Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: DARLING in the FRANXX
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NeverConvex
 Subscriber Posts: 2339 |
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I'm not sure site ratings are a good indicator of quality. People seem to use them in very inconsistent ways, even just among the reviewers themselves. Some folks assign high ratings when they liked a show while others assign high ratings when they thought a show was an impressive work; some folks assign ratings relative to other shows while other folks assign ratings relative to the average performance of the current series, without attempting to compare it to other media. That's an awful lot of construct variation to contend with in trying to figure out what precisely an aggregate rating 'means'.
EDIT: On top of this, although I imagine this line of reasoning may not be taken well, there's also a lot of variation in folks' ability to & interest in discerning and reasoning about the quality of a work. Trying to reason about quality through popular opinion seems fundamentally wrongheaded to me. |
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JustinTaco
 Posts: 118 |
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I don't think it was foreshadowed at all, but besides "I had a feeling" I've seen a couple arguments several times. I've heard people cite APE's lack of compassion for humans as proof they were aliens all along. Except that's one of the most common cyberpunk/sci-fi dystopia staples. You pretty much cant even do a plot similar to this without disregard for human life somewhere. Yet obviously not every sci-fi plot involves aliens. Sometimes the people in power are just unethical bastards. Another argument I heard was how they appeared out of nowhere during that mess of a backstory episode. Except the show had already made a habit of haphazardly introducing and dropping plot threads by that point. The flashback didn't explain plenty of things so the idea of APE randomly coming out of nowhere was completely reasonable in the context of the show's clumsy worldbuilding. The last one I've heard was the Trigger/Gainax pedigree of the people on the staff (And usually these folks use wording that almost implies Trigger is the sole party at play here). They claim "of course this twist happened, it's Trigger/Gainax, it's just what they do!" The first thing that bothers me about this is when they imply that it's a good thing. Somehow recycling the same exact plot beats over and over is just meant to be their "quirk". If you don't take this weird simultaneously optimistic/cynical view, this argument is implying that studios should just be ecpected to repeat entire plots wholesale. |
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we love lain
Posts: 145 |
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You don't know how much this last argument kills me. I usually hope that the ones vocalizing this drivel are exclaiming it ironically but no; there are people who are dead serious when using this as a refutation. |
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Tsumikisan
 Posts: 39 |
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Let's not forget people claiming "Klaxohime called them human wannabes (in episode 18/24 no less) so the foreshadowing was there and it makes sense". The very least they could have done was have Klaxohime try and send a message to the Parasites/Zero Two warning of VIRM and the relationship between the Klaxosaurs - that would have been enough foreshadowing telling us something bigger was coming.
This show was a mess, but the ending was absolutely pitiful. Cheap animation, still frames and narration taking up almost the entirety of it, Hiro and Zero Two going into yet another monologue about how much they belong together (as if they weren't doing that for 23 episodes already), and a lackluster power up thanks to the power of friendship.. not to mention Naomi suddenly being treated like she was there with the main cast for the entire show. I would have given it a 5 for being somewhat consistent and being good at pretending like it was going somewhere for the first half, but the comedic finale sets it at a 3/10 for me. |
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zrnzle500
 Posts: 3767 |
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@NeverConvex I do agree that they are not a perfect indicator and should not be taken as the objective truth of opinion on the show, but I do think it can still be useful in getting some idea about of how the community sees a show. They are often influenced on the margins by the tastes of its members, for genres and for particular shows, and participation is by self selection. However, discussion is just as affected by self-selection and is also influenced by personal tastes and opinions, and beyond those two measures, I don’t know what else we have to substantiate that. At the very least, I would say ratings at least get us in the same ballpark. I think the best quality
I will say that I like rating systems that are partially or even fully qualitative, as with this site’s series pages. I think it gives such ratings more of a framework than strictly numeric ratings. When someone rates a show Good, well I’m liable to take their word that they thought it was a good show, and that they had a somewhat positive opinion about it. Though I think trying to find a shows quality wholly or even mostly separate from how entertaining one found it is to some extent misguided and seems to neglect how much of a factor whether one enjoyed something is to how good one thinks a show is. No matter how smartly something is written or otherwise put together, if it can’t get the viewer to be interested, then that is a failing, at least in the that viewers eyes, and I don’t believe it is my place to say they are wrong. Hopefully one can see how well put together it is outside that and not deem it a bad show merely because one was not interested, but I think that lack of enjoyment will prevent from one considering it of the highest quality, regardless of whether others take it to be a masterpiece. And say we take two more modestly put together shows that are equal in every regard except that one liked one and didn’t like the other. I think that difference is meaningful in determining which shows one found to be good or not, and saying that there is no difference in how good they were because they were of otherwise equal quality neglects an important factor and a quality of a work in and of itself. |
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Errinundra
Moderator
 Posts: 6535 Location: Melbourne, Oz |
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@ Tirol Choco.
