(L) Kotetsujo no Kabaneri (Knocking on the Walls of the Armored Fortress)

[BoyTitan]

Originally Posted by wissenschaft

Errr, it was explained in the show. In one of the episodes, Biba was asking a guy he captured about who betrayed him and the prisoner said the shogun. So it seemed clear to me Biba was made a scapegoat and hes out for revenge now. Not sure why everyone else here didn't come to the same conclusion. Did the show really need to spell that out for us? I guess so....

The negativity for this show is rather shocking to me. I'd thought this would be more popular but what do I know. Anime fans confuse me.

This is exactly what I was saying. Like exactly.

[Blonto]

Originally Posted by karice67

My point has always been that the anime screenwriter is almost never the showrunner, so why in the world does everyone blame them for the general plot, or the characters' personalities and their character arcs, which are aspects of a show typically driven by the creator/showrunner?

But I said that the same rule applies to western animated shows, at least comparable ones. The western screenwriters are not the ones who make the big decisions about characters or plot, they are there to write a screenplay based on the guidelines. That doesn't mean that they don't provide ideas and that you can't credit them with a single thing (a lot of joint creative efforts aren't as clear-cut and separate as people imagine), but they're not the ones who call the shots.
As I said, the creators behind The Last Airbender barely wrote any of the episodes (even though people love to credit them with pretty much the whole series) because, as they themselves said, they simply didn't have the time. They were the showrunners, not script writers and they are NOT credited for writing most of the episodes. The same thing applies to other animated series whose production I was interested in (Green Lantern and Young Justice). It was different for Korra, where due to the initial smaller number of episodes and bigger ego they did do all of the writing themselves, at least for season one, and it not only ended up being terrible, it's like it tried to screw up everything the original did well. I dare say it's due to the lack of talent beside them. Far from the first time such a thing has happened coughStarWarsprequelscough. People love to underestimate everyone's contribution besides the big guy's'.

[karice67]

Originally Posted by Blonto

As I said, the creators behind The Last Airbender barely wrote any of the episodes (even though people love to credit them with pretty much the whole series) because, as they themselves said, they simply didn't have the time. They were the showrunners, not script writers and they are NOT credited for writing most of the episodes. The same thing applies to other animated series whose production I was interested in (Green Lantern and Young Justice). It was different for Korra, where due to the initial smaller number of episodes and bigger ego they did do all of the writing themselves, at least for season one, and it not only ended up being terrible, it's like it tried to screw up everything the original did well. I dare say it's due to the lack of talent beside them. Far from the first time such a thing has happened coughStarWarsprequelscough. People love to underestimate everyone's contribution besides the big guy's'.

It sounds like we're talking completely past each other, partly because you took my post replying to Cicili completely out of context. Well, that, or you still don't get the writing process, and who's involved where.

Spoiler for Screenwriting for US TV, with some reference to Korra:

For US TV shows in particular, people praise the showrunners because they're talking about the ENTIRE story being good (or bad). So many ideas are discussed, tried, discarded or taken up in the course of writing a show that showrunners are quite literally the people who have control over its quality.

Adding more script writers to the writer's room means more creativity, i.e. more ideas to play with, which is one reason you might have thought Korra's first season was worse than its subsequent ones (I wouldn't know: I haven't seen it).

But the showrunners and all the writers have so many discussions over each episode's script/screenplay (as many as there are drafts) that you won't know where a particular idea, or scene, or even a particular line came from unless someone tells you. Honestly, please go and read Michael DiMartino's posts about it, because you clearly haven't.

And back to Kabaneri:

Go back to the post I was responding to:

Originally Posted by Cicili

But let's just say that for me, the show just got more and more dumb. It's probably still making sense. But i just see it now as a standard action flick which requires me to turn off my brain sometimes to fully enjoy.
I guess this is what i should have expected from the guy who wrote Code Geass R2, Guilty Crown, Valvrave or is it Cross Ange?

Tell me, given that Cicili was referring to the broad, overarching story/plot/developments, is it the hand of the showrunner we're meant to be talking about here, or the hand of the scriptwriter?

I don't see anything in Cicili's post that I can be crediting to the scriptwriter in particular. Do you?

If you want to actually talk about what a single writer contributed, then you have to find someone who tells you exactly what they contributed, even for the particular script they are credited with. So if you want to talk about what Okouchi himself did, go and find out what he actually did. If you want to keep blaming him for 'how dumb' the story is, then find something that proves that he is the showrunner.

If you can't do that, or can't be bothered, stop blaming Okouchi for the story/character arcs and just leave it as "the writers."

[Blonto]

Originally Posted by karice67

For US TV shows in particular, people praise the showrunners because they're talking about the ENTIRE story being good (or bad). So many ideas are discussed, tried, discarded or taken up in the course of writing a show that showrunners are quite literally the people who have control over its quality.

The showrunners plan the story, but a good story is so much more than just some guidelines for the writers to work off of. The showrunners can be praised for good judgement, not for every single idea in the show. It's pretty common that when they get a chance to do everything themselves, that they make garbage.
Also, I have read DiMartino's posts. You don't seem to realize though that Korra's writing where the showrunners are also the screenwriters is not the norm for these types of Western animated shows and in fact it's not how its predecessor was made.
If certain stories consistently have one writer's dirty fingerprints all over them, it's very possible that their suggestions got past the director. As I said, these things usually aren't as simple as "showrunner provides 100% of ideas, screenwriters and everyone else only translates them to script". Do not underestimate the input of everyone besides the guys in charge. Expanding ideas into a script is not like translating something from one language to another. If you give two writers, one bad and another good, the same guidelines, you can get a pretty good script from one of them and a really forced and unconvincing script from the other. Add to that a non-critical director and you're sure to have a bad result. The mentioned writer's anime all have the same stench around them, I find it hard to believe they had nothing to do with it.

