(L) Simoun

[FatPianoBoy]

Actually, the character that worried me the most was Amuria and her "Motto tsuyoku!" stuff. After the fourth time I heard her say that, all kinds of horrible were going through my head about this series turning into Gundam with lesbians.

Spoiler:

I was actually relieved when she died, because I was afraid she'd drag the IQ of the show down considerably.

I know now that pretty much everything I just said was wrong, but I actually almost dropped the show then because of that. Fortunately, episode two and Erii came along to save the day. That's when I knew I found something worth finding.
I always liked Aaeru. I picked up early on that she wasn't that typical upstart that everyone else was talking about. And her blatant honesty was just awesome from the very beginning.

[warainagara]

Well, stats are just stats.
And they sometimes (actually very often) mislead its readers.
I think we don't need to be sensitive to them at all.

Nana's DVD and manga sales are one of the tops among the whole anime DVD and mangas, but its thread count in 2ch and here animesuki is incomparably lower than Simoun and Stopani.
That could mean Nana is broadly popular beyond the anime-fan groups, which is apparently true.
But it also means stats focused on specific aspects don't reflect popularity or even quality of the title in general.
Then do I mean DVD or manga sales is the absolute standard of popularity or quality?
No, it's also one of them.

By the way, Stopani and Simoun are the two titles that have most anti-fans in 2ch anime section among the recently finished titles, which is apparently due to lesbianism in both titles.
Difference in its message and language doesn't seem to appeal to the public nor to general anime fans except yuri sympathizers.

But yes, as anime fans accepting yuri, we may well have something to say.
I have been following both shows and interacting with other fans of both shows while having interest in the views that the fans from both sides have on the other title.
I often get obsessed with useless issues, which sometimes hinders me from doing what I need to do for my real life.
Let me summarize as a reporter what I have seen in 2ch, forums in my country and other English forums.
It may be deviant from the current issue,
includes no personal opinion here although I may agree to some,
and most importantly I don't intend to induce a competition or tension between the two shows.

Spoiler:

Quite many of the fans ovelap but obviously Stopani-only watchers are more than Simoun-only.

Some Stopani fans...
-think Stopani is the top among animes having started in April or yuri animes.
-confess the show led them to the world of yuri and that they plan to try Marimite, KnM, Simoun and the like.
-think Simoun is boring and clueless about its message.

Some Simoun fans
-think Simoun is the top among animes having started in April or one of the bests ever.
-think Stopani is a yuri show flattering to males and want to exclude it from due yuri titles.
-Simoun is for ones with high-level schooling, and thus distinguished from Stopani.

Some of watchers of both shows think
-Simoun contributed to the development of yuri animes to a different era and Stopani played a vital role to extend the range of their audience.
-Simoun is a grandpiece and Stopani is good work as a title originally intended to be an easily accessible yuri.
-Simoun doesn't have much of yuri element while Stopani is about outspoken lesbianim.

There should be much more but these are all I remember now.

[Simon]

Originally Posted by Conri

What issue did Megami Magazine start publishing the Sybilla Fanclub column and manga? I might pick up the issues if I can find them for sale.

v77 (October) had #5, so I'm pretty certain it started in v73 (June). A second-hand copy of v73 should reach me in the next day or two, so if I'm wrong I'll post accordingly. You can buy current issues from Amazon, although they sell out fairly quickly - with a bit of hunting I've managed to pick up the missing back-issues from YJ Auctions.

EDIT: Oops, I only answered half your question. Sybilla Fanclub started in v73, the manga started in v75 (August).

"Adopt me!"

Aww, that's so cute...

Originally Posted by Matrim

(unless some big change happens in the second half of the show that I haven't watched but I doubt it)

Well I admit I nearly didn't get to the second half either - the first few episodes had me shaking my head in disbelief, convinced it was a Maria-mite parody for loser fanboys (to borrow Erica's wonderful term). But somehow I couldn't quite bring myself to drop it, then from about the moment Chikaru appeared I found myself forgiving its trespasses (which are many - not that Simoun is perfect either, mind).

But actually things do get better later. Junko Noda shines as Miyuki, especially around eps 19-20 which I personally found quite moving (then again I have a Reki complex, and Miyuki is a character I find easy to relate to - so maybe I'm a bit biased here). So despite slipping a few episodes behind recently I intend to watch it to the end - it sure ain't no Simoun, but then it never claimed to be.

Oh, and after all my waffling about lies, damned lies and statistics, I left out the one point that actually matters: whatever Simoun fans lack in quantity, we more than make up for in quality

[Matrim]

Actually, the character that worried me the most was Amuria and her "Motto tsuyoku!" stuff. After the fourth time I heard her say that, all kinds of horrible were going through my head about this series turning into Gundam with lesbians.

Come to think it, a proper Gundam with lesbians would have been kind of cool in the sense that it would have been quite a slap in the face of all the authors of yaoi Gundam fanfics. Kidding aside, I don't recall Amuria bothering me much (probably because I was in "Dude, she is so hot!" mode ). And I was also busy picking my jaw from the floor because of the awesome music, nice art and battles in the first episode, so I think I started paying more attention to the characters at the end of the episode when Rimone and Aaeru arrived on the Arcus Prima.

confess the show led them to the world of yuri and that they plan to try Marimite, KnM, Simoun and the like.

