It's no Gurren Lagann, but S2 of Lagrange is definitely more focused on the politics and their goal of stopping the war. It's not bizarrely flip flopping in tone every other episode anymore. It's not very good, but it's not as much of a mess as S1 was.
I was as hyped for it as anyone here, but S2 has felt fairly lifeless to me in comparison to S1. It's just going through the motions at this point and piling on extra fanservice to obscure this.
I see no reason why the entirety of the game world can't be interesting. The only limitation on the variety of interesting scenarios possible within the world is the ability of the author to create them, so being presented with an enormous virtual world that's lifeless, empty, and repetitive is a disappointment. Really, integrating the personal struggles of the characters within the world with an exploration element would have been an entirely reasonable thing to achieve within the story.
The show has a story to tell and only so much time to tell it. The struggle through the first half of the game would probably be really interesting, but it's not necessary for us to see it. Less is more.
Kirito has been pretty antisocial since the beginning of the game, though. After befriending Keita only to later state his intention not to team up with him, it was clear that Kirito placed so much faith in his own skill due to having been the best beta tester that he was unable to bring himself to cooperate with anyone else. He was finally able to build up enough trust in the abilities of other players to take part in the Floor 1 boss expedition, but this was shattered when everyone turned on him.
Kirito has serious trust and social issues, and these seem to be what lead him to avoid grouping. Go back to the first episode where Keita asks Kirito if he wants to add his bros to his friends list. His reaction tells you everything you need to know.
His actions after defeating the floor one boss were fairly exaggerated and theatrical in nature, but he had no reason to "motivate" people who were ostracizing him out of petty jealousy and irrational fear. Because he was being kicked out of the group anyway, it seemed that he simply made his exit in the most cocky, condescending way possible to strike back at everyone.
Before launching into his performance, he freezes up, has a eureka moment when he thinks of the plan, then gulps as if to swallow his anxiety. If nothing else, Kirito was trying to protect the other beta testers from being vilified for his own perceived failure.
From the way the scene was depicted, it looked like the player who committed suicide did it partially to spite Kirito for being the "cause" of Diabel's death and presumably the later deaths of other people in that party.
All but one of his friends died and he was stuck in a seemingly inescapable world of death. Kirito's "betrayal" was just the straw that broke the camel's back.
The way in which the scene was handled was overkill, is the only problem I have with that. The "trap room" concept was fine, it was just that everyone was totally slaughtered without putting up a fight despite being previously depicted as a skilled, well-prepared guild. It was just too unrealistic for me.
It's no Gurren Lagann, but S2 of Lagrange is definitely more focused on the politics and their goal of stopping the war. It's not bizarrely flip flopping in tone every other episode anymore.
This sure was comedic compared to the super serious start.
Sayaka succesfully subdues a group of Dr. Hell's soldiers when her bikini top falls off and they all fall prey to her bare breasts. Kouji even uses this tactically later on.
Roll & Lori had some of the skimpiest bikinis I've ever seen too.
It's no Gurren Lagann, but S2 of Lagrange is definitely more focused on the politics and their goal of stopping the war. It's not bizarrely flip flopping in tone every other episode anymore. It's not very good, but it's not as much of a mess as S1 was.
Texhnolyze
It wasn't so much that the violence was well done(though it certainly was), but that I was really rooting for Ichise and wanted him to succeed and be happy regardless of what he had to do to achieve it. His existence was just pure suffering up to that point.Even at its worst, the violence never entered the realm of gore-porn. To provide contrast, I couldn't enjoy Blood C nearly as much because the gore made me too uncomfortable to invest myself in the show at all. Texhnolyze managed to avoid that while still being really brutal.
As I say below, Texhnolyze isn't a show like that one, it's a high-end anime which clearly had a lot of thought put into it. Which, yes, is why it hurts so much when you reach the last three episodes -- they go a great job of making you care about the characters, and then...
As for taking it, well...
the show ended up being a lot more FUCK YEAH than I ever expected. After the pure distilled satisfaction of episode 10, the other shoe didn't drop until episode 20 when Doc resigned to staying behind.* Despite the unrelenting nihilism of the last three episodes(Onishi's secretary's story arc and its conclusion hit me really hard), the series isn't as consistently painful as something like School Days.
I mean "could you take it" as in, "with an ending that unrelentingly depressing, how do you feel about the series now..." But I guess you still like it overall, as I also do.
I mean that in a good way, however. A big part of what made Texhnolyze such a great experience was how well-rounded it was. It wasn't at all the one-note show that I was expecting.
*
What was the deal with the water leaking out from under her door in the hotel?
Texhnolyze is a classy show, it shouldn't be put in the same category as those two shows. It really is a high-end show; those two are just stupid violent shock stuff. Texhnolyze does more than that...
But yeah, it's not one-note, you're right. One way I thought of the show, after watching it, is like an RPG. So the characters get to the final boss, and they seem to have a chance...
but they lose and all die, and the villain wins*. Except as the asterisk notes he doesn't really win either, because the girl denies him his greatest wish by killing herself. And with that he has to live on as a frustrated tree, while the MC waits to die, surface world continues on fading away, the end. But up until that moment near the end -- and I'd put it at the battle between the unified city groups and the badguy -- there still seemed to be a chance, maybe, if they could pull it off...
