Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Kino's Journey - the Beautiful World-
Goto page Previous Next Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
Author | Message | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
CrowLia
Posts: 5505 Location: Mexico |
|
|||||||
My guess is that Gabriella (as well as Jacob) assumed the 2003 interpretation was a faithful adaption of the original story and went with that. People in this forum mentioned otherwise. At the very least Jacob acknowledged he got it wrong and that was the end of it. No such "adaptation"-regardad claims have been made ever since and Gabriella has certainly never claimed to reading the novels. Again, you pressing on this point with the Master and walled-city examples makes no sense in regards to what Gabriella is actually saying
Hardly. Her companion is taken prisoner under false charges by a corrupt government. Master's actions are framed as just and cool. The viewer is presumably meant to be excited about watching the clear villains of the story getting their just desserts. This is further emphasized when we learn her actions actually helped overthrow the corrupt government and make the country prosperous. At worst, the characters are presented to us as Chaotic Good. We're supposed to root for them. |
||||||||
Ashabel
Posts: 350 |
|
|||||||
I think people are exhausted of quoting that line from the second episode review and explaining its implications at this point.
No, it's not. It's expecting to respect the rules of the series' world while holding a discussion on it. When discussing any piece of fiction set in a reality not like our own, it's important to acknowledge that certain things will not translate well once transposed into common sense. Otherwise your argument is inherently flawed in, to repeat myself, the same way as claiming that political messages in Zootopia make no sense because animals don't talk in real life. A discussion of how the core rules of the show are flawed can be important, but it doesn't always translate well into an argument. And if Gabriella resents the core rules of Kino's setting so much that she needs to argue against them while providing her arguments and examples, then maybe she should have been assigned to broad analysis of the series and not episode reviews. Otherwise people will think she's inherently biased against the show on the grounds of disliking its core premise, and question why she was chosen to conduct episode reviews in the first place.
See the paragraphs above for why I and presumably others find her analysis to be unconvincing.
I'm sorry, but I'm genuinely too disturbed by the idea that someone would consider Master's actions within the episode to be just and cool to even provide a counter-argument. |
||||||||
Zac
ANN Executive Editor
Posts: 7912 Location: Anime News Network Technodrome |
|
|||||||
I feel like we've gotten to the bottom of this. That line in the second review should probably be rephrased, otherwise I don't think there's anything else productive we're gonna get out of this debate. |
||||||||
CrowLia
Posts: 5505 Location: Mexico |
|
|||||||
So you're saying that we're supposed to find Master's actions reprehensible and that the "heroic" thing to do would've been to ditch her subordinate and let him rot in "Corrupt Government Prison"? It's not about what I believe but how the show is presenting the story. In this specific story, Master is being put against a clearly villainous "corrupt government". In contrast with that, her actions are clearly presented as "positive" -if not necessarily ethical- Without any background information about the novels or the character, can you honestly say that the characters are being presented as anything but "heroes"? Not heroes in the lawful good kind of way, but simply as characters that the audience is supposed to cheer for. That's like saying Lupin III isn't framed as a hero, after all, he does selfish and unlawful things all the time. |
||||||||
Ashabel
Posts: 350 |
|
|||||||
I'm saying that the Master is quite clearly parsed as a terrible human being by her actions and just because her actions ultimately benefit the country in a deeply backwards way, doesn't mean she was a good person at any point. A villain can get into a fight with another villain and end up contributing to the world around them, that doesn't magically turn that villain into a hero. You fall into the same trap as Gabriella where you explain your reasoning through an idea that every story of conflict is supposed to have a villain and a hero. It's not. Sometimes there are bad people on all sides of the fence. |
||||||||
CrowLia
Posts: 5505 Location: Mexico |
|
|||||||
You're completely ignoring my argument. I didn't claim the Master was framed as a "good" person. I explicitly said otherwise. That was literally the point of my last two lines and the Lupin comparison. She's not "good" or "moral", but her actions are not framed as villainous or reprehensible. The narrative is not criticizing her or presenting her actions as a "bad" example. The viewer is not expected to come out of the story thinking "gee, that Master person sure is awful, hope they get punished for their selfish deeds". Just like you're not expected to root for Zenigata even though he is by all accounts the "good" person in the Lupin franchise
|
||||||||
Hades_ANI
Posts: 20 |
|
|||||||
Since here is often mentioned that these parts are all fan voted - if I can believe my fellow redditors (and I do that), you can see in this link from Reddit a table with all the episodes and their ranking and only 10 out of the 20 stories are from the vote.
