(L) Sora no Woto

[brain]

Please stop feeding the troll.

[orion]

This whole debate is getting confusing. Can we talk about something else?

[Sol Falling]

Originally Posted by Cosmic Eagle

I don't see where Cat's reply to VCV which I'm agreeing with mentions So.Ra.No.Wo.To anywhere.

Maybe you were the one who didn't read then? Cats was characterizing my post and Bbee's as 'mindless trolling that didn't know what it was saying', and the 'get away with it' referred specifically to what we were supposedly doing. If you agreed with him/her, you were agreeing implicitly with his/her position on what we thought of Sora no Woto, which was that our claims that Sora no Woto has moe (and in Bbee's case that consequently Sora no Woto sucked because of it) had no basis. If you only wanted to talk about moe divorced from any association with this show, then the one you should have replied to was Vallen Chaos Valient.

And please, I am still wondering what your smug little 'they are only hating it because it's popular' line was trying to contribute if you weren't even referring to the hate or popularity of this show.

[MeoTwister5]

I find it odd, because quite frankly I find that moe isn't large or substantiated enough to be considered an all-encompassing statement worthy of a deal-making or deal-breaking decision to watch something, much less be considered a genre in it's own right.

Which is why I find the idea of dropping a show or penalizing one just because it has moe elements rather baffling, unless one does by default hate moe by by some personal issue, as bbee himself admits. I tend to dislike moe in certain regards myself, but only as a dominating/distracting presence and not as a matter of "being there". Moe isn't exactly the one singular thing that defines liking or disliking a show, this status is pretty much reserved for other elements that have been used far more than moe has.

[Ice Block]

My thoughts on the "Invisible Shinigami":

There are three possibilities: Chemical Weapon, Biological Weapon, or Radiation Zone / Supply Contamination. Stealth attacks/assassinations or massacres are immediately ruled out, as Mishio's mom was said to "show symptoms" upon arrival at the presumed refugee area.

Of the above three, the second is the least probable, as Biological Weapons are usually designed to be highly contagious in order to increase the yield (or w/e) per unit of money, and thus would have had Mishio show the symptoms as well. The third is not quite there, as Mishio did not get sick (supply contamination, given children's low resistance to this) nor show signs of cancer/tumors (radiation). Chemical Weapons, however, with sufficient chemistry technology, can be manufactured to target and compete with or denature/rearrange specific enzymes/proteins/hormones/etc. It may have been some sort of nerve gas, though Mishio's survival goes against this. Perhaps in this case, the chemical was designed to target a certain enzyme only present in adults or w/e.

Originally Posted by scr

Btw, the "vantage points" script and the mafia theme reminds me of Baccano!.

Originally Posted by Ice Block

Ho ho ho, did I just see Luck Gandor?

Indeed.

Originally Posted by Sol Falling

six episodes in, none of it had actually reached me

It's quite hard for something to reach you when you're either actively or unconsciously pushing it away.

[felix]

Originally Posted by Ice Block

My thoughts on the "Invisible Shinigami":

There are three possibilities: Chemical Weapon, Biological Weapon, or Radiation Zone / Supply Contamination.

Too little information. There are diseases that are known to effect adults and never affect children; take chronic lymphocytic leukemia for example. Since we are in some fictional world we can assume radiation and other weirder less likely real world situations are also equally possible at this point.

[Ice Block]

Originally Posted by Cats

Too little information. There are diseases that are known to effect adults and never affect children; take chronic lymphocytic leukemia for example. Since we are in some fictional world we can assume radiation and other weirder less likely real world situations are also equally possible at this point.

Yeah, but non-instagib (instant death) biological weapons would not really be manufactured with such low efficiency and autotransmission rates. If you want a precise but wide-area, non-instant population extermination solution, you'd want to go for relatively slow-acting chemical weapons (though they could have used some form of Botox to achieve similar results).

Though, it could have been via natural causes (an epidemic for example), so, yeah, lots of possibilities.

[orion]

Originally Posted by Cats

Too little information. There are diseases that are known to effect adults and never affect children; take chronic lymphocytic leukemia for example. Since we are in some fictional world we can assume radiation and other weirder less likely real world situations are also equally possible at this point.

I assumed that it would be a weapon-derived death. They were in a war. Radiation poison could do it easily. Mom was in the wrong place at the wrong time but Mishio wasn't like in Barefoot Gen.

[kankyo]

Originally Posted by orion

I assumed that it would be a weapon-derived death. They were in a war. Radiation poison could do it easily. Mom was in the wrong place at the wrong time but Mishio wasn't like in Barefoot Gen.

Let's not forget that their medicine has taken a huge step back, so it could just be any infectious disease (perhaps a newly emerged one?) for which they simply no longer have any treatment. The fact that Mishio survived may just be her luck (or low transmission rate of the disease?).

[Sparvid]

My first guess of the invisible death was radiation from nuclear weapons.

On one hand, I want as much as possible to be explained (or at least be given enough hints to get the full picture), but on the other I want to see a second season, which they could save that kind of stuff for...

[felix]

Originally Posted by Sparvid

but on the other I want to see a second season

Second season of Kanagi first. // pl0x

[Solace]

Originally Posted by Cats

Second season of Kanagi first. // pl0x

Doubtful that will happen considering the current status of the manga.

