• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Fall of Anime 2012 |OT2| O cursed spite, that ever I was born to UUURRRRYYY!!

Status
Not open for further replies.

Emitan

Member
Oh, I suppose that I forgot to mention that before you're Lu Bu's courtesan, you're this dude's sex slave:

ohys-tonari-no-kaibut7tsqr.jpg
 

trejo

Member
Wikipedia said:
Zhou Tai (died ca. 223), style name Youping (幼平), was a military general serving under the warlord Sun Quan during the late Han Dynasty and Three Kingdoms era of Chinese history.

So this means I serve Instro? I am totally okay with this.
 

Jex

Member
I've just rewatched the second episode of Pyscho-Pass and while I know that it's already super-duper old news there are just a couple of things I would like to touch on, briefly, if I may. If not, well, I guess you can just skip this whole post, but then I won't like you any more.

The first thing that stood out to me about this episode was it's structure. Where as the first episode had a very standard police-procedural structure this episode drops that entirely in favour of a 'day in the like of...' approach. This shift allows them to show the audience a wider variety of aspects of the Psycho-Pass world than if the show only followed Akane's police missions. Sure, we do eventually follow Akane out on a mission but we also see her: starting her day, interacting with friends, interacting with colleagues and talking to Kougami. Nearly all of these scenes are designed to show off how unusual Akane is in that she has far greater personal autonomy than anyone else in the show, no-one else has any choice about what kind of life they lead.

It's really hard to say how the show is going to develop only based off these two episodes and so I wont even try. There may well be a main 'plot' that we're moving towards but they haven't really given us much to go on regarding that.

My favourite scene of the whole episode was actually the first one, they managed to convey a lot of important information about the world without actually beating the audience over the head with it. Some of the storytelling was wholly visual, such as the way Akane's room reverted to it's cold, sterile self as soon as she left the building. Nothing was said by any of the characters but the fact that the room appeared so bear and sterile, thanks to the colour choices, served to imply that this is how the world actually is when you peel back the veneer that's been painted on top of it.

PsychoPass21.jpg


The writing between Akane and her, er, electronic buddy was surprisingly subtle too. We learn quite a bit of information for the casualness of their conversation - we know how closely people's eating habits are watched (which sounds quite useful), that weather can apparently be predicted with perfect accuracy and that there's even a forecast for people's psychological state. The one theme which links all these ideas is control - the control that's exerted by the Sybil over individuals eating patterns, their behaviour and so forth. Being able to measure the weather perfectly suggests a shocking degree of technological advancement. We can infer all this from only a handful of lines of dialogue, which is really neat.

Unfortunately not every scene in the episode was quite as smooth. Akane's interaction with friends and colleagues was, unfortunately, still riddled with exposition. Take this moment for example:

PsychoPass22.jpg


which was blatantly written just so that we, the audience could be informed about Akane's scores. Everyone already knows her results, so why bring it up right here? I'm willing to forgive a certain amount of exposition but when characters explain something to a character and that character who is having the concept explained to them should already know about it then I get rather annoyed.

Still, this is all small potatoes compared to my least favourite scene in the whole episode - the scene where Akane goes to visit Kougami in hospital. I think it's important to remember what happened between these two characters in the last episode that led them to this particular situation
Akane was put in charge of the Enforcers during a kidnapping case. Kougami catches up to the perpetrator and disposes of him violently. Much to Akane's surprise, the Enforcers then turn their guns on the victim of the crime because her Pscyho-Pass has been corrupted. Before Kougami can execute the victim she shoots him with her Dominator. She didn't actually spend much of that episode talking to Kougami before she shot him because she spent most of her time with the old guy.

Bearing all that mind, especially the part where these characters have maybe spent a few minutes in each others company, how would you expect a scene between these two characters to go? Perhaps something along the lines of "why did you shoot me, she was a dangerous criminal" or whatever. None of that happens. Instead what happens is that Kougami wakes up and launches into what's apparently a re-prepaired speech on the nature of justice and what it means to be a complete officer and he delivers this with no prior prompting at all.

