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Forum - View topicREVIEW: New Game! Season 1 BD/DVD
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Lemonchest
Posts: 1771 |
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Somewhat echoing the reviewer, the main issue I remember having with New Game is how it seems to just want to be a cute girls high school club anime, only set in an adult workplace - with 0 consideration for the different implications the two settings have. So all nighters due to bad management become sleepovers, a creepy boss becomes a quirky club president & Yagami's complete lack of work - life balance becomes an excuse to look at her arse over & over again etc etc.
There's a line between escapism & straight up ignoring the shows own reality, & New Game crosses it for the sake of not putting off the men-who-like-watching-girls that buy these shows. Which actually linked into a different thought I had while watching it - that making the characters card carrying adults but still acting like "cute girls" highlights how condescending & weird the whole genre can be towards women. & I say that as someone who's generally a fan. |
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mgosdin
 Posts: 1302 Location: Kissimmee, Florida, USA |
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I very much enjoyed this season of New Game, at least some of the complaints about the show that the reviewer had are corrected in the second season.
I wasn't as pleased by the dub which I thought clashed with the tone of the series, but happily the original is just a menu choice away. Mark Gosdin |
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rizuchan
 Posts: 976 Location: Kansas |
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It's interesting to me that Nick mentions the fanservice - apart from the aformentioned panty shots, I don't remember the first season's fanservice being as jarring as the second's. But maybe I was just enjoying it too much to be too bothered. (unlike the second season which I had a lot more complaints about overall)
That's a really interesting point - I liked New Game a lot because I thought it did a pretty good job of being a workplace comedy. But I don't disagree with any of your points. While I was bothered by the creepy "I only hire cute girls" boss and Yagami getting away with parading in her underpants at work, it's not like those things are acceptable at a high school either? I guess I just see them as unfortunate staples of the genre. Even so, I don't disagree with your main point either - there are a lot of times that the show feels really "high school girls that are supposedly adults at work". On the one hand, it's kind of realistic - a lot of office politics aren't really that different than school drama, and people's personalities really don't change that much from high school to adulthood. And there are plenty of times when the show used the office setting to its advantage, like Aoba having to learn a lot of new things quickly or learn to communicate with the other departments. (Also I think it's important to note that it's not entirely "bad management" that they're there overnight so often - it's an unfortunate staple of the Japanese workplace to stay overnight around the time of a deadline.) But I also think the "sleepovers" were a bit silly, and the fact that Aoba is barely 18, looks like a high school freshman down to the "uniform", is very clearly trying to appeal to people who only like SOL shows because they're about high school girls, which is unfortunate. |
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meiam
Posts: 3442 |
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Personally my main problem with the fan service was how front loaded it was. I watched the first episode when it aired and ended up dropping it there because of how silly it was that the first things you see of Ko is her in her panty. This just give the show the wrong impression, you go in thinking "oh its one of those show huh". But once you get pass that most of the fan service is subtle enough that you don't really notice it.
My other big complain might run counter to the review
I might be miss reading this part, but I though the art of the actual game was incredibly disappointing and generic, barely fit for an internet flash game, much less for a big console release. This always made things very jarring for me whenever Aoba would go praising the art or Ko as incredible. Compare the art shown in the show to something like Odin Sphere or Legend of Mana and it's really hard to believe anyone would be inspired by this game specifically (and really hard to buy that Ko is considered some sort of genius when plenty of amateur regularly post far more impressive art for free on the internet). |
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TheMorry
Posts: 658 |
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Sometimes i wonder how ANN rates their reviews. This dub get a B- while AICO, which is probably the worst dub in ages, get the same rate. How can I take a review serious then?
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lycopene
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Someone at one point, probably Zac or Jake, explained that the grade is for the show itself and not just for the language track. So, in Nick's opinion, the whole first season is a B- regardless of which language you watch it in. Based on what he said in his review, if the rating system were designed differently and they could rate a dub separately, Theron likely would have given it a much lower score. |
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Łukasz Kawosz
Posts: 77 |
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Why do I have a feeling ANN is too obsessed with finding any clues of sexualization in any show they watch? Even including trying to shoehorn complaints about pedophilia in a show about adult girls (hey look these girls looks like high school girls - just like in about any other anime, isn't that weird huh???).
Are there seriously people who dropped the show at Kou's butt scene? |
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Jose Cruz
 Posts: 1775 Location: South America |
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I guess Creamer-san is not a big fan of Japanese-style salary-man environment. 
Japan is a culture that regards hard work and overtime work as a perfectly natural part of work and nothing "sinister". I personally didn't feel like anything was wrong since there are a lot of jobs where people work 80 hours a week. For instance, in my PHD during the first years I often worked 70-80 hours a week so I can identify with that kind of show.
They are not supposed to represent real women though. The characters in the Cute Girls Doing Cute Things shows are abstract avatars of cuteness through which the audience feels the moe. 
Often these avatars are depicted doing masculine activities, such as working on videogame development in New Game or playing in a rock band in K-On!, camping in Laid-Back Camp or driving motorcycles in Bakuon, because their audience consists of men and so they can identify with. These characters are not supposed to represent actual human females but instead they are representations of masculine interests materialized in a cute avatar. |
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Feng Lengshun
 Posts: 50 Location: Indonesia |
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My friend dropped the show in an episode, and I did after three episodes. His complaints is mostly "it's unrealistic, unbelievable." And I pointed that the show was never meant to be serious, it's meant to be Cute Girls Doing Cute Things. Judging by the post-airing reception, it seems to have succeeded at that.
And it's not like most high school animes are different either. High school animes' depiction of high school are often are unrealistic as well. But ultimately, I think it came to if the show are enjoyable enough and didn't poke real life issues. The problem is that the issues in Japanese workplace and the global video game industry is too well-documented, too reported, too well-known for them to be easily dismissed from anyone with even a moderate interest in video game development and Japanese culture. There's always this asterisk of "No, this isn't real, this is wrong" feeling that makes it hard to enjoy for some people. My friend couldn't enjoy it because of the sheer divergence from reality, and hated it for that. I lost interest because that asterisk was just too ever-present it makes me unable to believe in the show's conceit and antics after a while. It's like "Heh, cute, but this is really an unrealistic anime." At some point, I just can't buy it anymore and lose interest. That slave-like adherence to the tone they're going for even when they flirt with real, specific issues and some other peculiarities (such as the main character's lack of experience and resume, plus the company being all-women without making it noteworthy) creates a jarring experience for those who knows even a little bit about these things, and it weights down on their experience, enjoyment, and interest in the show. Really should've stuck with a game-making club. Or at least make it a small doujin game circle. Would be less jarring that way, IMO. |
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