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REVIEW: Galilei Donna Episodes 1-6 Streaming


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darkchibi07



Joined: 15 Oct 2003
Posts: 5515
PostPosted: Fri Dec 27, 2013 12:25 pm Reply with quote
I wonder if Umetsu is too busy working on his other big work Wizard Barristers which seems to be a lot more of his style.
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zensunni



Joined: 05 Mar 2010
Posts: 1294
PostPosted: Fri Dec 27, 2013 12:27 pm Reply with quote
Well, a pretty accurate appraisal of the show. I enjoyed it, despite the uneven storytelling and the gradual decline in quality. The real question is: Why do a review of episodes 1-6 when the show has already finished airing?
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dtm42



Joined: 05 Feb 2008
Posts: 14084
Location: currently stalking my waifu
PostPosted: Fri Dec 27, 2013 1:13 pm Reply with quote
A goldfish-themed mecha that the little girl built herself (plus all the other goldfish tech), pirates whose swagger is only matched by how annoying, uncool and stupid they are, and a premise that hinges on Galileo supposedly having some amazing but undefined treasure that people centuries later think is going to be worth something, so they kidnap just one family even though Galileo's inheritance (if it even exists) could be amongst any one of the thousands of people descended from him.

I can't believe that people consider the first episode to be good when it just reeks of W.T.F.A.I.W. (What The Frack Am I Watching).

zensunni wrote:
The real question is: Why do a review of episodes 1-6 when the show has already finished airing?


Agreed, though the review was probably written before the finale. Still, why not wait till the show is over, then review the whole lot?
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Philmister978



Joined: 12 Jun 2011
Posts: 335
PostPosted: Fri Dec 27, 2013 1:34 pm Reply with quote
Really, I could argue that the girls became nothing but caricatures of themselves after episode four from both a design and personality perspective. In addition, the CGI's really out of place (more so than most shows) and the backgrounds kinda just blend into one another after a while.

And this is before going into how bad the villains (Roberto and the pirates) were, how the cheap the attempts at drama were, that whole time travel plot point, or the ending that raised more questions than it answered.

By episode 6, I kept watching just just I could update the show's encyclopedia page.

All and all, I'm just surprised that they sat on the review for as long as they did.


Last edited by Philmister978 on Fri Dec 27, 2013 3:02 pm; edited 1 time in total
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jr240483



Joined: 24 Dec 2005
Posts: 4457
Location: New York City,New York,USA
PostPosted: Fri Dec 27, 2013 1:43 pm Reply with quote
zensunni wrote:
Well, a pretty accurate appraisal of the show. I enjoyed it, despite the uneven storytelling and the gradual decline in quality. The real question is: Why do a review of episodes 1-6 when the show has already finished airing?


well i wouldnt jump into conculsions just yet cause of a review of only 6 eps. despite of having some of the same flaws as the Mezzo DSA series, its still a good series to watch.

Besides, considering who is directing the series, both this and DSA are a lot better off for me and anyone else over those those massive hentai sex fest that was in his two infamous movies ( Kite & Mezzo Forte )
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HitokiriShadow



Joined: 09 May 2005
Posts: 6251
PostPosted: Fri Dec 27, 2013 1:56 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
Why Umetsu's direction self-destructs is open to interpretation. The specific way his television series fall apart suggests that he's the cause, but is it because he doesn't know how to manage a budget? Because he can't handle the time pressure of producing an ongoing series? Because he loses interest after a few episodes or doesn't have the energy to keep his labor-intensive style running long-term? Does his well of creativity take too long to recharge for it to be viable in a weekly serial? Is it some combination thereof?


darkchibi07 wrote:
I wonder if Umetsu is too busy working on his other big work Wizard Barristers which seems to be a lot more of his style.


It's been confirmed that the series was originally supposed to be 2 cour and was then cut down to one. Which really explains a lot about those last few episodes (the ones not covered in this review). That decision would likely have nothing to do with Umetsu himself, but it seems very plausible that after having plans for the story and suddenly having half the episodes to do it with and thus needing to make massive changes, he may have just stopped giving a damn at some point. The last episode is such load of nonsense than I'm pretty sure the creative staff did, in fact, just through there hands up and said "fudge it, who cares, here's an 'ending', thank god this is over".
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Super_Sam24?



Joined: 18 Dec 2013
Posts: 6
PostPosted: Fri Dec 27, 2013 2:53 pm Reply with quote
I like the whole aspect of the series and later on the episodes get sad, but I feel like this series could have been done better story wise I thought it was an okay series as a whole.
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Surrender Artist



Joined: 01 May 2011
Posts: 3264
Location: Pennsylvania, USA
PostPosted: Fri Dec 27, 2013 3:06 pm Reply with quote
After all this time, I finally checked and found out that donna is the singular form of 'woman' in Italian and donne the plural. All this time I thought it was 'Galileo Daughters' or something like that, instead it's more like 'Galileo Woman', who would probably be the worst superhero since Florida Man. (I guess that 'Galileo Daughters' would be something like Galilei Figlie) If deliberate and not referring to Anna for some dumb reason, it might explain why the series more or less gave up on Hazuki and Kazuki to fawn over Hozuki. Then again, I'm not sure about counting a thirteen-year-old-girl as a woman. I guess I harp on that because the potential for a convincing and engaging loving-yet-troubled dynamic among the sisters and larger family was one of the things that I found most promising about the show early on, but that didn't really pan out.

