Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Made in Abyss
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鏡
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If you read James' reviews he generally acknowledged the fetishistic tendencies (which are apparently ambiguously fetishistic, judging by divisive audience reaction in this thread alone) as a negative. Judging by this post though, I'm guessing two things: 1. You don't think they're ambiguously fetishistic. 2. They're not to your taste. I'm not sure how either of those things being true figures into a critique of the show as being "emotionally manipulative", rather than just being a list of elements in the show that aren't to your taste. Is someone who "shares these fetishes" (viz. doesn't see them as critiques of the show), and therefore likes the show, being emotionally manipulated? As for the positives of the show: I think people got a pretty wide variety of things out of it throughout its entire run. It's certainly a longer list than atmosphere and suffering. But again I'm not really seeing how this speaks to your original point about the show being emotionally manipulative. Is your idea of emotionally manipulative storytelling just the inclusion of cute girls suffering and atmosphere? |
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Crunky
Posts: 32 |
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You don't see introducing two new characters within the last few episodes and then expecting you to care by showcasing a needlessly graphic mutilation as exploitative or emotionally manipulative? Okay. And there's nothing ambiguous about the fetishistic nature of the show considering in this episode Riko talked about Reg getting a boner after seeing her naked and Nanashi remarked that he touched her in a lewd way. I know you guys are infamous for ignoring the elephant in the room constantly to not been seen as a creep while watching an anime you like but this too much. |
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鏡
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I'm just having trouble understanding what makes Nanachi's arc in the show manipulative instead of just an instance of emotional storytelling - what would make it a non-manipulative story for you? Or to get more to the point, what exactly do you mean by "emotionally manipulative"?
If you read back a bit in this thread, you'll see where James first started noting some of the more egregiously "fetishistic" tendencies of the show, and the ensuing multi-page discussion which his acknowledgement generated, so I don't know where this is coming from. |
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Crunky
Posts: 32 |
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Emotional manipulation basically comes about when a show shortcuts to a sense of drama, sadness, or basically any other emotion that it hasn’t earned through the narrative itself. Normally, empathizing with a character requires first understanding that character as a human being i.e. seeing their interactions, development, and how they're written within the story but when you employ emotional manipulation, you use other dramatic tricks to avoid the need to fully characterize people and explain the stakes of their feelings (case in point and over the top and graphic flashback that plays up the tragedy with no subtly). This generally involves something like introducing a simple character and then immediately providing them with a tragic backstory, in an attempt to get the audience to care purely out of human empathy and projection without doing the work to make the audience believe in that character on their own merits (“it’s sad! feel sad!”). Would care about Mitty prior to this episode at all or say that this made her a well-rounded character in which you understood her personality, history and her role in the story? No she was just leverage to explain Nanachi's past, her motivations and why she couldn't leave her hut in short just a plot device but then I see people bawing their eyes out over a character who couldn't even talk until now because a show told me to be sad? Please, how weak are you? And I'm generally not trying to be edgy or anything I've cried at Evangelion (Kaiji's last message to Misato) Parasyte (Izumi's final confrontation Reiko) hell even spoiler[Elfen Lied] (but I was young at that time so...whatever), point is if you're going to give a show high marks due to how cheap it is playing with the emotion of the audience what's the point of it?
