(CR) Märchen Mädchen

[serenade_beta]

*sigh*
Well, I can't say I'm surprised this anime Regalia-ed.

[Liddo-kun]

Watched episode 8:

Enjoyed watching this. Russian team is sort of overpowered?
Nadia's telling of joke and Rasputin forced control both can paralyze an entire team... and if you add Ivan's skill - that's 3 members that has a skill that affects multiple people. Well, some of their tricks failed due to stupidity and maybe plot armor of japanese team.

Surprised that Mai is a karate and israeli martial arts expert. Able to beatdown 5 people who look physically strong all by herself. Got to admire the communists not giving up after getting beat up.

And lastly.. I think Hazuki team only won this time because their opponents are actually nice people.
____________

See you again on March 22!

[arkhangelsk]

Talk about this "The World is Out to Get Japan" vibe - after a rather cold hearted plan to close the Japanese school when by all accounts it had suffered a tragedy through no real fault of its own, the Committee actually jammed the battleground selection system just to recover Cinderella.

For all the talk about the Japanese being the holders of two very powerful books, it seems many schools actually have more fantastic books. The Japanese school's books seem mostly based around direct attack and defence, while other schools' are more strategic and tricky techniques that would be hard to counter by direct attack and defense magics. Though shouldn't the book that shows the one (presumably true) future be more powerful than the one that shows you all the futures if the one true future is already shown to be in favor of its user?

The fight. I'm not sure if that is anywhere close to the way it went in the original, but it is rather coincidental that the entire sequence was written such that it would not use heavy animation...

Well, the author's anti-American attitudes come to fruition.

Tatiana is a ditz and miserable liar even among the ditzy Russians (rare choice!)

Ironically, just as the show started to get somewhat interesting and pull a few rabbits out of the hat, the production team fell apart first.

[Anh_Minh]

Yeah, the Japanese team looks really weak. Kaguya-hime's kinda powerful but really straightforward (which isn't worth a lot in these battles), the others aside from Cinderella are also straightforward and aren't even strong. As for Cinderella, rather than "strong", it looks like it just does whatever the plot demands for Japan to win.

The Russians would be unstoppable if they weren't so dumb, though...

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

Though shouldn't the book that shows the one (presumably true) future be more powerful than the one that shows you all the futures if the one true future is already shown to be in favor of its user?

Maybe it just shows the most probable future, while the German book allows its user to pick whichever future is most advantageous, even if unlikely.

[Liddo-kun]

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

Well, the author's anti-American attitudes come to fruition.

Hmm, can't remember exactly where... but I've seen a post that says the author only completed the draft of this anime before passing away. Did the anti-american sentiment come from him or from the others who completed the work, I'm not sure?

Lynn Daves (american school) = "my loli can't be this evil" >__<

[Liddo-kun]

Originally Posted by Anh_Minh

Yeah, the Japanese team looks really weak. Kaguya-hime's kinda powerful but really straightforward (which isn't worth a lot in these battles), the others aside from Cinderella are also straightforward and aren't even strong. As for Cinderella, rather than "strong", it looks like it just does whatever the plot demands for Japan to win.

Agreed on this. Kaguya is strong, but somehow easier to avoid becaus e you see her about to shoot things at you. The russian team... their skills are harder to avoid because the attacks effect a wide area and hard to dodge.. like you need earplugs to not hear the corny jokes, and that rasputin skill.. you don't even see it coming.

[arkhangelsk]

Originally Posted by Anh_Minh

Yeah, the Japanese team looks really weak. Kaguya-hime's kinda powerful but really straightforward (which isn't worth a lot in these battles), the others aside from Cinderella are also straightforward and aren't even strong. As for Cinderella, rather than "strong", it looks like it just does whatever the plot demands for Japan to win.

To be fair, the Japanese team was going to win anyway, and I guess this method is less disgusting than the typical "male protagonist" solution to the problem, where the new out-of-nowhere magic will just blow away the Russian team while Protagonist teammates just gape.

[FlameSparkZ]

The Russian team was fun to watch

As for Hazuki's mysterious magic, I think it's still faithful to Cinderella's story.

