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View Poll Results: Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai NEXT - Episode 6 Rating
Perfect 10 14 28.57%
9 out of 10 : Excellent 6 12.24%
8 out of 10 : Very Good 16 32.65%
7 out of 10 : Good 8 16.33%
6 out of 10 : Average 4 8.16%
5 out of 10 : Below Average 1 2.04%
4 out of 10 : Poor 0 0%
3 out of 10 : Bad 0 0%
2 out of 10 : Very Bad 0 0%
1 out of 10 : Painful 0 0%
Voters: 49. You may not vote on this poll

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Old 2013-02-17, 04:50   Link #141
EroKing
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Well the whole point of any anime or manga/novel is to evoke those strong feelings among the watchers/readers towards the characters whether positive or negative. In the end they want their product to be a success for which the author needs to have an entertaining bunch of characters. Just imagine how boring this particular series would be had it not been for Yozora's trolls.
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Old 2013-02-17, 05:08   Link #142
erneiz_hyde
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Chaos2Frozen View Post
So essentially you want a magical character that understands all of them well, yet is not a part of their group, but would judge them reasonably from the outside? You realized how contradicting that sounds?
Indeed, in universe, such character does not exist. It seems the author is hell bent on making every single character has some screws loose . But, an irl example I think would be a psychologist. This role is supposed to be given to a club's adviser but...yeah...

Quote:
Originally Posted by Chaos2Frozen
I don't get it, why can't we look at it from any individual characters? If the author intends from us to view this group from the outside, he would have created that character himself.
We can actually, and that's what I do myself. But my main gripe is then you seem to reject any other approach, that 'they're doing it wrong', which then implies an 'I am RIGHT!'. A preferable state of mind in a debate, but not really a good attitude in a discussion.

As I have stated earlier, I don't believe you can put a 'benchmark' or 'standard' on this because it's highly subjective and personal. One can like or hate or be indifferent to any of the Neighbor Club's antics, and none of them are 'wrong'. While I don't wholly agree with frivolous' idea, I respect his trying to be impartial.

Quote:
Originally Posted by potchip
I can use words to describe what I consider the traits of each character, and list them. I can even go as far as ranking them in prominence. But even then there are too many variables for comparison, and some people would rather use ONE word to describe a character.

In a way the current character interactions are in equilibrium. Yozora is a sadist, Sena is a narcissistic. If you imagine instead a 'nice' Yozora, given what I know about Sena's character and other things being equal, Sena will get carried away and antagonise Yozora instead, and you get a horde of people hating on Sena. And I hate boring characters - if Yozora is nice - well, there's one less interesting character in this show. Just the other side of the coin.
Either you already forget what you said just a few words ago, or that when someone uses a 'Character X is Y' phrase, it was never meant to describe their whole character but rather just one aspect of it.
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Old 2013-02-17, 05:46   Link #143
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Those 2 words are fairly accurate for the typical interaction between Y & S though. However some then proceed to describe the character with one word without the proper context.
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Old 2013-02-17, 06:17   Link #144
frivolity
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Chaos2Frozen View Post
So essentially you want a magical character that understands all of them well, yet is not a part of their group, but would judge them reasonably from the outside? You realized how contradicting that sounds?

Would you like your Animes to be judged by someone who doesn't understand the finer points of the 'culture' ? I mean, sure you could do it, but I'll bet it'll leave a bad taste in your mouth afterwards.

I don't get it, why can't we look at it from any individual characters? If the author intends from us to view this group from the outside, he would have created that character himself.

And what's stopping this character of yours from being flawed him/herself?
Now, I'm not talking about actually creating a character here. I'm talking about projecting our views from the theoretical construct of such a character so that we can have rigorous debate while being on the same page. The purpose is not to create a perfect character with no flaws, but to have the same base from which we can debate.

