Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: The Lost Village
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Mogtaki
 Posts: 44 Location: Inverness, Scotland |
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I'm finding I'm watching this show more out of curiosity over it being a favourite.
I mean, there's people taking note of all the characters, whether they're alive or dead and their popularity with viewers. People are trying to make predictions about this show. It's kind of like this weird game going on and everybody's taking part in the guessing game. |
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Saku-dono
Posts: 801 |
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Well, I keep tabs on this show. Also, I don't expect anything extravagant from the fact the show had over 30 characters and only had 1 cour. So far, the characters who all had a loose screw showed potential that they can be interesting. So far, so good.
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Dop.L
Posts: 723 Location: London |
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From the first episode I thought this was likely to be crazy melodrama, and so far I'm not disappointed. I like crazy melodrama now and again!
It's almost like a thought experiment of "what would happen if you took a load of really annoying character types and put them all together?". I mean, they're all losers in a way or they wouldn't have been on the bus in the first place. |
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ikillchicken
 Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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So this show is literally just: "30 of the worst people from an internet forum decide to go live together in an abandoned village in the woods and it goes exactly as well as you'd expect." I'm honestly not sure what to say about that. If that's their premise...well I guess they've at least realized it well. They've pretty effectively recreated the screaming, monotonous, pit of dogmatic, socially dysfunctional morons that is your typical internet forum. That's not to say I think this show is remotely true to real life. I do think though that this show is a pretty good representation of what it would be like if people in real life acted the way they do on the internet. So yeah, right now I'm really hoping they all get eaten by bears. Honestly, that's the biggest problem with this show so far. It seems like this show is striving to be much more than a simple schadenfreude fueled slasher story. They keep slowing down, especially this last episode, to try and humanize these people with various tragic back-stories. That's admirable in principle but it becomes a problem when the show inevitably runs up against the fact that Mari Okada is a bad writer. I mean, she's perfectly suited to writing these characters at their loud, melodramatic, stereotypical worst. That's an important first step if you want to make a larger thematic point that underneath these are still real, complex people with reasons for being the way they are (which sort of seems like it might be the direction this show is headed). It's that second part where the show falls flat though. Ultimately, the deeper truths about why these people are the way they are are just as loud, unsubtle and blunt as their external personas. Valkana is spoiler[a violent, aggressive jackass...but was once wrongfully blamed for a thing at work. Jack straight up tried to murder a guy for talking shit to him...but he was probably bullied or something.] If you're going to humanize such terrible people you need to do a lot better here.
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MidoriUma
Posts: 130 |
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You're going to spend half the first review telling people how terrible you think the series is? It's only three episodes in! If you get so emotionally invested in your hatred for this series, how will you be able to do a fair review if by chance you end up liking it somewhere down the road?
I love this series... probably my favorite of the season, so far. Everyone has secrets, everyone has hidden goals and it's going to be fun to watch them play off each other. The atmosphere reminds me of Judge, somehow. They're all wearing masks. |
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John Thacker
Posts: 1009 |
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To be fair, Valkana wasn't just spoiler["wrongfully blamed for a thing at work." His independent freelance systems engineering firm (hired as a consultant or contractor) was blamed by the company that hired him for their own mistake, resulting almost inevitably in the failure of his company, all his employees losing their job, and him being extremely unlikely to get any more clients or work for or with any large company in Japan almost ever again. I realize that it sounds like much less of a major issue from an American perspective, but the generalization presented here by a Japanese site (last bullet, "間違いと失敗") has some truth to it as a generalization. Industry blackballing is a bigger deal and you have to adjust your cultural expectations a tad. He's still an ass, though.] |
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SaiyamanMS
Posts: 302 |
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I decided to pick up this show based purely on Zac's review in the preview guide making me laugh. With quotes such as "M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN MEMORIAL BUS TO SHOCKING TWISTVILLE!", "at a certain point the show starts seeming like a thriller where the gimmick is that someone stuffed too many anime characters onto this bus, and once that theory held up, I couldn't stop laughing." and "it seemed like this show wasn't trying to be the best thriller, it was trying to be THE MOST THRILLER YOU'VE EVER SEEN", I figured that if the show was worth checking out for the pure entertainment value.
