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Forum - View topicThe Fall 2023 Anime Preview Guide
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FilthyCasual
Posts: 2368 |
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S-Rank Daughter: The backgrounds are very pretty and Hayamin makes for a hilarious and charming Ange. Shame the animation's low-budget, but it could be worse.
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nl_TvdL
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I don’t get why you guys are always so edgy about these “morally wrong” Japanese anime. It’s part of another culture where people are fine with it i guess, it’s not like the 15 year old girl is a real human being forced into a real relationship against her will or something. It’s all just another anime story. If it’s not your cup of tea, i totally get it, it’s not mine either, but what’s the purpose of these harsh reviews every time? It’s not even made for a western audience in the first place.
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InfiniteNothingness
 Posts: 187 |
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I wouldn't describe calling something you hate, something you hate, as "edgy," at most overlong in the disdain at times but it's easy enough to skim past what might be "fluff" for me at times. At least when describing things to friends, if there's something I really hate, I've seen no reason to hold back if it's critical enough. ... Even if I would sooner see a bit less of it overall. Sometimes they seemingly take up like a third of the review, which like the premise itself I would presume takes little build-up; you like it or you don't, it's meant for a niche audience. That aside though, I'd agree with you more if they were solely made up of ragging on age gap romances (and assorted), or things the reviewers don't like, but as it is it's sounding like even in a much much leaner season A Girl And Her Guard Dog would be thoroughly uninteresting to me: Bland faces and stiff animation, "over-the-top sitcom dads" (in ths context), even Keiya sounding umimpressive, and other traits purportedly confirming what the PV seemed like to me. I do still share the frustration at least a bit. Also, like, not as if the anime industry has a monopoly on age gap and other "problematic" romances. Twilight is the laziest possible example to give, but it's there. I just find the framing kind of weird there? |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11584 |
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I think the moment that won me over in S-Ranked Daughter's Quest to Go Home was just before she left and she demanded "Squeeze me" from her Dad, rather than "I need a big hug" or something more mundane. It just spoke volumes about their relationship, which seems to have been very physical (not that kind) during her training. Maybe it plays different in Japanese, but in English it was cute.
I also thought it was funny when he specifically thinks, "It doesn't look like she was abandoned," and then steals her anyway.  I'm interested to learn who she really is and why she was left in the forest. What I'm worried about after the premier is that rather than being a father/daughter story, this could turn into a drawn out tale of her inability to get a break and finally see Belgrieve again. I really hope they just misjudged how to do a story launch, rather than that being the story.
The premise of Yakuza With Candy isn't a deal-breaker for me, as I'm fairly non-judgemental about age-gap relationships, because I've known too many couples for whom it totally worked out great, and because I know that for many adolescent girls such fantasies serve a non-threatening function as opposed to real life encounters. What I'm not sure I can deal with are the character designs, where it looks like their corneas are melting down their faces. Maybe if this were a zombie series... Anyway, I'll probably give it another episode or two until the season really kicks off and I have to start culling. Unless something radically changes in subsequent episodes, there just isn't enough chemistry in the leads' relationship to save it from the chopping block. |
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Saeryen
 Posts: 984 |
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There’s a difference between saying “I don’t like this, this makes me uncomfortable” (which is the point of a review, you say how the show makes you really feel) and calling for censorship. I agree that a content ban would be wrong and if this appeals to some people that’s fine, but a reviewer whose job it is to say their real thoughts on the show has a right to say “this feels gross to me.” This isn’t my cup of tea either and it’s fine if it’s anyone else’s, and of course it’s okay to disagree with the majority of reviews. I’ve thought shows were good when most reviewers or even most viewers in general did not. |
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musouka
Posts: 718 |
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Honestly, I see no issue with the reviews of Yazuka and his Jailbait.
In other years, the Preview Guide has been very quick to jump on judging the audience for shoujo age gap couples, but just getting the icks over an ugly, lackluster offering in a sea of season premieres isn't worth a teaspoon of criticism. A review should reflect the reviewer's taste and that's exactly what they do. |
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DamianSalazar
Posts: 759 |
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The main male character in A Girl and Her Guard Dog looks like he would fit right in with the cast of 6Teen.
