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REVIEW: Chaika - The Coffin Princess season 1


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Cyclone1993



Joined: 05 Jul 2011
Posts: 947
PostPosted: Thu Jul 03, 2014 2:23 pm Reply with quote
Cecilthedarkknight_234 wrote:
DmonHiro wrote:
This show was great. And that cliffhanger... I cannot wait till fall.


Haven't watched the series at all yet and I'm trying to avoid spoilers but it seems that it would best to wait until fall to watch this series?? Or should I bother watching it now and wait for what is known as cliff hanger hell??


If you can wait that long, no problem. I personally didn't feel like it had a huge cliffhanger, but apparently that is up to interpretation.
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Oneeyedjacks



Joined: 21 Dec 2009
Posts: 307
PostPosted: Thu Jul 03, 2014 4:47 pm Reply with quote
I enjoyed the show quite a bit, but in all honesty, I felt the only thing that saved this show from being completely mediocre was the fun characters. The story wasn't that engaging, the political subplot made no sense, and the characters weren't given anywhere near as much exploration as they should have been.

Plus, a lot of important plot details were skimmed over or gutted entirely, as well as removing some humor and fanservice, yet they felt the need to include two pointless filler episodes.
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Key
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Joined: 03 Nov 2003
Posts: 18137
Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley)
PostPosted: Thu Jul 03, 2014 4:53 pm Reply with quote
Clarste wrote:
Not to mention the more insidious problem that you're comparing half a series worth of character development to a full series'.

Sorry, no. The comparison holds accurately at a half-series level as well, on all comparison points that I stated.
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HitokiriShadow



Joined: 09 May 2005
Posts: 6251
PostPosted: Thu Jul 03, 2014 5:07 pm Reply with quote
Cyclone1993 wrote:
Cecilthedarkknight_234 wrote:
DmonHiro wrote:
This show was great. And that cliffhanger... I cannot wait till fall.


Haven't watched the series at all yet and I'm trying to avoid spoilers but it seems that it would best to wait until fall to watch this series?? Or should I bother watching it now and wait for what is known as cliff hanger hell??


If you can wait that long, no problem. I personally didn't feel like it had a huge cliffhanger, but apparently that is up to interpretation.


Yeah, there is one interesting thing that happens in the last episode that the audience will sure want some explanation for and to see what happens, but otherwise it ends like the rest of the arcs, with the main group moving on to their next destination. It's hardly a cliffhanger.
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Clarste



Joined: 06 Feb 2012
Posts: 424
PostPosted: Thu Jul 03, 2014 5:14 pm Reply with quote
Key wrote:
Clarste wrote:
Not to mention the more insidious problem that you're comparing half a series worth of character development to a full series'.

Sorry, no. The comparison holds accurately at a half-series level as well, on all comparison points that I stated.


I don't really care whether it holds up or not, and if you had read slightly further into the paragraph I even admitted that possibility, I was just talking about the way the review itself was written. You never said, "comparing this at the half-series level," so the whole thing felt unbalanced, like you were predetermined to find fault in it by giving it an unfair comparison. It's a matter of the impression to the reader, not the facts at issue(I think your overall opinion itself was fair).
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Cyclone1993



Joined: 05 Jul 2011
Posts: 947
PostPosted: Thu Jul 03, 2014 5:34 pm Reply with quote
Oneeyedjacks wrote:
I enjoyed the show quite a bit, but in all honesty, I felt the only thing that saved this show from being completely mediocre was the fun characters. The story wasn't that engaging, the political subplot made no sense, and the characters weren't given anywhere near as much exploration as they should have been.

Plus, a lot of important plot details were skimmed over or gutted entirely, as well as removing some humor and fanservice, yet they felt the need to include two pointless filler episodes.


What two pointless filler episodes were you referring to? The episode with the fake Chaika no doubt, but if you were referring to the flashback one that expands on Toru's character and motivations, it would hardly be a filler episode, because the majority of it was in the original novels.
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Oneeyedjacks



Joined: 21 Dec 2009
Posts: 307
PostPosted: Thu Jul 03, 2014 8:24 pm Reply with quote
Cyclone1993 wrote:

What two pointless filler episodes were you referring to? The episode with the fake Chaika no doubt, but if you were referring to the flashback one that expands on Toru's character and motivations, it would hardly be a filler episode, because the majority of it was in the original novels.


Primarily the Neo-Gaz empire episode, and then the flashback episode had most of the back story for Akari and Toru completely gutted, to the point I almost wondered why they bothered doing it in the first place.
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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15433
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Thu Jul 03, 2014 10:43 pm Reply with quote
Oneeyedjacks wrote:
Primarily the Neo-Gaz empire episode, and then the flashback episode had most of the back story for Akari and Toru completely gutted, to the point I almost wondered why they bothered doing it in the first place.

