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On October 22 2016 13:38 Zergneedsfood wrote: Slaine really didn't do anything wrong though.
Only true for s1 though. In s2 he just didn't make sense anymore. I guess you could argue he didn't do anything wrong but it was the writers fault for writing his actions in a way that they completely contradict each other.
I only watched S1. xD
Though, I do remember for a while, having not watched s2, I just went to the mal subforums and started spamming that he had done nothing wrong with a couple of people.
I was pretty quick to pull the trick on Godwin's Law.
Yeah I remember you told me to do that as well, when I said here that he had done nothing wrong or so. I might have posted it a couple of times on MAL, lol.
Another great girlish number episode. I feel kind of bad for that ln writer but at the same time, not really. Also lol chitose getting owned throughout the ep. Maybe she does suck at a lot of things but her brother is right that at least she has good snark.
On October 22 2016 10:50 Slaughter wrote: In light of the recent uproar over Shelter.
I actually just now watched Shelter too. It was a pleasant experience. Seems to be one of those things that leaves a fair bit of wiggle room for the viewer to unconsciously fill in with what they want. I guess that is why so many people got really attached to it perhaps.
As a side note about ZNF's review: How much of your "controversial" reviews are true critiques and how much of them are just pure salt baits? Or perhaps you express your actual ideas but in a way that will maximize salt production? The undercurrent of your review has some valid things to say from someone who holds a similar perspective to you but it seems to be bundled in hyperbole designed to manufacture salt.
ZNF already responded to you but I liked this post from him more since there's less "omg, I'd rather watch all of Naruto than 6 minutes of Shelter" (come on lol)
Okay, I didn't write the review to literally piss everyone off.
Maybe with my score, I purposefully chose to do that, but I legit think this music video perfectly captures in six minutes everything that I don't like about anime.
And maybe it's philosophical in nature, and my objection is not necessarily to the video but what it represents, and why I think people should be rejecting it as something that we shouldn't accept as an animated experience. I know a lot of people are saying "yes, this is why I watch anime," to which my response is "no, this is not how I want to watch my anime."
I don't want my anime to be an array of flashy colors, brilliantly animated vistas but are emotionally empty and lacking in any sort of logic, where I have to fiat a relationship and feel sympathy for a pair of characters based solely on their dignified affectionate interactions with one another. The redditor in question asks, "would I be sad if my father died?" Well, no fucking shit, but I've known my father my entire life. I don't know whoever this guy is. All I know is he's some smart genius professor who didn't put in a second seat and has doomed his daughter to a potential lifetime of solitude and loneliness.
But that glaring error is glossed over by one of the most pathetic uses of the word "arigatou," I have ever seen in my life, a total submission of gratitude to a lifetime of solitude that is done not because there is any rationale, not because there is any sort of real substantive connection that I can tangibly discern, not because I can empathize with the girl's admission that her father had done the right thing and left her alone, but because the story itself chooses to do so as a means of trying to barrage me with conjured up emotions of that bittersweet tragedy, of a loneliness that I feel is completely unnecessary.
What I mean by this is that this represents everything that anime shouldn't be. It is the replacement of what used to be my favorite aspect of anime. The subtlety. The implication of little actions, feats, and gestures. I think someone mentioned Junichiro Tanizaki's In Praise of Shadows the other day, and I think there's something meaningful there. That while the West is concerned with light/clarity and illuminating the truth, the Japanese fictional style is concerned primarily with the shadow of that truth, what lies beneath it. It is the simple, the economic, the modest that makes anime extraordinary.
My favorite anime are things like Hourou Musuko. The Tatami Galaxy. These are simple and economic in their stories, but there is so much to be said about the little things. The small glances from person to person. Slight gestures, permutations of meetings that we have seen before. There is an innate and extraordinary beauty in the ability for an anime to use its raw simplicity, juxtaposed against a set of creative visuals, and tell us a compelling story.
What we have in Shelter is everything but that. It is an explosion of superb animation, but the subtle tones, which are self-contradictory in and of themselves, are ignored by grandiose gestures of familial affection, a long diatribe by the main girl's father that is placed deliberately for us to contemplate on, that adds nothing but an affirmation of what we already knew from the rest of the video, that a father most obviously will love his daughter and wish her strength and wellness. The obvious has superseded the subtle, which should never happen.
@Xykko will appreciate this, but Pessoa wrote a poem that I think fits here. It's his most famous poem (or so I'm told), by the name of Autopsychography.
The poet is a man who feigns And feigns so thoroughly, at last He manages to feign as pain The pain he really feels,
And those who read what once he wrote Feel clearly, in the pain they read, Neither of the pains he felt, Only a pain they cannot sense.
And thus, around its jolting track There runs, to keep our reason busy, The circling clockwork train of ours That men agree to call a heart.
What I think Pessoa says here that I think is most applicable is the idea of the poet, or perhaps the writer in this instance, feigning an emotion, giving us a muted, distorted, or unrealistic feeling that isn't true to life.
And thus when I come across something like Shelter, I do not feel any of the emotions attempted to be conveyed, only the semblance of an emotion that I know that it is trying to tell me to feel.
It lacks genuineness. It lacks humility, humanity, depth, and any other "buzzword" people will accuse me of throwing in there.
