Forum - View topicANNCast - Warriors of Plasm
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nightjuan
 Posts: 1473 |
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I seem to remember that the early episodes of Guin Saga could be considered entertaining because of the fight scenes, where Guin often displayed his ridiculous physical strength and occasionally a bit of wits as well, but eventually the show introduced some passably interesting medieval schemes and politics to make up for the rather uninspiring take on generic fantasy.
Then again, there's always the fact the original story dates all the way back to 1979, in terms of its source material, so what sounds tired and dated now may have seemed at least a little more creative back in the day, depending on how familiar the intended audience in Japan was with similar works or even just J.R.R. Tolkien. Can't really talk about the novels but the anime adaptation itself is still no Twelve Kingdoms or anything on that level though. Too bad we may never know if the potential was ever truly there. I liked Casshern Sins myself, for all of the mentioned reasons and then some, but after a while one has to admit the angst can't really be considered low. Granted, it's more of a gradual process than something that happens all at once, so this may not seem obvious after watching just a couple of episodes: Casshern himself is almost always worried about his fate or his missing memories, for one thing, and lots of people (and robots, of course, we can't forget the robots!) keep dying around him. Rather than counting that as a complete negative, however, I would simply say you need to be in the right mood for a story set in a hopeless setting and where tragedy ends up being far more common than the opposite. If you can deal with that, I think the show's good points can still be appreciated. Hmm...I guess you could say "fascinating failures" is a fitting term for a few anime titles I happen to enjoy, because interesting ideas or themes can often make up for imperfect execution in my book. As long as the show doesn't really make me regret watching it and actually made me think about a couple of things instead, I'll acknowledge most of the objective flaws but won't automatically hate it. Absolute boredom, on the other hand, is much harder to forgive than any scripting, animation or pacing issues. Doesn't mean I can't appreciate shows like Tiger & Bunny that aren't doing anything truly new but have great execution and, like Zac and Brian mentioned, good writing. I'm quite satisfied with everything I've seen and heard about it. And, as I've said a few times before, even Gundam Unicorn itself arguably counts as yet another example of that. One Piece is quite enjoyable, but I'd agree that after the Buggy arc it takes a while for the show to get back on track. Sanji's introduction was nice, sure, but it's really the Arlong arc that finally convinced me this could be a shounen series worth watching, though I'm certainly not in any hurry to catch up with the rest. I will, however, get back to it sooner or later. As for Production I.G.'s Guilty Crown, I don't know whether or not the series will actually be good or bad and it's definitely too soon to tell....but there is a rather big difference between having a nationalistic setting and a nationalistic story. You can, in fact, have one without the other. The distinction may seem subtle on the surface, but in practice the consequences and implications certainly differ. I will go out on a limb and say that even Code Geass had a very cynical take on nationalism, in retrospect, simply because the protagonist wasn't even Japanese, didn't think the Japanese people were somehow special or pure, he manipulated the local resistance for his own ends and had absolutely no nationalistic interests or motivations at any point in the story. Anyone who believed the show was about "The Revival of Glorious Nippon" would be completely missing the point. The setting is perfect for something like that, of course, but "liberating Japan" was a means to an end in the eyes of the main character, not the other way around. Nobody can say if Guilty Crown will indeed go for a far more straightforward take on the subject and actually make promoting or excusing Japanese nationalism the central part of the story nor, more importantly, if the show will be any good in spite of that possibility. Personally, I'll prefer to wait and see what happens with the rest of the premise, such as the deal with the protagonist extracting weapons from people. Sounds like the basic idea was taken from Revolutionary Girl Utena or a few other places, but they could still do something entirely different with it. Which reminds me...it would be interesting if you (and/or ANN) asked the creator(s) about any of these topics, Zac, including the whole "defeating the invading West" preemptive interpretation. Going by what other people have commented before, I think complaints about Legend of the Overfiend "ruining anime" or just about the show in general were more of an issue in the United Kindgom, but I don't even know if that's still remotely applicable. |
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Tanteikingdomkey
 Posts: 2346 |
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I have read viz's release of brave story and the BOOK IS AMAZING. the movie cuts all the interesting parts of the book, and MANY key plot points from the books that are actually important. the first 300 pages of the novel is takes place in the real world and then the rest of the novel happens in the fantasy world, which is actually very well defined, and the twist that they put into the actual world is somewhat dark (which is partially why I think they cut it from the movie, I am talking about the second one btw) and very psychological. yes it has a quite a few generic elements to it but what series is wholly original and still good... I am having a hard time remember a decent show that is orginal (penguindrum does not count it has not explain anything yet).
