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I really should watch the drat thing myself and form my own opinion (rather than get reactions from the anti-CA crowd via Twitter like I did), but I'm not in the mood. The only thing I want to say is that I've seen the word "scam" thrown around, but I think that's the wrong word. Given what Lupa has said about the need to constantly refilm this thing, and the lack of updates via the crowdfunding website, and just the stories of how poorly run the whole thing is, I think "incompetence" is a better fit. And what really gets me is how simple some of this stuff would be to address. COMMUNICATION guys; seriously, they could have avoided so much poo poo if they had just talked to their producers/employees regularly, and we might not see some of the producers turning so sour on the whole thing. It's disappointing and frustrating that the Walkers/Michaud can't get the fundamentals right. Now for some new poo poo. I've been on a "magic special" kick for a while. While going through some of the David Copperfield TV specials, I found this guy's channel of reviews of magic specials: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=user?maxwellsmagicreviews They aren't very good. It's a lot of "play the clip (in its entirety in some cases!) , cut to reviewer making a comment, repeat". I think you could do so much more with these specials--Copperfield had at least 15 TV specials across three decades, and it would be fascinating to trace his evolution as a magician/performer. Maybe I should be the one doing it, rather than waiting for someone else to. I could probably put in a better effort than Maxwell here :P.
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Apr 2, 2015 00:08
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poparena posted:Every April 1st, GoingRampant gives a serious feminist analysis of a horrible b-movie, and this year, it's 1999's The Last Man on Planet Earth. If you don't know about this movie, HOLY poo poo. Last Man on Planet Earth is astounding and everyone should watch it right now. Possibly the first recorded instance of some familiar MRA rhetoric. Maybe today's shitlords saw this as young kids and they imprinted on it or something.
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Apr 2, 2015 00:13
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Yea in as much fairness as they deserve 'scam' implies active deception and fraud poo poo, which is a very different brand of shitbag than just 'these guys kinda have no idea what they're doing and they got a lot of money regardless so whoops'.
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Apr 2, 2015 00:13
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New musical countdown for those who dig such things: The Top 10 Anime Opening Themes of 2004! EVERYTHING IN THIS VIDEO IS A WHOLE DECADE OLD, ACCEPT IT. 
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Apr 2, 2015 00:17
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Jack Gladney posted:Last Man on Planet Earth is astounding and everyone should watch it right now. Possibly the first recorded instance of some familiar MRA rhetoric. Maybe today's shitlords saw this as young kids and they imprinted on it or something. It's so astounding that I remember having some of the same issues with it that GoingRampant did, and I was a Rush Limbaugh listening, traditional family values, young Republican idiot at the time.
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Apr 2, 2015 00:30
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i am tim! posted:Egads. I watched that game show, and I had thought I might've hosed something up and accidentally came in halfway through. Who's idea was it to cold start them playing that fishing game board? I don't know what's worse about it that: 1) Why are they playing? Is this a prelude to another round, or is this a preview of what's to come in the episode? 2) It has no resolution. Who won the game? What did they win? How did that mini-round effect the game overall. 3) A loving DOLLAR STORE GAME? Did you have fun watching those people play? No! Of course not. It's a stupid game, and not exciting to watch at all. You would only watch two people play a boring game if you were interested in the people, and their interaction. That's why it's fun watching funny people to LPs of poo poo games. But two nobodies who you literally know NOTHING about playing a boring game? 4) Goddamn shaky cam. Did none of that $50k go into buying a loving tripod or camera stabalizer? Not only is it a poo poo game played by boring people, but you can't even make out what's going on. Hold a shot for more than half a second! If the goal was to induce nausea, mission accomplished. 5) The fact that within the first SIX SECONDS you can see the cameraman's shadow. In just slightly over 100 frames, they make an amateur cinematography mistake. And all of that within the very first scene-- the very first minute-- of the very first episode. And if all of THAT wasn't bad enough-- and that isn't even counting the exposed wood beams and visible wall seams in the set-- there's the fact that this stupid, idiotic dollar store game is being PLAYED WRONG. There are four colors of fishes. The reason is because each player is supposed to be the first to catch all of THEIR OWN COLOR. But instead they're just snagging any color. They're playing the game wrong. They're playing--the game-- wrong. :| Sheeeeeet.
