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Spring Anime 2017 |OT| Don't be a SukaSuka for Gacha
- Thread starter TUSR
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I think this is pretty much the only thing I like in Kado. The premise is good enough and there were certainly some bizarre developments over the past few episodes. However, the execution is very lacking and pretty much anything else is unappealing, if not downright terrible. Especially the characters, I very much agree with ibyea's post. The reactions on Kado make me think that people are just thirsty for a sci-fi anime, and they're willing to excuse its missteps, because I can't justify the (seemingly) positive reception.
John Blade
Member
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2im6ka2UoQ
I don't know what to say......a good watch if you like ice skating.
I don't know what to say......a good watch if you like ice skating.
Jex
Member
I don't disagree with anything here. I was going to write something similar after the last episode, but never got around to it. My biggest gripe with the show is that it's got a simplistic view of everything: people, work, science, the media, geopolitics - but it wraps itself up in the clothes of a 'serious' work.
It's a truly pretentious series.
nintendoman58
Member
Aaaaannnd there goes any and all interest I had in watching this.
I'd like to hear your thoughts on those topics. I've heard from others on the other two.
dickroach
Member
I think y'all are just thinking too much about Kado.
the story's about what this alien actually came to earth for, and the "character who's given nothing to do" is apparently going to be leading the i don't trust this weirdo movement. the I've created a thing that can help humanity but ends up causing problems is one of the oldest sci-fi tropes.
and with the politics, society, media, etc....
it's not actively presenting anything where they're saying and here's the problem with X, they're just letting this story roll along and any message you want to take away from it is up to you.
I've watched pretentious shit before. Kado isn't pretentious
and the cube looks so cool
the story's about what this alien actually came to earth for, and the "character who's given nothing to do" is apparently going to be leading the i don't trust this weirdo movement. the I've created a thing that can help humanity but ends up causing problems is one of the oldest sci-fi tropes.
and with the politics, society, media, etc....
it's not actively presenting anything where they're saying and here's the problem with X, they're just letting this story roll along and any message you want to take away from it is up to you.
I've watched pretentious shit before. Kado isn't pretentious
and the cube looks so cool
Disregards a show when one person says it's bad.
Never watches a show when multiple persons say it's good.
I kid.
Or do I?
MetroidPrimeRib
Banned
Kado feels like a two parter Star Trek TNG episode without Picard
nintendoman58
Member
Disregards a show when one person says it's bad.
Never watches a show when multiple persons say it's good.
I kid.Or do I?
Quality > Quantity
Hellwarden
Member
GoldCrusader
Member
Lord Jexhius has spoken!Disregards a show when one person says it's bad.
Never watches a show when multiple persons say it's good.
I kid.Or do I?
It is kind of funny.
NaDannMaGoGo
Member
Having rewatched parts of AoT ep31 and a bunch of other scenes unreasonably often I've just got to praise Reiner's voice actor for his performance. He, that is Yoshimasa Hosoya, is seriously killing it.
MikeHattsu
Member
Oh yea, I am watching this too.
SliceSabre
Banned
Fluffy Centaur is not lewd!
That just Emilia from Re:Zero
Slightly older eromanga-sensei? ;P
If I didn't know better I'd say this is next season's lewd comedy. Hmmm....
Disregards a show when one person says it's bad.
Never watches a show when multiple persons say it's good.
I kid.Or do I?
Listening to others without coming to that conclusion himself.
Bwong.
NaDannMaGoGo
Member
Maybe we didn't know better as people here were just overselling their smut!
MikeHattsu
Member
Valdfellgar
Banned
I'm of two minds when it comes to Kado. On the one hand I think it's potentially a slow build show. It's already proven itself disinterested in escalation, one of the primary tenants of compelling entertainment. Every good series gradually ups the stakes and the tension, and the best series, in my opinion, tend not to let up, constantly throwing a cascade of problems at our heroes for them to surmount and defeat.
Trouble is Kado is way more interested in its idea, about the anisotropic and it's affect on humanity and our civilization. It spends a lot more time considering and working around logistics, rather than the human drama, which, well, is generally what most people watch entertainment for.
