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Old 2012-11-22, 13:00   Link #2761
Joe_fh
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Originally Posted by Gohan78 View Post
You have to be extremely careful in betraying your audience's expectations.
Especially if it's not clear whether it's a conscious subversion or plain bad writing ("I wrote myself in a corner with this plot development, so I'll just drop it").

I think that many of AO's so-called subversions (theEnd, Elena's identity, the Third Engine) are just abandoned plot threads.

P.S. An author that often (ab)uses subversion is Nisio Isin. The most egregious example is Katanagatari episode 4. Let it be known that after that episode I was so enraged that I insta-dropped the series. As I said, subversion is a double-edged sword...
I said what I think about theEnd earlier so I'll skip this part.
What you're saying is quite understandable. There really were a lot of potential in each of those. Even as they are at the end of episode 24 there still is. Which again leads me to the conclusion that 24 episode weren't enough.

For example - we get Elena's identity. But we don't get anything else. How did Eureka end up there? From what we're told she was there twice- once by mistake and a second to give birth to AO. Why was she there so much earlier and how? She was travelling through time but she was more like a ghost so she couldn't have saved Elena at that point.

The third engine seemed to respond to the feelings of the pilots. And not just any feelings - it seemed to respond only to love (or maybe to when someone you love goes out of your reach possibly forever) But they are machines so how did they do that and why.

It's not that they are abandoned plot threads - there was just not enough time to develop them is such a short time. As ttdestroy said 24 was too short for this.
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Old 2012-11-22, 14:01   Link #2762
Shinji103
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Originally Posted by Myssa Rei View Post
Yes, but do recall it just... ended. Just like that.
Because the bad guys were all dead, the plot was revealed, the characters decided what they had to do to save the world, there was nothing left for the characters to do but do it and end the story. Short doesn't mean abrupt.

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Originally Posted by Kaioshin Sama View Post
Don't let the SRW appearance fool you, Zeorymer is something best left forgotten to the annals of history. Zeorymer is a poorly animated go nowhere mess of four episodes of a robot punching it's fists together and making things explode that basically just ends and wastes your time. It's textbook Aikawa schlock in the worst ways from being a 4 episode OVA based on a pornoviolence manga with no way or even attempt to accomplish anything meaningful or exciting, to there being no real identifiable characters, to the repetitiveness of main character refusing to do anything then his split personality taking over to be evil and finish the job to the weird world hating/destroying power fantasy thing that seems to be creeping below the surface of much of his work in the 80's. It's just bad.
I'm not sure why you think I'm only basing my opinion on its appearances in SRW. I've seen the OVA, read the first manga, and read everything I can find of the second manga. And I respectfully disagree with you wholeheartedly.

Yeah, the first manga seemed like it was a rather lackluster porn comic with an attempt at a plot and not-so-good mecha designs , but the OVA was leagues beyond all that. Just because it was a short 4 episodes doesn't mean it was bad.

"Poorly animated?" I haven't the slightest clue where you got that from, because Zeorymer had great animation. "Go nowhere episodes?" It went the whole way through its plot, which was simply short, not go-nowhere. Zeorymer was a brief but good title.
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Old 2012-11-22, 14:03   Link #2763
Xagzan
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Originally Posted by Joe_fh View Post
I said what I think about theEnd earlier so I'll skip this part.
What you're saying is quite understandable. There really were a lot of potential in each of those. Even as they are at the end of episode 24 there still is. Which again leads me to the conclusion that 24 episode weren't enough.

For example - we get Elena's identity. But we don't get anything else. How did Eureka end up there? From what we're told she was there twice- once by mistake and a second to give birth to AO. Why was she there so much earlier and how? She was travelling through time but she was more like a ghost so she couldn't have saved Elena at that point.
That's the problem. We don't get anything else. So we find out who Elena is. And that's it. Nothing changes. She doesn't change (aside from maybe she won't go on incoherent rants anymore, but she's still the same one note otaku girl), Ao doesn't change, Fleur doesn't change, the plot certainly doesn't change. It has no impact, so how in the world am I supposed to care about it? I definitely didn't care about finding out who she was for Elena's own sake, aside from faint curiosity about whether it would give her depth; that would've required me being previously invested in her character in the first place. The only reason I had any interest in this plot thread was to see how it would affect things I did care about, like Ao, or Fleur, or even more so, Eureka and the E7 world.

