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Dec 21, 2017
Everything rateable in the world should be rated in relation to what it aims to achieve, and no one kind of art is superior or inferior to others. Two statements that are central to the defence of Shobitch that I will try now, having taken a peek at the three out of four scored one reviews on the front page at the moment. I think this deserves better than that.
And such, I mean, it's underrated. What does Shobitch try to do that they don't really succeed to? In essence it's a lewd joke show with romance in large doses, which is clear on the title,
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clear on the poster and clear in the synopsis, and should have been clear to the viewer, and it simply delivers just that.
Does it fail in the jokes? It doesn't. They basically throw every sex joke they can think of on the wall, take everything including the jokes that don't stick and barrage the viewer with it for 20 minutes straight- and I'd say everyone would find at least a few that sticks every episode, surely. This is more than I can say for much of the other comedy anime, or any anime that procures comedy as part of it to be fair. Maybe because of the language barrier, it's very hard to find comedy anime sketches that genuinely make you lose your breath, and even if sex jokes is a rather easy way to achieve universal larger-than-smirk laughs they do achieve and I'd have to commend them for that.
Does it fail in the romance? No. This is a preference thing, but because they are polar opposites in tone I'd expect most people to at least like one out of Akiho and Shizuku- and they both have lots of scenes that can satisfy the viewers. They even take time out of every episode to develop the relationship somewhat and endear the couple to the viewers in a different tone. Does it beat around the bush and become a frustrating drawn out romance? Nah again, they set it in stone in the first episode and run with it, to the point and without any frills, without any embarrassment. What's not to like?
Then is there any huge problems that drag the show down? Obnoxious as fuck characters? Not really. Stale writing? No, I'd even write it in as a compliment. Bad visuals? It's definitely cheap, but it's adequate enough. This kind of show is just fine with this level of art. Does it get boring at any point? Absolutely not. Frantic, fast every minute.
Then why's the score a 6? Much of the jokes still don't really work(naturally, per above), there wasn't a 'great' episode and there's an innate cheapness that is hard to deny. But are there any fatal faults that warrant such a low score, as is currently? No. Not for me.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Sep 30, 2017
It's to note that the none out of the apocalypse setting, western late modern period setting, warped isekai-ish setting, and their combination is particularly original. Now I might sound like a snob who thinks every fucking show should be 'original' and shouldn't be 'generic' and 'derivative' but you can look at my list and you'll know you'll be mistaken- that and my next point, which is that...
You can still make such an amazing show out of those settings if you push the right buttons. I think they did. Or at least was close to doing that. You can't really go THAT wrong with this kind
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of plot, right? And it's more dynamic and expansive than, say, Yuuki Yuuna for instance. And we have pretty good characters with fairly interesting backstories, too. Not to mention waifu-worthy girls, talking skeletons and adorable animals. The protagonists are likeable, not instant classics but not too middle-of-the-road, cool as you like. Art wasn't outstanding but good enough.
And yet I can't renege the feeling that every moment I watched this I was, what's the word, well, not disappointed, underwhelmed? You get to feel these kinds of thoughts to varying degrees. This scene should have been more dramatic. This scene should have been more subdued. Willem should have been more expressive there. Willem should have acted cooler there. This scene needs a little less comedy. This scene should have played a bit slower. Those scenes should have been spaced out a bit. These scenes would have been better if contrasted. This episode is a bit cluttered and should have been sequenced a bit differently. This foreshadowing is clumsy. The visuals should have been more striking there. This moment should have been AMAZING! It really should have. Yet it isn't. Not really.
Even in the last episode- those scenes, they should have been massive, yet they were just good~great level for me, as when I thought about the scenes again they lost their gloss a bit. In a nutshell, it's not scripted that well. I think.
I'm not half saying that it's bad, but compare it to, say, Kakegurui that just finished as I write. It's pretty repetitive, and much of the characters are an acquired taste. I really don't think it had that much potential, I don't think it's half as good a show as Sukasuka is(at least the part adapted so far), in my opinion. Yet when you watch it you don't think of the above issues, since it's pretty gripping and immediate, adequately dramatic and paced pretty well. Hope you understand what I'm getting at. I really feel this problem masks a lot of the high points.
So, we have an anime with a not-particularly-original-but-adequately-quirky setting(genre), interesting (but slightly messy) storylines(songwriting), solidly likeable characters(catchiness), fairly enjoyable visuals(vocals), but with really boring direction(production); exacerbated in this case; that is reasonably, but not really very, popular. I proclaim Sukasuka as the anime version of Grizzly Bear. Sorry if I look like an idiot, which I probably do now.