I wonder whether there will be posts along the lines of "Marimite rips off StoPani".

[wowo]

Come to think it, a proper Gundam with lesbians would have been kind of cool in the sense that it would have been quite a slap in the face of all the authors of yaoi Gundam fanfics

Noooo! I can't stand by and pretend I didn't see this. :P

People who think "Gundam" is Gundam Seed and Gundam Wing filled with pointless robot fights and yaoi, please please take a look at the original Gundam, created by the fantastic creator Yoshiyuki Tomino.

People who love Simoun for the depth of character and setting, with an epic tale of the human soul and dreams - check out the three part movies - the movie version of the original Mobile Suit Gundam.

If Simoun's ending filled you with a sense of beauty and hope for the human soul, Gundam is the original animation which truly fills you with something special. Well, I can't say anymore without spoiling anything, but check it out.

[Matrim]

People who think "Gundam" is Gundam Seed and Gundam Wing filled with pointless robot fights and yaoi, please please take a look at the original Gundam, created by the fantastic creator Yoshiyuki Tomino.

I am aware that Gundam is not supposed to be always cheesy yaoi fangirls bait and stupid battles of superhumans agaisnt cannon fodder, I was just making fun of this aspect of the Gundam franchise because I thought FatPianoBoy meant the cheesiness associated with Gundam rather than its positive qualities. And I would have been inclined to watch the original Gundam, had it not been for the unfotunate fact I dislike mechas in general (by mechas I mean shows with giant robots, not series like Last Exile or Simoun).

[wowo]

Ah cool. To be honest, I just used your post as an excuse to promote Gundam.

Still Matrim, looking at your posts so far, I would recommend Gundam for you.
I don't like Mecha either, and I didn't want to watch Gundam for the longest time, one reason being seeing Gundam Wing (gah).
Anyway, I just really enjoyed Simoun, though I criticized it a lot (it's only cuz I love it ), and I wanted to share some other outstanding anime series with people with somewhat similar tastes.

[oneplusme]

Originally Posted by FatPianoBoy

Actually, the character that worried me the most was Amuria and her "Motto tsuyoku!" stuff.

For what it's worth, she was an absolute pain to sub, too... We were trying to give her a bit of depth, but she just said the same darn thing over and over. Argh!

(I was all for translating said line as "Harder, Neviril! Harder!". )

[Simon]

For anyone interested, here are the covers for the Simoun manga included in Megami (nicked off a YJ listing, because I'm not game to remove the staples on my copies to extract them).

Originally Posted by oneplusme

(I was all for translating said line as "Harder, Neviril! Harder!". )

This reminds me, the last couple of entries in Moetan 3 read

いこう、おれたちのせかいへ!
Let's go, a new world awaits us!

もっと高く、もっと遠くへ!!
Higher! Farther!

(Yes, those are the exact translations given in the book.) Coincidence?

[yononaka]

Originally Posted by Kaoru Chujo

Perhaps based on my own dubious instincts, I wonder if running the stats was an attempt by an SP fan to try to cut Simoun down to SP's level on AS?

Well, I wasn't the first one to introduce statistics in this thread. As I recall, things like 2ch thread counts were used long before me to make points about the popularity of Simoun vs SP But in any case, it seems like I have to take some time to explain what my "beef" with Simoun is.

One of the things I like about AS is that people usually gather around and talk about what they enjoy as opposed to bashing what they don't. Because of that, I almost feel like I should apologize for what will probably come across as a strong anti-Simoun sentiment in what I'm going to saw below. However, I need to get some of this out of my system. This is going to be quite long, so I'm going to put a lot of it into spoiler tags to improve thread readability. I guess that's what happens if you wait until the series is over to start posting about it It'll probably also be somewhat disjointed and "stream of consciousness"-like, but hopefully still comprehensible.

Spoiler for a few caveats about me:

First, I'm going to be a bit more direct than I usually am. This may be ill-advised, since I'm a new poster and you haven't seen enough of my typically diplomatic style yet; but I feel that in this case that style would only serve to make what I want to convey less accessible/sincere. Expressing contrarian opinions in a very qualified manner is also frequently misinterpreted as being being sarcastic or "holier than thou", and I don't want that here. Rest assured that while I may make what look like highly definitive statements below, I'm well aware that for the most part it's all just my opinion, just without the "IMHO", etc. ornamentation. You are most definitely entitled to reject it and have your own. I like plurality. And if I happen to offend anyone, I'll apologize in advance. That is not my goal.