After last week's episode I do wonder if we're maybe going to finally get some real tension and pay off for all the work it's been doing up till now. But because the show seems so disinterested in that already, I think more likely the series is going to continue on this path of logistics and exploring its base concept rather than try to deal with the real drama that might spring from that.
In some ways the series feels realistic, as in that things don't really escalate the way we'd like in dramatic entertainment. But in others it feels perhaps too optimistic that various issues just blow over and so many characters seem to be less at odds with each other, or skeptical of the alien than they should be.
As we get further into the series I really begin to wonder what was even the point of Episode 0. At first I thought Episode 0 was a way to dole out important character information for anyone interested and allow the series to otherwise take a strong plot focus. But what's come after all that leads me to feel like Episode 0 really doesn't matter. At all.
I'm not as negative as most people seem to be here, but I can't say I'm not feeling disappointed in the series, especially when it had such a strong, mysterious and engaging start. I don't know that I would go so far as to cal it pretentious, but it certainly lacks the depth one might have expected from what initially felt like a 'hard scifi' anime.
The way I currently see it is that Kado is a fun exploration of a concept, focused on the logistics of what happens when humanity is introduced alien technology that could catapult our way of life forward significantly. But I think there's a really limited appeal there and without smarter writing Kado feels kinda hollow.
Trouble is Kado is way more interested in its idea, about the anisotropic and it's affect on humanity and our civilization. It spends a lot more time considering and working around logistics, rather than the human drama, which, well, is generally what most people watch entertainment for.
After last week's episode I do wonder if we're maybe going to finally get some real tension and pay off for all the work it's been doing up till now. But because the show seems so disinterested in that already, I think more likely the series is going to continue on this path of logistics and exploring its base concept rather than try to deal with the real drama that might spring from that.
In some ways the series feels realistic, as in that things don't really escalate the way we'd like in dramatic entertainment. But in others it feels perhaps too optimistic that various issues just blow over and so many characters seem to be less at odds with each other, or skeptical of the alien than they should be.
As we get further into the series I really begin to wonder what was even the point of Episode 0. At first I thought Episode 0 was a way to dole out important character information for anyone interested and allow the series to otherwise take a strong plot focus. But what's come after all that leads me to feel like Episode 0 really doesn't matter. At all.
I'm not as negative as most people seem to be here, but I can't say I'm not feeling disappointed in the series, especially when it had such a strong, mysterious and engaging start. I don't know that I would go so far as to cal it pretentious, but it certainly lacks the depth one might have expected from what initially felt like a 'hard scifi' anime.
The way I currently see it is that Kado is a fun exploration of a concept, focused on the logistics of what happens when humanity is introduced alien technology that could catapult our way of life forward significantly. But I think there's a really limited appeal there and without smarter writing Kado feels kinda hollow.
It was late at night and I couldn't even think that much. No, it more like started with an uneasy feeling, and ended with me feeling very put off by this show. I didn't even know what I hated about this show, and it took me a long while for me to process why I hated it. So I wasn't thinking too deeply when I hated it. I am not actively looking to hate on shows that I watch.
They better not put all that weird shit from the manga in the anime. Keep it out. Put in the lesbians, the imoutos, and the snake girl and I'll be happy.
See, the show is disingenuous in those aspects. It's trying to deal with the effect the wam being introduced into society, which along with it contains themes of the dangers of nationalism. But underlying the whole thing, there is an obnoxious "Fuck yeah Japan!" vibe to it that totally muddles what the show is trying to tell, along with a thoroughly botched representation of international relations where the other side are just outright the villain. And personally, I think you can't separate the human part from the logistic parts. If you want to tell a story of how humans would react to first contact, then you should have humans dealing with it, not idealistic machines as their stand in.
PshycoNinja
Member
Slightly older eromanga-sensei? ;P
Oh snap. You're right.
No thank you.
