(L) Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 (BONES)

[Guardian Enzo]

Originally Posted by orion

It's the opposite of Eden.

And thank goodness for that...

[orion]

Originally Posted by Guardian Enzo

And thank goodness for that...

If I wanted to watch a family show, I'd put on a Disney title.

[Hari Michiru]

Originally Posted by Guardian Enzo

LOL - funny you should mention it, because for me that would be Clannad.

Honestly, Clannad didn't even make me sad, let alone cry . I still don't get the hype around it...except for Kyou!

Anyway, back on topic: I want to smack robot otaku so badly for being so stupid .

[Theowne]

Ugh...this is the last place I wanted to hear mention of Eden.

We were given previews that emphasized disaster anime.

You're still upset about the previews? Episode 1 should have been a clear indication that this series wasn't going to take the traditional "disaster story" route. Anyone who still stuck around should know better than to complain about this seven episodes later.

[Slice of Life]

Originally Posted by orion

Air and Clannad are derived from crying games. That's what they are suppose to do.

Hanasakeru Seishounen is dereived from a crying game too? I could name of few more shoujo and seinen drama.

I could also ask the other way around. Name a few current anime with more realistically behaving people. Needless? Canaan? Princess Lover? Bakemonogatari? Kanamemo? Basquash?

Originally Posted by orion

TM8 was suppose to be realistic. Instead, it is emotionally pandering. "It's not the family that's at fault but Mirai." imo is the message that it's giving us. It's the opposite of Eden.

We were given previews that emphasized disaster anime. They need to get back to the disaster and stop preaching to the viewers imo.

I find it funny what stuff people interpret into this anime I simply don't see. First people declared what looked like a normal teenager in a rebellious phase to me the most annoying brat in existence and already began collecting the wood for her stake. And now the anime is suddenly preachy for merely suggesting that one can also have a bit more constructive outlook at one's parents.

If it was Eden Tokyo would have already been restored 10 minutes into episode 2 at the price of 10 million yen.

And this is a disaster anime. I don't know what exactly you were expecting. I was expecting an earthquake in episode one and then some walking around through ruins, meeting survivors and hear their stories. That's pretty much what we got. An earthquake is over in seconds, you can't fill 11 episodes with "disaster". You also can't prolong it by letting some zombie apocalypse breaking out afterwards just because its a favorite Hollywood trope. Japan is an industrialized country with a working society and not some failed state in central Africa, and one can expect them to have plans in the drawer and the whole crisis machinery into rear and gear within a few hours.

[Guardian Enzo]

Slice of Life, I speculated that a lot of fans would turn on this series way back after the first or second episode - it was completely predictable. We all know what makes shows fan favorites in this day and age, and TM8 has none of it. No moe, no romance, and a slice-of-life approach to disaster - it never really had a chance, and you could see it in the comments after the first couple of episodes. It's Moribito all over again (thought TM8 isn't quite on that level of greatness). People thought they were getting a slash and hack action show there, and they ended up with a thoughtful exploration of politics and human relationships (non-romantic ones, to boot). Here they thought they were getting The Poseidon Adventure and they ended up with a show exploring what real people would do in the days after a disaster. If you don't take the easy path, you lose a lot of followers on the way. It's true in anime just as in any other art form - pandering works.

[orion]

Originally Posted by Slice of Life

Hanasakeru Seishounen is dereived from a crying game too? I could name of few more shoujo and seinen drama.

That is not a crying game derived title. KEY titles got insulted by being put in a category with that imo. It appears to be a reverse harem title. It's also derived from a manga and not a visual novel.

Originally Posted by Slice of Life

I could also ask the other way around. Name a few current anime with more realistically behaving people. Needless? Canaan? Princess Lover? Bakemonogatari? Kanamemo? Basquash?

There aren't any that would fit the category this season that I watch except Requiem for the Phantom. Perhaps going back farther to Mononoke, xxxHOLiC, would do imo.