So then we get to the reveal, and, ok, she's not Ao's sister, she's not Renton and Eureka's daughter, that's fine. That was just one possibility I was anticipating among countless others I hadn't even considered. But she wasn't just not any of those things. She was nothing. And I don't mean she was a nobody: being simply some random girl of no blood relation to Ao would've been just dandy, if done right. No, I mean nothing. Her true identity had no relevance to anyone else's goals, their backgrounds, or even really their subsequent actions or how the story got resolved. The only thing you could maybe say was changed by this plot thread was Elena herself, and even there, hardly at all.

So in the end, we were led along with entire episodes hinting at something--we didn't know what, but something--anything more to the mystery they were foisting on us. But there wasn't. It's fine to subvert your audience's expectations, but whatever it is you eventually present to them, whether they expected it or not, should at least make some kind of splash. Otherwise you just wasted valuable time that should've been devoted to something actually important to the show.
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Old 2012-11-22, 14:17   Link #2764
Haak
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I think the idea is that sometimes things you expect to have an affect turn out to not lead to anything at all. Like I said, Eureka seven Ao was generally going for anticlimactic stuff and the things they made climactic were the unconventional things instead.

And I did care about it for Elena's sake because i was already invested in her character. It did, in fact, give her some actual depth.
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Old 2012-11-22, 14:32   Link #2765
Kazu-kun
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Originally Posted by Haak View Post
I think the idea is that sometimes things you expect to have an affect turn out to not lead to anything at all. Like I said, Eureka seven Ao was generally going for anticlimactic stuff and the things they made climactic were the unconventional things instead.
There's nothing wrong with having some things being anticlimactic, but being unconventional for its own sake generally leads to poor results.

For example, what happened with Mami in Madoka episode 3 was anticlimactic but it had a lot of impact on Madoka's character development. That's the meta justification for the anticlimax, and why it works so well. What Aikawa did with Elena was just being pretentious, since the plot-thread is closed without any substantial impact on Ao's characterization or the story at large.
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Last edited by Kazu-kun; 2012-11-22 at 14:48.
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Old 2012-11-22, 15:33   Link #2766
Haak
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Originally Posted by Kazu-kun View Post
There's nothing wrong with having some things being anticlimactic, but being unconventional for its own sake generally leads to poor results.
And the meta justification for this anticlimax was that sometimes things are really just anticlimactic, which i think contributed in making a rather relatable atmosphere. Plus it greatly expanded upon Elena's character which was more than enough for me.
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Old 2012-11-22, 15:50   Link #2767
Kazu-kun
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Originally Posted by Haak View Post
And the meta justification for this anticlimax was that sometimes things are really just anticlimactic.
That's no justification. Being unconventional is cool and all, but it needs to have a real impact on the story.

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Originally Posted by Haak View Post
Plus it greatly expanded upon Elena's character.
Which is meaningless if her character is isolated from the story at large. Going back to the example of Mami, what happened with her affected Madoka's character, which in turn affected the main plot. What happened with Elena didn't effect anything besides her own character (and not that much), and that only shows how disconnected her character was from the actual plot of the series, how irrelevant she was. This wasn't only a problem with Elena. Almost all the characters except Ao Eureka and Renton were just there, floating around.

These are all pretty big writing issues. It's easy to see Aikawa didn't know what the hell he was doing.
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Old 2012-11-22, 16:04   Link #2768
Haak
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Originally Posted by Kazu-kun View Post
That's no justification. Being unconventional is cool and all, but it needs to have a real impact on the story.
You must've missed my edit. I said I think it contributed in making a rather relatable atmosphere.

Quote:
Which is meaningless if her character is isolated from the story at large. Going back to the example of Mami, what happened with her affected Madoka's character, which in turn affected the main plot. What happened with Elena didn't effect anything besides her own character (and not that much), and that only shows how disconnected her character was from the actual plot of the series, how irrelevant she was. This wasn't only a problem with Elena. Almost all the characters except Ao Eureka and Renton were just there, floating around.