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Apr 2, 2015 00:41
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Next time the Walkers complain about shaky cam in whatever movie, I hope they're reminded of this opening and how not needed it was.
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Apr 2, 2015 00:44
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Jay O posted:EVERYTHING IN THIS VIDEO IS A WHOLE DECADE OLD, ACCEPT IT. I'll be very glad once we hit the point where Elfen Lied is old enough that basically no one remembers it.
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Apr 2, 2015 01:03
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Jay O posted:New musical countdown for those who dig such things: The Top 10 Anime Opening Themes of 2004! #1 is from one of my favorite anime period, so that was really cool to see. Nice list, overall!
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Apr 2, 2015 01:06
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99% of anime is new to me.
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Apr 2, 2015 01:16
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IronicDongz posted:They all seem pretty old to me! I'll never forget that show. That poo poo is burned into my head.
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Apr 2, 2015 01:18
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdqrQnLyEB0
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Apr 2, 2015 01:19
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lornekates posted:There are four colors of fishes. The reason is because each player is supposed to be the first to catch all of THEIR OWN COLOR. But instead they're just snagging any color. They're playing the game wrong. They're playing--the game-- wrong. :| This is actually hilarious. As a child I knew to match up the color of the fish to the color of the fishing rod.
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Apr 2, 2015 01:34
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Multiple anime clubs insisting that Elfen Lied was good is what cemented by belief that all anime is bad.
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Apr 2, 2015 02:09
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PresidentBeard posted:Multiple anime clubs insisting that Elfen Lied was good is what cemented by belief that all anime is bad. I think it's that most high schoolers and college kids think stuff that's hosed up, violent and bloody is deep yo.
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Apr 2, 2015 02:36
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IronicDongz posted:I'll be very glad once we hit the point where Elfen Lied is old enough that basically no one remembers it. Apparently, Todd is working on another Top Ten Worst Songs of X year list. I hope it's from the early 90's, plenty of guilty pleasures there.
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Apr 2, 2015 02:40
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Celebrating one year of Every Frame a Painting by looking at F for Fake 
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Apr 2, 2015 02:56
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PresidentBeard posted:Multiple anime clubs insisting that Elfen Lied was good is what cemented by belief that all anime is bad. You and SO MANY OTHERS. Unfortunately, Elfen Lied quickly took the "Anime Is For Adults See?" spot left vacant by Evangelion's growing age in the mid-00's, tons of taste-lax otaku passed it around as emblematic of the medium, and it scared so many people off of anime for good loving reason. It's one of my least favorite anime ever made for its negative impact on western fandom. Its groan-worthy content is just the cherry on the poo poo sundae. No wonder the market crashed a few years later. (I mean, that's not the REAL reason, but I like to think it was one firm chisel chip alongside the jackhammer of mistakes that shattered the industry's foundation.) Now the "Anime Is For Adults See?" spot has been supplanted with Madoka Magica, which praises be, is actually an excellent, thought-provoking show with powerful adult themes that speaks to broad audiences (if you can get past the cutesy artstyle, which you should, because it's worth it.) I still don't really know how the narrative of "Elfen Lied is a good adult gateway title to show newbies" spread, but it killed off a ton of interest in anime in the mid 00's. So now I think it's Attack on Titan as the fun populist gateway title and Madoka Magica as the "serious art for adults" gateway title, both good shows. Jay O fucked around with this message at 03:08 on Apr 2, 2015 |
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Apr 2, 2015 03:01
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I like to imagine that somewhere, there's a Japanese Western Film Club in some High school that insists that Boondock Saints and Sucker Punch are works of art.
