Vinland Saga Episode 1 Discussion

Tsarko said:


Besides them speaking Japanese, I don't see what makes you feel like they are typical Japanese characters.

Antanaru said:
Graphically it's a pleasing breath of fresh air it the landfill of moe and plain shounen/romcom designs but the beginning and the end of the episode left very bad aftertaste.

It started with something I came to hate: random battle without a context. This trope can get a pass only if it's intriguing or plain awesome. Here it was just horrible choreography. Man jumping between conveniently placed boats, cutting through cardboard cutouts of people and then fighting in water as if he was floating in the air. That scene screamed it wants to be cool but was just awful instead.

Then the end which made me despise the MC. Cretin who doomed his family. His sickly wife, young son and daughter. And for what? To buy a corpse and flex his nonsensical, ahistorical morality. Fucking hell. It completely killed my will to continue watching. You have realistic design, some semblance of brutality and realism in the world but it all gets crossed out but tough guy acting like a moron in every other shounen/romcom series where common sense is banned.

Start and finish are two places you really don't want to fuck up...

multikwatcher said:

Go watch Vikings and then jump into this. There's no pagan/norse vibes, just typical samurai villagers with nice wives, lovely oneesans and gakis

multikwatcher said:

Go watch Vikings and then jump into this. There's no pagan/norse vibes, just typical samurai villagers with nice wives, lovely oneesans and gakis

Jim_White said:
I love this series but when I learned that it was gonna be adapted into an anime, I knew it was gonna attract 90% morons. Boy was I not wrong, boy was I not wrong. Why couldn't you people stick to watching Jojo and WWE?

Mich666 said:
Thors who was shot by the arrow and acted like nothing had happened (the fact that the arrow just disappeared in the next scene and he was able to swim was even more jarring).

Mich666 said:
Other times he was just jumping around like superman.

magictuch said:
Thors was wearing chainmail underneath and the arrow only pierced through leather jacket he had on top. No, the arrow didn't dissappear - you can see the arrow break and fall off when Thors performed a throw on that dual-wielding warrior - you can literally see that broken arrow fly almost directly into the camera. So they are paying attention to details - it's WIT Studio after all.

magictuch said:
Is that necessarily a bad thing? Anime allows itself some hyperbolization because it's supposed to be a saga - think of it as being a tale that is told with some allowances to make it more epic for a viewer (that is how sagas are supposed to be - depicting heroes and their feats in the epic manner).

Mich666 said:
As I said before, there are some things this series does right (even seeing the next episode which was quite good) but some details like this are really making me think they are not taking it seriously.

magictuch said:
It's not that they are lazy or not taking it seriously - they are doing manga justice, because original material is full of exaggerations when people are getting cut in half with mere swords through armor, horses are being stopped at full speed with a single punch and so on. Manga never aimed for full realism and there are certain characters in this that have god-like powers and stand above the rest. Maybe it doesn't upset me or put me out of the moment in the anime because I am already used to stuff like that in the manga, but there will be a lot of superhuman strength moments in this show, so you should probably change your approach towards this so that you can enjoy this show more - treat it as a legend, an epic saga that exaggerates stuff for entertaining purposes or to elevate certain characters and their feats.

TrueDragonPrince said:
For now, it's a disappointment. The opening genre is inappropriate to the Norse theme but is not really Norse? From what I've seen, the only thing Norse until now are people's names. Some Norse spiritual allegories are taken literally, which Norse didn't do at all. No Jormungandr is waiting for you in the Western waters. Sorry to disappoint those who take mythology literally and there's no abyss the waters fall into, as the Earth is not flat. The first lie about the Earth being flat appeared for the first time in the Quran. All Pagans knew the Earth was round. It's in the Vedas too. The other inaccuracy that bugged me was the mention of slaves.

Maybe this anime can be watched as a stand-alone story, without considering the spiritual, cultural, political and historical inaccuracies. The landscape shots and the visual style in general are very appealing in contrast.

ChainxBastard said:


The only people that knew for sure how the Earth and exploration worked were.....

Wait for it.....

Explorers.

You think every civilian had a education where they learned of the great beyond and how to navigate the seas?

I swear people come up with the most asinine reasons to hate on a show. We have people now that genuinely believe that the moon landing was fake, yet what are you going to say? "All Americans knew that the moon landing was real." Well, clearly not.

Put two and two together - not everyone had equal access to knowledge. Some WERE taken literally, like the runes on Thors's dagger (funny how you don't know anything about that).

Not saying that they do a perfect 1-to-1 transcription (that would be boring as hell) and there are certain liberties taken, but to call it a disappointment is absolutely absurd considering the author knows WAY more than you about the time period in question.

