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Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - What the Hell is Going On in Freakangels?
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Dop.L
Posts: 715 Location: London |
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I mean, I really liked Transmetropolitan back in the day, though Ellis did have a tendency to recycle the same ideas over and over and over again (What is Doktor Sleepless but "What if Spider Jerusalem but a mad scientist rather than a warmed over Hunter S. Thompson copy?"), and while I read the Freakangels webcomic back in the day, I suspect that even if Ellis hadn't turned out to be an irredeemable arse, it would not have dated well.
Which is a long-winded way to get to my point that I didn't watch this show, but reading this article has just shown me that I made the right decision! |
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Beatdigga
 Posts: 4386 Location: New York |
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This show was made to capitalize on the popularity of Castlevania, except I would go so far as to say the stuff that really made Castlevania work was the animation and not the writing. Ignoring that Warren Ellis is a sex pest and a pariah now (which is exactly why the series has been all but ignored by Crunchyroll and they don’t mention his name if they can help it) his dialogue heavy writing style and Japanese humor and the like are extremely incompatible. It doesn’t work.
And considering all the stuff noted about him being a pariah (Powerhouse fired him from Castlevania and canceled an original series he was working on called Heaven’s Forest) I don’t think we’re going to see any more. It’s just another chapter in the comedy of errors that has been the Crunchyroll Originals lineup. |
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JintoLin
Posts: 44 |
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If you want to know just how much of a pariah he is, just visit his web page. Wow.
And visit the web site his victims set up: https://www.somanyofus.com/ Which is not to say that he's not a good writer. Stepping back in time to before I knew about any of this crap, I read a lot of Ellis, and most of it was good. Planetary, The Authority, Iron Man: Extremis, the Karnak mini-series, the James Bond series, all really good. Freakangels, not bad, but not great. And the animated series: woof! Now, I won't buy anything with his name on it, which is really disappointing. |
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luisedgarf
Posts: 658 Location: Guadalajara, Mexico |
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I watched the first episode, and, while the animation is decent, the original English voice acting is quite bad, and there's no dubbed versions on any language.
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11396 |
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Where the hell did they find a cliff at Stonehenge to push the guy off of? It's called Salisbury Plain for a reason.
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Zump
Posts: 131 |
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I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one who felt this way about Netflix Castlevania. I gave up watching it after its second season because the horrendous dialogue was making me grit my teeth. It seems like the only CR Original that was decent was Onyx Equinox, which seems to have already faded in memory for a lot of people. High Guardian Spice was just middling, but this show... this really looks to be the absolute worst of the lot. I think even the middle-school me who spent a lot of time watching low-effort, edgy Newgrounds cartoons in the early 00's would have passed on this show. |
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Beatdigga
Posts: 4386 Location: New York |
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Onyx Equinox was pretty terrible, although it’s the forgettable kind of terrible. It stinks, but it’s just bland and bleh, not actively offensive or egregious in mistakes. The sad thing is that they finally did make a good original with their Shenmue adaptation and that looks to be the last of the CR Originals lineup. So any goodwill it might have bought is destined to end there (to say nothing of adapting the rest of Shenmue’s story without the need for a pricey Kickstarter). I hate to say it, but a lot of the webtoons animated weren’t ready for prime time, and the adaptations those were among the better offerings. |
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Dop.L
Posts: 715 Location: London |
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I keep forgetting that In/Spectre was labelled as a Crunchyroll Original, because really that's the only thing carrying that label I liked.
Though actually checking the list there was also Dr. Ramune which was OK I guess as I watched that. But there weren't half some stinkers! |
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gedata
 Posts: 615 |
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I don't know what this is but this dude looks like he has a penis tattoo
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luisedgarf
Posts: 658 Location: Guadalajara, Mexico |
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Well, to be fair with that show, and I'm Mexican BTW, Onyx Equinox was a Mexican show made for Mexicans and made with American money and staff, in the same way Yasuke was an American show made for Americans and created with Japanese money and talent. But personally, I really loved it, even if I agree the show is not for everyone, and they went quite over the top with the violence. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11396 |
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I take it you didn't read the text that went with it?
To be fair, I wasn't really sure if that was actually in the show or if the reviewers had drawn it in while they were adding in their snarky subs, but it kinda sounded like it was really part of the show. |
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lossthief
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 1398 |
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It is 100% authentic to the show. If I drew a dick on a character's head I promise you'd know what it was without a doubt.
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Madster
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IIRC in Canipa's CR Originals article, FreakAngels was being handled by Crunchyroll Studios Tokyo... before it was shut down and the show (along with the still MIA Meiji Gekken) had to be switched to another animation studio. That might explain the low animation quality and the short 9 episode order.
I second this. Castlevania seasons 1 and 2 were great but seasons 3 and 4 were a chore to sit through. And to wrap this up, I side with Nick on this whole thing. As easy as it is to crack open a chair with popcorn and watch the dumpster fires that are CR Originals (believe me I'm guilty of this too), it does suck that many creators, animators and writers had to deal with poor leadership and limited resources while making these shows. Anna Lencioni, an animator who worked at CR Studios Burbank and the wife of Onyx Equinox creator Sofia Alexander, left this comment on Geoff Thew's CR Originals video, and it does offer some good insight from someone who actually worked on these shows: "Thanks for touching on the budget, and on the horribly annoying subtitle situation! Both are very frustrating. Some day, hopefully soon, you'll hear a lot more about the production of these series. I've worked on several different animated series and CR is by FAR the wildest experience I've ever had and probably will ever have. Tons of love and creative talent went into both HGS and OE, and considering what they were able to achieve by basically rubbing two sticks together over wet newspaper, they deserve a lot more recognition than they get. Sadly what you said about "lack of vision and confidence in the project behind the scenes" is fairly accurate, save the "vision" part, as both creators had very clear visions and hopes for their series. Just look at Raye's [High Guardian Spice] student film, or Sofia's [Onyx Equinox] comics from 2008. Unfortunately, it's a lot more lucrative for CR to just license existing anime if you know what I mean. " |
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Agent355
 Posts: 5113 Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready... |
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Thank you for calling out CR’s lack of closed captioning! It’s infuriating. I don’t watch dubs on their platform because of it, and now that Funimation (which *does* provide closed captioning on most of their English dubs) is completely merging with them, I’m dreading the situation there. We really need to update the Americans with Disabilities Act to require closed captioning on streaming services (as opposed to just broadcast channels, which is the case now). The situation sucks.
Closed captioning is even more important in the case of accents but..this show looks like Shite. Thanks for the hilarious article and for reassuring me that I’m not missing much! |
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