Forum - View topicShelf Life - Me, Myself, and Yourself
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ScruffyKiwi
 Posts: 675 Location: New Zealand |
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It's funny to see the people who hated FTNW pop in and completely misunderstand the whole show. IMHO it was the masterpiece of 2013 both art and story wise and is 100% on my to buy list.
Comments about 'fanservice'. There is no conventional fanservice but there are some kisses and some minor hugging. There are no panty shots or beach episodes or hotsprings or any crap like that. What people who complain about the fanservice are saying is that there is a scene where two boys kiss and that's it. It was funny seeing the response from that episode on the internet. People were almost shouting OMG it's a yaoi show!!! The same people were quite happy to see girls getting close. As to the development of the romance, one of the things that a lot of people who have not finished the show misunderstand it that this is not modern day Japan projected into the future. This is a very different society with different views on sex and also on the age at which people have sex and why they have sex. You will not see a confession scene, or someone going on a date or going to a kayoke bar or going shopping together. That doesn't happen in this world. Yes I do admit that I am a rabid fan of the show, and it is a great pity that it did not sell well, but we are lucky to have such an amazing story told in such a stylish way. Even with the last episode which was pretty much mostly epilogue it managed to surprise me and gave a final punch which left you sitting there wondering if the wrong guys won. |
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sakurahitagi
Posts: 71 |
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Not everyone who doesn't love FTNW dislike it for fanservice. There was very little for the most part. I was fine with the boys kissing but I thought the romances were underdeveloped, like many of the characters. My problem with the show are its lack of character development, pacing issues, and lukewarm treatment of potentially very interesting concepts. I'm not saying it's bad. I was just underwhelmed. But I can understand why you would like it. |
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Knoepfchen
 Posts: 698 |
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From the New World was a great watch, although I admittedly enjoyed it a bit more from an analytical than emotional point of view. It did feel kind of cold and detached at times (or, rather, I felt that way while watching it), mostly because we didn't really get to know and care about the characters that die outside of the remaining cast mentioning repeatedly how important they were to them. If I don't get to experience this importance myself, I find it hard to sympathize.
The world building was very strong, indeed. The characters and pacing less so. Way too much running around in the woods/snow searching for stuff and people.The use of sexuality within the story and for characterization purposes was brilliantly applied. Why have characters angsting when you can show them spoiler[being unable to be alone and on their own for even a second instead, portraying the same feelings of insecurity, fear, and stress through not being able to take each others hand off one another.] That was good storytelling. I also felt spoiler[Satoru] had feelings for spoiler[Shun] right up to the end of the story, settling for spoiler[Saki] the same way she settled for him after the loss of spoiler[Shun and Maria]. Even though we only saw heterosexual couples among the adults in the village, it didn't feel to me like a statement was being made, at least regarding the main characters. I also really enjoyed the art style, even though the character designs weren't really for me. The use of fragmentary, reduced, abstract visualizations served the setting and atmosphere extremely well. Now, if the pacing had been a bit more consistent and my emotional attachment to the show a bit deeper, this could have easily become a favorite of mine. I'd still rate it very good for being ambitious and offering a very unique world building. |
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Raneth
Posts: 271 |
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I agree with the above few posters. I really enjoyed FTNW. It's a show that explores a world more than all of the characters in it--a world where everyone has deadly powers, and everyone is bisexual, and where human aggression has been almost completely transformed into a clinical cruelty. It's the first work I've seen where a dystopia is not treated as a black and white concept. The entire world and setting is as much a character as Saki is, and when viewed that way none of the events in the show are as jarring as people think. In addition, we get to see how this world changes Saki as she grows from childhood to adulthood. That narrative choice cuts out some of the depth of her life due to timeskips, but it doesn't detract from the impact of the important events that were what clearly shaped her life.
I don't know why people fixate on specific events within the show as a marker of its poor quality or poor treatment of the issues it presents. It's meant to be taken in as an entire experience, I think, and that enhances the enjoyment. The show is definitely among my favorite anime. |
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jl07045
 Posts: 1527 Location: Riga, Latvia |
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So, mostly with things that the show wasn't even trying to do. I'll give you pacing, though I personally was bothered more by tonal differences due to different visual style, mood and direction in general between early episodes. |
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Cerceaux
 Posts: 180 Location: Earth |
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I really enjoyed From the New World. Even though it's not a horror show, it had a very creepy atmosphere and that sense of something sinister lurking around the corner is a big part of what kept me watching.
I wasn't even bored by the info dumps, because the background of the world was really interesting to me. Also it's not mentioned in the review, but I found the soundtrack very nice as well. |
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MCAL
Posts: 182 |
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I still feel strange whenever anyone mentions From the New World has pacing problem, because for me every episode felt like it ended in five minutes. Needless to say, I found the pacing to be fantastic.
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Echo_City
Posts: 1236 |
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What do you mean by this?
