So are we finally ready for some semblance of intelligent thought after that period of nonsense? Ready to retackle that Daimaou sillyness?
Well, look around; how intelligent do you feel right now?
A ‘crazy layout’ and ‘artistic expression’ are two very different things.
Angel Beats and Daimaou, all in one fell swoop. Remember the twelve episode curse? It comes back to haunt Angel Beats in full. Mr. Jun was too ambitious with AB; he started by having Yuri’s backstory to clean up, added Otonashi’s on top of that, then had Otonashi’s budding relationship with Kanade, not to mention all the other Sensen members that have basically as of now only been extra manpower to shoot stuff with. None of those guys have resolved backstories; you’d have thought they’d be an important bunch because they’re in Yuri’s personal troupe, but all they ended up being were background characters with quirks.
We roll with this fact. *sigh*
I can’t help but feel Angel Beats cops out by having everyone disappear in a few minutes worth of one episode – but then, what could Mr. Jun have done in thirteen, right? Especially when *sigh* Yui got an entire episode all to herself. Notice how the actual combating members in operations take a backseat to GirlDeMo’s lead singers. Makes you wonder about the decision in pacing; Otonashi remembered his past, saw his sister die, befriended Kanade and made king-sized sashimi all in one episode if I remember correctly.
Juu-ni no noroi. Believe me, darnit.
Angel Beats takes its audience very seriously, with its conceptual explanations and its own set of Magiscience Laws of the Universe™. As such, it’s all too easy to apply logic to it; it almost invites us to. Where did Matsushita go to train ‘in the mountains’? Does that mean they’re not confined to school grounds? Why are we never *properly* taken out of the school grounds (fishing trip doesn’t count)?
This hurts Angel Beats in its final stretch, in my humble opinion; Yurippe has that vision of a normal school life while assaulted by Shadows, something no character assaulted before has had. Why? Takamatsu was shown to have become an NPC; is that what was happening to Yuri? Why didn’t she get translocated? Otonashi and co. managed to snap Yuri out of it, does that mean they could’ve saved Takamatsu as well?
Yuri monologues so much that they might as well have had Morgan Freeman voice her.
It’s dangerous to go alone!
The Guild’s leader tries to leave a bit of inexplicable profoundness before vanishing, and X members of the SSS managed to disappear seemingly by will just by hearing Otonashi’s speech. Was Yui their only reason for staying around? Seriously?
Yuri has what is supposed to be a revelational conversation with the sentinel Angel Player’s programmer left behind, but it felt like its purpose was to tie up loose end as quickly as possible. The Shadow plot that has been building up since last episode is simply explained to us by the sentinel, and Yuri is offered godhood. She declines this, to the chagrin of some fans, but I believe this to be in good judgment – imagine how balls bustingly fast the next episode’s pacing would be if she’d gone for it. Neither is this the right time for fishbowl insanity, with how Mr. Jun has been emphasizing how righteous Yuri the Warfront Leader is.
My face when I sat on a vertically standing box of Toblerone that one time.
It’s just that, I couldn’t take their revelational exchange and Yuri’s humble resignation seriously at all, when right afterwards she started spraying at the screens to get rid of the system. I just couldn’t. Once a character starts spraying automatic rifles at their surroundings in slow-mo, all suspense and existential thoughts go down the drain. You’ve watched Predator, I assume? Like that. Don’t bring a submachine gun to an intellectual discussion. When Yuri reared back to pull out the dual pistols, I thought she was going to throw a hand grenade – and that wouldn’t have surprised me at all.
Instant Ningyo-cookie to anyone who can tell me just what the hell she’s wielding like that.
How many anti-infantry bullets does it take to do this to a room?
Dual-wielding firearms at that rate of fire would’ve numbed Yurippe’s frail, spindly frame within thirty seconds; also, how many bullets do you need to actually knock analog computer monitors into the air? I’m also inclined to believe that there are more effective ways to deactivate a computer system than to fill it with lead.
That’s just too much.
Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door was a really cool name that this episode just doesn’t quite live up to.
Daimaou and Angel Beats both deal with deicide, and really, I can’t see it as anything but a cheap plot device to try to impress audiences. This allows them to explore convoluted theologies and fancy sounding plot devices to give off a sense of complexity and depth. These terms are unflattering, especially given the context of the series. For example, Keena is the ‘Law of Identity’, some abstract existence that’s supposed to be ‘bound’ to the demon king to create a new world – all this really means is that she can make everyone think Akuto isn’t the demon king in the end.
That’s actually the dumbest plan I’ve ever heard.
