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Forum - View topicREVIEW: Concrete Revolutio: The Last Song
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SNaGem
Posts: 41 |
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Interesting. Unfortunately, I found Season 1 to be such a forgettable slog that I didn't want to experience that again in S2. Also I forgot everything. I guess it delivered.
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MarshalBanana
 Posts: 5347 |
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Playing Poker
Me: OK Concrete Revolutio, show us your hand Concrete Revolutio: Look at this hand, all Aces. |
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Kougeru
 Posts: 5531 |
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"also, i forgot everything" LOL me too. I meant to watch this but never got around to it yet (seems like I should tho). I blame Hulu tho.... I saw they season 1 and waited for Season 2 to appear but it never did...
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Ajc228
Posts: 265 |
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It's streaming on Funimation for free if you create an account. I enjoyed what I saw of the show. It reminded me of watchman in the the way it had had all this meta fictional content. |
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SNaGem
Posts: 41 |
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Heh, I'm far worse. It popped up on my account, and I watched the first ten minutes, and most of the details were lost on me... I didn't like the first season at all (probably worst of Fall along with Comet Lucifer IMO), there weren't any Wikipedia summaries of the episodes (at the time, dunno if that's true now) and I didn't feel like watching it again. I doubt that I would like this second season anyway. |
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justsomeaccount
 Posts: 471 |
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In my group of friends we were watching and discussing this series with some liking the first season, others disappointed (me in those) and others downright hating it... and we all hated this second season. The few advantages it had (more simplistic stories and a more focused direction and mood in them) were completely overtaken by pure nosense, constant betrayal of characterization and plot threads (especially Jaguar, what a disaster man!), even more contrived plots that make no sense only to slightly reflect whatever stupid commentary they wanted to force at the moment (or not, 60% of the time two characters fight there's no reason for it, they just want to make them fight and have conflict that is not even related to what's going on), barely real consequences that are actually followed up, deus ex machinas every minute, etc. Also, of course, the two biggest problems of the first season, but bigger:
1-When they return to the main plot it's all overstuffed, rushed and there's no tone or mood to the scenes. I totally get that the scriptwriter said the director read the script, shrugged without understanding and did it anyways, because it really feels like it has no idea what tone the scenes have and it puts the monotone boring energetic for everything, and so NO emotional attemp comes close to succeed, with maybe one or two exceptions. 2-The blatant dialogue where everybody just talks in ideology-language 90% of the time for everything every second in the most awkward way that it's so ridiculous it's impossible to take seriously (the last episode has the line spoiler["Ugh! Am I going to lose? No, if I lose that means I'm not justice!"] and I laughed for a minute of how awful and forced it was). Even for a show that demands such high levels of suspension of disbelief and only come for the thematic points, and that I was already not comfortable with in the first season but still gave it a chance for the next one, it pumped it to such extreme levels that made impossible to take seriously anything about it. Good for the people who made it or liked it, but it's one of the easiest shows to understand why very few followed it to the end. |
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ProlificSky
Posts: 11 |
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I made a long post in the forums for ep 24, but I'll reiterate that I'm probably not of the right demographic for this show. I loved the episodic side stories of all the seemingly random superhumans, but quite disliked the development of the main cast. I prefer a more cohesive narrative, which this show sacrificed for a jigsaw puzzle of various themes. spoiler[My biggest gripe is still with Jirou killing off his previous comrade-in-arms, the S-Planetarian, whom Jirou rescued twice, with nary a thought afterwards. Who knows how many superhumans/previous allies were killed in his pursuit of misguided martyrdom.] It was brushed aside and left a bad taste in my mouth. I honestly want to like this show as much as I did initially, but with the overall narrative full of holes by the end, I'm not so sure I can.
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ryanvamp
Posts: 416 |
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I love this post so much because it offered me the chance to just agree with that and expand upon my thoughts as to why I find ANN staff reviews so baffling so many times: while I truly enjoyed reading Rose Bridge's reviews of many episodes after I finished watching them, I couldn't understand how someone who is clearly intelligent and articulated chose to overlook the very glaring issues this show had....I honestly believe sometimes adult anime watchers (including myself) are so fed up with formulas, cliché and the "SAO of this season" than they'll gravitate towards ANYTHING that has more depth and originality and try their hardest to ignore its actual quality as a well told story. To be honest, I quite enjoyed some aspects of the first season, but I could never recommend it to anyone without a second thought because it seemed like a trainwreck from episode 1. The show went from smart and adult to nonsensical and awfully executed in a matter of minutes, like if the series was a representation of a schizophrenic mind or some kind of weird experiment (I'm convinced it was, at the very least, the latter). Like the quoted forum user said, a lot of scenes were tone-deaf about what they were supposed to depict and almost every character suffered from very uneven development (the worst example that comes to mind is Kikko). How was all of this so easily forgiven by Nick & Rose is beyond my comprehension. I accept it cause their opinions are as valid as mine, but it does confuse me because there's a certain point in which I stop considering something "subject to discussion" and start seeing as "anyone with the proper tools can reach this conclusion". You can certainly find someone who enjoys the last Transformers movie (it did make a billion dollars worldwide), but you'll have a harder time finding a person with a background on arts that can call it a worthwhile movie without sweating in the process. I do understand reviews are meant to be subjective, but if I ever did one as an actual job, I'd try my hardest to evaluate from not just my personal taste and point of view, but also trying to consider formal aspects of the show (composition, script, dialogue, pacing, scene transition, COHERENCE, etc). Otherwise I would feel like I'm just writing my thoughts instead of giving my readers some sort of "recommendation" regarding if they should spend some time with a particular series or not. But maybe (probably) this is no Rotten Tomatoes, and all this time I had the wrong assumption as to what exactly is the point of a written review here. Or maybe the one thing that sometimes completely ruins a review is the need to assign a score that everyone can easily check before deciding to actually read it: like I've said, I found both Nick and Rose's reviews a very nice read...it's the fact that they either rarely mentioned the very weak aspects of the show or/and rate them very highly the source of my concerns. But hey, at least I do concede that the series did many things right and it won't go down as generic wish fullfilment anime #4422. It's a shame it does seem like an anime that was barely watched and confused a significant portion of the audience that tried to give it a chance, though. |
