What was your favorite anime of the winter season 2017?

bastard_of_young said:
Returning Sangatsu and Rakugo.

Best new show was easily Kuzu.

Unless you're sexually repressed and hoped to live a sweet, successful love story vicariously through missionary position loving innocent cuties.

Then you probably called it "Cuck's Wish", compared it to School Days, gave it a 1, and returned to Twitter to tell porn stars to kill themselves.

bastard_of_young said:


While I won't say it's as good as Nana (which is a masterpiece in my eyes, while Kuzu isn't), I think calling it an inferior version of Nana sells both series short. Aside from the tunnel vision focus on love and sex (which makes perfect sense in the context of the series, given the characters' obsessions with physical connection in hopes that it can fulfill their emotional needs), and mildly overblown visual characterization (Akane's evil lip licking seems to be a go-to), the drama is very realistic. I've personally lived some scenes eerily similar to those in the series, and know others who have lived though other scenes. I'm not surprised that people don't like it (though School Days S2 remarks are wildly off-base). One, you have to have been exposed, at least in some fashion, personally, to events similar to those in the series. It's an example of Poe's Law. The absurd can be mistaken for real, and the real can be mistaken for absurd. The world is a crazy place. Teachers sometimes fuck their students. They fuck more than their students. Melodrama can be realistic, ESPECIALLY when dealing with hormonal teens and irresponsible younger adults. Beyond that, having previous experience with pink film, as well as traditional film cinematography and sexual psychology would help exponentially in not dismissing the sensual/sexual scenes as not exploitative. There's this idea by some that Kuzu is an excuse to make a series you can jerk it to, which is absolutely insane from my perspective. While the direction is fantastic at cultivating a palpable sensual atmosphere, the sensuality is not used to arouse the audience sexually. These scenes play out like suspenseful horror scenes, in a similar way to a movie such as In the Realm of the Senses. The fear that these people might go that one step too far to the point where they can't go back. It's an uncomfortable, but powerful watch in that context. It's even more impressive that the series manages to cultivating that dread during those scenes when considering how little they actually do show.

I could go on, but I gotta play Persona 5 haha. Basically, I don't begrudge anyone for not liking it, but the outright dismissal of it by some as flat-out poor art does bug me, especially when a primary argument against it seems to be that it's exploitative simply because it shows sexual encounters "too often" when, being inspired by pink film, is like criticizing a comedy because it's too funny.

bastard_of_young said:


In my opinion, I think that assessment (as well as Zeph's) are off-base. I also don't understand how the show wasn't psychological enough. The show provided excellent psychological profiles and character arcs for each main/semi-main aside from Kanai. I'm actually shocked that Kuzu doesn't have a psychological tag, especially when it's more so than many shows that do have it.

My rip on the "exploitation" criticism is in fact ripped directly from when I read Zeph's review. I don't know how often sex is "tasteful", but again, the idea that the sexual/sensual scenes were included to arouse rather than facilitate a sense of dread and enhance the characters' psychological profiles indicates to me a lack of ability to see sex as anything but smut unless it's "tasteful", and if it's not tasteful, it's exploitative and incapable of serving a storytelling purpose. The major fault I see reviewers making, in my opinion, is the idea that "it could be a good story if there wasn't so much sex". It's an odd criticism as the meat of the storytelling is told through the sexual encounters, and to "flesh out" other aspects in its wake would only serve to downplay the level of obsession the characters have.

I also disagree that this is how "most" young people are, which serves as both a misunderstanding towards the show, and a valid criticism of it. I know that people have criticized the internal monologues as simply an excuse for exposition. That it's unrealistic for someone to make mistakes while consciously know that they're mistakes immediately after, or even while making them. For many well-adjusted people (or people who haven't found themselves in a similar position), this is true. But for many others, it is not. When I was at college, I fell in love with someone I knew didn't feel the same way about me, and yet I continued to pursue them knowing full well it would never happen. I remember clearly that whenever I spent time with her, my mind constantly told me "I hate this but I need this" on loop. I was in my own head and detatched from her for almost two years every time I saw her. The same applies to the characters in Kuzu. It's not healthy, it's not normal, but it is a thing.

I think the emotional implications were more than met by Kuzu, and if it had taken a moralistic turn, it would immensely detract from the message. If these people faced cliched karmic justice outside of the vacuum in which their actions existed, it would've been preachy and trite. Nobody got pregnant and these characters actions don't need to have any baring on anything aside from their own psyches and relationships within the vacuum.

And to Hana x Mugi shippers who might read this...

Everyone is going to have their own experiences to take into Kuzu. How it impacts you is dependent upon those experiences, and not liking the show is entirely understandable to me, but while their are enough little legitimate artistic criticisms to levy Kuzu with, I'm hearing far too often "it's bad because I personally can't relate and sex can't possibly be important to a story".