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REVIEW: Concrete Revolutio: The Last Song

"also, i forgot everything" LOL me too. I meant to watch this but never got around to it yet (seems like I should tho). I blame Hulu tho.... I saw they season 1 and waited for Season 2 to appear but it never did...

Kougeru wrote:

"also, i forgot everything" LOL me too. I meant to watch this but never got around to it yet (seems like I should tho). I blame Hulu tho.... I saw they season 1 and waited for Season 2 to appear but it never did...

It's streaming on Funimation for free if you create an account. I enjoyed what I saw of the show. It reminded me of watchman in the the way it had had all this meta fictional content.

In my group of friends we were watching and discussing this series with some liking the first season, others disappointed (me in those) and others downright hating it... and we all hated this second season. The few advantages it had (more simplistic stories and a more focused direction and mood in them) were completely overtaken by pure nosense, constant betrayal of characterization and plot threads (especially Jaguar, what a disaster man!), even more contrived plots that make no sense only to slightly reflect whatever stupid commentary they wanted to force at the moment (or not, 60% of the time two characters fight there's no reason for it, they just want to make them fight and have conflict that is not even related to what's going on), barely real consequences that are actually followed up, deus ex machinas every minute, etc. Also, of course, the two biggest problems of the first season, but bigger:

1-When they return to the main plot it's all overstuffed, rushed and there's no tone or mood to the scenes. I totally get that the scriptwriter said the director read the script, shrugged without understanding and did it anyways, because it really feels like it has no idea what tone the scenes have and it puts the monotone boring energetic for everything, and so NO emotional attemp comes close to succeed, with maybe one or two exceptions.

2-The blatant dialogue where everybody just talks in ideology-language 90% of the time for everything every second in the most awkward way that it's so ridiculous it's impossible to take seriously (the last episode has the line spoiler["Ugh! Am I going to lose? No, if I lose that means I'm not justice!"] and I laughed for a minute of how awful and forced it was).

Even for a show that demands such high levels of suspension of disbelief and only come for the thematic points, and that I was already not comfortable with in the first season but still gave it a chance for the next one, it pumped it to such extreme levels that made impossible to take seriously anything about it. Good for the people who made it or liked it, but it's one of the easiest shows to understand why very few followed it to the end.

To be honest, I quite enjoyed some aspects of the first season, but I could never recommend it to anyone without a second thought because it seemed like a trainwreck from episode 1. The show went from smart and adult to nonsensical and awfully executed in a matter of minutes, like if the series was a representation of a schizophrenic mind or some kind of weird experiment (I'm convinced it was, at the very least, the latter).

The overall impression I got is that the show isn't really all that concerned with plot or characterization (for many of the characters anyway), which is obviously a huge flaw for most viewers where such things would be the primary way they engage with the material. Instead, the show redirects nearly all of its efforts to themes and ideas, which often requires a bit of reflection to even understand. But even that tiny moment of reflection can completely kill the emotional resonance of a scene, as explained in the review.

On the other hand, I think the themes are strong enough, and refracted enough over so many different characters, to provide satisfaction all on their own.

Clarste wrote:

The overall impression I got is that the show isn't really all that concerned with plot or characterization (for many of the characters anyway), which is obviously a huge flaw for most viewers where such things would be the primary way they engage with the material. Instead, the show redirects nearly all of its efforts to themes and ideas, which often requires a bit of reflection to even understand. But even that tiny moment of reflection can completely kill the emotional resonance of a scene, as explained in the review. On the other hand, I think the themes are strong enough, and refracted enough over so many different characters, to provide satisfaction all on their own.

The thing about the characters, is they all archetypes of; robot detective shows, magical girl shows, super robot shows etc. And they act and behave in accordance, with little regard for modern commentary. Jiro for example has the beliefs of a small boy when it comes to good and evil, the show seems to know this is not how people are expected to act as demonstrated by this line "Justice? Jiro, how old are you?. Aren't you nearing 30?". Yet despite this he still holds up these values at the end of the show, while acknowledging that it is not black and white.

So it is not like they aren't characterised, it's just not in a way you would expect. It is difficult for the jaded internet generation, who are hard-wired to think that the only good characters are the ones who are "complex", to latch onto characters who are defined by their believes and values.