02-07-2015, 04:44 PM | #26 |
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02-08-2015, 11:24 PM | #27 |
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RELEVANT TO THIS DISCUSSION.
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07-31-2015, 12:41 AM | #28 |
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Surprise! Long time no see! After a string of other distractions, projects, and tasks to attend to, I've circled back around to OreGairu with the intention of polishing off Season 1. I don't currently have any plans to watch Season 2 after I finish Season 1, but I remain hopeful that the second half of Season 1 will be so good as to change my mind.
Episode 07: Spoiler: show
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07-31-2015, 01:41 AM | #29 |
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Oh hey, I'm actually watching this right now too! After plowing through Episodes 5-8 last night, I'm checking out 9 before heading for bed. I've really enjoyed it so far. Humor's right up my ally, and the character's are (almost) all great.
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07-31-2015, 01:50 AM | #30 |
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07-31-2015, 07:43 AM | #31 |
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08-01-2015, 12:47 AM | #32 |
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I wonder if age/maturity has something to do with how we view this series.
Frankly, there is no direct evidence for either side (yet). It's us drawing conclusions about the character thoughts based on how they behave and monologue. Accusations are made by characters on both sides, so it's kind of a half empty half full scenario. That said, as I have matured, I have noticed that my tolerance for slice-of-life has depreciated tremendously. I've lost patience with the "trial and tribulation" nature of discovery that comes with the territory in adolescent fiction. And frankly, some of the issues just irritate me. Overall, I think it's helped to shave me down to a cynical, misanthropic person who likes to make black comedy jokes at the expense of morally sensitive issues. Perhaps I'm projecting my desire for something unique and different onto OreGairu, and I'm seeing things that aren't there. I watched this show independently of my discussion online with it, so I don't think I was influenced by other thoughts as far as considering it a "subversion". Many others independently arrived at that same conclusion. But, this was not the first show I watched that tried to do that - Muv-Luv outright did the same, but had a lot of cues that clued in the viewer that the story was intentionally being cliche. So perhaps there was some projection upon it. It's too bad you don't share this view! But given Hachiman's age, I think it would have been a serious challenge to convince you that Hachiman is a corrupted, fully matured individual and not an edgy teen trying to avoid being emotionally hurt. The nature of the beast in adolescence is going to negatively bias that line of thinking. A disillusioned adult is far easier to accept just on the basis of age. That said, Yukino's sister Haruno is a wicked woman. Her personality is pretty darn bad, even if she's beautiful and smart, too.
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08-01-2015, 07:29 AM | #33 |
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08-01-2015, 03:53 PM | #34 |
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I'd save those questions for once this arc is finished, and if they're not answered then you can raise them as criticism. Because for right now, I think the show is accomplishing what it wants to by frustrating you. It's showing things that don't make sense, but intends to explain them away as those things unravel.
One of the big keys to OreGairu, I think, is that Hachiman comments that the high school romance everyone wants to be a part of isn't as glamorous as it is idealized. Aside from the main clique of characters, that's largely true. I would hate someone like Sagami in real life. My own high school life, while interesting at times, was not nearly as impressive as those in animes. Which I think is a near universal agreement with anyone who watches anime. Perhaps Hachiman is a real world person who knows about anime, but isn't aware he's actually in one, yet?
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08-01-2015, 04:42 PM | #35 |
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08-01-2015, 08:27 PM | #36 |
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08-01-2015, 08:40 PM | #37 |
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Did the episode end with a Yukino-Hachiman conversation?
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08-01-2015, 10:29 PM | #39 |
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08-01-2015, 10:40 PM | #40 |
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A bit tangentially related Talon, but what did you think of Toy Story 3?
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08-02-2015, 05:15 AM | #41 |
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I still haven't gotten a chance to see it.
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08-02-2015, 01:42 PM | #42 |
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I suspect there might be a philosophical difference as to what we value in endings for shows. I see OreGairu's ending as not dissimilar from Natsu no Arashi, both "baby steps" endings that I really love to see, especially when the romance is unconventional and improbable. In certain cases, I like things being left up to the imagination, especially when the writer says something concrete so as to heavily suggest what was happening.