Secondly, over the past 6 years or so (after rediscovering anime), including the shows still in progress (but excluding hentai ), I've seen somewhere between 250 and 300 anime titles. (For various reasons I've had a lot of empty time to fill, and anime fits the bill for that ) By "seen", I mean "seen in full"; there are still more that I've just sampled. I do NOT (I can't emphasize that strongly enough!) say this to proclaim myself as some "authority" on the subject. I'm sure there are people around here who have seen comparable amounts; and I'm typically not among the most analytical of the fans. I just want to explain why at this point I might have a pretty saturated view of anime, and why a series might not feel as fresh and special as it might if I had gotten to it earlier in my "career". The thing is--even if you just watch for entertainment and don't deliberately try to analyze it all to bits--with this amount of input it's virtually inevitable to develop a sense of "deja vu" and a certain jadedness towards a lot of the elements commonly used to manipulate the viewers.

Also, Kaoru Chujo called me an "SP fan". While that's reasonable after I said I liked SP "quite a lot", it's probably an overstatement (depending on how you define the word "fan"). I found SP quite enjoyable, but after the first few episodes I felt that this type of entertainment wasn't what I really needed right then (my time is more limited these days). So from there on I mostly skimmed the rest of the episodes and only focused on the ones with more Shizuma in them. Her, I like a lot, and I suppose am a fan of. However, unlike with Simoun, I liked pretty much all the characters from early on and--if I'd had more time--I would have liked to immerse myself a bit more deeply.

Spoiler for impressions:

Before watching Simoun, I had no preconceptions about it. I knew it was supposed to be yuri, but since that was neither a particularly strong selling point nor a put-off for me, it really didn't matter. I like yuri, but I'm not going to watch a show simply because it's yuri.

The beginning raised a few red flags. The most important one was that I didn't take an interest in any of the characters in the first couple of episodes. (Except perhaps Amuria, who ironically was promptly dispatched ) If I like at least some of the characters from the beginning, I can usually force myself to ignore most of problems an anime might have. I'm well aware that characters can develop over the run of the series, but I've learned that I need to have some investment in some of them from the very beginning. I've noticed that this (not really liking anyone) typically happens to me with shows that have a large "something for everyone" cast. (That's not the same as simply having a large cast.)

Another thing that struck me was how the show was trying to instill pathos. It's not very easy to explain, but there were a number of occasions where I could see the show telling me "now feel this way" without the feelings ever getting there naturally. Unfortunately that never seemed to go away even later in the series.

For all the supposedly "overt yuri" in SP, I actually found it a lot harder to ignore the sexual aspect in Simoun than in SP. The uniforms in SP are pretty subdued, whereas in Simoun the sibyllas' clothing is anything but. Again, it'd some effort to explain it in words, but looking at the character designs side by side there's a stark contrast in that aspect. So, when SP characters aren't actively kissing or groping each other (and most of the time they aren't, surprisingly), sex doesn't really enter my mind at all. With Simoun, I got the feeling of "don't you want a piece of that?" a lot more. Or rather, it's not that I got that feeling, but I could see how the show was trying to make me get it. "Megami-ization" is not something incidental to Simoun, it's built in. Which also made Simoun romances feel "cheaper" for me.

I wouldn't make comparisons with Haibane Renmei. To put it as Kaoru Chujo did (in his case about SP, not HR): "to compare it with Simoun is laughable", albeit with the reasons reversed. Simoun would have benefitted a lot from the more subdued atmosphere/chara designs/acting/direction of HR. An HR-style Simoun I would most likely enjoy. I think Simoun would have been a vastly better story if had been less sexualized. Apparently some of you were able to ignore all that, but viewers should not be expected to ignore the main selling point of a show to enjoy it. BTW, I'm not saying it should not have been a yuri show, but having the pre-choicers be more androgynous or asex would have been better still. But then they would have had to rely more on the story--which they were "making up as they went along"...

In a way, I could say that SP is catering to the fans, whereas Simoun is manipulating them. SP is one of the most cliche-ridden animes of recent times. However, that enables the viewer to go in knowing exactly what to expect. (Or to not go in because they know what to expect.) It's not a coincidence that almost oll the "plot twists" were predicted by fans well in advance. When that's why you're watching it for, it's really not a problem. In the case of Simoun, you can sort of feel the anime crying out "We have girls kissing! We have gender issues! We have war and battles! We have ancient technology! We have religious mysteries! Don't it all look pretty!? Dramatic music to boot! Pick any! Pick all! If you swallow the bait, we'll give you enough fodder to make this a better anime in your head than we could make it on the screen!" And indeed, if you do swallow the bait, you will very likely end up defending Simoun, because you will have invested yourself into sorting out its mixed bag. Me, I don't like to be manipulated like that.

There's a lot more I could add, but this is getting unwieldy as it is...

Spoiler for why I would continue to bother with something I don't like:

Now, having said that, why didn't I simply cut my losses and abandon Simoun? I blame this thread See, while I couldn't get into the characters, there was still some potential in the setting for some interesting developments later on. (Even though my experience suggested that was unlikely. I guess I prefer to be hopeful...) What I usually do in cases like this is keeping up with the show through blogs and discussions such as this thread, and trying out a few of the episodes that get a lot of attention from fans--to see if perhaps I was mistaken about my assessment. And--perhaps because the lot of you are so "educated, intelligent and highly verbal"--the show started to sound half-interesting. When people refer to things like The Left Hand of Darkness (one of my all-time favorite books), I'm bound to pay attention. (I have to tell you though, if anyone adapted that book to anime in a manner similar to Simoun's, I would be extremely unhappy. )

And this brings me to what's probably become my biggest frustration with Simoun, as silly as it may sound. Through the eyes of its devoted fans I see a show I would like to watch. But when I watch the show itself, I don't see it. What that tells me is that the fabled "greatness" of Simoun is the product of the fans filling the gaps with their imagination, not of the creators doing anything exeptional. The "making it up as we go along" thing someone mentioned they actually did is very much the feeling I got as well. Which, again, is great for fans seeking to fill the gaps, but certainly not what I'd call great storytelling.

