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Old 2017-04-12, 22:00   Link #81
nicky.
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I'm quite certain that "your conception of writing is beyond awful.". is a personal attack.
If you don't believe so, Tong, then that means you do not know the definition of 'personal attack'.. "lol" right back at you.

Oh believe me, I'd love a civil debate. On that note, is anybody able to explain to me why this episode 1 was "good" or perhaps "well-done"? I really want to hear something, but it appears nobody can.
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Old 2017-04-12, 22:14   Link #82
xeviouses
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Character Development centric-show huh? Like Grimgar, focus on the characters with slow,gradual reveals of the setting and lore. I like it I think.
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Old 2017-04-12, 22:35   Link #83
arkhangelsk
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Originally Posted by nicky. View Post
Oh believe me, I'd love a civil debate. On that note, is anybody able to explain to me why this episode 1 was "good" or perhaps "well-done"? I really want to hear something, but it appears nobody can.
I'll actually agree that the first episode was average - watchable and I'll be there for Episode 2 but not brilliant. The bigger point of contention is whether they didn't do enough to add setting.

I'll say they did OK. They managed to introduce the Protagonist and the Heroine and get in their basic personality vectors, as well as the proverbial Big-Sister character. It's not brilliant (character design is not Sukasuka's chosen decisive point for battle), but it serves.
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Old 2017-04-12, 22:44   Link #84
nicky.
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I appreciate the sensible conclusion you come to, ark. I too thought it was nothing more than average LN crap.

Regarding their personalities, yes it was very lackluster. If characters are not the author's strong suit, and he is aware, then why doesn't he try a different approach, like placing more importance on the world building, especially when considering the setting is so bizarre?
I imagine you don't have the answer to this question, which is fine; you don't know the guy. But that doesn't excuse him for terrible decisions.
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Old 2017-04-13, 01:30   Link #85
Dawnstorm
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Originally Posted by nicky. View Post
xrick, what exactly what disclosed about the setting? We saw virtually nothing but the town hub.
Yes, but what we saw made perfect setting sense, and there were "bits and pieces" hidden throughout the episode that you could easily miss. You're not going to get it all, but mostly you'll get enough to get a sense of setting, without having to dive deeply into it or get straightforward pieses of information.

Quote:
Not just visual aspects either, but the dynamic between the different "islands",
- We know the island has a number ("Island 2X" [I forgot the number; 27 or 29 I think]). Questions: What sort of culture simply numbers their islands? Do they have local names?

- We learn that this particular island is less friendly to "non-furries/scalies/feathers" than others from a short comment after the girl has drawn attention. Maybe it's smaller than the others? Maybe it has a smaller non-animal-like population than others?

Quote:
what makes them levitate,
True. We know nothing about that (if I haven't missed it).

Quote:
...or the struggles of life in such a place...
Before we even meet our first character, a pan falls onto the street, and some passerby shouts upwards. The living conditions are very crammed. Streets are narrow, and buildings are high. Space is, likely, scarce. That means that if a pan drops from somewhere that's dangerous. It probably also means a high population density, and we know that places with high population density often means that tempers flare more easily (for example, people tend to be more relaxed in the country than in big cities). When we go along, we see they build up high all the time, which reinforces that aspect. A lot of people on small little ground (which plays into such silly images as when our duo suprises a bathing frogman - it's a joke, but it makes perfect sense in terms of setting characterisation).

During the talk between our male main and his bounty hunter friend we learn that friend of his has become "third food". They're treasure hunters on the surface, and that's dangerous. It's also likely that, if you're human-looking, that's one of your only options to find work in the first place. Maybe people also organise expeditions to the ground (we later learn that there are two major factions: military and merchants; they might do that). So it's possible that they get resources from there, but it's both dangerous and - I suppose - there's a limit to what you can get in one trip.

Basically, the biggest danger to ever-day life on the islands, I'd expect, would come from your fellow citizens in some sort of conflict over scarce resources; certainly in the city.

Later, when the main character arrives at the site for "weapon storage", what you immediately notice is that there's a lot of space and very few people - compared to the city. Our main character is immediately attacked by one of the girls (which is likely not baseless propaganda, since if folks living in crammed conditions could very well be jealous, and intruders (violent or drunk or both) may not be that rare.

