[Pocari_Sweat]

Originally Posted by 0utf0xZer0

You know what? I'd be willing to beat a few dollars that HSI episode 3 is an intentional parody on Okada's part. Hell, might explain how she convinced others to go along - "It's not stupid! We're parodying actual literature!"

You might be right. Apparently, there was an episode in Black Rock Shooter where somebody gets hit by a car (lol @ this overused J/K drama trope) but it was done in a parody manner.

Spoiler for Black Rock Shooter:

One girls' family was gonna move because her dad got a job outside their place of residence and normally this would be sad for the girl's friend. However, the girl's friend chased the girl and then randomly got hit by another car, which made the girl and her mother stay because they felt bad.

Putting BRS aside, since that made me lose my vocal chords due to the level of "wtf/retardness" and many brain cells being lost and whether in both BRS and HSI it was intentional or not in the way episode 3 panned out like it did, it doesn't repute the fact that it caused a drastic change in tone for HSI.

Prior to the episode 3 debacle, it seemed like a perfectly good legitimate coming of age story with a irresponsible mother sending her daughter away to a rather old-school strict "evil" grandmother (not an uncommon plot device for J/K dramas either). However, instead of pursuing that route, episode 3 gave us a lolwut episode, which was completely different to the first two. The episodes after 3, were largely "fluff" (but enjoyable and better than average fluff), until episode 7 whereby we got another lolwut episode (The episode that made 0utf0xzer0 a Tomoe fanboy ). It wasn't until episode 9 it started to be revert back to to its episode 1 and 2 style.

Question to the thread: are buffoonish male characters common in J and K dramas?
Because if so, in light of the parallels people have drama between HSI and J and K drama in the past, I think genre convention is a much more satisfying explanation for Okada's choices here than having man issues. Particularly since there's some evidence that her taste in anime men runs towards characters like Shrade from Aquarion Evol. And I'm pretty sure I've run into buffoonish characters in at least a couple J dramas I've seen.

I can't really say for J-dramas since I've only seen a couple. But in terms of K-dramas, they are usually split into two genres - Saguk (Historical/Fantasy) and Hyundai (Literally means "Modern"... no I'm not referring to the car brand ). Won't focus on Saguk since that's irrelevant for this topic, but for Hyundai type dramas they are split into two main subcategories: Romantic comedies and Melodramas.

For romantic comedies, there is indeed a lot of "buffooning" around, but it tends to be split between both genders. Both males and females are portrayed to be idiots indiscriminately . But since the K-drama audience are overwhelmingly female, they males to be "dorky", "fabulous" and/or often times "dickheads" whilst the female tends to be either "weak-willed" or "tsundere" - pretty much borrows a lot from shojo manga romcom tropes.

For melodramas... well, imagine Ano Hana, replace high school characters with characters in their late 10s or early 20s (sometimes even 30s), remove Menma since she is more or less an "otaku-bait" character and double the amount of scenes where someone is crying on screen and introduce a hospital premise, someone getting hit by a car, and/or someone being diagnosed with a terminal illness. Evil stepmothers are a bonus trope too. But in general, no "buffooning" here. Instead maximize the melodrama cheese. Example here!

Yes, I'm generalizing here, so don't take me 100% seriously .

I wouldn't be surprised at the fact that Okada gets a lot of her drama writing inspiration comes from Asian TV drama, because they sometimes seem very similar in approach. It's frustrating yeh, but I guess it's just personal preference for me in that I rather see TV tropes be used cross-medium than common tropes in the current anime medium be used again. Lesser of the two evils I'd say.


Here's a fun fact. Both True Tears and Anohana (written by Okada) very shortly after their respective Bluray/DVD releases in Japan, was licensed in Korea WITH Korean dubs on them, whilst it took years before the English version of a sub-only version of True Tears to come out on Sentai whilst Ano Hana is still yet to be licensed in English. Coincedence? I'd say no, considering Koreans and their love for drama and anime is a pretty popular "underground" entertainment medium over there, whilst manga (and manwha) is pretty much mainstream.

I actually went and watched the episode just so I could participate in this discussion (otherwise I haven't seen AKB for a couple weeks). My take is no, she's not trolling. It's just a typical LOLWTF comedy episode of AKB (I have to protect my first hater from the DES!) that happens to feature hate mail as a plot element.

Also when Orine was bursting in tears from happiness whilst crying out "My very first hater"!. Not sure if that was supposed to be intentionally melodramatic but I took it the completely wrong way and started laughing at it


Anyways, one thing is for sure for Okada as of late. Her crazy, lulsy, wtf series appear to be the norm these days, when it wasn't the case even about a year or so ago. That's why I personally think she's on "troll/egoflated" mode as of late. Her last "legit good" series that was intended to be "legit good" was Ano Hana, which I already had a few problems with. Hanasaku Iroha came out pretty solid, but I have a feeling Okada intended that to be more "crazy" if it wasn't for some editing by Ando.