Spoiler for Simoun fans vs SP fans:

One thing I was interested in observing was the dynamic between the SP and Simoun fandoms. That's independent of whether I liked either of the shows; I just generally like to observe fandom trends.

In this case there was quite a bit of rivalry there, even when not expressed overtly. And I can't say I like some of the attitudes Simoun fans seem to have towards their SP counterparts. "We are the intelligent yuri fans. People who prefer SP are stupid yuri fanboys. If they weren't stupid, they'd realize the greatness of Simoun." Too harsh? Well, that's how much of the commentary I've seen comes across in translation.

I'm not sure some people here realize just how some of the comments they make can sound. Things like "I think that some people who would like serious anime (e.g., Honey & Clover) were put off from Simoun by the yuri aspects of the OP and by the complex terminology and unusual situation." (Kaoru Chujo). Presumably intelligent people (because otherwise they couldn't be expected to like Simoun in the first place...) would not be able to deal with the terminology and the situation? Might there be some other explanation to why they were put off Simoun?

And then of course there's people hoping that SP would do badly in sales. It's not enough to hope that what you like does well, you have to wish ill for others? It's not like if SP does badly the investment money will turn towards series like Simoun unless Simoun actually does well in its own right.

I have not seen nearly as much of such negative attitudes coming from SP's side, except perhaps in reaction to what Simoun fans have provoked.

I guess all this may sound like I hate the Simoun fans in this thread. Not at all. I think what you guys did with creating your own fansubs was very cool. I like the overall enthusiasm. And I know perfectly well how it can be frustrating to love a show that many people just don't seem to get. However, that's not an excuse for condescending.

OK, so I guess there goes my "Simoun dump" I wonder if any of you actually read through it. Maybe it's best if you didn't Anyway, I'm not trying to say that Simoun is a terrible anime. Objectively speaking there are many worse. However, subjectively speaking Simoun did nothing for me, so I felt the need to express some of my views about it. Sorry if it was too negative. Like I said, probably I would have liked it better if I'd seen it back when I was less saturated with anime.

Spoiler for a note to Kaoru Chujo:

A lot of what I said above references you directly or indirectly. That's hard to avoid when someone is as pervasive in the thread as you have been. While a lot of these references are very critical, that is really an aberration of sorts. For the most part, I seem to have very similar tastes with you, and I enjoy reading your posts. You're also a sort of an epitome of that AS positive approach I mentioned right at the beginning. I admire that. Hopefully you won't take what I've said in this post personally, because I don't like the idea of being "enemies" with a nice person like you.

Edit:

I ran the Haruhi and Fate stats as well, and the pattern there is significantly less "top heavy". Some of it may be due to the different dynamics that happen when a show has a forum as opposed to a thread, but I'm sure it's also a meaningful indication of a wider fan base. BTW, I didn't do this to "prove" yet something more about Simoun, I was just interested in how prevalent the quasi-80/20 pattern really is.

Spoiler for Haruhi and Fate stats:

Haruhi (overall)

809 total posters
13311 total posts

1213 (9.1%) posts by the top 2 posters
2360 (17.7%) posts by the top 5 posters
3681 (27.7%) posts by the top 10 posters
5778 (43.4%) posts by the top 20 posters

7533 (56.6%) posts by the remaining 789 posters

Spoiler for Top 20 posters:

737 C.A.
476 Onizuka-GTO
457 Vexx
396 panzerfan
294 melange
275 Shirobane
269 CrowKenobi
262 Riker
260 SnakeLegend
255 Kaioshin_Sama
252 IchiKyo
242 PhantomX
239 Kinny Riddle
237 arias
224 Vallen Chaos Valiant
205 Maids! Maids! Maids!
188 npal
186 Noppapana
180 Sushi-Y
144 FatPianoBoy

Fate/stay night (overall)

796 total posters
13957 total posts

1698 (12.2%) posts by the top 2 posters
2932 (21.0%) posts by the top 5 posters
4519 (32.4%) posts by the top 10 posters
6780 (48.6%) posts by the top 20 posters

7177 (51.4%) posts by the remaining 776 posters

Spoiler for Top 20 posters:

1141 Shiroth
-557 iamandragon
-462 gammaoh
-419 PhantomX
-353 Kira_Naruto
-350 npal
-335 Xellos-_^
-306 stormy001_M1A2
-304 Maids! Maids! Maids!
-292 Village Idiot
-290 Demongod86
-288 Deathkillz
-266 Erhjegel
-257 demon_god04
-232 kamikazex
-222 justinstrife
-195 JanthraX^
-192 Shikimori Kazuki
-176 Alu
-143 fict_ticious

[fignae]

Read it all, yononaka, and I see where you're coming from. Dashing off some points.