But they couldn't.
Now, the show does have some issues.
Most notably, no reason is ever given for why the surface people are fading away and don't care about life anymore. There are some other unexplained things like this, but that's the biggest one.
And second, the prophecy was that the MC would cause the city's doom, or something, but I didn't see that at all... he wasn't even there when everything happened, he was away failing to get help. By the time he got back it was all over. It felt more to me like he was helpless in the face of events, not that it was his fault or anything. But of course, being helpless in the face of events that cause the deaths of everyone in the city is a huge burden to bear, when you're the one survivor... though I don't expect that he'll be living for too much longer after the end, there.
But overall it was a fantastic series, and I usually can't stand apocalypse series. This one was just done so much better than anything else vaguely like it I've seen (Saikano, for instance... ugh. Bad.).
I think I'm sort of acclimated to the setting as it's like some unabashed jrpg setting and it does a wonderful job by not worrying about the details so to speak. You're either with them or you're not and they don't really care either way.
JRPG setting? I don't know, I can't think of idol concerts with glowsticks in too many fantasy JRPGs, even... I mean, FF10-2 has them, but that's clearly not a fantasy game. I think Dog Days goes beyond even what you usually see in games... though yes, it has happened in other fantasy animes before; Shin Koihime Musou also has idol concerts, for instance. Those other things are even more common.
So yeah, you're right, in anime that stuff is very common, and in games some of it is common. But as I've said before, while that can get me acclimated to that stuff, because I do have expectations that decently designed worlds should make some kind of sense, I consider that just an excuse, not an explanation. That is, it's still going to annoy me at least somewhat, even if they're very common things in the genre, if they don't make sense.
I appreciate part of it for the parody nature of the premise. I mean I've seen this sort of thing before. Rogue whatever from some clan absconds with their secrets and the clan chases them to tie up the loose end. It's just that secret is ridiculous at face value but sort of makes sense given the the extra mile they went with the setting.
Yeah, that basic premise has certainly been done before, and works, but I've never seen this version of the premise, for sure! And I agree, that's part of why it works... it's all fairly well thought through, they just took a historical setting and then completely ignored any semblance of historical accuracy in favor of opposite history of sorts, with magic and stuff too. And it works.
That's the thing, if you get too far up your own ass in terms of detailing every small detail in the universe, then you end up spending way too much time world building than you should.
Eh, I guess, but if you do something like that series described there (Diebuster was it?), you go way too far in the other direction... sure, yes, inventing all kinds of futures stuff is chancey, and you're probably going to be wrong whatever you guess, but come on, it's not going to be EXACTLY like the present, but with spaceships.
And besides, that kind of detail can be fun!
Aria gets away with it since it's basically tourism porn for Venice and most of the things they're coming up with already exist. But imagine trying to fill out a real city in that kind of detail over the course of an anime series or any thing other than a 1000 page novel. It's not advised, that's for sure.
Most notably, no reason is ever given for why the surface people are fading away and don't care about life anymore. There are some other unexplained things like this, but that's the biggest one.
The closest they ever got to anything relating to that was that
humanity was unable to evolve beyond what they had already become, but yeah, they never really said why exactly it was happening. Maybe the stagnation of humanity was a cause for decline because they became too content or something? It's almost as if they threw away all their emotion and gave up trying, which was kinda neat.
If anything, I kinda always thought of that point as something they wanted the viewer to interpret on their own, or at least wanted you to try and surmise on your own why
civilization would ever decline like it did on the surface.
The show has a story to tell and only so much time to tell it. The struggle through the first half of the game would probably be really interesting, but it's not necessary for us to see it. Less is more.
Kirito has serious trust and social issues, and these seem to be what lead him to avoid grouping. Go back to the first episode where Keita asks Kirito if he wants to add his bros to his friends list. His reaction tells you everything you need to know.
That doesn't make any sense.
Before launching into his performance, he freezes up, has a eureka moment when he thinks of the plan, then gulps as if to swallow his anxiety. If nothing else, Kirito was trying to protect the other beta testers from being vilified for his own perceived failure.
All but one of his friends died and he was stuck in a seemingly inescapable world of death. Kirito's "betrayal" was just the straw that broke the camel's back.
It's an MMO, man. Being skilled and well-prepared doesn't mean shit if the enemies are significantly more powerful than you are. It's a numbers game.
Don't get me wrong, Sword Art Online isn't super deep or well-written, but that's what makes your interpretation so baffling.
Yeah, I'm finding that I apparently see Kirito as a much bigger jerk than everyone else does. I'm open to reevaluating his actions, but I'm surprised that the consensus seems to be that I'm wildly off base. Quite honestly, I went into Sword Art Online expecting it to be shamelessly anime and a neverending source of incredulity due to AnimeGAF's collective reaction to Accel World, and so I now realize that I've been interpreting the events of SAO through the most negative lens possible simply due to expectations and not due to what's actually going on in the show.
I still stand by my statement that I wish that SAO was more adventure-focused, but I'll concede the point of Kirito's character for now until I can reevaluate events in a neutral light. Even if he's a good guy I don't feel particularly much for him as a protagonist yet, but that can change with events.
