that I did, and I'm grateful for that.

It's weird, but that reply makes me feel loads better, thank you. I hope things calm down in here for all our sakes, as while I still have my disagreements with the review, it's nothing worth being uncivil over. I hope people realize that moving forward.

...Now I should probably go off and look at kitten pictures or something because I've been stressing over this whole situation way too much for my own good. Embarassed

If you've been like me and stressing out over this, probably doing something nice and relaxing like that will help.

EDIT: Oh shoot, I didn't see Gabriella's reply, sorry. Thanks for clarifying that. I believe I saw JO say something along those lines on twitter (I look at it because I actually agree with her on a number of things not related to Fate stuff, oddly enough), so I made assumptions based on that. Again, sorry about that.

Well it looks like my re-post of the Twitter pic stirred up things more than I anticipated. I apologize to Hopeif there were nasty things said because of the reaction to that pic, and apologies to Zac who had to go in and clean up some things. I am sorry.

My original intent was to reinforce my criticism, which was not a rebuttal to a perceived personal attack on me as a fan, like many here, but that we had content in the review that was poorly thought out. My ongoing criticism is that

1) we had a determination made of the overall theme of a story before it was complete.
2) the theme was in error because our reviewer zoomed in on the wrong stuff and ignored context, artist, identity and made all sorts of wayward, irresponsible semiotic deductions based on nothing but a few singular details that were then extrapolated.
3) this doesn't even belong in an episode review anyway.

This issue was not that the editor was or was not in agreement with the writer, and maybe the second point I made above is just my opinion, but the editor did not catch points one and three (which Zac agrees with) before the post was made, and not only that, gloated about how good it was. unfortunately with pages of postings every day things were lost in the shuffle.

Gabbomatic wrote:

As a feminist, I dislike what F/SN is doing to its female characters. At the same time, I don’t want to tack on evaluations like “feminist” or “antifeminist” to works that are very much not about the female experience. Both shows are very much about men. I just believe that F/Z is smart in how it uses women and that F/SN isn’t. These points are open to debate.

I'd like to hear your reasoning why.

Fate/Zeros female characters are, in rough order of importance;spoiler[
1.Saber-Constantly bullied throughout the show and only once manages to get in a relevant line/counter-argument against Kiritsugu.
2.Irisviel-For most part she only goes along with what Kiritsugu says-she thinks Kirei is dangerous because he says so, she wants to save the world because he does.
3.Sophia-falls for Diarmuid and abuses Kayneth.
4.Maiya-More or less Irisviel lite only this one kills people.
]

So uh, i'm not seeing how it did any better than F/SN in regards to its female characters.

Gabbomatic wrote:

because some people have been bringing it up, I don’t think that Fate/Zero is “feminist.” At no point in the review do I say that it is. Both F/Z and F/SN are complicated works in how they relate to women. I was pointing out one way in which F/Z’s study of idealism was aided by its portrayal of women. I believe that F/SN’s study fails in part because it doesn’t do something similar.

As a feminist, I dislike what F/SN is doing to its female characters. At the same time, I don’t want to tack on evaluations like “feminist” or “antifeminist” to works that are very much not about the female experience. Both shows are very much about men. I just believe that F/Z is smart in how it uses women and that F/SN isn’t. These points are open to debate.

Basically, FSN is bad because it objectifies women sexually while F/Z is good since it actually objectifies women as nothing more than objects.

Is Zero the Fifty Shades of Gray of anime?

HughAlexander wrote:

Is having a male MC the issue? Is it that it's a VN so people look at it with bias?