It seems like a lot of this subjective element comes from the character designs. Personally, I don't look past that -- it just doesn't register after a certain point, I don't know why. The later episodes, especially.

I fight the anti-SP sentiment in myself quite frequently these days, because I'm participating in a thread elsewhere that loves SP to bits. I think it is bad to feel like this, and I certainly think we Simoun fans should be more subtle about it. But at the same time, people do tend to select different levels of tact when speaking, and it may be more hypocritical to hold back, I don't know. Honestly, for myself it may be jealousy speaking. Objectively, I support SP, sort of. It's not as horrible as non-fans say it is, and it's a milestone for yuri, which I do gravitate towards. The feelings are ambivalent, so I guess I concluded that the less I say, the better.

Oh no, the thread is definitely getting derailed. Is this against the rules?

I forgot who said the creators are making it up as they go along, but I'm pretty sure he or she meant some of the material, not all. The Japanese are humble people. We shouldn't take creators' disclaimers at face value. Besides, the author is dead, blah blah.

What that tells me is that the fabled "greatness" of Simoun is the product of the fans filling the gaps with their imagination [...]

This is what any good text does. (Whoops. Okay, good, postmodern text? There are standards, and there are standards.)

All that said, I suspect it is the anti-SP undercurrents that brought out yononaka's words. I hope no blame gets thrown around. I think there is a middle ground to be found. I like reading critiques, 'cause some of us have been searching and searching for reasons why some anime fans can't take to Simoun, and this is relatively well-articulated.

edit: Argh, I can't seem to leave this alone. The entire HB paragraph is implying that Simoun is using its sex appeal to prop itself up and that it has nothing else. The problem with this argument is, if we disagree with yononaka there, there is no more to say besides flogging that dead horse.

[ghost89475]

Well, I guess to each his own...or something like that.
I watched thru both SP and Simoun...

I was introduced to the manga of SP first, was impressed, then anticipated the anime...which totally flopped for me.

Simoun, on the other hand, was dangling right in front of me with all the nice chinese fansubs but I took a month before picking it up, just because I had nothing better to do. I was initially put off by the drawing and massive new info of their world...but oh well..i ended up waiting for raws every tuesday.

Just compare the final eps and I know I made a right choice by skimming thru SP. Just the dialogue of Shizuma at the church made me cringe hard. Taiwan dramas show something similar...

If simoun was "manipulating" me into watching it, then i guess i was manipulated. but aren't shows supposed to "draw" us into their world?

[yononaka]

I'm back to my usual diplomatic style now

Originally Posted by fignae

edit: Argh, I can't seem to leave this alone. The entire HB paragraph is implying that Simoun is using its sex appeal to prop itself up and that it has nothing else. The problem with this argument is, if we disagree with yononaka there, there is no more to say besides flogging that dead horse.

If you mean the HR paragraph, it's not really all about sex appeal. Perhaps I should have broken the paragraph at the middle... Anyway, it's more about the elusive "mood" that I think HR has loads of and Simoun fails at because it tries too hard.

As for the sex appeal, I wouldn't propose something silly like "it has nothing else". However, Simoun is certainly relying on it, whereas HR I don't think was relying on it at all (unless you count the angelic elements as sex appeal).

Originally Posted by ghost89475

If simoun was "manipulating" me into watching it, then i guess i was manipulated. but aren't shows supposed to "draw" us into their world?

Just in case: I wasn't trying to imply that Simoun fans are chumps who got suckered into liking the show Manipulating the audience is a common thing, most--if not all--shows have it in one from or another. I just don't think Simoun managed to integrate all of it's "carrots" well enough, and for whatever reason I didn't find them tasty enough.

[ghost89475]

Originally Posted by yononaka

I'm back to my usual diplomatic style now

As for the sex appeal, I wouldn't propose something silly like "it has nothing else". However, Simoun is certainly relying on it, whereas HR I don't think was relying on it at all (unless you count the angelic elements as sex appeal).

maybe i'm dense, but thruout the show, i didnt see any sex appeal thing other than the kisses...???no?

Just in case: I wasn't trying to imply that Simoun fans are chumps who got suckered into liking the show Manipulating the audience is a common thing, most--if not all--shows have it in one from or another. I just don't think Simoun managed to integrate all of it's "carrots" well enough, and for whatever reson I din't find them tasty enough.

Simoun does not interest you.

[fignae]

Originally Posted by yononaka

As for the sex appeal, I wouldn't propose something silly like "it has nothing else". However, Simoun is certainly relying on it, whereas HR I don't think was relying on it at all (unless you count the angelic elements as sex appeal).

Bleah, I didn't mean to downplay that element either.

Relying on it to pull in extra viewers, yes. May turn people off, true. But Simoun has so much more than that, and if the audience can't look beyond that, it's a shame. I wouldn't blame the director for it, though, as the character designs are an important part of the show. I am, by now, rehashing an old, old point. It comes down to that, huh?