I just don't have much of an issue with those points. The scientist character served her purpose and the show was self-aware enough that while she did clash with the tone of the anime, it enhanced the point they were making. The depiction of Japan is so utterly harmless that I don't feel it's worth being upset over. Every country's media depicts their own country in a positive light. Look at Arrival for example where it was the Americans who pretty much broke the language even if there were negative factions inside the country itself. Unless it's particularly egregious like in GATE's case, I don't think it's a particularly big deal either way.
The depiction of the other Japanese negotiator is a problem so far but the show is going somewhere with her so I'm in a holding pattern on her.
This isn't pretentious. I think the show just doesn't have the time it needs to go into the complexity it wants at certain junctions. I don't think it would be a better work if the UN spent two or three additional episodes fleshing out the politics of Wam. I'm again thinking of Arrival that largely just brushes off international depictions because nobody wants to watch a committee argue about long term effects or ramifications of a technology. So it's better to just speed through that stuff even if the complexity isn't all there.
It's a single cour trying to tell a Childhood's End sort of story so I feel it's acceptable to breeze through certain elements to tell the story they want.
I am not too sure what the consequences are though. So far my experience with the show has been that a complicated problem is presented, a simplistic solution is found, and nothing really occurs on the other side of that. There is no real hardship, struggle, or change. Things just kind of....happen with no real result or follow-through. The international incident and the introduction of infinite energy sources was especially egregious in this regard. I'm just not really sure what the show has going for it other than the premise.
hosannainexcelsis
Member
I feel like the writer knows things aren't as simple as they appear here - there are offhanded comments made a couple times that raise good potential issues with the scenario being presented - but the show leaves them as offhanded comments and shrinks away from actually engaging with them. Perhaps the director/producers aren't interested in going too far down the road they're on.
The anime looks pretty bland, which is about what I expected. Oh well.
Well, I can answer the science part. Firstly, physicists are overrated as heck in a first contact situation. Not to mention I hate the insinuation that physicists are the "smart" scientists. Anyways, I don't think it's asking much get a variety of scientists to work on this sort of situation. Science is a collaborative effort. This lone genius trope is all just a mythologizing of science. Which okay, this is like in a lot of science fiction and stuff, so normally I wouldn't begrudge them for it.
But then they went ahead and did that scene with the paper folding, and fuck me, that scene was unbearable in its smugness. It's a scene that on the surface looks so clever, but in reality it's freaking stupid. It's the vision of science from a child's perspective. It's the sort of crap that just outright smashes all pretense that it is "grounded", and it's nothing but hot air. At least in other shows with shallow representation of science, they understand that what scientists do are detective work, but this show couldn't even be bothered with that. Furthermore, this situation makes me think if like Shindou, if we are even dealing with a person here. What is this thing that just looks at these spheres and just go, okay it's just shapes!? This is the ideal of a scientist, not a real scientist, And even then, it's more like the ideal of a robot whose programming is some twisted idea of "science". They took the idea of genius so far that it made her look an obnoxious inhuman who thoroughly flaunts the concept of professionalism when this delicate situation is precisely the situation where professionalism is very important.
Valdfellgar
Banned
I don't know that I really agree yet that there's a significant undertone of nationalism. We do see some small hints that while the Japanese government is all buddy buddy with the alien, there are people in Japan hardly thrilled with the situation. I think the bigger trouble is Kado is so focused trying to tell its story on a larger scale, with its human characters more as vehicles for the ideas than the people themselves, that it loses a lot of the details that would make it more overtly interesting.
I think you're right that there's an inherent contradiction with trying to deal with the effects of Wam and Sansa (Not that one) but diminishing the significance society's reaction might play. The human component is important to a first contact story, though I think there's still potential interest to be had with the core concept itself and the macroscopic story it's trying to tell.
I'm waiting to pass a final judgement though. I'm still enjoying it, but I think it was episode 7 when I really started to feel like Kado was losing me.
See, I thought I was being unfair to the show regarding that, but then I remembered the explanation the alien gave as to why they landed on Japan, the way the UN looks thoroughly like a villain, and Japan has the noble prime minister sticking it to those greedy politicians and always thinking about humanity. It just feels bizarrely lopsided in its view points. Edit: In fact, this show is more akin to Independence Day than to Arrival. Except at least Independence Day realizes it's a fun super not serious movie despite the obnoxious "Fuck yeah America!" underlying it.
