I'm sorry that your tastes are so unrefined. Try again in a few years!
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Spring Anime 2012 II | Welcome Home Eureka
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The later episodes of Un-Go were actually pretty good as they resolved a lot of the plot lines.
Disagree because you have a longer time to maintain the audience's attention span while with episodic material you can bring in new casts and plotlines to renew their attention. It's easier to correct a mistake or move on from episodic content as the writer can just mark it as failed and move on. While with narratives they have to stick with it even if they screwed up to a degree. Look at the crap Martin had to do when he decided to fix his story. It took him half a decade to correct it. You can also shift the tone of an episodic story while with a longer narrative you have to stick with that tone. The parts of the story become more important as well, such as the conclusion needing to be satisfying in regards to the time invested. A perfect example, although this is game related, is Mass Effect 3 in that people were citing part of the reason it was unsatisfying is become of the time invested into the trilogy as a whole. The more the audience is invested in said plot, the bigger the payoff has to be. Not to mention the importance of the beginning in that you have to establish an interesting narrative that want to make the audience invested in the first place. A more literary example would be the Dark Tower where people were unsatisfied with the payoff after waiting decades for it.
What was up with that!? As much as I'm starting to gain an inkling of tolerance to cg done bad, the whole everyone was in chibi mode plus it being badly done cg nearly burned my god damn retinas.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
Well, when I was watching this show, I immediately thought that this is the Book Girl series zero wished existed. lol
Very very strange to hear you make this type of statement based on your general stance towards CG. Because that shot is the least attractive in the entire episode, and it's actually offensive to the eyes.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
The CG head bob was amazing. lol
Crash Station
Member
What was up with that!? As much as I'm starting to gain an inkling of tolerance to cg done bad, the whole everyone was in chibi mode plus it being badly done cg nearly burned my god damn retinas.
And it wasn't even cg the whole time! It was actual 2d people for parts of it.
You're not addressing any of my actual points but just giving out more poor examples. Those examples don't prove that it is harder, they are just examples of poorly executed conclusions because they were badly written. The execution itself is bad, hence it was disliked. It does not prove the form of narrative made it hard. There are many examples of long-form works which ended well and are well liked.
Writing individual stories means you have to take into consideration that people have to stay invested in the characters and still be interested in new stories being told after they have already seen a hundred stories with these characters before. Unless you have a lot of ideas, it is NOT easy.
I can also turn your examples around. Even though Mass Effect 3 and Dark Tower had conclusions which people complained about, both are still extremely successful works. So is Lost, a show which many people had serious issues with towards the end. They made tons of money and were successful even though they were poorly executed. Does this not indeed prove that it is "easier" to make long-form narratives since as long as you have the proper hook at the start, people will continue to buy into the content even if the quality doesn't match up towards the end?
Please, explain to be why long-form narrative is 'harder' considering how people are still reading Bleach.
Ok, let's do this! (next week, no time this week)
So true
Its not like IG did a great job with the movie either.
Nah, I'm good.
How much of Marimite are we talking about here?
welcome back Dragoon.
I usually have issues with CG but I also really liked the tracking shot, infinitely better than the fucking awful tracking shot of the sniper rifle in the first ep of Angel Beats.
llol.
I don't have a problem with CG backgrounds if they're done well.
Hyouka tracking shot>Berserker
These things can come back to haunt you.
Hyouka 1
Everyone's probably said all that needs to be said about the visuals. I'll just chip in by saying that the visuals were generally great, with some interesting art direction and camera placement as pointed out by others, but some spectacularly animated scenes felt rather shallow. I didn't really get the point of shots such as when Chitanda was so ardent about the mystery of the
and the scene was transformed into Houtarou being entangled by her hair and flowers. I understand their purpose but it just doesn't feel like it was executed well to me; it feels kind of tacked on to wow the viewer with impressive scenes. Same thing with the eyes. Love the animation, don't really get it. I did like the 3D-like camera view when
mainly due to the depth it gave to the scene.
Anyway, the episode was pretty boring. The exposition was pretty heavy-handed and it feels really drab. Not the best first impression but I'll stick with it. I liked the music though. Classical music is always classy.