I now read the first sentences of the upvoted reviews on MAL and it looks like they echo my views somewhat; it looks like a fair amount of people thought the same.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Mar 17, 2016
KonoSuba is a strange animal. Literally every trope it contains is fatal and it shouldn't work at all on paper. It includes, and is built on, an MC that tickles the complexes of the socially incapacitated Japanese 'Hiki-neet's, a huge female main cast(including two...or one who hasn't appeared yet), mostly cheap visuals, generic generic and generic backgrounds, standard Boke-tsukkomi combinations, an obviously unnatural focus on the roles the MCs partake in and paper thin characters that blatantly rely on their profile personalities to interact. Definitely it does.
And yet, surprise surprise, most of the time it DOES work. All of that is down to the producers,
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who injected shards of brilliant and original(at least down this road) screenplay which sometimes felt simply ingenious. Credit where it's due, the high sales and the critical success comes from that reason.
But there is a disclaimer. It is not that this is an otaku filling moe show with tonnes of fanservice surgically implanted into it. To tell the truth it is, but it is no more so than your normal show. The praise and popularity doesn't root from that.
The disclaimer it that the heaps of problems this contains only works when tongue is firmly in cheek. And regardless of the reason why, lots of times they tried to pull a serious face. Never did they succeed. Even worse, it severely hurts the viewer's image of the show. It's a one to laugh with, and its fabulous comedy golds are perfect to laugh with. But when it does not work it becomes a one to laugh at. Case in point: the Darkness scenes in the last episode.
For me in particular it was a hard time trawling through certain episodes because of that. The pseudo seriousness Darkness brings to the table always backfires on the flow, even when it leads to the inevitable masochist joke, because that trope in particular got old extremely quickly. Every character is guilty of this, only in differing ways.
KonoSuba's qualities as an entertaining show always stem from the flaws and the gaps between its status as a game based LN show, and the production usually made great use of it and strongly amplified the effects of those qualities. Unfortunately those exact flaws lead to the fact that it would never be a perfect show, and the fact that it would always be a show gunning for a niche. It is impossible to build on it as a genre because it straddles the line innately. It is a bastard child of two genres and multiple tastes. This was the final undoing of the show.
But then again I admit that I enjoyed the show quite much and am disappointed by the restraints on time it got. Its highs define its lows, but the lows don't overshadow the highs. The girls are still cute. The comedy is still funny.
You know what haters gonna do, haters gonna hate. Haters gonna bait. I'm not a hater, but I realise its minuses. This is a show that's bound to divide. I would stay on the like side, for now.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Feb 17, 2016
Do you recall your high school days? Did you do club activities? I did. I was in the school newspapers. An English newspaper in a Korean school, producing a tabloid-size every year. The first time I attended the meetings, I remember, an English teacher took to the front of the classroom. She passed out a sheet of paper to every new member of the club. It contained 'useful phrases for easy article writing', with the title written in bolded and underlined Korean.
I also did interviews with the newspaper. The mission was to interview a Chinese teacher and I was paired up with a senior to
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do it. I prepared the questions, and the senior was tasked with the interview itself. For the daunting and audacious task we were allocated fifty minutes, and the senior prepared a pen and a notepad for the interview, then... told our beloved teacher to write the answers on the notepad. We were done in no time. We returned to the classroom triumphant, thirty minutes spent chatting in the restroom.
Did I care? No. Did anybody care? Probably not. Did you care about yours? I'd say most of you didn't. But...but they did. These five girls did. It was the true birth of their lifelong dreams.
Shirobako is too idyllic.
Do you recall your college life? Some of you may not need to go there, but here in our place we need to go there, for economic reasons more than academic reasons. I remember about the entrance ceremony. Herded from the meeting place just inside the school gates, I sat in an auditorium, unwell from a cold caught some days before. They did congratulation gigs, they did speeches, they did 'explanations on campus life'...I was getting even sicker. And then a junior stepped onto the stage, and she talked about such an exciting subject. 'Things to keep watch on when you drink with higher grade students'
I did part time jobs when I had free time. I needed the money. My major was 'istree, no way anybody would benefit on finding work from that. I resorted to managing a convenience store. It was close enough to the college itself. It was a run-of-the-mill job, mildly physically challenging, mildly mentally challenging. It's hard when you meet that drunkard on 3 AM. Then one day I met an instructor. He pulled out an energy drink and wanted a Marlboro. I duly gave it to him, and then he said...'Hey, working for your dream aren't you. Good luck.'
