Why is this so bad?

Sejin said:
Wow. This is becoming...painful to read. Do the people criticizing this show even know what they're talking about? A symbol is something that stands for something else. That's it. That's all it is. From what I understand (which is, admittedly, not much), this generally happens through association. To use this show as an example, lilies have been associated with purity, so over time they became a symbol of said purity. At that point, you don't need lilies to be next to a pure thing to make the association. All you need is the lily, and possibly some context if you want to be more specific. Essentially, the fact that the lily is present says, "this thing/person is pure".

Symbolism isn't automatically deep. How it's used is what determines such a thing. Essentially, symbols are used for efficiency. Because they can get across meaning with less effort than words or actions, you can convey more with the time you've saved. Symbols are also more abstract than words or actions, so depending on how they're used, they can convey complex things much more easily than if those things were conveyed in words or actions. In my (again, limited) experience, symbols feel a little different than words or actions when you experience them (I'm not really sure how else to phrase it).

The hiccup is that, to understand the symbol you have to know what it means. I don't know a lot of symbolism. I've done a ton of searches and reading online to try to understand how the symbols are being used in Yurikuma. It's not the kind of thing that you can't learn if you don't already know it. It's like any skill, the more you practice it, the better you get. Don't understand =/= can't understand. I'm saying this because I've seen some people disparaging others for essentially being "too dumb to get it". As someone who is honestly still firmly in that group, but who has decided to try to learn to watch things more critically and thoughtfully, I really can't stand that kind of talk because it implies that if you don't know, you can never know, which is as far from the truth as you can get.

With Yurikuma, it seems like a lot of the symbolism in the first two episodes (the only ones I've seen so far) is really overt--because I perceive it. Honestly, from what I've seen of it, to really understand the basic story in this show, you have to sort of couple that surface-level symbolism with the story as it goes along, otherwise it will seem really confused. What that means is that if you don't pick up on that surface-level symbolism, you'll be lost. There are also a couple metaphors and some wordplay that's going on in tandem with the symbolism that you need to have picked up on. If you go and read some anibloggers' posts about the first couple of episodes (or heck, just read through the discussion threads for the first two episodes here on MAL), it'll sink in surprisingly quickly. So, for everyone who's confused about this show, do that.

And people really need to learn what "pretentious" means. At this point, from multiple interviews of and commentary by Ikuhara I've seen and read, I'm reasonably certain he isn't pretentious. A troll sometimes, yes, but pretentious? He seems to have a good sense of humor about himself and his work. Honestly, I think Yurikuma is a great example of this. It's so weird and silly and absurd at times that how can you possibly see it as taking itself super seriously and being high on its own importance? And even with the trolling Ikuhara does sometimes, I think there's a reason for it: He likes abstraction. Abstraction leaves things open to interpretation. In that vein, why would Ikuhara just tell you everything? If part of the point of the work is to get you to think about what it's addressing, spelling it out in the work itself or in interviews and commentary runs counter to that goal. Another thing I've heard, but am not very certain of myself, is that in general the anime studios tend to handle their directors. They don't like them talking about that stuff. Again, this is only something I've heard and don't know for myself, but if it is true, it could be another reason for Ikuhara's vagueness in interviews and the like.

Also, as has been said by many others, this is an Ikuhara show. Knowing how he does things is really helpful, just in that you know what you're getting into. I do agree that, just because he made some really critically beloved shows in the past, it doesn't mean this one will be the same, but there's absolutely no way to know that only two or three episodes in. Also, he seems consistent enough that I don't think it's unreasonable in the slightest to have high expectations for Yurikuma. Again, there's no way to know only two or three episodes in. Just wait and see.

If you don't like this sort of thing, that's perfectly understandable, but you can't say that makes the show bad. On the flip-side, if you do like this sort of thing, that doesn't make it automatically good. It's all in how you use it. Now, if you don't like it because you're missing stuff left and right because you can't perceive it (and believe me, I know what that's like; that's what happens to me most of the time), then you can do a lot to change that. Criticisms based on ignorance are really flimsy and people readily object to them, as in this thread. However, that's also something that can be changed if you wish, by learning about what you don't know.

Really, if you're bagging on the show and you don't really even know what you're bagging on, you should really expect the pushback. Not every show is obvious. Not every show gives you the answers. Not every show is escapist. I think this last one is important because the vast majority of people just want that out of their entertainment, and that's fine! Anime is great at escapism. But, when it's not being escapist, you need to recognize that. You can't validly criticize something based on what it's not. That doesn't make sense.

I guess I felt it necessary to write this because a lot of the back and forth in this thread seems to be caused by people not really understanding where the other side is coming from, and maybe not fully understanding where they themselves are coming from (my spiel about people not having the same amount or kinds of knowledge). And maybe that's a big assumption on my part, but it's the impression I've gotten from following this thread pretty much since it started. Discussion and debate is good and all, but this one doesn't really seem to be going anywhere.