Is Kado to Japanese politics as Gate is to Japanese military?
I can understand and maybe agree with a lot of criticism against Kado, but pretentious is definitely NOT one of them. I don't think it's pulling a making Japan look so good type of shit that was in GATE but rather dealing with how should people deal with this new entity and energy source. It's not like they're being greedy and hogging it all to themselves as a nation.
I don't know, since I never watched GATE. But at the very least, there is an underlying tone of Japanese exceptionalism that I can't outright ignore.
Valdfellgar
Banned
This makes me want to show the series to my father, a physicist, and see how he reacts to it. Though right now he's watching Game of Thrones from the beginning because he's increasingly unsure the books will ever finish.
I see what you're saying, but I guess for me I don't feel what's here is nasty levels of nationalism. But maybe that'll real it's ugly head more as the series continues.
It's similar. As someone who didn't feel like Gate became a problem until its second season, I don't think Kado is quite there yet.
The show however repeatedly points out that Japan would be just like the UN if the shoe was on the other foot. The UN depiction is probably fairly accurate. The problem has more to do with the Japanese depiction but again media is generally favorable to the host country and the anime does depict that not everybody, inside Japan, is happy with the current scenario.
It's not the type of show though to have those sort of interesting moments. We're not going to get any type of Cuban Missile Crisis scenarios. Yaha by all accounts is seemingly a friendly alien and is doing his best to have humanity adjust to the technology.
Valdfellgar
Banned
Unless he whips out a certain cook book.
Yeah, this is why I compared it to the movie Independence Day. It's not the worst thing ever, but it's fairly obnoxious.
I would be interested in the perspective of a working physicist. My perspective comes from me being a PhD physics student, so I don't know how different it might be.
I actually agree with this assessment. But at the same time there is something about the way the show presents itself that makes me feel like those comments are a kick in the teeth.
Valdfellgar
Banned
I'll see if he's interested and maybe once we're through GoT S1 I'll sub it in and post here with what he says. I'll be curious to see if he reacts as negatively as you, or has a different perspective.
Even in 'thinking' scifi shows/media, American exceptionalism is all over the place. What matters is the extremity to which aspects like these are taken.
hosannainexcelsis
Member
Kado is a "serious" story featuring a cast entirely of adults, and I think some people are so eager to see that kind of story told in anime that they're willing to give the show a lot of goodwill just for going with that kind of premise.
Valdfellgar
Banned
Generally agree with this. Exceptionalism can be hard to notice if you're so used to it in the media you consume. I think it's similar to how foreign viewers complain about Japanese media tropes as if American media is exempt. Not saying everyone does it, just that it's always easier to notice flaws in another cultures writing/work.
I agree that people are giving it a lot of rope/faith that something will build from all its set up. I don't know that it's because people are eager for this kind of story. I think it's more just it had such an intriguing opening that people are willing to give it a lot of room to succeed or fail. The benefits of having a solid/engaging opener rather than having to rule of three it.
I want Kyubey to pop out of one of the cubes.
I agree that even Arrival has a little bit of that. But at least in the example of that movie, it was balanced by collaborations with scientists all over the world, with a fairly balanced view of the nations where even America had its villanous aspect, and with the characters being actual character instead of just being a living embodiment of whatever human trait American culture happened to favor (which in this specific aspect even Independence Day looks better, lol).
Kado is Independence Day level of exceptionalism without the fun of Independence Day and the seriousness and balance of Arrival. It makes for a terrible combo.
Valdfellgar
Banned
We've had a nonsensical word, a game of thrones character, sure, I can see him popping up too.
Look at how the soldiers are viewed in the movie though in that there are maybe three scenes leading up
to the bombing and the soldiers are viewed as your generic Trump supporters. There's little fleshing out their viewpoints and stances and after the bombing is over, it's never really brought up again
Works like Independence Day, any Michael Bay film, or GATE take those elements to a totally different level. Hell we're not seeing characters giving long monologues in front of their country's flag for starters.
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