Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Dahlia in Bloom: Crafting a Fresh Start With Magical Tools
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18494 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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I also thought that was strange, but given the circumstances, it may have been meant to suggest that he was caked in blood. While this series has distinct visual flaws (especially in the CG), I can't agree with it being even close to the worst-looking series this season, much less this year. Failure Frame has decidedly worse CG and other series (including, unfortunately, personal favorite I Parry Everything) have taken bigger nosedives on technical and artistic quality fronts. I do agree that the story and characterization has a lot of potential, though. I saw some commentary from novel readers that the first couple of episodes aren't where the novels really start (and are just pieced together from later snippets?), but I felt they were necessary for providing a solid foundation for where Dahlia is coming from and contributed greatly to the series living up to its main title in episode 3. It may be a slower way to get the series going, but the series is solidly on my watch list for the season because of that. |
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sakurahitagi
Posts: 73 |
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I really like Dahlia and want to continue to follow her story, but I agree the visuals are pretty bad and it takes away from the emotional core of the story. I’ll still follow anyways, but I may just read the story instead.
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Saeryen
 Posts: 1005 |
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I...honestly don't get all this criticism about the visuals? I don't think it's anywhere near that bad.
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Andrew Cunningham
 Posts: 527 Location: Seattle |
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One of the more consistently frustrating aspects of the glut of poor productions is that it's quite hard to tell the difference between a serviceable adaptation of a bad book and a lousy adaptation of a great one.
This was always going to be a tough series to turn into an anime; it's all about the joys of creation, and has a real grown-ups drinking wine party vibe, both of which are hard to represent; and that's all underpinned by a meta joke where it takes familiar genre conventions (like a broken engagement) and solved them by acting like level-headed adults (getting a notary.) The third episode is where the first novel began; these opening events squeeze a lot of backstory in as things play out, so I can see an argument in favor of fleshing that out into two backstory episodes. But in actual practice this show just arranges things in sequence with absolutely no perspective on the events; it's like reading a wiki summary written by a dude who thinks politics have no place in fiction. Like Tobias telling her to dye her hair--Dahlia doesn't react at all, so we have no clue what she made of it. They don't even frame this as a bad thing, much less try and give us insight into the insecurities that lead to it. And her dad doesn't even seem to notice when she mentions what he's up to? (The novels have several chapters showing exactly what her talents scared her father into pushing her the predicament she starts in, but they did not attempt to cover that at all.) It's interesting to compare this against this arc of Oshi no Ko and imagine how the communication breakdown might have happened. Like, in the source novels Lucia (the friend with green hair) shows up out of nowhere in the second book without any previous mention. You can see that the author might have suggested giving her a scene or two in these early episodes to make that seem less weird--but both appearances are so perfunctory they give no sense of her personality, and don't even establish that she's a wannabe clothing designer. It's as if the writer was just given a note and angrily accommodated it without the slightest understanding as to what that would be for. Ultimately, I think I've already seen enough to be fully in that source readers begging people to just read the books instead of watching this disaster of an anime. |
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Eilavel
Posts: 136 |
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I did get this intent, but it wasn't very good on his red armour; on his blue hair, its just a bad choice. But I agree with the general consensus the visual issues aren't that bad for me; I guess problems with animation and implementation are easier for me to ignore than problems with the core design work. Its interesting to see that episode 3 is where the novel starts. I agree this format was probably a mistake. Because we've spent two episodes on a backstory that all at once is mawkish and yet somehow inexpressive; and yet after all it doesn't actually really link us into episode 3, because suddenly theres this whole wider but very close social circle I know nothing about - and the fact she doesn't seem to have been socially isolated makes her total non-response to Tobias's controlling behaviour puzzling more than anything. I think a half episode opening covering the reincarnation, loving dad and magic system is enough. The rest can be flashbacks if needed. |
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Azure Chrysanthemum
Posts: 145 |
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As usual, a great series that I personally really love is getting shafted by bad production, it is a day ending in y. I'll stick this one out because I love Dahlia in Bloom, the leads have great romantic chemistry and are whole-ass adults who already have their own lives but come to find that those lives are much richer when shared. Exactly the kind of thing I love to see when I read romance, especially with so many romance series being about younger or less mature protagonists (not that those can't be fun but it's nice to see something a bit different). I do wish it were a better adaptation though, it never gets easier seeing series you love getting done dirty and given my personal tastes this happens waaaay too often.
