Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Wandering Witch - The Journey of Elaina
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lossthief
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 1395 |
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Well since I've got to do your book report for you let's do this: 1) Fundamentally Broken: Her motivation is that her parents raped and/or beat her as a (younger) child, and this trauma apparently made her so incredibly insane and evil that she not only murders them and an apparent bystander with premeditation, but then either consumes their blood or rubs her face in their still-warm remains. This is, fundamentally, dumb as all hell. That's not how trauma works in anything but amateur creepypasta stories, and the way it's presented takes an incredibly serious and weighty subject matter and exploits it for a cheap, hackneyed attempt at a dark twist. 2) Bad Writing: The way we learn all of this, outside of the visual elements establishing Selena's bloody mouth and the corpses at her feet, is to have her directly explain her backstory to Elaina practically unprompted. This not only makes Selena feel even less believable as a character than her psycho-killer shtick, but it means we get the entire authentic backstory of the show's inciting incident in a matter of a few sentences, all while the (presumed) shock of this whole reveal is supposed to be playing over the audience. That's incredibly clumsy exposition indicative of the creator(s) not knowing how to build a mystery or execute a meaningful twist. 3) The child killing: This is largely a problem created by the first two - because Selena is such an unbelievable character with a totally unrelateable motivation, it feels equally exploitative and hacky when Estelle immediately starts splattering her former friend's blood all over the walls, all while said toddler is laughing and monologuing about how evil she is. It's an attempt at brutality and tragedy that is, again, fundamentally handicapped by the very concept it is built upon, and so unless you've never seen a dark twist in anything ever, you're probably going to laugh or roll your eyes as it proceeds. Especially with the incredibly cliche Evil Anime Faces our tot-sized ripper pulls during the whole event. Now you may wonder why I didn't dump all those words into the review proper, and that's pretty simple: These reviews need to actually be readable, and thus dropping an essay in the middle of it about basic storytelling requirements isn't usually a great idea. I also usually write these reviews with the assumption that the reader has already watched the episode, and thus doesn't need a moment-to-moment breakdown of why something is good/bad/mediocre. |
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Insomniabulist
Posts: 16 |
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That's much more fair and works better as a review, though I still feel as though its overly harsh as there are merits to the episode which brings it above a 1.
See, I didn't completely buy that, specifically that it was her trauma that made her evil. We already saw that Estelle was wrong when she assumed that one specific incident had made Selena the way she was; the entire episode happens because Estelle is trying to prove to herself that Selena was a good person who was led down a dark path by horrible circumstances. To me, the climax of the episode was more about the betrayal of that belief than about the child abuse and eating jam. And I thought that Estelle sacrificing her memories like she did was genuinely tragic. I do agree with you that Selena explaining her motivations like that is really clumsy writing, and that the gore was overdone (it's already a horrific situation without all that). This is my personal interpretation, but judging by how Elaina started questioning the original backstory the second she started to think about it, I think that the signs were always there and that Estelle was in denial. Like I said earlier, I do think that there were other merits to the episode, like how the animation was still very strong (I think that Rostolf is my second-favorite setpiece in the series, next to the ruined city from Episode 4), as well as Elaina's and Estelle's character arcs throughout. I think that even with the criticisms of it being shock horror taken into consideration, a 1 is still too harsh. And I found your post perfectly readable. |
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ATastySub
Past ANN Contributor
 Posts: 647 |
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Of course the explanation was perfectly readable as a forum post, but it has zero place in a review. All that information that was just spelled out for you is already in the review. He just took the time to explain extremely basic storytelling to you, which I'm glad you appreciate but is a complete waste of space that bogs down a review for an audience that is assumed to at least have that basic grasp of how the thing they're reading about works.
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Insomniabulist
Posts: 16 |
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I disagree that it has zero place in a review. Subjectivity is much stronger when its based around objective criticisms, and if you don't at least display those objective criticisms then you're just left with pure subjectivity, which a reader can just counter with "well I thought it was good." I believe that if you're going to publish your review on a widely-read site then you should hold yourself to a higher standard than that. And what is a book report but a review? |
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Yuvelir
 Posts: 1568 |
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You guys are waaaay too obsessed about the friggin score, that thing that reviewers usually hate handing because it's ultimately meaningless.
