Forum - View topicIs The Lost Village Actually A Comedy?
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JustinTaco
 Posts: 118 |
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But it's not lowering your standards. Just expecting different ones. You expect different things from a horror, a thriller, a campy comedy, an action flick, a subdued period piece, etc. The humor comes from expecting one thing and getting another and often times how you get that other thing. |
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relyat08
 Posts: 4125 Location: Northern Virginia |
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I didn't realize there were so many people who didn't see this as a comedy. I thought it seemed pretty likely from the very beginning and was obvious just a few episodes later. It's not just that it's bad, it's about where it's bad. In animation, there is kind of no way you would put a light post in front of the speaking character accidentally. That has to be deliberate. It requires a storyboarding and key animation to deliberately draw that in. There are numerous other occasions where similar things happen.
Around episode 4 or 5 I ran across an interview with Mizushima that sort of solidified my opinion on this piece. He makes it very clear how closely tied he thinks humor and horror are. I'm just curious now if Okada was in on the joke as well. 
Last edited by relyat08 on Wed Jul 06, 2016 12:50 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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jtron
 Posts: 183 Location: Chicago |
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Terrific article; more like this, please.
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EricJ2
 Posts: 4016 |
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Yes, parody, even deadpan parody, is something that, if you HAVE to ask, probably isn't. No Western viewer back in the 80's remotely got the joke in Project A-ko about A-ko watching the horror movie where Colonel Sanders comes out of the alley, and if we knew that it was a scene-specific parody of Harmageddon where a robot was supposed to come out of the alley, THAT'S parody. There are pop parody jokes in Oh Edo Rocket ("The message says 'Shinigami only eat apples'...") that fly so under the radar they might have been stealth bombers. But at least the clear intent is there, for, as MST3K used to say, the Right People who get them. Japan doesn't really have a Best Worst Movie culture, like our trying to rationalize facetious reasons why Troll 2 or The Room are "artistic genius of bad" when they're just messes. They have cultural difficulty understanding Western irony, and often find saying it straight out to be funnier. A culture that berates you for not giving 110% to your job is not going to make a joke about consciously being incompetent in a Meta Sort of Way...At least not without the obvious punchline of the good socially-validated Normal character TELLING us there's something wrong with this thought process. Horror anime may have goofy premises, but there's not as much of a culture that makes fun of it as our arrogant Western audiences do, with audiences that want to laugh at, deride and genre-deconstruct a horror movie as much as they want it to deliver the goods. Their filmmakers are usually totally serious about their premises...They're Japanese, after all. And if something's bad, it's not for a lack of earnestness. |
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meiam
Posts: 3442 |
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I haven't watched it and reading this article I wasn't fully convince until that example of the guy talking with a pole right in his face. You can't make that up, its an anime. If it was live action, then maybe the director is just that dumb that he didn't notice that the pole was blocking the guy giving the speech, but this is an anime, someone had to draw this. They had to put the guy in and then draw (or just drag) the pole over there face. The only way this can happen is if its deliberate.
I wouldn't be surprised if this was trying to be both, but I'm sure some people watch the room and think its a straight up horror. |
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jesusalcala11
 Posts: 132 |
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I'm with some of the other people here. As soon as I saw that there was a pole in front of a character's face, the comedy/quality had to be intentional. That's way too big of a thing to go through so many individuals to not be.
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PumpkinMouse
 Posts: 80 |
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I think you may be right, but I still struggled mightily with even small expectations of humor, because I was let down early on in the show. Having no expectations whatsoever in regards to humor, camp, or anything else for Lost Village made it easier to accept and occasionally enjoy what each new episode threw at me. I think the comedy in Lost Village just wasn't for me, in the end. I laughed the most when the show both met and subverted my expectations at the same time (like when the giant Tokimune burst out of the forest, because of course something has to rise up and chase the main characters, but no one expects it to be a giant stuffed penguin) and laughed the least when it just subverted expectations entirely. The anti-climax method alone wasn't enough for me to enjoy the show's sense of humor. It probably also didn't help that Sailor Moon Crystal was also using a lot of techniques to cheaply animate scenes, like poorly framed shots and early scenes where characters' mouths were hidden while they spoke. So when Lost Village employed similar techniques for humor, I instead wondered if they were doing it to save their budget. In retrospect I can see that's not the case, but it seemed unclear at the time. |
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purplepolecat
 Posts: 130 |
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I'm with Nick on this one. I found TLV very entertaining, and this article really helped to solidify some of the reasons that the show tickled me. There are a LOT of layers to this thing, some more accessible than others.
