Guaporense and Zotis Review Animation

Before I get back into the debate, which won't be today because I don't feel like it, I have to point that I am listening to the last video posted by Guap and it's amazing because Velvet's avatar can't stop dancing to the song.

146) HaNaYaMaTa (2014)



Very cute show. It's a bit more realistic drama rather than a cutesy comedy and hence less cutesy focused than most stuff sharing similar premises (Japanese school girls). Well, it can be said to be an abstract visual storytelling given it's characters do not look or behave in realistic fashion and do not try to do so: they are not supposed to be like real middle school girls but cute abstractions of certain elements of the human condition. It is something westerners have difficulty understanding since western storytelling tries to be more grounded to physical reality (as I said repeatedly).

However, I didn't like it's visual style, specially the character designs looked a bit weird and traditional Japanese dancing didn't look very interesting. So I didn't care much for it. But the animation was very good.

147) A Centaur's Life (2017)



That's a really nice slice of life title that has a lot of interesting elements that make it relatively unique. It's actually social commentary about racism and prejudice and it uses the concept of a world where humans have evolved into different sub-species that look very different from each other to comment on that. It's has been a quite different experience from the other slice of life titles that I watched recently. Although it has some similarities with Kobayashi's Dragon Maid (perhaps the slice of life title of the decade).

Although the animation and art are pretty subpar.

148) Himouto Umaru Chan (2015)




Perhaps the most concentrated piece of cuteness entertainment since K-On!. Indeed, it's very entertaining and enjoyable.

I liked it's representation of Umaru as being a selfish lazy nerd who has wears a fake image to the outer world. It is a commentary on the fact that who people "are", in the way they are perceived, changes depending on the social environment.

I don't like TV shows openings in general but I really liked Himouto's opening, it's really cute:

Himouto is fun! Nice show.

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This show was incredibly satisfying. I watched the whole season in one sitting consisting of twelve episodes with a completed story. The Reflection is a superhero story with distinct super powers and multifaceted characters. The artwork was very well composed and the story was quite strong too. The action scenes have great animation quality, and it wasn't obvious when they were saving money on less detailed frames. The portrayal of superheroes in this was so interesting, I loved the characters, story, and artwork so much. I can't really pick a single category that stood above the rest. Everything was done so well. This show left me feeling very excited. I highly recommend it.

anybody seen Ai City?? Looking to watch it

I watched about 45 minutes of Ai City. It's half-decent, but not great, and I kind of lost interest. I'll probably finish it sometime, but right now I'm not in the mood. The artwork was good, but the animation quality was a bit sloppy. The plot was a mess, the pacing was awkward, it's a messy movie, but it does have heart. I especially loved the way the villain would push around his subservient underlings with psychic power. One thing I found especially annoying though was the convoluted power levels of the characters and how dramatic effect does completely away with any kind of consistency in the setting.

149) Made in Abyss (2017)



Whoaaaa.... I was really impressed with this one. It's the best cutesy-violent-drama since Madoka, in fact, it's about as good as Madoka and superior in many senses as it is more elegant. In fact I think it is a masterpiece, a really powerful work.

Great animation, art, music score (best score in several years) and great voice acting performances. This a truly great stuff, perhaps the best animation of 2017 even better than Kobayashi's Dragon Maid.

This video describes it better than I can:

150) Blade Runner 2022 (2017)



Interestingly, we are approaching the date of the original's Blade Runner film and LA doesn't quite look like the one in the film (in fact, thinking in 1982 that flying cars would be standard by 2019? ), but this short animated film is quite a visual treat in its own right. Incredible art and animation. It's style is much more realistic than the average manga or animation I have consumed recently and so it feels rather fresh. The director is the Watanabe who also directed the show Cowboy Bebop, which is extremely popular among North American animation fans.

151) Mangirl (2013)



A very mediocre adaptation of 4 panel comedy fag manga. This time about a manga magazine office ran by 4 women. Hence the name: "Mangirl"= manga girl. It's very short as the whole thing is about 1 hour long and it was very vapid. Overall I watched it to clean up my crunchyroll queue.

I'll watch Made in Abyss soon.