The concept of an ordinary reasonable person is borrowed from a legal concept of the same name. Without delving too deeply into legal principles, the reason why such a legal concept exists is for objectivity. So when interpreting a contract, a judge will not decide a matter based on what either party thinks the means, since both parties will argue that the contract should be read in a way that benefits themselves. Neither will the judge decide based on what he himself thinks the contract means. He will decide based on what he thinks a reasonable person would interpret the contract to be. By doing this, the system removes as much of the judge's personal bias as possible.

As I've said in my previous post, we obviously should not debate based on real-life standards. That's equivalent the judge deciding based on what he thinks is right, and personal biases start coming in, such as people who have been bullied before will feel strongly about Yozora's actions. For this reason, we should not assess the story based on what we personally think to be right or wrong, but based on what an independent party would view it to be.

The simplest explanation I can give you as to why we should not look at the story from any of the characters' perspectives is the concept of the unreliable narrator. When we're reading stories with an unreliable narrator, the author will often leave clues for the reader that the narrator or protagonist would not become aware of. Authors will generally not write their protagonists to be all-knowing, and many things in the story have to be inferred by the reader. In making inferences, we are already recognising the fact that we're not looking at it strictly from the character's perspective, but incorporating some other element that the character has not observed.

With this approach, we're looking at the events in Haganai based not on what Kodaka actually observes, but on what Kodaka should have observed according to the author's hints, even if he does not actually see it. This is why I recommended looking at it from the reasonable person in that position instead. The reasonable person who sees what should be seen and does not see what should not be seen, in accordance with what the author intended it to be.

Now, I'm not quite sure what you're getting at with regard to being judged by someone who doesn't understand the finer points. For the sake of clarity, let me repost what I said earlier:

Quote:
It's similar to how we can read a story based in an African tribe with completely different practices, and when analysing the characters, we can sometimes say, "I personally believe what he did is wrong, but I think that it would be considered acceptable in his culture."
So we are readers looking into Haganai. We should not be explicitly imputing our personal beliefs into whether the character's actions are wrong or right, but neither should we simply accept the character's own opinions. Just because the protagonist thinks his actions are right doesn't mean that they are.

By incorporating things such as other characters' reactions, and making inferences, we are thinking about a reasonable person's view, and not the character's own view. And by looking at it from the view of a character in the story as opposed to from our own view, we are in effect attempting to cast aside our personal biases. This is what I'm getting at.


**Working on my reply to potchip, will update.

Last edited by frivolity; 2013-02-17 at 06:30.
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Old 2013-02-17, 06:28   Link #145
Chaos2Frozen
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Quote:
Originally Posted by frivolity View Post
Now, I'm not talking about actually creating a character here. I'm talking about projecting our views from the theoretical construct of such a character so that we can have rigorous debate while being on the same page. The purpose is not to create a perfect character with no flaws, but to have the same base from which we can debate.

The concept of an ordinary reasonable person is borrowed from a legal concept of the same name. Without delving too deeply into legal principles, the reason why such a legal concept exists is for objectivity. So when interpreting a contract, a judge will not decide a matter based on what either party thinks the means, since both parties will argue that the contract should be read in a way that benefits themselves. Neither will the judge decide based on what he himself thinks the contract means. He will decide based on what he thinks a reasonable person would interpret the contract to be. By doing this, the system removes as much of the judge's personal bias as possible.

As I've said in my previous post, we obviously should not debate based on real-life standards. That's equivalent the judge deciding based on what he thinks is right, and personal biases start coming in, such as people who have been bullied before will feel strongly about Yozora's actions. For this reason, we should not assess the story based on what we personally think to be right or wrong, but based on what an independent party would view it to be.

The simplest explanation I can give you as to why we should not look at the story from any of the characters' perspectives is the concept of the unreliable narrator. When we're reading stories with an unreliable narrator, the author will often leave clues for the reader that the narrator or protagonist would not become aware of. Authors will generally not write their protagonists to be all-knowing, and many things in the story have to be inferred by the reader. In making inferences, we are already recognising the fact that we're not looking at it strictly from the character's perspective, but incorporating some other element that the character has not observed. This is why I recommended looking at it from the reasonable person instead.