Angel Beats does this a bit better, with the twist how love was the glitch in the system that caused people to become unable to disappear, but this part of the plot was only explored for as long as the sentinel had to tell Yuri about it – you don’t get the sense that something actually happened, or that it was a device that ever had any relevance.
Daimaou twelve’s one great flaw was how it felt it needed to make sense of its deicide plot, even at the expense of trashing Brave and Bouichirou, the former of which took an episode to develop and the latter the series’ primary antagonist for the longest time, within minutes. What were supposed to be epic plot confrontations became relegated to Akuto’s warm up before he went to fight ‘god’, a system in the form of a Yggdrasil parody of sorts. Sure, it’s a plot twist not seeing epic, lengthy confrontations with Brave and Bouichirou, but it’s not a very good one.
Ouch.
“Aaah you have slayethed me” *swoon*
Episodes ten and eleven, for all their senseless insanity, retained primary antagonists much better. They embodied what people liked about Daimaou; light-hearted magical action harem, with a hapless main character trying to make the best out of what fate has preordained for him. Nowhere in there was ‘coherence’ supposed to fit in.
This somehow translates into a need to go save him naked.
Akuto now holds the record of ‘previously clothed character shirtless for the longest time’ though, if that makes you feel any better.
Thing is, these two series are supposed to be on a totally different vein, but they ended up being very similar – and they both suffer for it. AB because it gained too much of that hurried inexplicableness native to Daimaou, Daimaou because it tried to make sense of its universe like AB.
In Daimaou, everything is fridge logic.
Ninjas on a helicopta~
Still, I have to hand the superior episode badge to Daimaou. We never had to suspend our disbelief for it, and that’s what makes its job easier. Angel Beats isn’t over, of course, but episode twelve was so conclusive that I could do this.
You ought to see these mikos’ rate of fire – you’ll crap your pants.
It all depends on how one likes one’s theology and nonsense – either of these series could be pleasant, or just rub you the wrong way. If you want my verdict, it’s that either series is above average on the entertainment scale, but only compared to their peers. Alone, they’re nothing to write home about.
Not that they serve much purpose besides irritating Akuto.
He punches THROUGH flying mikos for breakfast. Keep him away from my Touhous.
This wasn’t just a compare and contrast post, it connects directly into a follow-up post to come in a bit. First I shall get my last exam out of the way. Yeesh, they’re such energy leeches; not often one experiences what it’s like to be a zombie. Well, there’s always this image to pump me up a little.
HOO-HAH!
Ningyo
Related posts:
June 24th, 2010 at 12:02 pm
Suspension of disbelief is kind of required when watching anime in general, particularly fantasy anime, not even mentioning the fact that fantasy kinda works on it’s own version of logic. I have no clue about Daimaou, and I have to agree with this whole visit to The Architecture in AB, but before then AB actually did somewhat nicely with its limited logic — especially since it sets the grounds early on that it’s pretty much an MMO with its patchwork of internal logical consistency.
June 24th, 2010 at 12:26 pm
@Aorii
Of course – I wouldn’t have gone anywhere near Daimaou if I wasn’t willing to do that for fantasy anime. Don’t worry, I’m not antagonizing Angel Beats nor other fantasy animes’ universal code; all the problems I had with the episode were plot holes. As for the scene in which Yuri mows down all the monitors, I complained about its physics simply because I so despise that scene used as an extension to drama, because of how exploited it is in action films. I just can’t take anything that pulls it seriously.
Otherwise, this’ll all take significance in the next post. Trust me, I’m not against a bit of suspension of disbelief. It’s the point I’m writing in favor for in part two.
June 24th, 2010 at 9:09 pm
I can’t quite comment on half the post because I kind of halted Angel Beats for a while. After episode 5, I felt no motivation to spend the time downloading it. Furthermore I haven’t seen Daimaou 12 yet.
Both of these shows however, I went in to or at least by the first episode, expecting terrible plot but simple and nonsensical entertainment. While I expected both of these shows to provide me with such, I also expected to label them with the word “bad”. However, I am a firm believer that a show is “bad” when it doesn’t give itself the right amount of self-respect. What I mean by that is that Daimou would’ve been plenty more times entertaining if it attempted a non-serious approach to their story, or didn’t take itself too seriously. By the 12th episode, part of my chagrin is that they start discussing serious things like the Law of Identity which feels like they want me to think about some sort of philosophical metaphor. The problem is they never built the concept up enough throughout the series to make me give a rat’s ass.
When an anime tries to rap up the final episode with huge and irregular jumps in plot development, it leaves a bad taste in your mouth. It is even preferable to simply have plot holes so long as the show itself was entertaining. “DEEP” anime needs to set itself up as such from the get-go and needs to likewise put in the production effort and have writers who ensure the plot to be coherent and thought-provoking. a half-assed effort to tie together the knots isn’t winning the anime any additional points. The only thing I can say in Daimaou’s defense is that “It was entertaining until the final episodes”, but why cant I just say, “It was really entertaining”?