The topic of the thread is DitF, not SAO. You're derailing things. Likewise, talk about the anime, not the fans. |
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NeverConvex
Subscriber Posts: 2339 |
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I don't follow. Do you mean just counting up the number of people who like a show and are present in the discussion? Why would we do that when we can actually look at the evidence adduced & arguments made about the show during discussion? That is the best barometer we've got of quality. It's not one that lends itself to immediate agreement, and it requires in-good-faith effort to get anything out of it, but it directly cuts at the issue, with no need for appeals to proxies and surrogates.
I don't see why this should be the case. To jump to specific examples, again, why should Breaking Bad or Dostoyevsky boring me to tears lead me to criticize them as poor works, when everything I know about them suggests they are both well-crafted and engaging, but just not for me? Or, maybe something more mundane would convey my point more clearly. I don't, for example, care at all about sports teams, and rarely feel anything in watching them, but I can determine perfectly well which teams are bad and which are good. Why should my sentiment towards a team have anything to do with whether I think the team does a good job? |
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njprogfan
 Collector Extraordinaire Posts: 1171 Location: A River Named Toms |
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This anime, for me, started out a Fourth of July fireworks spectacular, I just couldn't wait for the next episode, but ended like a sparkler, petering out with each second season episode. Disappointment would be an understatement.
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zrnzle500
Posts: 3767 |
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@NeverConvex I was talking about the forums not necessarily being representative samples of a site’s members opinion of a show, not about whether or not it was a good barometer for quality.
I wasn’t saying that not liking a well crafted show would lead you to think it’s bad, just not of the highest quality. I think that opinion of them not doing it for you is important and non-negligible when assessing whether one thinks a show is good or not. As to the sports comparison, you can tell whether a team is doing well without being interested in the sport because there is a win and loss record, and you can also see by how much they won. TV shows don’t necessarily have such clear indicators that can be understood even by those who don’t follow them. Ratings perhaps, but I don’t know that I would say Sazae-san is the eternal best anime of the season (it is consistently gets the highest ratings for any airing anime by a good margin and day time anime like MHA, One Piece, and Kitaro are the only anime watched by those outside Japan that even show up in the top ten. Even the most well crafted late night anime don’t by virtue of their time slot). The rankings on this site could serve that function, but you have found those flawed as well in determining quality, IIRC. Sales seem more indicative of what is popular than what is good necessarily, or even just their sales strategy of including something else that fans might want, like downloadable content for the game it is based off of (or even another game made by the same company) or a figure. Since this spun off the conversation about SAO which was considered derailing the thread, and has gotten away from the subject at hand to more general examples, I think I will leave it at that. You may have the last word if you like. |
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Sentinel_Wraith
Posts: 23 |
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Technically, APE mentioned "burning THEIR world", suggesting they weren't from Earth. When Tarsier died, there was no body inside, either. The fact that 001's telepathy only worked on the human members of the diplomatic mission and that Tarsier immediately tried to silence her was also a red flag. But yeah, I do agree the narrative went all over the place. If there was going to be a space battle it should have been on COSMOS space station. |
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JustinTaco
Posts: 118 |
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Have you seen people say that too? (or are you reacting to my summary here) |
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we love lain
Posts: 145 |
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Dude, of course; it's quite a shame actually |
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CrowLia
 Posts: 5506 Location: Mexico |
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Finally watched the episode, nothing much to add. The whole space battle was so pointless and emotionally flat. To be honest, I found myself feeling nothing through the whole thing beyond frustration at how horribly they treated Ikuno all the way through to the end and how non-characters everyone else was. I do feel quite cheated that for all the death flags and "ooooo these kids won't get to become adults" hints that were dropped along the way, that none of them actually died except the lesbian makes me feel quite cheated
One thing I did notice was the subtle yet very clear labor division by gender, because I guess Darling couldn't leave our lives forever without shoving outdated gender politics in our faces one last time. Anyone else noticed how all the girls are left behind fawning over Kokoro and taking care of her pregnancy while all the boys are out there plowing the fields? Or how literally all the women are inside the room when Kokoro gives birth whilst all the men wait outside? For a show that takes place in a relatively distant future, it sure is written as if it was set in the year 1852. It's certainly not the worst show ever made, but it sure turned out to be a massive waste of time, that meant nothing and achieved nothing |
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Hiroki not Takuya
 Posts: 2541 |
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^^ Well, that sounds like one vote for DitF being the "Biggest/Worst Waste of Time 2018" and I agree. Care to start a poll anyone, or was there a more worthy contender for that title?
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Evaunit02berserk
Posts: 44 |
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You are telling me Death March never crossed your head? |
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