Quote:
Originally Posted by Forsaken_Infinity
I will be honest; I think you are whining too much here. Stand back and watch the show as the director plays it out to you - like it or not, up to you - but to decide by yourself that the show would have benefited from being a shorter series before the show is even at halfway mark is only your playing "the critic" to a fault. And as Sides pointed out, not much (I would say not a single frame) has been wasted thus far so you lost me with your "shorter would have been better" argument.
You may not have found Ringo interesting, but I - and many others - watch the show with much arduous interest than most other shows precisely because of her. Do I think she's a crazy bitch? Most definitely. But does that take away from the show? Nope. It adds quite a bit to it instead. I am practically glued to the screen, trying to notice every subtle change - from the very subtle references to external materials to the antics of the penguins - so you lost me with the "attention span" argument as well.
Regarding fresh, the show is fresh alright. It brings to the table stuff you didn't find in anime for years. And no anime thus far has had such a character as Ringo so the one thing you hate about the show is already serving as the counterexample of one of your arguments. Comparing RGU and MPD, I don't exactly see what's so similar about them. Sure they have a somewhat similar art style and there are surreal touches in both. But beyond that, I find the stress of the two show to be much different. RGU was a fantasy while MPD is "real" is how I would put the difference I perceive. I am almost inclined to agree with you in that RGU is somewhat made out to be more than it is but MPD has thus far been a magnificent show. You can disagree with that conclusion but wait until you watch the whole show to call out on how the show could have improved upon. At the moment though, I think you are giving in too much to your desire to criticize a "popular" show to the point that you aren't even having fun watching it anymore.
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One man's trash, you know? What you're effectively saying is, "Take the show as the director intends it and shut up." That doesn't inspire much of a discussion, does it? Offering critical commentary isn't "playing the critic" as you so condescendingly put it - it's participating in a discussion. If you're not comfortable with anything but positive commentary, you're the one with the problem.
It's certainly valid to love Ringo as a character - different viewers are going to react differently to a character as a matter of course. I'd certainly take issue with the statement that we've never seen anything like her - we've seen lots of characters like her. In fact, she's practically a trope. It's just that - in my view - many of those characters were executed much more effectively. I'll certainly agree she's much different from Utena as a character - they fill a different role and represent a different perspective.
In terms of whether the show is fresh and whether it would benefit from brevity, again, it's a matter of opinion. There's plenty here that was fresh - the first time we saw it, seven eps ago. Now that we're seeing it for the nth time without anything beyond cosmetic change, it isn't quite so fresh. That was an issue I had with Utena and why I worry about MPD - it felt like a lot of the freshness was packed into the early parts of the series and a lot of the creative spark was stale by the end. RGU was 39 eps, I believe, so that was always going to be a challenge. That''s why the "no wasted frames" argument doesn't fly with me, because I see Ikuhara using not just recycled imagery, but recycled imagery to accomplish the same result. And we're only 8 episodes in.
Is this interesting? Absolutely - it's the most visually striking series of the season. Ikuhara is undeniably a man with a genius for surrealism and his skill at composing a shot is stunning - he has a great imagination and a great eye. I just see worrying signs that his discipline isn't at that same level and I think the balance of the show has gone out of whack with the last few episodes and their obsessive focus on Ringo. It might be a different view than yours, but I don't buy the premise that not accepting what a director is doing at face value makes your opinion invalid.