mAcOdIn said:
Does the current Earth have a plot? Stop whining, plot is all about perception, Escaflowne had other countries whose only appearance was at the end in airships, just how shit works, even during WW2 the WW wasn't every countries plot nor the plot of the world and whether the war was won or lost the world would keep spinning regardless, plot is nonexistent.
That's a false comparison, fiction doesn't and often shouldn't be like real life -- the whole point it to have something more interesting than the real, pretty much. With a beginning, a middle, and an end. And besides, there are plots in individual real stories, sure. Plenty of things that are based on real-life events have stories and plots.
And part of this just makes no sense, unless you're referencing the usual "bad guy wants to take destroy the world" anime/videogame story. I do think that that plot is overdone. More badguys should just want to take over the country, or the world, or what have you, why do they usually want to destroy it anyway?
But even so, that TTK doesn't really have a main enemy -- there is no Big Bad in TTK, at least not in the anime version (who knows about the later books) -- is an issue for it in its genre. It sort of makes up for it with the interesting, complex stories it does tell, but it is something worth noting.
But anyway, to return to my first point the idea that fiction should be like reality is silly, and obviously false. It shouldn't.
And putting this nebulous plot above characters is insane, without them whatever plot you do get forcefed feels fake and heavy handed, like Hidan no Aria or Escaflowne, at that point you're just on some rollercoaster ride of images that happen to have some images that sometimes look like people and act like people even less of the time.
It's not slow! It's just not fast, it's semi-realistic or whatever you'd want to call it. I have a feeling you'd say Escaflowne had good pacing and while it was a more exciting show I don't think it had better pacing, the pacing was too fast, too unrealistic and relegated everyone to moving set pieces, that's not good pacing either. Each episode is like 20 minutes long and sometimes as much or more stuff happens than in a single 40 minute episode of Battlestar Galactica so come on.
Aria and Escaflowne have something in common plotwise? What? I can't think of anything of note...
But no, to me your complaint just makes no sense at all. Sure, action with no plot can be pointless, but plot and action with mediocre characters isn't like that at all. With a good plot and story, and characters just good enough to make the story work, things work just fine. Rollercoaster ride of images? But if the plot's good, and interesting, it's going to be much more than that...
I agree that Escaflowne's pace isn't realistic, certainly, though. It's a very, VERY fast paced show, and it skips over almost all of the downtime in between the major events. I just think that it works that way. Escaflowne is proof that you can have a full-length series of 100% plot-centric, fast-paced episodes and it can work, too. They had a huge story to cram into a 26 episode series (I believe the rumors that the series was originally supposed to be longer, it makes sense), and they made it work. Sometimes that kind of thing can break down, where events just get too fast and confusing to be able to make sense out of it, but it didn't in this case. Not at all.
So yes, a lot happens in each episode. That's one of the show's major unique points, I would say. If you disliked that, I can see why you'd dislike the series. I, on the other hand, think that that's one of the good things about the show.
You have some sanity left I see.
I guess so, I'll try to make it up somehow.
Absurd. Absolutely absurd. For one the show is flat out showing you that no tragedy is pointless because the characters grow from living through those tragedies and make themselves and the people around them better for it, that is not pointless, for pointless tragedies look no further than, again, Escaflowne where they're essentially allowed and crafted by the powers that be because those people aren't the people they're going to intervene with, the characters in Escaflowne don't learn from anything that happens around them, if there's violence it's because the show wanted to show you some action not because it needed to get violent and none of the characters ever learn or grow from any experience. That's pointless tragedy. In the Twelve Kigdoms the hardships everyone faces strengthens them and contributes to the them at the end, they would not be the same people at the end of the show without those tragedies, they would be lesser people, so I fail to see how that's pointless.
Yeah, the two shows have very different design philosophies. That much is obvious anyway. Which design is better, however, is obviously very much a matter of opinion...
But first, no, I don't agree that all of the TTK hardships help character growth. I mean, that idea -- that one of the best ways to have characters develop is to have bad things happen to them -- is a traditional theme, but I just don't entirely agree. I think that there are ways to have character growth and development along those same lines that doesn't involve randomly killing people off. Like, what did that woman Youko had been staying with's death accomplish, for her character development? Not much. It just provided another pointless tragedy for the writers, so they could once again say "see, this is a serious, dramatic show!"
And hence I use the word pointless. But I think that this clearly shows how different our viewpoints are here -- while you approvingly talk about how the tragedies exist to further the characters' emotional journeys, I find that frustrating. If there are going to be things like that, I don't like it to happen just to affect other, more important characters. Randomly killing off minor characters just to make the main character feel differently isn't something I like. And it's not realistic here, either -- such things happen a lot in TTK, as I said, far more than would be believable if you just went by realism. There are just so, so many horrible things that happen to these characters! It's ridiculous.
Sure, in a story like this of course some bad things are going to happen; completely avoiding that would be quite unrealistic. But TTK does that a LOT. Some stories do that, and TTK is clearly one of them, but it isn't something I'd call entirely realistic, first, and it's also not something I like.