I watched 11 episodes of Made in Abyss, but I didn't enjoying it very much. Some things I enjoyed, but overall I just couldn't embrace it. The backgrounds were beautiful, the monsters were creative, but I found most of the characters irritating and the internal logic was too flawed. It was not a smart show. In fact it was quite lacking in self-awareness. Characters responded to flawed logic with awe. Most of them were extremely dense, especially Reg. I also resented how forcefully the music tried to manipulate my emotions. It gave me a conflicted feeling for the majority of what I watched. If I was cringing or face palming at something the music would still be swelling up feelings of excitement or sympathy. I'd think to myself, "but I'm not sympathetic to this situation at all, it's quite absurd," and I would make effort to suppress the effects of the music. The music genuinely made me feel those emotions, but what was on the screen made me feel almost the complete opposite. I hated that.

Here is an example of how the internal logic of the show was flawed:

In the fifth episode Reg was uneasy with the notion of eating meat from monsters that prey on humans. Riko explained that the blue whistles’ hunted on the first floor of the abyss for the meat that they ate at the orphanage, and those monsters ate people too. Then she said, “But they become the flesh and blood of those creatures, and then once again become our strength. That’s how we, all us cave raiders, have become strong.” This scene became offensive to me when the atmosphere tried to make me feel like this was insightful. They didn't know if that particular monster necessarily ate any people, and it wouldn't make them any stronger even if it had. This was an observation of two children's naive reasoning. As an observer I couldn't embrace it because I'm not twelve and I understand logic. The music made me feel something completely different from everything else in the scene. The music fully embraced the emotions of the characters and transferred them to me as the audience, but I could not empathize because it was too absurd. I inherently wanted to criticise the flawed logic. So, when the show tried to make me embrace it, I rebelled. Thus the show did not work for me at all, because this was a constant thorn in my side.

The show did show some self-awareness in episode 10 when Riko's hand was poisoned and Reg planned to cut it off. After breaking her arm in preparation for cutting it off, Nanachi came along and prevented Reg from making a big mistake. Reg and Riko had no idea what to do in that situation so they floundered hopelessly. That was the first time that I felt the show demonstrate the characters' incompetency. I was surprised Reg had the foresight to break her arm though. That was something he shouldn't have thought of. However, there was one thing that was completely and utterly stupid. She wasn't breathing, but her heart was still beating. Then the worst display of CPR I've ever seen in my life actually worked. I'm a first responder. I've taken first aid training. If someone isn't breathing, their heart isn't beating. If their heart is beating, then they are breathing. You can't have one without the other. For CPR Reg did no chest compression, but he merely breathed into her mouth a few times. Breathing into someone's mouth during CPR is being removed from CPR training because you mostly exhale carbon dioxide, you can possibly contract diseases from the unconscious person (like Tuberculosis), and while you're exhaling you're not pumping their heart so oxygen is not reaching their brain. So yeah, the heart beating without breathing, and worst CPR ever, had me cringing so hard when it actually worked.

((Edit: I just double checked this and I got it backwards. If you don't have a pulse then you can't be breathing, but you can have respiratory failure without your heart stopping, and breathing into them can trigger them to start breathing again, so the show was not wrong. Maybe I'll finish it after all then.))

I really don't see any comparison to Madoka, and certainly no where near the level of genre interaction, artistic aesthetic, or internal conflict. I think this show would be more comparable to Miyazaki works like Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro.

Also the show had some really weird parts:

Alright, I'm on episode 13 now, and I think I finally realised that the ultimate thing I dislike about this show is just Reg's IQ of 0. It's painful to watch him blunder around, but at least the show is aware that he's stupid and has Nanachi calling him a push-over and a useless tool. I hate how often he gets surprised by things. If you said hi to him, it would startle him. If you sit down to eat and hand him his food he acts like you've done something no one would ever have expected. It's a little bit like torture watching him. But I guess I do like the world, and the concept of the Abyss. I think the world could have been better represented though. It feels like way to much is bypassed, and the only relics they go into are stuff that people already have or else they're just useless ovular objects that don't do anything. And they always have stuff that just happens to be extremely useful to their circumstances. It's way too convenient.

Edit: He doesn't want to kill Mitty because she seems happy. Then when Nanachi tells him that someday she'll die and Mitty will be left alone for all eternity, something that had already occurred to me, he is so surprised. Like, he's thinking, "Oh wow, I never considered that. Oh no, what should I do now?" Someone that incredibly stupid would never have made it that far. It reminds me of when I play Black Ops Zombies. I go into a random match, don't say anything, and just laugh as the scrubs die on early rounds. Most of them are smarter than Reg. This act of characters getting surprised and shocked by normal everyday things is something I have never ever once seen in real life. I've never said hi to someone and had them respond with wide-eyed bewilderment. I've never pointed something out to someone that they didn't realise and heard them gasp. They usually furrow their brow and say hmmm, or tilt head to one side and scrunch up their face thoughtfully. I really hate this trope so much.

