Okay, you know that a series is is badly received when even the raws of the local World Masterpiece Theatre series get released faster. It’s really such a shame to see that Gonzo is going through such bad times right now. In July 30th, they’re going to be delisted from the the stock exchange, and a large part of their staff has left by now. We can only hope that they’ll end up well in other places, like for example David Productions. It’s going to be such an incredible shame to see all of their talents to waste like this.
In any case about the episode: for each season I obviously have my favourite series, and damn, this time my favourite show of the season really is the most controversial one I’ve had so far. With these kinds of episodes, even I have trouble to suspend my disbelief: where did the poisonous gas come from, and why did it disappear so conveniently? Why, after the cease-fire, did Takehito suddenly appear somewhere completely different? Why, after the cease-fire, did Kuniko and Momoko decide to wander off to Atlas’ residential area?
Agh, this is really driving me crazy! These flaws are definitely there: the plot is really stupid at times. And yet I still love this series, and not in the way of a guilty pleasure like I do with 07-Ghost. Even though there are series that are much more solid this season, like Pandora Hearts and Phantom, Shangri la still stands out the most for me. I’m still surprised myself, but aside from the really sloppy scriptwriting, this series does have everything that I’m looking for in anime: a grand and evolving storyline in which there’s always something going on, a diverse, well developed and fleshed out cast of characters, an imaginative setting with a lot of different settings and layers, an excellent sense of mystery that slowly but surely reveals itself to the viewer, and making the story more intriguing with every revelation, a terrific sense of eye candy. It’s ambitious, experimental and always offers something interesting.
My guess would be that Gonzo indeed is in a lot of trouble, and so they simply lack the resources at this time to properly pace and plan out the storyline in the finest detail, and so instead they’re trying to end this series with the biggest bang possible. And seriously, that’s something I appreciate a lot. Nevertheless, we can only imagine how incredibly awesome this series could have been if it was animated during the height of Gonzo’s quality.
This series is also making me question what it means to be a good series. For example, Code Geass also had a lot of flaws, yet was very ambitious, but it really didn’t work with me. I think that the reason why I wasn’t able to stomach Code Geass at all, while I continue to sing praises for Shangri-La that for the latter, I’m able to give an entire washing-list of things that it does right and which I love about it, while Code Geass… never really impressed me anyway. Characters felt flat, the plot tended to repeat itself, there wasn’t much variation and the plot was mostly dull and incredibly politically incorrect.
Okay so yes, this series isn’t going down history as the best series ever, but I’m definitely going to remember it, because this is one series that made me really question what it means to be a good anime. You of course have the powerhouses that are Kaiba and Birdy the Mighty Decode 2, which are awesome in every single way, but the reason why they were awesome was because they took risks: they looked outside of the box and came with a story that rocked in nearly every single way. However at the same time, it’s incredibly hard to come up with such a storyline. It’s not a matter of “is this flawed or not”, but “is this good enough”, and I admit that in my recent reviews and summaries, I’ve been focusing a bit too much on pointing out random flaws instead of looking at what’s really important. We all know that plotholes are a bad thing, but in what way and how much do they bring down an otherwise awesome story?
Rating: ** (Excellent)
MAJOR plotholes, and yet the setting and characters thicken even more. This is a really weird series to be a fan of.
I agree with psgels in this one.the story is going somewhere. just hope the ending of this series will be something special.
I can’t honestly talk about Shangri-La without actually seeing it, but if the show remains interesting enough then those flaws, while probably something that should be reflected in the final ratings, wouldn’t necessarily bother me on a personal enjoyment level either.
Suffice to say that, very much unlike psgels, I did like Code Geass and would in fact be able to make a list of things that particular series did well, for me, in spite of its flaws too.
But that doesn’t matter, it’s an old subject, so the point is that applying a similar logic to Shangri-La or anything else isn’t beyond me at all. Not because the series are identical, certainly not, but as a matter of principle.
Second, I wouldn’t really be so sure about Gonzo making mistakes only when they started to become financially unstable as a company, unless there’s been something directly linking their finances to the production process of Shangri-La specifically. It’s not difficult to point out that Gonzo has made both superior and inferior products at earlier points in its history too.
I’d recommend you to watch the movie “The Prestige” (by Christopher Nolan, in my opinion the best director of his generation (and of 2000s in general)).