In Natsu no Arashi's case, you have a feeling the romance isn't going to work out. But I want to believe, so I don't care for actually seeing it break apart or come to fruition. Ending on feelings of optimism and hope for it working out is a good place for the viewer to bid sayonara to the title. But not just optimism: the original ending of Muv-Luv Unlimited was very powerful, as it created a sense that the world was a cosmic force out of control of a single person. It was a very sobering feeling of helplessness, and ended with one of the series most iconic image: a wrecked TSF in a repose of death, reaching toward the distant heavens. The ending for Alternative was moving too, but both were really good. To explain Toy Story 3, I thought TS2 had a godly ending, while TS3 sucked. In fact I objected to the whole premise of TS3 because it was predictable and sappy. Why would people want to watch something definitive like that? TS2 was basically Happy Ever After, why would you deliberately want to see what happens after that? Here in OreGairu, Yukino and Hachiman both have some serious emotional problems. Yukino seems utterly incapable of letting someone get close to her, and expecting her to radically unravel over the course of the first season is a bit too much. But at the very end, there's a glimmer of hope where she lets Hachiman get a little closer to her than he was. I appreciated that a lot because the series did a solid job (for me) of illustrating how screwed up the two of them were, yet how this odd marriage might progress into something if they hang around long enough.
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08-02-2015, 06:40 PM | #43 |
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OVAs can generally be divided into two categories: bonus episodes and canon episodes. Canon episodes are a part of the main story and tend to either bridge television seasons or else finish off stories whose television broadcasts ended prematurely for one reason or another. They should not be skipped if you want to know the full story. By contrast, bonus episodes tend to have the following properties:
OVA: Spoiler: show Series review next post. (Yes, yes: I'm aware there's a second season now. Too bad! )
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08-02-2015, 08:13 PM | #44 |
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When my good friend Doppleganger recommended I check out OreGairu, I took his suggestion to heart. He went out of his way to create a separate thread for the series, and at a time when the only person who was frequently doing this in Anime was me. And he rated it a 10/10! Doppel has been known to pride himself on the fact that he doesn't dispense 10/10s often. He also has been known to point out that, for him, a score of 10/10 really does mean "Masterpiece" -- it isn't enough to say, "I loved this show to pieces and it's in my Top 10 favorite shows ever," it has to actually be flawless. "Flawed masterpiece" is a term Doppel's coined for many of his 9/10s, series he loves as much as a 10/10 but which are flawed in one form or another, forcing him to objectively give the series a lower final score. So when Doppel rated OreGairu a 10/10, I knew that it meant he thought it was not only great but also flawless. And when I considered the genre -- high school romcom -- I felt like I was going to be in for a treat.
I'm not happy with the outcome. I don't like raining on people's parades, least of all my friends'. No one likes it when someone downgrades your favorite show. Some of us are bothered by it more than others, but I think that just about everyone is at least slightly perturbed when someone takes your 10/10 and gives it a 5/10. So I want to disclaim that nothing I am about to say I say with ill intentions. I'm just offering my end-of-series review like I almost always do. You're free to disagree with what I have to say. I'm just going to explain how I felt about certain categories and why. ------------------------------------------ Plot: 5/10 for a high school romcom, would probably be a 4/10 or lower otherwise but I acknowledge that the plot in OreGairu is pretty damn standard for the genre and certainly doesn't feel like a bad plot. Weak? Oh, absolutely. But not any more so than, say, the plot in Nyan Koi!. I don't think this is a story you watch for the plot. Certainly not Season 1 all on its own, anyway. Characters: 5/10 I found everyone in this series to be perfectly average for a romcom anime. Generic, even. Oh sure: Hachiman is slightly different than usual protagonists. Yuigahama and Yukinoshita are slightly different from usual Girl No.1 and Girl No.2 characters. But for the most part? Not really. Things get really bad once we leave the main trio. Then I think there can be no debate: everyone outside of the main trio is categorically plain yogurt average. I could transpose to or from OreGairu any number of secondary plain characters and a newcomer wouldn't be able to tell something was amiss with either the source or the target series. (E.g. I could transport Zaimokuza to Hyouka and you wouldn't know he didn't belong there. I could transport the mail carrier from Nyan Koi! into OreGairu and you wouldn't be able to tell she didn't belong to the OreGairu universe.) I will forget every single one of the secondary characters' names within one year, I wager, unless otherwise reminded by sources outside myself; and I will forget Hachiman's, Yui's, and Yukino's names too inside of five years, I reckon. That's where I'm coming from when I rate the character category score a 5 out of 10. It's that bad for me. None of the characters are really bad ... they're just not great either. Animation: 4/10 in terms of how it looks and feels, but perhaps a score of 5/10 or higher would be fairer in consideration of the team's budget (or lack thereof). I don't know the details. All I know is, in terms of technique / in terms of how it technically looks, it looks like Music: 5/10 Same damn problem as with the characters. None of the music in the series was bad, but it never really captivated me either. All of the episodes' background music is generic background music that I hardly even noticed was there. (To its credit, then: it did its job! ) The OP was okay but I wouldn't go listening to it over and over again. Same idea with the ED, although slightly different: I actually quite like the melody of the ED's chorus, but the rest of the melody I'm not too crazy about and the lyrics kinda ruin it for me too. :\ But yeah, ED chorus melody is good. Replay Value: The only reason I'd re-watch S1 would be to refresh my memory on the characters and events in preparation for a viewing of S2. That aside, I don't think I will ever want to watch this one again. OVERALL: 5/10 OreGairu isn't bad, per se. It's mediocre. It doesn't do enough to stand out from the crowd for me to really care or take notice. It isn't a show I'd ever recommend to someone, but neither is it a series I regret spending time on. The time investment was low and I can't act like it was torture to watch it. It was never torture. It was just ... boring.
