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nargun wrote:

Blood- wrote:

Anybody who has watched anime for longer than, oh, say five minutes, knows that the use of chibi or super-deformed figures is AN INCREDIBLY COMMON COMEDIC DEVICE IN ANIME. It's true that the device is used more often in straight up comedy shows, but it is far from unheard of to be used in other types of shows.

It's not actually that common, though. It still turns up, but it hasn't been "common" for years; last recent show I can think of that did it is, whatsit, Ghost in the Excel Saga.

As I said, it is more common in straight up comedic shows than otherwise, but March Comes in Like a Lion uses it and it's a recent show. I'll start keeping track of examples, but I have seen it used in other shows that aren't predominately comedies.

I don't know what you're talking about Anne... That OP, while visually not impressive, is easily one of the best songs of the season.

Knoepfchen wrote:

You seem to assume a general unfamiliarity with or bias against super deformed characters on my end when I was unconvinced by its use in a specific scene out of several ones that featured Elias in his chibi version, which he generally transforms into for a purpose. Not all are for comedic effect, but none are random, either, and most of them worked just fine. In this scene, the purpose is to take away the fear that Chise might be punished for causing trouble and lighten the mood, which had become quite intense. Cute, chibi Elias is a lot less imposing than regular giant-sized Thorn Mage. (Emphasis added.)

Well, that's one possible intended purpose. In that specific scene, I took it as the animators showing his "That was a good experience, was it not?" line, while accurately conveying his assessment of things, was still comically disconnected from Chise's fears. (And yes, to release some of the audience's tension.) It's not like Elias is cracking jokes all the time; he's a serious dude.

From his earlier comment as Chise was tempted into the forest, he clearly expects it will be a learning experience for her but doesn't seem particularly worried. It's only after she apologizes that he realizes how afraid she was. If Elias were really concerned that Chise was afraid of being punished and wanted to be "less imposing", wouldn't he change into a human with a smiling face as he did in the second episode? Or did you mean that the animators gave him a chibi face to make him less imposing to the audience? Even with a skull face, when a mage says he wants someone for his bride and is as nice as Elias has been to Chise, as a member of the audience I'm not afraid he's suddenly going to rip her head off and drink her blood. (Well, not in the first episode at least.) And for her part, Chise doesn't seem intimidated when he puts his hand on her shoulder or gives her a reassuring hug -- even while wearing his serious skull face.

Blood- wrote:

My point as it applies to Ann's review and Nick's comments in previous March Comes in Like a Lion reviews is that the technique is treated as something that is OBJECTIVELY wrong. Ann's speculation as to why it is used in TAMB implies that she doesn't actually understand that it's a technique. Nick's ridiculous contention that there are some expressionistic techniques that might work on the static page of a manga but don't work in an animated work belies the same conviction: that certain types of expressionistic techniques in anime, such as the use of super deformed or chibi characters, are OBJECTIVELY wrong to employ.

This belief is simple cultural arrogance. Don't get me wrong, there may be Japanese viewers who don't like it either, but at least Japanese viewers have been "trained" to understand what's being intended. There is much more emphasis on tonal unity in Western entertainment than there is in anime. In the West, you don't tend to mix serious drama in with goofy expressionistic techniques for comedic effect. The Western bias insists doing so is wrong (because it violates tonal unity ... you are not supposed to undercut serious moments, with humour). I hate Western commentary on cultural products created in A DIFFERENT CULTURE that stipulates a technique that is not a Western tradition is wrong. It's ethnocentric and arrogant to look down on different story-telling techniques just because they are not native to your culture.

I'm not sure why you keep bringing up Nick's reviews of another show in this thread beyond lumping us together in the culturally arrogant pot. Given we don't know anything about each other's backgrounds or what kind of entertainment one grew up on, I take offense with you taking this to a personal level I have little intention to argue on.

