The way I rate anime is pretty straightforward. I base my rating mostly on enjoyment and nothing else. I can look at anime from an objective point of view but am not going to base my score on it because it is nonetheless my point of view anyway.
Sorry again for the late reply XD. I was a bit busy last week applying for college because this upcoming year will be my last in HS. I went to a few colleges around my area to check out the interiors and see what they offer academicwise as well as financial support that will be needed when I finally enroll. I'm not sure if I'll be going out of state or not though :/.
Back to anime. I can agree with what you said and that's the main reason why I said the anime was pretty much stuck at the half point and I think it should have ended right there seeing how the story was missing a lot of background info that would build up for the second season to follow along nicely. Unfortunately not much can be done now except expand on the OVA and hopefully the franchise will be redeemed someday. I think the VN is already retconning some of the anime like Shu's mom being Past and the one that saved him and Gai during the time Mana caused the first lost Xmas.
I looked at your list and noticed you've been watching HunterxHunter. I want to watch it but seeing how it is quite long I don't know if I'll be able to get through it all. GAR is not really my cup of tea so I skipped Jojo's Bizarre Adventure but I've heard it's pretty good. I have been watching the much anticipated SnK but have been left somewhat disappointed with the development so far. Mikasa was one of the more interesting characters but other than her Eren has been an average shounen protagonist. Armin is okay as a character and from what I hear he's supposed to become much better later on. I fell behind in episodes but will catch up eventually. If you want to discuss SnK I would like to hear your opinion on it as well :).
If there is anything I praised in GC, it was the tone. The general feel in character interaction was just right barring the actual conversations XD. I really felt movement was captured well enough and I think Araki did a splendid job here. Where he went wrong though was the style. During my time watching the anime, I never felt the glaring sunset was right even if the setting was supposed to be dystopic because everything felt pretty empty. I saw a similar style in Death Note but I think more dark blue hues would have worked much better and this is why I thought the Lost Xmas visual novel was much better in the interpretation. The sky for example was sometimes mixed with a dark blue hue. The style during the opening scenes in the first episode were just right though imo and I wish Araki kept this darker atmosphere instead of going with the sun glare XD.
Aside from style, what GC did wrong was emphasize too much on plot over characters. The reason I say this is because the plot was its weak point and all characters went down the toilet because of this. Some may think GC was trying to do too much just like Code Geass but the only reason it worked in CG is because there was effort shown to make things work. Yoshino barely tried to make Inori's character work and we see this in plain sight when she goes to missions using her outfit XD. Then there's the actual use of her singing and she randomly sings in most of the early episodes. Retarded? Yes. Creative? Depends. Should it be done? I think not. What really screwed over the anime though was the choice of using a Yandere Mana to drive the conflict. I personally saw no reason for this and I didn't think it would work because she was Shu's sister. What do we know about Shu's relationship with his sister thoughout the anime? We don't, and this was the problem. If there are things I would have eventually excluded from the anime had I been the writer then I would have taken out the school setting shortly after the first few episodes. Inori as a singer is fine but the whole idea behind Egoist would have made things difficult for the same reasons as the school setting. The psychotic stuff that reminded me of Mirai Nikki would not have worked for similar reasons for reasons explained with Mana. Gai's resurrection was uncalled for because Da'at was the real enemy. What happened to the organization? See, the plot literally went nowhere after the finale. I really liked the second season in the way it brought despair and the opening theme was perfect. The problem here was the transition. We can only assume after Gai died, the undertakers surrendered and went into hiding. The school setting was also unnecessary but I also saw members of an institution that was supposed to create civilized members of society turn into savages when they rebelled and I thought this was good too. However, for plot's sake as well as consistency it would have been better if the isolation arc didn't come before the actual ending XD and this is because we didn't know squat about most of the characters. In truth however, I really only saw two possible stories in GC one of them having more stark realism that would sacrifice enjoyment over another story that was more about making a very creative anime and this is where characters would have shined. Could a mix work? I don't know for sure but I think it's possible. Thematically, GC is really more about the relationships between characters and this is what the fan I spoke to believed as well. It's really this difference that separates GC from Code Geass. Sadly, it's the characters that were supposed to make the story and yet were the ones ignored by the production team. Two main elements being GHQ and Da'at were handled in the most generic manner possible. Like you said, there was very little depth in the story. One way I would have imagined the story's first episode would be actually showing how Inori steals the void genome for example and not just showing Inori running in a scenario that was pretty retarded anyway. The students at Shu's school taking a field trip to Seppirah genomic so that the viewer could be immersed in the anime's biological world. Then there's Funnel that was barely used in the anime. I thought he could be something like Tachikoma XD. There were many many missed opportunities. There was very little creativity shown by the writers.