Whoah now. You're putting words in my mouth. Never said having a male MC was an issue; I was just saying I didn't like him. I've been into anime for 15 years I think I'd have a hard time if I didn't like shows with male leads lol. As for it being a VN, I have no problem with VN's (morally, I think they're boring though). But a a VN that has hentai sex scenes... along with 3 different routes (hat allow the male MC to hook up with 1 of the 3 leading ladies... and otherwise strong female characters put into comprimising positions... yeah I've been into anime to know when something's not for me, and never was meant to be. I'm not saying people who like it are bad, or wrong. I'm not saying FSN or UBW is objectively bad. I'm saying it's a male centric thing and I'm almost always not into that. The fact that other girls like stuff like that is irrelevant. I'm just not interested in that sort of thing

I don't think we're gonna get much out of keeping on conversing. You love FSN, I don't have interest in it anymore like I used to; that's what reading reviews and other opinions are for if you don't want to invest the time yourself. We can go in circles all you want, our convos are just going to look like this.

Lili: Yeah I think I'm gonna skip this show. Not really into shows were they feel like sexually assaulting their female charactersfor reasons. It makes me uncomfortable. I really liked Rin and Saber and I don't like Shirou so I kinda wanted more focus on them.

Hugh: But it's really good!! And that's not the POINT of the show there are reasons for it.

Lili: Yeah but it still makes me feel uncomfortable, and I don't like Shirou.

Hugh: You shouldn't feel that way its a great show!

aaand repeat

Also idaf what the reasons are. Including rape or rape threats as a way of putting female characters in peril to me is sexist and lazy. It's like bad comic book writing. "Hey... how can we make the audience really mad at the bad guys and cheer on the good guy?" "OH, I know! Let's have the bad guys kidnap his girlfriend and threaten her with rape! Works everytime!" Male characters are not threatened the same way. THERE IS a way to do this right, if the work takes the time to explore that person's trauma in a respectful way, like say the Utena movie for example. But FSN is the lazy version, because Rin matters less than Shirou at the this point. By your own admission, the only reason that'd she's kidnapped and threatened with rape is so the audience will go "ooo... shinji and archer suck!!! Go get em shirou!!!" You're only proving my point.

Now I expect FSN fanboys to jump down my throat about how kidnapping an MC's gf and threatening rape isn't lazy writing because reasons and I don't know what I'm talking about because I haven't read the VN.

Popperins wrote:

So uh, i'm not seeing how it did any better than F/SN in regards to its female characters.

I'd agree that FZ is problematic with its female characters, but it's not so bad because of the screen time they DO give their female characters. FZ may have had problems, but it also had awesome scenes like Irisviel & Saber bonding (going out on the town, driving a car together, etc.) It was awesome that for long scenes at a time, female characters were developed with little to no mention of Emiya. I like FZ more because it was more of a group cast, there wasn't really a clear MC, also

Why is spoiler[Sola taking Kayneht's command seals ]cited a knock against the writing of the female characters?? If anything it proved she could be just as ruthless as Kayneth and that she had ambitions of her own outside of him. She didn't want to be his loyal little pet, giving out Mana for Lancer so he wouldn't have to. She wanted to upstage him and win, and possibly get her sum Lancer lovin'.

Last edited by _Archer_ on Wed May 27, 2015 9:15 pm; edited 1 time in total

Lili-Hime wrote:

Why is spoiler[Sola taking Kayneht's command seals ]cited a knock against the writing of the female characters?? If anything it proved she could be just as ruthless as Kayneth and that she had ambitions of her own outside of him. She didn't want to be his loyal little pet, giving out Mana for Lancer so he wouldn't have to. She wanted to upstage him and win, and possibly get her sum Lancer lovin'.

It's likely cited as a knock against her because Sola's whole relationship with Lancer is extremely shallow in that she only loves him because of his mole. She enjoys the feeling it makes her feel since she never felt anything like it before in her entire life and that's literally it. Kayneth has done nothing to her in their relationship but try and make the best of a situation that they were both forced into by constantly trying to appeal to her since he genuinely falls in love with her, and in a situation where Kayneth is essentially told that all his life's efforts and future prospects are destroyed, instead of at least comforting him in a time of need, she forces him to hand over the one thing he has left to support him as a magus(which is a huge deal for him) by going as far as to break his fingers just so that she can feel a false sense of love from someone that doesn't really care about her in a romantic sense. She then lies to Lancer about how she got the command seal and spends the rest of the war in a love-dovey dream land barely focusing on what's in front of her. She didn't really have an interest in upstaging Kayneth, she mostly just wanted to get in Lancer's pants/spend more time with Lancer and feel close to him.