You're still downplaying it though like it shouldn't been seen as a flaw in the show or that's its easily ignorable. I'm not a prune to this type of stuff since its all over anime but this site is well known for giving lower marks to shows that do that shit and outright dismissive of shows that cater to those audiences so what makes MiA the exception? Because it has a budget that can distract you from the sleaze and tries to make you think its some en garde masterwork all while an underage girl pees herself for third time? That's straight hypocrisy. |
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Hoshikawa Subaru
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I'm sorry for reopening this discussion and I've only kept up with the last two pages of this convo but the issue is EVEN IF IT WAS EMOTIONALLY MANIPULATIVE (im not saying it is, I love this show to bits), it was produced and handled well enough to get people to love it. If shows really did do well by playing "the same drums" and "get the same reaction" then hordes of isekai shows such as isekai smartphone should be pretty well received. Same argument about how nanachi is just introduced to invoke sympathy. Loads of shows do it, so many of one piece arcs revolve around some new characters tragedy on a new island(don't hate on me for this). Key thing is how well told the story is and how believable. If you can't understand why people love nanachis story then fine I guess MiA wasn't to your taste but don't trash it like it was some poorly adapted story filler garbage Last edited by Hoshikawa Subaru on Sun Oct 01, 2017 10:46 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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鏡
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Alright, I think I understand what kind of critique you're making, which is more about the thinness of the character writing than I would have guessed. First, granting that we have no reason to care about Mitty until the depiction of gratuitous violence inflicted upon her is true, and the show is therefore leaning on basic human empathy to elicit emotion rather than a positive depiction of an interesting character: is that even a problem? If the emotions the viewer feels upon seeing this poorly written character suffer are cheaply bought, in what way does that invalidate the emotions themselves? Second, speaking only from my experience of the show, I was really interested in Mitty the moment she was introduced, and was immediately invested in finding out more about her and seeing what her fate would be. When her tragic backstory is revealed, it established a relationship between her and Nanachi that I think is thematically potent and, more than creating sadness at the violence of the act, caused me to empathize with both of them as damaged survivors of something horrible. When Mitty is killed, the emotions it elicited in me were not just sadness at the loss of an uncommunicative flesh-blob. There's a deep sense of simultaneous injustice and catharsis in her execution scene that the show establishes by showing how Mitty's physical state is symbolic of the permanent scarring inflicted on both Mitty and Nanachi by Bondrewd. For me, Mitty was the physical embodiment to what I think was the strongest element of Nanachi's arc: the depiction of a person trapped in a liminal psycho-emotional space by their employment of defense mechanisms against trauma. For Nanachi this defense mechanism is a kind of nihilism and self-abnegation, and for Mitty this is embodied as a literally suffocating immortality. When Mitty's body is incinerated and her soul freed, Nanachi exits her nihilistic shell and questions the value of her own life by agreeing to continue on with Reg and Riko. Mitty is held up as a mirror to Nanachi to demonstrate that while you may be safe under a blanket of nihilism, you're not exactly living as a full human being. Ultimately Mitty's death-scene was for me more about a symbolic "fudge you" to Bondrewd than anything else. But that's all just a description of what I personally got out the show's use of Mitty. Assuming I had cared only about the fact that she was violently hurt, and that that's sad, (or interpreting everything I just described as coming to that in so many words), I think it would still be a commendation of the show that it elicited a strong emotional reaction from me, regardless of the strength of the character writing that precipitated it. So I guess I'd just say that your question "How weak are you?" is not really a critique of the show but of the standards of the people watching the show. If the implication behind it is that you yourself are not so weak and did not find Mitty's death scene moving, then your claim about the show is not that it cheaply manipulated your emotions, but that it failed to do so effectively. Clearly there are people for whom it did not, and for those people, I'm not seeing why the show's ability to elicit a reaction shouldn't be praised. That said, for someone with your standards of what a show needs to do to get you to care about a character, if MiA fails to meet them, then I understand why you would have a problem with it. As I currently understand it though, your charge that the show is emotionally manipulative is not a description of your own experience of the show, but a claim about the validity of other people's reactions to the show.