This is just another way of using real life standards that you said we shouldn't because we have no view on the regular people of Haganai.

Any 'ordinary reason person' would then be a product of the viewers ideas and belief, that's bias right off the bat.


Quote:
Originally Posted by frivolity View Post
Now, I'm not quite sure what you're getting at with regard to being judged by someone who doesn't understand the finer points. For the sake of clarity, let me repost what I said earlier:


So we are readers looking into Haganai. We should not be explicitly imputing our personal beliefs into whether the character's actions are wrong or right, but neither should we simply accept the character's own opinions. Just because the protagonist thinks his actions are right doesn't mean that they are.

By incorporating things such as other characters' reactions, and making inferences, we are thinking about a reasonable person's view, and not the character's own view. And by looking at it from the view of a character in the story as opposed to from our own view, we are in effect attempting to cast aside our personal biases. This is what I'm getting at.

You're essentially going, "Nope, I don't agree with these characters, I want someone that I can agree with to prove that I am right."

Last edited by Chaos2Frozen; 2013-02-17 at 06:44.
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Old 2013-02-17, 06:49   Link #146
frivolity
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Chaos2Frozen View Post
Except no such character exist! And if we were to use him/her, it would be created from our minds and be filled with our ideas!

This is just another way of using real life standards that you said we shouldn't.

Except no such character exist! There's no magical character that is the ultimate form of reason.
Now we're getting somewhere! You're finally getting it!

Yes, such a character does not exist. As I said, such a character is merely a theoretical construct and forms a base for us to debate. Yes, this reasonable character is created from our minds, so what's reasonable and what's unreasonable is exactly what we should be debating about!

It should also not be about what the characters themselves see, because the characters don't observe everything that the author is trying to tell us. So instead we think about what the reasonable person in the character's position would see, and we think about whether it's true that the character should see it.

After going through this process of reasoning, only then should we debate. The debate about Yozora and bullying should not be about what we personally think about bullying, or about what Kodaka sees, or even debating that no logic applies at all. It should be about the whether it would be reasonable to construe Yozora's actions as bullying in the context of Haganai, or whether it's so unreasonable that the author could not have meant for us to make such an inference. This is why I've been saying that the reasonable person is a theoretical construct to be used as a base with which we can focus our debate and discussion!

Quote:
Originally Posted by Chaos2Frozen View Post
You're essentially going, "Nope, I don't agree with these characters, I want someone that I can agree with- That person must be right."
No, I'm going, "The author has dropped several hints that the character himself hasn't seen. So-and-so is what I believe to be reasonable to infer in the context of the story. Now let's debate about this view, instead of debating what the character himself sees since he has most likely missed some things."

I'm not saying that we can all ultimately agree on one viewpoint. Of course we won't. But that's the whole point of debating and discussing, and by focusing on both the realm of the story and on what's reasonable for the story, our discussion would be much more objective and robust.








Quote:
Originally Posted by potchip View Post
In my view you simply get it, or you don't. What you are suggesting is a slippery slope in anime critique. Next thing you know, characters have disproportional eyes and I can't take them seriously anymore. The problem with the previous sentence is, you are not supposed to take certain aspects seriously, somethings in anime are taken for granted. Some traits will be exaggerated. Feel free to judged based on morality but don't expect other people to take such judgements seriously either. It's like arguing about the physics of shounen. Where does that leads to? What is a 'reasonable person's subjective observation but not Kodaka' anyway? I agree Kodaka is an unreliable narrator because himself is also flawed. I don't agree his flaw is overly nonchalant - his primary problem is afraid of change and does not seek feedback - so he tends to get the wrong impressions of many situations.
Not sure what you're getting at here. When I talk about reasonable persons, I'm not referring to real-life persons who have no knowledge of anime. I'm not saying that we should ask our neighbours who aren't anime fans what they think. I'm saying that in thinking about the issues of the anime, we should think about what we believe a reasonable person in the story would think. It's a more objective approach than simply saying stuff like, "I have a friend who bullied me in the same way that Yozora is doing to Sena, so I think Yozora is a bully." It is also more accurate than saying, "Kodaka thinks this, so that's the way it is." Since we're looking from the perspective of a reasonable person IN THE ANIME, obviously the fact that some traits will be exaggerated is already known.

