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Funny MT review. I havent watched that anime, but the discourse around it is certainly heated.

I understand where you are coming from a lot more now, but I still somewhat disagree. Emotions are inherently the most important part of your writing, so I agree with you on that, but I don't think that trying to understand the context in which you formed those emotions diminishes their authenticity. If you are just trying to understand what parts of a given work made you feel a certain way, that does not automatically retrofit your reaction or in any way diminish its value. Obviously, emotions are deeply personal, but I wouldn't call them inherently subjective. There most definitely are things that give people certain emotional reactions, these feelings can be forced to some extent and because of that, I wouldn't consider them to be solely subjective. To me, this mainly comes down to seeing your emotions as a reaction to a given work, instead of being random. As long as they are the product of something else, they can't be something inherently separate from the world and thus still have some connection to the reality we inhabit. If that is the case, which we can probably agree on, then our emotions, as bound to our subject as they are, still have an objective nature behind them, which can be shared and discussed. I agree that your emotions are important and that you should stay true to them, portray them in the way you experienced, but, to me at least, part of artistic analysis is always understanding why these works make us feel a certain way. As long as this reaction isn't random, we can search why we experience these things the way we do. If you ask me, that is a core part of a review, as we are trying to understand the work in question, not the reviewer. I think that's the big difference between our view points here, to me, a reviewer is a person who tries to talk about a work through their experience, while to you, a reviewer is the subject of discourse and the work is simply the vessel for this analysis. This is also why I never mentioned my person view on the movie, because it didn't really matter to the discussion, at least from my perspective.

I quite like the Boy and the Heron, it is nowhere near my favourites, but I find it to have the best soundtrack, animation, direction and script out of all the Ghibli films. Overall, I'm not the biggest fan of these films as a whole, as they very rarely are able to form compelling narratives, but with their magnificently beautiful worlds, I just enjoy them for the imagery alone. Out of them all, The Boy and the Heron just manages to have the best narrative, as it actually says something I understood. Miyazaki's films most commonly lose themselves in a web of symbolism and metaphor, which hides their narratives behind layers of abstraction. This leaves the film as a singular experience feeling rather flat. They have imaginary visuals and fantastic music, but the story just goes from dot to dot until we reach the end, most commonly with some bullshit conclusion that makes zero sense but is blown out of proportions to be in any way as grand as the world it takes place in. Because of this, I ended up enjoying The Boy and the Heron the most of these films, because it puts its obscure and deeply personal message at the centre of the ending, forcing you to write your own interpretation, instead of giving you some half-baked "the scarecrow was actually the prince" thing as the conclusion of the narrative. I understand how this will probably not jell for most people, who would much rather have a simple but understandable ending than something wild and confusing, but for me this works a lot better, especially if you know the background of the movie and what the characters stand for. So is the Boy and the Heron some kind of Masterpiece? If you ask me, actually yes, it is still terribly flawed, but to me, it was grand and imaginative in all the right ways, I to this day listen to the soundtrack and though it isn't that important to me, it seems like the kind of film made for those rare few, who will forever remember it as the best film of all time. It is not for everyone, it is way too personal, way too specific, but even though it wasn't for me, I just have to adore that part. I love art that knows what it wants and achieves it without compromise, that chases a very specific thing, without giving a single fuck about money or general reception. It just feels honest, that's how I would describe it.

That's my view on the film, and just to repeat myself, it isn't any more valid than yours. We obviously have pretty opposing views on this, but I don't really care about that, I just had a good time talking about this stuff and hope you somewhat did too. Once again, have a good one.