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Dorcas_Aurelia
 Posts: 5344 Location: Philly |
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I'm a little sad that Tiger and Bunny is one of the examples of successful "good" shows. It's not that I think it's a bad show (the comedy and action scenes were good, and the plot and characterization were consistent throughout), but it felt so conspicuously obvious in driving in the point of everything that happened. Like the episode about Blue Rose/Karina when she's considering quitting heroing to be a singer, and her song is exactly about her situation. Then at the end of the episode she pretty much explains the details of her decision, because the writers were afraid we might have missed the entire point of the episode.
In spite of my complaints, I will gladly watch another season of this show when/if it gets made, and I'm at the point right now where I'm only watching 3 or 4 shows a season. |
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Charred Knight
 Posts: 3085 |
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My understanding of Howl's Moving Castle is that it's only bad compared to his earlier work. You have one of the most successful directors of all times that created works like Nausicaa, Castle of Cagliostro, and Spirited Away, then you get Howl's moving castle where the war subplot is hamfisted, and terrible. Nothing happens to Suliman, the war just ends meaning that there's no consequences to it. As for Ponyo, the first thing I noticed while watching it is that Ponyo's dad looks and acts like a drug addict while the boy's mother is insane and stupid. "Hey a bad storm is coming and they're telling us to evacuate. Let's go home instead"
The one series I would call a fascinating failure is Gundam Seed Destiny, it's got a bunch of terrible ideas but I love characters like Durandal and Meer. Every time One Piece intrigues me enough to consider buying some volumes the next arc is terrible enough to make me change my mind. As for the people who do abridged series, honestly having read some of the threads on Toonzone, and listened to some of the response, and those guys get a ton of respect. Sure you have a lot of people who are jerks but that's true of anything. Most anime fans wish their favorite series got the response that Abridge series get. While it's certainly true that Hiroyuki Yoshino worked on Code Geass, as assistant series Composition for Code Geass, he certainly wasn't the main writer that was Ichiro Okouchi. Hiroyuki Yoshino is most famous as the writer of the My-Hime anime, My-Otome (both anime and manga) and the creator of Seikon No Quaser. None of those series have a nationalist flavor to them, and the My Otome anime had the American equivalent Aries Republic as the main ally of the Otome academy. I hope that Guilty Crown somehow explains how women's breast will free Japan. |
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kpk
 Posts: 484 |
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Then read the novel... 
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immortalrite
 Posts: 56 Location: Yonkers, NY |
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The criticism is really more aimed at a director who has virtually built an entire career on making films which have spectacular appeal simultaneously to children, teenagers, and adults; it is only in light of this fact that "kids movies for kids only" seems like a major step down. A more recent analogy I think would be Cars 2 vs. Pixar's previous works: it isn't terrible in and of itself, but what came before it was just so much better. I would say if Ponyo can be faulted for being utterly too simplistic, Howl's can be faulted for being utterly too complex, attempting to combine an ambitious about of thematic material while narrative coherence falls by the wayside. Much of the movie seems to operate on a kind of esoteric internal logic and causality which is never really made apparent to the viewer. I think Justin described it best on the inaugural ANNcast when he said that "there's a good movie in there somewhere." Actually it is fairly surprising to me that the ANNcasters seem to be some of the only people who consistently criticize Howl's Moving Castle, that is, when the rest of the world seemingly loves the movie unequivocally. This stands out to me since while I have personally always considered it by far Miyazaki's weakest work, I have never really met anyone else who felt the same. I would like to watch it again (it has been at least a couple years) to fully solidify my theoretical problems with it. That being said, not all hope is lost: last year's Borrowers movie (Karigurashi no Arrietty) was wonderful, and easily Ghibli's best since Spirited Away; it recaptures pretty much everything I love(d?) about the studio and represents a great return to form. Perhaps it is safe to say that future Ghiblian excellence will come from the younger generation of directors. While I would like to think that Miyazaki has not completely lost it, and I keep praying that he will make another Princess Mononoke (or just something epic, thoughtful, coherent, and even, Heaven-forbid, aimed at adults), the near polar opposite of his recent two directorial productions make me think that in his old age he just works better in the background. |
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TJ_Kat
Posts: 363 Location: Saskatoon, Canada |
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what most people seem to fail to realize (including the folks on ANNCast by the sounds of it) is that Howl's Moving Castle is based on a novel by Diana Wynne Jones. most of the flaws in the movie are much, much worse in the novel. the disjointed story in the later half of the movie is largely due to the fact that a large part of the story (the worst, most groan-worthy part of it) was left out entirely and the holes left in the story weren't all tied back together. the ending to the movie is also much better than the book's out-of-nowhere 'and they all lived happily ever after... because i said so!' ending. based on what he started with, i think Miyazaki did a fantastic job with Howl's Moving Castle.