It also means that the project is very important. At the same time, the girls are "weapons" (not "soldiers"), which also shows you how much fun living around here must be for people without animal-features. At the same time, they have more space and possibly resources for daily life than people in the city. Though if the intro is anything to go by, they're not expected to live very long.

I'll stop here. All this is speculation. I can be wrong about many of these things, even about all of them. Mostly the episode has alerted me to what sort of questions I'm supposed to ask, and it's likely that I'll change my mind about a few things. But I have a pretty good idea what I'm dealing with, and none of it is intrusive in the sense of an "As-you-know-Bob" dialogue (where people talk about things they have no reason to talk about, only because the reader/viewer is supposed to know it).

It's competent science fiction/fantasy; thought through very well I'd say with regards to design. They keep it in the background, but it's still important. All of that is simply how exploratif SF/F works. There's nothing ingenious about it, but it's very detailled and for people who like that sort of stuff it's perfectly well executed. They've gained my trust; I think they know what they're doing. It's not groundbreaking, but it's also not heavy-handed, and the concept is definitely important (you can't easily set this on regular earth and have the same experience).

You can disagree with me, if you like, but words like "crap" or "bad writing" aren't terribly motivating to reply. Note that I've mostly talked about setting here. The story, I imagine, is going to be pretty sentimental, and I can see myself growing tired of it. At best it's going to be really sad, at worst it's going to be eye-roll inducing melodrama; I can see myself reacting in both ways. But that's a matter of what I like and what I don't. The writing's not bad; they know what they want and go for it. Everything feels very targeted, and nothing feels gratuitious. Even the rather silly are-you-going-to-eat-me jokes have setting function.

This style of writing isn't about telling you what you need to know; it's about guiding you to ask the right questions, make you come up with possible answers some of which you discard, and some of which you keep, and, watching the show like that, the setting will make more and more sense. (For me, personally, there comes a time when I have to discard less and less possible answers, and that's often also the time when I lose interest. Shows that survive that stage are the really good ones [there are also shows that won't give you enough until the very end and keep your interest alive through constant exploration.)

Shows like that demand attention and patience. If you don't like to watch a show with this in mind, that is if that feels like work rather than fun, then a show like this isn't going to be much fun. But that's not the same thing as bad writing; it's just that what you expect doesn't match what the show does.
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Old 2017-04-13, 01:31   Link #86
Harry Dresden
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This is literally the first time I see someone care more about vague things like architecture rather than proper character establishment(which is, you know, the logical focus of any beginning of the story).

The first episode established the world they live in, the main character and his tragedy, the characters surrounding him and overall goal/theme/objective of main character through the show. That's literally what a beginning of the story does. The core element of any narrative is the characters - everything around them is just excuse to have the characters go through things and comes secondary in terms of establishment. Every narrative starts and ends with the characters. Sometimes the "character" can be the world, or the architecture, but in most of cases it is real people.

Its not a history book and not a documentary. Focusing on the characters that the story is about is only logical. They might or they might not explain the world around them(they already did quite a bit of explaining that felt natural in this episode) eventually but it literally makes no sense to infodump about the world in the first episode in a character focused work. Especially the one which already started with in medias res indicating it won't be entirely linear.

Last edited by Harry Dresden; 2017-04-13 at 01:44.
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Old 2017-04-13, 02:45   Link #87
Arya
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Quote:
Originally Posted by nicky. View Post
I appreciate the sensible conclusion you come to, ark. I too thought it was nothing more than average LN crap.
mmm, not sure how you could dismiss this as average LN crap, honestly. If this is average crap, how do you evaluate things like rokudenashi majutsu?

Personally I'm with Dawnstorm and Harry here. And this is just the first episode, I'm not saying it's perfect, but all in all you can tell there's competence, they know what they are doing. So far. And they better know it, since the path they seem they want to take strongly needs it to avoid going astray

As I said this is the first episode and it could be easily a set up episode, having the story bend toward a more cliched path from the next onward, having the MC dealing with the girls jumping from a trope to the other. Time will tell.
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Old 2017-04-13, 08:38   Link #88
LKK
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A quick modly reminder. Disagreements are accepted here. Personal attacks are not. And yes, there have been personal attacks mixed in with the disagreements over the past few posts. But there won't be personal attacks in the future posts.
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Old 2017-04-13, 16:33   Link #89
sparhawk1610
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Well, I can agree, that for a person which didn´t read the LN, the first episode can look not so good. But I really liked it. But calling this LN as average LN crap... well, I can´t agree with this statement. You can´t find many LN which give you this kind of feelings. You know that reading will hurts you, you know that it is sad, but it makes you want more, you want to read more about characters and how they struggle.
I really think that first episode did well, because it show you in which way will this anime further evolve.
From first episode you can feel that this is not your classic drama/romantic anime, because there are more specific problems.
The next episodes will show you, what is the main plot of this series. I will comment more about this topic later, because I don´t want to spoil it.
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Old 2017-04-13, 19:49   Link #90
orion
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i didn't read the LN and I liked the first episode. Though, I am kind of leery of a sad outcome.