Well you might ask the question of what is better, gutted or cluttered? I though they managed to fill an episode well without cluttering it up, which was interesting and had some development, or showed normal interaction between characters.
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nargun



Joined: 29 Mar 2006
Posts: 924
PostPosted: Sat Jul 05, 2014 5:04 am Reply with quote
Ali07 wrote:
Chaika's speech pattern seemed a bit off to me


It's extremely off: she can't manage even a simple "-ga" subject marker or even use the right word for "yes", but somehow manages to navigate the mess that's japanese verbal morphology. IIRC she even manages to reliably distinguish between transitive and intransitive verbs, and those are completely 100% irregular.

Mind, I'm not being hugely critical, because foreign accents are pretty tricky if you're doing them from first principles[1] and japanese speakers -- even writers -- don't get a lot of exposure to genuine second-language thick accents.


[1] It's basically conlang work, and fairly sophisticated at that: you need to sketch out the first-language structures and then see where they'll interfere.
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nargun



Joined: 29 Mar 2006
Posts: 924
PostPosted: Sat Jul 05, 2014 5:27 am Reply with quote
The above is pretty harsh, actually, and unfair: Chaika's language is actually extremely consistent and pretty obviously carefully thought through. Noun-heavy syntax, and those nouns largely kango chinese-derived vocabulary, with most of the case-marking dropped.

And the verbs left untouched, which is "wrong"... but while japanese verbal morphology is pretty distinctive there's not a lot you can do to it and still leave what you're writing comprehensible to an untrained native speaker.

[and she should probably be consistently mispronouncing one of the vowels or something, but they might not do that sort of training in japan...]
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Ali07



Joined: 01 Jun 2014
Posts: 3333
Location: Victoria, Australia
PostPosted: Sun Jul 06, 2014 9:41 am Reply with quote
Quote:
Humor and relationships are too steeped in current romcom trends

After all this talk of Scrapped Princess, just saw episode one. Funny, as the "current" imouto trend is strong in that first episode. But, it's alright, as they're not blood related. Laughing

I look forward to seeing more of it, as it was a series I wrote off initially.
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Key
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Joined: 03 Nov 2003
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Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley)
PostPosted: Sun Jul 06, 2014 12:00 pm Reply with quote
Ali07 wrote:
After all this talk of Scrapped Princess, just saw episode one. Funny, as the "current" imouto trend is strong in that first episode. But, it's alright, as they're not blood related. Laughing

There is never the faintest indication anywhere in the series that Pacifica has any romantic inclinations towards Shannon, or vice versa.
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Ali07



Joined: 01 Jun 2014
Posts: 3333
Location: Victoria, Australia
PostPosted: Sun Jul 06, 2014 8:05 pm Reply with quote
Really? Even when she whispers that she loves him and expects him to blush? She attacks him for not having the proper reaction, something else that is a common trope. That sounds like it is more romantic love than sibling love...

Pacifica looks back to check if Raquel is listening, sees her reading a book...then this happens (a scene that is very "current rom-com", just posting links as I don't want this to be a huge post Laughing ):
http://s29.postimg.org/ljg18i4br/image.png
http://s29.postimg.org/wzr1ka7vr/image.png
http://s29.postimg.org/y4l3pnucn/image.png
http://s29.postimg.org/nt8qx02nb/image.png
http://s29.postimg.org/hcv6t64pz/image.png
http://s29.postimg.org/k5oed752f/image.png

Still, have a lot of it left to watch. But, if that scene isn't a hint at romance, I don't know what it is. She turns red when she says it, what kind of sibling does that? Comes off as "non-blood related sister says she loves him, but he just thinks it's as a sibling...and gets attacked for it".
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Key
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Joined: 03 Nov 2003
Posts: 18137
Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley)
PostPosted: Sun Jul 06, 2014 10:30 pm Reply with quote
Oh, I don't need to see the screen shots to know exactly what you're talking about; SP is a series I probably have watched a couple dozen times over the years (it's one of my favorites), so I know it inside and out, and you're reading too much into that. You're forgetting that Pacifica is consistently portrayed as being rather immature, but she's also at an age where directly saying "I love you" in a familial sense is rather embarrassing, too. She reacts the way she does to Shannon's reaction because she doesn't think he's taking her seriously and is just treating her like a little kid (which is what she's acting like, but try convincing Pacifica of that). You might have an argument if at any other point in the series there was a single scene which even vaguely reinforced that she had actual romantic-level feelings, but there isn't.
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Ali07



Joined: 01 Jun 2014
Posts: 3333
Location: Victoria, Australia
PostPosted: Sun Jul 06, 2014 11:11 pm Reply with quote
As I said, still got a lot left to watch of it. I just found it funny that a scene like that was in the first episode. Guess it was more down to me not expecting that. Because, alone, that scene does seem to have romantic undertones...but maybe with recent anime, I've been conditioned to see that? Laughing
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