In other words, the anvils exist, the flaws exist, but viewers don't deal with them in the same way. Additionally, we really mustn't ignore the group who were drawn in by the in-your-face whatever, then stayed for the underlying greatness.

[Matrim]

And I can't say I like some of the attitudes Simoun fans seem to have towards their SP counterparts. "We are the intelligent yuri fans. People who prefer SP are stupid yuri fanboys. If they weren't stupid, they'd realize the greatness of Simoun."

Well, I'd like to say that but I am being too polite. No, really, in case you were referring to some of my posts I couldn't care less about the relative intelligence of the Simoun or SP fans and considering there are people who are fans of both, it would be a terribly idiotic generalization to claim that one set of fans is full of idiots and the other is an elite group for the bright people only. What can be claimed that since SP has a lot more comedy, it goes by default that Simoun has more potential to be taken and analysed seriously and depending on your tastes to either love or hate. One can casually follow SP but I think it would more difficult to do it with Simoun.

And this brings me to what's probably become my biggest frustration with Simoun, as silly as it may sound. Through the eyes of its devoted fans I see a show I would like to watch. But when I watch the show itself, I don't see it.

I think you have missed a great opportunity to add some additional flavour to this thread, all the praise we have been writing here could have used one or two opposing voices. But then again following this philosophy I ended up being widely known as a troll on the Mai Otome board so maybe you did the right thing. But you really should have believed your eyes more. for me it;s as simple as that - character driven show in which I don't like the characters - well, there is no point watching it, even if I have all the free time in the world.

Things like "I think that some people who would like serious anime (e.g., Honey & Clover) were put off from Simoun by the yuri aspects of the OP and by the complex terminology and unusual situation." (Kaoru Chujo). Presumably intelligent people (because otherwise they couldn't be expected to like Simoun in the first place...) would not be able to deal with the terminology and the situation? Might there be some other explanation to why they were put off Simoun?

I don't think the terminology issue refers to the people's intelligence directly - after all most subjects taught in high school do have a lot more complicated terminolgy than Simoun and somehow even people considered not so bright generally get passing grades. It depends mainly on whether one has the will to make an effort to figure out things, wait for a better fansub, go to a forum to ask what was all that about and so on. It's a lot easier to enjoy a series like SP where you can guess plot developments without even trying and there are few confusing things. In other words one can be very a intelligent elitist and still to expect information to be given to him step by step, rather than Simoun's approach of literally putting the viewers in the midst of strange characters talking about and doing even stranger things. I don't see anything wrong with that, I personally got tired of following Ergo Proxy's terminology and abandoned watching the series. Not because I wouldn't understand it if I tried but because at that point I didn't think it was worth the effort.

In a way, I could say that SP is catering to the fans, whereas Simoun is manipulating them.

Sorry for the mostly off-topic rambling but that reminded me of some criticism for the Danish film director Lars von Trier. He is often being accused that he intentionally puts his characters in tough situations only to make vieweres symphatise with their plight. But when I watch one of his movies _ I don't care about that. His characters stir my soul like few others, you can call this manipulation, I can call it knowing how to get to your audience.

And then of course there's people hoping that SP would do badly in sales. It's not enough to hope that what you like does well, you have to wish ill for others?

I can't deny a bit of spite in my sentiments but my main reason for wanting to see SP bomb in the market is teaching the company the lesson to write a dialogue that is not literally painful to listen at times, for instance. Or try for once to make a yuri anime without an abundance of moe or childish characters And yes, it's wishful thinking in its worst, I know.

For all the supposedly "overt yuri" in SP, I actually found it a lot harder to ignore the sexual aspect in Simoun than in SP. The uniforms in SP are pretty subdued, whereas in Simoun the sibyllas' clothing is anything but. Again, it'd some effort to explain it in words, but looking at the character designs side by side there's a stark contrast in that aspect. So, when SP characters aren't actively kissing or groping each other (and most of the time they aren't, surprisingly), sex doesn't really enter my mind at all. With Simoun, I got the feeling of "don't you want a piece of that?" a lot more.

Everything bar some of the comedy in SP revolves about the romantic affairs of the characters (at least up until episode 17 where I stopped watching). This might not be the fanservice that everyone would recognize but the SP characters often behave as if living in some male wet dream, IMO. And you'd be hard-pressed to find in Simoun scenes so pointless and totally full of fanservice as the nude scenes between Kaname and what-was-her-name-the-other-evil-lesbian. If Simoun was so hell bent of fanserivice it would have shown a lot more of the night Alti and Kaimu spent together, for example. So basically you can remove all the romantic elements from Simoun, make the characters wear clothes that cover their whole bodies and still have most of the plot intact with some alterations. While if you remove the fanservice and romantic affairs from SP you are left with nothing at all. So from the traditional point of view - fanservice=naked or half-naked chicks Simoun might have more of it. But from the "loser yuri fanboy"'s POV (as Erica from Yuricon would say ), SP is the clear winner since the yuri romance is the whole idea of the show, one can even see the seme-uke couples a mile away, it has a cosplay club, beach episode, main characters wearing maid outfits, squaling females including fangirsl for the popular people in the school - all the tricks in the fanservice book.