Originally Posted by Slice of Life

And this is a disaster anime. I don't know what exactly you were expecting. I was expecting an earthquake in episode one and then some walking around through ruins, meeting survivors and hear their stories. That's pretty much what we got. An earthquake is over in seconds, you can't fill 11 episodes with "disaster". You also can't prolong it by letting some zombie apocalypse breaking out afterwards just because its a favorite Hollywood trope. Japan is an industrialized country with a working society and not some failed state in central Africa, and one can expect them to have plans in the drawer and the whole crisis machinery into rear and gear within a few hours.

No, it's a slice of life title that happen to have an earthquake as its context. It's too calm for a true disaster title. Injuries aren't shown all that much detail until Mirai's leg wound today. Yuuki got knocked out. Where's the head wound? Mari's head wound clotted in nothing flat.

They need to hurry up and get home imo.

[drobertbaker]

Originally Posted by orion

"It's not the family that's at fault but Mirai." imo is the message that it's giving us. It's the opposite of Eden.

The differing points of view of Eden of the East and Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 got me pondering the whole NEET/bratty kid thing. Whose fault is it?

The whole problem being addressed in these animes comes from the fact that these children are raised in environments totally unrelated to human biology and needs.

What are their lives? They sit in school all day learning stuff totally irrelevant to their lives as they know them. They passively watch television shows and read manga about fictional people doing interesting things that they will never do in exciting situations that they will never encounter.

They are actively immersed in toys and video games where they manipulate heroes fighting dragons and startroopers. If they lose, they just respawn. Think how much better players they would be if they got an electric shock when they lost a game. And how few players there would be wasting valuable play (skill practice) time on these useless entertainments.

They associate only with their peers who live equally pointless and irrelevant lives because they can't see any point in what adults say or do and are bored being around them, if the adults even have any time for them. They do nothing useful, have no responsibilities that matter to anybody, and play with no purpose.

They have no idea what their parents do all day or why. It makes no difference to them. They eat every day anyway. They have no idea what skills are needed to claim a mate and feed and protect your offspring.

They are completely provided for, no matter what. In these kid's world, nothing they do matters at all. A negative consequence for them is losing video game privileges.

It's no wonder they feel disconnected and pointless. And it's no wonder that this embitters them. People (kids included) want to feel useful and needed. They are neither.

When they get out of school, they are given jobs where they fill in Word templates and shuffle numbers around in spreadsheets. They don't see any connection between what they do and the results of their miniscule labors. So they drop out. Why not? How does it matter?

NEETs generally NEET around for a while, then start to realize that if they want a real girlfriend, they need a higher paying job to effectively compete in the mate market. They begin to learn at an advanced age the lessons they were denied as children.

Children need to take on increasing responsibility and safely practice practical skills through play. They need to see and experience the consequences of good and bad decisions and skillful and unskillful actions. They need to go hungry if Dad misses the deer with the first shot and want to learn how to shoot and know in their stomachs why it matters.

Play is biologically meant to be safe practice for learning adult skills. In earlier times, if you didn't master important adult skills by the time you were an adult, you and your family would die.

It takes something like a missile attack or an earthquake for them to be placed in a real situation where what they do matters at all and makes any difference that they can see.

Mirai has been removed from her cocoon for the first time in her life. She's finally starting to learn real things and make real contributions and her malaise is clearing up nicely.

So I guess I think that both the society and the kids need to change.

The society and parents need to provide some genuineness in kids' lives and stop protecting them from reality by providing perfectly insulated and totally irrelevant environments for them.

The kids need to man up, take on real tasks relevant to them, and see and experience real consequences of success and failure. They are crying out for the chance to prove that they can handle it.

[Craymel]

Spoiler for SAVE THE ROBOTS!!!:

I want to slap robot otaku boy, I really do... "ROBOTS SAVED MY FAMILY! NOW I MUST SAVE THE REMOTE CONTROLLED DEVICE THAT'S TRAPPED BESIDE A BUILDING THAT JUST SEMI COLLAPSED!" I don't care how much that boy loves robots. If he truly new so much about robots then he should have known his gesture to save it was completely unnecessary and stupid.

