CNagy said: There sure is a lot of complaining about this anime. It must straddle a very careful line of annoying people but not quite enough to get them to just drop it.
Tatsuya is a NG+ character in a NG world. Sometimes, that's how stories are. Not all stories are about a MC who develops from naive to experienced; sometimes the MC is like a force of nature. Not every story is the hero's journey. Sometimes it is about how the world reacts to the MC, or how events are altered by their presence. Hagure Yuusha no Estetica had a similarly overpowered MC. Kaze no Stigma. Legend of Legendary Heroes. Rurouni Kenshin. Trigun. Heck, kick it old school with Fist of the North Star. It's okay to not like this type of story, but it is still a valid method of storytelling.
I haven't read the LNs. I also haven't had to; so far the story is self-contained. It has all made sense--note: not making sense is when something contradicts itself, not when it contradicts how you assume the world is supposed to be. There is always a wider world of information outside of the main narrative. An entire universe of it, in fact. Knowing aspects of the extended universe can affect your enjoyment of the story, but it isn't necessary. The difference between things that need explaining and things you want explained are that the former are necessary to maintain the story's internal logic (why is Tatsuya so powerful yet initially regarded so poorly? Oh, because his strengths don't lie in the measured criteria/are military secrets) while the latter are just things that would affect your enjoyment of the story, some of which may just not be explained yet (if the details go on take central importance in the story).
This is all long-winded and probably sounds a bit pretentious, but it's a reaction that's been building in me, thread after thread of people complaining. Yeah, it's not perfect. Most of what I wish was better would require a longer run-time, though, so as far as complaints go, "I want more" is hardly damning.
Well you shouldn't mind too much abut people complaining on character development. That's hardly ever an issue since stories don't actually have to have anything to do with an actual character development. Most movies we see have absolutely zero character development but nobody complains there cuz they have plenty of action. The story has to say something.
But it's hard to get anything out of this story in particular, when it hasn't even set it's premises. Most of the ppl here and the vast majority of the guys rating it are people who read the LNs and are happy to see a story they like being animated. If you had been around animelist for enough time you would know this is somewhat of a pattern. It always happens like this whenever famous LNs get animated, regardless the fact that, as in Mahouka's case, even LNs readers say the same: first arcs are bad.
They are bad simply because they don't reveal anything new, they don't leave any space for speculations, that's probably because the story hasn't presented enough characters yet. And this is 12th episode we are talking. We all understood something is happening `behind the scenes` but do these "bad guys" want to harm the school or the main characters? why would anyone want to harm the school ? why would anyone want to harm the main characters?
In order to make people have valid starting points to be able to discuss a story and present speculations would mean to give them something to start. For example, we could have been given SOMETHING on the character's past, on the normal people's attitude towards the school of magic, some sort of civilian conflicts, put a face on the bad guy's identities, just anything. It would have helped at least to make the two characters worry about something, to show the watchers that there is actually something they have to deal with.
The only thing that we've been shown until now is that Tatsuya is more than meets the eye. Every episode had the purpose of showing that and all I mean is that this was not necessary and it's getting old. From the viewer's point of view, even 1 event was enough to believe that Tatsuya was in fact anything but week, the anime didn't have to stress this to the point that every episode is a basically a different story of someone getting caught or saved by Tatsuya.
What actually is bothering me is that we get too little insight in the characters' relationship and it's hard to figure out if are they running away, are they afraid of someone, are they just avoiding someone or are they not? So much mystery surrounding their family but the directors haven't actually fed us any piece of information in order to be able to make any connection to anything. And i guess them meeting their father was a good example: in the end you couldn't tell if their father was against them or not, just that "something" wasn't quite right.
Sure tho, I've been spoiled enough to know a few things on how the story goes further on. But this is one more reason for me to say that the beginning is awfully written and I wish the directors would have chose to do it a bit differently or simply just fit these arcs into less episodes. |