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Last edited by HellKorn on Wed Jul 07, 2010 3:30 pm; edited 1 time in total

JesuOtaku wrote:

I'm not sure this is so wrong. If the premise itself is an insurmountable obstacle for some viewers, I can understand completely. No amount of coaxing will EVER EVER EVER get me to watch Saw, much less something like The Human Centipede. Same with anime titles like Shigurui and Afro Samurai. I'm just not going to do it. I have a kneejerk reaction to violence for violence's sake, so if there's something more there, even if it's very little, as in Inglorious Basterds, or Elfen Lied (and I HATE Elfen Lied, but there's some substance there, I'll watch it,) but I have a strict cutoff point at the "being shocked just because you can is awesome" material.

Just would like to note that the Shigurui anime is not like the others at all; despite what you may have read about it (Carl's review? Well, he also praises the Berserk manga, which, while I love it, does actually glorify extreme violence, so there ya go), the series isn't violence for violence's sake. Unless one is the type for ghastly violence at all costs, they'd have to see through minutes upon minutes of slow pans and precise close-ups of characters doing everything but cutting or smashing other people -- and these spurts of violence might take up a minute of an average episode in the series. And the violence isn't shown in a gleeful way, either -- it actually hurts, and the whole tone of the show is so distanced and glacially-paced that I cannot imagine anyone watching the show because they're some violence-freak. (For more info on the show, I recommend this post, this forum post and all of the ones that follow, and reading the booklet that Funimation included in the DVD, though not the Blu-ray sadly. It's very informative, and, like the show, decontructs a lot of the romantic myths about that time period of Japan.)

(Also, while my friends liked Kick-ass a lot, I didn't care for it, so you didn't miss anything by not seeing it.)

Anyway, as for Gunslinger Girl, I've seen bits and pieces, but never sat down and truly watched it because it's bizarre for me to have such a nakedly manipulative premise ("tragedy porn," etc.) to be played straight (i.e. no winks to the audience, tone isn't sensational like, say, Now and Then, Here and There), etc.). I'll sit down to really watch it eventually because some generally reasonable people (you and DKL) apparently got something out of it, though my expectations aren't high based on opinions of others' I trust.

@JesuOtaku - I have no problem with somebody avoiding a show if they have learned something about its content that they believe would make it an unpleasant experience to watch. That's simply common sense. But when you step beyond saying, "this doesn't sound like it would be my cup of tea" to making hard and fast pronouncements about the intentions of the show's creators without having seen a single frame for yourself, then I say you are taking an uneducated stance. A person may or may not agree with your personal interpretation, JesuOtaku, but no one can claim that your interpretation comes from a place of ignorance because you have actually seen the show in question.

I really don't see how a person can contribute much of value in the way of intelligent discourse about a show if they haven't seen a single second of it. That seems like a pretty obvious point.

JesuOtaku wrote:

WHAT, pray tell, makes you so adult by choosing to watch something you know is going to shock you and mess you up?

My apologies, given my words seemed to cause confusion. This isn't about him viewing the series, but rather, conjecturing against other people's opinions when these opinions were formed from a series he did not even watch.

It's like discussing Camaros and having someone spew out "I hate Mustangs. I'll never drive one. But they're better than Camaros."

Consider me a bit pompous to end a conversation in this manner because, the way I see it, nothing we say will even convince him to understand our position is based on the series, not real life assassins.

And yes, I consider this a little immature, aka childish, to do onto others, hence the playground quip. A little overboard, but I felt it was necessary to express my opinion on the matter.

Quote:

No amount of coaxing will EVER EVER EVER get me to watch Saw...

Fair enough. But if you enter a discussion and spew rhetoric why the show is fake because there's no way it's done like this in real life, I'll treat you in the same manner and ask you to also join the playground.

Quote:

"Let's make a story where little girls are forced to become killers so we can push a few buttons. NOW how do we rationalize it?" That's exactly what this is.

JesuOtaku, what you're basically stating comes down to "Why even write a story like this?" Did you not read real life events having similar themes? There is no rationalization. It's a delivery of content, nothing more. We, as an audience, decide what's best for our viewing. I don't particularly enjoy reading stories based on real life events. Fictional or not, it's generally the goal of the material to invoke an emotional response, whether good or bad.
In all honesty, I don't see how anyone could feel good after a viewing of this series.

Quote:

...but ALL entertainment manipulates. This could have been a lot more schmaltzy.

The number of episodes was probably the limiting factor here. Though I do agree all entertainment manipulates... all the way down to people who don't even watch it.
Wink

PetrifiedJello wrote:

Quote:

"Let's make a story where little girls are forced to become killers so we can push a few buttons. NOW how do we rationalize it?" That's exactly what this is.