A number of qualities stood out to me in this show, but there were also some serious flaws. The backgrounds were very well detailed and meshed smoothly with the other layers of the animation. The motion was fluid and crisp, and the artwork was thoroughly detailed and for the most part consistent. Sometimes I did notice shots with less detail, like close-ups of characters that filled the screen so there was little to no background. These could have been done to save on the budget, or for the sake of time were likely drawn by a b-team. I'm only speculating at this point, but I think those are the usual reasons. The story was also quite compelling with some endearing moments, however I often felt like the attempts to reach the core of my emotions were too forced and/or manipulative. I found the two main protagonists, Riko and Reg, hard to like. They were obnoxious to me as often as they were enjoyable. I also felt like tension was often too strained. The atmosphere was engrossing as often as it was alienating. The show was very good at extending the emotions of its characters to the audience, but unfortunately only a couple of characters had serious personalities. Most of the characters were too nice. I know there are people like that, but usually there are only one or two of them in a crowd. This world just had way too many of those types of people for its narrow focus. This is similar to the complaint I have about a lot of Miyazaki's works. It's too detached from reality for me to attach myself to it. A big problem with this series for me was the dialogue. The conversations didn't have much depth. They never talked about anything particularly important, but tended to focus on basic tasks like cooking their next meal. Also the characters were not flawed enough. While they were extremely stupid and foolish, and had to suffer the consequences of their ignorance and inexperience, they didn't have any personality flaws. They didn't argue. They were never selfish. There were no complex characters or real life issues. It reminded me of roleplaying online when people would often write their characters' personalities without any flaws. I really loved the idea of the abyss, the monsters, and the relics, but I felt like it rushed too fast to get to the deeper levels and didn't flesh out the world enough. I'm used to the anime trope of people being startled over little things, but this series did it way too often. In episode 13 Reg is sleeping behind Riko while she is cooking. He wakes up, and she sense it. She abruptly startles and dramatically slowly turns around and is pleasantly surprised to see that Reg is awoken. Oh boy things like that fill me with confusing feelings. Why was she startled? Was she expecting someone else? Didn't she know he was sleeping behind her? But the ending was pretty good and I do want to know what happens next.

This clear concise critical analysis brings almost every conceivable flaw to the surface. There are quite a few things I didn't even think about, but he puts it in such clear terms. I think it's spot on.

Mahoujin guru guru is also very good. But they are very different titles.

Thing is that the Japanese have a different approach to fiction than the west. Made in Abyss is essentially like visual music: music is also something completely detached from reality but we have deep emotional connections to it. Made in Abyss is the same: everything behaves in a very unrealistic manner. Its over the top like heavy metal music.

Also, very funny the accent of the reviewer you quoted. He is intentionally sounding more pretentious than anything. Very cool. Besides, his criticism is also regarding the unrealism of the setting and the plot, essentially saying that things don't feel natural: everything is a plot device. Indeed, that's true.

I view everything from a more symbolic perspective: the Abyss is kinda like time. By going down the Abyss you cannot go up and as you move down it gets more and more dangerous. Riko's journey is motivated by her visceral desire to find her mother no matter what and symbolizes greed and selfishness. Reg is an android and effectively her tool to reach her goal. Notice that she decided to descent to the Abyss when she found Reg, which enabled her to do that. They never fight because Reg is not human, it is an obedient robot, although one who can mimic human emotions perfectly. Anyway, I really liked Nanachi and his/her backstory (it is not clear if Nanachi is male or female). Very cute bunny indeed.

I think he makes very compelling arguments. The constant use of deus ex machinas make danger superficial and erode tension. When they face a terrifying lethal monster it just waits patiently for them to work out a strategy and plan their move instead of just instantly killing them like it easily could.

The show isn't clear about wether Reg is a robot. I don't think he is either. I think he is a sentient being that is robot-like, and I think I detected a couple of clues alluding to their being a whole race of them.

