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REVIEW: The Great Passage Episodes 1-11 Streaming


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Lemonchest



Joined: 18 Mar 2015
Posts: 1771
PostPosted: Fri Feb 24, 2017 10:20 am Reply with quote
Great Passage was one of my biggest disappointments of 2016. It started off a bit slowly, but for four or so episodes, when it looked like the focus would be on Majime's odd couple relationship with Nishioka & awkward romance with Kaguya, it was probably the best drama of the year & I was really hooked on watching how Majime & his relationships would change over the years of writing the dictionary.

But then, for reasons only a hack director could account for, it has one of the worst handled time skips I've ever seen that cuts short all the character development up to that point so the show can be Shirobako for dictionaries - which doesn't work because Shirobako had dozens of characters with different jobs & motivations to explore, whereas The Great Passage is about a few people who spend all day in a quiet office, reading.

Dud end to a pretty mediocre year for the Noitamina block & Amazon's attempt to get in on the anime market.
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Random 21



Joined: 03 Jul 2014
Posts: 198
Location: Nottingham, United Kingdom
PostPosted: Fri Feb 24, 2017 10:47 am Reply with quote
The Great Passage was easily one of my top shows if the year, it was an absolute treat to watch week to week. The animation was gorgeous for a show of this nature, and the characters were all charming. It made me legitimately interested in the dictionary business, which I can't say I was expecting. Between this and Scum's Wish, I hope this signals an uptick in the quality of the Noitamina block which I hope they can keep up (Saekano 2 notwithstanding). As a big fan of this block (currently I'm trying to go through and watch ever show from the block), this idea makes me very excited.

They even actually managed to pull off something I usually dislike in other shows, during the spoiler[timeskip. Usually I'm not a big fan of this technique, but they managed to pull it off very well here, helping to demonstrate just how much Hajime has grown over the course of the show].

So yeah, I can't recommend this show enough. If you're looking for a nice, low-key drama to help you relax, this show is perfect for it.
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dash56



Joined: 06 Jul 2016
Posts: 151
PostPosted: Fri Feb 24, 2017 10:59 am Reply with quote
YES!! It's finally here Very Happy

2016 had a few great shows last year but this one was my favorite. The idea of people discovering their passion in life resonated with me. Such a warm and charming cast that made the boring tasks of dictionary-making actually look interesting. By the end I couldn't help but feel a huge sense of pride and accomplishment along with the team.

There's definitely a sense of fulfillment when you're lucky enough to do something you love. And for me, this show captured it perfectly.

Now that Amazon's done being weird about streaming, hopefully more people can get the chance to enjoy it. Thanks for reviewing it. Also "Before it fell victim to the Amazon anime hostage crisis of Fall 2016" made me chuckle.
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Crowjack



Joined: 22 Jun 2011
Posts: 40
PostPosted: Fri Feb 24, 2017 11:10 am Reply with quote
I have been waiting awhile to watch this show. I thought ti was strange when only North American Amazon Prime members couldn't watch this show. Then Amazon had the brilliant idea of charging extra to join their anime club on top of the regualr Prime payment. Amazon doesn't have the Anime library yet to justify anyone having to pay extra just to watch anime. I will defnitely use my Amazon Fire tv w Alexa to watch this show and anything else on Amazon Prime. But I will more than likely be using Kodi that I installed on my Fire Tv to do so. I really do not like to pirate anything. I buy alot of anime every month and have subscriptions to different streaming services. All so I can support the industry. But I do not think it is fair for Amazon to charge extra for anime and lock an entire genre of shows behind a paywall. Especially considering how every other place in the world that has Amazon Prime can watch anime without having to pay extra except for North America. I know all this is kinda off topic. I just hope that enough people contact Amazon and let them know just how bad of a deal this is. Alot of people like to watch the new anime shows as they air weekly and discuss the current episodes. Amazon sometime likes to wait untill a show is done airing then and put all the episodes up at once. They also do not provide a forum to discuss the episodes. So basically Amazon wants $100.00 a year for Prime. Then another monthly fee for people in North America to be able to watch the limited anime they have available. All with ino forums to discuss things with other people. Wow what a deal Amazon. Sorry for the the long rant. But seriously please everyone if you also think this is a horrible deal contact Amazon and let them know. Again sorry for the long post it's late/early I've had no sleep. Amazon has messed up my last 2 shipments somehow. And seeing news about this show reminded me of just how mad I am at Amazon at this moment. Evil or Very Mad
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Dark Mac