JesuOtaku, what you're basically stating comes down to "Why even write a story like this?" Did you not read real life events having similar themes? There is no rationalization. It's a delivery of content, nothing more. We, as an audience, decide what's best for our viewing. I don't particularly enjoy reading stories based on real life events. Fictional or not, it's generally the goal of the material to invoke an emotional response, whether good or bad.

I believe JO's point is that to create a film/show/novel/comic/whatever to make the audience cry/sad/depressed isn't an admirable goal -- nor is it a particularly hard one to achieve, as it's too easy to make audiences cry. Everyone is free to like whatever they want, but since people seem predisposed to criticize even entertainment, then critical evaluation is important -- i.e. is the director/writer making a valid point without forcing a sledgehammer to your face, or is he/she just trying to work the tear ducts with little to no understanding of the real issues reflected in the work? Are we talking about a mature drama or a hackneyed soap opera?

Take a popular movie that came out recently: Get Him to the Greek (I'm not recommending it, but it has a point that relates to this). Russell Brand's character makes a song and music video titled "African Child" that's rather exploitative and doesn't really have an understanding of the issues he tries to address with the lyrics. It's condemned by the public. So it might be argued to be comparably if not equally crass to create a fictional story about child soldiers that doesn't understand or ignores the geopolitical and societal reasons behind such tragedies in real life. I'm not saying Gunslinger Girl does -- I haven't seen enough of it to make a real judgment -- but if falls under this,and doesn't have much to offer otherwise, then yeah, I can understand and sympathize with the criticism.

Not to get massively off-topic, but on Shigurui: I think I would have liked that series better if it didn't feel so... incomplete. Not to give a spoiler here, but you never return to the beginning. You don't know how the "hero" lost his arm, you don't know how the duel ended, there's not conclusion, no cartharsis, and as a result, it does feel like it just wallows; there's no finale to give any meaning to it, even a meaning of "violence is meaningless." I have a feeling the manga goes on much further (it is ongoing, no?) and they just lacked the budget to go any distance beyond the point they did. But to me, it's that unfinished feel that made Shigurui a disappointment and a non-recommendation from me as much as the level of violence and sex.

And yeah, no great review is going to get me to watch High School of the Dead; I know from the very premise (ecchi zombie gore) that I will not like it, so I sympathize.

vashfanatic wrote:

Not to get massively off-topic, but on Shigurui: I think I would have liked that series better if it didn't feel so... incomplete. Not to give a spoiler here, but you never return to the beginning. You don't know how the "hero" lost his arm, you don't know how the duel ended, there's not conclusion, no cartharsis, and as a result, it does feel like it just wallows; there's no finale to give any meaning to it, even a meaning of "violence is meaningless."

I'd say that, despite not fully clarifying the beginning (although spoiler[the vision that Mie sees seems rather damning of Fujiki's chances]), the ending is rather cathartic and concise with its message: spoiler[the violent, patriarchal system that attempted to destroy an outsider has collapsed in on itself by not just its self-destructive nature (this is where you might fit the meaning of the title in nicely), but by those they betrayed and abandoned: a woman and a cripple. The whole series, despite its fascination with the ability for humans to persevere through irreversible damage, is rather damning of the "macho" and rigid traditions that define this brutal system and worldview.]

Anyway, I suppose that Gunslinger Girl is less potentially frustrating as the series is more episodic/arc-based with the story?

HellKorn wrote:

Anyway, I suppose that Gunslinger Girl is less potentially frustrating as the series is more episodic/arc-based with the story?

Maybe a little less so, but I've still grown increasingly fond of things that actually feel like they have a complete ending, rather than tapering off in an open ending (unless that the whole point was a deconstruction of conventional narrative, i.e. Baccano!, and even that had an "ending" of sorts). There are so many series that do this, often because the manga isn't completed. Increasingly I've come to feel that in that case, I'd rather just read the manga. And I probably will someday with Gunslinger Girl.

Wow, I got defended. That was unexpected, but also quite welcome.

Ignoring Blood- and PetrifiedJello's immature comments (although their outraged reactions were pretty funny), I'll instead tackle these ones:

Blood- wrote:

I really don't see how a person can contribute much of value in the way of intelligent discourse about a show if they haven't seen a single second of it. That seems like a pretty obvious point.

PetrifiedJello wrote:

This isn't about him viewing the series, but rather, conjecturing against other people's opinions when these opinions were formed from a series he did not even watch.

I wasn't discussing the show exactly, but rather the show's premise. One needs to have watched the show to talk about the show (dur), but discussing the premise is open to anyone who can read a blurb. You two are free to criticise Gundam's premise that teenage boys can (more often than not) instantly learn the controls to complicated Mobile Suits, and you don't need to have watched a single minute to make those arguments.

