Forum - View topicShelf Life - Concrete Revolutio
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FilthyCasual
Posts: 2419 |
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I found that the second season helped bring together the episodes from the first season quite a bit, and also contained my favorite moments from the series. I enjoyed the first season well enough though, despite it being mostly setup.
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Merxamers
 Posts: 720 |
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A fair review, and if anything i'm even more disappointed by it. "Unfocused" is a good description for it, as it seems like no character, plot twist, or climactic event is given enough time to have an emotional impact.
This was the most frustrating show I've watched to completion in recent years; it wants SO BADLY to be like Watchmen, but without any developed and likable characters. It often seemed like the only thing the show had to say was "there is no black and white morality, only gray" and "every authority figure is a cynical, genocidal sociopath,", without doing anything interesting with the outwardly whacky aesthetic choices. It introduces a great character like Earth-Chan, but just writes her out of the story most of the time. I don't want to write a huge wall of text or anything, so i'll just say i was immensely more entertained by other works that play with the same themes; Blood Blockade Battlefront (exciting pastiche of genres, fun ensemble cast, story with heart), Watchmen (politically manipulated superheroes and their alienation from society), and All-Star Superman (how one can be a hero that inspires others). |
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Greed1914
 Posts: 4669 |
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Yeah, it definitely helped that the second half stayed focused on the present, rather than jumping back and forth. Without that, I think I would have lost the plot entirely. Obviously, the story and visual style were homages to older anime, but it ended up getting muddled by trying to do too much. It's easy to draw inspiration from too many sources, and then you get something that is more of a patchwork than a cohesive product. |
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Wyvern
 Posts: 1606 |
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Does anyone know if this blu-ray release of Concrete Revolutio has a different translation from the original Daisuki subs? I found those to be so awkwardly and poorly translated that it made the series nearly impossible to follow, and I ended up dropping the series. I liked what I did see, though, so I might pick this up if that issue's been fixed.
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Merxamers
Posts: 720 |
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I watched it with subs, and they were never confusing for me, so I can only assume they are ones that funimation did themselves |
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MarshalBanana
 Posts: 5525 |
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Greg Ayres is an odd choice for Jiro, I do not know who exactly would have worked best, but I'm sure there are a dozen other people.
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Calsolum
 Posts: 906 |
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Ah you poor soul, I can only guess that you're free to play(er) or have E rank luck. I have spent a bit more than I would like to admit on that damn Waifu collecting game but thanks to that I was eventually able to make a few teams that make farming those dailies bearable. The QP quests were the worst for me since EVERY DAMN THING needs QP. Arash is definitely one of the cornerstone servants for that game, anyone who says differently either don't care about grinding, or is a whale. Man Concrete Revolutio, what a blast from the past, I loved that show even though it confused the heck out of me. Sadly alot of what the reviewer says here is true and because of that it's hard to recommend it to others that aren't looking for something to invest in. That and I seem to recall the story behind the magical girl... lacking? Been a while so maybe I forgot but I don't think her origins were ever really clear. Nonetheless, I loved the series faults and all. I definitely remember the first episode being incredibly shocking with so many different things going on and I really wanted to find out what happens next to tie all these threads together. |
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Doodleboy
Posts: 296 |
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Heh, I still love Concrete Revolutio, even if I have to admit that it's a show only made for a specific few people. It feels like the British Comics Invasion went to Japan instead of America and had to write a crossover series with a bunch of children shows from the sixties instead of reinventing children superhero comics.
I do enjoy the characters a lot once I got the "rules" of the universe. They're children show characters made literal, so they hit me on that level. Fuurouta is a children's show mascot. So the second episode is the equivalent of seeing Casper the Friendly Ghost accidentally committing genocide, wrecking a child's life despite his archetype being a friend to all children. Even with the characters revealing their flaws you still root for them, because they're the characters you looked up to as a kid. The show's a big convoluted mess but it always felt like that was part of the purpose. It captures the feeling of looking at the news and feeling hopeless at the messiness of state of the world, an endless foreign war, a big political protest that started off idealistic but turned fractional and violent, multiple atrocities being committed at home and abroad, an energy crisis. Anyways that's enough rambling. |
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killjoy_the
 Posts: 2490 |
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I loved Concrete Revolutio, and some of the complaints here don't really get me - I loved at least two characters in the show, which is a lot better than most anime. I would agree on it being unfocused for sure, but some of the more episodic outings were also great, so that one gets a shrug from me. The whole 'jumping back and forth' aspect of the show was something that got me really invested in it, participating in lots of discussion and reading the timeline and so on, so that ended up being a plus to me.
Also it's a crime not to mention the soundtrack. |
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FilthyCasual
Posts: 2419 |
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The ED that became the climactic theme for a lot of moments was a work of art. |
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AnimusPrime
Posts: 51 |
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Concrete Revolutio is a very *clever* show, to the point where it's main narrative trick flies right over the heads of Western audiences.
The main events of the show is a direct parallel to events that happened in post-war Japan and the world, at a time when manga had an almost beatnik-like reputation. The main characters are based off of real-life manga characters, and they make their appearance in the timeline around the same time they appeared in manga. For example, Ep.15: the "new" character of the episode is a woman whose girlfriend had killed herself. This turns out to be a homage to "Shiroi Heya no Futari", ostensibly the first yuri manga published in 1971, also featuring a tragic suicide ending. There's a scene early in the episode in which she slays an ailen disguised as a fast-food mascot -- this is a McDonalds reference; McDonalds first arrived in Japan in 1971. And every episode has stuff like this in it. I really hoped the Funimation BR/DVD release would pick up on this, and provide special features detailing the historical parallels, but that doesn't appear to be the case. |
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v1cious
 Posts: 6235 Location: Houston, TX |
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I loved Concrete Revolutio, but I get that it's not everyone's cup of tea. It's a polarizing show, and the narrative structure can be confusing if you're not used to this style of storytelling.
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omiya
 Posts: 1855 Location: Adelaide, South Australia |
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The fact that "The Beginning" is a rare example of an instrumental ED is noteworthy in itself. |
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Luke's Yu-Gi-Oh! Channel
 Posts: 159 Location: Australia |
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I really enjoyed Concrete Revolutio.
It was a little confusing for a while due to the way the show ran, using the future quite a bit then going to the past. 2nd season helped a lot and it made sense once it was all done and dusted. |
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Brack
 Posts: 292 Location: UK |
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Of the Alan Moore works that Concrete Revolutio resembles, I always felt it was more League of Extraordinary Gentlemen than Watchmen. But it doesn't have the benefit of using public domain characters, so you have to mentally map these characters onto their real world and pop culture equivalents.
Thankfully, someone was annotating the show as it aired, so you could fill in the gaps in your knowledge. I think the second season is lacking in production values and ambition compared to the first. It's more linear and you feel the effect of it being two episodes shorter by the end. There's a couple of characters that probably should have gotten spotlight episodes had it been 26 instead of 24 total episodes. Still, it's my second favourite Mizushima & Aikawa alternate history anime behind Oh Edo Rocket. |
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