I will agree however that people often mistakenly think that the writers control the story, which isn't really the case. Their job isn't necessarily to think of a story, it's to make a script for a story. I think the confusion comes from the movies where the writer writes a screenplay and the director makes a movie based on it, but this isn't exactly how it goes for series.

[Xander]

Originally Posted by Blonto

The mentioned writer's anime all have the same stench around them, I find it hard to believe they had nothing to do with it.

If you mean this...

Originally Posted by Cicili

I guess this is what i should have expected from the guy who wrote Code Geass R2, Guilty Crown, Valvrave or is it Cross Ange?

...that's not exactly a complete assessment. One, the guy had absolutely nothing to do with Cross Ange. Never worked on that show. Two, he was only an assistant writer on Guilty Crown. The vast majority of the work was handled by other writers there. And three, we should try to take a look at said person's entire career before narrowly defining responsibilities. He wrote both seasons of Code Geass, not only R2, which included more variety in terms of content and quality, as well as other shows like Planetes, Shigofumi, Azumanga Daioh and Overman King Gainer, among others, plus a few movies like Brave Story and Fuse. He did a nice episode of Space Dandy too, not that long ago. With a more comprehensive overview, the picture is more complicated than it seems.

The same writers are capable of producing both better and worse scripts under different working conditions and also depending on the nature of each project. If you're asked to create something with a different ultimate goal, the results won't always be the same. That is why I would have to agree with karice67. Unless we know which good or bad ideas came from a given person, such as the writer, the director, other staff writers or anyone else, there's not much of a point. Even saying "I could write something better" is misleading, because you're not part of that production environment and have the luxury of a much easier and independent creative process.

[karice67]

Originally Posted by Blonto

You don't seem to realize though that Korra's writing where the showrunners are also the screenwriters is not the norm for these types of Western animated shows and in fact it's not how its predecessor was made.

LOLOLOL. This tells me all I need to know about your (mis)understandings about the screenwriting process both in Avatar: TLA and the Western TV industry.

And the rest of your post betrays your misunderstandings of what screenwriting actually involves, and of the writing process from concepts (breaking the story) through to the final draft scripts of a particular episode and the final product that appears on screen. Both in the US and in the Japanese anime industry. Hence, I don't believe you've read DiMartino's posts. If you say you have, then you seriously need to read them again.

Neither of these is relevant here in this thread, though, so I'm dropping this. I'd return to what I was saying about Kabaneri, but it's also clear that you haven't actually been following the point I was trying to make, as Xander's post points out. But whatever.

[endarion88]

watching ep 11, 4 minutes and i already want to skip the episode

edit finished watching

what can i say

Spoiler for spoiler:

mumei was at least only 99% useless till the end instead fo 100%, ikoma spent almost all the episode in emo mode but at least his final form was cool

[AB079]

Was Kabaneri intended to be a comedy? because this episode I lauged so hard.

Well, the episode itself was a huge load of asspulls, powerups, Mumei being useless again, Biba being the edgelord master with that pretentious plan and Ikoma screaming countless times while turn into Guts.

I don't know what the f**k is happening with the series, how something with a huge amount of potential can go straight into the GC bullshit and end on being just a big amount of nice music and animation. I'm not surprised by the fact that Kabaneri is going down in the rankings at high speed.

Now time to wait for the ones who still defend this even when the writting of the story is literally garbage at this point.

[larethian]

Spoiler for ep 11 spoiler:

Ikoma gets a final form wow. At least he looks really badass now.

[darkchibi07]

This is the best 7 episode TV series in the Spring season!

Good lord, this 2nd arc shouldn't even EXIST.

[foxbox360]

Was this series direct by the same guy who did guilty crown ?

[Kakurin]

Originally Posted by foxbox360

Was this series direct by the same guy who did guilty crown ?

Yes, Araki.

[foxbox360]

Originally Posted by Kakurin-san

Yes, Araki.

Damn it I should of know.

[Kusaja]

Biba's a lost cause as a character and a villain. Arguably the same goes for the shogun too. But I think the episode was about as decent as you could expect at this point. There was a power-up, yes, but it's not even much of an "asspull" given what we literally saw just two weeks ago. In other words, the show isn't really doing anything surprising. It's definitely an improvement to see Ikoma realize (with Kurusu's help) what needs to be done and get some of that confidence back. They also pretty much telegraphed that at least Mumei will most likely be saved, one way or another.

[foxbox360]

Going Ash William on Biba ass.

[bakato]

I called all of this. I know we're all pissed, but can we forgive this show just a little for Ikouma's new badass form?

[endarion88]

Originally Posted by bakato

I called all of this. I know we're all pissed, but can we forgive this show just a little for Ikouma's new badass form?

well forgive...endured till now, 1 episode left, might as well see the ending..

[Kazu-kun]

What a piece of trash this has become. It's such a shame, such a disappointment.

Oh well, just one more episode to go and I can finally forget about it and move on.

[endarion88]

Originally Posted by Kazu-kun

What a piece of trash this has become. It's such a shame, such a disappointment.

Oh well, just one more episode to go and I can finally forget about it and move on.

should be renamed

"the useless MCs of the trainwreck"

[Jan-Poo]

The last bastion of Japan and of what little remains of humanity is being raided by a crazy madman and his equally deranged followers, Mumei is being turned into Nue (a fact that the captive scientist points at as being very imminent), but Ikoma had something very important he needed to do before rushing there and save the day.

Spoiler for Extremely important:

Getting a haircut

Anyway did I miss something? Did they explain what the Shogun feared so much in Biba?