[Kaoru Chujo]

I'm away from this thread for a couple of days, and some great discussion breaks out.

1. Guardian Enzo: I like both this and Eden. Eden's story began to lose focus around this stage, though. We'll see what happens here. "I think people are so used to being emotionally manipulated by mediocre anime that emotional honesty feels like falsehood to them." Great sentence. Thanks. I'll have to rewatch some of Moribito with that in mind.

2. orion: I don't see this show saying "It's not the family that's at fault but Mirai." I saw some posters say that, but I think the show is more realistic and balanced than that. I also don't get the "emotionally pandering." Maybe not emotional enough, it seems to me.

3. Of course there's some moralizing in this show. What's wrong with that? Is the only good art art that tries to tear society down? Or that is only about pleasure? Not that I don't enjoy shows like that, too.

4. drobertbaker: It's a heck of a lot easier to say we should give kids more meaningful lives than it is to actually do it. Each individual needs so much education to function that they have to stay out of "real life" for decades. Society can either bribe them with toys and pleasure on the side, or keep them in examination hell with the threat of NEET hell if they don't succeed. Or both. A return to preindustrial times, when there was almost no such thing as childhood, since everyone had work to do, is not possible now. I feel the problem. I just don't see a solution. Do you?

5. robot rescue: Yes, the robotaku was an idiot. He should have been smarter than that, but I can imagine a 14-year-old robot otaku being overcome by his love of the machine and doing something like that. I just can't imagine Mirai hauling him up with one hand.

6. realism: Others may disagree, but I think the characters in Aoi Hana are acting fairly realistically. Emotion is part of real human life, even if it isn't part of shounen anime. And I think the characters are acting fairly realistically here, too. They may or may not be the norm, but they seem like possible humans to me. But I think anime is better at myths and memes than realism, so this show may seem a bit flavorless sometimes.

7. melodrama: I'm enjoying Hanasakeru Shounen (especially because Endou Aya is terrific in it). But there are scads of anime that are much more melodramatic. Of course, I enjoy most of them, too, lol. The champeen is Oniisama-e. Air and Kanon worked on me. Clannad kind of lost me, probably by having too much unfunny comedy (usually involving the sidekick guy) and not enough weeping.

Like I said, great discussion all round.

[MeoTwister5]

The moment we start pointing fingers and try assigning blame is where the damn cycle starts again. No one's willing to wo/man it up and take responsibility for what has happened and find it easier to assign blame wherever some inkling of it it spotted and pile up the blame from there.

It's two sides of the spectrum. Is it only one side's fault that Mirai is socially and emotionally inept?

I'd say it's the fault of everyone who's affected her growth in one way or another. Until society realizes that each and every person has had a hand in the development of another human by direct and indirect means, people are never going to change.

It begins with you. If you insist that someone else do it first before you're bothered to change yourself, the status quo will always be the same. This was Eden was trying to say, and as it stands as some have pointed out this show is making it look like fault rests solely on Mirai who's finding it difficult to adapt to this world-shattering change in her life.

[drobertbaker]

Originally Posted by Kaoru Chujo

It's a heck of a lot easier to say we should give kids more meaningful lives than it is to actually do it. Each individual needs so much education to function that they have to stay out of "real life" for decades. Society can either bribe them with toys and pleasure on the side, or keep them in examination hell with the threat of NEET hell if they don't succeed. Or both. A return to preindustrial times, when there was almost no such thing as childhood, since everyone had work to do, is not possible now. I feel the problem. I just don't see a solution. Do you?

As always, Kaoru-san hits the nail on the head. It's like, after I read all the various opinions, I wait for the voice of reason to state the "right" conclusion.

This can be done. Not all kids are brats or grow up to be NEETs. Sometimes kids are forced by circumstance to grasp reality and sometimes they chance upon or are led to something they can believe in and get involved with. Creating a rich environment and supplying children with lots of stimulation is a step in the right direction, but all too often it's just things to keep them occupied and out of the way of parents too busy or self-involved to do any real teaching of their children. Like television, the ideal babysitter.

