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Oh wow, I wasn't expecting myself to enjoy Perfect Insider after seeing the reviews, but damn, it was actually very interesting. I like how Sohei sometimes just suddenly changes subject in the middle of a conversation, it really gives you the feel that his mind works completely differently than a normal human's. Nishinosono is a decent combo with Sohei, its a good thing she is not smitten with Sohei in an intimate way, and she has moments where she can play around with him.

I'm on the same boat as those that don't understand some of the criticism Perfect Insider is getting. As Nick said, the show knows very well that most of what the professor says can sound extremely pretentious, and thus plays around with it. Heck, the professor himself always has this laid-back attitude going on, which makes his words sound a lot less irritating than they would if someone like, say, Hachiman from SNAFU, said them. His personality is actually quite fun, as he's not really stuck up his ass and his attention does wander away from the subject at hand a lot, which made it seem quite believable in my eyes.

Other than that, the dialogue is actually pretty well written, with the characters having an actual conversation that goes somewhere instead of just talking to themselves. Nothing much happened this episode, but knowing this is an adaptation of an actual mystery novel, I wasn't expecting a lot of plot in the first place: for a novel revolving around a single mystery, you do need your fair share of build-up.

I'm not surprised at all that the only writer here with proper criteria, i.e. Nick Creamer, was the only one to truly appreciate The Perfect Insider.

Hum so I watched the perfect insider, my first though is: How the hell did he get such a large office! With a door to his lab too apparently!

In all seriousness, its pretty decent for now. I agree that the key here is how self aware it is, it help it not come off as arrogant. The way the professor change his manner when it come to doll woman makes him more human and interesting and make it pretty clear he's not a mouth piece for the author. Its also very well, directed I guess, it makes people standing around talking seems visually compelling, which is not an easy things especially with so little movement (I guess that's the director job?).

But at the same time it's apparently a murder mystery, so the show could change a lot, hopefully we won't get something super sic fi, like evil corp is creating super genius children or something. It also feel like there gonna try to pull off something with the title, is it a direct translation of the japanese title?

spaceguineapig wrote:

I tried to watch The Perfect Insider but it just sets my teeth on edge the way a lot of shows about Deep Genius type characters do. They always include lines about how stupid humans are and the audience is meant to think "Oh yeah they are, except for me obviously, I get it because I'm watching this Deep Insightful show"
Great OP though.

Yeah I get what you mean. Some how someway despite how promising things seem Aniplex/A-1 shows always manage to find some way to turn me off like that really early on with immensely cynical and IMO largely disagreeable world views of the cast.

This seems like the kind of show I'd want to put on hold to see how smug and full of itself it ends up getting or if it plans on just being actually good and engaging on some level that an average everyday person not just steeped in pure cynicism can enjoy. The potential is there, just...I don't know this producer man, they really seem to love to make things that are as polarizing as possible and I'm one of those people that just loathes Monogatari and why this isn't as irksome as that one was right off the bat with all of it's busy jump cutting and flat out horrible people for characters I can totally see it going that direction with all the cynical talk about humans and the whole everyone in this show is a genius and knows how the world REALLY works except not really set up.

Last edited by Daerian on Thu Oct 08, 2015 11:55 pm; edited 2 times in total

justsomeaccount wrote:

That's a bad thing? Lots of series do that, especially the ones with not meant-to-be-likeable characters and emotionally-distant framing (this is the biggest key) like this one. Even many more emotionally-honest series with their villains at one point do that.

I'm going to say rather unpopular thing and say "yes, it is bad". Many series does do that, that's true - but in most of them, it's not made infuriating in a way Perfect Insider does.
I'm not saying that quality of dialogue is bad, hints about Sohei not being prophet and author's point of view are here indeed. Problem is with amount, quantity of his theses. In this episode alone, around 15+ minutes is spend on presentation of his misanthropy and wandering around everything to make himself seem more intellectual and important. And we can expect to see much more of it in the future.

justsomeaccount wrote:

The only thing is, this show isn't going to beat you in the face with the fact that he will be wrong and start already being heavily challenged.

You are making assumptions here. Very important thing - I don't need for show to beat me in the face with his theses as being wrong. I don't need for show to declare them wrong. I'm rather interested in philosophy myself and discussions of human nature.
What I'm against is one-point of view constantly shown and not challenged in any way, because it makes it sound as correct, even if it's not considered that by author. I want show to challenge these beliefs, shown other opinions and make inner discussion with itself. Very good example here is extremely different show from last season - Gatchaman Crowds Insight and it's first season (together). They didn't have that much dialogue, but it had characters with very different opinions on humanity. Show itself, while taking rather positive stance, wasn't afraid to discuss dark parts of humanity (especially herd mentality) and it's narration was constantly discussing problem from all sides, not giving us final answers and making viewers think about problems. In this show were many world views that I would find not aligning with my own - but even when they were presented, I didn't find presentation infuriating.
To sum up - yes to showing some misanthrope vision of humanity, against his view being only ones really shown and against his "more intellectual than thou" self-presentation. This is especially annoying in light of his "other people make us stupid" world-view, which is antithesis of academics and self-defeating for university professor. And it doesn't take any face beating to discuss that, small jab of any other character in the style of "but you used Smith theory in you latest article and praised him for solving that" would be more than enough as small disapprove.

justsomeaccount wrote:

And themes are very clear and explicitely announced by them, about human identity, racionalism and limita, relations with other people, etc. with many paralellisms to the rationality of computers (the OP and ED are also computer-related, especially the ED). There's a direction in their talks.