PsychoPass24.jpg

PsychoPass25.jpg

PsychoPass26.jpg


If that wasn't artificial enough, Kougami than tells Akane that she might be able to do well with Akane as his boss. How do we know that considering that he's barely spent any time with Akane and yet somehow he still feels that two minutes of time spent together is enough to keep everyone happy. It really feels that the writers just want us to know specific things about this character and the best way to do that is exposition as opposed to something that make sense.
 

survivor

Banned
Moyashimon Returns 10-11 End

And with that brings the end of the France arc and the second season. I was a bit confused by
Marie's plan and how she planned to convince her dad. However it all made sense with the juice thing. Can't say I expected such a solution.
As for Hasegawa, I really like how they resolved her problem.
All this time they made Ryuuta to be such an asshole but at the end of the day he turned out to be reasonable and understanding. I really liked his confrontation with Hasegawa.

Overall this is more or less the same Moyashimon from the first season which I loved a lot. The character designs were really a problem, but I will say after couple of episodes I completely stopped caring. I suppose the only design that still bugged me was Oikawa's. They really made her 10 years younger and looked much worse than her original design.

One other thing is you can really tell this is just an adaptation of a manga arc that doesn't try to change anything. What I mean is outside of Hasegawa and to an extent Oikawa, the other characters really didn't get any major development, especially Sawaki. Heck, I'm starting to wonder if the guy is even the main character anymore cause his role in the second season didn't seem that important. I'm also very disappointed that Yuuki still didn't get more screentime, I wonder if he will ever get his own arc.

This was the better summer Noitamina show and I really hope there is a third season down the line.
 

mAcOdIn

Member
If that wasn't artificial enough, Kougami than tells Akane that she might be able to do well with Akane as his boss. How do we know that considering that he's barely spent any time with Akane and yet somehow he still feels that two minutes of time spent together is enough to keep everyone happy. It really feels that the writers just want us to know specific things about this character and the best way to do that is exposition as opposed to something that make sense.
I've only seen the first episode on Hulu, not sure if 2's up there yet but I figured that'd be where that was going to go.

I mean, frankly, you have the enforcers, who are pretty much considered scum by society just allowed to do a certain task out of what's seemingly necessity and now you have someone who might not exactly look at them that way, so I figured someone would take to her.
 

Kazzy

Member
Yuru Yuri 4

I don't think I'll ever get tired of Chitose's gag.

About that...

I was of the opinion that they absolutely drove that into the ground, one of the few gags I grew to despise. Chizuru was probably worse in that respect, but they wisely curbed her involvement in the second season.
 
Magical Girl Madoka, lost some manlyness. I'll put the series on hold till tomorrow because right now I'll watch One Piece Strong World movie!
 

Kazzy

Member
Nope, not reading the spoiler text! This show is too entertaining to let myself ruin it like I did TGTL.

I wouldn't let it bother you, YuruYuri is just good fun. Any complaints that I may have about it, are pretty minor when you factor in how much I enjoyed it overall.
 

Envelope

sealed with a kiss
Jinrui 11&12

Yes, I finally got around to finishing this....

I thought the ending was really touching in a number of ways, and even though I consider the first 2-episode arc to be the highlight of the series, this was still an excellent way to end the series
until the second season

the sky's the limit when it comes to dreams, right? :(
 

Ultimadrago

Member
If not, well, I guess you can just skip this whole post, but then I won't like you any more.

Well, we can't have that now.

Bearing all that mind, especially the part where these characters have maybe spent a few minutes in each others company, how would you expect a scene between these two characters to go? Perhaps something along the lines of "why did you shoot me, she was a dangerous criminal" or whatever. None of that happens. Instead what happens is that Kougami wakes up and launches into what's apparently a re-prepaired speech on the nature of justice and what it means to be a complete officer and he delivers this with no prior prompting at all.

I don't completely disagree. While Kougami's dialogue was more along the lines of a canned statement he has practiced in the mirror his whole career than natural conversation, I don't believe he'd go for a line along your example.

He stated to her in the first episode a duty of the Enforcer in a fashion fitting one who "knows their place." I knew from that brief confrontation that if it ever went down to Akane intervening through force, he most likely wouldn't have a restless response. Even raising his "speech", Kougami obviously doesn't trust his own sense of morality. Therefore, I don't think he would've made a large deal out of the event (this said taking his stoic personality into account).

Nonetheless, it is written out in a manner that doesn't only make for an awkward scene (for all the wrong reasons), but takes away from what could have made for an interesting insight through actions (or more natural conversation) in the future.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom