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Spring Anime 2017 |OT| Don't be a SukaSuka for Gacha

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D

dimb

Bjergsen is the greatest midlane in the world
PshycoNinja said:
Wow.

I really can't agree with any of this. I thought the animation was top-notch! From framing the scenes, to the colors used in the scenes, to the little motions characters emoted during scenes. It is well-crafted.

As for the story, I had a deep connection with the characters and their story. As did the people who watched it with me. The movie is far from melodramatic whining about self-sacrifice and about (MAJOR SPOILER)
two people who feel isolated from the rest of the world and feel they've actively made people's lives worse for being alive. Suicide is not something I feel one should merely brush off as "melodramatic whining about self-sacrifice."
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i'm not really brushing off the subject matter....
Realistically speaking if something wants to target suicide as a topic it needs to include a few different aspects of the idea that Koe no Katachi approaches but mostly overlooks. What is the concept of mortality? What does it mean when someone leaves your life? There's some kind of set up for this with the grandma but there is no reflection, which could be said about everything in the movie. It never reflects on any thought because there is nothing going on. What do the main characters think of the concept of death?

There are so many missing connectors that the story is just a complete mess. Shouya never even shares his brush with suicide with Shouko. This is what the show pushes as a bond between these characters but only on the most superficial level as the characters do not actually use these events to bond. Instead suicide is kind of just used as a tool to heighten the intensity of the material. It's cheap and emotionally brash and unsophisticated. And what does it ultimately build to? Cheap soap opera iconography with characters waking up from comas to rip out their IVs, fleeing from the hospital in the middle of the night wearing nothing but their nightgown for a chance meeting on a moonlit bridge. There is no real resolution to these thoughts of suicide or social isolation either. They just kind of come to an end because the movie is out of time and the story doesn't know how to draw that resolution bounced between characters or internally.

You'd think the movie could do more with sound but no...there's pretty much nothing going on there either. I don't even know that the story handles the aspect of deafness with any particularly adept hand either. I'm hesitant to say that it's actually offensive, but really the parallels drawn between the bullying Shouya and Shouko faced was pretty disgusting. Again...there's no real perspective offered here on how disability can create challenges with interacting with society, instead it's just a very simple thought about how terrible bullying is, with a charged message for young boys that it could happen to anyone.
 
D

duckroll

Member
hosannainexcelsis said:
Naoko Yamada is the best director working at KyoAni, and indeed one of the best directors working in Japan at the moment, and I doubt anyone will be able to convince me otherwise.
Click to expand...

She might be the most consistently good director working at KyoAni, but I still think that at their respective best, Takemoto is a better director. Waiting for Kigami to actually direct something other than Munto garbage so he can prove his worth...
 
L

Line_HTX

Member
Schwartzwald's open letter and the way it is read is just one of the most chilling things in Big O. That and the music accompanying it too.
 
T

Turin Turambar

Member
So in SA forums I found a short story of My Eccentric Family that is supposed to go between both seasons.
This part made me laugh:

0xMcy2L.png
 
J

jman2050

Member
PshycoNinja said:
Wow.

I really can't agree with any of this. I thought the animation was top-notch! From framing the scenes, to the colors used in the scenes, to the little motions characters emoted during scenes. It is well-crafted.
Click to expand...

Water is wet, sky is blue, dimb doesn't like thing. Natural order of the universe, best get used to it.

With that said,

A Silent Voice

I'm not sure how to feel about this. It's well directed, very visually nice to look at and animated well. KyoAni adapted the material pretty faithfully while managing to excise and condense what was needed to fit the movie format. It was nice to see some of my favorite scenes animated. Of course, the original story is flawed in some respects and that is still reflected in this adaptation, though I felt KyoAni did manage to minimize or remove some of the more egregious missteps.

My problem is there's no real flow to the story, for lack of a better description. The first 20 or so minutes that serves as the introduction is perfectly fine, and in fact I'd argue is the best part of the movie. But after that it seems like the production really struggled with the time constraints. The themes being dealt with in the story are pretty heavy and not easily digestible, especially considering how the author refused to directly cast judgment on any of the major events, instead forcing the reader to do it themselves. It works well enough in print, but in the movie I don't think the characters and the events surrounding them were given enough room to breath. I don't even know if it's possible to do it given the time constraints.

