Okay, I’m not going to defend this. This episode was just bad, and I really am not sure what happened here on the production-side, but with this episode this series suddenly lost all of its charm. There were too many signs that showed that the creators didn’t really put much thought into this episode.
Up till now the fanservice was tolerable, but the first half of this episode being nothing but a pointless pool skit? That really was nothing but an excuse to show the entire female cast in bikinis. It’s completely shameless and un-subtle. If you want to do fanservice: make it fit into the story. Don’t just randomly throw in a pool. I might care about the reasons that it was really hot, if only that those reasons were mentioned again, but mysteriously that extreme heat is never mentioned again.
The rest of the episode was just a mess. This kid who is running for major comes in, and thins just start happening for no reason whatsoever, and it’s all just so flimsy. There’s this random politician who yells a lot and the girl somehow gets assaulted by this mechanical thingy out of nowhere. And then Akina suddenly comes with this incredibly dry and soulless info-dump that apparently everyone already knew aside from Kotoha. It both baffles me that they couldn’t just mention this last episode (I mean, what was revealed was a pretty important detail there to just not mention…). Also, why was Kotoha not informed of this? Again, having demons flood into the city is pretty major. A mayor should have no reason NOT to know about this. The reasons the characters mention make no sense whatsoever.
Also, what happened to the background music? It was so well timed previously. And yet here we have this generic goofy music for the silly parts, along with generic broody music for the serious parts. Seriously, what happened?
Rating: 3/8 (Lacking)
Hm, you should remember their names <.<
I agree with your opinion of this episode-terrible. Also, the mayor is Hime, Kotoha is the 3D printer hanyou. I really hope there are no more info dumps, and we get back to good comedy and action, with thr occasional panty shot.
This was the first time I asked myself, “what did I just watch?” after the ep was over. Maybe because it lacked Kotoha, or maybe because character stereotypes were used for plot devices, once again. Or maybe because everyone just seemed to be either on bad behavior or in a bad mood; whatever it was, I didn’t understand any of what was happening.
The problem’s that they basically spent three episodes waxing idiotic and now they introduced too many elements, and all of those were pretty stereotypical of this kind of show. Why not handle the mayoral thing right away in episodes one and two, and introduce the over-arching crisis now? They’ll have to try extra hard to make me care now.
In many ways, this is the anti-Nagi no Asukara. There, everything’s too melodramatic to really capitalize on the drama, while here there’s just too much tonal shifting to achieve any steady drama at all. Maybe if they didn’t spend a third of the episode doing nothing at the pool it wouldn’t feel so insubstantial.. but then it would probably just feel one dimensional anyway.
There have been too many series recently which were very good in animation, but totally neglected plotwise.
Psgels, you asked for suggestions recently. Maybe you could consider another type of blog, in which you would wait till the end of a series, and then make ONE post only if the series is worth watching.
Additionally, that would allow you to review older series, and personally I would be very interested. There is a treasure of old-timers out there, which are worth re-discovering.
This would mean much less post updates, even less than what I’m managing right now. Would people be okay with that?
or do a kaleidoscope post with series on rotation i like your kaleidoscope posts small and to the point.
By saying ONE post per anime I exaggerated.
If the series turns out great it would be possible to make one post per episode, a posteriori.
Writing a posteriori is unfortunately not for me: the way I write is that whenever I finish an episode, I write whatever thoughts came to my mind. At the time of finishing a series, I cannot recall enough opinions for a bunch of paragraphs for the early episodes, unfortunately.
@psgels Personally, I think the current format works great. I think the best way to allow yourself to write more would be to simply make your episode-by-episode entries shorter and more concise. That would allow you more space for other types of entries.
Not saying your current entries are long-winded but I do think it would be possible to cut them down a bit more.
No, people wouldn’t. Maybe just have a tab or a section designated to “whole series reviews,” which, like how you’ve been doing, is designated to a feedback of the whole spectrum of a series… (sound, animation, pacing, cinematography, characterization, etc.) after the last episode blog post. But if it were an old series, you would just have that and no posts on the single episodes. The benefits of having single post reviews is that you can focus on the pacing and animation quality on just that 23 minutes. As well speculation on what will happen further down in the story. One can also compare anime-manga developments, for those who like to read it.
Agree with you psgels, it was terrible. I’m not a guy, so the fan service does nothing for me, I can tolerate some, however this was just in such bad taste, there’s just something really creepy about that pervy guy with that maid, I seriously dislike him. I was willing to overlook it for first episode because i thought the fight scene was fun, but this episode was piss poor.
I’m dropping the series.
This is what they mean by fanservice killing a show. The fanservice in this show is so bad, they should really just have axed that aspect of the manga.
Out of curiosity, did you drop Kill la Kill because of the fanservice or did you find the execution there to be less objectionable?
I’m still watching Kill La Kill
I’ve pondered about this a bit, a part of me feels like I should probably be objecting to both Kill La Kill and Yozakura, but there are key differences
Kill La Kill does both male/female objectification, i love the sensei with the clothes undoing themselves.
