Rolling☆Girls Episode 1 Discussion

AaaaaaKun said:

The exposition at the start is expected when you have a premise that is so surreal and out of the ordinary, to me is just storytelling 101, giving viewers some information about the universe of the story and setting up the tone, laying down the foundation for expectation, you don't get credited when you are just doing the basic.

AaaaaaKun said:
Just count how many technical terms they throw at you after the stand down of the two fractions till the end of the episode, if you know your story is going to have tons of them you may want to spread them thin and give each of them a proper time to flesh out. Of cause they will keep reappearing and maybe get more explanation in the following episodes, but still jamming too much detail and content in just the first episode is a huge mood killer for most viewers who just want to get into the story without constantly asking questions in their heads.

AaaaaaKun said:
I think that is the fault of the production team for putting too much distraction on the screen if you need to rewatch it just to familiarize with the basic elements of the story, yes the animation is good and the soundtrack is also nice but most of time the emotional connection just isn't there, viewers can't care about the story and the characters because they are constantly distracted by the fast-paced action and colorful background, they don't know how to react emotionally to whatever happening on the screen but appreciate the production value, in other words, style over substance. And that's why I call this show "Made by animators, only for animators" or even outright pretentious for focusing too much effort on making the show look good rather than being accessible to the viewers.

AaaaaaKun said:
It's not just a complain, I'm also criticizing the direction they are going for base on my understanding of the information perceived before the airing and the first episode. I just think the show would have been much better if the production team has more self-constraint, but seems like it's going to be the likes of Kyousou Giga and Uchouten Kazoku, three is a pattern, and a new sub-genre may just got born.

Kerozinn said:
for some reason i lost interest in it while watching...

pakoko said:

They SHOULD be credited for just doing the basic because that basic information was more than enough to figure out what kind of world this show is taking place in:

pakoko said:

The show can’t get any more straightforward than that, especially on the first episode. If you wanted them to go into specifics, that’s for future episodes, but the explanation cannot go more in-depth than this, or else it feels like too much of an info dump.

pakoko said:


Like I said, a Japanese show isn’t going to explain to the Japanese audience the geography of Japan. The stand down mostly consisted of an argument between borders of the various regions of Japan, something that is not expected of Westerners to know about. Westerners are not the target audience for this show, so Japanese people probably understood all the Japanese geography terms being thrown left and right. Those aren’t “technical” terms, they’re common sense for the Japanese audience.

pakoko said:
There were no other new “technical” terms after the stand down. Maybe terms like trainees, captains, and president, but those were very much straightforward. In other words, the show didn’t try to jam a lot of details in this first episode, when there weren’t that many to start with.

pakoko said:


No sorry, I realized the exposition at the beginning was just straight-up narration, without any other distractions. I just needed to reread the subs twice before I understood it because sometimes the subs go by quickly or the translations are sort of rough. Having said that, it’s my fault that I didn’t understand the first time and not the show’s animation or background song.

pakoko said:
Why talk about emotional connection in just the first episode? Why criticize it being style over substance in just the first episode? I find it puzzling that an AIRING show would purposefully try to be pretentious when they’re trying to make this show for a general audience (stuff like Me!Me!Me! is made by animators, only for animators). If that’s the sort of impression it had on you, then I can’t say anything because that was your first impression. But I didn’t see this as anything more than the typical show that tries not to spoonfeed its audience all the background info, but tries to do it in indirect ways. Why are you so displeased that the show is assuming that the audience is actually intelligent enough to figure everything out on their own? Or do you prefer anime that you can watch while having turned off your brain? Not trying to insult you, but you are criticizing a show for being pretentious, when really it just happens to take on a different style of storytelling.

pakoko said:


Well I guess you’re just not a fan of those types of anime. I personally loved Kyousougiga because it challenged me to figure stuff out on my own instead of having the show explain everything word by word. Kyousougiga is a show that could have been 20 episodes long with its explanations, but they somehow miraculously compacted into 10. Those are the sort of shows that make me proud to be an anime watcher, not shows like Highschool DXD or some other ecchi, harem, or moe shows. If you’re lowering yourself to look at anime from a general audience’s perspective that’s fine. But as long as you yourself understood the show after a closer look, then I can’t understand why you would criticize the show for its storytelling aspect.

AaaaaaKun said:
If the script is written by a high school student with no experience I would probably give him credit for doing the basic right at the beginning, but for Muto Yasuyuki, who has been working in the industry as a screenwriter for more than 10 years I expect a lot more than just fleshing out the "When" and "Where", why give credit when almost every single show that existed done that right? Of cause the information is important, without that we don't even have a story, and that's just fundamental.

I never said I want this much details, just like you I know the first episode can't be everything and sometimes viewers have to be patient for the show to develop until they can decide whether it is their watch, but that doesn't mean the production team can't try to pull viewers into the show, now that's a thing I can give credit for if they can have more focus on doing that in this episode.