A book report is a schoolwork assignment given with the purpose of the student proving before the teacher that they have read the book and they have developed the skills to understand it and its components. Which is not ehat a review is about. |
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NeverConvex
 Subscriber Posts: 2310 |
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I don't agree that subjectively assigned scores are meaningless (psychometry's a field for a reason!), but do agree that it's silly to argue over them when ANN doesn't really make any attempt to hold them to a uniform meaning across reviewers or even within reviewers. Seems like a bizarre distraction.
I prefer lossthief's post above to lossthief's review, but don't think it's an unreasonable choice to write a review that emphasizes style (of the review itself) over content (of carefully outlined criticisms); just means I'm not the target audience in mind for a review written in this style. The review did get me to want to actually watch this episode, though, since I'm one of the folks that gave this show a handful of episodes before checking out and giving up on it. Trainwrecks are exactly the highest hope I had left for Elaina when givin' up on it. |
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Blood-
 Bargain Hunter Posts: 23788 |
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Well, I can certainly understand where lossthief is coming from, but I definitely had a different emotional response to the material. I was able to set aside the over the top imagery and premise to empathize with Estelle. Poor woman. She carries around the guilt of killing her best friend and then sees her attempt at somewhat rectifying it turn into an even greater horror. Again, I understand how the execution of all this might provoke derisive laughter, but I wasn't laughing, that's for sure. I thought it was an interesting choice not to see Estelle after they returned from the past. Still feel bad for her.
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Yuvelir
Posts: 1568 |
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I wanted to feel bad for her, but the predictability, the overt schlockiness of the whole ordeal and Elaina's melodramatic reactions (and deadly neglect? Is Estelle dead or alive?) didn't leave me any room to connect. More power to you I guess. |
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Gem-Bug
 Posts: 1213 |
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I can't believe the reviewer has had to come into this thread to explain their review(and the well-deserved score of an arbitrary number) more than a couple times. And then when they do, it's -still- not good enough for some folks here, because lossthief apparently is not following the "gold standard laws of media critique" blessed upon us by the Harvard school of online journalism. Or whatever the argument is. I thought the review was accurate; this episode was hot trash pretending it was something deeper.
Is it not time to just accept that the reviewer's review/opinion is not going to match yours? |
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Redbeard 101
Oscar the Grouch
Forums Superstar  Posts: 16935 |
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We're done with the debate on the reviewer personally folks. We're done with the trollish comments and soapboxing as well to justify said posts. Stick to debating and discussing the SHOW and not the reviewer personally.
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JaffaOrange
 Posts: 251 |
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I thought the twist would be that Selena's family (and by extension, her) were vampires/monsters in disguise and the original murders was by a vampire hunter or Estelle in a circular time loop sort of way. The weird comments from the parents about the nape of her neck backed this up. I mean, that twist is still hackneyed but at least it's not offensively hackneyed like what the show ended up doing. [/list]
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 23788 |
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More power to me? If you're going to bother responding to a post of mine then feel free to drop the condescension. |
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Yuvelir
Posts: 1568 |
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I guess that wasn't the right expression. I wantes to say something mor elike, good for you, I wish I could since this is a show that I wanted to enjoy from day one but it's making itself hard to. |
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 23788 |
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I'll take your word that you weren't deliberately trying to be patronizing, but that's how it struck me. No biggie, but I will point out that had you just posted your first paragraph and dropped the more power thing, there would have been zero chance of offending me while at the same time clearly conveying your message. In any case, we're all anime fans here, so happy Friday to all! Can't wait for Jujutsu Kaisen! |
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ThrowMeOut
Posts: 260 |
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I might have missed it, because I was laughing too hard at how ridiculous it all was, but did they explain how an eight year old with no special powers managed to single handedly take down three grown adults, one of which was a super powerful magic user with experience fighting violent serial killers?
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