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Calsolum
 Posts: 898 |
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heh i remember that feeling of watching ep 1, to me it felt like "aliens vs MIB X magical girl + transforming boy divided by transformers to the square root of watchmen." Needless to say i was utterly confused but the animation did entertain me and i gave it another chance and I loved it. The second season IMO was... different that what i expected and i suppose that was my reason for not liking it. Im a sucker for antiheros and stories where the protagonist is betrayed by the same society or ideals he's given his all to protect, and he either lashes out in fury or accepts this as the way things are and just does what he wants anyway. The start of this series had that sorta feeling with jiro leaving the bureau but it was never that simple, my biggest gripe with this series is that it felt like it needed too much work to figure out what was happening, ill be honest my knowledge on history, politics, and WW issues is about 0 so all the parallels concrete revolutio was trying to draw was lost on me, I really appresciated these reviews that broke the denser themes down for me to understand but it doenst make the series enjoyable if i gotta sparknotes every ep. anyway i think binge watching concrete revolutio is the way to go cause i did that with the first and it was slightly easier to understand, i was watching the 2nd season week by week and ill be honest i forgot that S planarian was killed by jiro(explains why he wasnt in the finale) TL;DR concrete revolutio is a nice show but way too dense to leisurely enjoy, its really pretty though. |
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Clarste
Posts: 430 |
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The overall impression I got is that the show isn't really all that concerned with plot or characterization (for many of the characters anyway), which is obviously a huge flaw for most viewers where such things would be the primary way they engage with the material. Instead, the show redirects nearly all of its efforts to themes and ideas, which often requires a bit of reflection to even understand. But even that tiny moment of reflection can completely kill the emotional resonance of a scene, as explained in the review.
On the other hand, I think the themes are strong enough, and refracted enough over so many different characters, to provide satisfaction all on their own. |
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MarshalBanana
Posts: 5347 |
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So it is not like they aren't characterised, it's just not in a way you would expect. It is difficult for the jaded internet generation, who are hard-wired to think that the only good characters are the ones who are "complex", to latch onto characters who are defined by their believes and values. |
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Australian JRPG Gamer
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I thoroughly enjoyed CR.
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killjoy_the
 Posts: 2460 |
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I wanted to like Last Song more than I did. It had a phenomenal beginning, some great episodes throughout, but I felt the ending was weak, both way too on-the-nose and rushed. So it ended up being only a little bit better than the first season to me (which was still one of my favorite anime of its year).
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Clarste
Posts: 430 |
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Well, that's exactly what I meant when I said it was focused on themes, especially refracted over a variety of characters (ie: the same themes are shown over and over again through the lenses of different archetypes). It's sort of like Maoyuu in that sense, in that it's less about specific people and more about People in a general sense, with each character representing a basic and fundamental archetype, as seen in stories. |
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Thatguy3331
 Posts: 1794 |
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After giving the first season a second chance and forcing my way through season two I think I can at the very least say that, while I can see the ways in which fans of this show can really be as enthusiastic as they are for it, I wish I could, but I can't.
It's two parts of one, me coming to the realization that I simply am not the right person for this show, since a lot of it's ideas generally leave no real lasting impact on me. that isn't to say they're bad or that they can't fuel discussion, I honestly believe if anything this show can make for an excellent topic of discussion. I've heard many people claim that this is one of the best anime they have seen in years and while I may not personally agree with the sentiment I at least understand why the sentiment is there in the first place. The proof's in the pudding but it's just not my flavor of pudding. The other reason is mostly due to how little I cared about any body in the cast in spite of their motivations being relatively clear, all things considered, and connecting with the show's themes and such. They all still somehow felt very one dimensional and kind of boring most of the time. So they're constructs, big deal, happens in stories that have large casts like this but the severe lack of emotional weight I felt for anybody really surprised me, and when I hear the characters get praised so much, I really wondered if I'm even watching the same show as them. I can't say the experience has been all bad with me constantly looking at the timer waiting for several episodes to just end already, some of the episodic episodes did work for me and not every episode that was more plot focused felt like it went over my head (I think the film propaganda episode near S2's latter half was the closet it got me to care about something in the show.) and Yusuke Nakamura was able to pull off some really sweet cuts that remind me why bones is so well renowned for what they're staff can do (me watching a certain other show they did this season very often made me forget but that's another topic entirely.) and even if not everything about the art direction works for me I can somewhat appreciate it for just how fitting it is for this show and how much of an visual identity it gets for itself. I can at most respect the show for trying to be something that's not the norm for anime's standards, and I'm open to the idea of this show possibly working better for me at another point in my life (I'm 22 now for point of reference.) but even still it's only because of the discussion it charged with certain anime fans. As of right now though it's just not for me. |
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