Forum - View topicWake Up, Girls! (TV + movie).
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Stall_19
Posts: 78 |
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That crap falls on the manager. They're all just kids and he's responsible for them. That second episode made him look so incompetent and cowardly to where he would allow that to happen and it shouldn't have taken one of the girls leaving for him to finally call that damn thing off.
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HaruhiToy
Posts: 4118 |
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Episode 3 seems like things are getting back on track. Madame President might be a bit wild but she also seems to be a pretty effective rain-maker.
That scalding-water thing aside, going from near naked lap dance gigs to bulky animal costumes on broadcast TV seems quite a step. Not much happens now but at least we get a sense of the personalities and backstories of the individual girls. That's what an idol anime is all about isn't it? |
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DuskyPredator
Posts: 15494 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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Episode 3
The show they are working on now. Oh Japan, you are so crazy. |
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WhiteHairGirls
Posts: 4713 Location: New York City |
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I didn't understand the beginning of the weather segment. What does trying to balance over a tank of hot water in a bikini have to do with weather reporting
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Megiddo
Posts: 8360 Location: IL |
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Because Japan.
They like putting little girls in bikinis in hot water. Skip to around 1:45 to see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAlbyD8ijK8 |
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WhiteHairGirls
Posts: 4713 Location: New York City |
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Japan you cray but that is why I love them |
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Stark700
Posts: 11762 Location: Earth |
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Lol, I found those animal outfits to be kinda cute.
Shame about Minami's spoiler[grandma having a little health problem] wasn't pretty to watch but I'm glad she is doing better now. Hopefully in the future, Wake Up Girls grow more in popularity, get more decorative outfits, and some new songs to deliver to the audience. |
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notrogersmith
Posts: 192 |
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I'm glad that they scrapped the scalding water thing pretty fast. Looks like they were mocking it, too, although that didn't stop them from using it for what looked to me suspiciously like a bit of fanservice.
Still not sure I want to continue with this. Some of the more cynical business aspects of promoting idols are intriguing, but it doesn't help that I'm just not a fan of idol pop, Miyu's new "that was tasty, meow" catchphrase was cutesy enough to make me want to cough up a hairball, and the bit where Minami's elderly friends said she was like "the sun" seemed a bit too cloying for my taste. |
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TehDarkPrince
Posts: 67 |
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1 episode for re-introductions, 7 idol of the week episodes, maybe one for Matsuda and the President each. I'm guessing their will be a 2 I-1 final boss episodes? But personally, I hope it isn't so formulaic as idol of the week.
Episode 3 was better in regards to what I found annoying about the previous one. I didn't find that single close up of spoiler[Miyu's ass getting slapped] all that distracting. Compare that to the dressing room in episode 2; where there are several consecutive close ups on the girls various love humps, while they are speaking. Moreover, episode 2 had way more of these kinds of close ups, all within a few minutes. The animation direction was markedly worse in this episode; Matsuda's chin grows and recedes during the scalding water sequence. Who didn't foresee that spoiler[Granny] was going to fall ill, die, or spoiler[reveal her final form in dramatic fashion]?
Hmmm, I never found Rea's fanservice to be contradictory or somehow implicates me as being like her pops. The issue, as I see it, is also one of agency and her feeling deprived of it under the sway of her father, and how she comes to feel that spoiler[ these pictures and her father's possessiveness are unhealthy, stifling, and robbing her of her childhood and adolescence. Is it an issue of being sexualized, or implicitly being sexualized by a parent, someone who, by our social mores, shouldn't be? The pictures themselves are not a "major facet of her abuse", that is myopic to me. It's Rea being forced to do something she finds degrading, unwelcome, and potentially sexual by her father, for his own gratification. Meaning is derived from context, and the context of Rea's relationships make it hard for me to accept the Rebecca's point. It's way more complicated than saying that since Rea had been implicitly sexualized by her father, that any other attempts to find her sexually appealing or place her in sexual situations, is also sexualization.] They're not equivalent to me, and I don't know how the Rebecca arrives at the conclusion that they are. I don't remember the series all that much now, but I recall it as an average romantic comedy with the usual smattering of fanservice, garnished with a zombie premise that has largely outstayed it's welcome by now. It's the kind of show that I think isn't all that negatively affected by swaying bosoms and undead yuri moments. |
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notrogersmith
Posts: 192 |
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I agree that Episode 2 was far worse. Mostly what I was thinking when spoiler[there was a close-up of Miyu's butt] in Episode 3 was, "Oh, no, you're not pulling that crap again, are you?" And to be fair, for the most part, the animators didn't. BTW, I don't want to get into the details of whether Rebecca was right about Sankarea's fanservice; there's a whole other thread for that. It just seems like there was a concern in this thread about fanservice that ends up jarring because of how poorly it fits with Wake Up, Girls! story, and I noticed a similar concern raised -- for better or worse -- elsewhere. |
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Megiddo
Posts: 8360 Location: IL |
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Which to me is extremely funny because the fanservice in WUG has only been used to show how skeevy the idol industry can be and how it's not all innocent fun as the Love Lives or Aikatsus would have you think.
