(L) Yumekui Merry (Yume Kui Merry)

[BBOvenGuy]

Hey, I just said those were the rules. I didn't say they were good rules or that this show did them especially well.

But moving on... I finally saw the final episode yesterday, and... well, it wasn't great, but I didn't think it was the horror-fest that some people have made it out to be. The entire series reminds me of Shakugan no Shana, and the final episode was no exception. And yet people are howling about this show when it seemed like everyone raved about Shana. So what's the difference between the two?

And by the way, I'm not trying to be a troll or start a flame war or anything by asking that. I'm an author, and I'm asking out of professional curiosity.

[outerelf]

Originally Posted by BBOvenGuy

Hey, I just said those were the rules. I didn't say they were good rules or that this show did them especially well.

But moving on... I finally saw the final episode yesterday, and... well, it wasn't great, but I didn't think it was the horror-fest that some people have made it out to be. The entire series reminds me of Shakugan no Shana, and the final episode was no exception. And yet people are howling about this show when it seemed like everyone raved about Shana. So what's the difference between the two?

And by the way, I'm not trying to be a troll or start a flame war or anything by asking that. I'm an author, and I'm asking out of professional curiosity.

Well, personally, I think that the main villian in this series kinda came out of nowhere, was really way too powerful, and then was defeated so... well... stupidly. The sacrifices of the other characters up to that point were for nothing.

I could believe it if the other attacks had at least hurt her a little, but done in this way the ending was truly weak and unsatisfying. I myself have never watched Shana, so I can't compare unfortunately.

[orion]

Originally Posted by kitten320

The problem here is that everyone put everything into it and achieved nothing while two mains just used standard main hero luck. Story wouldn't be ruined if mains were not the ones to finish things off, would leave them place to improve and make other characters meaningful. Because basicly side cast wasn't even needed there.

What makes story good is when character roles are equelly divided and not when main hero has everything.

But the hero does have everything. Good looks, the girl, "powers". Happens in more anime than this one.

Index: lots of battles but in the end, Touma gives speech and finishes off the main bad guy.

Merry: big end battle, Merry and Engi finishes off bad guy. Yumeji gives speech.

Dog Days: Hero comes in and in tag team fashion ends a squirmish. He even gets to be paired with the princess in the OP and ED.

The last fight wasn't bad at all. Merry got her mojo back. Yumeji realized something about the dreamworld and used it to his advantage. Just pretend that Yumeji is Touma without the falcon punch. That was given to Merry.

[Malkuth]

I really miss the point to inject all this original material, it sucked AND was pointless, the moment they had manga material to work with, and at least the intention to animate it... sometimes these producers are so incompetent.

Anyway, another thing, I loved both the visuals and audio, the BGM was very fitting for the atmosphere they intended to create, and created. I really don't see the point to complain about the lack of action and sleepy music, this was not intended as an action show.

Originally Posted by kyouray

Air trombone ftw.

I was also puzzled... has anyone come up with a theory

Originally Posted by BBOvenGuy

Because those are the rules. Why was Captain Kirk always the one to outsmart the cosmic computer? Why was Sherlock Holmes always the one who put all the clues together? Why was Odysseus the only one on his ship to make it back from Troy? Because they're the heroes, and that's what heroes do. If they weren't, we would have been watching a story about someone else in the first place.

OR because the writers of the said examples suck

[numb3rs]

Originally Posted by kitten320

1. The whole bullet happened to be a waste of time, it did nothing. To be completly useless when it was so well planned out? WTF?!

That pissed me off. Help someone? so Leon died for nothing? i noticed when Merry hit Mistelteinn the mentioned somthing about his mark?
my guess is that it saved parade.

[serenade_beta]

Originally Posted by Malkuth

I was also puzzled... has anyone come up with a theory

She went crazy?

[kitten320]

Originally Posted by orion

But the hero does have everything. Good looks, the girl, "powers". Happens in more anime than this one.

Index: lots of battles but in the end, Touma gives speech and finishes off the main bad guy.

Merry: big end battle, Merry and Engi finishes off bad guy. Yumeji gives speech.

Dog Days: Hero comes in and in tag team fashion ends a squirmish. He even gets to be paired with the princess in the OP and ED.

The last fight wasn't bad at all. Merry got her mojo back. Yumeji realized something about the dreamworld and used it to his advantage. Just pretend that Yumeji is Touma without the falcon punch. That was given to Merry.

Who said that I approve Touma? He is long time on my hate list as many other main characters.

In Dog Days he was kind of suppoused to be the Hero, it was the main purpose why he even appeared. But the show just started so will see.