I don't remember "conjecturing against other people's opinions". What I said was that the show was deliberately and cynically affecting people's emotions through such a cheap plot device as having children (for no good reason) in roles almost always filled by adults. The franchise may have "played it straight" as one person put it, but there's no denying that the intention from the start was to make it easier for viewers to feel for the girls simply because of their age and gender. Or do you deny it PetrifiedJello?

dtm42 wrote:

Well, I haven't bought Gunslinger Girl, or even watched a single episode (legally or otherwise), because I cannot - I will not - accept the premise of the show.

So you are like those idiots who stand outside cinemas protesting against movies they haven't seen? Your opinion is invalid.

Also, I'm surprised at JesuOtaku's silly posting. Our issue with dtm42's position is not that GG is not his thing, but that he posits a specific position on why it's such a bad show, with no idea of what the show is actually like.

Regarding manipulation: as discussed in the "Why hate on moe" thread, all art and entertainment is manipulative. Comedies do stuff to make you laugh, romances do stuff to make you all rabu-rabu, and GG does stuff to make you go "OMG this is Wrong Sad

". Using little girls in particular enhances the wrongness of it. If they used adult men instead, the story would be very different, much more externally focused. As it is, even in its current form, the north/south political machinations of the series seem to me almost like a distraction from the real theme of the show, which is the suffering of the innocent in the means vs ends dilemma (although the collateral damage casually inflicted by both sides in that struggle is a reflection of the theme).

Anyway, regarding the use of girls in particular, it would be easy to generate plausible reasons, i.e. children's bones are more maleable, female brains differ from male brains (in proportions of white and grey matter), and girls have less testosterone, making them more controllable. It might also be that parents would be less willing to give up male children?

@ dtm42 - making judgments on a show's premise based on a "blurb" is ridiculous. I could dismiss RahXephon as a mere NGE clone based on a "blurb" of its premise and you would be the first to tell me how wrong I was.

I grant you the premise of GSG is pure bullshit. What I found fascinating was how skillfully the show's creators (imo) took that bullshit premise and crafted something that was interesting, poignant, thought-provoking and exciting.

eyeresist wrote:

Regarding manipulation: as discussed in the "Why hate on moe" thread, all art and entertainment is manipulative.

Is Citizen Kane a soap opera? People that dislike the Gunslinger Girl show do so because of the way they're manipulated, not the fact that they are, period. Melodrama is perfectly valid (see Douglas Sirk's comments on the relationship between trash and art), but if it's not done in an intelligent/creative/whatever way, then, well, it's not good. The manipulation is seen as too excessive, hence the negative opinions.

Of course, like JO has stated, the series could be generally restrained in tone throughout -- that's entirely possible. But that's not true of the premise.

HellKorn,

Whether or not the emotional manipulation is considered excessive is a subjective question based on individual tastes. What some people find excessive, others may find acceptable or even desirable.

IMO, it is clear that the makers of GSG were hammering at the audience's emotional buttons. However, where lesser anime do this using techniques that come across as immature, GSG takes place in the adult world with adult world rules and consequences. I think this is one of the main reasons it hits so hard; with the exception of some of the technology used (and even that is not so far-fetched), many of us can imagine something like this actually happening in the real world.

It's a sad show with little to offset the grim realities for everyone involved. I tend to prefer more escapism and (at least ultimately) optimism in my anime, so I haven't (and probably wont) re-watched the series, but I still think it was a well-told story. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to anyone who likes stories of this type.

vashfanatic wrote:

Yeah, but parts of it actually redid sections of the first series. For example, spoiler[the girl who died at the end is suddenly alive... somehow], and we wind up repeating some of the same incidents as a result. My understanding was that the second season was partly to satisfy fans who felt that the first didn't do it "properly."

Except that spoiler[she didn't die.] When I originally saw it, I also thought that spoiler[she had died]. But it goes pretty much the same way in the manga and spoiler[she lives. It's just that she fell asleep.] The problem was that it wasn't entirely clear the way that they did it, and since that was the end of the season, you didn't immediately see what followed after. What they did followed the manga. It's just that with that being the dividing point between the seasons and a different studio doing the second season, it comes off as being very different.

So, I can totally see why you would come to the conclusion that it's a reboot, but it is following the manga. They may very well have done additional flashbacks (I'd have to compare the manga and the anime to be sure), but it wasn't intended to restart anything - more like remind you what the situation was.

Still, I do think that the second season falls short of the first - in execution at least (I don't think that I'd say that when comparing those two sections of the manga). It's just that the second season looks so much worse and is not handled anywhere near as well. It's decent, but I think that they really dropped the ball on it.

i agree with a lot and disagree with a lot of this review. but the main reason i got the bluray over the dvd was because when I was looking online for the series, amazon had the bluray on 33% discount (for pre-order before it came out) and it was a good 15 dollars or so cheaper than the dvd at the time lol.