Everyone's probably said all that needs to be said about the visuals. I'll just chip in by saying that the visuals were generally great, with some interesting art direction and camera placement as pointed out by others, but some spectacularly animated scenes felt rather shallow. I didn't really get the point of shots such as when Chitanda was so ardent about the mystery of the
locked door
Houtarou walked towards Chitanda in the classroom
Anyway, the episode was pretty boring. The exposition was pretty heavy-handed and it feels really drab. Not the best first impression but I'll stick with it. I liked the music though. Classical music is always classy.
S1 at least. I'm not gonna force you to watch more episodes than I'm gonna watch of Un-Go.
Even if you dislike the tracking shot, it's over within seconds. CG Berserker appears over and over and over again.
You mean the truth?
You're making a dangerous assumption that they won't be using something like that more frequently in the show!
As for Berserker, you're also wrong. In a series which is 16 episodes long so far, he has appeared in literally 3 episodes.
Well, I'm sure they will use more CGI backgrounds. Disappearance used them as well. I doubt they will all be as elaborate as that shot, though.
You're not addressing any of my actual points but just giving out more poor examples. Those examples don't prove that it is harder, they are just examples of poorly executed conclusions because they were badly written. The execution itself is bad, hence it was disliked. It does not prove the form of narrative made it hard. There are many examples of long-form works which ended well and are well liked.
Writing individual stories means you have to take into consideration that people have to stay invested in the characters and still be interested in new stories being told after they have already seen a hundred stories with these characters before. Unless you have a lot of ideas, it is NOT easy.
I can also turn your examples around. Even though Mass Effect 3 and Dark Tower had conclusions which people complained about, both are still extremely successful works. So is Lost, a show which many people had serious issues with towards the end. They made tons of money and were successful even though they were poorly executed. Does this not indeed prove that it is "easier" to make long-form narratives since as long as you have the proper hook at the start, people will continue to buy into the content even if the quality doesn't match up towards the end?
Please, explain to be why long-form narrative is 'harder' considering how people are still reading Bleach.
Yes I did, the execution itself is harder due to the length of the material. It requires more involvement on the part of both the writer and audience thus increasing both the expectations and the work involved. The only disadvantage you could say episodic material has in regards to 'ease of creation' is that you need more setups. Longer narratives have to maintain character development, plot developments, tone, and audience attention over longer periods of time. Expectations are also much higher in general compared to length of craft. Does that mean people slack off, sure. It happens with all mediums and types of stories. However to create a quality 'long-form' narrative it certainly takes more work and there is more inherent risk involved.
Just because something sells, doesn't mean it's easy or harder to make. Harry Potter sells but so does ASOIAF. LOST is a great example of how hard it is to make long-form narratives as it had a huge backlash, similar to BSG, when they dropped the ball in regards to answering the mysteries. People expected LOST to answer questions all the way to the end and when it didn't, well you know what happened.
Bleach isn't a long-form narrative anyway as much of the stuff is episodic in nature. I would argue something similar to DBZ. The whole Aizen plotline and subsequent SS arcs are serial in nature however you could cut out much of the Arrancar/Fullbring stuff and very little would be lost. In addition, many of the arcs are different in content and tone than some of the other arcs. For example the Soul Society arc is much different in tone compared to the Fullbring arc.
hosannainexcelsis
Member
KyoAni was doing 360 CG pans as early as the Fumoffu OP.
Fate/zero 01
That was several shades of awful and took genuine effort for me to finish. It's not just an exposition dump, it's a bad exposition dump. Lots of lazy, uninteresting scenes where the camera slowly zooms out because nobody knew how to make this tripe interesting I guess. It's like a battle shounen without the fun and a laughable aura of SERIOUS BUSINESS. Editing was really really bad from scene to scene. There was nothing natural about how it went from one scene to the next. Just... ugh. I went into this series with a positive clear mind but this terrible episode soured me right back again.
Dreadful.
That was several shades of awful and took genuine effort for me to finish. It's not just an exposition dump, it's a bad exposition dump. Lots of lazy, uninteresting scenes where the camera slowly zooms out because nobody knew how to make this tripe interesting I guess. It's like a battle shounen without the fun and a laughable aura of SERIOUS BUSINESS. Editing was really really bad from scene to scene. There was nothing natural about how it went from one scene to the next. Just... ugh. I went into this series with a positive clear mind but this terrible episode soured me right back again.
Dreadful.
