Anik00712 said:Ah pardon me but i still don't get the point of this series
It is an attempt to tell a sidestory to season 1's events. Only there isn't enough story so fat for it to really be self-sufficient, so instead we get this mess.
theGodde said:for reference, I had typed out most of my reply, and then my computer died. So in frustration I just kinda gave up on a response to last week. Sorry about that, I had and still do have a lot to say about what you brought up
A possible solution for our text-losing woes could be typing them directly in something like google docs that are autosaved to the cloud.
I don't really think we need to go that far though :D
One thing you can do with books is explain what characters are thinking and feeling. You can add a lot more interior monologues that don't interrupt the pacing of a story like they would in a theatre aside or when an anime stops for a character to analyse a situation.
Good well written English stories can also give you descriptive imagery that surpasses poetry in its beauty. A lot of older authors from the pre-television age developed writing styles that completely blew me away. There is also the benefit that a book's imagery is limited only by your imagination.
I don't think visual media is much worse about engaging the imagination, but it certainly engages a different kind of imagination. Where in reading books you need to supply your own pictures, in watching images you often need to supply your own worldbuilding and internal monologues :D
You are, obviously, correct that everyone trying to make the internal monologue happen on screen is kind of missing the point. With the exception being, obviously, JoJo, where the relationship between internal monologues and on-screen events is a bit more complex.
You kind of lose me at the notion of "beauty of text". I understand some verbal constructions can be exceptionally meaningful, certainly dealt with and appreciated my share of those, but "beauty" isn't the term i would use. To me, "beauty" is one of those "good" and "bad" things - highly subjective and not really worth mentioning in pursuit of objectivity.
What i can appreciate in the context of "beauty" is some identifiable properties of text, such as a highly effective use of language. In fact, the best definition of poetry that i ever heard is "text that is impossible to translate into other languages without losing its complete meaning". I can also appreciate that text can be evocative, that is stimulating the processes of imagination.
However, i don't see how this helps in distinguishing what separates text from visual media in terms of their respective capabilities, as well as ability to adapt works from one medium into another. It might be tempting to say that text and visuals use different languages, but i find that the definition of term "language" get stretched a bit too thin once you start talking about things like "language of movies", to the where the entire concept of "visual language" starts looking like a false research target.
Obviously, there is stuff like color theory. In fact, visual design in general often seems to have some hard and fast rules that could pass for "language" if you don't think too hard about what language is. There is definitely something like language in animation, which is closer to music than anything written. But, just as it is best to view musical notation not as language, but as an entirely separate kind of phenomenon, so i think it is best to view the instruments of visual medium as a third completely separate category.
So, to me, the notion of beauty of text has more to do with beauty of language, but i don't find that notion really helpful in comparing texts to visuals, because relationship of visuals to language is much too unclear to begin with.
Still, the notion that the written word engages a completely different kind of imagination is interesting. I'll have to think a bit on what this actually entails, though.
the prevalence of streaming may totally turn the way stories are written. I know there are many indie filmmakers that now go and film a movie for less than 1 Million dollars and then appeal to Netflix to fund the post-production VFX, getting a guaranteed spot in their streaming platform. This in turn means that they aren't being usurped by producers in those earlier stages of pre-production and production itself (which is both a positive and a negative).
the negative to this is that movies are getting way longer. There are certain kinds of movies - such as action blockbusters - that do not need to be nearly as long as they are, and tend to become overindulgent and boring when extended beyond necessity (just look at the Snyder Cut. No matter your opinion on its overall quality, scenes linger far too long and the entire thing could have an hour trimmed off it no problem).
I view this whole thing as USA playing catch-up to the creative model of Japan. For example, the current Idaten anime began as a webcomic, then got adapted into serialized manga (that's when it got the attention of business), and is now becoming an actual anime series.
Further along in this process are series like Demon Slayer and From the Abyss, which are actually generating their own movies. Which, incidentally, are mostly meaningless fanservice, the actual interesting content of which could easily fit in 1 good anime episode.