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MaxSouth
Posts: 1363 |
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Zachary sounds too young to be chief editor (just kidding).
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hg revolution
Posts: 12 |
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I don't get the hate for Ponyo. If you think it has nothing to say, maybe try watching it again looking at it as a movie about parenthood. Miyazaki has said he made it as an apology for being a bad father to Goro. Fujimoto basically IS Miyazaki, a mad misanthropic environmentalist wizard struggling to father a much less cynical child. Sosuke's family is also troubled, with his father always being away at work and his mother being kind of crazy (I don't exactly know anything about Mrs. Miyazaki, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was some sort of influence there). Watching the movie aware of those parallels and I think you might get a bit more involved in it.
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PBsallad
 Posts: 338 Location: Phoenix |
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One Piece love, yay!
I also didn't like Usopp's story that much. I recently got Collections 1 and 2 and decided to try to re-watch them subtitled. Since I original watched them dubbed on hulu. But I skipped Usopp's arc cause... I didn't want to go through it. Also, I wanted to get to Sanji's arc. I found out the voice for Sanji is the same guy who does Kotetsu from Tiger and Bunny, Hiroaki Hirata. lol I don't watch that much subtitiled anime so I don't really have a favorite Japanese VA. But I like this guy. |
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Asterisk-CGY
 Posts: 398 |
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Ya know, that's what I was thinking the entire time watching Ponyo. "This is nice and all, but where are we going?" I could not notice the kind of plot I felt from Kiki's. It was hard to put down a direction for the entire movie. It just felt like the entire scope was really shrunk down.
The last bit where the kid had to choose Ponyo for who she was in a way made the previous adventure make a bit more sense, but didn't really see that until then. Well with VA's you could say the same for animators, directors, writers, or any other person of note that works on a production. There will be people who wouldn't buy into the P4 anime if they weren't going to use the game's VA (which really worked for that game) would be a pretty big disparity. |
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invalidname
 Contributor Posts: 2444 Location: Grand Rapids, MI |
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So, who's listening to Hope's Fruits Basket audio drama? I contributed a few lines as an extra a while back, and have been really impressed by the leads and how much they're bringing to their parts.
Production values are really high for a fan work too. People need to check this out. |
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Surrender Artist
 Posts: 3264 Location: Pennsylvania, USA |
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I looked the title reference up. Bravo. So, which one of you is High Gore-Lord of Plasm?
I think that Zac described Hope Chapman is a former ANN critic. That's fits with how nothing written by her has been posted in a while. I wonder what the Answerman will think of episode eighteen of Casshern Sins. I suspect that the whole final act will aggravate him. When talking about anime on cable, you could have mentioned SpikeTV, since they aired Afro Samurai, but it's probably best that you didn't. I've never seen anime on FX, but I did see an advertisement for Trigun: Badlands Rumble a week and a half ago during the encore airing of an episode of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia. The only new show that I watched, well had on in the background by the second act, this season was the premiere of Whitney, which was a terrible mistake. I could feel comedy dying with every passing minute.
You keep calling him that. Are you a supervillain or something? |
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HeeroTX
Posts: 2046 Location: Austin, TX |
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Which begs the question: Why make a movie out of it? It's not like Ghibli or Miyazaki could've been forced to make an adaptation. Any other studio, I think this is a valid defense, you could argue "the execs wanted it done" or "the studio got hired and did what they could". But Ghibli is the one studio that should (I think must, but I'll go with should) have the autonomy to do whatever they want. So, if there's a mess of a book, you better have a great plan to fix the flaws or DON'T DO THAT BOOK. I don't think it's a triumph to take an incoherent story and make it slightly better but still incoherent. Or, more coherent but as disjointed. Why not just start from scratch and make a great original story then? |
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Crisha
Moderator
 Posts: 4290 |
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Thank you, thank you for making me aware of this drama! I started listening to it yesterday. Heee! I love it so much! And it does have great production values for being a fan work. I've been trying to spread the love around by announcing it on different sites and to my friends. I so hope the passion for this series continues it past where the anime got. Hell, if interest starts to wane, at least do some of the more pivotal scenes later on in the manga! Like the last three volumes. I really, really want the last three volumes. |
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