The best hero so far was Edward Elric, he was greatly balanced and everyone in the series had their moment to shine.

Originally Posted by numb3rs

That pissed me off. Help someone? so Leon died for nothing? i noticed when Merry hit Mistelteinn the mentioned somthing about his mark?
my guess is that it saved parade.

Yeh...
Actually I don't find it to be usefil back then either, both Merry and Yumeji went on rampage so they would kick Misteltine anyway -_-

[orion]

Originally Posted by kitten320

Who said that I approve Touma? He is long time on my hate list as many other main characters.

In Dog Days he was kind of suppoused to be the Hero, it was the main purpose why he even appeared. But the show just started so will see.

The best hero so far was Edward Elric, he was greatly balanced and everyone in the series had their moment to shine.

And... FMA formula is rarely repeated. Even in One Piece Luffy usually beats the crap out of the main bad guy in the end.

[kitten320]

That's why FMA is one of the best shows.
I don't watch One Piece and that gives me even more reasons not to start it.

[Kafriel]

Originally Posted by serenade_beta

She went crazy?

She reanimated her dream of wanting to be the best trombone player in the world and beliiiieved in it, like a certain Yumeji ok yeah, this part was so random I have no idea wtf the writers want to convey with it.

[Tempester]

I'm a little late to the party for the last episode of Yumekui Merry. At this point I can't help but rant a bit about it.

Oh god. With the steady onslaught of anime-original blandness that was the previous few episodes, I was prepared for a bad and corny ending, but nothing like this revolting abortion of a conclusion.

The first few minutes were more like my expectations for the whole episode. Chizuru and Lestion go through with their plan, except using themselves as the final sacrifice. I thought Lestion needed 2 more dead dream demons to complete his bullet? And then they forget that and treat Chizuru's dream as good enough? I thought a dream demon was synonymous and unremovable from a human's dreams? That was stupid, but I was prepared for stupid seeing how this was heading for a filler ending anyway.

But nothing in this world could have prepared me to experience the scripting horror of what followed. Misteltine DIDN'T DIE. Heck, she even said it HARDLY HURT HER AT ALL. Look, I love strong villains who pummel and outsmart the heroes in fiction, but this was not how you write a villain! When the balance between evil and good gets this absurdly one-sided and the fight becomes completely unfair, the only thing that can save the heroes is a deus ex machina. This part was simply begging to be solved with a deus ex machina, which is exactly what we got. And one terribly develop butt-pull it was. With absolutely no buildup, Yumeji suddenly finds out that since he's in a dream, he can use his imaaaaaaagination to manipulate anything with the POWER OF DREAMS! Never mind that he's actually in Yui's dream and not his own. Never mind that there was no hinting or development that logically could lead to this revelation previously in the story. Now he can (almost) kick Misteltine's butt by believing in himself! Oh, and because Yui believed in herself and her air trombone, Engi is healed as well! Hip hip hooray! And Merry, after emerging from the Flower of Forced Emotional Conflict, believes in herself now as well, so she can magically hit Misteltine! I don't care if a similar development happened in the manga, because if it did it was probably much better introduced than what happened here.

Just who the heck was responsible for writing this rubbish? How in the world did this manga adaptation start off so good and then utterly rape its source material and destroy any chance of a decent second season? With 3 volumes of source material available, I'm sure they could have followed the manga faithfully and left us off on a hanging thread with a chance for a second season. Why follow this path? WHAT ADVANTAGE did they think they would have had by inserting this horrible ending?

Apparently, the staff and cast didn't like the direction of the ending either. Yui's seiyuu sounded hilariously bad with her "DAMEEEEEE." The animation was wonky and looked really bad in general.

When I saw the first few episodes of Yumekui Merry, the excellent direction, characters and animation made me expect to give the series a 7/10. After the original material started rearing its ugly head, I was thinking I should decrease it to 6/10 or even 5/10 if the ending was bad enough. But after this awful, AWFUL ending, I have no choice but to rate the whole series as

4/10,

which doesn't make the series bad, but more mediocre than anything. As much as I hated the ending, I can't ignore the utterly gorgeous stylistic brilliance of the first half of the anime. And admittedly, I would have never heard about the manga had this anime never been made.

Oh, turns out this show with the crud ending is licensed. That sucks, I'd rather see the manga on US shelves then the anime, so hopefully that gets licensed as well.

On the bright side, I love how "power_of_dreams!" is in the tags. I hope nobody removes it, as it's a very appropriate warning for what the Yumekui Merry anime collapses into.