These are all pretty big writing issues. It's easy to see Aikawa didn't know what the hell he was doing.
Being isolated from the main story at large doesn't make you meaningless. I didn't think it made her meaningless. I just think it made her realistic.

Maybe it would've been nice if Elena had more of an effect but would I call it a big issue? It's not like Elena dominated the story anyway so even it it were a problem, it wouldn't be a big one. I think saying Aikawa didn't know what he was doing is a bit of an exaggeration.
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Old 2012-11-22, 16:16   Link #2769
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Originally Posted by Xagzan View Post
That's the problem. We don't get anything else. So we find out who Elena is. And that's it. Nothing changes. She doesn't change (aside from maybe she won't go on incoherent rants anymore, but she's still the same one note otaku girl), Ao doesn't change, Fleur doesn't change, the plot certainly doesn't change. It has no impact, so how in the world am I supposed to care about it? I definitely didn't care about finding out who she was for Elena's own sake, aside from faint curiosity about whether it would give her depth; that would've required me being previously invested in her character in the first place. The only reason I had any interest in this plot thread was to see how it would affect things I did care about, like Ao, or Fleur, or even more so, Eureka and the E7 world.

So then we get to the reveal, and, ok, she's not Ao's sister, she's not Renton and Eureka's daughter, that's fine. That was just one possibility I was anticipating among countless others I hadn't even considered. But she wasn't just not any of those things. She was nothing. And I don't mean she was a nobody: being simply some random girl of no blood relation to Ao would've been just dandy, if done right. No, I mean nothing. Her true identity had no relevance to anyone else's goals, their backgrounds, or even really their subsequent actions or how the story got resolved. The only thing you could maybe say was changed by this plot thread was Elena herself, and even there, hardly at all.

So in the end, we were led along with entire episodes hinting at something--we didn't know what, but something--anything more to the mystery they were foisting on us. But there wasn't. It's fine to subvert your audience's expectations, but whatever it is you eventually present to them, whether they expected it or not, should at least make some kind of splash. Otherwise you just wasted valuable time that should've been devoted to something actually important to the show.
Holy crap Xagzan, you are just amazing!
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Old 2012-11-22, 16:20   Link #2770
Kazu-kun
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You must've missed my edit. I said I think it contributed in making a rather relatable atmosphere. Being isolated from the main story at large doesn't make you meaningless. I didn't think it made her meaningless. I just think it made her realistic.
I don't think it made her realistic at all, but even if it did, that doesn't make her relevant. An isolated character is pretty much irrelevant unless that isolation itself has an impact on the plot, which isn't the case here.
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Old 2012-11-22, 16:23   Link #2771
Reckoner
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Well finally got to see the finale. This might honestly be the worst anime sequel I have ever seen (Assuming the original was good). This was worse than Last Exile Fam.

Truth's character is the worst villain of the year.
Naru is the worst childhood friend of the year.
Elena is the worst character of the year.

The plot just ended up retroactively smearing the character development and conclusion of the original series. It also made absolutely no fucking sense at several points throughout.

Several subplots were dropped or concluded in hackneyed fashion.

Show gets a 2/10. I could have written a better fanfiction than this myself. Not even joking.

Lets forget this piece of crap even exists.
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Old 2012-11-22, 16:35   Link #2772
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...

@Reckoner, year pretty much what you said, but the original was waay better, I'm rewatching the Original DVDs that I bought from many years ago and ffs its awesome, I mean the first line in the first episode is a line by stoner that pretyt much goes along the lines of: Characters in stories are important, give them the purpose and care they need etc etc. . .<---- I was like wow, it's like who ever wrote this line was able to see into the future and was making a direct scolding to the guys who wrote and directed AO (the actual quote is better than what I remember but I cant be assed to go and find it again lol)

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Originally Posted by Kaioshin Sama View Post
Yeah but Steins:Gate actually used it's time travel mechanic to it's advantage and it played a key point in developing pretty much every character. I liked the time travel mechanic there even if it could be confusing at times. Here it just often led to dropped plot points.