The impact of the whole thing on writing is "light-novelization". However, i was already reading light novels in 1990s (and saw entire libraries full of said light novels in houses of people who really liked them), so i can't really view it as anything truly new when it comes to the writing world.
writing has changed dramatically overtime, but that change has been very gradual. In modern hollywood, the writing quality has dropped to an all-time low as a result of writers being selected based on their social attributes (race/gender/ideology) rather than their actual skill. While this is not good in the slightest, it is indicative of Hollywood's ability to change to reflect current American values. If they can become dramatically worse, then it should also be possible for them to become dramatically improved under the right circumstances.
The change in writing you describe i can't really view as "change".
Allow me to employ a grim metaphor in order to make my position the most clear it can be.
Imagine a dead body. A dead body is a dead body. And that doesn't change no matter how long said dead body lies unburied in the woods, exposed to the elements and undergoing various decomposition processes. Eventually, it will be just a skeleton, and that still wouldn't be "change". The change happened the moment the person died, everything else from that point on is not really "change" on any meaningful level. The next "change" will be when the skeleton itself becomes disassembled, but that takes either direct application of force, or prolonged exposure to various specific sorts of chemistry.
Let me recommend one of the few police procedurals i actually like that really puts that entire subject matter through the wringer :). It is called Bones and it is pretty good (for a status-quo go-nowhere perpetually-ongoing repressed-love crime comedy :D).
"He is a FBI officer with an interesting belt buckle, she is a forensic anthropologist too busy for his bullshit. Together, they fight crime!"
Back on topic, I maintain that the last big "change" in writing happened sometime between 1985 and 1995. Whether what happened since is "decomposition" or "progress" is a matter of opinion (but i'm leaning towards "decomposition").
yeah lmao I was trying to correct your understanding of characterisation, but didn't feed it into any overarching statement explaining what I meant. But basically characterisation is usually what you're calling "moments of characterisation" and then "overall characterisation" or "general characterisation" is the entire characterisation of a character.
Ah, so i was using the term a bit too broadly.
Fair enough, i will endeavour to respect the accepted terminology (while thinking about why specifically i chose to mutilate it in the first place).
Characterisation is not the act of giving personality to a character, it is the act of expressing the personality of a character you have already predefined either in notes or in your head. A good writer has an idea of their characters' personalities and story arcs before they sit down and write them. They then use events and character choices to reveal to the audience aspects of this character. Those acts are true characterisation. What amateur writers try and do is go from the opposite side - just add characterisation as you go until you develop the character. That is what I'm guessing happened with Mahouka.
If I were to describe this in reality, it's the different between the statement from Batman Begins "It's not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me" which is completely wrong and a terrible way of viewing humans and human actions. In reality "It's who I am that defines what I do"
I am not sure how wrong that way of viewing humans is. It is by their fruits that we know them, after all.
I will accept that this original Bible quote tells us specifically about identifying false prophets, applying it to characterization is a bit of a stretch :D. But you still do know a good character by impact he makes, and - more importantly - that's how the audience is going to view it. If you make a great character that has no impact... Well, you haven't made a good character :D (though here, once again, one needs to nod in the direction of JoJo's Speedwagon. In his case, being a character IS his impact).
The problem with Mahouka is that its characters lack impact, often being outright robbed of it by Mahouka's own plot. In fact, the recent episode of current show exemplifies it very well: Miyuki becoming a murderer was a nice touch and a great fertile ground for the whole "Miyuki is a monster" thing they had going on. However, they butchered the impact of this development through the use of Oniisan Ex Machina.
This, if you haven't noticed, is an example of a situation where previously made planning actually kills a character. So preplanning can be both good and bad.
The problem with characters in Mahouka is not that the authors didn't plan the personalities of the characters. It is that they planned those personalities so badly that they rendered blind to or unable to meet all the characterization opportunities the ongoing story provides them.