Sorry for the late reply. Yeah, I apologize for making you become my friend to add the comment XD I did that a few weeks after I joined the forums with the intention of keeping the profile clean and only have detailed discussions with members without any interference. I only comment on the boards when I want to give a quick opinion on the more recent anime seeing how the older ones already have enough comments to give a general idea of the anime in question to visitors.
As for GC, you got me. I honestly have no idea what happened to it after seeing all the effort go in art and music. Some may think that anime with high production values tend to have mediocre stories and characters but this is not the case as we have seen with the more recent Fate Zero. Ufotable really outdid themselves here and I want to see this quality in every other anime. Keep in mind though that you can see the collaboration with Aniplex and Nitro+ was well worth it and this effort in the production of anime should be exemplary for others that follow. Sadly, GC can really only be seen critically as an anime with an ambitious premise that was carried out with awful execution at every turn in its story and as an example of how not to go about writing said story. The general idea in the plot could have been above average but nothing great even if it was handled well.
I agree with you though that the anime tends to polarize its viewers that either end up hating it or loving it but like any other anime there are those that don't really fall in either category and instead remain neutral. I had a conversation with one of the fans shortly after I made my rant here in the forums explaining why I thought the anime sucked. If you want to take a look it's the longest one XD. The fan wanted to keep the conversation between us though and asked me to delete the posts related to GC after all was said and done. So yeah, some of the fans were disappointed in the way the anime turned out and blame the entire production team for allowing the writers to butcher the story. Speaking of writers, I think it's fair to say that Yoshino has proven to be a fairly mediocre storyteller. I saw some anime written by him like Macross F, Accel World, Seikon no Qwaser, and am currently watching Vivid Red Operation but all these anime have cliches like it's nobody's business XD. In other words, the creative department is fairly weak in them even for adaptations. To be fair, Macross and Accel W were okay esp MF but I notice that Yoshino can really only handle more complicated anime when he has a general idea of a story and characters to follow. However, put him in charge of envisioning a story and coordinating other writers to follow his vision and you have a butt mess waiting to happen XD. The fact that we were dealing with something like Guilty Crown prety much spelled trouble for Yoshino and I had a feeling he was going to screw up. It's spiritual predecessor Code Geass was more consistent in story because Okouchi was the main writer here and the project was directed by the legendary Taniguchi. Other works the latter directed like planetes and Ryvius I have yet to see were also received well esp planetes though it was adapted. In the case of planetes Okouchi also worked with Taniguchi so they had a short history working on anime together. In GC we had Yoshino as the main composer and Araki as the director. Really, the only way I.G could have pulled it all off was for all staff members to work together and really want to make something truly great in the medium.
All Comments (3) Comments
Back to anime. I can agree with what you said and that's the main reason why I said the anime was pretty much stuck at the half point and I think it should have ended right there seeing how the story was missing a lot of background info that would build up for the second season to follow along nicely. Unfortunately not much can be done now except expand on the OVA and hopefully the franchise will be redeemed someday. I think the VN is already retconning some of the anime like Shu's mom being Past and the one that saved him and Gai during the time Mana caused the first lost Xmas.
I looked at your list and noticed you've been watching HunterxHunter. I want to watch it but seeing how it is quite long I don't know if I'll be able to get through it all. GAR is not really my cup of tea so I skipped Jojo's Bizarre Adventure but I've heard it's pretty good. I have been watching the much anticipated SnK but have been left somewhat disappointed with the development so far. Mikasa was one of the more interesting characters but other than her Eren has been an average shounen protagonist. Armin is okay as a character and from what I hear he's supposed to become much better later on. I fell behind in episodes but will catch up eventually. If you want to discuss SnK I would like to hear your opinion on it as well :).