It leads to the question, "What would a reasonable person in the Haganai-universe think?" That is the question that we should be debating about.

Quote:
Originally Posted by potchip View Post
As for trying to come up with a universal scale on a characters' personalities - first of all, there's no universal scale even in real life - no personality is absolutely BETTER than another, and then we are just talking about single personality traits. When a character has multiple traits like any other person would, there's no point trying to be objective, and furthermore laughable to even contemplate it.

I can use words to describe what I consider the traits of each character, and list them. I can even go as far as ranking them in prominence. But even then there are too many variables for comparison, and some people would rather use ONE word to describe a character.

In a way the current character interactions are in equilibrium. Yozora is a sadist, Sena is a narcissistic. If you imagine instead a 'nice' Yozora, given what I know about Sena's character and other things being equal, Sena will get carried away and antagonise Yozora instead, and you get a horde of people hating on Sena. And I hate boring characters - if Yozora is nice - well, there's one less interesting character in this show. Just the other side of the coin.

And last words - instead of disagreeing with what a character's portrayed and trying to pigeon hole them into some sort of 'ideal' character that you'd want to see, (and complain about how the character isn't this and that) try spend more time looking at different aspects of a character and think about what the author/producer is trying characterise.
I think I've addressed most of the points here. It's not about coming up with a universal scale that everyone can agree on. It's about everyone using the same base with which we can discuss and debate in a more robust manner.


Edit: Just saw the edited post above.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chaos2Frozen View Post
This is just another way of using real life standards that you said we shouldn't because we have no view on the regular people of Haganai.

Any 'ordinary reason person' would then be a product of the viewers ideas and belief, that's bias right off the bat.
We're indeed using real life standards in a different way, and that makes all the difference in the world. Instead of saying, "I think the practice of forcing youths in the tribe in Brazil to wear gloves full of Bullet Ants is inhumane," we're now saying, "I can see how the tribe views the ritual as a coming-of-age, even if such practices would be unacceptable where I come from." This particular point is not a criticism against your earlier discussions, but against the members who come into the thread saying that they consider Yozora's actions to be a form of bullying since they themselves would not tolerate it.

Last edited by frivolity; 2013-02-17 at 08:12.
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Old 2013-02-17, 07:12   Link #147
Chaos2Frozen
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I believe a reasonable person would be able to see that all this is nothing more than the dynamics of the Neighborhood club. To them this is their nature, their normal, their way of life. Evidence to support this reasonable perspective is how they hardly strayed from their routine and have in fact grown accustom to all of it.


Except maybe Kobato, who is clearly being harassed by Sena and doesn't want anything to do with her.
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Old 2013-02-17, 07:20   Link #148
frivolity
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Ok, so how would you explain their interaction in the latest episode, when Sena was clearly hurt that the person she trusted as a friend ended up betraying her? As well as the close up of Yozora's guilty face, which shows that she probably recognised that her actions were wrong?
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Old 2013-02-17, 07:24   Link #149
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Ok, so how would you explain their interaction in the latest episode, when Sena was clearly hurt that the person she trusted as a friend ended up betraying her? As well as the close up of Yozora's guilty face, which shows that she probably recognised that her actions were wrong?
An unexpected error in the flowchart.