To put forth an example,
Nishimiya's attempted suicide doesn't really have the impact it needs in the movie. I could go on for a long time about this, but I supposed the tldr version is that in the movie the whole suicide attempt just feels like another event in sequence. There's no time to reflect on the suddenness of what happened or re-evaluate Nishimiya's actions in light of the revelation that she was suicidal years before any of this and her family knew it. Nor is any time allotted to give the viewer the opportunity to really get inside Nishimiya's head and see her true wants and desires in the aftermath. Instead, Nishimiya attempts suicide, we see some crying and apologizing and then it's straight to Ueno being a bitch, Nishimiya trying to make up with the group and then things start barreling towards the conclusion which, to the movie's credit, is a much more concise ending than the sort of aimless meandering that was the end of the manga.
I don't know, it's hard to explain in words. It's like the difference between reading a book and reading a well-written summary/school report about the book, but at the same time I think that's being too hard on the movie overall.

So I think I kinda liked it and kinda didn't? Maybe leaning more towards the liked it side? It's certainly no Disappearance, that much I know for sure!
 
T

Turin Turambar

Member
Twin Peaks S3E1

Damn so many series right now to watch. 3 Animes, Fargo, Archer, Sense8, Twin Peaks, American Gods...

This was curiously a big depart in tone from the original series, but at the same time narratively it's a straight, direct sequel. For now It hasn't been too confusing, I feared that it would be too much unhinged, unchained Lynch. There were some confusing parts, and lots of questions of course, but it's manageable.

I only had time to watch the first episode, I didn't know it was double length.
 
G

GoldCrusader

Member
Narag said:
Looks like LWA TV in on netflix on June 30th, long after anyone would care about it.

wait what's that? only the first thirteen episodes?

even less reason to care
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Going to assume that will be because they did not have the time to dub the second half yet at that point. The show will have just ended on June 30th. These shows are usually released with multiple language when released. Think Sinbad was the only exception.
 
T

Triteon

Member
Sakura Quest has grabbed me so far this season.

I empathise with the characters more than I usually do, it might be because so many slice of life shows I seem to catch are based around high school or romance and bore me. with the characters being older its hitting the spot. So far it seems like a show about finding a way to go forward when your goals don't work out and still finding comfort in real world outcomes, It's chill.

I have been disappointed with Boku no hero academia, the whole thing feels like its gone from a decent super hero origin good guys Vs bad into a sports/tournament/do your best anime. It feels like its treading water.

I've tried a few others and I am diving into new ones here and there, Alice and Zoroku had me entertained but I haven't stuck with it. Kenka Bancho Otome is OK but I don't really like the short 10 minute episodes.

I'm generally pretty happy when I get a single show out of a season so I'm pretty happy.
 
petran79

petran79

Banned
My only gripe with the manga adaptation of Silent Voice was how they omitted the discussion of the two divorced mothers about their worthless husbands. Too offensive maybe...
 
N

NaDannMaGoGo

Member
Koe no Katachi

Those ~20 minutes of bullying at the beginning were excellent and really hard to sit through. The homeroom teacher who couldn't be bothered to make a concerted effort in integrating Shouko nicely into the class was ultimately the catalyst for other students to eventually feel inconvenienced by Shouko, starting with Naoka, and the bullying not being stopped in its tracks. What followed then was a cruel 'kids being kids' sort of situation that was extremely unpleasant, in part because it felt realistic. Shouya's comeuppance was handled in a strong fashion, too, when the teacher called him out as the obvious culprit while slamming his fist on the board. I also liked that Shouya began to understand some of his actions when the costly hearing aids were brought up and he made the connection to his mother's rather low wage job.

I really loved that 'opener' and was very curious about where this would be heading. During all that bullying I was surprised by Shouko's unusually high resilience to her tormentors. I was looking forward to exploring how she got to be that way. Like, holy shit, she went through so much without ever breaking down (as far as we see). It's only when Shouya aggressively assaults her for cleaning his desk that she even fights back for once. Did her parents teach her early on that she'll have a toughen up due to her disability? Surely she actually really hates Shouya and co. but puts up a facade out of desperation as she has no other options really? Is she extremely afraid of being even more isolated if she brushes everyone off and fails make friends? Does she hate herself and think she deserves the dire treatment to a degree? Does she hate herself for seemingly failing to manage life with her disability? Now that it all went to hell, how will she cope? How does she change until they meet again?

