[Ryuou]

Originally Posted by relentlessflame

J.C.Staff is not some sort of giant monolith that somehow forces all of its shows down some sort of single creative pipeline called "suck". What they are is a relatively large production company that can coordinate multiple large-scale productions with a relatively reliable level of animation quality. Every show has different directors, writers, producers, and other key staff. If anything, I'd say they're a "workhorse" studio; their animation work is consistently decent, like a well-oiled machine. The actual quality of the *adaptation* depends on the directing and of the writing staff, and a lot of those people don't even work for J.C.Staff (or might even have been assigned by the producers without J.C.Staff's input). So... it's really not that simple. If a show's animation production values are good, then you should credit the animation director and the production studio. But if the story adaptation quality is good, then you should credit the director, planner, writers, and storyboard artists. If you want to predict whether a show will be good or bad, you have to look beyond just which studio is working on it and consider all the key players (producers, publishers, key staff, etc.)

It's like people like to have like the one face they can blame if they don't like something. With the Haruhi 2 stuff, at first it was Kyoto Animation and everyone was "grrrr Kyoto Animation", and then finally someone convinced them that it wasn't Kyoto Animation, it's Kadokawa, and so then everyone was "grrrr Kadokawa". Business politics aren't so clean-cut. There's not one single bad guy or one single person to whom all decisions must flow, really (even if there is on paper, it doesn't work that way in real life). It's a mess of contracts, and committees, and boardroom meetings, and stupid requirements imposed by people who don't know anything but somehow got into positions of power due to be related to the boss's cousin's friend. I suppose, at the end of the day, if you have to have a single person to blame, you could point to the director, but even then who knows what circumstances there were surrounding the production that were beyond his or her control. Life just isn't so simple.

Haha, must you make my simple gripe so complicated. JC Staff is the production studio in charge of making the anime so I will place my blame on them for my issues with their anime. They are an entity that's image will reflect their good and bad productions. The politics of it don’t matter. The entity is not void of blame. If it wants its image and consistency to improve, then maybe certain people should be replaced.

They are the production studio, they are responsible for who works on what, and are thus responsible for the quality of the product. And just like a certain level of quality can be expected from Kyoto Animation, there is a certain level of disaster that can be expected from JC Staff. They've built up their own reputation like KyoAni has. I usually don’t get too concerned over animation. It would be the writers and directors that I have problems with.

For the case you mentioned where directors and writers are put in charge from the people above (funders), and it ends up turning out bad. Well, that would just kind of suck. But if it’s not specified in the credits that that’s the case, and only names are there, then I’ll assume they work for JC Staff, or were hired for this job by them. If this were to happen on a consistent basis, then maybe they should make better decisions with who they deal with for an animation production.

I realize how crazy the industry can get at times, but that’s not a real excuse when quality anime is being produced elsewhere within the same industry. This isn’t to say that JC Staff doesn’t produce any quality anime; I’m just saying they produce a lot of bad. And then what really angers people, is their trouble with sequels.

So since it’s easier this way, I’ll just blame JC Staff and their reputation, instead of looking up each director and writer for each episode that I thought the quality dipped.

Edit: Onto Toradora! - My guess would be that Ryuji and Taiga aren't thinking about it or are just unaware of the law. There's the law that minors can't have sex but they do it anyway. Maybe a bad example, but the law doesn't always factor into one's thought process.

What I find a little odd is the focus on Ryuji turning 18. Unlike the States where you become an adult at 18 except for a few things, as far as I know turning 18 means nothing in Japan. Turning 20 is when you become an adult. I could understand the 18 bit as it correlates with him graduating High School, but that's not really factoring into his plan at all. This seems really odd to me. Maybe the author's had too much contact with the States, or maybe the rules got changed since I've been away.