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Apr 2, 2015 03:01
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The Vosgian Beast posted:I like to imagine that somewhere, there's a Japanese Western Film Club in some High school that insists that Boondock Saints and Sucker Punch are works of art. I was trying to think of a cinematic equivalent of "Hollywood Movies Are For Adults See?" to use in my previous post, and you nailed it. Elfen Lied's effect on western anime fandom is like if movies were a subculture medium and people tried to get their friends into movies by showing them Boondock Saints as an example of "film for adults." (And not a bad metaphor, considering Boondock Saints is the favorite movie of many, many, many, MANY taste-lax dudes.)
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Apr 2, 2015 03:03
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Jay O posted:New musical countdown for those who dig such things: The Top 10 Anime Opening Themes of 2004! Wait, what? Origa's dead?! Noooo....
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Apr 2, 2015 03:05
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Jay O posted:I was trying to think of a cinematic equivalent of "Hollywood Movies Are For Adults See?" to use in my previous post, and you nailed it. Elfen Lied's effect on western anime fandom is like if movies were a subculture medium and people tried to get their friends into movies by showing them Boondock Saints as an example of "film for adults." (And not a bad metaphor, considering Boondock Saints is the favorite movie of many, many, many, MANY taste-lax dudes.) I remember hearing of Elfen Lied way back then but never followed up on what exactly it was. Would someone mind telling or listing what makes it so horrible? I'd love to read/see it if someone wouldn't mind.
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Apr 2, 2015 03:32
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A guy desperately wants to gently caress a mentally handicapped girl with pink hair who pisses herself. He is prevented only by the lust he feels for his cousin who is also the only person who seems to have a job in the show. Handicapped girl is secretly a monster girl whose species has invisible arms whose only purposes seem to be turning people into gore fountains and raping human women. Handicapped girl becomes a serial killer when she is hit on the head. For some reason we are supposed to feel sympathy for her because all humans deserve to die for killing one puppy or something.
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Apr 2, 2015 03:41
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I remember when I was trying to get into anime I read about Elen Lied and iirc it involves some girl who is often topless, I guess has to wear a diaper and killed other girls in overly brutal fashions. I think there was a thing about cloning girls just to kill them that drove me off.
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Apr 2, 2015 03:41
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PresidentBeard posted:A guy desperately wants to gently caress a mentally handicapped girl with pink hair who pisses herself. He is prevented only by the lust he feels for his cousin who is also the only person who seems to have a job in the show. Handicapped girl is secretly a monster girl whose species has invisible arms whose only purposes seem to be turning people into gore fountains and raping human women. Handicapped girl becomes a serial killer when she is hit on the head. For some reason we are supposed to feel sympathy for her because all humans deserve to die for killing one puppy or something. I did eventually read a synopsis. The handicapped girl and the others like her are some kind of diffrent race of humans and the scientist who made them is using them to take over the world...or something. I think I'm putting more thought into this show than the makers did...or not enough. gently caress it, lets talk about good Anime. Go Watch Madoka Magica. Attack on Titan is fine too, but I feel like it will eventually suffer the same fate as Lost did. Jay O posted:(And not a bad metaphor, considering Boondock Saints is the favorite movie of many, many, many, MANY taste-lax dudes.) I wanna meet that one dude in his 30s who still thinks thats a good movie. BigRed0427 fucked around with this message at 03:48 on Apr 2, 2015 |
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Apr 2, 2015 03:45
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This is kinda going against the crowd, but I honestly don't think Madoka is that great. I don't know if I'm just burnt out after 4 years of it being The Thing or if it's something like some people's reaction to Eva in that the merchandise is kinda creepy and undermines the show or if I just really, really miss good Magical Girl series made by women for girls. I'm not saying it isn't good, but it's not OMG the best series ever and no other magical girl series has ever done something like this!!!!111!! But yeah, Elfen Lied was a bad show and I was way too into AMVs of it as a stupid middle schooler.