Everything up until that point was seen as routine, but a sudden deviation from the normal process causes uncertainty in how to return back to the starting point.
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Old 2013-02-17, 07:24   Link #150
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I think everybody can see it's the dynamics of their club. What people might take issue with is the dissonance that occurs when it's played for laughs. That's when it's not just the characters, but the story itself saying that's okay.

Thankfully, that wasn't exactly the case since it did recognise that it was wrong but even then they played it for laughs literally a second earlier so this kind of schizophrenic writing isn't helping anyone.
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Old 2013-02-17, 07:28   Link #151
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Well, Yozora unknowingly crossed a line. But they only realized it the day after.

Mocking Sena for her love of galge, or her narcissism - that's fair game.

Playing on her desire to have a friend, the club's common wound - that's when it went into the Not Cool territory.
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Old 2013-02-17, 07:35   Link #152
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Originally Posted by Chaos2Frozen View Post
An unexpected error in the flowchart.

Everything up until that point was seen as routine, but an unexpected deviation from the normal procedure causes uncertainty in how to return back to the starting point.
Alternatively, maybe Yozora is starting to change, even if it's just a little bit. It could mean that she recognises that she had gone too far in her prank, and sees that her actions have more impact on Sena than she had originally thought them to be. In this sense, it would not necessarily be a bad thing if her earlier actions regarding the hair prank were wrong, since it actually means more room for her to change and evolve.
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Old 2013-02-17, 07:35   Link #153
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Well, Yozora unknowingly crossed a line. But they only realized it the day after.

Mocking Sena for her love of galge, or her narcissism - that's fair game.

Playing on her desire to have a friend, the club's common wound - that's when it went into the Not Cool territory.

Indeed; the unexpected error in the system was that none of them realized how serious Sena actually took the fortune reading...

Even though they were discussing it in front of her just seconds ago about what they had in mind without hiding a single detail...
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Old 2013-02-17, 07:36   Link #154
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That's not unexpected. Yozora could see it happening and was pinching herself not to laugh her arse off.
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Old 2013-02-17, 07:38   Link #155
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That's not unexpected. Yozora could see it happening and was pinching herself not to laugh her arse off.
It was unexpected; because what she was laughing at was Sena falling for the obvious trick like she always had as part of the procedure.
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Old 2013-02-17, 07:41   Link #156
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So how it unexpected that she took it seriously?
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Old 2013-02-17, 07:43   Link #157
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It would be expected that Sena took the fortune reading seriously. If she seriously believed that the hair prank made her look good, then the reasonable inference is that she would have believed in the fortune-telling.

What's unexpected is probably the nature of the trust that Sena had, in that Sena was trusting Yozora not simply on the basis of being gullible, with the general level of trust afforded to others, but also because Yozora was in the special position as one of the people that she considered a friend. This was probably what Yozora did not anticipate.
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Old 2013-02-17, 07:43   Link #158
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So how it unexpected that she took it seriously?
Because she never takes it seriously- That's the requirement for the flowchart to return back to the starting point every next day.
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Old 2013-02-17, 07:44   Link #159
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So how it unexpected that she took it seriously?
The unexpected event is Sena becoming emotional in the aftermath.

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Originally Posted by frivolity View Post
What's unexpected is probably the nature of the trust that Sena had, in that Sena was trusting Yozora not simply on the basis of being gullible, with the general level of trust afforded to others, but also because Yozora was in the special position as one of the people that she considered a friend. This was probably what Yozora did not anticipate.
Don't think Yozora considers Sena a friend. That has a bit to do with Yozora's interpretation of a friend - only those like Kodaka 10 years ago can be considered a 'friend' to Yozora. So it is unlikely she'll acknowledge any friends until that interpretation is sorted out.
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Old 2013-02-17, 07:51   Link #160
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So basically because she didn't brush it off? So how that does make the actual joke bit funny when it's revealed later that it wasn't okay? The joke they previously played suddenly isn't funny any more was it?

And Sena actually never brushes anything off. And that's played for laughs too.
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