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Netero
Posts: 172 |
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Well, besides the utterly bizarre OP, I quite liked Frieren, I guess. But it was Rebecca Silverman's comment above that made me bawl my heart out more than anything in the four episodes did. |
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NeedMoreCats
 Subscriber Posts: 333 Location: Westchester, NY |
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Frieren: I read the first book, so I was stoked for this one, and it didn’t disappoint. LOVE the ED. It’s a great song by millet and the animation is beautiful.
S-Ranked Daughter: I thought it was sweet. I really like the warm relationship she has with her dad. I, too, wanna know why she was left in the forest. Who were her real parents? And I’m interested in dad’s backstory, too. Guard Dog: I would normally like this sorta thing—when I was an adolescent girl, I wasTOTALLY into inappropriate age-gap romances—but the creepy artwork is ruining it for me. |
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ThrowMeOut
Posts: 265 |
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Honestly it's rarely the subject matter itself, but how it's executed, and boy howdy does A Girl and Her Guard Dog have terrible execution. I don't think there's any aspect of it that works. The animation is ugly, the jokes fall flat, the dialogue is weird, and the pacing of the show is so off it feels kind of uncanny. In fact it's so bad I found it kind of hypnotizing. So then on top of that you've a poorly written romance that makes people uncomfortable, and yeah people gonna vent. |
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Shay Guy
 Posts: 2291 |
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The "New Anime" dropdown at the top is still showing the summer preview guide.
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nl_TvdL
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You’re totally right, they should give their opinion, i'm not disagreeing with these reviews, my criticism has more to do with the bigger picture. These kinda “weird” anime, from our perspective, almost always get judged by “our” western standard. I think that’s just foolish, in a way. It’s a thing in Japan, and probably always will be. So they’re always gonna repeat the same thing? |
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NeverConvex
 Subscriber Posts: 2510 |
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Glad to see Frieren's so highly rated; seems like the adaptation's premiere met peoples' high expectations. Hoping this season will be stronger than the last one was.
This is going to quickly spiral off-topic (if it hasn't already), but I think it's kind of ridiculous to suggest that grooming/pedophilia/extreme age-gap relationships (or various other things you might be obliquely referring to as 'weird', like sexual assault or slavery played as gags? Or sexism? I'm not quite sure what the line you're trying to draw here is, but this is the kind of stuff I commonly see people attempt to write off as a 'cultural difference' in this way) are strictly western concerns. Even if they were, though... this is a site written by people from a western cultural background, right? I don't know how else you'd expect them to write. Do you want the reviewers to try to cosplay as if they're a median Japanese person, or to never say anything critical because it might trample on a cultural difference? |
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nl_TvdL
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Pedophilia? Really? I think you’re totally overreacting with that label. Yeah, i expect them to take into account that there is a cultural difference. |
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NeverConvex
Subscriber Posts: 2510 |
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From what I understand of the show in question, it may be grooming and is clearly portraying a significant age-gap relationship, but I don't think I'd call it pedophilia, no. I mentioned pedophilia because your line of reasoning is identical to the kind that is used (and has recently been used) to defend shows that unambiguously portray pedophilic content as well (in fact, this show came up as an example in the recent Mushoku Tensei thread), and I was listing off the general things that kind of defense is commonly deployed in defense of. I don't know how else to have this conversation; if you don't address the ways that argument is commonly used, then it isn't even clear what it is you're asking the reviewers to 'account for' as if it were a mere cultural difference.
Anyway, I dunno -- I guess you can hope, obviously. On the opposite side, I hope ANN's reviewers maintain their ethical integrity and largely avoid using 'cultural difference' as a way of excusing gross portrayals of traumatic or damaging actions. I'll leave it at that, since this isn't really the purpose of this thread, and this kind of disturbingly common conversation easily spirals out of control. |
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