[felix]

Originally Posted by Solace

Doubtful that will happen considering the current status of the manga.

Didn't they make this out of thin air? It wouldn't even be new, look at Kuroshitsutji or Gai-rei, te~hehe.

And I'm only semi-jocking here mind you.

[Hypernova]

More info is needed on the surviving population to guess. It may be possible that the adults got it from work especially if the town has single major employers like mining towns. Bio is pretty much ruled out from non infection.

[orion]

Originally Posted by kankyo

Let's not forget that their medicine has taken a huge step back, so it could just be any infectious disease (perhaps a newly emerged one?) for which they simply no longer have any treatment. The fact that Mishio survived may just be her luck (or low transmission rate of the disease?).

If it was an infectious disease, the kid would have gotten it imo. Kids normally have a lower immunity than the adults in an immunocompetent population.

Plus, Japan has memory of radiation sickness. So it would be topical for them if it was this imo.

But we'll never know until the animators spit it out imo.

[bbee]

oO
Can we please play nice guys? There's no reason to label people trolls just because you disagree with them. It's perfectly possible to hate a show (and post about why) without trolling. It stops being OK when you start hating towards people, not the show, and some people here seem in danger of doing just that.

Originally Posted by Sol Falling

Kodomo no Jikan's character designs might be cute, but as you suggest, I think the emotional response part of 'feeling moe' is almost always subverted in the series in order to develop its more serious themes. I still stand by the claim that anybody who'd call Kodomo no Jikan a moe series either hasn't read it or has a loose conception of what 'moe' is (based only on appearance).

This. It's a bit OT, and it's not really nice form to start talking about people's signatures, but since it seems relevant here.. KnJ is by no means a moeblob show! It has some fairly amazing drama, and very deep characterization. Besides the humor, I love it for exactly these elements, which are the last things you'd expect to see in a moeblob show.
I'm not saying the characters aren't moe. I never said I hated moe characters. The -blob suffix isn't optional, because it signifies that the character has no other definable traits, and serves no other purpose, than being cute and doing cute things. This clearly isn't the case in KnJ, but imho is in Sora no Oto.
Even so, there are a lot of shows filled with characters that could be defined as moeblobs that use them to great effect. I'm thinking of shows like Ichigo Mashimaro (the funniest anime ever!) which use characters that aren't much more than moeblobs to amazing comic effect. Or if you want a more recent example, there's Hanamaru Youchien.
It's exactly this "use to great effect" that's missing in Sora no Oto, which is why I called it a moeblob parade. You will disagree with this, and there are a few people who continue to amaze me with the depth that they percieve in this show, which I feel just isn't there (/me looks at MeoTwister5).

Anyway, I could write more but it would end up being tl;dr and in the end I'd just end up reposting what Sol Falling said more eloquently than I could.
Agree to disagree, live and let live, etc.

[MeoTwister5]

Personally I still say Ice Block hit the nail in said head. I can't exactly call myself any different when considering that I approached this show with extreme caution after being burned by K-On!. I don't exactly have similar experiences with "moe" on par with most other people as the characteristic usually isn't to my liking, and more often than not it simply tends to just tire me out when moewhoring overrides everything else.

It's a bit of a paradox for me. Moewhoring can completely overshadow a show, yet sometimes behind the prostitution lies a relative depth one probably wouldn't have seen behind all the sugar, spice and everything "nice." As Ice Block said, sometimes the bias makes you push away what would otherwise be evident, or make you blind to it completely. Perhaps because I tend to give most of anything the benefit of the doubt more compared to other viewers and try to look at thing a little more than simply stopping at face value.

Now if I had simply relied on my admitted anti-moe bias I would have probably stopped the moment Kanata started getting tossed around on that sidecar in episode one, but I decided to stick with it as much as I could.

In the end, I haven't regretted that decision one bit.

[CaptGloval]

I like the storytelling in the latest episode.

I should've really expected the playacting in the first half because that would be less jarring a shift than the stand-off being real. While at the same time I wouldn't discount the possibility that they could do it for real. Also, the first half did reveal the presence of organized crime in the bootlegging/smuggling operations undertaken by a mafia and the girls themselves. While this could just be one more element to set up the background world, I'm hoping it would come in play later as the main characters are involved.

For the second part, I was expecting it to be more light-hearted and cutesy since it had Kanata and the children in it. However, it put out some drama as well as more hints to the extent of the war. I see that Kanata's role is to be that person who would have to say "it's alright"/"no need to get angry"/"no need get sad" like the youngest child (as opposed to Filicia's motherly approach) and it does have effects on the other characters. While in the earlier episode she being such a Pollyanna could be noted as sticking out like a sore thumb, this episode, at least for me, she didn't stick out that much. Maybe it's because she's no longer the newcomer, and would imply some change in character, but I would need to see future episodes to be sure.

[Hypernova]

Hm... I'll be on a flight to Australia to study for my Masters of Engineering in 12 hours yet my biggest concern right now is not being able to watch the next 2~3 eps (just when it seems to get to the real juicy bits) before my net access is set up there.

I guess I'm hooked!

[vharxin]

Funny how some people stating how much they hate moe, unclear storyline, etc etc, even posting tl;dr post about how much they hate this show, but keep watching just for the sake to bashing this show. Not like I care, just found it amusing and dumb at the same time