As for Escaflowne, and as I think I said, it'd be hard for Escaflowne to have much sadness over most of the deaths, with its pace. Maybe if the series was a lot longer there'd have been time for more of that; as it is they only had time for that for key moments. I thought that worked; that's a fairly standard way to handle things in a story like this, and over time anyway the characters are going to get more used to it... but anyway I remember some. As for learning from the action, I absolutely disagree that no one learns from the action in Escaflowne. Nobody learns anything from the violence in Escaflowne? Huh? What are you talking about? Sure, the Escaflowne characters don't have TTK levels of depth, but it's a different kind of story so that's okay. It has depth in the main plot instead, and the characters themselves have more than enough for the story themselves.
Even so, I agree that they wanted to have a lot of action in the series. It WAS made by Sunrise, after all! And sure, some was mostly there to make things more exciting, have more fight scenes and show again and again how powerful and determined the bad guys are to stop our heroes, etc., but it wasn't all entirely pointless action for the sake of action. There was some of that, sure, but it wasn't all that.
And anyway, action just for the sake of making the main character sadder isn't any better, in my opinion.
But ultimately, it's hard to directly compare these two shows, though, because with storytelling styles so, so different it's quite difficult to directly compare them...
And again, the hero does not always show up late, several people have been directly saved from Youko with her sword.
Yeah, until they get killed off later on when she isn't there in time the next time they get into trouble.
And also, again, this is perception, she may be too late to save Suzu's friend but because he died she's now acting proactively and will save countless others before they're even in trouble. So perception. Zoom in far enough and make the story about Suzu's friend and yeah she was too late but Zoom out and she's saving countless people.
As if that's the only way to have her learn that lesson? I disagree.
The reliance on flashbacks however is a pain in the ass.
Most definitely. For instance, do you REALLY need to show that poor kid getting run over something like ten times in five episodes? Really? We get it, it happened. We don't need to see it yet again, can't you do anything else to show the characters' sadness?
Lol, you've been wanting her to change since the second it was shown there was an issue and now you're unhappy, Blow(in my best bruce Campbell voice).
Yeah, I'd been sort of wanting that to happen, but that they had it happen so quickly and with only mediocre foreshadowing beforehand? That's not the way to do it.
Also, as I said, that her craziness somehow just completely vanishes when she changes her mind on this is also ... convenient. I mean, she'd gone completely nuts. Perhaps accepting things as she did would help that, but I can't quite imagine it just completely dispelling it like it seems to have done.
Basically, I do like that that event happened, I just think they did it in a way that is hard to believe. It could have been done a lot better. But of course, you like her character a lot more than I do, so I'm sure that also has an effect.
Anyways, the mouse guy whose name is too ridiculously hard for me to remember is like the first person who treated her like a person, convenient for the story sure but if you're wondering whose suggestions would have more weight between the guy who killed your family, a bitch who makes you work twice as hard because she hates you, a bitch loli queen that also hates you and a mouse/human guy who treats you like an equal despite your issues I think it's fair to say why some would only listen to the latter.
On that note, as I said, that Rakushun actually helps her so much, after she tries to get him arrested for a crime that she believed he would be executed for, and then tried that again when the first attempt failed, is just... hard to believe. I mean, she did some pretty bad things there! Yeah, it didn't have an impact because he has a super awesome pass, but he should have been a lot more bothered by it than he was... but for plot reasons he had to befriend her instead, because she needed to get to Youko. Why in the world does he keep trusting her after what she did, and with how crazy she was?
I know, the explanation is just that he's really nice and didn't mind because it couldn't affect him, and somehow he just knew that there was a decent person inside her even though she wasn't showing it at all at the time (convenient, that...), but that's some pretty contrived stuff. I know, fiction works on that, but even considering my defense above that doesn't mean I have to like all of it.
Once they did get together it quickly got better -- the things he taught her were certainly valuable lessons, and with that, combined with the real life experience in seeing the reality of an execution I could see how that could have changed her, but instead they have the change happen sooner, for no apparent reason. The attempted execution perhaps helped make her change of opinion certain, as she finally could see the reality of what her father had been doing, though, of course.
Overall I'd agree that her story as it is makes some sense -- this nice guy who knew a lot told her about the world and eventually convinced her that she was wrong -- and they tried to do that story in the anime, but I don't think they got it quite right. I don't know how the original books do things, though, of course.
As with the show overall though, I do think that Shoukei's story is interesting and decently told. For anime this is certainly a quite good character story; like with how in world design TTK tries pretty hard in a field where most anime puts in zero effort, you don't usually get characters with nearly as good character and story progressions as TTK does. I have frustrations with how it does things and some of the characters (like Shoukei), but that doesn't mean that I don't think it's good overall anyway, for sure.
Ehh I hate Suzu, she's not bad but I just didn't like her say what you will.
I don't hate Suzu, she's not nearly as crazy or deluded as Shoukei was... what's so bad about Suzu? She's okay. I've liked her more than Shoukei all along for sure. I'd say more, but I don't know why you hate her so I can't really reply.
And Youko's boss, she rocks.
Yeah, this at least we agree on. Youko's pretty awesome.