While blowing up the country à la Mononobe is too extreme a measure for creating purpose, I do think that parents often want to protect their children far too much from "adult things" like work, finances, and relationship issues in the interests of preserving and enjoying their pristine childhoods. The result is an adult-aged child. And not a happy one.

"School should do that." Well, school is not going to show a kid things like how to deal with death, how to feel compassion, how to drink responsibly, how to get a good price, or how to jimmy a lock.

Children can be recruited into even the most sophisticated and arcane activities in minor roles. Just because they're "adult" issues doesn't mean the children must be excluded.

"Add up those food receipts for me, will you?"
"Can you please tell your father I know all about his girlfriend?"
"Honey, can you tell me when the foam plasma pressure initiates the fission reaction in the spark plug?"

It's how a kid "learns the business". The most successful adults tend to be those who were involved in their parent's issues at an early age. When you're twenty years old with fifteen years experience at something, you've got a real leg up.

I was protected from all the realities of life and I was both a brat and a NEET.

P.S. Meo: You rock, Dude!

[MeoTwister5]

Originally Posted by drobertbaker

As always, Kaoru-san hits the nail on the head. It's like, after I read all the various opinions, I wait for the voice of reason to state the "right" conclusion.

This can be done. Not all kids are brats or grow up to be NEETs. Sometimes kids are forced by circumstance to grasp reality and sometimes they chance upon or are led to something they can believe in and get involved with. Creating a rich environment and supplying children with lots of stimulation is a step in the right direction, but all too often it's just things to keep them occupied and out of the way of parents too busy or self-involved to do any real teaching of their children. Like television, the ideal babysitter.

While blowing up the country à la Mononobe is too extreme a measure for creating purpose, I do think that parents often want to protect their children far too much from "adult things" like work, finances, and relationship issues in the interests of preserving and enjoying their pristine childhoods. The result is an adult-aged child. And not a happy one.

"School should do that." Well, school is not going to show a kid things like how to deal with death, how to feel compassion, how to drink responsibly, how to get a good price, or how to jimmy a lock.

Children can be recruited into even the most sophisticated and arcane activities in minor roles. Just because they're "adult" issues doesn't mean the children must be excluded.

"Add up those food receipts for me, will you?"
"Can you please tell your father I know all about his girlfriend?"
"Honey, can you tell me when the foam plasma pressure initiates the fission reaction in the spark plug?"

It's how a kid "learns the business". The most successful adults tend to be those who were involved in their parent's issues at an early age. When you're twenty years old with fifteen years experience at something, you've got a real leg up.

I was protected from all the realities of life and I was both a brat and a NEET.

P.S. Meo: You rock, Dude!

Heh.

This is pretty much what I'm expecting from Mirai as the series goes. She's slowly coming to terms with the situation at hand. She slowly taking responsibility for not only herself but her brother who again is relying on her so much that she doesn't even realize it.

You can't expect children of course to come to grips with the dark and gritty world of adult society all at once, but you can't exactly shelter them all their lives. There's a difference between a kid from the hood and a trust fund baby, and that's somewhere in between.

I grew up upper middle-class and while we were comparatively well-off in a third world nation I didn't exactly live with a silver spoon in my mouth. I spent summers in our factory boxing shoes and sandals and spent some of my school days doing charity work. Even then I'm probably far from the exact the paragon of my ideal way to raise a child but you get my drift. Growing up especially in the formative years children need the right exposure to adult society while protecting them from things they surely can't comprehend at that point.

The problem is often only noticed once they grow up and enter society. That's when most people notice they aren't the least bit ready to handle the shit life throws at them. By then it may just be too late. You need to start early because once they grow out of their teen angst you'll realize you did a rather shitty job at it. Hell I'm still dealing with my own issues right now, so much so I'm seeing a shrink.

How does Mirai yet fit into the picture? It's a bit too early to tell. As I said in a prevous post, nothing showcases a person's level of maturity and development like a good tragedy.

[aorta]

Two possible ending are really cliche: the happy ending where the children are reunited with their parents and the tragic ending where one of them dies or their parents are dead.

