Quote:
Originally Posted by Sheba
In that case, high or low class doesn't matter. It's how interesting, inspiring, funny, whatever you make it to be. Do I think Tsuzuki succeed? No. Is it because it is NOT GRIMDARK enough? NO. Spice & Wolf was as harmless as it is, but managed to entertain me. My problem with Dog Days is that the package have come as harmless yet so soulless as it can be. Utawarerumono was flawed but still managed to be interesting. And Angel Beat was all over the place but was interesting. See a pattern here?
|
I do see what you're saying about Dog Days, but I still think you're simplifying the issue too much. I don't think it's as black and white as you're making it out to be. Yes, more interesting things than Dog Days exist, but that doesn't make Dog Days completely uninteresting.
[I personally dropped Spice & Wolf early on since I found it boring, which I didn't do with Dog Days, so I'll leave that to personal preference.]
Spoiler for Rambling about Dog Days:
I'm going to ramble about the issues with Dog Days since that's how I think things through.
In my opinion, one of the larger contributing factors as to why Dog Days seems "soulless" [and I've noticed it too now that you've distracted me from my shipping
] is due to how one-dimensional the characters are. Even though the plot would seem as if it encourages character growth [as Midonin mentioned about the theme of having your feelings reach], the characters end up exactly the same as when they started. It isn't even a resetting development like light novel adaptations.
Also, the characters aren't even that complex to begin with. Shinku is basically nothing but energetic and "heroic" throughout the entire series; the subplot about him disappointing people unfortunately was nothing but a reason to motivate him to be heroic and was something that existed since the beginning of the series.
There's also Leon and Milli, and you could argue that they followed the theme of conveying feelings with Leon seeing actual development, but honestly this is told rather than felt. It's natural for Leon to start talking to Milli again, because the source of conflict is gone, not because of some sort of development that she went through. Because her source of conflict was primarily a plot-related one and not a character-related one, it isn't really that impactful now that it's gone.
That's not to say that plot-related conflicts aren't impactful, but a weakness of the series's plot is its lack of urgency or threat when it needed it. For example, although they show us Leon agonizing over Milli, there wasn't really a strong effort to make us feel that sense of desperation that she felt. It was all told to us, rather than shown to us or developed. I wouldn't say it didn't have any, since I found the end of episode 9 pretty exciting, but I don't feel as if the buildup to the climax was adequate to fuel a strong plot-related conflict [and I'd argue that this contributed more to the climax not being as climactic as some of you expected than the climax itself].
Yes, Dog Days is pretty unambitious. That being said, that doesn't mean you can't draw some entertainment from it. I may not have found it as entertaining as K-On or Taishou Yakyuu Musume [both for different reasons], but that doesn't mean I can't find it entertaining despite its flaws. It provided me with a fun adventure through a fantasy land with characters that, while unimpressive and unremarkable, had traits that I enjoyed watching.
Maybe this is the same cliche argument that people saw in Infinite Stratos, honestly. I watched that too and enjoyed it, so I definitely feel as if I can watch anime for shallow reasons.