AaaaaaKun said:
I thought that is never the problem to begin with, the show was never advertised to cater to western viewers. Yet just because an anime isn't made for a specific group of audiences doesn't mean it automatically pleases it's target audience, in fact in 2ch, like 4chan in Japan, most of the users just bash the show for being confusing or too "Animator-oriented", just like if a show just randomly and constantly throwing internet memes on the screen but without showing their significant to the story viewers are going to get confused or bored.

AaaaaaKun said:
Imply an insult, and then say that it is not your intention.

Yoru no Yatterman, another show of this season did made me invested into the story in just the first half of the first episode by providing minimalistic background information and focusing more on building up the characters and their motivations and personailties, right until they ruined it by having an inappropriate comedic moment, but still it is proved that making your viewers to be emotionally invested can be done at the beginning. And having that is a huge advantage, even Uchouten Kazoku, that has similar atmosphere did a better job of fleshing out it's characters and develop them in the first episode while having a vibrant world. I do like the scene after the first fight when the two sisters riding on a bike and having conversation with each other, that scene shows us their relationship and fleshes out their characters so that we can have someone to relate to in this totally bizarre world. It's scene like that which the flow is dictated by the characters not the animation help viewers to get invested into the story. Sadly after that we get a "Lamen eating" and amusement park scene which just for the sake of advancing the plot and showing off the animation instead of grounding on the story and characters. Scenes always alternated between character-driven and plot-driven that really made the show lost its focus. It's fine it they totally focus on one or the other, right now it's just half-baked, Space Dandy is another show which the entire focus is on the animation, but I won't call that pretentious because there is never any substance but mindless fun to begin with. It's definitely not spoon-feed information to the viewers, but this show just seems like throwing everything on the ground and without telling you what to look for.

AaaaaaKun said:
Well this is kind of off the topic so I don't hope this continues, but I'll admit I don't like the style of Kyousougiga after watching the first episode when it aired, but that's because I made a comparison of the similar style and storing telling technique between Akiyuki Shibo, Kunihiko Ikuhara and Kenji Nakamura, Shibo is good at making eye candy, Ikuharar is all about symbolism, Kenji is rather playful and unfocused and I just can't stand the randomness of the visual from Kyousougiga. So I can't tell if that is a good show or not since I never finished it but I have my impression that is based on my reasoning. Criticism is not like pure bashing if it's based on reasoning and evidence, just like many great show I or anyone can still criticize them if they can provide enough reasoning. If you see my post on the discussion of Shirobako episode 13 you'll know even though I enjoy the show and think that it's the best of its kind, the emotional connection just isn't there for me and I did give my reasons.

pakoko said:
I think I just interpreted your point about there being a “lack of effort from the creator to actually help viewers to be familiarize with the story” to meaning that the story didn’t do a good job of explaining the background story, when really you were just commenting about how there’s a lack of effort in how they try to draw viewers into the story; a totally different matter. I apologize for that.

pakoko said:
Well, that doesn’t mean you have to bandwagon onto their opinions, right? Unless you really agree with them. Anyways, I don’t think you bringing up 2ch is really relevant because you were asking about how many technical terms were being thrown at the viewers, to which I replied with the fact that most of the “technical” terms you were talking about were just Japanese geography that Westerners are not familiar with. I wasn’t saying anything about whether or not the target audience enjoyed this show or not.

But thanks anyways for the random input. I’m not necessarily defending the show, but I didn’t know that this show was confusing to and bashed on by Japanese viewers as well.

pakoko said:
Lol my bad, I tend to do that when I’m rambling on. I don’t usually edit what I type so sometimes I say a lot of blunt things. I apologize for that.

Ok well now I understand that you, as a viewer, really look for how a show tries to draw its audience in. I don’t look for as much as you, especially in the first episode, and I tend to wait for everything to pan out before I can make my judgment.

I am also a slice-of-life fan, so I’m interested to see how this show will manage to be a slice-of-life when it seems more like an action show right now. I won’t make any judgments regarding the actual story itself because we’re just one episode in. However, I guess I agree with your point that there’s a lot of random action in this episode without much purpose. Like, all the action is there for keeping the viewers interested, rather than some other purpose that would help with, say, the progression of the story.

luinthoron said:
Reminds me a bit of Kill la Kill, but not enough to drop it yet.

trabeus1 said:
The animation and the story felt like

Yozakura Quartet: Hana no Uta

Axernea said:
Nice fighting scenes, but the story isn't quite clear to me.. Also, Nozomi didn't seem like the MC to me, her Masami got more of the spotlight. If Nozomi's gonna step up to it thought, something will have to happen to Masami, so that she joins the other girls..