A really twisted ending would be that Mari actually deals in the human traffic business and sells the kids in the last episode to buy drugs to help her deal with the pain of her dead child. If said child was actually dead from the beginning as suggested earlier, even better.

[orion]

Originally Posted by aorta

Two possible ending are really cliche: the happy ending where the children are reunited witht thair parents and the tragic ending where one of them dies or their parents are dead.

A really twisted ending would be that Mari actually deals in the human traffic business and sells the kids in the last episode to buy drugs to help her deal with the pain of her dead child. If said child was actually dead from the beginning as suggested earlier, even better.

That's funny. They're really on the way to see the local organ harvesters.

[Ghostfriendly]

Originally Posted by aorta

Two possible ending are really cliche: the happy ending where the children are reunited with their parents and the tragic ending where one of them dies or their parents are dead.

A really twisted ending would be that Mari actually deals in the human traffic business and sells the kids in the last episode to buy drugs to help her deal with the pain of her dead child. If said child was actually dead from the beginning as suggested earlier, even better.

Would it be better to leave it hanging on whether their parents are alive? Mari getting killed, but everyone else living, could be cliche as well so we'll just have to hope they give us more to care about than whether or not various people are alive.

I don't think a sad ending is likely; so far we've had a cosy catastrophe, with numerous but limited deaths, and everyone mucking in to help out. Looters, mntal disturbance, parents abandoning their children in collapsing buildings and so on have yet to appear (try Deadman Wonderland).

[Ishe]

Originally Posted by aorta

Two possible ending are really cliche: the happy ending where the children are reunited with their parents and the tragic ending where one of them dies or their parents are dead.

A really twisted ending would be that Mari actually deals in the human traffic business and sells the kids in the last episode to buy drugs to help her deal with the pain of her dead child. If said child was actually dead from the beginning as suggested earlier, even better.

It is really cliche to point out endings as cliche. If Mari were to do that it would be out of character, but similar poorly done endings have been done before, so even that could be called cliche. Just because an ending is bad, doesn't mean it's original.

[orion]

Originally Posted by Ghostfriendly

Would it be better to leave it hanging on whether their parents are alive? Mari getting killed, but everyone else living, could be cliche as well so we'll just have to hope they give us more to care about than whether or not various people are alive.

I don't think a sad ending is likely; so far we've had a cosy catastrophe, with numerous but limited deaths, and everyone mucking in to help out. Looters, mntal disturbance, parents abandoning their children in collapsing buildings and so on have yet to appear (try Deadman Wonderland).

I don't either though I do think at least one parent should bite the dust.

[Kaioshin Sama]

Originally Posted by Slice of Life

If you cosider TM is emotionally pandering and melodrama then I really wonder what vocabulary you have reserved for anime like Air.

The category to describe the Key works in that regard hasn't even been invented yet.

Anyway I think what it comes down to is that what is recognized as slice of life by us older folk isn't necessarily recognized as slice of life by the younger folk. Slice of Life as it is now seems to find it's definition and category moreso in shows like K-On, Lucky Star or Minami-Ke, much as I find that doesn't work for what I would idenify it as. Too me Tokyo Magnitude is the kind of classic slice of life story I've been looking for for a bloody long time. It cuts out most of the moe, overwrought emotion and idealism and brings it down (or I suppose up) to something a little more real by my experience. Some people are good people, some people are immature, some people are weak, some people are strong, some people are interested in self-preservation, some people can be selfless, but many and in fact most people have the capability to be all or none of these things and just be their own person. It's really nice to see characters with more than one personality trait and what can found inbetween instead of merely a collection of moe traits and nothing to struggle against or improve upon in their lives. I feel Tokyo Magnitude gets it right. People generally have dominant personally traits, but also recessive ones that show themselves in extreme or unique circumstances, which is what we are seeing with characters like Mirai and Mari. Peopl are also capable of changing.....

[MeoTwister5]

BSS subs of episode 8 are out. Here's to hoping they get back on track.