An HR-style Simoun I would most likely enjoy. I think Simoun would have been a vastly better story if had been less sexualized. Apparently some of you were able to ignore all that, but viewers should not be expected to ignore the main selling point of a show to enjoy it.

It might be the main selling point, although I have no idea how it is being advertised in Japan but that's just a bait. Do you see anyone in this thread who followed Simoun just because of the hot lesbian chicks? I see this is as a marketing trick which apparenlty backfired quite badly for Studio DEEN. I find it much easier to ignore the skimpy outfits in Simoun (not that I want to ignore them really but entralled in the story I barely notice them) than the extremes of the mind-numbing soap operish school love-drama of Strawberry Panic but obviously I'd have had more of a point in comparing HR with Simoun had the fanservice factor been totally missing. But I really fail to see how the story would have been better if it had been less sexualized since the plot has hardly anything to do with sex (not in the meaning of "gender" ). Not to mention that it would have been rather weird to concentrate on gender issues and never show anything sexual between the characters.

Anyway, nice to see someone who has put such an effort only to criticise a series he does not like. I am impressed, although your introduction almost put me to sleep, it's way too long.

[jtrog]

I didn't even know what 'yuri' ment until like show 21. Catagorizing the shows at the start probably hurt this one. Yes I know the 2 'sisters' in Simoun talked about something but generally their world was as it was - all were born female until at the age of 17 they 'had' to make a choice.
So I didn't view most of it as 'yuri'. Now I did see the covers for the music cds I guess thats really 'yuri'....

Remember eps 1 and 2 and 3 then it was like 5 months before any one got back to it, and again, another long long laps in shows. Thanks to wowos work I believe most of us caught up about ep 17 then back and forth so in a way for ME the series unfolded like a flower.

And once they are 17 they get married have kids - ie not 'yuri'.

Yes yes yes, im not in Japan and do not live under their ways of life which we Cannot here in the U.S.A. and im not saying theres any thing wrong with them. Like in the show its just the way of life. The 'Girls' had to sleep in the same rooms for a while and they had to live with each other on that rust bucket ship they were on so you could see it was not a happy box of apples for them.

Much like us.

This series is awsome, best originality todate. Thanks to all that helped fill in the not understood parts.

thanks everone in the forum.

[Kaoru Chujo]

No offense taken, yononaka. Interesting posts. I hope you can gather from my posts that I am not anti-SP. I think I was one of the first in that thread to defend it, in the early days when most of the posts seemed so negative. I thought many posters there then just didn't get the fact that it was intentionally cliched.

Spoiler for resposes to yononaka, spoilered to keep the page shorter:

But I just felt so much more from Simoun, and what I'm looking for mainly in anime, or any drama, is for it to produce emotion in me. I really felt Simoun as "cathartic" in the way aimed at by ancient drama. I always feel badly that I can't enjoy a high-class show like Mushishi, for example, but it is just too detached for me. Without real emotion, there doesn't seem to be any point.

I would be the last person to downplay the sex appeal in Simoun. The kisses (even though they were not supposed to be romantic). The romance always just below the surface. And I think I've referred to "Barbarella flight suits." To me, Simoun had real sex appeal and SP had fake sex appeal, bolstered by two or three nude scenes and the first ED. We all respond differently. I certainly don't see anything wrong with sex appeal in anime. I agree that Haibane Renmei didn't rely on it at all. That doesn't make it superior to Simoun. In itself, sex is good, not evil.

It would have been more logical for the sibylla to be androgynous rather than female, I agree. That would have cast the gender topic in another light, and might have removed the sex from the story. I loved the show as it was made, but I'd be thrilled if the staff made it again with the same cast playing androgynes, lol.

Simoun and HR seem similar to me because of the feelings they produce in me of mystery, love, warmth, eternity, wonder, etc., and because of the band of girls experiencing them together in a world beyond ours. If you didn't feel those feelings, it's natural that you can't see the similarity.

I think it's legitimate for a drama to try to suggest which emotions to feel. I think it only becomes a problem when it is overdone, or when you don't actually feel them. You didn't, I did. Fair enough. But I also think the way the music was used, in particular, often played against emotions -- thereby heightening them. This is a wonderful effect, when it works, as it did for me. I really don't think Simoun was offensive in that way in the slightest. Unlike, say, most Steven Spielberg films.

I'm sorry to have spoken in that elitist way about intelligence and education, but I was just being honest. You yourself noted the tenor of some of the discussion here. Personally, I see distaste for dramas that have real emotion in them as another form of intellectual pretension. I'm not saying that applies to you, but it does to some people, especially people who have been warped by college English classes.

As for my saying that you were running the stats to prove SP was more popular than it seemed, I did add that I could recognize the practice because my own "dubious instincts" had led me to do similar things myself, lol.

I admit that episode one was hard to get into at first. I wasn't totally sold until episode 2, when I began to understand more of what was going on. One of my favorite sequences in the whole show now, though, is Neviril's parade to her Simoun in episode 1, with the baroquesque music trumpeting away in the background. For me, it encapsulates the whole tragedy in one scene. But it could seem bizarre and silly if you weren't into the characters or the situation, and I imagine it turned some early viewers right off.

