Forum - View topicREVIEW: Seven Days War
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#HayamiLover
 Posts: 796 Location: Eastern Europe |
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"Ok boomer"? Ummm, are you aware that this is a remake of the novel from 1986 year? The original was a love message to teens of generation X and its connection with our time is nothing more than an attempt to make it more “alive” for a modern audience. It was no attempt to "yo, we are relevant, kidz", as you try to think.
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Barbobot
 Posts: 460 |
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It doesn't have to intentionally been made that way, which I don't think Kim was stating. Just that today it reads very much like the "ok, boomer" tone.
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#HayamiLover
Posts: 796 Location: Eastern Europe |
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Well, the film does not try to be a parable about the problem of fathers and children for zoomers. This is just a film about the problem of "fathers and children" in general, whose events have been postponed in our time for easier perception. Of course, this is not "Romeo + Juliet", which was intentionally kitsch, but still. |
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Animegunclub
 Posts: 127 Location: AyeTeeEl, Jawhjah |
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I mean, boomers definitely existed in 1986 tho. |
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nDroae
 Posts: 382 |
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First paragraph of the review: "The story is loosely based on Osamu Sōda's 1985 social satire novel," so yes, Kim was aware. "OK boomer" is merely the current mainstream expression of the youth's POV in the ageless phenomenon of the generational gap. The article's intended point in using the term appears to be simply to let young ANN readers know that they should find more relatable sentiment than some might expect in a story from over 30 years ago. On the other hand, "Yo, we are relevant, kidz" would fall under https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TotallyRadical. You believe Kim assumes that this film's writing represents that kind of questionable attempt by older writers to appeal to a specific younger audience ("for zoomers"), but I don't see that at all in the review. Some might have the opinion that that the use of "OK boomer" in the article itself falls under "totally radical," but I think that's debatable, and at any rate the sentiment of being fed up with elders is clearly the same. Socrates, 5th century BCE:
You can bet that the ancient Greek youth of his time would have responded to this with some equivalent of "OK boomer." From 1985 to 2019 is hardly a significant change of period by comparison. https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20171003-proof-that-people-have-always-complained-about-young-adults |
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#HayamiLover
Posts: 796 Location: Eastern Europe |
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@nDroae If we talk about TVTropes, then I more referred to "We are still relevant, damn it!", which used in relation to works with an attempt to seem too actual and modern. That is why I drew attention to the fact that work is not trying to be "Bible of 10s teens". If Kim just wants to say that this is too simple film about the problems of fathers and children, okay, no problem. But in this context, it looks like criticizing the film because of false expectations.
I understand the desire to see social commentary on more actual themes for modern youth. Even from another "boomer" like in Hoshiai no Sora, but is the show obliged to do this if its original purpose is much more simpler? @Animegunclub Then we need to understand which generation is boomers. Millennials? In the 80s, they only went to kindergarten and were not the original target audience of this work. Not to mention the fact that, as far as I know, Kim is almost the same age as me and we both belong to the them. |
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BlueAlf
 Posts: 1498 |
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Reading the review, I get the impression that this was the sort of project that producers randomly commission to someone because they don't care much for the source material. I imagined because of time and capital constraints, they didn't get to revise the script enough.
But then I noticed that Ichiro Okouchi (of Code Geass and Guilty Crown fame) was the one who wrote the script. The lackluster character portrayal and the ridiculous story development suddenly made sense. |
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nDroae
Posts: 382 |
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"Boomer" can now colloquially refer to any elder, but if we're talking literal baby boomers, the USA's post-WWII baby boom was different from Japan's. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_boom#Japan According to this, Japan had a brief baby boom from 1947-1949, and a smaller second one from 1971-1974. The USA baby boom lasted much longer, from WWII to around the mid 60's, so baby boomers form a huge section of our population. I'd forgotten that we millennials are sometimes called "Echo Boomers."
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Frog-kun
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 118 |
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If I didn't use the words "ok boomer" in the first sentence and instead said "intergenerational conflict", would that have made things clearer? I wasn't using "ok boomer" to refer to a specific generation so much as a shorthand for the sentiments that youths express towards adults in power. From what I understand, that's exactly how the term is used in real life discourse.
I decided to use the words "ok boomer" rather than "intergenerational conflict" because there's a cheekiness to "ok boomer" that I think the film captures. It's meant to be a light-hearted affair, which I think you'll understand if you watch it. It's not that the film was created because of an English-language meme - that would be a ridiculous thing to suggest - but the tone expressed is familiar. I'm now somewhat regretting my choice of words because it seems to have opened a can of worms. |
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whiskeyii
 Posts: 2245 |
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Given that ANN is an English-based website with a mostly North American audience, I don't think the use of "ok boomer" was wrong, exactly, so much as maybe that meme is one of the few so mired in American cultural context that it's hard to translate that tongue-in-cheek-but-also-righteous-indignation-at-older-generations vibe to non-US and maybe non-Canadian viewers.
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Brent Allison
 Posts: 2444 Location: Athens-Clarke County, GA, USA |
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Ah, to be a grad student again and try to find a mistake in everything I read...
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#HayamiLover
Posts: 796 Location: Eastern Europe |
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@Frog-kun I understand what you wanted to say in your review. Just, in my understanding, this meme shifted its emphasis from the original "this generational conflict movie is too toothless" to "this film is not relevant". In the end, it really looked more like over-emphasizing one of its problems, rather than criticizing the weak social commentary, as it seemed to me, you originally conceived.
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ScruffyKiwi
 Posts: 673 Location: New Zealand |
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There is nothing particularly US about “ok boomer”. In New Zealand we had a spurge of intergenerational whinging when a younger politician used it to shut down an interjection From an older politician during her speech. |
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