Forum - View topicREVIEW: Bye Bye, Earth Season 1 Anime Series Review
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Glordit
 Posts: 680 |
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This series frustrated me so much. I loved the narrative, characters, how the world worked but the complete lack of explanation for almost everything made it hard to watch.
Even The Fire Hunter was able to at least give us some explanations on why the world was the way it was and how things generally worked. |
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Andrew Cunningham
 Posts: 526 Location: Seattle |
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This went so full-tilt boogie with the jargon bukakke and wild worldbuilding that it looped back around to entertaining, and I just rode that crazy train all the way through, not trying to parse any of the details. Not super inclined to pick up the novel though.
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Greed1914
 Posts: 4650 |
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I think that underground battle is where things really started coming apart for me. What was happening on screen was interesting to look at, but I didn't have much idea on why the characters behaved in some pretty specific ways. Music seems to have some sort of power, but not much to go on as to why. People could fill certain roles on the fly like it's totally natural, but there isn't an explanation there. Terminology was seemingly so important that it would be placed on screen, but not important enough to explain most of the time. You'd have characters that freely called themselves "good" or "evil" but not behave particularly differently. I think some of it also got left on the cutting floor for time because you'd unceremoniously find out something happened to a character from a previous episode by someone just talking to Belle.
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bassgs435
 Posts: 373 |
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As a fan of other Ubukata works (Mardock Scramble, Fafner Dead Agressor, Heroic Age), this is interesting as a look to his earlier self and how his writing got polished and evolved in his later works, and I look foward to where he takes this. It's definitely rough and don't blame anyone who is turned off. But it's stil fascinating to me personally
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AQuin1904
Posts: 270 |
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This is definitely on the innkeeper's exposition in episode not being clear enough. "Good" and "evil" are synonymous with "Topdog" and "Underdog," the two sides everyone in gets arbitrarily assigned to one of when they move to the city. |
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AiddonValentine
 Posts: 2354 |
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"Tow Ubukata"
Well, there's your problem right there. I get the feeling there's only so much they can do with the source material |
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Terraziel
Posts: 78 |
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Was this true? I mean I didn't get that sense at all, the only real connection to music is the singers, the rest of the terminology seemed to just be the author calling a spade a trombone and claiming that counted as world-building. |
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BlueFoot
Posts: 12 |
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The Doubt sequence in Episode 9 might as well have been a review of this show. It even starts off with the show's trademark style of highlighting a key word by showing it on screen right after it is spoken and then doing absolutely nothing to indicate how or why that particular word is any more significant than anything else in the script. It's like some sort of bizarro world Sesame Street where they teach you about words by saying a word and just going about their business as if you're already supposed to know what it is.
That sequence though makes it clear that the characters don't even have the slightest clue about any of the peculiarities of this world. Most of them just go along with whatever nonsense they're presented with just because they were told to. Is that the point of the show? That people are mindless sheep who live and die by the whims of the high and mighty weirdos in charge? There's no indication that anything is intended as commentary, so it's anyone's guess what the point's supposed to be, if there even is one. It really seems like the attempts at world building have hindered the story more than they've helped. I'm fine with a strange world with mechanics that make no sense from our perspective. Explain them or don't, but at least show us characters in relatable scenarios to help us make sense of what's going on. Instead, we get heaping piles of confusion dressing on top of the enigma salad we didn't want in the first place. The characters and their stories get lost in that mess. Maybe I'm just bitter because I wanted to see Belle go off on a journey and she's been stuck in this nightmare of a city the whole time instead. It's like if season 1 of Shangri-La Frontier had just been Sunraku playing the tutorial, only it got stuck in German and wouldn't let him play the game until he finished it. "What the heck does 'schnell' mean and why do you keep shouting at me???" |
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Eilavel
Posts: 136 |
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Honestly, I feel exactly the opposite. Bye Bye, Earth suggests to me not a maturing author but an author in a position to indulge their impulses without regard to editorial input. Indeed, I dropped it precisely in contrast (not consciously at the time) to shows like Fafner. Fafner starts the viewer with little idea whats going on, but while some elements around the Festum remain mysterious the show ultimately reaches a point where you can largely understand cause and effect. You learn and understand the world. It became clear Bye Bye, Earth wasn't doing this. When what you learn about the world doesn't allow you to understand and predict events, it turns out all you've learnt is a list of words and its a waste of time. Its just obscurantism for the sake of it- which is something I can actually enjoy to a degree or I would have dropped on ep 1, but a blanket level of it is basically unwatchable over time. |
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bassgs435
Posts: 373 |
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If you find his later work better, then you'd agree he's matured, no?. Keep in mind the novels being adapted were released in 2000, long before any of the other works I mentioned. This is just an adaptationg 24 years late- And he isn't involved beyond writing the novels 24 years ago. So yep, I'd think this earlier story having flaws that can be seen as corrected and improved on in later material suggests improvement and maturing from the author |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18486 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Kevin's evaluation of the first half is very similar to my own, and for essentially the same reasons. The series has a wealth of neat ideas but uses them too obtusely for its own good.
I'll still be back for the second half because, like Kevin, I want to know what the hell all of this amounts to. |
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Glordit
Posts: 680 |
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It was around episode 4 or 5 where they create an orchestra as a battalion and then have a conductor write a script that everyone needs to follow like an opera. |
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