Subversion didn't really work to Eureka Seven's advantage and I think created a lot of it's issues with making sense and having well developed characters. You can't just have a show where you leave the viewer in the dark for so long and then go, "okay this is how things are...no actually they're this way"....actually no really they are the first way only a little different.....actually none of that matters cause for serious real they're actually this way" cause eventually you're just going to make them stop taking things at face value. It felt like this show was always changing the rules and characterizations of some of the characters as they went along, specifically Elena, Truth and Naru who by the end I felt no attachment or intrigue from whatsoever because in particular they could apparently be anything the plot wanted them to at any point.

Yeah Naru, was really disappointing, like REALLY I had forgotten about her actually till you brought her back up, pretty much during the course of the show I WOULD forget about her too untill she would appear and do something stupid/against her established character. . .each new time the established her character the last time she showed up, and just seemed to take up space in the show (like the whoel elena thing) PLUS those God Damn elf ears and moomooshit thing she was wearing wtf. and even then those elf ears were fake WTF!!! I thoguht she was turning into a coralian/secret whatever thing, and then the director. Writter is like "naaaaaah we were just trolling you"

I litterally yelled WTF out loud when that happened. . . . then promplty forgot about her un till the next time. BUT AT LEAST the found a way to write fer out of the story during the last episode. so that was its saving grace, that makes this series a 1/10 instead of a -10201201391031930fuckyou/10 lol

Naru was just a failed character. . . .then again so was truth. . .elena. . .the the okinawan stooges, the stupid military guy who truth used, and then was promptly thrown away by the writer (they had him in the last eps for some reason and I didnt know wtf gazelle was yelling at him about. . .that was just dumb and didnt need to be there) god this show was bad...I could go on for months about all the stupid shit here, especially the whole okinawan situation, Since I actually know about this, (I'm living in Japan and know a few people who just wont stfu about it at work) I'm suprised this b.s. about okinawa in the show that is just riduculous didnt make every one cringe is beyond me. . .but then again, no one I know really watches/reads anime outside of one piece/shingeki no kyojin. . .so that's probably why. And guessing by what I've heard of the BD sales the hardcore otakyu people didnt either.

but man, that whole okinawa plot thread would be as ridiculous a comparison to that Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter movie. Completely ridiculous.

fleur. . .(almost...she was ..just okay untill the last ep when they decided to give her the finger along with renton and eureka)
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Old 2012-11-22, 16:37   Link #2773
Haak
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Originally Posted by Kazu-kun View Post
I don't think it made her realistic at all, but even if it did, that doesn't make her relevant. An isolated character is pretty much irrelevant unless that isolation itself has an impact on the plot, which isn't the case here.
I think it had its impact in making the story more down to earth.
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Old 2012-11-22, 16:40   Link #2774
Kazu-kun
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I think it had its impact in making the story more down to earth.
But that's not the same as having an impact on the plot so my point stands.
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Old 2012-11-22, 16:44   Link #2775
Haak
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No it's definitely not the same...

Whether it's better or worse however...

Well evidently your point does stand for yourself.

But I don't think it was time wasting. I just think it spent it's time on something you didn't prefer.
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Old 2012-11-22, 17:59   Link #2776
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Wow this anime was a giant mess! I'm really disappointed in this anime.
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Old 2012-11-22, 18:25   Link #2777
lann
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O__O

Ive just watched the final episode. I plan on watching it again, but it seems like Bones have obeyed by my rules on having a sequel yet not messing with the PoP ending, right down to this DVD cover

The only thing i need to recheck up on is if whether Eureka and Renton CAN have kids in their future, in areas of lower trapper i.e. earths surface rather than the scub coral continents.
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Old 2012-11-22, 18:32   Link #2778
Xagzan
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Originally Posted by Haak View Post
I think the idea is that sometimes things you expect to have an affect turn out to not lead to anything at all. Like I said, Eureka seven Ao was generally going for anticlimactic stuff and the things they made climactic were the unconventional things instead.
The thing about the anti-climax is, it's really hit or miss. On this matter I agree with tvtropes' assessment, "because if the audience is getting set up for a climax, they expect it to be followed through on. Therefore, except for a few rare occasions, an anticlimax should only be used for humorous purposes..."

Take wikipedia's example of an anti-climax, War of the Worlds. In the end, the big, bad, earth destroying aliens are defeated by a friggin cold. Highly anti-climactic. But you know what? In this instance, it works. It works and people like it because it impacts the story and characters. Hell, it impacts them in the biggest way possible -- it brings an end to the antagonists. An anti-climax doesn't get any more relevant than that.