So much potential with not just her character but most of the children. Yet, what followed afterwards felt like the cramped adaptation of a mediocre drama manga that it probably is. Instead of exploring some characters in depth we get to float on the surface level of many. The film never delivered the deeper justifications for Shouyo's behavior I was so curious about. Apparently she mostly is just a really nice girl that genuinely apologizes to and wants to be friends with people that tormented her daily for weeks on end. Okay, I guess? She barely seems to have any development either. After becoming friends with Shouya we get a very basic "I want to kill myself because you're better off without me" story. That angle fell completely flat to me since that newer problem only existed because Naoka continued to be an extremely toxic piece of shit, which in itself was disappointing. Her character had some depth at the very beginning when she shifted from friend to foe and you as the viewer actually understood how that came to be. Naoka overtly causing drama by being a huge asshole just wasn't interesting, really.

Most of the better scenes actually involve family members from Shouya and Shoko. Yuzuru was inherently interesting as the little sister of a severely bullied deaf girl. And so was their mother. Those tense encounters between her and her daughter's bully, now that's some good stuff.

Suicide as a storytelling mechanism is actually quite appropriate in this sort of story but unfortunately it was used rather cheaply here. I can't believe it actually lead to a last second save into reverse plunge, followed by a coma and what is there even to say to the ridiculous sequence regarding his waking up and onward. That's just not good writing. The one scene that really did work well was Shoko's mother and sister begging for forgiveness towards Shouya's mother. That made me cry even though most of the preceding and following scenes were just stupidly over the top. Naoka assaulting Shouko and getting into a slap fight with her mother afterwards? Like, what? Or that she's holding the door of Shouya's hospital room shut?

So yeh, ended up really disappointed by the largely weak characterization and plot.

As far as direction goes, I don't think I'm ever going to be a fan of Yamada if she continues with her shitty lens effects. That abundance of chromatic aberration and blur is hideous. It's not even just certain perspectives or point of views, it's almost everywhere. Those too on the nose symbolic blue X were terrible. They would've been fine for a single scene but were unfortunately used throughout the rest of the film, even serving for a very cliché ending.
 
N

NaDannMaGoGo

Member
hosannainexcelsis said:
The new first-years introduced in the second season had really grating personalities, the endless karuta matches were boring to watch, and the production continued to slide into mediocrity after the strong start of the first season. I was already getting checked out of the series after the recap episode of the first season, and the second season didn't give me any reason to keep watching.

That first half of the first season is some strong stuff though. Might as well pretend the series ends there.
Click to expand...

I see. I think I just enjoy Morio Asaka's direction so much that I like the overall product well enough even though I can agree with your misgivings to a degree. Helps that I took a liking to Karuta so that even the more drawn out matches didn't bother me too much.

Qurupeke said:
Koe no Katachi was so good. A lot of really strong scenes, outstanding animation and it was generally a great film. KyoAni made something good again.
Kawai was the worst and Ueno was a better character than I expected. Also, surprisingly, Ishida was a pretty good main character.
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Concerning the spoilered part. I hope your expectations for Ueno where the absolute bottom of the barrel if she actually exceed those. Because speaking her mind truthfully does not excuse being a huge pile of shit who constantly instigates bullying and even beat up a deaf girl with a bandaged arm.

For all her fakeness, Kawai wasn't nearly as damaging as Ueno.
 
H

hosannainexcelsis

Member
duckroll said:
She might be the most consistently good director working at KyoAni, but I still think that at their respective best, Takemoto is a better director. Waiting for Kigami to actually direct something other than Munto garbage so he can prove his worth...
Click to expand...

I can't agree. Takemoto is a very skilled director, for sure, but he's never directed anything as good as Tamako Love Story or A Silent Voice. He can create lush environments with beautiful and creative imagery, but Yamada simply goes so much farther in the thorough vision of her work. She's also capable of restraining herself from melodramatic excess more than Takemoto seems to be able to. Having jusf watched A Silent Voice, I have to say it's the kind of film that recalibrates my expectations for theatrical animation. It makes me want to reevaluate films I've appreciated in past years, to see if they're really as good as I once thought they were. Between works such as this, Your Name, and Kizumonogatari, as well as films I haven't gotten the chance to see yet such as Yuasa's and Yonebayashi's new films from this year, it's a really exciting time we live in when it comes to anime film. I haven't felt this way in a while.
 