I think that part of the reason Simoun is not popular is that its elements do not work together to attract an audience. People who might like the deep story are put off by the flight suits and the kisses. People who like the flight suits don't find enough fanservice elsewhere to satisfy them. For me, the contrast is artistically fruitful, but perhaps not commercially effective.

Your point about the comparative absence of fanservice in SP was interesting and seems true. And yet it was definitely a show that used yuri romance and sex as its hook. More to ponder. EDIT: I take this back. Warainagara's following post has reminded me of some of the obvious sexploitation in SP.

That "making it up as they went along" was more a joke than anything. This story was unified and coherent in a way that SP and most other shows are not. SP was just a loosely-aggregated series of shallow automatic romances, hung around Shizuma-Nagisa. Simoun was about the death of a culture. Some details were a little sketchy, but the overall thrust was strong and clear and tragic. When I watch that parade to the Simoun in episode one now, almost everything resonates with the last five episodes of the show: Neviril's confidence, Amuria's teasing, the assembled dignitaries, the admiring acolytes. It almost makes me cry just to think of it, I'm afraid.

I only rediscovered anime two years ago, and I have not seen some of the classics even yet. And I have little interest in many standard anime genres: magical girl, monster-of-the week, mecha, et al. Anime is not a genre of dramatic art, it is a medium, like TV or movies or books. Some people like romance novels, some people like war novels. All I knew about Simoun when it started was that it was yuri and mecha. One genre appealed, the other didn't. When I finally got into it, however, I found so much more. I'm sorry you didn't. Pardon me for thinking that it's all there, but that your antipathy to some of the surface of Simoun prevented you from seeing it.

Taste in this matter aside, I am glad to find someone else who enjoys the courteous discussion that seems the rule rather than the exception on AS. Especially when the courtesy is a hard-won mask for raging disagreement.

[warainagara]

yononaka,
I actually think most of the comments in my previous post are extreme because admittedly extreme ones have left in my memory.
And it seems some of us interpreted your stats more than enough.
However, I see your view on the two shows and their fandom is also extreme as much as them.

Spoiler for sexual aspect:

If I’m allowed to say with some exaggeration, sexual element is inherent in most of non-for-children animes and I don’t think any of us denied Simoun also has it.
If one wants to compare the degree of reliance on sex and its pattern in Simoun to Strawberry Panic on the basis of the original standard, he or she has every right to do that.
But in doing so, he or she may need to make sure that a seemingly general understanding on the issue from both fan groups, which apparently has no significant discrepancy, can be remarkably different from such a view.

Spoiler for manipulation:

As for the pathos, manipulating the audience to imbue the pathos and even carrot in the way you implied is called "direction" and "story writing" in my humble opinion.
There can be variety in judging what the pathos or carrot is and if they succeeded or not. That’s what critiques and fans really do.

If pathos doesn’t seem to exist and main purpose is apparently no more than entertainment if there’s any others minor, the show should still manipulate the audience to appeal for the other things. Why is Shizuma naked every time she is in her bed? (Mind you, I seriously like her and she is almost the only reason I followed the show.) Why does the evil lesbian duo end up with sex whenever they finished plotting? It’s an easy manipulation to respond to, which you seem to prefer to call "cater," but is still a manipulation to me. But I'd call it direction and story writing rather than manipulation and my understanding is that some just prefer simplicity to intricacy in direction and writing.
In addition, I agree Sibylla uniform is quite sensual but Simoun kissing is not so much, if only accustomed to it, since it is done as a habitual rite in the context.

Spoiler for fandom:

Fandom is also my interest. There may be slightly improper response there, though. Terminology thing is not from the feeling of superiority but from the common reasons Simoun fans in both Japan and English speaking circles attribute its unpopularity to. It’s from a conscious confrontation of the weakness in the show. I have to say that basing fans’ problematic mentality on it is disagreeable, while I admit some fans may be as you mentioned. But you know what? Matrim spoke my point about the general intelligence.

“I have not seen nearly as much of such negative attitudes coming from SP's side”
Well, regardless of what your intention for this comment is, my observation says quite many of Stopani fans are watching only the show. You couldn’t expect much of negative responses to Simoun there.

[wowo]

Lol, this week's Simoun radio is hilarious, check it out if you can understand Japanese.
Guest this week was
:drumroll:

Director Nishimura Junji!

A few things that stood out to me:
- the reason the show was created was, quote from director:
"me and two other old foggies wanted to write about young girls growing up"

- the choices for the final sex:
"of course I had the story and dramatics in mind, but I chose their sex mostly on my tastes. Like Morinas has such a good body, it would have been such a waste for her to become male"

Lol.

It was funny when a listener wrote "I bought the DVDs and games, but I can't get myself to watch them", and Takahashi Rieko answered:
"Eh, doesn't matter if you don't ever watch them, as long as you bought them we're happy."

Dark! Lol.


A few things were bleeped out / left out, and will be included in the CD, according to them.