Forum - View topicREVIEW: Cross Ange: Rondo of Angel and Dragon Blu-Ray 1
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DuelGundam2099
 Posts: 533 |
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VVV isn't considered ecchi? With the amount of sexual and fanservice pandering it had even ignoring ep 10? I've seen plenty of tamer things considered as such. 
And I was the idiot that posted it on Anime Suki when it was airing. 
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18324 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Direct quote from my review of the second half: "Fan service continues to be nearly nonexistent." There's no way that I would consider VVV to be even slightly ecchi. |
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kinghumanity
Posts: 365 |
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Honestly I lost a great deal of respect for a lot of the ANN reviewers over this show. The first thing they jumped to was "RAPE RAPE RAPE", despite the fact that it wasn't, and it was clarified by both the producers and the English dubbers. They refused to see new evidence, and buried their head in the sand because they were afraid of being wrong, then insisted that the show was literally trash....because it depicted rape.
I can't even unravel the stupidity. Besides, it's not like rape has never appeared in anime before. Valvrave anyone? |
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Guile
Posts: 595 |
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Sorry, I guess I should have specified I meant the scene at the end of episode 1. It seems to be the only thing people bring up about the show here. Nice to hear there might be a sequel though.
Most of the staff politically lean to the left I believe, and the left generally dislikes (female) sexualization. That's why I asked if it was actually a big deal in other environments. |
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zrnzle500
 Posts: 3768 |
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^Their issue with the scene in question was not sexualization in general, but framing a forceful non-consensual situation in a titillating manner, which appeared to be rape before it was clarified to be a body search.
Rape scenes, including VVV's, have not been popular with reviewers (not just this site and not even just anime), usually for being distastefully done. Cross Ange was one such case. Starting to get flashbacks to the preview guide forum when the show first came out. Minus the acronyms, or rather one in particular. |
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Yamaji
 Posts: 29 Location: Hudson Valley, New York |
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Even though it was clarified as a cavity search you can plainly see in the credit roll at the end that there is quite a bit of blood on her torn dress near her exposed buttocks. That to me would indicate a rather forceful penetration in a non consensual way and she is in obvious discomfort. As far as I am concerned that is still a rape. |
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Mertal
 Posts: 88 |
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Pretty much sums it up. I still cannot believe that people are STILL rationalizing this scene. It doesn't matter if its a guy with hisspoiler[ dick], a woman with a spoiler[dildo], or someones fingers in a body cavity search and with no sexual intent. Being held down and having your body forcefully violated is RAPE. Period. |
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 6144 |
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Sounds like forced sodomy to me. That's how I remember the Abner Louima case if we're going for real world parallels. |
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mangamuscle
Posts: 2658 Location: Mexico |
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^You can deconstruct the scene all you want, but your are fighting a losing battle against the dictionary since there was no sexual intent; i.e. no court of law will accuse of rape an officer for just doing a body search.
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JacobC
ANN Contributor
 Posts: 3728 Location: SoCal |
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Alright, that's enough rape-chat in here. If I never have to moderate another Cross Ange thread for armchair litigation over what is and isn't rape in a court of law or whatever, it'll be too soon. Knock it off.
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Animegomaniac
Posts: 4126 |
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This puritanical view on episode 1 is still going on years later?