N

NaDannMaGoGo

Member
Jarmel said:
I think that's the exact opposite.

I also don't hold Tamako's Love Story that high in regards.
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Yeh, there's plenty melodrama in Koe no Katachi and I can't say the direction in Tamako's Love Story managed to be good enough for me to overlook its tepid story.

I mean, I think I just don't like most of Yamada's work in general. Hibike season 1 I enjoyed the most but even that had the awful bloom etc. and was rather inconsistent on an episode to episode basis. So, it might depend more on the episode directors anyways. I'll have to take a look if I liked any she directed the most.

edit:
Hmm apparently she only did episode 1 of season 1? Well, Takuya Yamamura seems to be my MVP since he directed episode 10 which was my favorite IIRC.
 
J

Jarmel

Banned
Even just ignoring Silent Voice, the second season of Euphonium is filled to the brim with melodrama. Yamada does melodrama probably more than any of the other directors at the studio.

Edit: Hell there's the awful stuff in S1 of K-On and even S2 of K-On has a few patches.
 
Q

Qurupeke

Member
NaDannMaGoGo said:
Concerning the spoilered part. I hope your expectations for Ueno where the absolute bottom of the barrel if she actually exceed those. Because speaking her mind truthfully does not excuse being a huge pile of shit who constantly instigates bullying and even beat up a deaf girl with a bandaged arm.

For all her fakeness, Kawai wasn't nearly as damaging as Ueno.
Click to expand...

It's the first mostly, I thought she would be the one that started the bullying, sort of a manipulator, but she's more of a tag along. Of course, this doesn't mean she was good, her "redemption" felt kind of half-assed to boot.

Also, I immensely dislike characters like Kawai, who kept insisting she was good but she was actually rotten to her core. Her actions may have not directly damaged anyone, but she was the kind of person that essentially makes a bullying situation lasting. She also seemed to genuinely believe that she wasn't wrong. At least Ueno had the decency to accept that she was a terrible person.
 
N

NaDannMaGoGo

Member
Speaking of the title, "A silent Voice" seems rather unfitting when Shouko does actually talk. I was expecting her to communicate purely via sign language and writing.

I was actually a bit disappointed that we didn't get to know why Shouko was taught speech and evidently even told to frequently use it, even during singing classes. Now, tell me if I'm wrong as I'm surprisingly no expert, but isn't Japanese society less progressive in regards to the disabled than some of the western world? In addition, standing out unnecessarily is more frowned upon, if I'm not mistaken.

So, if that is the case, I find it surprising that Shouko speaks so frequently, drawing additional attention to her disability. I mean, she does even get directly ridiculed for it by Shouya for instance.

Would've liked to get some more insight from the film in regards to the deaf 'community' within Japan but alas, I got basically nothing of the sort.
 
D

DNAbro

Member
I only read A Silent Voice but I couldn't stand it. I just hated absolutely everyone cause everyone is awful and mostly awful things happen.
 
Cornbread78

Cornbread78

Member
Qurupeke said:
It's the first mostly, I thought she would be the one that started the bullying, sort of a manipulator, but she's more of a tag along. Of course, this doesn't mean she was good, her "redemption" felt kind of half-assed to boot.
Also, I immensely dislike characters like Kawai, who kept insisting she was good but she was actually rotten to her core. Her actions may have not directly damaged anyone, but she was the kind of person that essentially makes a bullying situation lasting. She also seemed to genuinely believe that she wasn't wrong. At least Ueno had the decency to accept that she was a terrible person.
Click to expand...

They were all pieces of $hit in there own way, which made it almost worse. Kawai just tried to play the innocent act, but she was clearly an enabler. I love it when Ishida called her sorry a$$ out on the bridge for it!

Ueno was just rotten to the core. She does not get a pass for being "honest with her feeling" when she was
In on the bullying, and even later once the were grown up, was still acting like a complete bit(h up to beating Nishimiya up when she was injured.
She was truly a piece of crap and should continue to be called out for being a piece of trash....

Nagatsuka and Satoshi were really the only decent people in the entire show outside of the mothers.


I guess my biggest fault for the story and how they skipped out on the development for Nishimiya. They could have carried the story with just showing how Ishida and Nishimiya were dealing with their inner demons, which was the backdrop for the entire show as we find out. Some powerful scenes in there.