In Elena's case, it doesn't work as well, because it has no bearing on anything, for reasons I already discussed.

Quote:
And I did care about it for Elena's sake because i was already invested in her character. It did, in fact, give her some actual depth.
Quote:
Plus it greatly expanded upon Elena's character which was more than enough for me.
Please tell me how? Not snarky, legitimately confused as to what depth you saw, particularly since we barely see her at all after this moment.

Quote:
Maybe it would've been nice if Elena had more of an effect but would I call it a big issue?
She was one of the three closest people to our protagonist on the show. She had entire episodes dedicated to creating mystery about her past. Yeah, I'd say that makes it a pretty big issue, when such a promoted character makes so little impact.

Kazu-kun's already echoed the rest of my sentiments on most of this.

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Holy crap Xagzan, you are just amazing!
Well thank you

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Originally Posted by Reckoner View Post
The plot just ended up retroactively smearing the character development and conclusion of the original series. It also made absolutely no fucking sense at several points throughout.
O/T, but I've been watching the redlettermedia review of Star Wars Episode 1, appropriately, and can't help but read this in Plinkett's voice
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Old 2012-11-22, 18:48   Link #2779
Joe_fh
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Originally Posted by Xagzan View Post
That's the problem. We don't get anything else. So we find out who Elena is. And that's it. Nothing changes. She doesn't change (aside from maybe she won't go on incoherent rants anymore, but she's still the same one note otaku girl), Ao doesn't change, Fleur doesn't change, the plot certainly doesn't change. It has no impact, so how in the world am I supposed to care about it? I definitely didn't care about finding out who she was for Elena's own sake, aside from faint curiosity about whether it would give her depth; that would've required me being previously invested in her character in the first place. The only reason I had any interest in this plot thread was to see how it would affect things I did care about, like Ao, or Fleur, or even more so, Eureka and the E7 world.

So then we get to the reveal, and, ok, she's not Ao's sister, she's not Renton and Eureka's daughter, that's fine. That was just one possibility I was anticipating among countless others I hadn't even considered. But she wasn't just not any of those things. She was nothing. And I don't mean she was a nobody: being simply some random girl of no blood relation to Ao would've been just dandy, if done right. No, I mean nothing. Her true identity had no relevance to anyone else's goals, their backgrounds, or even really their subsequent actions or how the story got resolved. The only thing you could maybe say was changed by this plot thread was Elena herself, and even there, hardly at all.

So in the end, we were led along with entire episodes hinting at something--we didn't know what, but something--anything more to the mystery they were foisting on us. But there wasn't. It's fine to subvert your audience's expectations, but whatever it is you eventually present to them, whether they expected it or not, should at least make some kind of splash. Otherwise you just wasted valuable time that should've been devoted to something actually important to the show.
I understand what you're saying and agree about a lot of points in general.

But see, when something is revealed it doesn't really have to make a big splash on everything else. It's true they didn't really have time to expand on the aftermath of it since, well since it ended and a lot of other things had to happen as well. But the whole time they were hinting at something bigger. She always thought she was something more interesting - an existence that was as far attached to this world as the Secrets and the Scub. She thought that and we went along with her. But it turned out she wan't any of that - she was a regular human just like everyone else. This means for her everything changed. You can't say that didn't have any impact on her.

It's probably a good time to point out that not all characters and their development impact the story in a big way (in general). In this case that was even clearly pointed out - that she wasn't anyone special and thus could not make any significant impact on anything. She was basically the human character of the show - the one that expects to be big and special but ends up being insignificant. That's what we humans usually do. There were a lot of these "human nature" and "that's what people do" things in this show to be honest.

All that aside it introduced one more thing, which again wasn't developed because it came way too late for there to be time for it. I mentioned it before but - Eureka went back into this world's past and managed to bring a human back from there.
There are a lot of things that could happen from this point on. But they didn't because it's over - if it was as long as the original it would have probably developed better since it would expand on a lot of things.
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Old 2012-11-22, 19:14   Link #2780
KleenexGhost
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Well to be fair. Ao wanted to make things right and he did make things right. I pretty much agree with the Random Curiosty review.
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