Forum - View topicANNCast - Mission Critical
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hissatsu01
 Posts: 963 Location: NYC |
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It is indeed difficult, having these people continue to disagree with me. I want to stop, but I can't. Like the Earth revolving around the Sun, I must continue. I must answer them the first time, the hundredth time, and the thousandth time. Someone is wrong on the internet, I can not allow this to stand! To not respond is unthinkable!
That you describe your behavior as normal is exactly why you can't see how tiresome you are. And having no desire to get involved with your endless efforts to get in the last word, you can have it. There it is, take it! Perhaps you should look into that medication if it actually gave you the ability to drop something. |
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ikillchicken
 Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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I'm surprised that Zac and Bamboo are actually saying Space Pirates is good. I'll grant that it was not terrible as you'd expect from a show like that but episode 1 really did not do anything for me. I didn't find it to be especially well written. I didn't really find any particular depth or motivation behind the characters. It was just a kinda bland show. I'm tempted to think that episode 2 is stronger but then it seems like everyone who loves it loved it right from the start so I don't know.
Didn't care for the world building either. We basically get this big confusing info dump to set up the situation. It never really made a ton of sense to me. I don't even really understand why this show is about Pirates either. By all rights these people aren't even really pirates. They're more like militia fighters or something. So...why then? Do they just want to use a buzz word like Pirate and/or be able to dress everyone in silly, stereotypical pirate costumes? Also, speaking of that, I'm not going to nitpick over zero gravity skirts or crap like that specifically. In fact, I think I agree that it's better than a bunch of panty shots. Is it really too unreasonable to ask for a show were girls wear pants (or for that matter just...anything that's not a school uniform)? I mean, come on. You don't have to be nitpicky to think the character designs here are pretty stupid. They basically throw a big poofy pirate hat and coat over her school uniform. I don't think there's anything unreasonable about point out how dumb that looks. |
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agila61
 Posts: 3213 Location: NE Ohio |
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Much snipped because I am not allowed to argue with ikillchicken, but on this point, other forum commentators and onlookers can search Wikipedia for "Privateer" now that Wikipedia is no longer blacked out. Historically, only the country issuing the Letter of Marque and its allies respected the Privateers as not being Pirates, and also, historically, the same pirates could become Privateers and then go back again, whether for something like they got caught stealing from the country issuing the Letter of Marque or because after a Peace Treaty the Letters of Marque were revoked across the board.
Yes, that's a normal response. You see the skirts, think, "that's a bit odd", then realize, "oh, they are just flagging that these are high school age girls, and in Japan, high school age girls wear uniforms with skirts," and don't worry about it. As opposed to being like, "I'm shocked, shocked that there is some slightly unrealistic symbolism in my future Space Pirates anime!!!". At least they are not wearing "future space uniforms" that would look a bit skimpy even on an Olympic women's swim team. |
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ikillchicken
Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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Why have you got to be such an ass dude? What you're saying here is a perfectly reasonable point that's in no way going to start a fight. It's actually a decent explanation that I'd be totally receptive to...except you've got to open by taking a piss. Are you deliberately looking to start shit here over nothing? If you're seriously that butt hurt over our last argument then evidently I was right to refuse to argue with you. |
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Melanchthon
 Posts: 550 Location: Northwest from Here |
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Lawsuit: Maybe ADV can dig up 8 million looking under their couch, perhaps.