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08-02-2015, 08:38 PM | #45 |
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I feared this. The series hinges almost completely on your attitude of Hachiman, as the plot and story more or less revolve around him. If you view him as little more than an immature, angsty teen, the story falls flat. We're pretty much in agreement about the art, animation, music and characters outside of the main cast.
It's too bad. It seems I've swung and missed twice on two series I really liked that you were merely tepid towards, so I'll have to take this into consideration the next type I choose to hype something to you. As I said, I do think there's a philosophical preference at work here that I will be more mindful toward.
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08-03-2015, 07:37 AM | #46 |
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... Well look who's back! ^^; I decided to watch the first episode of the second season, curious to see what changes if any were made to the animation, characters, presentation, and so forth. And you know something? I had a fun time! I know it sounds crazy, but there was something of a nostalgic feeling being "reunited" with these characters after ... what? Several hours? Yeah. It seems crazy to me too. But it is what it is: my heart was definitely warmed to be reunited with these characters for a second touring, despite all that I wrote (and still stand by) about the weak character writing in Season 1.
The animation in Season 2 gets an upgrade over its Season 1 predecessor. It still doesn't look anywhere near as good as the best that 2015 has to offer, but it's also one to two budget levels removed from the look and feel of Season 1. You'll notice it immediately -- because S2E01 opens with a re-animation of part of the climax of Season 1, and if you're like me and you just watched that scene only 24 hours prior, it will be immediately obvious. Thankfully, they didn't just decide to re-animate the climax and then return to their S1 standards -- the Another obvious upgrade is the direction. I'm not sure whether S2 has a new director or whether the first director took criticisms to heart and changed how he's doing things this season, but either way, this season looks and feels a hell of a lot better than Season 1 ever did. For starters, I can actually understand what's going on now! While I think this can partially be attributed to the fan translation, sure, this goes well beyond words in sentences -- we're talking at the root level of ideas that are communicated. The communication between director and viewer is so much more intelligible now. If before it felt like the director would go from A to D to Fish to Saturn, now it feels like he goes from A to B to C to D. It's so much better. Another obvious upgrade is the dialogue. A huge part of it is the script itself. There's some overlap with what I just wrote above, but here what I want to focus on is the fun and flavorful aspect of the dialogue. The show is a lot more fun to watch now. Yuigahama's excitement when Ebina entered the club room was palpable. Hachiman's personality comes across so much more clearly now. Another huge part of the dialogue upgrade is the voice acting. I mentioned Yuigahama and Hachiman already, and they once again are the primary recipients of the shot in the arm in S2E01. Hachiman has gone from sounding like an aloof, self-styled bad guy -- basically a teen with a bad case of Doppel's "I'm evil! X3" chuunibyou -- to sounding like the love child of Naruto's Shikamaru and Suzumiya Haruhi's Kyon. The Sugita-ization of Hachiman is something I welcome, even if not everyone does. I'm not saying that I wish all male leads in romcoms sounded and acted like Kyon. Nor am I saying that I think Sugita-ized Hachiman holds a candle to Kyon. He's in Kyon's shadow, alright, and the characters are too different for the contest to hold anyway. But no, why I like the Sugita-ized Hachiman so much more than what we had in Season 1 is that:
Alright! Time for spoiler discussion. Zoku Episode 01: Spoiler: show I hadn't really been planning to, but I guess I will go ahead and keep on watching S2 for now. Current score would be a 6.5/10, which I realize is cheating so ... if I had to pick one, I guess it'd be a 6. Still! That's already one point better than the 5 I handed to S1, and I can only hope the score will continue to improve from here.
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08-17-2015, 12:59 AM | #47 |
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I finished Zoku, and honestly, I didn't care for it. It took away some of the things I loved about season 1. Sure, more happened, but that touchey feeley shit doesn't belong in I'm A Frog! I gave it a 6 as opposed to the 9 I gave season 1. I'm sure the people who didn't care for the cynicism in season 1 would like season 2 better.
Also my favorite scene from season 1 was actually (end of show spoilers) Spoiler: show |
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