I'm not sure what you mean by this at all. Just because something sells doesn't mean it is easier or harder to make? Then what are we even talking about? If someone retains popularity despite criticism, it means that you don't actually need to put in as much effort into it to create a successful product, hence it is easier to make compared to something where you have to put in more effort into creating a successful product.
Crash Station
Member
Dusk Maiden 3
Not much to say. More ghost moe, more symbolic cuts, more drama. It's a good adaptation.
Not much to say. More ghost moe, more symbolic cuts, more drama. It's a good adaptation.
we posses the reading Steiner
hosannainexcelsis
Member
I'm sure you've heard this before, but it really does get better after the clumsiness of the first episode.
Well the first episode is the worst episode. Not to say that means you'll like it.
I'm not talking about success in terms of sales. What I'm discussing is quality in terms of critical analysis. Any idiot can make a book, irregardless of style or quality, and have it sell tons. Just look at Twilight. What I'm talking about is comparing high quality narratives to high quality episodic material and discussing the work involved into producing either. In my opinion, creating a longer quality narrative is harder than doing quality episodic material therefore I'm more lenient on them. Not that I would define K-ON as quality anything other than visual animation.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
I'm curious, are the Shaftisms from the manga, or are they an invention of the anime?
True but its a pretty rough episode to be sure.
He just needs to understand that the show gets a much clearer direction from there.
How much better though? The first episode made me legitimately angry -- from presenting an episode about powerlevels, classes, and stats in the most overwrought, self-important, and obnoxious way possible to downright tasteless shit like
Sakura in the worm room
How is that tasteless?
Probably not, but I could have guessed that he'd hate a serious take on this kind of thing before he even watched it.
Sure but once we are in this subjective area, it becomes very hard to really make any worthwhile factual arguments. Like I mentioned way before it becomes an arena of personal taste and opinion. I completely disagree that it is automatically easier, because when it comes to critical acclaim, you will find that flawed "ambitious" stories are generally more well liked or get more attention than well executed short stories. It is definitely easier to get people to grow attached to characters and story hooks in a long-form story simply because of how much space you have to let things breath. It is harder to achieve the same result in shorter or episodic tales, and hence there is a different sort of challenge there.
I feel that you are biased against one form of storytelling, and hence your comparisons to what makes one harder or the other easier is based on narrative requirements which favor long-form stories, instead of opening your mind to see that short-form stories have a different set of equally challenging conditions which don't generally apply to long-form stories.
From the actual images of it to the old man's dialogue about it, it's one of the most repulsive and offensive things I've seen in a while in an anime.
It only gets worse.
hosannainexcelsis
Member
Fate/Zero never stops being intensely serious, but it justifies its seriousness better once the Servants are introduced; their larger-than-life personalities and motivations lead to some genuinely interesting and well-written conflicts and conversations down the line, conversations that are more meaningful than power levels. There are more disturbing scenes further in, which may turn you off, though I feel they're executed better than the one you mention.
I vowed I would drop the show 20 minutes into the first episode. It was only the positive impressions of the second episode in here that changed my mind, and I ended up watching and loving the rest of the first season. Of course, I can't say that you'll have a similar experience.
It stops beating you over the head with exposition after that episode. So while the tone remains fairly self-important, it's no longer brutally obnoxious, because people are interacting in something resembling a natural way, and taking part in events that affect others.
That's not a guarantee that you'll enjoy it, but it's significantly less frustrating.
And less tasteless
Crash Station
Member
99% an invention of the anime.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
Is a former Shinbo-ite directing the animu?
firehawk12
Subete no aware
Restart at episode 4.
That said, the first three episodes coloured my impressions of the entire series and it's why I don't care to start the second season.
hosannainexcelsis
Member
Yes, it's being directed by Shin Oonuma, who did the two ef series, Natsu no Arashi, and Pani Poni Dash at Shaft.
I thought we were friends.
But in the end, I didn't drop it. I even kind of liked the first episode after Waver came on the scene.
Crash Station
Member
No idea. I don't even know which of the stuff that he's directed is from Shaft.
Edit: Well there you go.
It's not the disturbing content that turns me off about that scene. It's the way it's handled in several areas. I would go into more detail about it but it really doesn't deserve such a treatment -- it was handled in such a heavy handed and juvenile fashion that it was both not effective and extremely offensive. Truly the mark of failure.
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