Gargantia, why do you do this to me?
Long silence... I need to just own up to this basically being an anime blog for the time being; I still feel bad/reticent, like my blabbering about that stuff is somehow imposing on my f-list, but wth...
So, Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet. It's my favorite show of the season, and it's also the most vexing. I would like to see the writing credits broken down by episode, because this thing seriously reads like it's being passed back and forth between two people who aren't quite on the same page as to what kind of show it's supposed to be. One of these two --- I'll call them Writer J (eps 1, 2, and 4) --- seems to be taking some genre trappings and repurposing them into a grounded, sensitive take on the Dances with Wolves sub-genre as Ledo gradually and naturally grows toward the humanity that was denied him in his place of origin. The other one, whom I'll call Writer H (eps 3 and 5), seems to have a certain task to complete each episode and heads for it along a route scenic with genre-fan pandering. I like one of these writers much better than the other one. Indeed, Writer J's stuff is the kind of thing I want to show to everybody I know --- and then Writer H's stuff crops up and I don't really want to be seen in public with it. It's still my favorite thing going except for maybe Chihayafuru, but (just to point out what I did there) the Jekyll & Hyde quality is deeply vexing.
I actually dropped Attack on Titan after the first two episodes; I think it was the ham-fisted emotional cues that did me in. Yes, seeing people bug their eyes out and yell (and optionally stream tears) got old and/or unintentionally funny.
I'm still sticking with everything else that made it out of the first impressions round. Hataraku Maou-sama! is still brilliant; it manages to keep its humor fresh and even incorporate drama and action without bogging down. I still love Red Data Girl, too, but I acknowledge that it takes some effort on my part; it's an awesome show, but it doesn't really seem to care that people are watching it and would like to get close and understand it. Devil Survivor 2 and Karneval remain intensely average but interesting enough to follow; DS2 at least has polish going for it (it also manages to interest me in the game; I see a lot of people saying the game is even better); Karneval really doesn't (it's like that show has no sense of timing and doesn't know how to bring a moment off with flourish even), but I'm not wanting to drop it.
And then in back-catalog stuff, I'm currently about a quarter of the way into Legend of the Galactic Heroes. Yeah, I went there.
Mainly though, I wanted to bellyache about Gargantia being charming but untrustworthy...
‡ original post at Dreamwidth ‡
So, Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet. It's my favorite show of the season, and it's also the most vexing. I would like to see the writing credits broken down by episode, because this thing seriously reads like it's being passed back and forth between two people who aren't quite on the same page as to what kind of show it's supposed to be. One of these two --- I'll call them Writer J (eps 1, 2, and 4) --- seems to be taking some genre trappings and repurposing them into a grounded, sensitive take on the Dances with Wolves sub-genre as Ledo gradually and naturally grows toward the humanity that was denied him in his place of origin. The other one, whom I'll call Writer H (eps 3 and 5), seems to have a certain task to complete each episode and heads for it along a route scenic with genre-fan pandering. I like one of these writers much better than the other one. Indeed, Writer J's stuff is the kind of thing I want to show to everybody I know --- and then Writer H's stuff crops up and I don't really want to be seen in public with it. It's still my favorite thing going except for maybe Chihayafuru, but (just to point out what I did there) the Jekyll & Hyde quality is deeply vexing.
I actually dropped Attack on Titan after the first two episodes; I think it was the ham-fisted emotional cues that did me in. Yes, seeing people bug their eyes out and yell (and optionally stream tears) got old and/or unintentionally funny.
I'm still sticking with everything else that made it out of the first impressions round. Hataraku Maou-sama! is still brilliant; it manages to keep its humor fresh and even incorporate drama and action without bogging down. I still love Red Data Girl, too, but I acknowledge that it takes some effort on my part; it's an awesome show, but it doesn't really seem to care that people are watching it and would like to get close and understand it. Devil Survivor 2 and Karneval remain intensely average but interesting enough to follow; DS2 at least has polish going for it (it also manages to interest me in the game; I see a lot of people saying the game is even better); Karneval really doesn't (it's like that show has no sense of timing and doesn't know how to bring a moment off with flourish even), but I'm not wanting to drop it.
And then in back-catalog stuff, I'm currently about a quarter of the way into Legend of the Galactic Heroes. Yeah, I went there.
Mainly though, I wanted to bellyache about Gargantia being charming but untrustworthy...
‡ original post at Dreamwidth ‡