(Note that I am not Italian, don't speak Italian and didn't apply much rigor to this 'research', so it could be quite wrong)

HitokiriShadow wrote:
It's been confirmed that the series was originally supposed to be 2 cour and was then cut down to one. Which really explains a lot about those last few episodes (the ones not covered in this review). That decision would likely have nothing to do with Umetsu himself, but it seems very plausible that after having plans for the story and suddenly having half the episodes to do it with and thus needing to make massive changes, he may have just stopped giving a damn at some point. The last episode is such load of nonsense than I'm pretty sure the creative staff did, in fact, just through there hands up and said "fudge it, who cares, here's an 'ending', thank god this is over".


That would explain a lot about the mashed-up narrative of the second half of the series. It wouldn't fix all of its problems, but it would explain a lot. Not since the 'disappear into a magic map, then reappear to explain what happened rather than show it' scene from the Dungeons & Dragons film have I seen something as pitiful as the 'lets talk about the cool stuff we did off screen' that the Galilei geronti pulled.

Is there more detail as to when during production the series was cut down or why?
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dtm42



Joined: 05 Feb 2008
Posts: 14084
Location: currently stalking my waifu
PostPosted: Fri Dec 27, 2013 3:35 pm Reply with quote
Surrender Artist wrote:
Is there more detail as to when during production the series was cut down or why?


It is possible that the story was originally planned before it was decided that the show would air on noitaminA. Or, perhaps the producer was told he could have two cours but that got changed because someone else wanted to air another series and there was no room for Galilei Donna to get a second cour. There is a juggling act to fit shows into the noitaminA timeslot; only two series can be broadcast per season. That means just eight cours per year, so if you are trying to fit in five series only three of them can be two cours long. The timeslot is very valuable, as ratings are higher than most other late-night timeslots and there is a certain professional prestige associated with having your show air on noitaminA. So that means competition from other productions in who gets to go on, and whether they get one cour or two. With Silver Spoon's second season due to air in Winter 2014, it is possible that the staff behind Galilei Donna may not have had as much clout as Samurai Flamenco's producers and so it was decided that the former would only get one cour.

Production politics is a murky world. You should ask Justin Sevakis about it, see what light he can shed.

I still don't think Galilei Donna would have been a good show had it gotten a second cour, but it probably wouldn't have been quite as bad as it was.
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HitokiriShadow



Joined: 09 May 2005
Posts: 6251
PostPosted: Fri Dec 27, 2013 3:54 pm Reply with quote
Surrender Artist wrote:

Is there more detail as to when during production the series was cut down or why?


Not that I'm aware of, those kinds of internal politics generally aren't aired in public when it comes to anime. But I didn't read the interview myself, so I'm not sure.
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Great Rumbler



Joined: 03 Oct 2006
Posts: 334
Location: Oklahoma
PostPosted: Fri Dec 27, 2013 6:39 pm Reply with quote
It's basically Fractale all over again: a show that starts out really promising, but ends up cratering as all the potential is wasted.
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v1cious



Joined: 31 Dec 2002
Posts: 6229
Location: Houston, TX
PostPosted: Fri Dec 27, 2013 6:58 pm Reply with quote
Great Rumbler wrote:
It's basically Fractale all over again: a show that starts out really promising, but ends up cratering as all the potential is wasted.


I don't even think Fractale was this bad. This show has one of the worst finales I've ever seen.
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Zhou-BR



Joined: 28 Feb 2008
Posts: 1461
PostPosted: Fri Dec 27, 2013 7:49 pm Reply with quote
The first two episodes weren't bad, but I found them quite underwhelming except for the pretty visuals. Little did I know that the show would get so much worse. It might have been cut short, but I'm not sure I'd be able to endure another 11 episodes of paper-thin characterizations, dumb plotting and terrible tone shifts caused by Umetsu's need to undercut what could have been a pleasant globetrotting family adventure with his trademark nastiness.

And did the show really need to spend two of the last three episodes with spoiler[Hozuki stuck in the past and striking a friendship with her ancestor Galileo, which ended up developing disturbing incestuous undertones], and then hastily resolve the whole main conflict with spoiler[a half-baked courtroom drama]? Since no one was credited for "series composition", I suppose Umetsu himself supervised the writing, so the blame should fall squarely on his shoulders.


Last edited by Zhou-BR on Sat Dec 28, 2013 10:22 am; edited 1 time in total
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ikillchicken



Joined: 12 Feb 2007
Posts: 7272
Location: Vancouver
PostPosted: Sat Dec 28, 2013 1:53 am Reply with quote
Quote:
The occasional gory massacre and rampant skullduggery come to seem a lot less like essential parts of what is basically a goofy treasure hunt and a lot more like unnecessary concessions to the show's adult-oriented programming block (Noitamina).


What are you talking about? NoitaminA is the block that brought us Silver Spoon, Natsuyuki Rendezvous, Tsuritama, Kids on the Slope, Thermae Romae, Bunny Drop, Wandering Son, and Princess Jellyfish just to name the most recent examples. It may well be a block that is essentially adult oriented but the idea that it requires shows to toss in a bunch of gore or really even violence is completely nonsensical.
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naki12



Joined: 08 Apr 2009
Posts: 8
PostPosted: Sat Dec 28, 2013 3:44 am Reply with quote
Zhou-BR wrote:
And did the show really need to spend two of the last three episodes with spoiler[Hozuki stuck in the past and striking a friendship with her ancestor Galileo, which ended up developing disturbing incestuous undertones]


spoiler[ Hardly incest. It was purely platonic. He saw a kindred spirit in her after his many years of loneliness and isolation. They were two who could appreciate each other for who they were as their true selves!]
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