Like, I'm not kidding when I said I was offended by this. For someone who says he is a big fan of anime/Japan, he has produced something here that cuts me to my core. It is an affront to everything I believe anime should be about.
On October 22 2016 12:50 Zergneedsfood wrote: What do you mean by how many of my controversial reviews?
I've literally only written one review that's "controversial" and it's this one.
Also, I'm 100% serious about everything I wrote in that one. Shelter's awful. Worst thing I've ever seen and is probably the only anime where I legit never want to ever see footage of it ever again. If you gave me a choice between watching Shelter or Mars of Destruction, I will legit take the latter. + Show Spoiler +
If you gave me a choice between watching Shelter or rewatching the end of School Days for an hour, I would watch the latter. If you gave me a choice between watching Shelter or watching the entirety of the Naruto series backwards, I would choose the latter. I would be okay reading Kuso Miso technique on repeat for a week rather than rewatching Shelter.
In six minutes, it managed to represent almost everything that is wrong with anime, aka "let's just throw some stunning visuals and pretend that we're trying to tell a valuable story."
It's lazy, it's cheap, and as harsh as it sounds, it lacks any semblance of humanity and gives us the caricature of a human being, who I still strongly assume people identify with because she appears powerless and vulnerable. Even as a fan of moe, this is just the abuse of moe in its most grotesque fashion precisely because it actually tries to pretend that it's giving us something of substance and telling us a "serious" emotional story about our precious relationships/memories with others.
Name any short that tackles the stuff Shelter is trying to deal with. House of Cubes. Furiko. Pale Cocoon. All of them at least give us substance that is not superficial and doesn't cut corners by designing some cute character (girl or boy, mind you) and making that cute character do cute things and expects us to take the story seriously as an emotional experience
.
Lmfao. I knew this wall of text sounded very similar to something i read yesterday.. Oh yeah, that was the top rated(?) review on myanimelist i accidentally stumbled upon yesterday.
On October 22 2016 20:34 Zergneedsfood wrote: Wait Miragee have you been keeping up with the Bernard anime? lol
Some of the stuff has actually been kind of smile worthy.
You told me to watch it so I watch it.
In all seriousness though, it's only 3 minutes. I can rather bear utter trash that is only 3 minutes per episode and gives me a laugh once in a while than watching some arguably decent show with 20 minutes per episode that just bores me to death. It's more like me being "heck, it's only 3 minutes per episode so I might as well watch the whole thing".
On October 22 2016 21:47 Toadesstern wrote: I'm actually pretty impressed that you didn't drop twintails. Doesn't seem to me like a thing you'd enjoy
Tbh I'm using that one for the 2016 watching challenge since someone told me that september isn't summer season so my entry was invalid. Twintails was kind of funny in the beginning and I had a few laughs. It got a bit stale after a while and the same sexual jokes are getting old, granted that they weren't even funny in the first place. It's only 1 more episode to go though, so I will be fine I think.^^
That's largely because Oscar people don't watch anything animated though lol. Pretty sure some of them gone on record saying that even. Oscars are nice for the people in the industry but they really don't have any value in proving quality.
On October 22 2016 23:51 Numy wrote: That's largely because Oscar people don't watch anything animated though lol. Pretty sure some of them gone on record saying that even. Oscars are nice for the people in the industry but they really don't have any value in proving quality.
Pretty hard to take it seriously then. That'd be like me giving out an award for "Girl Who Gives the Best Sex." I wouldn't really have a lot to choose from.
On October 23 2016 00:47 Slaughter wrote: I don't even think the Oscars has a animated short category?
Apparently Shelter did its job as art. Provoking such vitriol and affection at the same time lol~
They do. As well as Animated feature film.
Last year The Tale of the Princess Kaguya was nominated and this year it was When Marnie Was There. Every year it seems that Disney related films win the animated film oscar. Go figure..
Watched Shelter, it's not really bad or anything, probably about average, maybe slightly more or less. I liked the music and felt like it fit really well with the overall video. I haven't watched other shorts to compare it to so in that small time period, it did present an issue and tried to tell her story. Story wasn't the most fleshed out though but that could've also been part of it too, left up to interpretation. Either way, I don't think there's a point in digging deeper. Definitely not the worst thing I watched compared to full length anime such as M3, comet lucifer and endride.
Full Metal Panic next Fall, time to get hype! Dancing Very Merry Christmas is going to be an Audio Drama, apparently, so I guess they'll jump right into Continuing On My Own? Plz give me BOMF, Xebec
On October 23 2016 00:47 Slaughter wrote: I don't even think the Oscars has a animated short category?
Apparently Shelter did its job as art. Provoking such vitriol and affection at the same time lol~
They do. As well as Animated feature film.
Last year The Tale of the Princess Kaguya was nominated and this year it was When Marnie Was There. Every year it seems that Disney related films win the animated film oscar. Go figure..
Yeah, I remember when some shitty CGI disney movie won the year Princess Kaguya was nominated. Quality really doesn't matter. Those who decide over there don't watch asian animations or any at all and just pick the one that sounds familiar.
On October 22 2016 23:51 Numy wrote: That's largely because Oscar people don't watch anything animated though lol. Pretty sure some of them gone on record saying that even. Oscars are nice for the people in the industry but they really don't have any value in proving quality.
EPT