Also, it is a shame that I don't get a respond from Editor-san, since he claimed wrong points about my person. Honestly, I care more about the discussion with him than Executive-san coming into this discussion, also arguing like a beginner on the internet, ignoring parts of other people's comments (which is obvious, since the other person had to repeat herself several times). Also the more offensive stand even from someone being one or several more positions higher is kind of surprising, I would have accepted a more formal and friendlier reaction - this is new to me. At the same time, I can't understand how someone can argue so much with someone from ANN about a reviewer from ANN - what does someone expect happening then ? it is like Shizu arguing with the villagers about the radio waves being not dangerous (what a surprise, this episode can be used in RL, at least on the net). They are part of the company and never will attack their own reviewers in public at least. So now I wonder, if something will happen behind closed doors and what the reviewer themselves thinks about this discussion or if (that) reviewer don't look into the discussion. Maybe we can see the positive things. Having a review about an episode with a questionable opinion leads to more discussion on this board. I think this is a rather active place compared to some other shows. |
||||||||
Hades_ANI
Posts: 20 |
|
|||||||
The newest episode ... I don't think that the 2003er version would have adapted such a bad story. This is really underwhelming.
First of all, again we get another country with a wall ? Why do they have a wall, if no one wants to come to their country anymore ? Thole plot is stupid, when they have a wall, since that isn't real at all and it should absolutely defend against a pyrocluster something. Then, if they want to have a better impression on other people, why not make a FB page and buy some likes and comments for their FB page ? That is fast and easy to make. Unrealistic. Also, if they knew a whole month about the pyro-explosiooooooooooooooon (Megumin, leave the keyboard now!) - sorry. So, if they knew about that thing already a whole month, why not only change the position of the whole country. You can easily push Bikini Bottom into a new position and there won't be aaany problems at all. Also, Kino showing emotions is so out of character. |
||||||||
Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11368 |
|
|||||||
^ You know, this sort of pettiness is really not a good look on you.
|
||||||||
Ashabel
Posts: 350 |
|
|||||||
I cannot believe I have to explain this at all, but here I go. Well, no, the series doesn't actively frame the Master as a bad person. That's because Kino's Journey doesn't frame anyone as an actively good or bad person at all. It takes sides to a degree (the story we're discussing is subtitled Don't Look Back, implying the country's disinterest in actually looking back and learning from their history despite their obsession with historic monuments), but it never actively persecutes or condemns anyone. Not the Master. Not the traveling merchants in the Tale of Feeding Off Others. Not Kino's parents and not the people in the Land of Permitted Murder or the Land of Rule by Majority. None of them are framed as bad people despite having killed countless others. The series may present their actions as disturbing, but it will never condemn anyone. That is because Kino's Journey is part fable, part thought experiment and part spaghetti western, and all three of those genres are known for their dry narrative and disinterest in taking sides. They expect the audience to have the basic grasp on ethics and common sense needed to understand whether an action is right or wrong regardless of its outcome, and ponder the situation in their head. They are not interested in clear-cut answers because providing a clear-cut answer destroys the purpose of a thought experiment. The fact that you are at all baffled by the series' disinterest in actively persecuting a villain after seven episode of the show's second season mostly tells me one of the two things. My first thought is that Kino is your first foray in all three of those genres and you still struggle to get a handle on their narrative approach. That's understandable, since they are pretty niche genres. To grasp them, I would recommend reading the wikipedia on all three of those genres and maybe start with something more short-form and less heavy on, well, the thought experiment part than Kino. Maybe watch a Sergio Leone movie or read some Aesop. That should give you a good start. If you do know those genres exist but still take issue with Kino's approach, then in all likelyhood your issue is with the genre as a whole. In which case, well, maybe Kino's Journey isn't for you. That's fine. Thought experiments are generally not for everyone. Of course, my other thought is that you haven't seen a single episode of the series at all, and are arguing purely off Gabriella's slipshod review. But I would never understand why you'd want to do that. So no, it's not that I'm "ignoring your argument". It's that you simply don't have an argument to speak of. Or rather, the only way for your argument to function at all is if you somehow still haven't grasped the basic narrative mechanics of Kino's genre after seven episodes of the show, twenty if we count the 2003 adaptation. |
||||||||
ArnisEnthusiast
Posts: 74 |
|
|||||||
Your entire comment is ignorant because the 2003 anime DID adapt "A Kind Land". It was even the finale. |
||||||||
Megiddo
Posts: 8360 Location: IL |
|
|||||||
That comment is wholly satirical.