"It made me uncomfortable." That was the point. "Regardless of what it is, I will see it as I want." Can't stop you, wouldn't want to try. Why? I've been trying to put my finger on Cross Ange's exploitation status every since I watched the dub; I'm leading towards the show isn't really explicit at all but rather it uses the imagination of its audience to not only fill in the gaps... I'm not changing that... but make things even worse for Ange than they really are. And it works, probably a little too well. Even in this review, there's mention of an implied hetero sex scene. It doesn't happen and it can't happen, not at this point in the story but the show will go out of its way to make the audience think the most lurid things are possible. But there's no nudity and very little gratuitous volence and gore... this show easily could have rivaled Elfen Lied if that was its intent... because I don't think that's the point of the show. Everything is done to put the audience in Ange's corner as quickly as possible but since she starts off as spoiled bigoted princess who excels in academics and sports, what she has to confront has to be at the very least in equal amounts to her former position. So she needs to go down, hard and fast... also no changing that. In short, there's no nudity because it would do nothing to belittle Ange. Even the lesbian sex scenes are there more to showcase how alone Ange is than to get a rise out of its audeince. True exploitation is explicit for the sake of its audience, this is, what do you call it,... Art? A well composed narrative, at least. |
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Key
Moderator
Posts: 18324 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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When I wrote that comment, I made myself a bet that someone would misinterpret which scene I was talking about there. Guess I won that bet. . . That comment was actually referring to spoiler[Silvia seeing Julio in bed with Liza - i.e., the scene where we learn that she's connected to the Dragons.] I don't strongly disagree with you on any of your other points, though. |
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zrnzle500
Posts: 3768 |
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@Yamaji and Mertal I was not trying to rationalize the scene, unlike others here I was replying to in the quoted comment. No matter what you call it, what was visited upon her was a terrible forceful violation of her person, which people understandably found objectionable, a point I have made here a number of times. Please don't conflate me with those who outright deny the scene could be interpreted the way you did, an interpretation I shared until the clarification by the relevant parties.
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HaruhiToy
 Posts: 4118 |
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Say what? Ange is nude plenty. Remember her first encounter with Salia? She's full naked until Salia figures out that she has to teach Ange how to put clothes on. Aside from that I'll agree with most of your stance here. I'm happy for that because I have nearly given up trying to describe CA on its merits of story crafting. It isn't as if the story is very unique. A rich, spoiled girl convinced of her own goodness has a hard fall from grace, hits bottom, finds new purpose and builds herself back up again finding a love interest along the way. Does CA make this rather tiresome litany interesting? It does. My arguments: 1. Angelise is at the start of the story a truly despicable character in spite of being so well dressed and coiffed. Call it rape or not rape (sorry JesuOtaku I don't want to get into that again either) what she did to that nameless mother and her child earlier in the episode was much worse than whatever Jill did or didn't do to her during her induction. We are left to believe she had a lifetime of doing that because everyone else was conditioned like her. Beyond that they dedicate a fair amount of story time illustrating her conceit and bigotry. Her strong will, which is later a virtue, is at this point just amplification of how rotten she is. 2. Her stubborn self-centeredness results in two innocent young girls getting killed as well as Zola. That was the price everyone other than Ange had to pay to start to turn her around. (I regret Zola being killed off so soon not so much that I would have liked to see her school Ange some more but that it seemed she had something interesting to say that was left unsaid.) 3. Many if not most viewers will view the yuri sex situations as just fan service. In the original threads even the fans referred to the anime as trashy. It is fan service but it is much more than that in this case. What they did was actually a plausible rendering of what life would be like if you stipulated the bizarre situation of Arzenal to begin with. What would happen if you sequestered an all-female population in a closed society like that? Would their sex drives all disappear and they all live as interacting dolls for their whole lives? I would think that less likely. Rather you have a range of personalities and libidos to go with them, from the oversexed predator Zola (who is nonetheless competent and respected aside from that) to those who just abstain except for self pleasure like Salia, and then most in between. It appears that Chris, Rebbeca and Hilda are merely dragged along in Zola's orbit to begin with but it turns out they have their own desires. So at the end of the day it isn't really trash it is actually legitimately credible world and character building. The fact that CA is actually pretty well crafted is what caused me to go ahead and buy the BD media. Fan service is fine but by itself wouldn't motivate me to part with the cash. Instead of the discussion that usually takes place I would prefer talking about some of the real flaws of CA, including a number of horrendous plot holes which I would have fixed if I could. But that's hopefully a post later on in this thread. I think I am already well into TL;DR territory with this one. |
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kinghumanity
Posts: 365 |
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Why? What's the matter? Just because you refuse to admit you were always wrong about the show, you have to flex your mod muscles in a thread about it? And IIRC didn't Zac already remove your mod status from the episodic discussions about Cross Ange, because you couldn't help abusing it? |
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