The review mentions that the show takes place in a rigorously controlled and engineered society. Does the show give a reason for why everyone is a "switch-hitter"? If not I'll be disappointed. Number 6 was another future dystopian scifi show and while it wasn't good for many reasons one of the reasons was that they didn't explain, beyond the obvious explanation of pandering, why non-hetero orientation was allowed to exist in a society that took Eugenics to a degree that advocates like Margaret Sanger and Woodrow Wilson could only fantasize about. |
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yuna49
 Posts: 3804 |
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Yes, and early on, too. Given your rather skeptical attitude about the whole enterprise, you may not find the explanation convincing, but there is one that makes sense in the context of the SSY universe. Why not just watch a few episodes and see if you find it worthwhile? You already mentioned you have a copy of the Blu-ray. That's a lot faster than posting questions here and waiting for answers. If you don't want to open the disc package, then watch it on Crunchyroll if that's available in your region. I also didn't understand your earlier comment about Sentai using a "yuri scene" on the cover. My copy has the same front cover image as this one at Crunchy. The back cover has two small images with a fully-clothed romanticized lesbian and heterosexual encounter. Is that what bothered you? You're not mistaking the anime and manga covers, are you? The manga is absurdly ecchi (NSFW) and nothing like the anime. Saki, for instance, is a normally proportioned girl in the anime and looks not at all like the bulbous girl on this cover. |
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maximilianjenus
Posts: 2862 |
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thanks for answring my question, so basically the tv version is much less hardcore than the manga (which is the one I managed to read) to the point that you could ignore it's fanservice elements just like you would at your average show that sometimes shows people in underwear or has mild bath scenes.
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kotomikun
Posts: 1205 |
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I'd guess what they meant was that it isn't just a preachy diatribe about why a certain societal structure is bad and you should feel bad. Both the human and monster rat societies are shown to be noble in some ways, and extremely messed up in others, for believable reasons. They do good and bad things to each other, and to themselves. spoiler[One of the rats starts a revolution against the humans, and although it's very much justified, the horrific things he does to both races in the name of progress make it pretty questionable.] Its obvious inspiration, Brave New World, also does this (possibly unintentionally); it's never made clear whether the bioengineered humans or the "savages" are better off. |
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Echo_City
Posts: 1236 |
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Unfortunately Crunchyroll's offering of this title looked so atrocious that I couldn't watch it without being distracted by the visual artifacts like banding (They call it 1080 but it is a far cry from bluray). That's the primary reason that I hadn't seen this prior to ordering it; the pitfall of HD purism lol.
I'm referring to that yuri scene on the back cover. When it was announced and subsequently confirmed I encountered some online furor about Sentai misrepresenting the series by choosing that image as it promoted the series via a false pretense. These comments and review have brought me to the conclusion that said pretense was a lot "less false" than I had been led to believe. |
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yuna49
Posts: 3804 |
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I watch CR in 720p on my computer. Most anime is shot at that resolution to begin with, so 1080p releases are upscales. For the best quality, I use my PS3.
I have no problems with CR in 720p even connected to my 55" HDTV. I have more issues with stuttering and similar problems, but those are network issues not the resolution or my computer. I avoid CR between 4pm and 11pm weekdays in the US because of congestion. On the PS3, these problems seem less severe; perhaps there's a different set of servers involved. There's only one website whose members' opinions I trust (it's not one I can link to from here), and that's because I've been there so long I have a well-defined set of people I can rely on. So I didn't see any of that "furor" you mentioned. Most anime discussions contain way too much drama and seem to attract argumentative types who nitpick every little thing in needless rounds of one-upsmanship. I've come to ignore most online discussions about anime shows for that reason and just rely on my own experience. Sentai wants to sell discs, so naturally they'll choose provocative scenes even if they aren't necessarily representative of the entire story. The cover art targets someone standing in front of a Best Buy rack trying to choose something to watch. Most of those people don't watch anime as it is released via CR or fansubs or whatever, so they have little background to go on when deciding. They'll look at the box for perhaps a few seconds. If it doesn't grab their attention, they'll look at something else.
Whatever "fanservice" there is in SSY doesn't even reach those levels. No one appears in their underwear. I don't recall any bath scenes either, but if they are there, they certainly didn't stick in my memory. The sexualized bath scenes in the manga have no counterparts in the anime. |
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TsunaReborn!
 Posts: 4713 Location: Cheltenham UK |
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You're spot on here I think the same sex relationships were used to show how tolerate the world had become and that it isn't given a second thought like any still do in todays world. It's to show that the world fears had moved from the fear that same sex relationship would corrupt the world to the fear of an actual human power which could physically destroy human life. I don't think it was used for titillation as there were no panty or up skirt shots (for example).... Well that's how interpreted it. |
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HitokiriShadow
 Posts: 6251 |
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As far as I've heard, the relationships were used purely for control purposes and were basically institutionalized Class-S. And there's nothing progressive or tolerant about that, it's the idea that "it's just a phase" during adolescence and people will eventually move on to become part of a heterosexual relationship and family. |
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