It has one ENORMOUS plothole at the very beginning, and yet it doesn’t prevent it from being one of the very best movies I’ve ever seen, and all those who watched it will agree with me. Heck, most people don’t even notice the plothole.
It would be nice to blame Gonzo’s trouble on the failures of this show, but this was based on an existing book, so I can’t give you that! 🙂
I like this show, and yet I hate it. It’s the poster child for poor pacing and storytelling. Still, I like that they have transsexual characters (something of a novelty) and the rest of the characters are interesting.
What disappoints me most is that we are led to believe that Kuniko is a badass, but they take more time telling a bad story instead of showing her progression in a proper fashion. I wouldn’t mind if the story was more interesting, but CARBON & ECONOMICS? What is this, school? I graduated college 6 years ago!
My favorite episode is still the conclusion of when she goes back to prison. That was great.
one of the things I like about science fiction is playing with ideas about science, economics, politics, etc…if you think that stuff is dry, you’re watching the wrong genre
I totally agree PL.
I agree with two of the flaws to the episode but not fully the gas one. I’m way too wordy since I typed as I was gathering my thoughts but hopefully I’m relatively coherent despite my oddly massive post. I’ll split it up by the three thoughts.
Since the poisonous gas came from that mysterious force that has intervened several times during the series already I can live with the ambiguity since obviously we’re not getting the details of what they did or what else they might have been doing since we never see that location over there under or beyond the gas and why they did it, and it kinda lingered since it was there choking the Metal-Age members while Kuniko was making her decision to accept the cease fire. However, they REALLY should have shown at least a quick cut of Atlas cleaning it up during the sequence of Metal-Age disarming to better address the feeling you’re referring to for something that just made such a big impact since they didn’t bother to show it again after Kuniko’s decision and since I’d assume that force didn’t stick around once they gave away their position it wouldn’t have been a big deal to show that battle-damaged location one more time with just Atlas clean-up personnel.
I don’t see the gas as a plot hole though since we supposedly know the cause, just not the why, I assume we’ll find this out later since they still haven’t told us who this force is despite referencing them several times now. Currently it’s sort of a plot hole but an intentional one if perhaps too convenient to ending the current conflict which would have had a stronger finish with a real forced retreat. I’ve also seen some theorizing from others that perhaps Talsin was prepared for it as it gave him the opportunity to intervene with the cease-fire.
I totally agree though on the nonchalant visit to the residential area of Atlas. It was way too abrupt and the way that came about was too out of place and did not flow well at all with the current mood of just surrendering to the enemy. However I’ll give them some leeway as despite the huge cast and multiple simultaneous events that sometimes required juxtaposed moods I think this is only time I’ve felt this. Hopefully they don’t need to do that again just to get two characters to the same location to start the next story arc, which was obviously the goal. In a way it reminds me of my one real nitpick during Gundam 00 which is one of my favorite Gundam series, the conceit of one particular stand out oddity in the otherwise mostly well written Gundam 00 where Setsuna just happened to end up caught by the police in that chase in the perfect location to “magically” meet Marina for the first time as the lame way to get their interaction started (along with where he makes the odd two-second stop to ask her his question about the state of the world). I don’t believe he ever even tracks or chases someone like that again in the entire series and certainly not in a land vehicle that could be intercepted by police. Fortunately I don’t think that one conceit of a sequence ended up hurting the show as they didn’t make a habit of it unlike the entire Seed franchise which had more coincidental meetings and events that led to those meetings than I could count IMO though I know it has a lot of fans too, so hopefully this is the one time with them making a very oddly timed trip to the Atlas residential area to get Kunihito directly involved again and they don’t need to pull it again.
Actually Takehiko didn’t just end up somewhere else I just think the scene wasn’t edited as tightly as it could have been, he was heading in the direction of the overlooking cliff that Kuniko and Momoko were overseeing the cease fire from when he spotted the cave and his hallucination, the illusion, or whatever that ends up being started, with him seeing his sister, distracted him towards the cave. It was only after that that his location “changed”. I just think it was oddly edited in terms of “time progression” with Kuniko and Momoko suddenly being so far gone as to be completely out of the picture despite Takehiko noticing them and going towards their position so quickly. They should have at least showed them off in the distance not noticing Takehiko way behind them as he veered away from the cliff towards the cave to make the sequence more coherent.
