Forum - View topicREVIEW: Steins;Gate BD+DVD 1
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shamisen the great
 Posts: 658 Location: Oregon, USA |
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I haven't finished Stein's Gate yet, so I can't really judge the series as whole yet; but so far it's good but not great. However if someone wants to think of it as a masterpiece who am I to judge. I feel the quality of a show is determined by how much enjoyment you get out of it, regardless of any faults it may have. Dtm42, I know you and I have disagreed on this point in the past, but I hope this won't turn in to an argument. To each their own, I say.
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Dan42
Chief Encyclopedist
 Posts: 3783 Location: Montreal |
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I think you perfectly summarized the first half of the show. It's not that it's weak per se, because that would imply you could skip directly to the second half to get to the "good stuff". But the second half would be nothing without all the careful setup of the first half. It's a case of delayed payoff, as opposed to weak payoff.
Yes 
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yoshiyukiblade
Posts: 305 |
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The word "masterpiece" is a strong word and if I was serious about it, I'd have to say that no anime that I've seen thus far deserves that kind of praise. S;G is great though, among my favorites. It invokes the same emotions I felt in the later parts of Clannad, an anime that I almost completely dropped after watching episode 1 and felt "meh" through all 22-23 episodes of the first half. Sometimes I will test myself to see if those feelings persist when I rewatch them. I think S;G will hold those feelings for a while. I'm dying to see how the English dub (for the 2nd half) will turn out to see if they can invoke those same feelings.
Indeed, opinions are weird that way. I find the ANN top rankings mostly agreeable though, with a few exceptions. |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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It's fine for people to say that it is their favourite show ever, I've got no issue with that. My favourite show is Dragonball Z, so if someone loves Steins;Gate then I have no grounds to chastise them for that. But just because something is your favourite does not automatically translate to quality. I don't like it when fans throw around the word "masterpiece" so casually, using it to describe things which are obviously not worthy of the word. The word "masterpiece" implies a certain level of actual quality; it is different from just saying "favourite". If my friend drew a stick figure and I called it a masterpiece I'd be wrong (unless my friend was Randall Munroe [I wish] and the stick figure was something he'd drawn in XKCD). As I said in my previous post, j4x was defending the use of the term with respect to Steins;Gate by engaging in a logically flawed argument. If he truly believes it to be a masterpiece then he could have made a case as to why he thinks it is. Simply saying it is a masterpiece because lots of people believe it to be so just does not wash. |
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shamisen the great
Posts: 658 Location: Oregon, USA |
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That's fair. I do tend to equate quality with how much I like a show, but I can see where you are coming from.
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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Most of my favourites are also titles I've rated very highly. That's because I enjoy quality writing and good character development and stuff like that. But then there's Dragonball Z, a flawed show that I just cannot get enough of. And on the flipside, Grave of the Fireflies is an amazing movie that I rated as masterpiece but I've only watched it once because it is too depressing. Quality and enjoyment are interlinked to a degree but do not perfectly overlap. |
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Etrien
 Posts: 525 Location: Tokyo, Japan |
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That...might be a different person. o_O
The thing is, I think there's a chance it might be intentional. Of course, there's a chance it's just me super-imposing, but this wouldn't be the first time I've seen a story do this. Umineko has a character that I am convinced the author intended to be mentally handicapped (severe aspergers, in that case), but was not explicitly diagnosed as such in-story (for justifiable reasons). And, since Mayushi being handicapped fits so well and explains so much, I can't actually rule out it being intentional. To verify, though, I'd need to read through the source material, the VN, and see if it further supports or otherwise refutes this suspicion. More on this in my next point:
This is similar to the understanding I came to. Once I realized that all of the things that made Okabe annoying were not bad writing, but intentional, it helped me see the whole cast in a different light. They're written as a genuine band of misfits. Not the standard anime romanticized misfits, who are all fantastically amazing people who have secretly found the best way of living. Genuine misfits, who are socially awkward, quirky and annoying, but still decent people if you can get past that. I've known people like Okabe, Daru, Moeka, and Mayushi. In the Mayushi case, I've known a girl like her that even had the whole "surprisingly attractive" trait that might otherwise seem unrealistic. The "catch"? She was mildly mentally retarded. So she didn't fit in well with many people, and tended to hang out with the other social outcasts. So, in this regard, I actually now find the cast of S;G a bit more realisically written than most anime characters. Of course, they ARE kind of annoying. Like real people. And maybe that makes a good argument for why we tend to write idealized, highly fictional characters, rather than realistic ones. But I do, personally, appreciate seeing a cast that was written to resemble real (Japanese) nerds, rather than fake, heroic ones. |
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Mesonoxian Eve
Posts: 1858 |
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Quality is subjective and it's quite common for many people to equate a masterpiece to their favorite. Just because you don't agree with their level or definition of quality isn't your place to judge. Especially since you're using the exact same arguments I made in PMMM to this series. Surely you didn't think I wasn't going to let this go without saying something, right? Pot, I'm Kettle. Please to meet you. A little piece of information that's an opinion: PMMM is not a masterpiece for the same reasons you believe this series isn't one. But don't tell anyone. They may get the idea the series has actual quality you don't believe exists. shamisen the great, don't ever let this user tell you an opinion you carry is incorrect. If this series is your favorite and you believe it's a masterpiece, tell him and stand confident of your belief. Letting his head swell causes problems for the rest of us. |
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yoshiyukiblade
Posts: 305 |
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Going a bit off topic here, but my arbitrary understanding of masterpieces is that they aren't necessarily inspiring or engaging, but just masterfully executed in their respective fields. In fact, I doubt that I'd gain much inspiration from any masterpiece these days. They are what I'd think of as "proper," "formal" and "timeless" works of art or literature. Like something that you can put into a textbook and teach. In other words, something that isn't really new and interesting, but can be made diverse and unique with creativity. Not exactly something you'd get from most anime lol. Exceptions, like dtm42 mentioned, are movies like Grave of the Fireflies.