Themes are interesting indeed. We will see how will they be realised. At this moment I'm very sceptical about realisation, but we will see.

justsomeaccount wrote:

Now, other thing is if you found it boring, stretched, heavy-handed, pretentious (in that it tries to sound too important for its own sake) or meandering without any plot or character hook as a fiction series should do; and that's a perfectly understandable criticism, like the other reviewers did. But there's a reason many of us are interested on this.

Boring is not good word - dialogue was paced correctly and well-written. Pretentious is correct, but another important part is - it's making Saikawa opinions only one that matters by it's actual framing, even if there are subtle hints about not everyone accepting his point of view. I want discussion inside show, not necessarily by characters, but by narration. We will see how will it pan out.

On different note, this might be because I have problems with taking author calling his series "S&M" as someone really capable of seriously discussing these world-view problems.

Edit: Added Smith example.

I really liked Perfect Insider's first episode for the art direction more than anything else. I'm a sucker for muted palettes and light-based ambiance. Nishinosono's car was a little ridiculous. But her outfit was super cute~ The Bach was also pretty heavy handed. It was kind of surprising to hear that used in an anime unironically for once.

Sensei's character design reminds me of Shibazaki from Zankyou no Terror and I like it a lot.

Between the two mistery shows of the season, Sakurako's first episode was better than The Perfect Insider premiere. The direction in the latter one felt a bit boring, and the color palette didn't help that much. I'd have prefered if the camera shifted more during the part when Moe and Sohei where talking in his office, because that still shot wasn't entertaining at all.

I've anyway enjoyed the episode. Moe is really likeable and I did get that all the over-the-top, philosophical crap Sohei was saying was meant to be a joke. And Miss Genius looks really interesting as well. I hope we get lot of character development for her. I liked the character desings. However, the OP and ED didn't work for me. And to be honest, the animation used in the OP gave my vibes of the "experimental" animation used in Evangelion's two last episodes.

I hope we get real mysteries and crimes in both Sakurako and The Perfect Insider, though. It would be funny if the best mystery anime of the year ends up being Rokka.

LinkSword wrote:

I'm not surprised at all that the only writer here with proper criteria, i.e. Nick Creamer, was the only one to truly appreciate The Perfect Insider.

I'm rather curious about what, exactly, you mean by that.

meiam wrote:

It also feel like there gonna try to pull off something with the title, is it a direct translation of the japanese title?

The English phrase "The Perfect Insider" is part of the anime's full original title and is used as a subtitle on the cover of the original novel, but the latter's title proper is Subete ga F ni Naru (Everything Becomes F).

LinkSword wrote:

I'm not surprised at all that the only writer here with proper criteria, i.e. Nick Creamer, was the only one to truly appreciate The Perfect Insider.

What is that supposed to mean? Literally, what do you mean? I'm not ragging on Nick Creamer, but what criteria are you talking about?

Key wrote:

We specifically don't do hate-watching reviews. That just invites all sort of potential trouble.

Since we started the "rate this show" feature, I've noticed that there tends to be a fairly strong correlation between how high the Community Score is for a series and how likely it is to get voted in for weekly streams. On that basis, Anti-Magic Academy is in trouble, since its score is currently in the same ballpark as Sky Wizards Academy, which didn't get voted in last season.

Of course, there are occasional exceptions, such as Chaos Dragon last season, but I think there were some special circumstances in play there.

I don't remember there being hate-watches before, the only one I remember that intended to be one was the one Hope reviewed Lord Marksman and Vanadis but she ended up enjoying the show.

On that note, the same thing can happen again with the LN Adaptation shows airing this season. I really wish that stigma/curse was broken now and I'm hoping Rakudai overcomes that. I say that by personal favoritism and knowledge that the formula is changed. The original source does depict an actual teenage romance. I'd like to point out that the Director/Script Writer took liberties with the show and downed the exposition and even during segments of monologue, there was action and movement while it happened. Unlike Trinity Seven where they stood around and chatted. I often wondered if the enemy was having tea while they waited.

DmonHiro wrote:

LinkSword wrote:

I'm not surprised at all that the only writer here with proper criteria, i.e. Nick Creamer, was the only one to truly appreciate The Perfect Insider.

What is that supposed to mean? Literally, what do you mean? I'm not ragging on Nick Creamer, but what criteria are you talking about?

English is not my first language, so I probably used the wrong words. Basically I'm saying he's the only reviewer here with consistent/solid opinions and arguments on shows, and thus the only guy whose writings I give a hell about. Naturally this is an opinion formed over the course of many seasons.

Oh, OK, I understand. Using the word "credential" made it seam like you said that the other reviewers should not have reviewed it because they don't have the necessary understanding, so that's why people were asking you about it.

One thing I do think is bad about Perfect Insider is that the gorgeous art of the original isn't here. They go for this weird 'semi-gritty/realistic' look and it looks wonky. The young girl genius looks like a granny with those lines in her face. Instead of making the show look mature, it just looks like it's trying to be.

Onto the story itself, I thought it was actually pretty nice. Sure, it has a lot of highfalutin, philosophical musings, but at least Moe is there as the viewer's stand-in for all the nonsense the professor throws her way. It would be more insufferable if the professor acted like some superior human being, but he seems decently grounded for a genius type so far. I worry more for the mysterious girl considering she seems to have almost no sense of humanity at all. Which could be construed as 'edgy' by some, but I'm willing to give it a chance.

And what is up with all these meme images popping up in reviews these days? It's like you guys want to get into extra grumpy mode more than ever.

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