Joined: 17 May 2008
Posts: 309
PostPosted: Fri Feb 24, 2017 11:27 am Reply with quote
I thought this was the second worst show of last year, after Girls Beyond the Wasteland. Everything in it was just so completely boring. Majime was cute sometimes, and his wooing of Kaguya was pretty adorable, but that ended up being a very minor part of the show. They tried to show how important it was to be making a new dictionary and make it more interesting, but it just completely failed. Some episodes succeeded in a "so bad it's good" way where I couldn't stop laughing, but even that mostly fell away by the end. I do agree that the animation was very nice, but I don't think the show really took advantage of that very much. It's nice that it was a total failure in Japan, but unfortunately Amazon invested so much in it that it probably made money anyway.
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Angel M Cazares



Joined: 23 Sep 2010
Posts: 5400
Location: Iscandar
PostPosted: Fri Feb 24, 2017 11:40 am Reply with quote
The Great Passage might be the best slice of life anime I have ever watched. I really liked the characters, and the overarching theme of overcoming the challenges life throws at you. I consider The Great Passage the best anime of 2016 in overall quality.

review wrote:
While it may have taken a while to get here, The Great Passage stands out as one of the best shows of the fall 2016 season, well worth revisiting even after this gap of time.

It is not as if the show took years and years to be legally available.
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meiam



Joined: 23 Jun 2013
Posts: 3442
PostPosted: Sat Feb 25, 2017 12:21 am Reply with quote
Yeah this show didn't work for me. I love workplace shows, but dictionary making is just not an interesting topic. First of all the internet exist so there job is flat out irrelevant, the perfect dictionary already exist. So when the inevitable "spoiler[there going to shut down our department" plot came around I dropped out since the show never actually bothered explaining why the department should still exist (unsurprising since it shouldn't and the company is just wasting good money).]

And even if I liked the idea of making dictionary, they were pretty awful at there job in all aspect. First off, they seems completely opposed to using any form of digitization, instead keeping a giant room full of document (what kind of company can afford that?!). And some of the definition they gave for words were needlessly complicated and uninformative (could be translation mistake), like one of the first one given to explain the concept of left (the direction) where the main character end up saying its the direction that the heart curve which; ignore the fact some people heart don't curve to the left and that its completely useless as an explanation since hearts aren't on the outside. And this also again reinforce the idea that the internet is better since you can have image to explain stuff like that.

The show could have salvaged it by going more in details about the exact nature of words and the various different interpretation (ie are word absolute or context dependent and so on), but nope it just really love word but has pretty much no interesting insight into them.

All that was left was character, but the main character is thoroughly boring as a person, I guess maybe word lover could like him, but otherwise he's just a boring person.
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relyat08



Joined: 20 Mar 2013
Posts: 4125
Location: Northern Virginia
PostPosted: Sat Feb 25, 2017 12:57 am Reply with quote
Wow, the whiplash I got from reading this comment thread was intense! Laughing Not that I wasn't going to watch this based on them anyway(I was pretty interested in this from the get-go, and "boring" subject matter like this works for me often[statistics are literally my passion], so I am not deterred), no matter what was said. Anyway, certainly looking forward to this. Especially for that character animation. I really appreciate some solid character animation and the clips on sakugabooru have thoroughly blown me away.
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DatRandomDude



Joined: 21 Jul 2016
Posts: 271
PostPosted: Sat Feb 25, 2017 2:42 am Reply with quote
Damn, yeah. The comment thread is a real rollercoaster of opinions.
Personally, it was one of my favorite in Fall season, but its definitly not for everyone so its understandable if some people didn't liked it.
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John Thacker



Joined: 28 Oct 2013
Posts: 1006
PostPosted: Sat Feb 25, 2017 8:53 am Reply with quote
meiam wrote:
Yeah this show didn't work for me. I love workplace shows, but dictionary making is just not an interesting topic. First of all the internet exist so there job is flat out irrelevant, the perfect dictionary already exist.


It is, of course, a guarantee on the Internet that someone criticizing the concept of dictionaries will make a grammatical or spelling error in that selfsame post. The way you've done so repeatedly makes me wonder if it was intentional.

Perhaps your point was 'even if I omit commas, use the wrong "there/their," and don't have proper subject/verb agreement, people reading my post will still know what I mean from context, so dictionaries are irrelevant?'
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yuna49



Joined: 27 Aug 2008
Posts: 3804
PostPosted: Sat Feb 25, 2017 9:28 am Reply with quote
I liked this show even more than Rakugo, which is the obvious comparison as both shows focus on adult drama. I found it easier to relate to the characters in Fune wo Amu, perhaps because I come from an academic background. I could have done without the little "educational" vignettes with the "dictionary-chans" but otherwise think this show is an unappreciated gem. Amazon deserves the blame for the lack of attention this show received while it aired. In the fast-paced world of anime, their decision first not to simulcast this show, and now to lock it away in the Strike service, means it will reach a mere fraction of its potential audience.

