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Now and Then, Here and There (TV).

Wrong.

It is *harder* for an anime to be realistic -- the bar is higher. As a result, I am harsher in how I grade an anime that is trying to be realistic.

bravetailor
You completely missed my point in your little rant.

My point is, if it's no better than what you or I could do, it's not doing a "quality" job. We are not good writers, as you said. This kind of sledgehammer writing is not quality writing because it is writing that many laymen could probably do.

~~EpiC~~
bravetailor No. Writing is an extremely difficult task. Not anyone can do it.

"I hate people who criticize something as manipulative, it's stupid, yadda yadda."

And of course authors want to cause emotional responses in dramatic works. A *good* author draws those responses out naturally through the use of good plot and dialog. Bad authors use crass means to drag out responses, hammering on emotional buttons with sledge hammers and leaving the reader/viewer feeling somewhat violated, or at least indignant, as a result. I think NTHT's authors fall somewhere in between of these extremes, and judge the overall work the way I do as a result of that perception.

This is NOT how NTHT works.

It still was a very adequate rebuttal. I like how you changed the subject from the writing to "opinions" just to try and cover that up though.

First of all, I did not criticise your opinion or got mad (???), I merely pointed out that the arguments you presented were at least a bit inconsistent.

You present arguments based on opinions of some anonymous 'fans' without any proof of them existing, to back up your opinion to which you are entitled to of course. But I am simply not a huge fan of such generalisations. Every opinion is worth discussing, but Id rather discuss arguments not backed up by phrases such as 'people think' or 'most fans happen to agree with me on this point'.

Another thing this series has going for it is its main character, Shu. In a lot of ways, he's a typical shounen lead (although he's missing the spiky hair): he's not too smart, but his kindness, morals, and energy make up for it. His personality and cute character design seem like they would be more at home in Shounen Jump, deep within a happy manga about ninja or soccer. Instead, he ends up in a world full of war, cruelty, and difficult moral decisions. Obviously his character has to change over time to accommodate all this, but despite all the garbage he goes through he never loses his optimism and good nature.

Then you completely danced around the second part of . what I said by making it look as if I was attacking you.

I was not, I just found it a bit funny that you pretty much assumed that people who liked the show and symphatised with its characters did so because of some vague personal reasons, rather than because of good writing. I just wanted to clarify that the point that you made was not very valid, since good writing does not exclude dramatic event hapening, as well as dramatic events not being equal to being a part of good writing.

For you the writing of the series might not be good, fair enough, no one here is on a mission to force you to love the show and I don't feel any urgent need to make you believe that the writing is excellent. I just don't think that accusing the writers of trying to cover up for their lack of skills with a series of dramatic events is very fair.

I appreciate your ability to mix around my words to express something completely different. Scroll back up and reread my post, please. I said I hate the argument, not the people. The argument was weak, and I quickly pointed out why I feel it has zero weight.

I don't understand why you are dancing around everyone's arguments and trying to transform them into something they are not. Are you interested in discussing this?

But first and foremost, calling a show emotionally manipulative is one of the most absurd arguments I have ever run across. I hate when people say it, because it's retarded

I don't know, usually the rape victims I have seen portrayed in novels and cinema tend to end up sobbing in their bed a lot, but I don't recall any of them whacking a guy with the butt of a gun and then running off into the pitch darkness. But maybe that is common amongst rape victims.

And to have Sara take over for Sis and be a surrogate mother for the children, despite not long prior being so furious as to try to kill the child that was inside her... that's something that I don't see a 'rape victim' do all that often.

But hey, if that's all you see in her character... I can't say much to that. It's your judgment after all.

Actually, at that point I was commenting on some of the posters here who were calling people "retarded" or "stupid". And I was referring to someone else's quotes in here when talking about it, so clearly I was not targetting you there.

I'm talking about fan opinions (and this link I post is a fan blog/site, I must mention, so it's not exactly a "professional" review, but it's a good indicator of what I come across in discussions about Shu)

For this fan, Shu being portrayed like a typical shonen lead is a good thing, while I view it as problematic, (and I disagree with him that Shu really changes. He may have more knowledge just by default of going through this crap, but he's not essentially a totally different person at the end). But there is a sentiment among SOME people, fans and critics alike, that Shu is essentially a typical optimistic and good natured shonen lead plopped into a darker than dark situation.