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Key
Moderator
Posts: 18494 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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As a novel-only reader, I can't agree here. Episode 3 provided a plenty big enough hint that Lucia is a budding clothing designer: around the 5:49 mark, she says, "we'll have some new patterns ready soon" immediately after asking Dahlia about imbuing rain coat fabric with magic. For me, at least, that pointed enough to her occupation of choice that I assumed as much on first pass. For other matters, I clearly understood from episode 2 that Tobias's instructions to Dahlia were born of his own insecurities about her outshining him, and I got the distinct impression from episode 2 that Dahlia wasn't pushing back on those because of some combination of 1) wanting to reassure her father that it was going to work, 2) wanting to reassure herself that she wasn't going to end up alone (like in her previous life), and/or 3) wanting to make sure she had a secure place in a world that's male-dominated. Carlo also does make a comment or two in the anime expressing concern about Dahlia potentially getting into something dangerous, and I came away from episode 2 with the distinct impression that this was his main motivator for going along with the marriage proposal. As for other points you brought up, I'll have to wait and see how the next few episodes play out to determine if this flow-through works or is as problematic as you say. But I haven't seen any problematically big storytelling gaps so far from a non-novel-reader perspective. |
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RenimLS
Posts: 136 Location: North America |
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The anime appears to adapt the manga adaptation of the series. Taking a quick look at the manga, Episode 1 was the same as the first chapter of the manga (ch. 0) and episode 2 was 2/3rds of chapter 1 of the manga. In comparison episode 1 covers content from the extra story in volume 1. Episode 2 covers elements from volume 2's extra story, volume 3's chapter 4, and some others.
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Miya543
Posts: 4 |
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You're kidding right? This is one of the easiest stories to adapt! It's a slow cozy fantasy story about the daily life of an Inventor of magical tools. Showing friendship (and later romance), delicious food, cool looking inventions, following Dahlia on her journey to become a successful woman is all pretty easy to turn into an anime. |
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Miya543
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Same here, like i'm always asking myself every week if i watched the same show as the person who always writes these articles, because even though the shadows are a bit irrating got used to it by now and everything else looks really pretty? Like no bad looking CGI at all and there are SO MANY worse looking anime out there and Dahlia isn't one of them. It looks solid and sometimes even really pretty. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11616 |
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Usually, when I see these kind of critiques about the animation and art, I'm kinda grateful that I don't have the same discerning eye that so many others have, and can just sit back and enjoy the story without the shortcuts ruining everything for me.  Those times when it's so bad that even I notice things falling apart, the whole production, including script and story, is probably such a disaster that I can only laugh at what's on screen. But this series for me is not one of those times.
Also, I didn't need any extra spoon-feeding to see all the red-flags Tobias was frantically waving in every scene he was in, nor the insecurities he flaunted in both his body language and actions. While he was an open book, though, I could've used a little more insight into Dahlia's utterly passive response to him. I couldn't tell if she was blind to his controlling behavior, or just didn't care because reasons. And if the latter, what were her actual reasons for not caring? |
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il-Palazzo
Posts: 4 |
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Oi! I’m a business major of sub-standard sized and I feel offended.
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JaffaOrange
 Posts: 254 |
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Yeah, while the first 3 episodes have been charming enough, it does feel slow. I'm not sure how I feel about it taking so long to get to a character motivation - again - especially since we know how this will all play out. I'm honestly surprised it took so long for the dad to die (of anime sickness no less) and the fact that Tobias isn't in the OP doesn't bode well for him, even as a source of conflict.
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NeverConvex
 Subscriber Posts: 2559 |
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It's funny to hear it called slow, although I can understand that; but, my primary reaction so far has been, "Wait, they've been married for X years now? And they're getting divorced? Didn't they get married last episode!?" It feels like we're jumping around between vignettes that are kind of brief snapshots of isolated places in Dahlia's life, to me, and skipping large amounts of development in between. Leaves me struggling to develop a real connection to what has taken place in the show.
Also, the husband being a highly controlling creep was kind've unexpectedly understated, and now we seem to have zoomed way beyond it. I thought it was going to be a major, developing issue in the plot, but instead it's only really been addressed through her complaining pretty mildly to her dad about it, and through her friend's one post-divorce comment on it? I hope we get to a sub-story, soon, that the show's invested enough in to spend multiple episodes with... |
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Key
Moderator
Posts: 18494 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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They weren't actually married yet. (See 3:30 in episode 3 for the clearest indicator of this.) All the paperwork was over the dissolution of a formalized betrothal, not a divorce. Also, episode 3 clarifies that two years have passed since the engagement and a year since Carlo's death. |
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