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18if (TV).


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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15433
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Sat Sep 09, 2017 12:14 am Reply with quote
Episode 10, Dream Dimension α

And this might be the most visually impressive episode yet, there were times that just had me thinking why the rest of this series could not be like this. In general it felt like it captured this dream feeling that I think other stories tried to get, but only this one nailed. It had this sort of wondrous adventure feel, where it set up this personality and I would say own identity, that made me put the name of the episode above.

This one actually had me interested in who was behind this episode, the closest I can get is the name Koji Morimoto. I don't want to say it was Ghibli like episode, I think other anime movies can have similar animation, and I think that there was also a Space Dandy episode or 2 that also had a similar episode, maybe the fishing one.

Another thing has me wonder that rather than being about some made up sleeping beauty syndrome, what the witches are going through could be more directly related to isolation, things along the lines of hikikomori. There were I think hints earlier, but I think it was perhaps more clear with a story here, where the answer seemed to be that Jane Doe actually did not need to stop doing what she does. She actually is accomplishing something with being off in her own world, she is apparently doing blogs and the like, which might be akin to someone who mostly stays in their room, but is doing some sort of art. The mission statement has been kind of to save the girls from these self kept prisons, but it has kind of come that they are not all bad, although there maybe needs to be some sort of balance. And with that it seems we are being set up the professor is getting some allies to actually help Haruto wake up.
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Chrono1000





PostPosted: Sun Sep 10, 2017 4:24 pm Reply with quote
DuskyPredator wrote:
And this might be the most visually impressive episode yet, there were times that just had me thinking why the rest of this series could not be like this. In general it felt like it captured this dream feeling that I think other stories tried to get, but only this one nailed. It had this sort of wondrous adventure feel, where it set up this personality and I would say own identity, that made me put the name of the episode above.
This episode did a great job of both feeling and looking like a dream. As for why it was wondrous that is because it was a pleasant dream. Most of the past episodes were various types of nightmares that were meant to feel sad.

DuskyPredator wrote:
Another thing has me wonder that rather than being about some made up sleeping beauty syndrome, what the witches are going through could be more directly related to isolation, things along the lines of hikikomori. There were I think hints earlier, but I think it was perhaps more clear with a story here, where the answer seemed to be that Jane Doe actually did not need to stop doing what she does.
The topics of isolation and loneliness are recurring themes in this show. It was nice to see Jane Doe call out Haruto for the simplicity of his pep talk. While a pep talk is a good thing it doesn't get rid of personal issues or societal expectations.

DuskyPredator wrote:
And with that it seems we are being set up the professor is getting some allies to actually help Haruto wake up.
I think having Haruto, Lily, and the Professor working together in this episode made the show more interesting.
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horseradish



Joined: 27 Oct 2015
Posts: 574
Location: Bay Area
PostPosted: Mon Sep 11, 2017 7:46 pm Reply with quote
There were many inventive visuals. Morimoto's work also tends to blend visuals and music together in a compelling and lively way, so I liked the spontaneous dance scene. The episode actually reminded me of some good dreams I've had, namely the segment where Haruto and Kanzaki are driving in a car along a train track.

I liked Jane, since she seemed so creative and carefree in her dream world. As Chrono1000 said, this was actually a pleasant dream rather than a nightmare. Her dream functioned as a way for her to be herself rather than a call for help despite being frail in the real world. I suppose she'd probably wake up when she felt ready and willing as well.


Last edited by horseradish on Mon May 04, 2020 8:44 pm; edited 1 time in total
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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15433
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Sat Sep 23, 2017 12:11 am Reply with quote
Episode 12

While watching the last episode I had a weird epiphany. If Eve is the big enemy, and apparently apposing her is someone called "Lily", then I was wondering if like Eve Lily could be a biblical figure. And the one that came to mind was that Lily could be Lilith, who if you are not aware is supposed to be Adam's first wife, who became a demon. What makes that interesting is in particular is her connection to Lilin demons, which are Succubi and Incubi, demons of dreams, but also that Lilith is also tied quite a lot to witches. Which in the end kind of feels like this show has it backwards, or these are actually foreshadowing to a plot twist.

For additional discussion about this episode, I think maybe mentioned the previous episode first, which was actually really boring with mostly real life stuff and being largely a recap episode. And similar with this episode, the real world stuff is just kind of not interesting. We did have an interesting dream scene in this episode, the explosion beams was fun, but things like how to save her by making impure (kissing her) was not I think that good of an idea.