It’s so over the top that it does add comic value.
Story and direction is good. The female characters all do something and have agency.
Mariabelle is purely there for fanservice, she serves no other purpose than to be groped and made to wear skimpy outfits. The nurse and the nun are also there for similar reasons. That’s probably what makes it unpalatable.
And speaking of the equal opportunity fan-service, in this latest episode we had the “Naked Nudist” (lol) operative “cleaning his gun” in the buff ([face_mischief]).
I agree with everything you said, but I would also add that I can accept the fanservice in Kill la Kill because over-the-top nudity/violence is an integral part of the show. If Ryuko’s costume bothers you enough to drop the show then well, you probably should drop the show because ridiculous/offensive content is one of the major themes of Kill la Kill
With Yozakura Quartet the fanservice is mostly tacked-on and unnecessary. It’s sad that you think of Yae as just “the pointless fanservice nun” because she’s a pretty cool/strong character when she’s not being exploited for fanservice. But the anime has added in tons of unnecessary fanservice (much more than the manga even) that is literally driving people away from the show.
By the way, speaking of fanservice, have you seen this graphic about Kill la Kill (NSFW):
http://i.imgur.com/DpG1VIk.jpg
I don’t know the manga, so I can only go by how the nun is portrayed in the anime.
Interesting read about KLK, I get that, but KLK is playing it both ways if true, using gratuitous FS to highlight the male gaze. When watching KLK, I was also thinking quite a bit about The story of Mine Fujiko. Again a highly sexualised female character who takes control of her own life.
What I am a bit concerned about is this being a trend where it’s deemed okay non-sexist to have women being all boobs and butt so long as she kicks some butt as well. I’d love to see a series with a action hero type female without feeling the need to resort to this, however, from what I know the industry is male dominated, and the target audience are male fans.
I really wonder if guys do *want* all the fanservice all it’s just a mistaken perception.
Well there have definitely been plenty of great female characters that weren’t sexualized.
Some good examples of this would be Kino, from Kino’s Journey, Akane from Psycho-Pass, General Armstrong from Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Saki from Shinsekai Yori and Biscuit Kruger from Hunter x Hunter are some that come to mind.
However, there are a lot more examples of female leads that were, in some ways, used for fanservice.
I think a lot of the Western fanbase at least would prefer for shows like Yozakura Quartet to not have fanservice although there are definitely a lot of people I see on forums who like that stuff. I’m not going to say I categorically dislike sexual content, it’s just that I dislike when sexual content exists solely for the purpose of titillation, in an otherwise serious show.
I think that most people, if they wanted titillation, would watch some softcore like To Love-Ru or Sekirei because that’s the point of those shows and people who don’t want borderline pornography know to stay away from it.
When you put it in a show like Yozakura Quartet it compromises the characters and drives away fans that would otherwise be interested. Suisei no Gargantia was another recent example where pointless and unnecessary fanservice took away from an otherwise compelling show
Good examples. FMA was created by a woman, so that may be a part of the reason for the good female characters. (though having said that KHR was terrible in its portrayal of females and that was also created by a female mangaka)
But Kino and Shinsekai yori feel more like exceptions to the rule. I know when I watched shinsekai, I was like ‘yes
, finally a great female MC!’ Akane was a bit too moe for my liking, although that’s probably nitpicking and I did like respect her in the end.
With Yozakura, I almost wonder what would be left if you stripped away the fanservice, that would take out half of the screen time! I think lurking in there, are some good ideas, but the direction and pacing of the anime seems off. too many random shady characters doing shady things in the background for reasons unexplained, this episode it was a major infodump, last episode the mood was all over the place, i did not like the over dramatisation of a ‘death’ to find it wasn’t so.
Just watched KLL 05. It was fab.
YQ is only 50% fanservice because of the choices made by the production staff. The manga is mostly a fantasy/action manga with some SoL comedy elements to add levity to what is mostly a pretty serious story about the consequences of being a Youkai and of living in a world where two dimensions are always threatening to fuse.
The YQ OVA, hoshi no umi, is a great example of this and is basically done in the style that many people hoped this anime would be done in. While the anime is very similar to the OVA (especially the first episode) they have regrettably chosen to add a ton of pointless fanservice and, as a consequence, to slow down the pacing, which was a lot more brisk in the OVA.
Anyways, it’s far from a great manga, but it had the potential to be adapted into a really solid action series, like the OVA. And while the action scenes mostly have been pretty awesome, the disappointing choices of the production staff have led to the inclusion of a lot of stuff that hasn’t been so awesome.
You’re incredibly exaggerating about the fanservice, only this episode had it considerably, and it’s not it’s fault that the pace is suffering, since the direction has been slow from the first episode, and just rushed in this one.
It’s okay to dislike fanservice, but stop blaming it and pushing your dislike into everyone else.
Sure, mine seems like a pointless complaint, but it really pisses me off when people complain about this kind of stuff and blames it for completely unrelated issues.
I’m surprised at the number of shows I’ve been dropping this week. Looks like a pretty poor season overall.