I'm not looking for such types of work when I watch anime though. I looove emotion-provoking ones like S;G and Clannad as well as action and comedy that would be awkward to pull off in live action. |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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Funny how you too are using an argument from popularity. Just because lots of people believe that enjoyment equals objective quality does not make that belief correct. Objective quality is different from enjoyment, and to conflate the two is wrong. I even gave examples with Dragonball Z and Grave of the Fireflies of how the two are not the same.
What arguments? I know you're trying to be scary and all but Halloween was a month ago. Threatening to grab me and not let go is not scary at all. It's the sort of thing a desperate guy says to his girlfriend to spice up their sex life with a bit of light bondage. Unless your intent is to actually hit on me (and you did profess your love for me in the past, so it's not entirely out of the question), then you might want to re-work your wording. And here's another thought. If you want to diatribe against me then pick a better series. Attacking me for liking a show which just so happens to be one of the best ever made doesn't really carry much weight, you know? |
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ikillchicken
 Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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Yeah, this is one of the issues I had with Mayuri. (Is Mayushi the funimation translation?) Most of the cast of Steins;Gate is written very believably. They seem like real, plausible, socially awkward if not downright seriously disturbed individuals. That's something I really liked about the show. Mayuri totally shatters that (or at least this was my original impression). She seemed like a totally implausible character that didn't make any sense as part of their group. Your theory, whether intentional or not, definitely resolves that though. |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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I dunno. I fully accept that Mayuri fits the profile of being mentally retarded, and it does explain her actions and disposition perfectly. However, I get the feeling that it is merely co-incidental. As in, her character was intended to be cute and clueless and Moe and that how she turned out just so happened to fit the classification of mentally retarded. I don't think the writers deliberately intended for her to be mentally retarded, she just turned out that way.
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Shenl742
Posts: 1524 |
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Yeah...Mayuri was probably the major point of contention for me actually.
I don't know if the nature of her portrayal was actually intentional or not...but nonetheless something about it just crossed that line for me and it just ended up feeling kind of exploitive to me. |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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Yeah, from what I remember the show never addressed her personality and she never got any character development. So she did stand out from the other characters and it did seem weird to have this clearly not-there girl being the subject of Moe fanservice*. Mayuri was important in the second half, but more as a plot device than an actual character, so the way she was used didn't sit right with me. * She never strutted around on a beach in a bikini but there is more than one type of fanservice. |
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Etrien
Posts: 525 Location: Tokyo, Japan |
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Mayuri is her real name, Mayushi(/Mayushii) is her nickname and how she referred to herself, and also what typically first comes to mind for me. Shiina Mayuri -> Mayushi(i), Okabe Rintaro -> Okarin, etc.
99% of the time, that's what I'd assume too. Like I mentioned in my earlier post, exaggeratedly spacey, cutesy characters are definitely a staple of anime. And it's definitely possible that this is just another case of that. However, what sets this case apart (for me) and made me consider this alternate possibility is that, unlike most shows with these types of characters, Mayuri is a distinct anomaly. And apparently I'm far from alone in this feeling. S;G has this collection of surprisingly realistic and believable characters. And Mayuri. The level to which she didn't match the writing on the other characters was jarring to me. But, since I'd seen this sort of thing happen before (Umineko), it made me wonder if there wasn't more behind this case, too. It really all hinges on your faith in the writing: do you think that the writer is good enough that they probably wouldn't write a character like this without there being more to it? Usually I'd say no, except that I consider the rest of the cast written so much more competently that it gives me pause. If it is actually intended that Mayuri is mentally handicapped, there would no doubt be more conclusive evidence in the visual novel, which undoubtedly has far more character development and introspection. This is the kind of nuance often lost in transition, anyway. (The autistic character in Umineko wasn't really diagnosable as such in the anime - she just seemed like an annoying and unrealistic character who also didn't match how the other characters were written. Heck, that character was even specifically listed as a minus on the recent ANN manga review.  )
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