[Guido]

Tempester, right now I'm the most recent guy who joined very late the party at this thread, although I won't be the last.

Originally Posted by Tempester

But nothing in this world could have prepared me to experience the scripting horror of what followed. Misteltine DIDN'T DIE. Heck, she even said it HARDLY HURT HER AT ALL. Look, I love strong villains who pummel and outsmart the heroes in fiction, but this was not how you write a villain! When the balance between evil and good gets this absurdly one-sided and the fight becomes completely unfair, the only thing that can save the heroes is a deus ex machina. This part was simply begging to be solved with a deus ex machina, which is exactly what we got. And one terribly develop butt-pull it was. With absolutely no buildup, Yumeji suddenly finds out that since he's in a dream, he can use his imaaaaaaagination to manipulate anything with the POWER OF DREAMS! Never mind that he's actually in Yui's dream and not his own. Never mind that there was no hinting or development that logically could lead to this revelation previously in the story. Now he can (almost) kick Misteltine's butt by believing in himself! Oh, and because Yui believed in herself and her air trombone, Engi is healed as well! Hip hip hooray! And Merry, after emerging from the Flower of Forced Emotional Conflict, believes in herself now as well, so she can magically hit Misteltine! I don't care if a similar development happened in the manga, because if it did it was probably much better introduced than what happened here.

Just who the heck was responsible for writing this rubbish? How in the world did this manga adaptation start off so good and then utterly rape its source material and destroy any chance of a decent second season? With 3 volumes of source material available, I'm sure they could have followed the manga faithfully and left us off on a hanging thread with a chance for a second season. Why follow this path? WHAT ADVANTAGE did they think they would have had by inserting this horrible ending?

I feel very happy to find out another person who shares similar views like mine. To tell the truth, never did I know about Yumekui Merry until I looked to it at Divine's Randomc.Net blog for the list of shows airing for the January to March 2011 season.

I joined in the ride because I got interested due that SHAFT was behind the production values for this series.

I have to be honest that the child within me likes this type of shows which feature as well sugary themes like "power of dreams", because I feel it delivers some leverage and alleviation to the glum and tragic atmosphere for this type of shows.

However, I do understand your feelings for the following that you have already stated, which I quoted: Yumekui Merry anime should have dealt more on the manga material and kept focused mainly on the relationships between Merry and Yumeji, as well as Engi and Yui, and later on focusing on the other secondary characters which delivered some useful knowledge about what's really happening in the plot, for example, getting to see more of Chaser John Doe.

The only redeeming point for the main villainess, Mistletain, was that the writers made no attempts at humanizing her. Gosh! I really hate when they pull that stupid twist or literary device on a villain that's already been very established for most of the story that has no redemption or hope. Outside of that, she's no different from the anime adaptation of the following villains: Aeon, Chrono Crusade; Hao Asakura, Shaman King; Naraku, InuYasha; etc.
It's like you posted, it becomes annoying and vexxing when the villains are developed so god-insanely strong to the point that the tide of conflict and struggling gets meaningless because it's always one-sided in favor of the villains.

This stupid device is also recurrent and trendy among TOEI's magic-girl shows like the recent Pretty Cure shows, just it's done the opposite: "The heroines are ridiculously, insanely strong and in most cases turn the tide of the battle one-sidedly to their favor and without breaking sweat." It purges me to no end.

As well, that in those type of latter shows mentioned the DEUS EX-MACHINA is not only recurrent but the law to happen as well, so as to resolve the conflict in the most happy tone for the heroines.

Although, I got to admit that the DEUS EX MACHINA pulled out at the climax of this show's last episode did not bother me much. What pissed the most were: 1) Mistletain's rampage with her one-sided, insane strength and 2) the maniac & psycho teacher that not only fooled me in the first episodes with his nice guy facade but possessed zero personality traits once he revealed his ugly colors; I always imagined the character Tsunashi Takuto from the anime STAR DRIVER, breaking into this show's universe and pummeling the maniac teacher with his trademark punch on the face so as to shut him up.

Oh, well! This anime has been the fourth title finished for the winter 2011 season.

[tyciol]

Is the 'dream eater' a similar concept to vampire princess miyu who would feed on them in an endless dream sleep?

[Shuugo!]

It might be, but not in this show. Merry finishes dreams and ends it therefore freeing the victim from the dream, which is the complete opposite of trapping someone into an endless dream and feeding off of them.

[Shadow5YA]

This show isn't exactly helping my low faith in JCStaff to adapt a series decently to the very end.