I've neither followed the discussion you guys seem to have had in the March Comes in Like a Lion thread nor do I know Nick personally, but calling him ridiculous for saying some storytelling devices work better in one medium than another is disconcerting. Would we be having the same discussion about the effectiveness of constant internal monologuing in a light novel adaptation? It would hardly be a question of cultural background if I were to say that there are more cinematic ways to go about it without calling it "wrong". Again, I've never claimed the use of super deformed characters in anime to be wrong, either. That would be a silly thing to do. There's no right or wrong here, just the question if something works in a specific situation or not. You're calling it a technique, which, by definition, is something employed to achieve a task. In that scene, it didn't work - for me, which is obvious as I was the one writing the sentence, even if I'm not going to qualify every statement. It must have worked for you, otherwise you probably wouldn't have turned this into a discussion about cultural arrogance.

On that note - Western audiences have been exposed to comedic interludes within their serious drama at least since Shakespeare and opera intermezzi. While these hardly count as popular culture anymore, it's not like Westerners are incapable of getting the idea. Very few people seem to find crying for 3 hours straight all that enjoyable, and when your audience is already down, you kinda need to lift them up a little before hitting them again to achieve any effect. The techniques are different. But they either succeed in a specific situation or they don't.

TasteyCookie wrote:

I don't know what you're talking about Anne... That OP, while visually not impressive, is easily one of the best songs of the season.

The song is lovely, especially that metric change when the thorn magic starts, but the OP itself is somewhat underwhelming.

This a shoujo?

I'm generally in agreement with the review. AMB is well done but feels like it could be better through the first two episodes.

Regarding Elias, I see why some of his mannerisms and concept were a little off putting to some viewers. He has a patronizing way about him and makes weird comments about Chise that you would expect from someone who is not very sympathetic. Yet, at the same time, he seems like a genuinely good guy. One moment he is calling her his "puppy" (and not as a romantic pet name, he seems to really think of her as some kind of pet animal in those scenes) and the next he is telling her she is special and that his home is her home. There's something about this combination of mannerisms that comes off as not quite authentic to me. That being said, it's not that I don't like his character. I think he is being set up as a positive influence in Chise's life, notwithstanding that he starts off as her literal owner. Some have used the term "daddy" to describe Elias. I think this is a good word to use for him, not in the literal sense of course but in the context that it is often used to describe a certain type of romantic relationship that pops up commonly in B grade romance novels. In that way, Elias seems to be a kind of custom "daddy," as he feels like someone took aspects of different types of daddy characters and deliberately combined them together to create this person.

To that point, I think there are several possible daddy types, but two different ones that frequently pop up in romance stories are the daddy who "knows best" and the "supportive mentor" daddy. I think these are kind of contrasting types, but each have their appeal for fans of this kind of romance. The daddy who knows best is a superior type of person, often arrogant and controlling. He sometimes says and does things that don't seem to make sense to the main character at first, but that's just because he is so superior that he has "reasons" that seem mysterious but always turn out to be correct or for the best in the end. He will often treat the main character as if they are incapable of doing things for themselves the right way, and will literally take control and do things for them. As for the supportive mentor daddy, he doesn't see himself as superior to the main character. He sees something truly special in the main character, who is too ignorant or mentally immature to recognize it for themselves. No matter how much the main character messes up or struggles, his belief in the main character's talent and untapped potential is unwavering. He is not controlling, and instead encourages the self-doubting main character to become more confident and self-reliant on the way to reaching their potential.

As i indicated, I see these two daddy types as being contrasting. However, this author seems to have combined them together to create Elias. This is probably why I have a sense of him being not entirely authentic. For example, Elias does seem to be very superior and very controlling. Aside from referring to Chise as a kind of pet dog (and thus beneath him), he literally has to bathe her and places a "bell around her neck" so that he can find her and bring her back if she wanders too far. Normally, these might seem like extreme actions towards an adult, but yet the story makes his actions justified (i.e. he does indeed "know best"), since Chise seems so lacking in self respect that she probably is very dirty and she does wander off into a potentially dangerous situation shortly after he puts the "bell" on her, from which she has to be "rescued" and brought back home. (Although she is shown to resist the fairies' temptation on her own, it is not clear that she could have escaped them without Elias intervening.) Yet, he is simultaneously not-controlling and indicates numerous times how special and talented Chise is. He removes her shackles immediately on arriving home and lets her go about on her own. He says that she will become a great mage, essentially putting her on equal footing with himself as far as her natural talents, though she simply needs training to reach that potential.