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Apr 2, 2015 03:56
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The artist for Elfen Lied also worked on a sports manga called Nononono. To no one's surprise, it's very nononononononono.
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Apr 2, 2015 04:00
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I am glad i only watched anime in the 2000's on aldut swim. Pandora agents and wolf rain was my ceiling In term of deep anime.
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Apr 2, 2015 04:04
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hopeandjoy posted:This is kinda going against the crowd, but I honestly don't think Madoka is that great. I don't know if I'm just burnt out after 4 years of it being The Thing or if it's something like some people's reaction to Eva in that the merchandise is kinda creepy and undermines the show or if I just really, really miss good Magical Girl series made by women for girls. I'm not saying it isn't good, but it's not OMG the best series ever and no other magical girl series has ever done something like this!!!!111!! Yeah, that's why it's mostly recommended for people who aren't into anime as a kinda gateway drug. It's not the most hardcore poo poo in the coat pocket but it's interesting enough that people will ask what else is in there. EDIT: that list reminded me, I never actually watched the second season of Ghost in the Shell. At the time I only had cable and YTV only ran the first season, which I only half remember now. Is it worth watching now? SatansBestBuddy fucked around with this message at 04:16 on Apr 2, 2015 |
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Apr 2, 2015 04:06
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Cyron posted:Pandora agents and wolf rain was my ceiling In term of deep anime. It's Paranoia Agent to be exacting and pedantic. Not a bad show either, though the real standout from that era of Adult Swim was Ghost in the Shell. That was a good drat show.
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Apr 2, 2015 04:13
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Cyron posted:I am glad i only watched anime in the 2000's on aldut swim. Pandora agents and wolf rain was my ceiling In term of deep anime. If you want something good that's recent, go check out Death Parade or Mushi-shi.
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Apr 2, 2015 04:13
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Bombogenesis posted:On the topic of things better than Lordkat-chat, James Rolfe just did his first Board James in a couple years. James Rolfe can act. He's not a great actor, but he really can act. There seems to be a subplot developing here. I'm looking forward to more of this.
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Apr 2, 2015 04:18
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BigRed0427 posted:I did eventually read a synopsis. The handicapped girl and the others like her are some kind of diffrent race of humans and the scientist who made them is using them to take over the world...or something. I think I'm putting more thought into this show than the makers did...or not enough. gently caress it, lets talk about good Anime.
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Apr 2, 2015 04:27
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hopeandjoy posted:This is kinda going against the crowd, but I honestly don't think Madoka is that great. I don't know if I'm just burnt out after 4 years of it being The Thing or if it's something like some people's reaction to Eva in that the merchandise is kinda creepy and undermines the show or if I just really, really miss good Magical Girl series made by women for girls. I'm not saying it isn't good, but it's not OMG the best series ever and no other magical girl series has ever done something like this!!!!111!! I also almost never give up on a show once I start watching it but I had to bail on Elfen Lied after almost no time at all. It's just pointless sadism.
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Apr 2, 2015 04:29
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Bombogenesis posted:On the topic of things better than Lordkat-chat, James Rolfe just did his first Board James in a couple years. I remember that Rodney Dangerfield game. They played it on Beer and Boardgames. It it about as exciting as it appears!
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Apr 2, 2015 04:41
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No joke, if someone wants to watch anime, I start them with something dumb. The first couple Dragonball Z movies are usually a good starting point because they're light on plot and big on action and spectacle. The combined dumbness of them eases people into it. We laugh and joke about it and generally have a good time. Then maybe Ninja Scroll then on to The Slayers. It was kind of the route I went and it seems to work. I'd put Speed Racer in there but it's pretty dated and kind of through cultural osmosis has become the butt of holyshittheytalksofastdotheyevenhavetimetobreathwiththespeedtheyneedtotalkat?!?!?! jokes.
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Apr 2, 2015 04:47
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Just watch Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. That's all you ever need really.