But there is a difference between talking about emotions and talking emotion. Emotions are incredibly valuable, and they are what we base our entire world on, but if we want to discuss these things, we need to put them into the context of something people can share and understand. I 100% agree that your emotional response should be the core of your review, it should be what everything else is based on, but that's it, it's just the base. You can have the strongest emotion ever felt by a human, if you can't express it, then you can't talk about it. This is why it is so important to put these things into the context of whatever thing you are discussing. I understand that you want to frame this problem in the context of a singular old review, to put it off as something irrelevant and lost to time, but the fact that you so strongly retorted to my criticism, without focusing on actual argumentation only shows that you either still value that old piece of writing or see it as emblematic of your writing as a whole. It is this thing that you are fundamentally misunderstanding, because it isn't some old piece of writing I am critiquing, though that most definitely is what I originally did, this has grown to be about your general approach to media discussion. You think that you need to care about me to listen to my criticism, while reason does not need to stand in connection to whomever framed it. Like art, reason exists in itself, a good argument remains good, even if it is the devil himself who says it. You frame my criticism as self-serving, as if my intention here was to somehow sell my own narrative or to feel superior over you, but even then, even if those were my intentions, that would not change anything about the quality of my critique. I don't believe my writing to be particularly great, my reasoning isn't the best and I have a real problem with keeping my shit concise, but even then, most of my arguments still hold truth to them. I am not the final authority on what a review should be, but we are not talking about that, we are simply talking about your reviews and whether they fail. To you, discussion is about winning, it's about being the one to vent your opinion, to let your voice be heard. You deserve an audience, the chance to have your words heard, but if you write your reviews everyone who takes the time to read them is in turn allowed to respond. Just as much as you are allowed to have your problems with The Boy and the Heron, which might be 100% valid, we just don't know, because you never really made that part clear, I am allowed to have problems with your review. So maybe the lesson for you here would be to learn how criticism and insults are thrown around lightly, though as soon as we are the ones criticized, they tend to land with more force than we previously expected. Criticize art, criticize people, society, institutions, whomever you want, but do it in a way proportional to what you have to say and the people receiving that criticism. If you don't have anything to say and just feel disappointed, maybe it's best to just shut up and wait for the next thing, for the next opportunity to start speaking your mind. But hey, that's only a suggestion, you can talk as much as you want, but those words have consequences. People are going to listen, and if you talk too much nonsense, you might just end up with some idiot in your comments trying to tell you how art and communication works. And what do you do then? Do you own your faults? Debate them to be such and have a civilized discussion? Or are you going to demonize that person for taking the same liberties you did, for doing the same thing that got all of this started? Your views are important, but no more than those of everyone else. I am not trying to impose my views upon you, I am telling you that you assume your freedom to be further reaching than it is. Your freedom to punch the air ends where my face begins. Call me easily offended, though that would miss the point, but if I truly was offended, I would have every right to want to talk about it. If you want to tell me how I am talking nonsense, remember, you did the same, that is why were are here.

If you disagree with what I am saying, just argue, just give me some arguments that make me shut up, something I can't refute. I might believe my position to be stable, to be morally above yours, to be in any way more logically sound, but those are my biases. Show me how wrong I am, try to convince me otherwise. If you can do that, I will gladly accept that, shut up and calm down.

Have a good one.

Jesus Christ, okay mate, but like, again, no. I specifically did not impose my own interpretation upon the movie, but instead framed it as one of many ways to read the metaphor of birds. The whole point of the first two paragraphs was to make clear, that my view is no more valid than yours, so you don't have to agree with my reading. All I was saying was simply, that you assume intentionality without backing up your claims. So no, the point isn't that the birds did have meaning, but that they had meaning to me and probably a lot more people. If you want to critique a work of art, you have to base your criticism on reason, not just an emotional response. You didn't like the movie, completely fine, I couldn't care less, but instead of arguing what the movie did wrong and why you didn't have a good time, you just assumed that to be a given and rambled on about nothing but your direct emotional reaction. So no, I am not "narrowing the experience of reality by filtering it through own perception", I am using that experience as a basis to form criticism, the exact purpose of a review. I know you aren't stupid, I know that you understand the difference between perception and reality. An interpretation is not the same as an emotional response, it is an attempt at framing your emotions and understanding in a logical way to understand a given work. You did not do this, it's that simple. Instead of trying to understand anything about the film or even just your own experience of watching it, you took that very subjective experience as an objective truth and based your entire review on it without even a single critical thought. So yes, I "read reviews to hear different takes on something", but you literally do not have a take. If all you are saying is simply "me don't like it", without in any way thinking about why, then that isn't a take, it is simply your emotional response. What the hell is a reader supposed to do with an emotional response? How does this broaden my understanding of The Boy and the Heron, apart from the fact, that I now know that there a people who don't like this film? You see the problem? But truly most embarrassing of all, you throw around terms like "death of the author" without even understanding them. Death of the Author does not deny intentionality, it simply frames intention as something inherent to the work, as something not based on the artist who made it. If Tolkien claimed the Lord of the Rings to be a sci-fi reimagining of Homer's Odyssey, then that would not matter when interpreting his works. What Lord of the Rings is about, is not defined by whoever wrote it, but by how we interpret it. Critically though, even then we assume intentionality, because there is no meaning without intention and with that no interpretation. I'm sorry, but how do you not know this? Really, I didn't write that first comment to shit on you, it was simple criticism, not an attack on your character, but you somehow strayed further from reality in your response. You probably won't listen to this, because this very much seems like an attack on your character, and it is easier to vilify criticism than it is to take it to heart, but seriously, you can't tell me that you don't understand what I am saying. I'm sure you're smart, I'm sure you just had a strong emotional response to The Boy and the Heron, one that overshadowed your critical reasoning, and you know what, that's completely fine. We all have things we hate to such a degree that we pass up on logic and let our thoughts be guided by emotion, but we have to own that, we have to see these as what they are, mistakes. Your review sucks, I'm not even going to talk around it, it is just bad, but that does not mean anything. Who cares whether a single piece of text you wrote is good or not, if there is something to learn from it. I know you pride yourself on being stubborn, sorry, I meant to say "correct", but if you refuse to own your mistakes, then you will never improve. If you don't care about that, if you don't care about the quality of what you are writing, of the reviews you are creating, then those reviews are nothing but your way of venting your opinion. If that is the case, if you truly do not care about how truthful, knowledgable, mature or good at writing reviews you are, then that reduces your writing to nothing, because there is no meaning in art without intention, and if there is no interest in one's skill, then there is no interest in art itself.

