Forum - View topicSword Art Online: What makes it SEEM so bad?
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Night fox
 Posts: 561 Location: Sweden |
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So, it's the fanservice that puts people off the most? Well, how about rape in other anime? It's been a while since I saw Strawberry Panic, but I do remember there being rapescenes in it and I don't think they were exactly "fanservicey". So, for those who remember, did Strawberry Panic receive similar criticism for its rapescenes?
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GrayArchon
Posts: 393 |
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This isn't the first time I've seen someone make this argument for it being nothing more than fanservice, but there's a problem with this argument I don't think I've seen anyone address. Sword Art Online is an adaption of a light novel. So the author is the one responsible for including those scenes. Holding "appeals to the male gaze" or "the scene is framed as" up as proof doesn't work for text. They only way that could work is if those scenes were included in the scenes illustrated for the light novel. Scenes of Suguha changing and bathing? Sure they were illustrated. Any scenes involving the slug researchers on the other hand were not. The confrontation with Sugou at the top of the tree had two illustrations. One of Kirito, Asuna, and Yui reuniting. One of Kirito squaring off with Oberon. Any part of Sugou assaulting Asuna is not illustrated. So all the things about how the scenes are clearly meant to be fanservice are the responsibility of the anime staff. Any attempts to make them titillating are their doing. But they didn't decide to put them there for the sake of fan service, they made the scenes because they were in the novels to begin with, and could not be removed without causing some plot holes. So those scenes being nothing more than a "plot device to throw in some fanservice" doesn't hold water. The people who made the scenes fanservicey aren't the ones who created the scenes in the first place, and the person who created the scenes in the first place pretyy clearly wasn't intending them as fanservice or they would have been illustrated as such in the light novels. |
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Vaisaga
 Posts: 13231 |
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The job of an author is to paint a picture with their words. Just because a scene doesn't get an actual illustration doesn't prevent it from being fanservicy. I've not read the novels but if it's written with detailed descriptions of her breasts being groped and what not then it's safe to say titillation was part of the intent. "Beads of sweat rolled down her young, supple body as seductive moans escaped her lips." Stuff like that.
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littlegreenwolf
 Posts: 4796 Location: Seattle, WA |
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Either way, illustrated or not, rape as a cheap plot device is a pretty bad problem in books, too. Yes, the anime added fanservice to them, but the attempted rapes were in the original light novels. Ask yourself this: Did the attacks on Asuna and Sinon happen as plot point/grand finale for the sake of moving the story along? To add spice to a plot? I'd say yes. Did the attacks do anything to help develop those characters? Did we see any significant development to their personalities because of it? I'd say nope. What was the point of them then? So that Kirito could save the day! Add to the fact I hear there is even more attempted rape happening in the Alicezation arc, I would say the original author depends on it as a plot device way too much. It's a really cheap writing trick, and really pathetic when a male author is using it to make a male lead look heroic. Use it frequently in your series? I'll think you're a really bad writer. |
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Vaisaga
Posts: 13231 |
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It's not so cheap when it's perfectly in line with what we know of the perpetrators. If, say, Kayaba suddenly started molesting people that would be out of nowhere since it goes against what we know about his character.
Besides, could you imagine how the scene with Sugou would go if you took out the assault? Asuna is chained up, Kirito is on the ground and Sugou... is just standing there. Maybe he's laughing, maybe he's gloating, but then what? He gets tired and leaves? It was the climax of the story so there had to be some sense of urgency. Something that needed to be prevented at that moment to make Kirito desperate enough to overcome his limits. Should Sugou just have been threatening to kill Asuna instead? That would be stupid because he needs her alive. And why is it that murder is seen as a less serious crime than sexual assault? |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18274 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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You can argue that in Asuna's case and I won't dispute it, but not in Shion's case, for reasons I've previously quantified.
Again, in Shion's case see my previous point. You're really better off keeping those two cases entirely separate given what you want to argue. Oh, and to follow up on another point you made, anyone who thinks Shion's scene was all about fan service is just seeing what they want to see there. Again, as a guy who's normally very squarely in the target audience for fan service, I didn't see it in that scene except by a real stretch. |
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Night fox
Posts: 561 Location: Sweden |
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Well, congrats. It made you FEEL something, which is usually the purpose of most forms of expression - be it anime, sculptures, novels, or music. The point is that each individual will enterpret it differently and if you happen to dislike something it doesn't necessarily make it bad in someone else's eyes. Someone already mentioned the expression "tragedy porn" earlier, which (if I understood it correctly) is when the viewer feels manipulated into symphatizing with a character by some cheap plot device by the author. E.g. while most people on these boards think that Clannad is a great series, quite a few also believe that it's little more than just "tragedy porn". I suppose other works that can be said to "suffer" from this trope include Grave of the Fireflies, Madoka, Claymore, Elfen Lied, Lain, Perfect Blue and Tokyo Ghoul - I could go on. Some people will enjoy the plot, while others will think it's just "too much". Now, if you feel like the author of SAO pulled off a cheap trick and used the rapescenes in this fashion, simply to make Kirito appear more heroic, then that's your prerogative. However, don't present your opinion like it's some kind of fact, because it's not. ~EDIT~ Replaced Millennium Actress with Perfect Blue (freudian mindslip or something) Last edited by Night fox on Sat Jan 09, 2016 10:14 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Spotlesseden
Posts: 3514 Location: earth |
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Like few other said. The main reason is because it's very popular. If it's not popular, nobody would care like 90% of the anime out there.