Those wings and background remind me of Saikano.
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Old 2017-04-13, 20:03   Link #91
OH&S
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First episode instantly won me over as soon as Scarborough Fair started playing; certainly hit the right nostalgia note there.
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Last edited by OH&S; 2017-04-13 at 20:55.
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Old 2017-04-13, 21:57   Link #92
Blueknight78
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Zefyris View Post
That's because almost all trolls in modern fantasy settings are directly inspired from tolkien's trolls.
However, in legends, trolls/ogres weren't especially of inhuman appearance. As some peoples may have guessed from what Naigrat says this episode (about showing hospitality being another natural behaviour of trolls just like eating humans is), the trolls in sukasuka are inspired of legends of civilized human-like monsters, who live in a proper house (and not in some grotto) away from villages and town. Those stories usually tells about travellers carelessly finding themselves far away from town and villages when the night come, and asking for hospitality at an isolated house nearby. The peoples living in the house welcome the traveller, sometimes even giving him a real feast for his dinner, before eating him during the night after feeding him like that.

As such, it's obvious that such species that had a way of life based on getting mistaken for a human are going to look completely human.

It is also worth to note that just because a few races in sukasuka look like normal humans, it doesn't mean that their bodies are really like human bodies all the way, they just LOOK like humans.

--------------------------


BTW, in light of what I said just above about trolls in sukasuka, I saw a lots of comments in the previous pages complaining about the troll lady not being monstrous in any way. If you payed attention to this episode properly. You would know that this precise job was requiring a species that looks like humans. Grick said it very clearly in the job requirement.
So even if trolls in sukasuka were completely cliché tolkien trolls (like apparently many wished them to be, while complaining about cliché themselves, nice logic here), you would then have had another race instead.
Key word is "Disfeatured". Remember that name becaus eyou're going to see it regularly. It designs any race that have no external visible difference with the human species, basically they have no inhuman "external feature" (horn, different skin like frog or lizard, feather, no inhuman shaped head, no tail, no fur, no claws, no fangs, and so on).

So. Why are some complaining that the person that took a job specially addressed to disfeatured species is from a disfeatured species ?

Also if disfeatured is a word, it means in itself that there ARE several species out there that are disfeatured. And that just like the local crowd reaction in episode 1 has shown us, they usually have a hard time living directly in towns because of the backlash. So a job far away from everything like Naigrat got is absolutely perfect for them.
ok you must remember which peoples have different tastes and blabla bla.

but for now, while old legends talked about humans bein called trolls or ogres, the reason the modern ogres and trolls and others humanoids where turned in "monster like creatures" is exactly because of they behavious and looks, what i means is which while "human trolls" where still humans, they where not described as "hot girls and hot guys" they where described as rustic peoples which normally they houses where dirty and they have some features like scars dirt nailfingers and things like that which where what was changed to make then look more and more ugly until them look like monsters.

the trouble exactly here is when you where in a fantasy set wher all the others races are showed being animal like and "only one female character is showed as a "hot young human girl which is obvious (fanservice) reason not because the writer wanted them being based on realistic human or she could not look like that, as your typical hot girl, while i can understand that argument about need a "human like race", but the fact which her look is more like "fanservice reason" still true.
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Old 2017-04-14, 04:38   Link #93
Alf
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Well, "troll" is just a translation. What is actually said is "oni", which usually means the japanese type of "demon". Usually having horn(s), but the look and behavior varies depend on setting and disguise as human isn't uncommon.