I had to laugh when I read that there were widespread expectations that Majime and Nishioka would have a homosexual relationship. That thought never crossed my mind while watching this show even before Kaguya appeared on the scene. All this BL/fujoshi stuff has gotten so tiresome.

Japanese authors seem capable of taking the most unlikely subject matter and turning it into compelling stories. Fune wo Amu is a shining example of this art.
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter



Joined: 07 Mar 2009
Posts: 23624
PostPosted: Sat Feb 25, 2017 9:41 am Reply with quote
Ha ha, the divergence of opinion on this show in this thread is amusing. I was a fan, myself. It's the type of show we just get way too little of in anime: a slice of life with adult characters. I don't think we saw a schoolkid the entire time - heaven! And yes, the fact that the show was actually able to make editing a dictionary into a compelling narrative is a real coup. As this comment thread indicates, the show is not going to be a hit with everyone, but I have no hesitation of recommending it to anybody who wants something different from "schoolkids saving the world from monsters/aliens/enemy mecha/whatever."
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meiam



Joined: 23 Jun 2013
Posts: 3442
PostPosted: Sat Feb 25, 2017 9:43 am Reply with quote
John Thacker wrote:
meiam wrote:
Yeah this show didn't work for me. I love workplace shows, but dictionary making is just not an interesting topic. First of all the internet exist so there job is flat out irrelevant, the perfect dictionary already exist.


It is, of course, a guarantee on the Internet that someone criticizing the concept of dictionaries will make a grammatical or spelling error in that selfsame post. The way you've done so repeatedly makes me wonder if it was intentional.

Perhaps your point was 'even if I omit commas, use the wrong "there/their," and don't have proper subject/verb agreement, people reading my post will still know what I mean from context, so dictionaries are irrelevant?'


Considering you were able to understand my post, I think my point makes itself. I could go on about how most of grammar is pretty pointless (ask yourself, if I had said my post out loud, would you have been able to tell I was using the wrong there/their? Then why does it matter in writing? Are you unable to understand my point due to the wrong usage of there/their? And how long till computer automatically fixes those?).

But the show wasn't about language, it was specifically about dictionary and dedicated quite a bit of time to talk about the various different dictionaries and there strength and weakness. Those weakness all stems from the limited number of pages and the need to constantly update the dictionary, neither of these apply to the internet yetthe show never even mention the internet and try to make a case for dictionary continued relevance (at least up to the point I watched). It's like watching a show about people making telegraph instruments set after the telephone was invented and the show just never even mention it.
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dash56



Joined: 06 Jul 2016
Posts: 151
PostPosted: Sat Feb 25, 2017 10:01 am Reply with quote
meiam wrote:
But the show wasn't about language, it was specifically about dictionary and dedicated quite a bit of time to talk about the various different dictionaries and there strength and weakness. Those weakness all stems from the limited number of pages and the need to constantly update the dictionary, neither of these apply to the internet yetthe show never even mention the internet and try to make a case for dictionary continued relevance (at least up to the point I watched). It's like watching a show about people making telegraph instruments set after the telephone was invented and the show just never even mention it.


Some of it was about language and the importance of a guide to help people properly express themselves to each other. Majime, Matsumoto, and Araki loved words and took pride in the fact that their work could create better ways of communication. Through that communication people can form connections.

They were very much romantics about the whole thing. Kinda like certain people who enjoy records or novelists preferring type writers.

yuna49 wrote:
I could have done without the little "educational" vignettes with the "dictionary-chans" but otherwise think this show is an unappreciated gem.


I have to say, the way they tied those vignettes into the actual story put a huge smile on my face. One of the many awesome things Nishioka brought to the table.

Honestly I loved this show so much I went out a got the live action movie after the series ended.
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yuna49



Joined: 27 Aug 2008
Posts: 3804
PostPosted: Sat Feb 25, 2017 11:42 am Reply with quote
dash56 wrote:
yuna49 wrote:
I could have done without the little "educational" vignettes with the "dictionary-chans" but otherwise think this show is an unappreciated gem.

I have to say, the way they tied those vignettes into the actual story put a huge smile on my face. One of the many awesome things Nishioka brought to the table.

I found those segments rather jarring and disruptive of the mood set by the story itself. I got used to them, of course, but they always felt out-of-place.
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