When you say music is detached from reality I think you're talking about something different. The music isn't doing anything that real music shouldn't be able to do in real life. But when they show a setting with a very dangerous environment and then have a careless idiot haphazardly stumble around and not get killed because of conveniences like tumbling into a hole too small for the monster's head it doesn't make any sense. There were more dangerous monsters in the second layer than the third.

I can appreciate the artwork and music, but the writing is just aweful. The characters barely have dimension, and the plot makes no sense. When I say it's detached from reality, I mean that events don't transpire as they should. Why do trees grow upside down? The world doesn't have enough lore. Instead of spending time in each area fleshing out the world they just rush through. Consider Naussica and how they talk about the forrest and what's going on, and she has to be smart and think about what she needs to do. She doesn't have an indestructable ally to convienently bypass every obstacle.

Also Nanachi is obviously a girl. They showed us her human form, but if you find it visually ambiguous then just look at her behaviour. For one thing she's fine with Riko touching her but not Reg. If that's still not enough, she's voiced by a woman.

That youtuber was also pretty critical of Madoka. While I didn't agree with a number of things he said about Madoka, he did bring some interesting things to light. I love how fully he embraces his pretentiousness. He's really funny while being extremely logical.

I'm curious why you thought Made in Abyss rivaled Madoka. Perhaps it was the visual experience?

I am talking about the concept of music itself: it is a completely artificial and nonsensical concept. Music is a sequence of sounds made for no other purpose. It has no relationship with physical reality but people like music anyway. Anime is essentially something more abstract than live action movies, it cares less about being "realistically built environments" and actually is getting less and less realistic over time. It is more concrete than music and stands at the middle point between the two mediums.

Anyway, I think that finding plot holes in fiction writing is not valid criticism. It's like criticizing some Tarkovsky's movies from not having a well constructed plot.

The author of the original manga actually said that the gender of nanachi was not defined.

Nanachi refers to himself/herself as 俺 in the Japanese audio track and in the original Japanese language manga as well (which I also have) which is typically a male self reference (women usually say アタシ or 私) as well. And looks are often deceiving in anime, in Made in Abyss, Marulk is a male for instance and he looks like this:



It's common in anime for woman to voice male characters.

Which means he fundamentally misunderstands art. Art is not supposed to be logical.

Actually I think the writing is better than in Madoka, since it's more elegant and well spaced and it's atmosphere builds up more gradually and elegantly, while Madoka is more rushed and less elegantly constructed. I think Made in Abyss is the best animation since Madoka overall. And I really don't understand your problems with it.

You think music has no relation to physical reality? Then what are sound waves and how do we hear them? What is physical reality if not waves and energy? There are no solid objects in physical reality. It's just sequences of sounds for no other purpose? What is talking then? What about the emotional effects of music?

Concerning plot, all of Tarkovsky's movies have well crafted plots. What are you talking about? You can't arbitrarily exclude an aspect of a work of art from criticism. Absolutely every element can be criticised if it has errors.

Art is not supposed to be logical? Now it just sounds like you don't know what logic even is. Logic does not even apply to art necessarily. Logic only applies to reason. There is no neutrality when it comes to logic either. Logic is either sound or faulty. If a character's motivation explains their actions then it makes sense and is logical. If the character contradicts their own established motives, that is an error, and is not logical. It is bad writing. Saying the world is dangerous and then having stupid clumsy characters survive by constant deus ex machinas contradicts the established setting and makes no sense, it is illogical and stupid. It is lazy writing.

As far as gender, that is some gender nonbinary bull****. Marulk being a boy is disgusting, but also completely irrelevant to the character and the story since everything he does is female behaviour, he looks like a girl and wears a dress. Gender nonbinary people are not like that. They pretend and lie to themselves and have a lot of personal problems as a result. Marulk has no sign of the struggle and confusion these people have over their identity but presents the character as stable and perfectly reasonable, and this is just a terrible illustration of a cross dressing boy with none of the challenges that he should be facing. What a terrible one dimensional character. This is also bad writing.

The only thing praisworthy about the show is the visuals, so you act like that is the only criteria that matters. Even on that basis alone Madoka is better. It has prettier colors, more complex animation, and more detailed artwork. Plus it has an experimental side, and better composition. Also Madoka was more thoroughly detailed throughout, while Abyss had some clever budget saving tricks interspersed so they were hard to notice.

Come over to the side of logic Guap. You will like it more than the fantasy realm, trust me.