I can understand people not enjoying TLV, or not finding it funny, but I'm amazed that some people still don't even acknowledge that comedy was being attempted spoiler[AND THESE PEOPLE SHOULD BE EXECUTED]. That fact alone justifies this in-depth article. |
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maximilianjenus
Posts: 2863 |
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the "villain" appears twice in the same shot (a group shot) I ams till wondering if that was oin purpose, asa way to point out who the villain was. |
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JustinTaco
Posts: 118 |
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That may have been a technical mistake given that it was a very wide, zoomed-out crowd shot. Mayoiga is usually pretty blatant with what it's doing. |
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RDespair
 Posts: 244 Location: California |
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"Bad" was a poor choice of words as I ended up enjoying it a lot. I meant more that I spent a lot of time wondering if a lot of the humor I saw was intentional or just me projecting into it. |
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Edl01
Posts: 117 |
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A campy B-Movie style horror anime from the director of Squid Girl and Girls und Panzer.
Where is the argument coming from that this isn't a comedy again? The only non-comedy show I've seen from Mizushima is Another spoiler[and even that was pretty damn funny at times.] As I've said before the idea that The Lost Village is just a poorly made production baffles me. They have Mari Okada and Tsutomu Mizushima leading the project, two veterans of the industry, both of whom have worked on incredibly popular and acclaimed shows like Shin-chan, Shirobako and Toradora. It's absurd to claim they both forgot the completely basics of their craft while making this show. Last edited by Edl01 on Wed Jul 06, 2016 4:00 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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scrwbll19
Posts: 87 |
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Interesting article. Having seen the entire series, I can see both sides. The series could be interpreted as a B-grade psychological horror or as a satire of the former genre. It could be both. Either way, it seems to promote an absurdist view of its overly generalized characters, which sets up their (potential) downfall and the expectation for humor. It occurs to me that in its attempt to do whatever it is trying to do, it has succeeded in one thing: dividing people's opinions about it.
What I personally find just as interesting by way of comparison is this series and a book I read recently called "The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi: Short Stories by Jesus" by Amy-JIill Levine. It is a scholarly book that examines the parables of Jesus in terms of how they should provoke and humor readers. Much of what Nick wrote in this article shares the same premise as what is in her book. Iam not trying to push religion here or anything. Rather, I find the premises interesting in how they can be applied in completely different waya to come up with completely different results. This series is a deconstruction of the horror genre and its characterization in one sense. The book deconstructs people's character flaws and expectations about other people. In both, you find humor where it is not expected. Regardless, the article at the very least provoked readers, if the anime did not. The boo does so as well. In shirt, I have enjoyed this article, the anime, and that book. |
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Razor/Edge
Posts: 607 |
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It's not a comedy, it's just bad. Bad writing. Bad characters. Bad development. Bad just about everything. You could try to make the same case for any bad anime. "Oh, it's intentionally bad, because it's trying to be a funny parody." Or...you know..... it could just be a bad anime.
Whether it's purpose was supposed to be as a horror anime or a horror parody, it did neither one well enough to be deserve any sort of praise. Last edited by Razor/Edge on Wed Jul 06, 2016 10:59 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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BodaciousSpacePirate
 Subscriber Posts: 3017 |
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Just based on the out-of-context screenshots, this show looks hilarious.
I'm somewhat disappointed that Pony Canyon has the US rights to this show. It seems like 5 years down the road, this would have made a great 20-30 dollar bargain-bin release, and now that will never happen. |
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