I mean, they started to go in a direction with this scene:

eUjExYH.gif


then abandoned that completely from that point forward and never re-examine it. You would think that they would touch base with it towards the end, but they never actually went there. I was almost expecting the sign language to be different in the final scene between them but nope....

Probably, the most powerful scene in the movie was the final scene between Ishida and Nishimiya as elementary school classmates when they
got into a fight in the empty classroom. I was very uncomfortable during that scene watching the two of them go at it, Nishimiya almost looked to be fighting for her life during the whole thing, while Ishida just kept blaming her for being aggressive, like WTF... I had to stop watching for a second when is was over. It was a VERY powerful scene...


Additionally, On the residing issue for the story:
Why
did they never discuss the suicide attempts by Ishida after the fact? Why did he never share his experiences with Nishimiya? Even after it was over, they never talked about it. Huge story gap there.

Almost felt like NHK for a moment....


Clov said:
I'll see if I can manage to watch A Silent Voice tonight. I've really been looking forward to watching it!
Click to expand...

It's very much worth your time....
 
H

Heysoos

Member
Sword Oratoria 1-2

I thought this was mainly supposed to be Ais, but it seems like that Lefiya chick is the main character... Not digging it so far.
 
Cornbread78

Cornbread78

Member
BGBW said:
Since more people have seen it now I guess I can finally ask.
Was anyone else caught off guard when the OP song started playing?
Click to expand...

Hell yeah, especially since it doesn't match any of the themes of the show after the first 20 mins and all the characters are introduced..


Heysoos said:
Sword Oratoria 1-2
I thought this was mainly supposed to be Ais, but it seems like that Lefiya chick is the main character... Not digging it so far.
Click to expand...

It's not as "fun" as the original series, but Ais' party as a whole is a pretty interesting. Unch to watch.
 
B

BGBW

Maturity, bitches.
Also, Ishida's two friends: we see one working on a food stand and he apparently was there to help after the fall, but the chubby one just disappears forever. What was his story? Perhaps he was the silent voice all along.
 
D

duckroll

Member
hosannainexcelsis said:
I can't agree. Takemoto is a very skilled director, for sure, but he's never directed anything as good as Tamako Love Story or A Silent Voice.
Click to expand...

Because Takemoto would never let him direct something that obvious. I'm not saying this to troll, but I think Takemoto has a nuance that Yamada lacks. She is expressive in different ways and that helps a lot when a story requires a certain dynamic, especially an eventual cathartic release. But I've never seen Yamada direct something just just allows the audience to get as much out of a piece as they decide to put effort into appreciating. I feel that way about both Fumoffu and Hyouka.
 
S

Syrinx

Member
Aikatsu Stars! 57

Kirara has an ego the size of the sun, and needless to say, she learned it from Elza, who probably reads Ayn Rand books.

How is this show gonna make me hate Elza even more?
 
H

hosannainexcelsis

Member
Jarmel said:
Even just ignoring Silent Voice, the second season of Euphonium is filled to the brim with melodrama. Yamada does melodrama probably more than any of the other directors at the studio.

Edit: Hell there's the awful stuff in S1 of K-On and even S2 of K-On has a few patches.
Click to expand...

I love the show, but there's more excessive melodrama in Hyouka than in K-ON, Tamako Market/Love Story, or A Silent Voice. (Season 2 of Sound Euphonium is indeed rather over-the-top in its melodrama, which is why I'm not particularly fond of it, but it's hard for me to know whether to blame Yamada specifically for that or to blame others such as Tatsuya "Mr. Key" Ishihara. I know people like to forget about Ishihara, since no one likes him, but technically he was the head honcho on both Sound Euphonium seasons!) I think what helps is that Yamada is so focused on indirect expression, such as her famous fixation on the expressive qualities of legs, used to great effect throughout A Silent Voice. Because of this awareness of out-of-the-way details, it feels like Yamada is able to approach her subjects from a wide variety of angles as opposed to tackling things head-on directly, as both Ishihara and Takemoto as the oldest generation of KyoAni directors have a tendency to do. A lot of this comes down to personal aesthetic preference, but Naoko Yamada, especially in her film work, embodies exactly the kind of ambitious, sensitive, imaginative, warm, expressive, out-of-the-box director that I admire and adore. The filmmaking of A Silent Voice is the kind of filmmaking I want to see, not just within Japanese animation, but in general.
 
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