I was a bit disillusioned. I guess you were too. But they weren't. At least, Midori wasn't. How easy does getting a seat next to your immediate boss does it get?
Shirobako is too idyllic.
Do you recall the first day you went to work? I admit, it's not too far back for me. Maybe for some of you the day hasn't come yet. I still remember that day. I borrowed my parents' car for the day, seven in the morning, and drove there. It was a fair distance, thirty minutes on car. If I was still living in Holland, a bridge may had suddenly wrenched on its legs and stop me for fifteen minutes strong, but I was in boring old South Korea so the only roadblock I got was a traffic jam. The workplace was edgy for a beginner, I remember nothing of it, and after the day I have to go home, don't I. I hopped on the car, maybe I would get to race a rival company employee! Guess what, I got another traffic jam.
To quote Dick Ashcroft when he did Glasto, life's a struggle, and tomorrow is a Thursday not a Monday but anyhow Monday morning may be a struggle working in a job that you despise, and working for a bastard you despise. We're a slave to money then we die. Are you? I am. But they aren't. None of them are. All of them and maybe their colleagues too.
Shirobako is too idyllic.
And yet I dream sometimes that those five girls will grace my screen again. No, not that actually. In the dark cloudy nights after a long day, when I look out the window of my high-rise flat, the neon rainbow-coloured ark would appear, with those five girls sitting in the middle of the ark, and fill my eyes with lunar light. What's happened? We've got Shirobako season two. What will happen now? Surely, heaven would be ours...
Do I need to explain to you what the series contains? No ta, just watch it. Drink it in.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Nov 29, 2015
I'll have a rant with Charlotte. It deserves it. Why isn't there a zero score for 'story'?
It is oft repeated that everybody, well not everybody, but many people, had high hopes for Charlotte, and that 'people' includes me in the ranks. It was the first name on my team sheet for the summer season. Such a waste.
It's also repeated that it started okay and plunged down after a certain point. This plays true to the words, it shot up the horribility scale after about EP8. Everything went wrong. The pacing, the character development. But especially the plot. The believability of that plot. Plot holes are
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galore. It's really depressing trying to talk about every one of them. The last episode was especially a huge pile of garbage on that front, which you have to see to believe. How is that even possible? There were too many 'red dots' on one map in one city and too much time taken for him to erase one dot at a time for me to believe any second of it.
The characters were a big problem too. Nao is well-loved and praised, at least round here in my part of the Earth. She is well-designed, no doubt about it. However she plays too little a part in the short and appalling main plot, think about it again, doesn't she? About all the others, well...there are too many come-and-go characters that just slip in, do their part which have wildly varying impacts on the plot, and then vanish with slim explanation on their past or future actions and intentions. Even two 'main characters' in the main party, glasses guy and idol girl, really do nothing to complement the anime outside of giving the odd giggle(or, to put it better, vain attempt at making you giggle) and being a kind of christmas visual decoration. We still don't know virtually anything about them after the end of the last episode. It's impossible to like the character as a moving character that has flesh and blood, even though they're 'main characters'. Ms. Zhiend and Nao's older bro clog up more than one episode of the anime, and the whole of EP8, for literally nothing, as their forced drama is reversed when the MC turns back time. What was the point?
Pacing and production, to a lesser extent was also to blame. Look at the flashback scene in EP9 and...It’s really bad. I'll have a moan with the main band Zhiend as well. They're vaguely listenable, but how on earth are they a post-rock band? And why did Maeda try to emphasize that?
That leaves the art. It's not a masterwork in design and movement, but it's certainly commendable and faults were hard to find in the quality throughout the series. That's it though. It doesn't leave waves of astonishment for that, and is just...a little better than the average anime you get. There's no trying to leave from the tradition neither, everything is standard. Is it better enough than your average 'moe anime' or whatever they call them to cover up its gaping shortcomings in just about every department excepting the art? Nah... it just serves to make this shit look a bit less shit.
That's Charlotte then for me. I was planning to give this a long, critical mind you, but still long review up until EP11 or something. I lost the remaining love for this over the next couple of weeks, and gave up on giving it a long review as it was a waste of time. That leaves this rant. No recommendation people, don't watch it. No chance I'm waiting for another series from Maeda. Not in a million years.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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