Was that pretentious as fuck? Yes, but it's still correct, so I don't really care.

Have a good day, I hope you can take criticism, no matter how emotional it makes you as what it is, not an attack of character, but feedback.

I'm really sorry to say this, but, like, the birds did mean something in the boy and the heron. It's about the commodification of art and how our artistic legacy can't just be continued by something else. Art is a core tenet of human experience, people are shaped by art and their creations are shaped by that of others. But that's the thing, no matter what we do, our creations always remain just that, our creations, not those of whomever we are trying to replace.

Now, you might rightfully say that this is not the way you interpreted the film or that you find this line of reading to be absurd and sure enough, that is absolutely understandable. I'm not trying to tell you that my interpretation of this work has any more value than yours or that I am closer to some ambiguous "correct answer". Of course, a hundred people can watch the same movie and all have a completely different experience, and all of those experiences in of themselves are valid. If we care, we can talk about our views, we can discuss our readings, argue about meaning and how some lines of reason are contradictory, or we could proclaim our own line of reasoning to be above those of others.

I'm 100% fine with the fact that you did not like The Boy and the Heron, I don't care whether you see meaning in the birds, but there are people who do and you have to respect that. Much of what you are saying is valid criticism if phrased correctly, but if you frame your view as more than just one of those many many readings, you impose a singular reality upon art. Not only is this deeply disrespectful to both the artist and a lot of people reading your review, but probably more importantly, it just makes your writing worse.

I'm going to interpret the fact that you don't use spoiler tags on your reviews as meaning, that you don't just write them for people who already watched whatever thing you are talking about. You want your reviews to be helpful, to be enjoyable maybe but most importantly, you want them to be truthful. Clearly you value speaking your mind and that very much is a good thing, why after all write reviews, if you have nothing to say. There is only a problem with this, if you impose your truth upon a given work. By doing this, you fundamentally alienate those who have a different view on that particular work and make your review pretty much unusable to those who haven't seen it yet. Probably most detrimental though, you narrow your perception of that piece of art and by extension art itself further and further down upon your single view. If you filter reality through nothing but your own perception, without even thinking about the implications of this, you miss things you could have loved, rob yourself of learning experiences and slowly shut yourself off from things you don't already vibe with. But you know what, that's all your business, do whatever you feel like, don't just listen to whatever some weirdo on the net tells you. On the topic of your reviews though, I just want to focus on how much worse this makes them. If you have a particular aspect of a piece of work you don't understand or dislike, simply stating that fact doesn't really do anything. The real value lies in identifying the reasons for why you had this response, that's the stuff people can work with. But if your review isn't based upon an assumed collective experience, upon a movie everyone can watch and interpret in different ways, but instead upon your very own reality, then that is not something you can share or teach. If you want to talk about art, you need to give that art the benefit of doubt, you need to assume intention even if you don't understand it. Write about how these things were lost on you, about how you didn't see meaning because of an assumed reason, not an expected reality. If you believe in art enough to want to discuss it, give it the room to breathe it needs, because even if this movie wasn't for you, I hope you agree that creativity should be encouraged, even if it just isn't our thing.

Thanks for reading this clusterfuck of a comment, I hope you have a good one ^^

Still waiting for Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer to get nomated at the Oscars. Come on it's only been 40 years!

Bless you for your review of The Boy and The Heron. Just walked out confused and irritated. You expressed my thoughts beautifully!!!

Thx for the patient answer. I was just curious because I'm usually a pretty unapologetic Miyazaki/Ghibli-sceptic but it's supposed to be among his best movies ever (which doesn't mean much) but anyway. Your review pretty much articulated what I expected.

No offense man but why did you give "The Boy and the Heron" a 5 even though you called it "a mess" and "poor" and "mindless rambling" etc.? Your review gave the impression that it was rather a 3/10 at best. Or was it satirical?

Tis' the season for giving bad anime reviews that'll be removed by mods for being 'troll-ish' despite giving an insightful didactic insight towards how how Shinji is a recurring metaphorical motif of Lenin-Marxist ideology in 'Shanghai Knights.'

I really need to change my pfp, the reflected text is accidently reversed and it slightly irritates me.

In little less than a couple of months time, my account will turn 2 years old. Where does the time go?
Haven't written any anime reviews since January last year, nor have I completed a series since Maison Ikkoku last September, in fact I haven't been watching all that much anime anymore.
I guess as time goes on we get more busy and caught up with things in life, that'll in return make the past look like a distant memory.
But i'll continue watching until the next Yatsura series drops next year, just to keep myself busy until then.
But rest assured, i'll still comment on this page profile for many years to come.

Second season of Urusei Yatsura (2022) announced and slated for 2024; looks like I need to do some catch up

I don't know whats happening right now, i'll just stick back to my Urusei Yatsura corner.

Best CSM review ever written.