Forum - View topicIs The Lost Village Actually A Comedy?
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anddo
 Posts: 670 |
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Mayoiga was about as much of an intended comedy as The Room.
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Hiroki not Takuya
 Posts: 2670 |
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Why go over this again, and with a banner article too, since you made so much of it in your reviews for Mayoiga? Most don't agree with the analysis, though I can understand there may be a possibility it is correct. Quoting Mr. Jensen, whose opinion I respect, "If the viewer has to think about what just happened for a few minutes before concluding that it was supposed to be funny, then something has gone seriously wrong". My analysis is that you really like this but see that it fails to be what it purports to be, so you want it to be a comedy. Not only that, but for some reason you are compelled to convince others of the validity of this viewpoint. There are a few that will "eat this up" because they wholeheartedly agree, but to me this viewpoint deserves a name as befitting the psychological aberration it seems to be: "Creaming".
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Angel M Cazares
 Posts: 5507 Location: Iscandar |
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So Nick is going to stubbornly keep arguing that Mayoiga is a comedy and that it was intentionally bad. I strongly disagree with him, but he is free to have his opinion. I used to respect Nick's opinion, but not anymore because his views on Mayoiga have convinced me that his opinions on anime are more fanboyish than critical.
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RDespair
 Posts: 245 Location: California |
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Reminds me of Gun x Sword - a good portion of my viewing time I spent wondering if it was intended as parody or just bad.
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John Thacker
Posts: 1009 |
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It's a difficult claim to convince people of, though certainly that type of international humor exists, including in anime with internationally bad framing. I would similarly argue that in Saekano does the latter quite a bit with Megumi, as there's certainly no other reason to have her constantly off center or off screen in a number of episodes where she is speaking or being the focus of attention other than to lampoon the idea of her being (or being capable of being made) a main heroine.
I am not sure that I agree with Nick, but the commenters who disagree with him are certainly pushing me in his direction through their arguments and diction. Perhaps they are intentionally being not just unpersuasive but anti persuasive as a form of irony? |
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lys
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 1017 Location: mitten-state |
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Because some people didn't watch the show (I tried out the first ep), didn't read the reviews every week, and aren't inclined to go read all of them now, so a separate article making the case for "it's actually a comedy" is interesting and fresh. Whether or not he's right about the creators' intent, I still enjoyed the breakdown of what humour is, how and why jokes work, why certain types of humour click with certain people, and so on. This article has piqued my curiosity about the show and one way it could be interpreted, and maybe I'll give it another try at some point. |
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Fronzel
Posts: 1906 |
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Hmm, what does this mean for the earlier Another? Parts of that certainly seemed like jokes (spoiler["This girl's a ghost. Wait no she's not." Or the entire finale])
One of the lessons of the great Airplane! The main character's completely literal "drinking problem" which ruined his life is an absurd gag but at its heart it's just a story about a man who is haunted by past failure and overcomes that. |
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Blood-
 Bargain Hunter Posts: 24159 |
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I took the view from the very first episode that The Lost Village contained lots of intended humour as opposed to the, "oops, we were trying to be serious here but due to our incompetence, we created 'found' laughs." That's not to say the show didn't have intended seriousness, either, of course. Anime often will juxtaopse the deeply (intentionally) goofy with the deadly serious. It can be a discombulating experience for some, but it's one of the reasons I like anime. Oh, and Lion needs her own show. Somebody please make this happen.
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mangamuscle
Posts: 2658 Location: Mexico |
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Add me to the list of the people that did not watch Mayoiga because I thought it was a comedy. If some people thought it was hilarious, more power to them, but to me this is the same fanboyism as the fujoshi that kept saying that Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu was a BL story.
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Bobduh
 Posts: 24 |
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Us critics unfortunately have to get kind of used to hearing "I used to respect your opinion, until it didn't match my own." All we can do is articulate our thoughts on shows in the clearest and most appealing way we can manage, which I feel reasonably confident I have done here and will continue to attempt in the future. |
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Kougeru
 Posts: 5588 |
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[quote="lys"]
Except that they don't work. All the author is saying that "it's so bad that it HAS to be funny", just tries to back it up with non-logical statements that only work in some people's minds, but not most. In the end, it's one of the most hilarious theories I've seen about an anime. Kind of ironically...I find this article to be comedy. |
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JustinTaco
 Posts: 118 |
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If you had to think for minutes at a time about why what was happening was funny then you were probably watching on autopilot. I barely even watch any horrors or thrillers and the betrayed expectations were pretty obvious. As someone who laughed their ass off from the time subs came out until they went to bed, I agree pretty strongly with Nick's article (and boy has he posted reviews I have some choice words about, so don't take that statement for granted).
