For The Sake of a Good Story
I said I'd be back on the 25th. Well, work called and I'm needed. So, I do have a post for your today, but I'll be radio silent for another week after this.
I don’t usually direct quote users on other sites, etc. But I think this poster hits a critical point. Scroll down to the post by Kaioshin_Sama at this link. It should be near the bottom. Pay particular attention to their second paragraph.
Kaioshin effectively sums up the problem I generally have with the series mentioned. Each of those series – the Monogatari series, Muv-Luv: Total Eclipse, and Aquarion Evol – is a show that should have been alright in concept but failed in execution. The reason? On execution the writers, directors, producers choose to take odd tangents, introduce bizarre, off-topic, ideas or developments, seemingly for the mere purpose of it being shocking or controversial.
There’s not a lot wrong with shocking moments in a series. But it has to be purposeful and cogent to the story. It has to be embedded in the story itself as a meaningful part of the story, not something that’s just done for its own sake.
I look at Sakura Kiss for this winter season of anime. If you took out the novelty that the relationship was established from episode one, or the depiction of the participants actually kissing, there wouldn’t be much about this series of note at all. Even the yuri element, which many seem apt to mark as a reason for the show's buzz, isn’t really a reason for any buzz given how relatively common the meme is in Japanese anime. In fact, if you limit the comparison of Sakura Kiss to just yuri anime, it fails to even rank that high among those in terms of storytelling, animation quality, or anything – and when you’re including series like Strawberry Panic, you’re talking about series more than a decade old that at least should run even. So it's not the first yuri series, and not the best, at all.
The fact is, Sakura Kiss is a show that seems to overcompensate for its lack of a good, compelling story, or otherwise interesting characters, by way of having the main characters making out nearly every episode, sometimes multiple times per episode. It tries too hard for the ladies to be cute and endearing. There is no practical reason for it. It doesn’t change things about the story as it’s presented or anything more than give people something to chatter about. But as you might notice, that effect dropped off rather quickly once the show grew older. Essentially they oversold their bid, overplaying their hand. It didn’t take long for many people to see their efforts for what they were.
Kill la Kill is similar. The depiction of the fights, the reactions of the characters, particularly Mako, are all completely over-the-top, especially in the early going where the NSC (non story critical) characters were thrown like rag dolls from the shock waves of the battles. But for Kill la Kill the show is deftly aware of its over-the-top nature and in many regards shines a light on how absurd it is. They don't try to pretend their absurdity is anything but absurd.
Golden Time dances (pun intended) close to the same territory of shock for shock’s sake. But the difference here is that, while extraordinary, its antics are feasible for the story itself and serve an artistic purpose in the storytelling. The idea of a person suffering amnesia, their life afflicted by their past-self sabotaging their current-self, is befit to shocking and bizarre moments. But within the story of Golden Time, it is cogent to advancing the basic story. It is part of what makes the story special and is imperative to the story’s dynamic. Remove it and the story all but falls apart.
This spring anime season will have a lot of series (nearly 60 by some measures). That means a lot of competition. That means to be successful a show has to stand out. Invariably some shows will resort to gimmicks to gain that attention. They will try to do something that is ancillary to the story they’re telling, that is like trying too hard to be relevant, whether that is being just a little too much on the eechi side, or just blowing up a lot of stuff for no reason other than to make it flashy. Some will manage to be entertaining with or without this. But know that any show that plays up too much to these gimmicks will likely be much worse for it.
I don’t usually direct quote users on other sites, etc. But I think this poster hits a critical point. Scroll down to the post by Kaioshin_Sama at this link. It should be near the bottom. Pay particular attention to their second paragraph.
Kaioshin effectively sums up the problem I generally have with the series mentioned. Each of those series – the Monogatari series, Muv-Luv: Total Eclipse, and Aquarion Evol – is a show that should have been alright in concept but failed in execution. The reason? On execution the writers, directors, producers choose to take odd tangents, introduce bizarre, off-topic, ideas or developments, seemingly for the mere purpose of it being shocking or controversial.
There’s not a lot wrong with shocking moments in a series. But it has to be purposeful and cogent to the story. It has to be embedded in the story itself as a meaningful part of the story, not something that’s just done for its own sake.
I look at Sakura Kiss for this winter season of anime. If you took out the novelty that the relationship was established from episode one, or the depiction of the participants actually kissing, there wouldn’t be much about this series of note at all. Even the yuri element, which many seem apt to mark as a reason for the show's buzz, isn’t really a reason for any buzz given how relatively common the meme is in Japanese anime. In fact, if you limit the comparison of Sakura Kiss to just yuri anime, it fails to even rank that high among those in terms of storytelling, animation quality, or anything – and when you’re including series like Strawberry Panic, you’re talking about series more than a decade old that at least should run even. So it's not the first yuri series, and not the best, at all.
The fact is, Sakura Kiss is a show that seems to overcompensate for its lack of a good, compelling story, or otherwise interesting characters, by way of having the main characters making out nearly every episode, sometimes multiple times per episode. It tries too hard for the ladies to be cute and endearing. There is no practical reason for it. It doesn’t change things about the story as it’s presented or anything more than give people something to chatter about. But as you might notice, that effect dropped off rather quickly once the show grew older. Essentially they oversold their bid, overplaying their hand. It didn’t take long for many people to see their efforts for what they were.
Kill la Kill is similar. The depiction of the fights, the reactions of the characters, particularly Mako, are all completely over-the-top, especially in the early going where the NSC (non story critical) characters were thrown like rag dolls from the shock waves of the battles. But for Kill la Kill the show is deftly aware of its over-the-top nature and in many regards shines a light on how absurd it is. They don't try to pretend their absurdity is anything but absurd.
Golden Time dances (pun intended) close to the same territory of shock for shock’s sake. But the difference here is that, while extraordinary, its antics are feasible for the story itself and serve an artistic purpose in the storytelling. The idea of a person suffering amnesia, their life afflicted by their past-self sabotaging their current-self, is befit to shocking and bizarre moments. But within the story of Golden Time, it is cogent to advancing the basic story. It is part of what makes the story special and is imperative to the story’s dynamic. Remove it and the story all but falls apart.
This spring anime season will have a lot of series (nearly 60 by some measures). That means a lot of competition. That means to be successful a show has to stand out. Invariably some shows will resort to gimmicks to gain that attention. They will try to do something that is ancillary to the story they’re telling, that is like trying too hard to be relevant, whether that is being just a little too much on the eechi side, or just blowing up a lot of stuff for no reason other than to make it flashy. Some will manage to be entertaining with or without this. But know that any show that plays up too much to these gimmicks will likely be much worse for it.
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