I believe the best way to view the disconnect in our positions here is by referencing a game design concept called MDA (mechanics, dynamics, aesthetics). You can easily google it, it is not a hard thing to grasp at all (the original paper was like 10 pages). Point is, you as a craftsman approach the character from the side of mechanics (and are trying to get the underlying mechanics right to make sure the ongoing mechanics work), whereas the audience will approach the character from the side of aesthetics (how the character makes them feel).
An interesting though experiment here can be had with an ongoing series. I am currently loving the characters in Idaten series ). It very much reminds me of early episodes of Soul Eater (and i half expect it to go downhill about as fast, but that's the problem for the future me :D). Would love to hear your comments on those.
I'm going to be honest here, the action was the biggest weakness of unORDINARY. There was so many different powers but everyone's fighting style was basically the same. Combat also did not change or evolve over the progress of fights. Uru-Chan also was rather unimaginative with the character's use of their powers.
This is all pretty much fine since the heart of the series was always the story and characters, but I think it would translate pretty poorly to anime. I also strongly suspect she's American (or at least a native English speaker) as her names are all very English (I've seen a lot of anime set in British or American style societies that still use Japanese names), and there are a lot of cultural aspects that only someone who's lived in a culturally English country would know. And then there's the characters which feel very culturally English. If she's not Japanese, the chances of a Japanese animation studio ever animating any of her content regardless of how popular it gets is next to nil.
I'm hopeful that at some point she will bring unORDINARY to a close and start an entirely new story - one that utilises all her experience working on unORDINARY that's a lot better quality in storytelling and art style (her art looks very average, I can only imagine it's from Webtoon's oppressive work schedules).
I agree that Webtoon remains a bit too much on the webcomic side of webcomic-manga spectrum. In that way, most works published there still need something like a decent manga adaptation before they become quality material for anime. In fact, the three webcomics that got an anime adaptation (Noblesse, God of Highschool and Tower of God) had a much more developed visual style behind them and improved their visuals much more in their early runs than Unordinary did.
I have no opinion on Unordinary fight scenes or the national status of Uru-chan. You are probably correct that the fight scenes are all kind of boring curbstomps with little depth or tactics to them, and i agree that Uru-chan seems like she might be a native english speaker, but you are also correct that neither has any bearing on the story.
Uru-chan seems like she still has some ideas for Unordinary, but i also get the sense that she is investing herself a bit too much into her own characters (which may lead to a burnout).
Well, the best i can do for her is buy early access to her comics and cheer her on in the comment section :D
This seems like a fun idea, so why don't we spend time identifying the flaws and possible solutions to Mahouka?
the first major flaw is the animation - not necessarily the quality of the frames themselves, but the fluidity of motion. Fights always tend to play out like a pokemon battle. One side will use their attack, the other will stay still until it's launched and then will either get hit or dodge, in which case it's their turn to attack. The prime example being this episode where the three girls were fighting armed assailants and I don't think they fired a single bullet the entire fight.
the way CADs are used in mahouka is also awful. The fights basically boil down to 17th century musket wars, where two sides line up and take turns activating their CADs at each other. If there was a better mix of quick-activation low damage spells and long activation high damage spells that could easily improve the fluidity and changeability of the combat.
The need to lengthen every CAD battle also can really harm the pacing. Sometimes quickdraw duels can be more entertaining than long and arduous battles (when set up correctly)
suffice to say the action is and always has been severely lacking in Mahouka, and no one would stop watching if the fight direction improved.
I'll start with that, feel free to chip in with your own thoughts and suggestions as well.
"Improving" means that you first identify the basis that is strong and then build on that, cutting away all the stuff that is weak. The process is not unlike caring for a bonsai tree :D
I do want to engage with your criticisms, but if you really want to think about improving Mahouka then we have to start with what you think actually works about it and can serve as a basis :D
So, without discarding the above criticisms, could you tell me some things that work about Mahouka for you? Then in my reply i address both your positives and your negatives (and will talk a bit about my positives and negatives, so we can compare). |
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