Quote:
Originally Posted by zarqu
Any cyberpunk/dystopia show is more original and rare than any romance/school/harem VN adaptation. I can't say it's simply genre bias at this point in time.
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It's certainly rarer in anime, but all that would means to me is that a familiar idea gets an anime treatment. I'd file that under "execution".
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As for this quote:
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Triple_R
You really think that all narrative ideas are completely equal, and that none have more inherent potential than others?
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You'll have to elaborate, here. "Potential" to do what? There's no such thing as un-directed potential. And there's the catch, too.
Some shows have an "emotional" core, and the narrative is an excuse to deliver a certain set of emotion. Something that's not very interesting can still have an impact, and such shows often become part of my favourites. Perfect examples are
Kimi ni Todoke and
Usagi Drop. They're part of my favourites, but it's
all execution. (
Kimi ni Todoke is interesting in that respect, since IMO that masterpiece status only applies to the first season [and seeing flashbacks to the first season in the second one makes that clear to me].)
That's the thing: you need to avoid cliché (i.e. a trope you're so used to seeing that it no longer triggers it's core). But when it comes to emotional shows and intellectual shows, there's a difference to where you look for clichés. If the main draw is intellectual, you'll look for cliché in the concept. That's because you want to think things through. Narrative potential matters more, here, because you want to be challenged in some way. You want to think things through.
Emotional shows, on the other hand, often rely on re-affirming narrative cliché in the first place. But to do so, they can't resort to clichés in the execution. Because if they do, you don't feel it. I watch
Kimi ni Todoke and remember why I'm watching romance in the first place. It's probably the safest show on earth, and I love it to pieces for it. I doubt you can inject intellectual depth into
Kimi ni Todoke without hurting that core.
Instead of re-affirming narrative clichés, you can subvert them.
Madoka relies on that subversion for many of its intellectual effects (and in the end it re-affirms the emotional core, but only after you've been thrown off for a while).
Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun, I think, is also a show that subverts genre clichés, but for comedy rather than intellect. However, there's a serious side to the show, too. The show has gotten much flac for the notorious rape threat (and in turn for affirming shoujo tropes, such as the "forceful kiss"), but I think that people have been talking about this, because the show upstages these tropes. For example, there's the standard scene with delinquent protagonist X, where "his future girl" gets abducted. She's usually tied up, and the bad guys threaten to abuse her sexually, but hero shows up and saves her. Variants galore. Here?
Our heroine is abducted by the bullies, but she's not tied up. In fact, it takes her a while to realise that she's been abducted, and who those guys are. She asks if she can study, and they allow it. Up to here, it's played for comedy, complete with two girls fawning over how cute she is. But then Hero appears, in a rage, and "rescues" her. She tries to intervene, and Hero hurts her in the process. The scene is pretty brutal for the genre. You see pretty realistic nosebleed (two drops, but they're animated in detail). The body language and everything that follows is quite serious. She has enough and tells him she can't give him what we wants, so he should just leave her alone. He sulks and goes away. Never even apologises for hitting her.
And yet the show
is a shoujo romance. They're playing it for all the usual awww-moments; it's just that they put the abusive nature of (many) male shoujo protagonists on the plate, and empower the female lead more.
There's a lot of potential in that sort of subversion; no idea whether it's going to be exploited.
Psycho Pass has more narrative discipline, but that's because the emphasis is on story. So far, the story has started in medias res, and then expanded the setting. They've also foreshadowed the main narrative conflict, but they have yet to introduce it. It's fairly conventional for the genre, and Gen fits fairly well into the groove.
The shows are simply too different for easy comparison, and - yes - I do think it's mostly about preference whether you pick one or the other.