Booty Pirates and Jurassic Park: Oh my god. I had the same flashback in that scene. I even shouted "This is Unix, I know this!" during that. Winter 2012: Worst season ever? Say what? I'm watching 7 series, which is normal for a Winter season, but all of them seem good so far. I count 2 A- (Booty Pirates, Fake Bakemonogatari), 3 B+ (Onegai Sensei, Another and Inu x Boku) and a couple of B- (DxD and Zero 4). I certainly wouldn't complain about this one at all. A 35% success rate for the season is better that most. Reviews: I draw my review power from hate. The more I hate a show, the better I write. So shows that I love I have trouble writing reviews, because I find it harder to describe why something works than why it doesn't. Show, don't tell: I agree with that there far to much Telling and not enough showing, especially in a visual medium that is made for showing. Perhaps there is a disconnect in the term worldbuilding. When I think of worldbuilding I am thinking of shows like Simoun or authors like Asimov or Reynolds that spend a lot of time exploring their creations and making everything fit together and make sense. In Redline, there was a lot of really random plot points that existed only to be cool. And yes they were cool, but I couldn't rationalize why they were there, and I need that to enjoy my Science Fiction. In Redline I would rather see more about who the other racers are that have JP wander aimlessly for 40 minutes. That's what I mean by worldbuilding. If you can't tell a story in the time allotted, don't tell the story: Could you please tell this to Peter Jackson for me? There is no reason to have two separate Hobbit movies. |
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Mad_Scientist
 SubscriberModerator  Posts: 3011 |
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Regarding the whole showing vs telling thing, I think a lot of anime fans don't really want anime that "tell rather than show" or contain a bunch of info dumping, what they want is anime that build detailed worlds.
There are works of fiction that function like snapshots, giving you a quick look at the life of a character or a certain event or whatever. You don't know all the backgrounds of the side characters or details of the world, and you don't need to, because that is not what the work is about. Though I haven't seen it, it sounds like Redline is like this. But there are also works that envelop you in a world, in its history and culture and background, etc. Works that create a whole new fascinating universe and reveal it to you. These types of stories are especially common in fantasy or sci-fi settings, where for some viewers the world itself is a huge draw, even apart from anything else. Neither type of work is automatically better than the other. Both can be pulled off well or pulled off poorly, and both have their fans. Myself, I like both, though I think I tend to favor more detail focused works. The thing is, such detail focused works are much easier to pull off in some mediums than others. Books tend to fare well at doing that (well... better than other mediums at least), while movies have a hard time pulling it off because of their relatively short lenth. TV series can manage it better depending on their length, but even for them it can be troublesome. And for better or worse, "telling rather than showing" and info-dumping are easy ways to try and pump out a bunch of details quickly. So for a lot of viewers I think, it's not that they like info dumping. They like details, and it just so happens that there aren't a lot of shows that gives them the details they desire without resorting to info dumping. And those shows that do sometimes suffer their own criticisms. Consider Bodacious Space Pirates, which has been blasted by a lot of people for its pacing. It would have been easy to compress a lot of these early episodes into "telling" rather than "showing" and get straight to the pirate action, but the show chose not to. And it's been criticized for it. Or how about Chihayafuru, which apparently contains a 3 episode flashback. I could definitely see that turning off some viewers. So while I think most people that would be viewed as fans of info dumping don't really care for the info dumping itself, and just like series that create really detailed worlds, some may actually find themselves preferring the info dump method because it takes less time than doing things the proper way. Also, info dumping gives you all the details upfront, or most of them. I notice some viewers have a tendency to immediately assume something is a plot hole if it's not instantly explained in detail. For example, in a world where space travel is common enough that Highschool Girls are allowed to take ships into orbit, it's not unreasonable to think that some skirts, including those that are part of the of the uniforms of said school girls, might be designed to react to low gravity environments and become extra rigid. Is it that way in Bodacious Space Pirates? I have no idea. But I do know that if that is the case, there hasn't really been a good place to reveal it naturally yet, but had they gone into a bunch of "telling" about the Yacht Club they could have revealed it. |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18187 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Okay, I think we've gone quite far enough with the "skirts in space" issue, on both sides of it. Unless you actually have something new to say about it, that topic is done.