[Rimbo99]

Originally Posted by FlameSparkZ

The Russian team was fun to watch

As for Hazuki's mysterious magic, I think it's still faithful to Cinderella's story.

To be more precise, there are ways to interpret Hazuki. I believe that Hazuki did match a character from Cinderella. It wasn't the main heroine but actually the fairy godmother.

[Liddo-kun]

Spoiler for images:

[serenade_beta]

*watches ep 9*

Oh my god... Oh my god...
It's hilarious... But it's so sad too.

[Liddo-kun]

Watched episode 9:

So only the Daves sisters are cheaters in the american school. The other 3 members are good people who want to play fair.

Shizuka notice that Hazuki has sandwiches.. how cute.
And funny how the elders in Shizuka's house react that the jap school won the first round. Pride of the family restored while he's still alive.

Sadly, the number of animation errors in this episode remind me how little budget this anime has. The animation quality on some scenes have become severely low. And there's one V.A error as well. Hopefully, they could fix things up for the next episodes.

[arkhangelsk]

This has gone beyond low quality. Where had they scraped up these animators?

[FlameSparkZ]

This might be the first time I see so many mistakes in a single episode.

It's really sad...the lack of budget has become quite obvious :/

[Anh_Minh]

Holy hell. Those derpy faces at the end.

[Cloudedmind]

Yeah, I was getting second hand embarrassment watching this episode. It's like they were suffering from a lack of good talent, and had to let their interns relatives draw some of the panels.

[alex_drian]

Man, this episode hurt physically, fucking shit. I was begging for the episode to end.

[vietthai96]

Originally Posted by FlameSparkZ

This might be the first time I see so many mistakes in a single episode.

It's really sad...the lack of budget has become quite obvious :/

I think budget is not a huge factor here, and i can't tell this anime lack time or rushed schedule like Dragon Ball Super. It more like they lack talent or those animator don't feel like they want to do anything anymore, or more like they try too make the character look as cute as possible but something wrong happen and they failed miserably.

[zztop]

Ep 10 is Marchen's final broadcast episode. Eps 11-12's broadcasts will be put on hold indefinitely.
https://twitter.com/maerchen_anime/s...86829841227777

Anime blog site Sakugabooru claims to have received insider info from someone closely associated with the production; the insider claims the production was a chaotic mess from the beginning, such as inexperienced production assistants, lack of manpower, indifference/tantrums from Studio Hoods' CEO/anime producer Nagai Masaru, etc.

https://blog.sakugabooru.com/2018/03...on-postmortem/

Some excerpts from the blog:

Spoiler for Sakugabooru insider info:

'...it was quite hard to discuss these matters with (producer) Nagai to begin with, as it had become a regular occurrence for him to scream at others during meetings...

...hands-on staff tried to remedy this: “By autumn 2017 we were already worried that the broadcast could be in danger, so Kitamura, as production assistant, came up with an outsourcing plan that was then rejected by the CEO for financial reasons. By late January, the CEO finally approved the subcontracting proposal, but at that point we were running so short on time that no studio was willing to take the offer. Even after that, the CEO planned to continue delivering unfinished episodes so as to make broadcast, but the distribution side forced us to postpone it for two weeks.”

The problems began from the very first episode, as (externally-produced) key animation...turned out to require many complete retakes. The quality of the drawings for episode three was so low that the episode directors and supervisors had to correct essentially everything (this marked the start of the severe delays). Even the storyboards for that episode were late, as they had to be redrawn by (Hisashi) Saito, since the original director fell sick, and his replacement was an assistant without any experience in episode direction.”

As the production grew more chaotic, episode 7 ended up being broadcast without consulting the studio members about the credits (the animators at the studio were so occupied with episodes 6 and 8 that no one was available to act as animation director, so they had to resort to falsely crediting someone for the episode). As a result, (Kiyoshi) Tateishi [the only supervisor credited for episode 7] only corrected about 20 cuts – everything else was either fixed by the key animators themselves, done uncredited, or went through entirely uncorrected.”

[Marcus H.]

So what are the mistakes Hoods did that other production committees doesn't seem to commit?
Only a few shows meet such a terrible fate... but you gotta wonder why these things still happen while KyoAni was able to finish an anime before the airing of Episode 1.