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Top Gun
 Posts: 4652 |
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Based on those counter-examples being posted, I think some people really missed the point of those complaints about the headset's microwave function. There's a huge difference between a device that can have potentially-hazardous side effects if used improperly, and something whose entire raison d'etre is to harm someone. Yes, an Easy-Bake oven can burn the hell out of your hand if you touch the wrong place, and yes, we're still not sure what sort of long-term effects cell phone usage has on brain tissue, but those aren't remotely comparable to what is essentially sticking your head into a plugged-in microwave oven and hoping nothing goes wrong. I mean, why would that thing even have a microwave emitter in the first place? Even your average first-year EE student would take one look at that thing's specs and say "Ummm...", so how in God's name did it get slipped past Japan's equivalent of the FCC? Not to mention that, just with a general working knowledge of physics, I can think of at least two or three plausible means of disabling the headset without causing fatal harm to the user (EMP!), yet no mention at all is made of any serious attempts to do so. The series just handwaves its way to "six months later..."
Look, I have no problem whatsoever with suspending disbelief if the setting gives me a good reason to do so. If you tell me that you can magically transform elements by clapping your hands together, or that you have a giant robot fueled by manly fighting spirit, or that you can turn into Stretch Armstrong by eating a magic fruit, I can roll with that all day without batting an eye. But SAO's fatal flaw in my eyes is that it's set in what is ostensibly our own near-future real world, with all the physical limitations that should imply, and yet casually ignores nearly all of the issues this should imply. When you literally start the series by trying to convince me that a murderous brain-zapping device managed to get in the hands of tens of thousands of consumers, and that a single man BOTH engineered that AND inserted a killswitch into the code of an MMO which must have had hundreds of people on its dev team, you'll yank me out of the experience so hard that my head will spin. SAO lost me from that first episode, and in my view it was largely a downhill slide from there. (Case in point: spoiler[Kirito magic-ing himself back to life because hey, he's the protagonist!]) All it tells me is that the author didn't bother to put any real thought into the implications of his setting, and in turn I'm not going to place any value on his writing skill.
I know this phrase probably does get misused/overused a great deal, and I've probably done so in the past, but in this case I'm genuinely not using it to mean "something that other people found really sad but I didn't." What I was trying to imply is a situation where a writer creates this ridiculously-contrived set of unlikely circumstances that are laser-targeted towards triggering a feeling of overwhelming sadness in the viewer. I mean, let's take a step back for a moment and think about the setup of Yuuki's situation. spoiler[Despite living in a modern first-world country, her mother happens to receive a blood transfusion that's infected with HIV. (Yes, this has happened before, and actually did in Japan a few years ago, but already you're looking at one-in-a-million odds at the high end.) And then the woman was pregnant, so her fetus contracts the virus as well...as does her husband when they have sex...and her next child. Somehow during none of this do any of them have any bloodwork done that would reveal the presence of the virus. Then they all contract AIDS, and of course it happens to be a super-resistant strain that can't be dealt with using modern retrovirals. And then everyone in the family dies, leaving this one teenage girl alone in her virtual medical world.] Any of these circumstances alone could potentially happen, but when they're all mashed together into a big ball of misery, the show is just trying so very very hard to make the viewer sad that the manipulation becomes blatantly obvious, and I'm yanked entirely out of the intended mood. It's the same exact reaction that your standard Key visual novel adaptation engenders in me. If you can't make tragedy flow from a believable place, then you really shouldn't even bother trying, lest I just roll my eyes and seek better writing elsewhere. (The other egregious part of that arc is that one of its main goals seems to be portraying Kayaba in a more positive light. Y'know, the guy who casually murdered thousands of people, and then when confronted about such cheerfully remarked, "I don't remember why!")
No, I mean, "create sympathetic, believable characters that I can genuinely root for and don't want to repeatedly punch in the face." Alternately, "use a Yuki Kaijura soundtrack in a way actually befitting her talents." (Seriously, SAO has some good stand-alone tracks, but their actual implementation in-situ is by and large just abysmal.) For all of SIGN's non-action, it made me feel things other than general disdain or unintentional hilarity. |
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nobahn
 Subscriber Posts: 5124 |
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I really must get around to watching this show -- if only to find out if all of these extreme reactions are justified in any way, shape or form. In the meantime, everyone, please remember to keep the discussion polite.
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Key
Moderator
Posts: 18274 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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So what? Live-action TV shows constantly feature one-in-a-million occurrences in their stories because they make for good drama. I guess I just don't see why this is such a bigger deal here.