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SoandSo
 Posts: 204 |
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Find it odd that most comments I see regarding "Show, Don't Tell", a rule I live by, seem to imply that it only applies or applies the most to visual media, when I believe it's especially important in the written word. Maybe this is an uncommon opinion, but I drop a novel pretty much immediately if it drones on and on and on about character backstory or setting history or especially character personality(Jessica was a sprightly, spunky waif with a lust for life ever since her first victory in the tennis championships...) Even excessive dwelling into inner thought bugs the shit outta me. Keep the plot moving and develop characters and worlds naturally, especially when writing.
Otherwise, I almost entirely agree.
Space Pirates isn't being blasted for taking its time and not getting to the dumb PIRATES EXPLOSIONS ACTION BOOM BOOM BOOM right away, it's being blasted for wasting its setup space with a whole bunch of nothing. The whole point of slow, zeroed-in storytelling is to focus on or highlight strong characterization, interesting plotting or palpable atmosphere, all of which many of my favorite series accomplish. BSP has a near-total dearth of any of those things, and while not as cripplingly cliche as Lagrange, it is exactly as bland and flavorless and I fail to see how mollasses-slow pacing is giving it this false veneer of careful storytelling. |
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Mad_Scientist
Subscriber Moderator Posts: 3011 |
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I strongly disagree about with your points about Pirates, as I think it has shown interesting plotting and characterization, but ignoring that disagreement for now, the show has been criticized for it's pacing by some people who don't also think the show is nothing but bland crap. And even if you disagree with my specific example, do you also disagree with my point in general, that building details through methods other than info-dumps can cause pacing issues for some people? |
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ikillchicken
Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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Okay, totally different topic: I never really got the criticism toward that scene in Jurassic Park. When she says she's a "hacker" obviously that's hyperbole. A classic case of a kid who is into computers and likes to call themselves a hacker cause it sounds cool. It's not like the "hacks" the computer system or anything fancy either. She just knows enough to look at the system and figure out how to turn on the locks which by all rights would have been fairly easy since by that point they'd already rebooted the system and fixed all the problems and just needed to turn it back on basically. It seems fairly plausible to me for a kid that's into computers.
This I agree with wholeheartedly. I'm fine with slow pacing. I just felt like the show was merely wasting time though in it's first episode. I mean, how much time did they spend on her just kinda messing around at her job at the stupid maid cafe? Was that scene where girl with glasses eats the milkshake somehow developing her character? The show just seemed like a whole lot of nothing to me. Another random thing: I'm not sure why they bothered with that big info dump at the beginning and then basically just retread all of it later on when she's looking this stuff up on space google. |
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SoandSo
Posts: 204 |
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[quote="Mad_Scientist"]
I don't particularly care about the opinions of those who take issues with things cause shows don't exposit enough, but as a broader observation, sure, I gotcha. Could be a sympton of watching too much anime like that and becoming indoctrinated to that sort of storytelling, to the point that they can't decipher subtler details or subtext without having every little tiny thing explained in crushing detail. Shame that. |
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Surrender Artist
 Posts: 3264 Location: Pennsylvania, USA |
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Key sounded nothing like I expected him to, but nobody ever does.