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Apr 2, 2015 04:52
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PresidentBeard posted:Sorry for continuing the derail, but the scientists weren't making them. They were studying them to get rid of them. There was some long speech about the horned girls being a natural species and "the next evolution of humanity" or something. They were a wierd kinda parasite that infected human women to only produce more of themselves. Hence saying they're all rapists, because that's exactly what it is. It's condemning someone to carry a child that isn't even their species, and whose birth will likely kill them. The handicapped girl does this casually to women passing in the street. Our "hero" is a rapist serial killer. With Boondock Saints you at least have the thin justification of the badguys being mobsters. Here you're supposed to cheer a character on the same moral level as Alex DeLarge. Holy poo poo I didn't even remember that aspect of the show. With every girl pissing on the stairs and just not caring, and getting abused, and chopping limbs off, I guess something had to slip between the cracks. Didn't the anime end on a cliff hanger? Better than the manga's ending. I really like that opening though. Jesus Christ, I just thought of the implications of the manga ending. Gross. Excuse me, going to marathon Jojo to scrub my brain with a good show.
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Apr 2, 2015 04:52
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Ryuga Death posted:I remember hearing of Elfen Lied way back then but never followed up on what exactly it was. Would someone mind telling or listing what makes it so horrible? I'd love to read/see it if someone wouldn't mind. Apart from the stuff that's already been said, some of it accurate and some of it not (the lead girl pisses herself once but nobody wears a diaper, invisible hands cause human gore fountains but no invisible hands rape women or anything,) it is interesting to talk about both why Elfen Lied is so goddamn terrible but also why it caught on and became so popular and pervasive. Things that are just plain hoary poo poo don't catch on for no good reason, and they definitely don't get called "thought-provoking" or "adult" out of nowhere. The show had its draws and surface flair even if it was garbage underneath, which makes it much more interesting. For one thing, Elfen Lied was made with the intent of making a serious artistic statement, which informs a lot of its direction and tone. It's foul schlock when you stop to think about it for two seconds, but it doesn't play like foul schlock because that was far from the original intent. Studio ARMS, the production house behind it, was founded by much larger mainstream animation production house Studio Pierrot to produce content for the direct-to-video adult market which was still booming away at the time. (Kind of like how Disney had less family-friendly fare produced under the Touchstone label so they could corner that market without sullying the shiny House o' Mouse image.) ARMS put out a lot of exploitative garbage, but the success of their gratuitous and salacious yet artistically valid film Kite (by talented yet notoriously perverse director Yasuomi Umetsu) was successful, got a lot of traction on video, and gave them some precedent for establishing a potential "grindhouse-arthouse" brand. Elfen Lied was their first TV series, first non direct-to-video production, and it was meant to be taken very seriously, if that opening theme wasn't crystal clear on that count. It's blatant and overbearing, but as arthouse horror, the show's big opening scene is pretty effective, unforgettable, and a good hook for what it's trying to be. Dated art and animation aside, it's full of carefully composed shots, stark silences balanced with dissonant noise, tense pacing, all stuff you associate with Serious Films. That opening scene and the theme song did its job, it got people's attention, and once it had their hearts, they were more eager to let go of their brains a little. That's where it all goes down the shitter. The actual story of Elfen Lied is basically just an artsier-fartsier X-Men, if X-Men was particularly naive, goofy bordering on moronic, and outrageously misogynist. The "X-Men" themselves are the next evolution of humanity, all female because convenient excuse for the fetishization of woman abuse. They're telekinetic via bone extensions of their skull that look like horns coming through their head. As soon as humanity realizes this is happening, they quarantine these evolved girls in a laboratory and torture them because of course they do, and through this process they discover the girls have evolved an instinct to exterminate humanity and spread their superior genes to the next generation through telekinesis. If one of their invisible telekinesis-hands touches you, you have