You found it FUNNY? You sure don't sound very amused to me so far! I merely asked (my post was posed as sort of a query) exactly what people were reacting to and my theory/opinion as to what the show was "actually" doing to evoke these feelings. I didn't assume that people were sympathising with the characters because of some "vague" personal reasons, I said that I felt the characters were broadly and unspecifically drawn and that I found no specific reason for people to react to the characters emotionally other than the events they went through in the show.

Everything about her stems from her getting raped.

You could say that we're not qualified to criticize any work of art, ever, because few of us are professional directors, artists, animators, musician or writers. Yet everyone does it when they criticize. Is it fair? Maybe not. But it's how we hold the creators accountable when we don't like something.

Your argument makes no sense.

At all.

Her 'character' is reacting, yes. That is what characters do. They react. They don't just change out of the blue for no farking reason whatsoever.

She did not take care of the kids because she was a rape victim. I don't even know why I typed that sentence. It was a reaction, yes, but it was a reaction to the new light in life that Sis had shown her, the small joy of motherhood.

And I think she could have learned the small joys of motherhood had she never been raped, yes.

Well, you should have quoted them instead of me.

However, just because someone takes an alternate opinion than yours doesn't mean it's not worth discussing. I'm really not into arguments that go into "I hate people who criticize something as manipulative, it's stupid, yadda yadda."

My point is still valid- you used arguments about, quote, "Even fans of the show... ". And fans for me in this context can mean 5, 50 or 5000 people, we don't know. You made it sound like if it was a major portion of fans that made an official statement. Your link however provides us with few opinions of random people who enjoyed or not the show. Whats the point on basing your argument on something so vague? Even without it I suspect that some people might find the show badly written, I don't need actual quotes that prove that some people don't like the character portrayal. I just don't think particular opinions be treated as 'majority of fans', etc. In the same way, I can say "Most fans love the writing" basing the opinion on posts by me and few other people that particcipate(d) in this very thread

I might be wrong, but you make it sound kind of like "Oh she was raped, but she should have dealt with it otherwise, her response was too dull and too influenced by her beign raped". Well, if you ever meet a rape victim, show me one that deals with it overnight. ?

It is a long and gradual process to get out of a trauma, and there is no way that the series action happens over a few days/weeks. And then Sara is majorly influenced by the other woman who dies in prison (can't remember her name), and by the children, AND by Shu. So she does react to different sort of stimuli. She shows that depsite all the tragic circumstances, she is a strong young woman not afraid to risk her life to save children although she has no interest to do so. That really tells you nothing about her personality

That was not my point. I think we have every right to criticise people who worked on a show, I just thought you used arguments that didn't really prove that the writing was bad

This is what I mean. Everything she does leads back to the same simplistic reason. So yes, she did not take care of the kids BECAUSE she was a rape victim, she decided to take care of the kids because she was RECOVERING from being a rape victim.

If someone you know, for instance, went through a traumatic event--whether it be rape, horrible accident, disease, etc,--does everything you know about them revolve around that one event?

bravetailor
That is what you posted, right? Now, I COULD be misreading you but when you say "it's retarded", you either mean the people who say it, or the argument. Either way, it describes the person behind the argument, because an argument itself cannot be "retarded", so it can only mean that the person who posted is "retarded". Now, I don't have a problem with that personally, I've been called worse and quite frankly, I'll fully admit I do some pretty darned retarded things! My quibble is that you basically steered the conversation away from the show and onto the WAY we were talking about the show.

Tuor_of_Gondolin
For example, I've been in the military, and so when military things are brought up in anime, I do compare my knowledge to what I see and adjust for differences in the created world's underpinnings, then decide if it still makes any sense. I have some knowledge of engineering and physics, I know something about politics, and I know how people tend to act in various situations. When you're going for realism, then these things have to come pretty close to expectations or suspension of disbelief starts to break down.

See, when you and Meggido stuck to the actual show, I felt we were having a perfectly civilized discussion. I even thought about offering monocles and teacups and cookies to maintain the perfectly civilized mood!