The "daddy who knows best' is a bit more old fashioned, so to speak, so this is where the parts of him that made some people uncomfortable seems to come from. I assume that those who are saying he "gets better" later in the series are indicating that the "supportive mentor daddy" traits will begin to dominate more later on in the story. Perhaps one good way to sum up the contrast of Elias is by considering the fact that he says he intends to make her his wife as well as his apprentice (and ultimately a great mage). These are not mutually exclusive, but the first comes across more as an arranged marriage type situation, where Chise will be his wife whether she wants to or not. This contrast is also indicated when at one point, Chise comments that although he seems to be giving her agency, at the same time she has no real authority to refuse his decisions. (Also, this is where I am going to segway into the discussion on super deformed content, because Elias enters "super deformed mode" when he confirms that Chise's assessment is correct!)

I don't want to go on too much longer now, but I wanted to also briefly comment on the "super deformed mode" discussion. I also generally agree that it came across as somewhat stilted here. I certainly understand that it is a common device in anime to signal to the audience that something is funny. If I were to give a "Western" equivalent, I might say that it is analogous to the laugh track that was once very common in Western sitcoms. It has that similar purpose of telling the audience that they should feel jovial about whatever just happened, even if that wasn't their initial reaction. I'm not opposed to that device being used as it is indeed common throughout anime. However, I personally think it works better when the characters themselves have a certain amount of immaturity, as the super deformed version always appears goofy, so it makes more sense when used on children or similarly immature characters.

So to sum up, I like the show. I will definitely be continuing to watch. I don't think Elias is a bad guy, but I do think he is a fairly contrived "daddy," meant to service two contrasting desires for romance stories. And, I think super deformed Elias does partially detract from the merits of what should probably be the more serious direction of this story.

@ Knoepfchen/Ann: Why I lump you and Nick together should be stunningly obvious: you are guilty of the EXACT same behavior, imo. And coincidentally, Nick's first review for the new season of March Comes in Like a Lion appeared yesterday as well which, of course, reminded me that he had the exact same reaction to comedic expressionistic techniques that you did for TAMB. In fact, you eeriely echoed one of his arguments:

Quote:

It's a weird choice given that everything feels so emotionally honest otherwise, a good example of how not everything translates equally from one medium to another.

I interprete the bolded statement to mean, "maybe that can work in manga, but it doesn't work in animation" which is EXACTLY what Nick said about techniques like it in March Comes in Like a Lion.

The sense I get from you is not that the technique doesn't work in the specific case of TAMB, but rather that it can NEVER work in a situation where you have realistic looking characters (er, relatively) in a show that is not predominately comedic to start with.

I don't know if this will help explain where I'm coming from, but let me use an analogy. Imagine a reviewer who comes from a culture where slow motion is not part of its film grammar. She sees a movie made in a different culture where slow motion is used. She's not used to seeing that and she doesn't like it. The human eye doesn't work that way in real life so why would you use that technique in a film - it ruins the immersive experience for her. Using slow motion is "wrong."

That's how I view you and Nick. Because you were raised in Western art/entertainment norms and traditions where expressionistic techniques used in TAMB or March would never be used in "our" cultural products, you are thrown for a loop. It is "wrong" to use those techniques.

That's the insidious thing about cultural arrogance. Often we don't even know we are practising it. I maintain that your reaction to what you saw in TAMB is not a result of some subjective, individual judgment on your part. It stems from the fact that in the culture you grew up in, entertainment products simply didn't do that kind of thing. So when you see it in a culture product not created in the West (which is the tradition you are familiar with) it feels wrong. And I find that attitude objectionable.

I cannot stress enough that I fully understand any viewer, Japanese or not, who doesn't like the technique. My only thing is that if you are a Western viewer and you don't like the technique, simply recognize that probably the reason you don't like it is that it is not part of the Western tradition. Don't be arrogant and assume the technique is "wrong" simply because you don't like it.