Which says nothing about some of the laughable other parts with the girls apparently running around and I guess trying to find Haruto. We got told that they are apparently using their feelings, getting one scene that this includes going to a crystal ball watching psychic, which came across as bad. But none of it meets up to the spoiler[first love witch coming back as a ghost in the normal world]. Laughing Oh my god, who came up with that idea?! They even try to explain it like something that a spoiler[part of her soul stayed behind in their world (the normal world)].
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Chrono1000





PostPosted: Sat Sep 23, 2017 2:53 pm Reply with quote
DuskyPredator wrote:
While watching the last episode I had a weird epiphany. If Eve is the big enemy, and apparently apposing her is someone called "Lily", then I was wondering if like Eve Lily could be a biblical figure. And the one that came to mind was that Lily could be Lilith, who if you are not aware is supposed to be Adam's first wife, who became a demon.
It does seem likely that Lily will turn out to be Lilith since she seems to personally know Eve.

DuskyPredator wrote:
We did have an interesting dream scene in this episode, the explosion beams was fun, but things like how to save her by making impure (kissing her) was not I think that good of an idea.
Well for every feminist idea that they put into this show I think they were required to throw in an anti-feminist idea. I am not even sure if that is a joke considering how often that seems to happen in this show.

DuskyPredator wrote:
But none of it meets up to the spoiler[first love witch coming back as a ghost in the normal world]. Laughing Oh my god, who came up with that idea?! They even try to explain it like something that a spoiler[part of her soul stayed behind in their world (the normal world)].
That made me laugh so hard but at least Casper will have another friend.
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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15433
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Fri Sep 29, 2017 10:44 pm Reply with quote
Episode 13 (finale)

Well, that was somewhat disappointing. You know that foreshadowing it could have had about Lilith? Did not come into play at all, instead just a situation of Lily being a part of Eve, like her innocent part, I think meant to be a reference or something to the purity of Eve. But it is almost too good of what part Lilith could have played in the story, especially since Eve seemed bent on getting revenge against god's order that she should serve Adam. I am not a big bible person, I am aware that the very thing that had Lilith cast away was that she did not want to just be subservient to Adam, she also wanted to be on top. It is like hugely ironic that they chose to take Eve in this way, yet not aware of Lilith, it should not be that obscure.

But getting to what actually happened in the last episode, there was a pretty feminist element to it, which was fine when the witches mocked that modern women should even be held to such ideas of waiting on men. Became a little uncomfortable when it started to kind of mock men in general by calling us gross, and maybe should be the opposite. This perhaps the part where I can have the biggest disconnect with this series, where me being a man myself, I cannot be quite the best judge at whether it is like a relief in being fair to the other gender. But I can say that some of this was pretty uncomfortable. I think that the scene with all of the witches also kind of highlighted elements of the individual stories that themselves were a little toxic. For example the witch that got revenge by killing those guys, and this was just saying Eve should just kill everyone. But then you had one like the otaku girl, which was good, and against the weird theme was a case that it was not a man's fault. Focusing on blaming another gender, or even just the idea of the system, like a patriarchy but the oldest one with god as being something to ignore entirely, is just kind of toxic. That if they had a problem they should find the worth in what makes them happy, treat others like they want to be treated, and think about others circumstances.

The above would maybe be what the moral of the story was, but I think it also suffered from being a bit too messy, with contradicting itself a few times, and maybe not fully understanding some implications. To bring it back again, they way they apparently was going to beat Eve was by destroying her purity by having Haruto kiss her, and again a very bad self destructive concept. An importance of purity, that is lost when a men does something like kiss them. For as much as the them it wants to play, it maybe should think that the idea given of purity is bullshit, that a woman should not subservient to such ideal that they be defined by a man in such a way? Going back to the idol episode you can see that her problem was two fold that her sexuality be abused by men in power that they can pressure her, but also she was being invited of controversy from rumours from the expected purity she would need to sell her to the male fans. The answer there was that the men committing those acts were people of blame, and that the general idea of expecting her of some goddess with artificial purity is also a gross concept, that she shouldn't be forced to be defined in those ways. Similarly it kind of thought that the show commits the same acts in terms of with Eve, but also that twisting it around by treating the guys like servants or conceptually always as bad, is also wrong.

Not to make this too much of a thing, but it is maybe why you find now days people that there is something wrong with feminism as a concept, when so much is done and some people feel like they are in turn unfairly targeted. Not that I am generally one of those people, I am constantly of interest of things like fairness to both genders, and especially to the problems that I might be more blind to. It is why I was kind of into this show, and the parts that had me certainly interested. Why I thought episode 6 was especially good, it was not even about men, as it had a girl that was bullied by other girls in a way more specific to girls, and an escape in the way of fiction in a rather meta way. It maybe becomes especially poignant when a number of the times the problem a witch had was something like the bastard boyfriend they had was actually really shallow, and the girl let herself be defined by that. I know that happened from the first witch and the candy witch, and maybe could count murder one too. I think I want to kind of turn that into this series being really bumpy, that it had some really good parts, and probably worth a discussion or so, along with I think some very flawed episodes and elements, that kind of felt wasted from some poor execution.