TrueDragonPrince said:


Now it's true that in the Dark Ages there was a progressive regression but that doesn't mean that it applied to all populations worldwide. Pagan population have always had libraries and places of knowledge that were accessible to everyone for free. It was only Christian missionaries and the likes that went on destroying these places (see the burning of the library of Alexandria and the destruction of all druid academies in Britain and Ireland by pulling them stone by stone to build, you know what, churches). There is also to say that not all population succumbed to regression immediately. Finland, for example, was one of the last countries to fall, ironically. I say ironically because after its fall it became gradually so weak that half of it could be easily overtaken by Russia right before WW2.

Referring to spiritual subjects, each civilisation has always had a priesthood, which had the most knowledgeable people in it, and this priesthood always taught the basics of their spirituality for free to anyone. Even after the fall into the Middle Ages, it's not like the people point blank forgot everything they knew. Family and clans exist as such and parents always teach their children their family tradition. Runes were not only a spiritual mean of divination, but also an alphabet used for writing; while Thor's hammer is not a physical object but the representation of the powers attributed to the third rune, Thurs/Thurisaz, the Thor rune.

There's a difference between hating an anime and counteracting its weak points. I don't hate this anime. It just disappointed my expectations, like the Vikings tv show. Does it mean I hate it? No. It's enjoyable, as long as it's taken out of context with reality. Most people nowadays think Norse people were barbarians due to corruptions of ancient history by Christian scholars, but how do barbarians win wars, establish a spiritual culture that has existed for many millennia longer than Abrahamic religions and build advanced and sophisticated ships? It requires an advanced culture, science and technology built over millennia. It's disconcerting thinking how people believe the Egyptians to have been ignorant and less technologically advanced, yet nowadays we wouldn't be able to build anything like their pyramids, which may seem simple but architects who studied them have noticed what advanced knowledge of geometry, sound and light physics, and astronomy is needed to build them and certain chambers inside of them. The same goes for other ancient monuments.

In substance, you can keep your bias but you can't have discussion with me over ancient history and religion without having a cultural baggage built through years of study that are not streamlined to Wikipedia and outdated history books. And certainly you can't say I hate a certain show just because I'm disappointed because I had different expectations than you for it.

Try not jumping to conclusions without knowing other people's background, will you? This is not a page for discussing history, culture, spirituality and the likes. It's a page to provide commentary to an anime. Going any further than this would mean being off-topic.

ChainxBastard said:
l

I'm not here to debate you on the history, I was just giving you a commentary on your lack of perspective and your bloated expectations.

This anime isn't perfect and it does have its weak points, but what you have argued to me is that you know out of certainty that there weren't any slaves (there were - they were called serfs) among other things.

I never said you outright hated this anime - I just called you a hater (people who nitpick fall into this category) because like most people, you came in expecting one thing and had your hopes dashed.

I'm into cinematography, animation, dialogue, storyboard writing as well as all around storytelling. This anime has knocked all of those out of the park. Everything they said about Norse mythology could be flat out wrong, that doesn't make it "disappointing" from a pure technical standpoint.

This is a loose historical anime, as most tend to be. No different than a movie that is "based" off of a true story but then takes certain liberties and creative freedoms in order to make it more engaging and compelling - anime does nothing differently.

You can save your holy crusade for the poor ancient Norse men and women for someone else. I couldn't care less how they were or weren't remembered, because there will always be people within a culture that will fit a stereotype, and there will be people who will shatter it. You'll never be able to have all of the facts.

This just comes down to people in general needing to enjoy a show for what it is and not for what they want it to be.

TrueDragonPrince said:


It's because of people like you who don't care about real history and ancient culture, but prefer believing in posthumous slander (slaves and blood sacrifice) added later by people with an ambiguous reputation that the world is in the shape it is today. Keep enjoying living in your bubble and stop bashing people because they have different expectations than you do. Goodbye.

HungryForQuality said:


@TrueDragonPrince is clearly correct. Whether you let it affect your view is your choice but what he's saying should definitely be taken into account. You're just saying the opposite and whining about high expectations. It's dumb.

You don't have to let it affect your view (I probably don't think it's as damaging as he does because I'm not that invested personally into the history) but you should accept the reality. Knowledge and accuracy is a good thing.

Yautja said:
Already noticed a little fuck up. That arrow magically disappeared from his shoulder. Looks interesting though.

Yautja said:
Already noticed a little fuck up. That arrow magically disappeared from his shoulder. Looks interesting though.

abiisu said:
Yeah the arrow really bugged me. It's a real shame it just disappeared cause the animation during the beginning of the episode is so smooth and it's hard to believe it was just overlooked.