It doesn't work if you go in fully expecting a comedy. That's what Nick is saying about expectations. When I saw 30 characters being introduced one by one, some of them clearly unhinged, I thought it was going to be an absolute bloodbath and expected total chaos. My enjoyment shifted somewhere I can't pinpoint because after giving up any hope of people dying (besides Yottsun for a while, which was it's own joke) I was just reveling in the beautiful absurdity of the whole thing. |
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PumpkinMouse
 Posts: 82 |
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I'm in the camp for Lost Village wanting to have its cake and eat it too, in that it wanted to be both a comedy and convey an earnest message about trauma. I don't think it was especially good at either, but it was definitely trying.
Also, I think comparing The Room (or any live-action media) to Lost Village is a little difficult. Anyone who's ever seen an American film can recognize that Tommy Wiseau is a terrible, terrible actor and that the dialogue is pretty weird at times. But people would know that because they know what good cinema looks like, what a good actor looks and sounds like when giving a good delivery. Plus, we have a basis of comparison in reality, so the movie will either look and sound like reality (with more or less deviations depending on the genre) or nothing like it, and clue the audience in accordingly. But anime usually exists in worlds that are incredibly different from real life, even when they ostensibly take place in the real world, so its deviations from reality have to be really extreme to inform the viewer that the weirdness is a stylistic choice rather than par for the course for anime. Add to that the general disagreement about what makes a good anime (not great, just good) and the task of delivering a so-bad-its-good anime gets a lot harder. I think the choice to go all in for anti-climaxes really hamstrung the show's ability to hammer home to the audience that this was supposed to be weirder than usual anime weirdness. It was an interesting choice, sure, but maybe not the best one.
While this ended up being true to my experiences with Lost Village (the less I expected of it, the more I enjoyed it), this was also true of my experiences with Sailor Moon Crystal, and I would consider this season of SMC to be "almost good" at best. Just because it worked for both shows doesn't necessarily elevate the quality of either. It also smacks heavily of "lower your standards" to me, which I never like having to do to enjoy a show. Last edited by PumpkinMouse on Wed Jul 06, 2016 11:50 am; edited 6 times in total |
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Vaisaga
 Posts: 13240 |
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While there was plenty of funny bits in the show, I'd never say it's primarily supposed to be a comedy. It just accepts that horror movies and the like have an inherent silliness that's unavoidable. Some guy in a mask killing kids in increasingly convoluted ways? That can get pretty funny even if we're supposed to be horrified. Seeing a scientist getting impaled by a unicorn? Ridiculous. A killer appearing in your dreams? Utter nonsense. But rather than hide from these things and insist it be taken super seriously Lost Village just goes "might as well have some fun with it."
Most of the humor does come from the characters' reactions to their situation, but those reactions are in line with what is known about them and humanity in general. Not recognizing something for as serious as it is, showing no interest in things you don't care about, group conversations going off on wild tangents, etc. These are all things people do. The monsters being kind of goofy actually works with the greater message of the show. The monsters are embodiments of people's trauma and the people in question are terrified of them, even if we look on and go "that's just stupid." Trivializing the problems of others is another one of humanity's unfortunate habits. You got stung by a bee once? Oh boo who, just get over it! Even if that person is seriously struggling with something we're quick to dismiss it with a "suck it up" (which really means "Well it's not as important as my problems!") That no one died is more a trait of Mari Okada. Where as other writers will senseless kill off characters to raise the stakes, Okada knows that you can create plenty of drama without anyone dying. You get more out of a character who lives than a dead one. Personally I really liked Lost Village for exactly what it was: a psychology driven thriller looking at human nature that didn't have a stick up its ass. |
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jroa
Posts: 548 |
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I couldn't care less about Mayoiga and whatever it was doing, not my cup of tea, but Gun x Sword was very Tarantino-esque and full of in-jokes or references to other works, both blatant and subtle. It was also a pretty good action adventure show for other reasons (here's one or two pieces in support of this) and not remotely bad. I'd only tell people to avoid the show if they thought, say, Kill Bill was too shallow and unoriginal for them. |
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