First of all, spoiler[Yuki's sister was a twin, so they contracted it from their mother at the same time. And the time lapse between the bad infusion and the HIV being discovered was only four months. Given that people typically only have blood work done once a year unless they get hospitalized or their physician has cause for concern, I hardly think that it not being found until four months later is unbelievable.]
Okay, I'll give you that the story is laying it on a bit thickly, but that tragic situation is not what got me emotional. It's how she and Asuna handled it and related to each other because of it.
Frankly, I think you just have impossibly high standards for this. Would be curious to know if you've ever found anything convincing on that front in anime, and if so, what?
We (and by that I mean the people in the discussion threads at the time) argued about this heavily at the time the episode originally aired, and I still maintain that nothing in that scene was showing anyone portraying him in a softer stance because of that revelation. It struck me instead as strong irony.
Okay, we're simply not going to agree here at all, because I thought the soundtrack was always on-the-mark. Still, I'd be really curious about specific scene examples where you think it's used that badly. |
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Gatherum
 Posts: 773 Location: Aurora CO |
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Sword Art Online is one of those works whose quality tends to be very inconsistent between arcs, in a manner not dissimilar to the problems faced by long-running shōnen works whose main narrative is interspersed with filler. The difference is that SAO has no filler--just some rather terrible writing.
I'll just go ahead and make the blanket statement now that both seasons of SAO feature a very compelling first half because they accomplish two things: raising the stakes and keeping them high, and doing what the franchise as a whole is regarded for: serving as a(n action-oriented) commentary on the nature of identity and anonymity in the vast expanse of the internet and social media. Were those two first halves of those two seasons put together as a single-season show with some tweaking for fluency, we'd have a veritable masterpiece on our hands, despite Kirito. The rest of the content is really just OVA material. The throwaway extra/bonus episode kind featuring Kirito and his crew dicking around in various MMO quests. There's just too much of a disconnect to take it all that seriously. Speaking of Kirito, I wouldn't go so far as to say that he is a Gary Stu or whatever, but he's just not...interesting. Probably because he essentially wins at almost everything he tries his hand at, from beta testing, to romance, to beta testing his romance. He is overpowered in all but the most critical of situations, and when he does have something to come to terms with, it either doesn't last very long, or is plain ridiculous. I found it asinine for him to be crying for like, two episodes, about spoiler[killing two Laughing Coffin members in SAO, especially when he gave them plenty of chances to surrender, and it literally came down to kill or be killed. I wouldn't be super proud of offing them either, bro, but under those circumstances, I'd declare it to have been unavoidable, be happy I'm the one who got to live, and move on. Sheesh.] Compounding all of this, the series likes to take what it thinks are subtle turns in to harem territory, even after the spoiler[romance with Asuna is well-established], but fails to be at all subtle about it. Even in the aforementioned portions that are good, the villains can be very toxic, but not in a good way, essentially amounting to far-overblown, stereotypically degenerate otaku caricatures who would be very at-home in a hentai with lots of rape in it. Even in hentai, they're hardly tolerated, but at least there's some eye candy to feel guilty about fapping to. In a regular show, though, this character type is insufferable. Overall, it's just one of those series that kicks off so well, but in some way or another, lets you down. It's disheartening, really. |
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Chiibi
 Posts: 4829 |
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Nah, it was more like Kayaba had been working for so long on this project that he lost sight of the objective. But I thought it was simple to deduce: he wanted to make a world where he could play God.
Yeeeeah, see, I wanted to punch Tsukasa a couple times. The only character I can say I "liked" was Mimiru. |
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Key
Moderator
Posts: 18274 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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So you're saying this about Mother's Rosario, too? Think you might have entirely missed the point. Now, the Calibur arc I'll agree with you about. |
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Gatherum
Posts: 773 Location: Aurora CO |
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I haven't watched Mother's Rosario. If you're coyly referring to the episodes in the first half of season one, wherein Kirito goes on some episodic adventures with the minor female side-characters, I give it to you that it gives them some depth, but it still doesn't work because it essentially has to pause the main plot to do it. It backfires because it only drives home further the fact that these characters are meaningless secondaries whose sole purpose is to crush on Kirito, which in turn furthers his annoyance factor. If you're referring to Aincrad, it's more focused than the second half of season two, but still drops the ball on the stakes by spoiler[taking away the die-in-the-game-die-in-real-life scenario], introducing a comically over-the-top child molestor and bitch as the villain, becoming an exercise in exploiting Asuna in general, andspoiler[depicting Kayaba('s residual consciousness) as cool and almost sympathetic after we already know that he is a megalomaniac indirectly responsible for the deaths of thousands]. The series repeatedly loses sight of its strengths and seems to have a hard time with basic morality. Not in an infuriating way per se, but I can't remember another time in recent memory wherein my eyes rolled so hard. If you're referring to something else, I'm sorry. Maybe I just felt like ranting a bit more since I'm feeling more eloquent today. 
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