I'm not saying she should have fallen in love with Kayneth or am saying people criticize her for not doing so, but she comes across as overly cruel and selfish for really poor reasons to both of the only characters she interacts with in the story. Most people (or maybe just men?) generally don't like it when woman are portrayed like that because it makes the character come across as nothing more than bitchy rather than actually being someone who was in a poor relationship and found meaning in loving someone who treated her better. At the very least, she isn't a very considerate person, which contributes to why people don't like her.

Last edited by JacobC on Wed May 27, 2015 7:12 pm; edited 2 times in total

_Archer_ wrote:

Lili-Hime wrote:

Why is spoiler[Sola taking Kayneht's command seals ]cited a knock against the writing of the female characters?? If anything it proved she could be just as ruthless as Kayneth and that she had ambitions of her own outside of him. She didn't want to be his loyal little pet, giving out Mana for Lancer so he wouldn't have to. She wanted to upstage him and win, and possibly get her sum Lancer lovin'.

It's likely cited as a knock against her because Sola's whole relationship with Lancer is extremely shallow in that she only loves him because of his mole. She enjoys the feeling it makes her feel since she never felt anything like it before in her entire life and that's literally it.

Actually, that's backwards. Admittedly, the TV version of it doesn't do a great job of conveying this, (too much else to cram into the show,) but Sola-Ui is a powerful mage and thus completely unaffected by Lancer's beauty mark. She really does love Lancer because she finds him attractive and is especially susceptible to these kinds of passions, being trapped in a loveless engagement. (Being put into a powerless position and seeing a way out for the first time, along with feelings of infatuation that you've never felt before, would be pretty intoxicating.) Kayneth just assumes she's brainwashed by the beauty mark because he's a blockhead who sees the world for how he assumes it should be and not what it really is. He's underestimating her. He doesn't get it. It's one of a few tragic flaws that bites him in the ass in the end.

Anyway, tangential, but just putting that out there. Sola-Ui being brainwashed by Lancer's beauty mark is actually a completely reverse reading of the material. The entire point of her character is that she does have her own agency in that choice, but no one pays attention to or cares about it. (Even some Fate fans, apparently! Again, to be fair, it's not communicated as well in the TV show, but it's explicitly stated in the novel.)

EDIT: This doesn't mean you have to like the character, of course. I kind of want-to-like-her-but-don't purely because I feel like she doesn't get enough to do in the story, much like Assassin, but we can at least be clear on where she's coming from. She's not a brainwashed plot device. In keeping with the "guys who have diminished ideas about the personhood of women get stomped in Fate/Zero" thing, that is literally what brought down Kayneth. I wouldn't call Fate/Zero a "feminist" work either, it's not really about women generally speaking, but it definitely has an ongoing thing of "if you diminish, objectify, or underestimate women, bad things will happen to you," just as a theme. (Boochi has some definite "fear of women" that has dissipated over time, and that's where I honestly think it comes from. Maybe he was in a bad relationship with a really smart, scary woman? Who knows.)

Zac wrote:

Ultimately I have to side with allowing the author to be honest. If I thought for a second she were being disingenuous or doing this just to generate traffic I'd have shut it down long ago and she wouldn't be working for us anymore. But this is how she really feels, and I think it's a pretty well-considered piece.

"It's how she really feels" is an odd way to defend someone. She's not writing a one-off opinion article, or a blog, she's reviewing the show for your website. ANN isn't obligated to give anyone a platform to promote their views. You wouldn't hire a Christian preacher to write anime reviews, or a columnist from the Daily Stormer. I don't see why "feminism in Chinese cartoons" is an angle that needs to be heard.

kamillebidan wrote:

I don't see why "feminism in Chinese cartoons" is an angle that needs to be heard.

I don't see why that viewpoint needs to be discussed here either. Good thing this website is about JAPANESE cartoons!

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