HellKorn wrote:

I'll sit down to really watch it eventually because some generally reasonable people (you and DKL) apparently got something out of it, though my expectations aren't high based on opinions of others' I trust.

To be honest, at this point, I don't really know what to think.

On one hand, the premise kinda sets itself out there as something that can fundamentally buy the sympathy of the audience...

On the other hand, I don't like to think that the experience is "cheap"; there's something about the show's sensibility (when it was under Morio Asaka, at least) that clearly separates it from other shows that have similar setups.

Also, going back to the setup, think about it this way: how different is this from, say, Evangelion, where all the pilots HAVE to be 14-year-old kids for whatever reason (from what I can remember); it's no more hokey than Gunslinger Girl’s premise, to be honest. BUT, beyond the hokeyness is an interesting implication: how far do we go when shouldering the burdens of adults onto our children? While it might not completely apply to the real world through things like fighting Angels using giant robots or being trained as cyborg assassins, the insight taken away from these hokey setups could fit well with everyday things like forcing your kids onto a career path they don't want or whatever... that said, another interesting take on this idea can be seen in Alien Nine, where dealing with aliens at school is likened to the scariness of growing up and its overwhelming responsibility.

That’s not to say that every show demonstrates the same sophistication as the shows I’ve talked about; it’s very variable, especially given the prevalence of the otaku sensibility of storytelling, where tragedy is enhanced via the practice of imbuing one’s characters with commonly endearing traits and then putting said character through the ringer; interestingly, Gunslinger Girl sort of looks like these shows, but I feel like it doesn’t convey itself in nearly the same manner, by far.

(if I was to draw a similarity: Martin Scorsese’s New York, New York LOOKS like a big-budget Hollywood musical… but it doesn’t necessarily convey itself in the manner that is expected of its appearance… that’s not saying that Asaka has reached those heights as a filmmaker, but people get the idea… uh, actually, I mostly want to plug the example in for the sake of getting people to maybe check the movie out; it’s awesome; by all means, I may be grasping here, but I am amused by this grasp, so I shall do it)

I mean, Triela LOOKS the part with her cute twin-tails, but she doesn’t actually convey herself like a tsundere archetype character (in fact, all the girls seem to have very sensible personalities, outside of the whole killing other human beings thing)…

That being said, I'm pretty much a big fan of Morio Asaka at the base, going back all the way to Cardcaptor Sakura, which, upon further recollection, was actually a lot more sophisticated than its manga counter-part, I felt (Asaka had the foresight to link capturing cards with the responsibilities of growing up; I can’t remember this being emphasized too well in the original manga and it’s been something I’ve thought about a lot… people give me crap about my analysis about this stuff, but I’m all like whatever since I don’t feel like I have anything to prove).

For the most part, I've always enjoyed Asaka’s work and his distinct "sensitivity" (though, arguably, he may be TOO sensitive).

What was most interesting to me about Gunslinger Girl is that I actually went in knowing that he was behind the show’s production. And when I got done with the first two episodes, I was completely startled: Asaka somehow transformed himself and demonstrated the most restraint I’ve ever seen of him (and we wouldn’t see this side of him again up until his recent turn in Aoi Bungaku, which was even more interesting given the apparent lack of Asaka’s trademark sensitivity; in essence, he kinda just took the kiddy gloves off for that production; there was almost nothing pretty about how No Longer Human ended). He ditched his trademark cute caricatures in favor of more completely represented facial expressions and his drama staging became a lot more subtle (this show had really good use of pauses: you can just feel the seriousness of the situation when Jose lays that gun down on Henrietta’s bed, the very striking imagery being framed by a two-way mirror: Pretty Pictures). And outside of the excellent use of the show’s real-world location, the small details peppered around by the production were quite lovely: I was always into this one gesture that Jose did where he loosened his tie every time he felt uncomfortable with a given situation; it made a pretty big impact on me given how full of character it was: it wasn’t JUST that he did it… it was HOW he did it; great acting on the part of the show’s animators.

So, yes… this is kinda where I’m at: despite what I’ve talked about, I must concede that it is very possible that I’m too in love with the classiness of the show’s filmmaking to accept what might be obvious flaws in the setup…

But when you have shots with composition like this (most likely cribbed from a movie I’ve not seen):

More pictures.

It’s hard for me to resist liking it.

========

That being said, I’m surprised that you still remember me dude. Yeah… been kinda… not hanging around the otaku scene a whole lot lately given how fed up I am with a lot of aspects of otaku culture in general.

Let’s leave it at that.

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