Blood- wrote:

Quote:

It's a weird choice given that everything feels so emotionally honest otherwise, a good example of how not everything translates equally from one medium to another.

I interprete the bolded statement to mean, "maybe that can work in manga, but it doesn't work in animation"...

The sense I get from you is not that the technique doesn't work in the specific case of TAMB, but rather that it can NEVER work in a situation where you have realistic looking characters (er, relatively) in a show that is not predominately comedic to start with.

Did you miss where she explicitly said the exact opposite of what you "sense"? "You seem to assume a general unfamiliarity with or bias against super deformed characters on my end when I was unconvinced by its use in a specific scene out of several ones that featured Elias in his chibi version, which he generally transforms into for a purpose. Not all are for comedic effect, but none are random, either, and most of them worked just fine."

Blood- wrote:

My only thing is that if you are a Western viewer and you don't like the technique, simply recognize that probably the reason you don't like it is that it is not part of the Western tradition.

Super-deformed per se might not be, but comic relief, which is one use of SD, certainly is a part of the Western tradition. And you can't say that comic relief always works wherever it's placed, especially just because it's a foreign work doing the placement. Well, you could say that, but it would be a pretty indefensible argument. As is the argument that everything that works in manga format works equally well in anime form.

SleepySkull wrote:

Or did you mean that the animators gave him a chibi face to make him less imposing to the audience?

Yes? Did you think Elias was actually altering his face to chibi form in scene? oO (he's not)

@ Gina Szanboti - I was going by what was written in the review, not what Anne has written in this thread. In fact, I didn't really hoist on board that Anne = Knoepfchen until her second post. But I thank you for redirecting my attention to what she wrote, because it does actually correct a mistaken impression I had. In that post, Anne explains that she doesn't have a bias against SD used as a comedic technique in a drama in general, she just didn't think it worked in that specific scene. Fair enough.

Gina Szanboti wrote:

SleepySkull wrote:

Or did you mean that the animators gave him a chibi face to make him less imposing to the audience?

Yes? Did you think Elias was actually altering his face to chibi form in scene? oO (he's not)

No, I thought that in much the same way other anime had used chibi segments, the audience was meant to understand that the animators were conveying something about Elias but that in the story Chise saw him throughout in his animal skull form. Indeed, I had enjoyed the climax of the first episode and thought I understood it. And then I read Anne's review and comments here. Given that she knows more than I about anime in general and this story in particular, I was racking my brain to get what she was driving at in that odd paragraph of her review.

Feeling a bit like I was back in high school facing a chibi history pop quiz that I hadn't studied for. my brain connected her mentions of manga and OVAs and how things don't transfer well from one medium to another with the phrasing "When Elias turns into his super deformed mode" and I thought, wait a minute is there some nuance of chibi portrayals or this story that I am missing? Are we really meant to take the chibi form as Elias making a transformation in the story? Hence my phrasing trying to confirm the normal rules applied.

Aside from all that, I still don't understanding her reasoning about the first episode's climax. By the time the chibi form of Elias appears, the situation had already been resolved. While Chise responds like a child used to abuse, Elias had been decent to her and Chise had even said as much as she used physical pain to break the fairy spell, so I had no fear for her emotional safety at that point. Anne's points about somebody not wanting to get too emotional in the episode and the chibi portrayal being a lack of emotional honesty continue to puzzle me.

On a lighter note...

https://youtu.be/lWffhbjzIic

I was surprised to see this show runs on Twitter in Japan.

Ha ha, that was cute. I could be mistaken, but I don't think the show itself runs on Twitter, just the shorts.

Ah, that makes sense based on https://twitter.com/mahoyomeproject.

So episode 4 preview confirms they're adapting two chapters next. Interesting to see how they handle the pacing and such. Might feel really different from the first three episodes' atmosphere.

Really liked this week episode, but it really cement my feeling of this show, Chise shouldn't be in it. She's by far the less interesting aspect of it, being little more than a crumbled blank sheet. She's also tied up with all the creepy aspect of the basic premise (slavery/forced marriage), which the show seems intend to not explore or flat out cast in a positive light. And really, she just take time away from the interesting stuff.

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