Quote:
Originally Posted by sa547
Having read a lot about the eccentricities of some anime directors before, and with an A-list staff going into this project, I think I'll wait and see.
Even the denizens of 2ch were bouncing off the walls once they heard the news, as witnessed by one of my close friends, a veteran translator, who ventured there:
As we were discussing this at another forum, some of us thought it was the craziest thing Kawamori had dived into (as if playing with ecological themes weren't enough), which spells "career suicide", but then me and some buddies figured that he'd been tinkering with enough stories involving pop songstresses and dogfights since 1982 that the idea of directing a show of this magnitude (and thus the huge risk) is too damn hard for him to refuse.
At any rate, Kawamori's gonna have his hands full within the next two years, with this, EVOL, and the 30th anniversary of Macross. |
One persons "A-List Staff" is another persons bundle of upstarts, misfits and nobodies. As far as I can tell this series has very little going for it so yeah...I'm basically here to lament what appears to be the career suicide for Shoji Kawamori. Even if it's "successful" (which I'm sure it will be with a popular name like AKB48....you know cause god forbid anybody can make anything for TV anymore without relying on some established big name to carry them) it's kind of really easy to see how this is going to go right from the get go just by looking at said "A-List Staff".
Cute girls doing cute things, lots of high pitched voices, stock scenarios that we've seen done in these types of shows many times before....probably one breakout character that helps to carry it into the second half (bet it's the bossy/busty chick archetype yet again), a big concert scene every time it looks like people are getting a little bored with the shows lackadaisical pacing and a sentimental ending to cap it all off. I've seen this show when it was called K-On and swapping out popular name for popular name for popular name as they've been doing since is unlikely to change a damn thing. For that you'd need a premise shift or genre-shift and I just don't see that happening. Japan is clearly to afraid to mix it up with what they see as a winning formula, and while it's not exactly fair to be this cynical and this decided on what a show is going to be like cause of the formulas you've seen in the past, this particular one has made it really easy.
Again huge shame as I could not see myself typing the above about TV anime even 5 years ago, but it kind of looks like it's hit a brick wall of creativity and experimentation that it just can't seem to get past cause nobody wants to take even the slightest bit of a risk anymore. It's the sort of thing that is plaguing Japan's video game industry too and has driven people like Megaman Creator (yes that repetitive formulaic milestone) Keiji Inafune literally out of the country in search of work. When the guy that created that franchise loses hope you know things are at a standstill over there, and while I don't subscribe to the total doom theory that 2ch does (though it's funny that there's a faction that finds these current trends as predictable and cynical as I have of late) it for certain is the continuation and acceleration of a disturbing beholdence by anime producers to whatever is popular in other scenes of Japanese sub-cultures these days. There was a time when TV anime was it's own thing and created it's own cultures and sub-cultures, but it seems that that era is all but over now.