to be sterilized (which is what I think the person above meant by rape, except it's not like that at all, it's like an airborne infection instead. It doesn't impregnate anybody, it just ensures that their child will be an X-man, so they have to be sterilized, and it affects both men and women victims. Touched by one of those hands? Gotta get your balls chopped off!) Their most dangerous subject, Lucy, escapes the facility in that opening scene, but reverts to childhood after being shot in the head at the end of said scene. The show's basic thesis is that Lucy and all these evolved humans only want to exterminate humanity because they evolved that instinct after being persecuted. It's a basic-rear end X-Men "don't hurt people who are different" thing, and that's it, but man people went nuts for it because Look At All The Blood And Sex And Artistic Direction It Is For Adults. Anyway, because the boy who rescues and shelters her falls in love with her infantile personality (ew ew ew), he is saved and proves to the audience that women, erm I mean "X-Men" are just bad because they haven't been treated right, and these raging monstrous scorned bitches are really tender baby flowers who have been wronged (usually through violence and rape...hey, I didn't say there wasn't rape in the show, I just said it wasn't the invisible hand monsters who did the raping, they are instead the rape-ees.) So yeah, the journey to get to that is a tour through gratuitous subplots about gore and violence and tarnished innocence assaulting your eyeballs frame after frame, with plenty of deft cinematic execution to try and mask the stink. It's loving garbage. But that stink-masking worked because man did anime fans (mostly dudes) LOVE it! Thank Christ it's been supplanted over time with better stuff. I'll take the nerd obsession with Steins;Gate over Elfen Lied any day. Fun fact, Elfen Lied flopped in Japan. It was popular and revered by American otaku, but not at all successful in Japan, which is why Studio ARMS never really got that kind of budget for a TV series again. (The biggest "otaku dude" hit that year was My-HiME which is probably also kind of gross, but I haven't seen it personally, and only know enough to know it doesn't hold a candle to Elfen Lied.) So you can't really blame the Japanese audience for being misogynist perverts on that one, Elfen Lied's success story is all based in the good old USA. (Don't worry, Japan has exercised their misogynist pervert card thoroughly in other departments.) Since then, Studio ARMS has pretty much only produced pandering titty-time anime like Ikki Tousen and Queen's Blade, still with some artifice of seriousness in that it has a Plot and Ideas, but way more quick n' dirty product in nature than Elfen Lied was. Guess they figured the arthouse approach didn't take and wasn't worth the effort. EDIT: I disagree with the "show trying to make you sympathize with Lucy is terrible" thing in previous posts, though. That's a huge misread of the material and kind of at the core of its misogyny problems, albeit on the opposite side. (Elfen Lied infantilizes women, this criticism inadvertently demonizes them.) Lucy does deserve audience empathy. She's an abandoned child who slaughters the humanity around her because that's the only way she knows how to live, she's not given any other option by the narrative, she's persecuted from birth and has power she doesn't understand how to control. It doesn't justify her actions as a murderer, but the show isn't trying to justify those actions, it's trying to make you pity her and curse the cruel world she lives in. The show has the desire to be empathetic toward its human and X-men characters, it just has such a sophomoric and immature vision of humanity and prejudice that it doesn't work at all. You can't really have a story about how wrong it is to mistreat people when you're reveling in ultraviolence and rape as dramatic devices. Once again, I think the show caught on more in America because it's much more similar to ridiculous comic book storylines with battered women becoming monsters, written by gross ole American dudes. Jay O fucked around with this message at 05:31 on Apr 2, 2015 |
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Apr 2, 2015 05:08
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Jay O posted:Apart from the stuff that's already been said, some of it accurate and some of it not (the lead girl pisses herself once but nobody wears a diaper, invisible hands cause human gore fountains but no invisible hands rape women or anything,) Sorry for using hyperbolic language. I was referring to the hands changing people's body to produce horned babies, which is fundamentally rape. Also I don't remember diapers but I heard the manga included them in some capacity.
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Apr 2, 2015 05:20
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