The best episodes were episodes 6, 8, 10 and mostly 3, which were pretty cool, with a few others that had some elements that were a little unclear, and others that I think had some larger problems. It is kind of weird that I would feel like judging this series so much off of individual episodes, and I think that the weakest part of the series even was trying to keep a constancy and running a whole story which made up the last 3 episodes. That one cult guy who somehow had a large church to himself, had a really stupid helmet. And although I have seen some say that Haruto was kept consistent in his trait of always taking the side of the witch, that is not actually a consistency, where between the lines of that he kind of varied too much. Somehow he could also be very arrogant until he would suddenly play nice, getting annoyed at people bothering him because it gave the illusion of a personality, and saying whatever sounded good. Ironically it gets thrown back at him in episode 10, and episode 8 shows that he is not as receptive as he plays the part of, these being the two that kind of did not need him playing the role of prince coming to save them. It is no use coming up with what the main character could have been like instead, but I wonder if it would have done better with someone who seemed much more intuitive than Haruto, that would have been less aggressive, and more empathic where he might get tears when learning what they had been through, but also believe in their personal strength.

For a rating I am going with Decent (6/10), where it is certainly something I did not lose my time watching, with some pretty standout episodes that could be a mix of creative and interesting subject matter, but yet others that could fail to click in terms in a few different ways. Perhaps worth the watch just to look at what did and did not work personally.
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Hiroki not Takuya



Joined: 17 Apr 2012
Posts: 2501
PostPosted: Sun Oct 01, 2017 11:16 pm Reply with quote
With the final episode, I'll crash the threesome to dispel some confusion (evident from the show). The Torah (original text with extant fragments dating to 700BC) does not mention any Lilith, Eve was deceived by Satan and Adam joined the transgression knowingly. God banished them from eden "lest they partake of the fruit of the Tree of Life and live forever" in thier corrupted state thus allowing the human race to begin. He wasn't angry, didn't call Eve a "fool" or any such. The Lilith you are thinking of appears in mythological texts of the first milleniun AD and onwards but the first appearance was in the Talmud ~200AD as a "sexually wanton night demon".

Now, for the show. I really dislike the last three episodes and resent how they presented the premise of the show laid out in Ep1-3 differently than at the end. Making a highly contrived ending featuring all the "witches" (alive and dead!) to attempt to unify the disparate stories I feel is lame writing and a little insulting, as if that was the intent all along. I agree that the series works better if they just acknowledged it as an anthology based on the problems young women (and men) encounter and how they might be overcome. Sadly, the resolution phase of episodes 4-6 felt very rushed and were face-palmingly terrible in that regard and while Ep7 was a stand-out fascinating story, it did not fit the series at all. If this comes out on DVD I will probably get it because I think it had really good elements but I think it deserves the "decent" rating, not really great and not really horrible.

P.S. I have become a fan of Teddyloid's music featured several places in this show (and Space Patrol Luluco ED). Didn't know much about him before...
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Chrono1000





PostPosted: Wed Oct 04, 2017 3:58 pm Reply with quote
Well that finale was a bit disappointing. I wasn't expecting much from 18if but the hammy message about the world being better now that men served women was bad even by the standards of this show. It was almost like the show wanted to be feminist but each of the directors took a guess at what that meant. The message about purity was somewhat strange for a show that was trying to be feminist though I guess they needed to throw in some way for Haruto to defeat Eve. That Haruto didn't do it was supposed to show his respect for Eve though it was a clumsy way to show it. While most of 18if is average I think that episodes 2, 3, 6, 8, and 10 are worth watching. Also episode 13 is worth watching if only to see several witches give a pep talk to Eve in a somewhat confusing manner.
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horseradish



Joined: 27 Oct 2015
Posts: 574
Location: Bay Area
PostPosted: Sat Oct 28, 2017 1:52 am Reply with quote
After enjoying episode 10, I hesitated in finishing the show since I figured that the show would struggle with the ending.

Considering how Freudian the dream elements were, adding biblical stuff further muddled up the story. Felt that The Thorn Cross Association was thrown into the plot for more religious flavor in the background since that was totally superfluous.

The witches being able to sense and find each other was reasonable I suppose, but resurrecting Kayo as a ghost was ridiculous. Some revealed details made me scratch my head some more. Apparently Valanga (ep 7) is a real kingdom? How do the dream worlds function apart from reality again? I did not expect the witches to stop the apocalypse simply by having a nice chat with Eve over some tea. She's been angry and hurt for thousands of years and bent on destroying humanity, but consoling her with how women are gaining fairer treatment (not even at that point yet) and pointing out her naivete with the outside world is all it takes? A boy simply kissing Eve will kill her? Really now :/

I suppose 18if tried to be thought-provoking and unusual and I liked how the episodes showcased different directors, but the show was pretty much a waste of time for me.
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