Anyway, it's a bit jumping conclusion to say her human look is just for fan service when we have only 1 episode aired, especially when it's clearly shown that discrimination to human look creatures is an issue. We will see.
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Old 2017-04-14, 04:49   Link #94
Kakkou
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Originally Posted by Alf View Post
Well, "troll" is just a translation. What is actually said is "oni", which usually means the japanese type of "demon".
She calls herself a troll in the show, not oni. On her character page her race is written as 喰人鬼 -troll-, as in it's meant to be read as "troll" even to Japanese viewers/readers. This is not a translation choice but something the author has clearly set from the get-go.
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Old 2017-04-14, 04:52   Link #95
orion
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Well, I find the whole mindset of the world different. You discriminated against multiple species and expect them to fight and die for you. My thoughts would have been "S**** this! Just die already! I'm not going to sacrifice my life for you.".

I do have to agree if we don't see any human-like males of the troll/demon/oni or leprechaun species then the designs could be considered fanservice-y.
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Old 2017-04-14, 07:00   Link #96
Alf
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Originally Posted by Kakkou View Post
She calls herself a troll in the show, not oni. On her character page her race is written as 喰人鬼 -troll-, as in it's meant to be read as "troll" even to Japanese viewers/readers. This is not a translation choice but something the author has clearly set from the get-go.
Ooops....I missed that. I only recalled the protagonist's thought, so that "human eating oni" was a pun that translated the Kanji into something else....
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Old 2017-04-14, 15:53   Link #97
Blueknight78
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actually another note about "trolls" they are originally from the norse myth which already describing then as monster like appearance, not because of "tolken, he only get the reference from here, like many others references, he didin't created them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll
even there they also where described as being both "good and evil" like some could be good and friendly and others means and evil.
also others races which come from norse myth where the dwarfs and elvens(that i don't know for suce also they described as party of germany myth), actually a lot of fantasy creatures come from they myth, other part come from greece and others come scattered from others places like ireland(the lepprechaus and gonomes if i'm not wrong) and others places.
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Last edited by Blueknight78; 2017-04-14 at 16:44.
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Old 2017-04-14, 18:04   Link #98
Shadow5YA
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Zefyris View Post
That's because almost all trolls in modern fantasy settings are directly inspired from tolkien's trolls.
However, in legends, trolls/ogres weren't especially of inhuman appearance. As some peoples may have guessed from what Naigrat says this episode (about showing hospitality being another natural behaviour of trolls just like eating humans is), the trolls in sukasuka are inspired of legends of civilized human-like monsters, who live in a proper house (and not in some grotto) away from villages and town. Those stories usually tells about travellers carelessly finding themselves far away from town and villages when the night come, and asking for hospitality at an isolated house nearby. The peoples living in the house welcome the traveller, sometimes even giving him a real feast for his dinner, before eating him during the night after feeding him like that.

As such, it's obvious that such species that had a way of life based on getting mistaken for a human are going to look completely human.

It is also worth to note that just because a few races in sukasuka look like normal humans, it doesn't mean that their bodies are really like human bodies all the way, they just LOOK like humans.
So John Bauer took inspiration from Tolkien decades into the future, huh?

Images
trolls
Sorry; dynamic content not loaded. Reload?

That's some funny revisionist history you have there.

You have made me curious about where on earth you get your information from. So where are these pre-Tolkien "legends" where trolls were commonly portrayed to have attractive humanoid bodies like Niagrat?
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Old 2017-04-14, 18:37   Link #99
Blueknight78
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Shadow5YA View Post
So John Bauer took inspiration from Tolkien decades into the future, huh?

Images
trolls
Sorry; dynamic content not loaded. Reload?

That's some funny revisionist history you have there.

You have made me curious about where on earth you get your information from. So where are these pre-Tolkien "legends" where trolls were commonly portrayed to have attractive humanoid bodies like Niagrat?
as the time passed they tales started to change little by little in some places where they started to look less groteske and more human like.
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Old 2017-04-15, 04:32   Link #100
Harry Dresden
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Friendly reminder that plenty of folk tales about trolls involve the detail about them being able to adapt their appearance to trick their targets, to lure them to their doom - the victims either being imprisoned by trolls or eaten when their guard is down. Quit a few cautionary tales also involve trolls masquerading as people and giving out advice or gifts that lead to misfortune and mischief. Its the reason why witchcraft in norse is called trolldomr. In fact, trollkona the Scandinavian equivalent of a female troll is pretty much depicted as a witch. A norwegian type of female troll known as huldra is pretty much a seducer than ensnares and eats men.

So yes, Nygglatho fits the troll lore in that she is akin to the Witch from Hansel and Gretel tale, which coincides with depictions of troll behavior too.
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