Rather than potential plot holes my only complaint of the episode was that the reason for the visit was not good enough for the abrupt mood change of the residential area visit after such a defeat given the strong emotional response the rest of the episode resonated with that defeat and the dramatic turn in Karin’s story.
Still in terms of interesting events and information/packing an episode with a good amount of key story events I thought it was a very good episode which could have been excellent if the visit to the Atlas residential area had a better reason or wasn’t in so much conflict with the dramatic events of the rest of the episode. Even then as usual there was always something interesting happening and I think more new Takehiko stuff and the even heavier Karin stuff balanced out my flaw of the episode.
Oh yeah I totally agree with your overall thought, it’s extremely rare for something as ambitious as this to be flawless and it’s the ambition of the show and how much it does right that’s intricate to it’s hook.
I didn’t find the flaws pointed out to be much of a flaws.
Kuniko is deeper into ATLAS than she ever has been, why waste the chance to see what life in ATLAS is like? It’s not as if it wasn’t something that she hadn’t been wondering about forever.
And I just attribute the sudden changes in scenery around Takehiko to mimetic technology, and we saw how suddenly scenery can change in the previous episode.
As for the poisonous gas, Elvenwarrior expresses the same thoughts I have. (Except about the lack of cleanup shown: it isn’t odd that they would wait to fix things after Metal Age completely withdraws.)
Good point about waiting on fixing the gas, that’s right they hadn’t completely left yet, forgot about that.
Yup you echoed my thoughts on what might be involved in Takehiko’s event. I too was surprised the sudden change in environment around Takehiko ended up as a flaw in the review.
“I didn’t find the flaws pointed out to be much of a flaws.”
Agreed.
“Kuniko is deeper into ATLAS than she ever has been, why waste the chance to see what life in ATLAS is like? It’s not as if it wasn’t something that she hadn’t been wondering about forever.”
Agreed in fact my odd feeling had nothing to do with them going there, my only nitpick at the time was that it perhaps felt a teeny bit abrupt for merely a split second due to the timing of having just been kicked out and then sneaking back in a few moments later screentime-wise (though I don’t have a problem with it as we’re already aware they can get in undetected). Hardly a flaw and I was even quite pleased they even thought it out nicely (they even had Kuniko say before they went that they were going to get in the way they have in the past so it’s easy to believe they could get in even with the hightened security of their failed attack), the feeling simply came from perhaps a bit of a rushed feeling in the time between when they were overlooking the cease-fire to being back in ATLAS to keep things moving story-wise at a critical juncture. Hence as I said, not a big deal but the one thing in the episode I kind of could see someone who’s trying to be as critical as possible mentioning in a review.
somehow i got the impression that Takehiko’s sister ended up as one of the lord Hiruko containers; the ghost girl, creepy shrine and the basket full of shoes contributed to that.
Firstly what was the major plothole in the Prestige. Presumably when Julia dies in the tank right?
The fundamental difference between that and Shangri-La is that the entire series is based on a misconception. Then tries to be clever with that misconception and utterly fails.
The plotholes here aren’t where did they get poison gas from? Why did it dissipate, well perhaps the Chemical teams mentioned have something to do with that.
You might as well ask where did they get those spinning tops, and mecha from as well. Weapons are weapons. Plothole here is why poison gas would increase Japan’s carbon coefficient when it doesn’t have any carbon in it.
In addition withdrawing makes the entire last two episodes utterly meaningless not to mention everyones deaths. Metal-Age is recognized as a terrorist group; so how would complying with “UN sanctions” help? Kuniko is just a shite leader, after all why was it she invaded Atlas again?
“The person who is suffering the most is our leader”
what an utter bullshit reason to give up. Not to mention Kuniko then F’s about sightseeing on the 4th floor enjoying herself.
Back to economics: the gap between real carbon and carbon credits to become too large, what utter utter nonsense. Why would it even matter as they are two different things altogether. Its only when you have a huge difference between perceived value and actual value of a product then you have a problem. In addition why would Tarsian get carbon tycoons to create Medusa in the first place?
The blog author mentions the sloppy writing, glaring plot holes nonsensical plot and inconsistencies yet still thinks this is a great series – sounds like some poor excuses. Looks like I can bung together a whole load of crap which doesn’t make sense and as long as its pretty I’d get great reviews. At the end of the day what’s the message of this series? What it does show is the reason why Gonzo is going down the toilet: picking up light-novels that shouldn’t have been printed in the first place.