Aside from style, what GC did wrong was emphasize too much on plot over characters. The reason I say this is because the plot was its weak point and all characters went down the toilet because of this. Some may think GC was trying to do too much just like Code Geass but the only reason it worked in CG is because there was effort shown to make things work. Yoshino barely tried to make Inori's character work and we see this in plain sight when she goes to missions using her outfit XD. Then there's the actual use of her singing and she randomly sings in most of the early episodes. Retarded? Yes. Creative? Depends. Should it be done? I think not. What really screwed over the anime though was the choice of using a Yandere Mana to drive the conflict. I personally saw no reason for this and I didn't think it would work because she was Shu's sister. What do we know about Shu's relationship with his sister thoughout the anime? We don't, and this was the problem. If there are things I would have eventually excluded from the anime had I been the writer then I would have taken out the school setting shortly after the first few episodes. Inori as a singer is fine but the whole idea behind Egoist would have made things difficult for the same reasons as the school setting. The psychotic stuff that reminded me of Mirai Nikki would not have worked for similar reasons for reasons explained with Mana. Gai's resurrection was uncalled for because Da'at was the real enemy. What happened to the organization? See, the plot literally went nowhere after the finale. I really liked the second season in the way it brought despair and the opening theme was perfect. The problem here was the transition. We can only assume after Gai died, the undertakers surrendered and went into hiding. The school setting was also unnecessary but I also saw members of an institution that was supposed to create civilized members of society turn into savages when they rebelled and I thought this was good too. However, for plot's sake as well as consistency it would have been better if the isolation arc didn't come before the actual ending XD and this is because we didn't know squat about most of the characters. In truth however, I really only saw two possible stories in GC one of them having more stark realism that would sacrifice enjoyment over another story that was more about making a very creative anime and this is where characters would have shined. Could a mix work? I don't know for sure but I think it's possible. Thematically, GC is really more about the relationships between characters and this is what the fan I spoke to believed as well. It's really this difference that separates GC from Code Geass. Sadly, it's the characters that were supposed to make the story and yet were the ones ignored by the production team. Two main elements being GHQ and Da'at were handled in the most generic manner possible. Like you said, there was very little depth in the story. One way I would have imagined the story's first episode would be actually showing how Inori steals the void genome for example and not just showing Inori running in a scenario that was pretty retarded anyway. The students at Shu's school taking a field trip to Seppirah genomic so that the viewer could be immersed in the anime's biological world. Then there's Funnel that was barely used in the anime. I thought he could be something like Tachikoma XD. There were many many missed opportunities. There was very little creativity shown by the writers.
As for GC, you got me. I honestly have no idea what happened to it after seeing all the effort go in art and music. Some may think that anime with high production values tend to have mediocre stories and characters but this is not the case as we have seen with the more recent Fate Zero. Ufotable really outdid themselves here and I want to see this quality in every other anime. Keep in mind though that you can see the collaboration with Aniplex and Nitro+ was well worth it and this effort in the production of anime should be exemplary for others that follow. Sadly, GC can really only be seen critically as an anime with an ambitious premise that was carried out with awful execution at every turn in its story and as an example of how not to go about writing said story. The general idea in the plot could have been above average but nothing great even if it was handled well.
I agree with you though that the anime tends to polarize its viewers that either end up hating it or loving it but like any other anime there are those that don't really fall in either category and instead remain neutral. I had a conversation with one of the fans shortly after I made my rant here in the forums explaining why I thought the anime sucked. If you want to take a look it's the longest one XD. The fan wanted to keep the conversation between us though and asked me to delete the posts related to GC after all was said and done. So yeah, some of the fans were disappointed in the way the anime turned out and blame the entire production team for allowing the writers to butcher the story. Speaking of writers, I think it's fair to say that Yoshino has proven to be a fairly mediocre storyteller. I saw some anime written by him like Macross F, Accel World, Seikon no Qwaser, and am currently watching Vivid Red Operation but all these anime have cliches like it's nobody's business XD. In other words, the creative department is fairly weak in them even for adaptations. To be fair, Macross and Accel W were okay esp MF but I notice that Yoshino can really only handle more complicated anime when he has a general idea of a story and characters to follow. However, put him in charge of envisioning a story and coordinating other writers to follow his vision and you have a butt mess waiting to happen XD. The fact that we were dealing with something like Guilty Crown prety much spelled trouble for Yoshino and I had a feeling he was going to screw up. It's spiritual predecessor Code Geass was more consistent in story because Okouchi was the main writer here and the project was directed by the legendary Taniguchi. Other works the latter directed like planetes and Ryvius I have yet to see were also received well esp planetes though it was adapted. In the case of planetes Okouchi also worked with Taniguchi so they had a short history working on anime together. In GC we had Yoshino as the main composer and Araki as the director. Really, the only way I.G could have pulled it all off was for all staff members to work together and really want to make something truly great in the medium.