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notrogersmith
Posts: 192 |
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I only partially agree. The show has definitely been trying to show the skeevy aspects of the idol industry and to present them in a negative light. There's no serious question about that. However, there are some parts where it looks like the story-boarding of the show is trying to have its cake and eat it too, that is, trying to present the skeevy stuff negatively while still seeming to attempt to use it for titillation. Let's go back to episode 2 for a bit. I'll be blunt. There are a lot of close-up shots of the girls' bikini-clad rear ends. Now in the shots where the girls are performing in front of the guys at the spa, one can argue that those shots are supposed to be from the perspectives of those guys. However, that argument doesn't make sense in, for example, the scenes in the locker room. Those guys aren't in the locker room, so any shots of the girls in that room can't be from the guys' perspectives. Nor is there any other character in the room who is supposed to be ogling them. The perspective of the "butt shots" in the locker room appears to be just the bog-standard male gaze -- with all the unfortunate implications that entails. Now episode 3 is certainly less awkward than episode 2, by far. Still, the bit with Miyu being pushed into the scalding water could have been done better. Why not, for example, have the "camera" point at Miyu's face as she was pushed -- where her facial expressions could convey her discomfort -- rather than have her rear end near the middle of the shot? It's as if the storyboarders are going back and forth between presenting the girls according to the themes of the story, where things like bikini modeling and the scalding water stuff are supposed to be unseemly and exploitative, and falling back to presenting the girls in a conventional way that appeals to the male gaze. |
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HaruhiToy
Posts: 4118 |
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Episode 4 certainly continues this theme. By now this anime has definitely differentiated itself from the IdolMaster which is a good thing. I don't know enough about it to tell if it is "real" or not but it certainly has a gritty feel about it that matches other industries that exploit young entertainers. |
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DuskyPredator
Posts: 15494 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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That scene with all the I1 girls just felt kind of without emotion, although perhaps it is not far off a truth. It was almost military like, and not in the fun AKB0048 way.
I wonder if they spoiler[pressured her out of the group because it would be easier to push some sort of scandal onto her], and now they are trying to crush her again. That is the people in suits, and I would not be surprised they actively put posts in to sway online opinion. |
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marie-antoinette
Posts: 4136 Location: Ottawa, Canada |
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Very glad to see that episode 4 didn't go into the formula of " idol of the week." I definitely feel like the strength of this series is going to be a focus on the on-going plot, which the episode did very well.
I love the contrast that's been set up between Wake Up, Girls and I-1 Club and I'm quite invested in the real story about what happened with Mayu, to the point where the spoiler[meeting at the end of the episode] had me engaged enough to yell at the screen when the "To Be Continued" text appear. Also they are doing a decent enough job with little insights into the characters that, while I wouldn't be adverse to all the cast members getting an episode focused on them, I don't think they need an "idol of the week" formula to get everyone at least a bit established. This is especially nice since I was concerned about that coming into the show, since the cast is rather large. It was also good to see less fanservice in this one. Given that it happened with I-1 this time, the show may be using the male gaze with some purpose, though it's really too earlier to tell for sure. At very least, it's a bit less blatant than other shows out there. |
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