If in the first sentence you're referring to me personally and the fact that I put "fetishistic" in quotes - the quotes were meant to convey the ambiguity of the fetishistic nature of those scenes in audience reception. If you're referring to that reception - different things are flaws for different people, and are more or less difficult for different people to ignore. This is in fact reflected by ANN's own set of reviewers - you'll find that they have widely varying standards for what "fetishistic" content is easy or difficult to ignore or even whether that kind of content constitutes a commendation or condemnation of the show. Granted, it's certainly not as wide a range as is demonstrated in its readership, but that's also a much larger group of people. tl;dr: comparing James' standards for what constitutes objectionable content to ANN's standards is unfair because ANN doesn't have a unified set of standards when it comes to objectionable content in anime. Last edited by 鏡 on Sun Oct 01, 2017 11:09 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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James_Beckett
ANN Reviewer
Posts: 275 Location: USA |
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Also, I would like to point out that I have spent many paragraphs, across multiple reviews for the show, highlighting the content I find objectionable, and how different viewers may feel about it, depending on their tastes. Heck, the first derailment in this very forum occured because I took the show to task for this very thing. I've already made it clear that I dislike the nudity and focus on bodily functions, and that it is essentially the biggest flaw that detracts from the show for me. I've also made it very clear that, while I dislike those aspects of the show myself, they are presented in a tasteful enough manner that they can be ignored, or at least pushed aside, and therefore it doesn't necessarily impact the show's overall quality for me. Compare that to Dragonar Academy (found here:animenewsnetwork.com/shelf-life/2016-01-04/.97152), which is one of my earliest reviews for the site. I found that show repugnant, becuase its fetishization of the underage-looking characters in its cast was more or less the whole point for watching it. It was crass, poorly written, poorly animated, and too in-your-face about its smutty intent to ignore, at least for me. The point is, as has been communicated by many others, different people are going to have different thresholds of tolerance regardig what a show focuses its sexual lens on, and how it does so. Critics are no different. My job is soley to clearly and effectively communicate how I feel about such things, and how that might differ from any number of fans and writers all across the board. I feel confident in knowing that I have done just that. |
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Nordhmmer
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The central motif of Made in Abyss is its cycle of death and rebirth,Riko's death was her birth.Mitty's death is for the hope of her rebirth- then there isspoiler[Prushka]
The story gets darker,yet no scene is just for shock value nor is a throwaway for fanservice. Riko's naivete as far as how she interacts with others,makes for an realistic character. Reg could be Riko's tsukkomi in certain situations but I think of him more of a Pinocchio. He wants to be human,he thinks as a human but he is not a human. Mitty & Nanchi,for me, are what if versions of Riko. Keeping in mind the story was not written to cater to Western sensibilities. Edit: also these are late night/very early morning ramblings,so coherence be damned. |
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Joshua Zarate
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@ Crunky - Damn, you're making it sound like this series, for all the things it did right, is outright terrible and shouldn't be remembered only for the fact that you didn't like the way it did it's thing. Pretty much everybody here was praising the series (For good reason. It f*cking earned it) without any mention of emotional manipulation until you came along. (I've seen emotional manipulation. This is not it.) For what's it worth, any reviewer that you could find anywhere would be able to find and talk about emotional manipulation to its audience if it is present in what they are critiquing (Here, none was mentioned because there wasn't any present in the first place). It even sounds like, to me, that you watched a completely different show with a completely different mindset than everyone else here has. Made in Abyss is a great show (It's still not finished, however). But I can understand it not working for everyone (Hell, everything that has ever existed in the universe has never worked for everyone. That's just how it is.). You, however, have gone a long way to point out your personal issues with the show that no-one else here has had, but with a tone that is, quite frankly, too harsh (even for the harshest of critics) for a show that doesn't deserve it in the slightest. It's not perfect (No anime is), but even if it does some things similar to series before it (Originality will not always guarantee success not will it always result in a quality product), it's all in the execution that makes it work. Made in Abyss has certainly excelled in its execution, otherwise, it clearly wouldn't have affected so many people loving it this much. I also have a good feeling that it will be remembered by many for some time to come in the future.
EDIT: Nordhmmer also makes good points about Made in Abyss that make sense once one thinks about them. |
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ChibiKangaroo
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Not sure what is supposed to make Nanachi furry fetish material. He/she doesn't show any outwards signs of sexuality. Its not like this is the first animalistic humanoid in anime. Spring season had like what, 3 shows with such characters, Grimoire of Zero, SukaSuka and Granblue Fantasy.
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Clematis
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I'm not a forum dweller, but damn this is one excellent piece of a show.