June 24th, 2010 at 10:50 pm
furthermore, I for one welcome our new Lily Overlords.
June 27th, 2010 at 2:16 pm
Agreed that Angel Beats tried to cover way too many themes. It tried to do too much and ended up failing everything. Well, I haven’t seen the last episode, but that’s the feeling I get so far.
Anyways, is badenbadenlily referring to this Lily?
June 28th, 2010 at 11:14 pm
“Notice how the actual combating members in operations take a backseat to GirlDeMo’s lead singers.”
IWASAWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
June 28th, 2010 at 11:31 pm
I just finished the last two episodes of Angel Beats in one go, and God DAMNNIT, you are completely right, and then some. In all honesty, I never expected anything substantial out of the side cast, but even the main characters can be summed up by one-liner sob stories. This whole computer God development turned out to be a really forced plot device to make Yuri understand the fact that what she’s been doing with the SSS is pointless — a revelation that most viewers have arrived at AGES AGO.
The last episode is pretty much a drawn-out version of a 5-minute wrap-up for normal series. Brace yourself for some military-grade melodrama that will force the contents of your stomach out of your mouth. Ugh, it’s been a while since I hated an anime with such vigor, because it seriously makes me question the fandom as a whole. Are our emotional reactions so cheap that all it takes is a couple minutes’ worth of a sob story? REALLY? I really do need to give your book a read, because it may very well explain the reason why eroge-style drama like this works.
June 29th, 2010 at 8:31 am
@Jianyan
I can see why Angel Beats could take a bit of energy to complete – some of those first few episodes could rub one the wrong way, yeah. The Law of Identity was probably the primary nail in the coffin; right, Daimaou’s mistake is taking its last episode too seriously, providing the audience with unneeded explanation and resolutions. It felt like it was in completely different spirit from the two episodes before, which never bothered with petty unmanly things like explanation or logic. Well, Akuto does punch through Mikos and shoot eye lasers in this one, so it’s not irredeemable.
Perfectly put. If anyone ever decides to write a book pertaining the laws of producing good anime, they should definitely contract you for that last paragraph. But well, this makes Daimaou entertaining overall. Compared to what peers it has for us to contrast with, Daimaou commits no big sin, and in the end, we should probably be a bit thankful.
Afterall, that Iron Man anime with the robot pirate hasn’t reared its head yet.
And thanks, I needed that. Lily needs some recognition around these parts.
@Yi
Hmm, partially, I suppose. This only worked because her name is Lily, after all. The whole thing is still a super-move name, so real reason is just me wanting a facelift of sorts ^^;
It’s no incorrect feeling; you won’t be subject to much different until the last episode. The finale is random in its own right, but what I’ve tried to do is call it innovation and work from there.
@Glo
KANADE-CHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN~
@Chag
Oh Chags, I’m always the very avatar of correctness. True; thirteen was hardly enough room to begin to introduce any of the main cast, especially with Mr. Jun’s ambitious game plan. I don’t know if I can even call it a forced plot device – it’s a little too offhanded for that. It feels more like AB’s beloved writer was chasing the proverbial ‘dragon you can never catch’, if you catch my drift (you’ve been keeping up with your South Park, right?). Not an effective analogy, but apt, since AB likes throwing whatever it wants at us. As a matter of crap, there’s more than one instance of repeated plot revelation. For example, I was certain Otonashi knew that Kanade wasn’t really an angel once he befriended her (and saw her method of devising attacks, and saw her soft human sides…), yet this was apparently not so as he revealed in episode 11 or something.
‘Military grade melodrama’ gave me a good chuckle. Luckily there was nothing in my stomach to regurgitate, riiiight :D?
Yeah, Azuma there certainly delves into it, but who said it worked? I haven’t yet seen any entirely positive reviews of the episode, albeit the fact that I haven’t been raiding any ‘fourteen-year-old weaboo-level’ fanbases. Mr. Jun slightly played us for palm-munchers. That, and if I’m to establish this animosity between myself and Hiroki Azuma I had better start calling him Mr. Azuma. Or Azuma-chan. …Azuchin?
June 29th, 2010 at 2:11 pm
Sorry that I am not functioning correctly after chatting 13 straight hours with someone (+ watching Japan lose on Pk orz), but your post is too awesome that I can’t understand 2% until after I get my rest. I did lmao on most of the captions though xD
July 6th, 2010 at 2:27 am
Awesome layout! Yay for Lily!! xD I did enjoy that character too =) great choice -nod-