Anyway, can somebody point me to the episode that adapted Land of Adults? I put this series on hold because I wanted to see how it would adapt that. |
||||||||
Djidji
Posts: 26 |
|
|||||||
The last one for this episode (13th iirc) and the 4th one for the Land of Adults which will get adapted next week. |
||||||||
MarshalBanana
Posts: 5323 |
|
|||||||
I had completely forgotten that this was in season 1, aside from this and the Colosseum episode, have there been any others from season 1 that have been redone. I saw the show around 6 years ago.
|
||||||||
CrowLia
Posts: 5505 Location: Mexico |
|
|||||||
You can drop the condescending tone and the assumptions about my ignorance regarding Kino or film genre right about yesterday or I could equally question whether you're capable of separating this incarnation of Kino from its source material or even understand the notion of framing. Because in this version of Kino there are certainly characters that are condemned as villainous. The slaver merchants are definitely one of those cases. We don't get to see a single redeeming quality from them. The show doesn't ask itself or the audience "do you think slavery is bad"? The characters are easily the most obviously evil in the show, they are, by all intents and purposes "bad people". The characters' actions are definitely framed as horrible and reprehensible, we're not led in any circumstance to sympathize with them. The thought experiment in the episode is about Photo's moral connundrum and her guilt for letting them die, but the show goes out of its way to make them look so cruel -the boy throwing a stone at Photo before she can drink the poison too- that the viewer might be inclined to think they deserve their miserable fates. The same can be said of the corrupt government in the tower clock country. This is not the case with the Master and her apprentice. The most we get out of their actions that may be interpreted as morally questionable is that she shoots them in the knees specifically because she thinks that's worse than killing them.
Uh, no. The series persecutes its villains alright. The guy who went to the Killing country wanting to kill someone and gets killed instead for his malice. The corrupt government in the tower country. The slavers in Photo's episode. The king in the Colosseum country and to a lesser extent, the citizens that enjoyed watching the competitors slaughter each other. All of them are painted as reprehensible people who get punished for their wrong deeds. Even in the 2003 version, Kino kills the merchants she had befriended after she found out they were trafficking people. The show has no qualms in portraying unequivocally evil people and serving them justice. Not the case with the Master at all. She falls under the same archetype as the cast of Lupin III: a lawless but cool rascal, selfish in their motives but a baddass that the audience nonetheless cheers for. We're supposed to laugh at how the corrupt government is bested by these two asshole badasses. This is further emphasized when, the next time we see them, it's in the brief flashback of the road bandits. These characters function by rule of cool, they are so "cool" that even if their actions are questionable, the viewer is still supposed to root for them. You have not provided any proof that the show is not framing the Master as a heroic figure in the sense that the audience is meant to cheer for her even if her actions are morally dubious. You claim I "don't have an argument" but most of your gigantic tirade is a lame attempt at dismissing my opinion on the baseless assumption that I'm an ignorant and blind Gabriella follower. I don't even agree with her basing a lot of her criticism on the "realism" of the scenarios, so you can drop that "theory" too. And I watched the 2003 version of Kino's Journey for the very first time in July this year, so I do know the series and I'm not "clouded by nostalgia". But I did love it and was very excited about the new series. I even liked the first episode of this series because it presented the kind of thought experiment that I enjoyed from the first series. The rest of the show has -for the most part- not been like that. The "thought experiment" in the Clock Tower episode is about the way History is constructed and interpreted, not about whether what the Master did was righteous. |
||||||||
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
||
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group