Been a while since I felt the urge of rewatching an episode almost immediately after completing an anime. And I'll likely do it again and again over the course of time until s2 is out. Incredibly believable characters, a compelling story and the fact that the anime does not sugar coat ANYTHING nor does it portray violence/tragedy for the sake of it. From cruelty to comedy elements, everything has its own purpose - it helps build up the characters and our relation to them, as well as the masssive cruel, yet beautiful world of abyss, and makes you wanna descend this mysterious place and find its secrets. But what's also very important is how the show makes sure to take good care of both its cast and the viewers through a truly cathartic ending, and that I truly appreciate. The 'song of ascent' -a masterpiece in and of itself, I might add - playing in the final scenes reinforces all the hope and new-found strength both the characters and myself found after the past few gut wrenching scenes. I feel like the criticism - or rather, a vendetta against the anime - is largely unjustified, as the game does not in any manner portray its characters in a way that would be suggestive or compromising for the sake of fanservice - it just does not shy away from occasional nudity or other things that COULD have been fanservice, if portrayed differently - but they aren't. It most often uses them as a comical relief or to further a character's development. I myself have never felt that fanservice was, neither forcefully or discreetly, shoved down my throat at any point in the anime. As for this 'furry fetish' - I'd LOVE to dig my face in that floofiness that is Nanachi (and man the animators sure did an excellent job bringing out that furriness), just as much as I do that with any fluffy kitten bellies. Perhaps those out there who feel Nanachi's portrayal is suggestive in this or any other regard ought re-examining their own selves first. |
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MarshalBanana
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2 years ago in the exact same season People made a big deal out of it and it was the only show that season people talked about Nobody talks about it anymore This is so difficult.[/quote] Haven't you noticed the big flaw in this??? Your clues towards the show, are not how well people remember the show, but how well people remember what was popular in a season from 2 years ago. Do you not think people have more important things to remember than what was popular each season. I got into watch Anime seasonally in 2012, and I have no clue what was popular each season aside from the big run away hits like AOT. |
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Rederoin
Posts: 1427 Location: Europa |
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Oh, I was not being sarcastic at all, its very obvious what you ment. |
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jenthehen
Posts: 835 Location: Cincinnati, Ohio |
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re: "emotional manipulation"
It's not about quantity, but quality of storytelling. There are effective shorts on youtube that are just a few minutes that are able to make you cry, laugh, terrify you, etc. It's in the quality of storytelling. We've known Nanachi since the end of episode 10 where she is instantly endeared to us because she comes to the rescue and saves Riko's life. We see at the beginning of episode 11 that she was driven to do so by memories of another person (who we quickly realize is Mitty). Nanchi and Mitty were main characters in episodes 11 and 12 and the backstory is half of the double length episode 13. So we have an hour or more to get to know them (not much shorter than a lot of movies, tbh). Also, the emotions you feel when Mitty is transformed, tortured, and then mercy killed are EARNED by the masterful writing, directing, music, characterization, etc. It actually FEELS longer due to the writing/pacing/presentation. This is absolutely NOT emotional manipulation (i.e. tragedy porn - "you're supposed to cry here" writing). There are plenty of anime (or other series) that after 12-24 episodes with characters, you don't feel as emotionally invested as you do with Nanachi and Mitty, because the writing and pacing was crap and they squandered the chance to present REAL emotions. Edited to add: Nanachi and Mitty also are NOT out of left field new characters / new story that are presented in a rush at the end of the season. They embody the whole mystery of the abyss. The driving force of this story is the desire to discover wtf is going on in the abyss - what does loss of humanity mean? What happens in the lower layers? What's up with the white whistles? What happens to people who go down to the 6th layer, etc. etc. So this story feels satisfying on that level, as well - because it's answering a lot of questions about the central mysteries and plot of the story as a whole. |
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ChibiKangaroo
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Yea emotional manipulation can be bad when the writing is ham-fisted or the character's actions don't seem to make sense, or where the narrative is going strongly in one direction but then suddenly reverses course in a way that is either poorly explained or contradicts the established rules of the universe without good reason.
However, if the manipulation is occurring naturally due to a superior narrative that makes use of all its plot points and characters in a very well crafted/cleverly written way (and doesn't cheat) then it can be beautiful. Like I said, look at the way Nanachi sets up the blanket and stuffed animals for Mitty before killing her off. That was clearly manipulative emotionally, as the author knew that it would create images of young children in like a play pen or peacefully/innocently among their beloved toys/imaginary friends. It maximized the empathy for Mitty, who up until now has been a sort of weird blob. Now she's an innocent child among her toys about to be slaughtered. It was manipulative, but it made perfect sense and was exactly what someone like Nanachi (also a child) would think to do. The writer carefully thought all of this through and effectively maximized the audience emotion with what they had previously set up. |
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