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NEWS: Crunchyroll Originals Animated Shows High Guardian Spice, FreakAngels Reveal New Trailers

JennLegacy wrote:

RE: Overlap of anime and modern day cartoon fandoms I think taking a step into any random anime convention artist alley would be enough to squash the idea that there is no overlap. I've seen countless artists display and sell merch of stuff like Persona, Fire Emblem, Demon Slayer, etc. side by side with merch for shows like Steven Universe, Gravity Falls, and heck, even Rick and Morty. And specifically for HGS, magical girl fans are extremely receptive of shows that fit into the genre regardless of what country it's coming from. Seriously, alongside Precure and Sailor Moon, the magical girl shows I usually see the most discussions for amongst diehard fans of the genre are Winx Club, Miraculous Ladybug, and She-Ra which come from Italy, France, and the US respectively. Saying there's no audience for this show might as well be saying CR shouldn't have bothered putting in all that effort to license Precure and Pripara too.

I guess I'm not one of those people. I think shows like Steven Universe, She-Ra or High Guardian Spice are incomparable to Japanese magical girl series. For one thing Japanese magical girl shows actually have attractive characters. They also generally have better animation. They also structurally focus on different themes and styles. I love magical girl anime but I'm not a fan of any of those shows. Older stuff like Totally Spies, W.I.T.C.H. and Winx Club were fine, but then again they were also made like almost 20 years ago. Back then you could actually do things like make attractive female designs with fanservice and have other content that wouldn't fly today. I don't think it's really possible for America to do a magical girl series with their current restrictions and focus.

Thanks for admitting you evaluate what's a 'real' magical girl show on whether you, personally, can get horny over the young characters. Unfortunately, it still doesn't make you the target audience of those shows. Stuff like Ojamajo Doremi and Precure and many others aren't actually designed to turn you on either.

My point is only you can't say 'these shows don't have x and therefore x is better' if you haven't bothered to watch those shows. it's a pretty simple one.

Magical girl anime absolutely has its roots in otaku culture and sex appeal. I don't really get the point of trying to shame people for being open about their fondness of it. Could I dismiss the female fans of series like Haikyu, Free, or Prince of Tennis by saying they only care about the series because of the attractive boys? No, of course not. Attractive characters are important to a series because everyone likes attractive characters. Why would you intentionally make ugly characters if your goal is to be successful? Seems like a bad business decision for people who don't like money.

I don't think nobody would complain - of course someone will always complain - but CR markets itself as being a strictly anime streaming service. On Netflix you have both anime and non-anime watchers, and something like HGS would benefit more from also being able to catch those non-anime watchers. I genuinely don't think Castlevania would've done as well on CR.

Those two shows are pretty famous for being design for doing just that, actually. Precure is absolutely aimed at older guys One just needs to look at the current season and all the various kinds of cuts and shots being done intentionally. Whoever the guy that animated Cure LaMer's transformation sequence is being very blatant about his particular fascination with feet, among other scenes in the season that seem to focus on them. It's also probably safe to say those high-end lewd figures of the characters are aimed at guys rather than little girls.

Which is why Baki and Kengan Ashura are famously reviled, right? Those dudes are gross. Not to mention Spongebob Squarepants, Ren and Stimpy, the Rugrats... Or does this only apply when it comes to female characters?

I don't understand why it's so hard for some people to process that fuckability is not a priority for some animators. If you only watch animated shows where you want to have sex with the characters, that's your prerogative but it isn't a necessity for all or even most people.

I was always under the impression Toei counted Precure as being targeted towards men too because they were aiming for the audience who were still big into kids toku shows (which air around the same time) which is why Precure tends to have more lavish fight sequences than other magical girl anime aimed towards kids.

Also... there's an emphasis on LaMer's feet because she's a mermaid that gets legs when she transforms?? And Bandai/Toei wants people to know that they have kids nail polish for sale especially while the makeup centric season is airing?? Listen, I'm also an artist. I know that a lot of artists try to be cheeky and purposely put shit into shows that they know will go above the heads of the kids watching. This even happens with Disney movies. That doesn't suddenly turn kids entertainment into fanservice. Next, you're going to be telling me Oopsie Poopsie dolls are aimed at adult men too.

When She-Ra was first announced for Netflix, the Internet instantly complained because She-Ra wasn't sexy enough for them and people complained about the new He-Man show having too much focus on women characters or something. Also Crunchyroll has been streaming Rooster Teeth animation on their site for years without any issue. Even in this thread hardly anyone is complaining about Crunchyroll streaming the new Warren Ellis animated series which seems that would be a bigger issue of criticism given the sexual harassment allegations against Warren Ellis. It's only the show made for girls that people are making into an issue.

High Guardian Spice is an original show with no existing fanbase to displease. I'm sure people would still mock it because of the original trailer alone, but it certainly wouldn't have attracted nearly as much attention from the anime community if it wasn't directly involved with Crunchyroll nor did the trailer premiere precisely around the time there was a huge push to shame pirates for not supporting Crunchyroll. To put the timeline into perspective, the High Guardian Spice trailer premier within days of the Answerman column from 2018 that was designed to be a rebuttal of Digibro's video about not supporting Crunchyroll. It was all perfectly timed to be the big reveal of the side telling you what giving your money to Crunchyroll if you like anime would be, and the result ended up being High Guardian Spice which was certainly not what people were wanting to hear at the time. You can go back and re-read that Answerman thread and specifically see numerous mentions of High Guardian Spice.

I would offer a suggestion checking out some of the Japanese directors and artists blogs some time. They're very open about their intent and feelings. When you have official artists for franchises drawing lewds on Pixiv and Twitter it's hard to argue against their intent.

And for all the ANN forum people from the Twittersphere screencapping my post, I'd love to hear a genuine rebuttal to why Toei would put out those figures of the characters rather than snide insults. You can't just ignore the fact Toei put out adult-aimed cast-off figurines with certain very detailed and sculpted parts if it wasn't their intent to capitalize on that audience. One does not look at the gravure DVDs Toei puts out for the actresses in their toku series and insisting there's nothing sexual going on there. Japanese companies are not puritans. They know exactly what sections of the fanbase want and are more than happy to provide. Toei is especially known for it. It might be hard to accept but the people that make your favorite series are indeed probably perverts.

To put the timeline into perspective, the High Guardian Spice trailer premier within days of the Answerman column from 2018 that was designed to be a rebuttal of Digibro's video about not supporting Crunchyroll. It was all perfectly timed to be the big reveal of the side telling you what giving your money to Crunchyroll if you like anime would be, and the result ended up being High Guardian Spice which was certainly not what people were wanting to hear at the time. You can go back and re-read that Answerman thread and specifically see numerous mentions of High Guardian Spice.

Are you trying to suggest ANN is in on some conspiracy with Crunchyroll?