I have to say, that I am reasonably entertained so far. The show is dumb and over the top and as Nick has said, it's hard to tell if the show is aware of this and being tongue in cheek or simply playing things straight and coming across as ridiculous anyway. Either way, at least the animation and character design is attractive. |
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whiskeyii
 Posts: 2266 |
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Man, this show is seriously stretching my suspension of disbelief, and it was already pretty stretched by episode one. As far as Valkana goes, I get that he was basically steamrolled, but my American sensibilities can't help rolling its eyes at the idea of just spoiler[hiring an independent investigation into the leak.] More to the point, has no one ever heard of a buddy system in this world? Good gravy, if a "bear" is running loose, quit running off on your own. Yeesh!
The shallow-as-a-kiddie-pool characters I can take, but this severe and utter lack of common sense is really starting to get to me--like that absolutely ridiculous reaction by Mitsumune at the end. Because that's totally what my priorities would be after someone tried to spoiler[drown] me. Man, I think I need a buddy system for this show. Or maybe just a hell of a lot more camp. It feels like this show is trying too hard to be semi-good/serious to pull off the ridiculousness of "so bad, it's good" for me. More hippopotamus songs, please! |
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ikillchicken
Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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That's a fair point. I'm being somewhat glib in my summary of the situation. My concern though isn't so much whether his backstory is sufficiently "bad" as to justify his attitude. It's more the lack of nuance. In fact, the show would probably be better if it weren't so overtly tragic. I feel like there's a pretty good chance this winds up being just a parade of equally tragic backstories too. If so though, the show is going to amount to little more than treatise on the idea that "sure, people act like jerks but you should feel sorry for them because they probably have some super melodramatic backstory that explains it". I'm right on-board with a show that wants to say something about having greater empathy and understanding for others (which seems to be Mari Okada's topic of the season). But presented as above, that's not smart, interesting, or remotely true. |
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meiam
Posts: 3447 |
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Yay, I've found my new chaos dragon. Don't spare the detail!
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Utsuro no Hako
Posts: 1051 |
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The thing is, Valkana may be an overbearing jackass, but he's the only character, with the possible exception of the bus driver, who still has a mooring line attached to reality. Nobody else in the group, not even our alleged hero, has offered a practical suggestion as sensible as, "Hey, shut up and quit your arguing and let's go search for Yottsun," or "Hey, didn't I tell you to quit your arguing? Let's lock Jack away someplace for everyone's safety and we can decide what to do about him after everyone calms down."
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Hiroki not Takuya
 Posts: 2656 |
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I would hope Mr. Creamer would stop bashing the show as someone might actually like it and instead try to find what few positives he can. At least Mr. Jensen last season kept his reviews of BBK/BRNK from degenerating into a hate-fest even though it might have deserved it in spots.
That said, I am finding this show to feel like an anime port of "Lost" and so far agree with Mr. Creamer that it is ridiculous but don't see any tell-tale signs of parody so I doubt it is supposed to be funny. I'm still watching to see if Others or evil government experimenters show up (muwahahah...) |
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killjoy_the
 Posts: 2474 |
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This whole time I thought Jack was just not even bothering with Hyouketsu given how ridiculous the whole thing was but apparently not liking his internet handle is enough to get him to attempt to murder someone. Quite reasonable, though I guess one shouldn't expect much from the dude who elbow'd a driver while he was driving in order to... make him drive better?
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MidoriUma
Posts: 130 |
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Jack is like my new favorite character, oddly I trust him more than a lot of the others. Nanko and Narna seem like the only other remotely trustworthy people.
Having lived for several years in bear country, I really don't think it's a bear causing this. Bears tend to avoid large groups of noisy people. Also, the claw marks are far too large. |
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whiskeyii
Posts: 2266 |
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Right now I'm banking on a mutated human being responsible, or maybe a shape-shifter--if only because I'm almost positive the bus driver is dead, and that's not really him in the village.
As an aside, I really hope I'm wrong about this, but when Maimai failed to activate Mitsumune's girl-dar, my brain immediately went "Oh god, they're gonna' reveal that she's trans and use that as gross justification for why Mitsumune wasn't turned on by her because she's 'not really' a girl". Boy, do I really, really hope I'm wrong about that and it's just a silly running joke. >.> |
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