I have not watched Chihayafuru, but I only started using Crunchyroll last week to watch Bodacious Space Pirates, so I have plenty of things to try. I was disappointed to find that Sweet Blue Flowers was no longer available, so I don't want to lose my chance to see Chihayafuru. As for Bodacious Space Pirates, I do like it a lot. I had written if off because of the title, but it was a really nice surprise. Now I find the title pretty endearing. I think that it might make sense for Sentai to release it as Bodacious Space Pirates since it might attract more people, for much the reason I originally wrote it off, than it deters. My reason for liking it seem to follow Bamboo's. I've liked that it isn't taking any really conspicuous expository shortcuts and the pacing is really pleasing. It feels very slightly like a lighter-hearted Cowboy Bebop. I also really like the way that it's portrayed its lead. I liked that she didn't break down sobbing or go into a generic rage over the death of her father. Her reaction made sense to me and provided surprisingly subtle emotional engagement. I also really liked that she was visibly shaken after firing the big gun that her mother had her practice with; that also felt pretty believable. I also preferred the closing theme for Bodacious Space Pirates; the opening theme isn't bad and its vocals have a slightly idiosyncratic quality that I like, but I also love Tom Waits, so I might be nuts, but the closing theme is catchier. As for worldbuilding, I really appreciate when a setting is developed in great detail. Creating worlds and languages is something of a hobby for me, so I enjoy those details, but they aren't narrative content. I like it when a show pays attention to those details by portraying its world in a way consistent with them and builds occassional relevant references to them into their narratives, but it's dramatically better for something to treat its background as given rather than going out of its way to explain it or point it out. On series that my opinion has changed about: Saber Marionette J. I used to like it a lot; I even bought the damned collector's box, but after watching it again last spring for the first time in six or seven years, I don't really care for most of it now.
I kind of did, or rather I wanted to look past the specifics to the general question of how things like that work into my feelings toward something. The potential illogicality of miniskirts in zero-gravity occurred to me, as did a few other things, but I didn't care. In my own experience enjoying entertainment isn't a predominantly rational undertaking, so missteps in logic are something that I turn to only if the story and characters fail to engage me or if accuracy is one of the points of the series. I only take to bemoaning technical errors only if nothing else has my attention. These things don't really seem to matter if nothing else does. It's nice and to somethings credit if it incorporates technical accuracy, but for most things, that's a secondary concern. So for me, being bothered by something like energy weapons having recoil is a symptom of the storytelling and characterization failing, not a cause for me to mislike something. |
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vashfanatic
 Posts: 3489 Location: Back stateside |
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The worst example of pointless infodump was in Innocent Venus. It opens up with this long explanation of how a superstorm enveloped the world and altered civilization.... and this never has any relevance to anything that happens later. (Also, that series is terrible)
Code Geass nearly killed me with its first few scenes, with the opening narrative. And unnecessarily, since you could actually fill it in with a history lesson scene at the school. Infodumps should be short and inserted into a natural place within the story. Twelve Kingdoms, the example you used, dumps info piece by piece when the heroine asks for information about the strange world she's in. It makes sense, it happens as a dialogue. That's how you infodump properly. And actually, speaking of a series with a massive infodump... re: Lord of the Rings The usual complaints I hear about it from fans are: 1) Gimli being comical 2) Arwen getting more screentime 3) Faramir spoiler[almost taking Frodo back to Minas Tirith] 4) No Scouring of the Shire I was irritated at #3, mostly because Faramir was one of my favorite characters, but rewatching the second movie in the context of all three, I understood what Jackson was doing. Indeed, I found all his changes to be justifiable (and I think 99% of people were glad that Tom Bombadil was cut). The books will always be a different entity, a really good one, with a lot more detail and lot of great scenes that they couldn't make into a movie. But the thing is, Tolkine wrote them so that they couldn't be turned into a movie as they were. Tolkien may be loved by nerds, but the guy was a traditionalist Catholic who studied Old English* and hated modernity. He wrote in an intentionally archaic, epic style that cannot translate into movie format. *Did you ever read Beowulf in an English class? Thank Tolkien. He was probably the first person to really advocate treating it as literature and not just an example of Old English. Last edited by vashfanatic on Fri Jan 20, 2012 9:06 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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ArsenicSteel
 Posts: 2370 |
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Having a informative narrative at the very beginning of a new series seems like a natural and fitting way to set the mood of a show.
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Mad_Scientist
Subscriber Moderator Posts: 3011 |
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Sometimes. I tend to be fairly forgiving with the pre-intro narration that's so common to a lot of series, but it can detract from an anime if done poorly. On the other hand, Princess Tutu took this concept and made it awesome, except in the English dub, where the acting kind of botched it. Weird, considering the rest of the dub was pretty good. |
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