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Summer 2012 Anime |OT3| Where All the Waifus Are Made Up and the Points Don't Matter

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cajunator

Banned
ycsjBl.jpg

I cannot fathom how this character design was actually approved.

You keep saying things like this, but SenColle is genuinely a better show that most of the things you subject yourself to. It's not actually a terrible show.

I cannot see how its better than stuff like Jinrui and Space Brothers.
Or even Accel World.
 

madp

The Light of El Cantare
Compared to the rest of the current shows left in my backlog, I would rather watch more.

I don't think that many of us are going to have fond memories of this season, hahahah.

I guess I'm going to spend the rest of the evening trying to catch up on Lagrange S2. Fuck.
 

firehawk12

Subete no aware
In House's defense, they mix it up quite a bit. Season 3 is a good example of this.
House blows up the show via the characters, not the cases. Which is my point though - the strength of any of the shows of this particular type is on the characters. Dead bodies or patients carrying super viruses are the same as stolen trinkets and mysterious manga artsts at a school festival.

I don't think that many of us are going to have fond memories of this season, hahahah.

I guess I'm going to spend the rest of the evening trying to catch up on Lagrange S2. Fuck.
Sundays were my favourite anime day. Jinrui, Oda Nobuna, Hyouka, Tari Tari. For one reason or another, I like each of those shows. It was a glorious day. lol
 

kayos90

Tragic victim of fan death
They already lost me by then.

Honestly, I would recommend season 3 to anyone just because it's so good. If you care, the premise is that House has fired everyone on his team and he has to build a new team. He has dozens and dozens of people trying out. They have to compete against each other and it makes for an interesting scenario. You should check it out if you were definitely turned off by season 1 and 2.

House blows up the show via the characters, not the cases. Which is my point though - the strength of any of the shows of this particular type is on the characters. Dead bodies or patients carrying super viruses are the same as stolen trinkets and mysterious manga artsts at a school festival.


Sundays were my favourite anime day. Jinrui, Oda Nobuna, Hyouka, Tari Tari. For one reason or another, I like each of those shows. It was a glorious day. lol

Essentially, they're a means to an overarching story and narrative of an episode. Right?
 

Jex

Member
Man, those credits gave me a flashback to my life 8 years ago. lol

I'm not sure why I pointed out its Canadian-ness... other than as a way to separate it from the American procedural or out of some sense of national pride or something. lol
Well you folks are good at that. What was the name of that Canadian drugs/cops show? I can't remember but it's title but I seem to remember it being pretty cool.
 

firehawk12

Subete no aware
Essentially, they're a means to an overarching story and narrative of an episode. Right?
Like they are in Hyouka or any procedural based on an examination of the "genius" main character.

Why was I never informed that there were SEVERAL VOLUMES OF Sengoku Collection character CDs? This is actually the most normal that Kanetsugu has ever looked:

http://i.imgur.com/WMDpb.jpg

* selected episodes of
Are you willing to learn Japanese?

(There are hours of Aria drama CDs... no one will ever sub them though. :()

Well you folks are good at that. What was the name of that Canadian drugs/cops show? I can't remember but it's title but I seem to remember it being pretty cool.
We've had a few. Blue Murder is the most recent, long running one that comes to mind.

The big Canadian procedural show at the moment is Flashpoint... which I like mostly because it a) stars the original American Pink Power Ranger (let's pretend I didn't say that) and b) is about a SWAT team instead of a bunch of detectives, so the formula is a changed up considerably.

Edit: the other Canandian detective show that comes to mind is Davinci's Inquest.

(Southland, which is about LA patrol cops, is a nice change of pace as well. But now we're getting way off topic. lol)
 

Envelope

sealed with a kiss
Like they are in Hyouka or any procedural based on an examination of the "genius" main character.


Are you willing to learn Japanese?

(There are hours of Aria drama CDs... no one will ever sub them though. :()

I think you should be the one learning Japanese in that case!
 

duckroll

Member
Yeah, the patient will die if House doesn't solve the case, but who cares? We've never seen this person before, and we know beforehand how everybody besides House will diagnose something obviously wrong, House will act rude and get in trouble with his superiors, but his methods will be vindicated by solving the case. The patient will be saved and House will say something pithy while everyone looks contemplative.

House is actually a bad example to bring up because it proves that setup isn't everything, lol.

That's a good point, and I'll like to use that to springboard some things which I think Hyouka actually does well in terms of mysteries. Because of the mundane nature of Hyouka's mysteries, how interesting the case is as it is presented is often directly related to how interesting it is to the audience. The audience has to care.

The problem with Ep6 is that it is highly unlikely that any normal audience member will actually have the opinion that Chitanda wanting to know why she got so angry at a teacher who mixed up his lesson plan is an "interesting" mystery. Being mundane isn't the problem here, being totally redundantly vapid is.

On the other hand, I find that the Hyouka mystery and the hot springs ghost mystery were actually pretty interesting cases. There is a good amount of development in the characters being invested in the mystery because it is something which would actually bother a normal person if they came across something like this. I felt that like the characters, I too wanted to know the answer to the mystery. That is what made them interesting. Not because they were of some grand importance, but because the answer could prove to be intriguing. In both cases, they did end up being solutions which gave greater insight on the characters involved in the mystery, which is another plus.

I don't think mysteries need to be of huge consequence to be interesting, but I do feel they need to be well... interesting. Otherwise it's just a matter of ticking off a series of check boxes to fit a procedural pattern in the narrative, and that's just boring and pointless.
 

firehawk12

Subete no aware
I think you should be the one learning Japanese in that case!
I probably should. I don't think it'll happen though. :(
If only a company like RightStuf would get into the audio drama subtitling game. lol

Yup. I was just making sure I understood correctly.
Yep!

I don't think mysteries need to be of huge consequence to be interesting, but I do feel they need to be well... interesting. Otherwise it's just a matter of ticking off a series of check boxes to fit a procedural pattern in the narrative, and that's just boring and pointless.
Over the last 15 years of watching American TV, I've probably watched thousands of hours of procedural television. At that point, no weekly mystery is interesting. It's why all the shows have opted to do the double mystery - the boring mystery of the week and then the season long mystery that's supposed to keep your guessing. But even that is getting to be a tired formula now.

If anything, I think the lower stakes of the Hyouka mysteries, even the one you think is boring, is more interesting than anything I've seen in a long time.
 

duckroll

Member
Over the last 15 years of watching American TV, I've probably watched thousands of hours of procedural television. At that point, no weekly mystery is interesting. It's why all the shows have opted to do the double mystery - the boring mystery of the week and then the season long mystery that's supposed to keep your guessing. But even that is getting to be a tired formula now.

If anything, I think the lower stakes of the Hyouka mysteries, even the one you think is boring, is more interesting than anything I've seen in a long time.

But I don't watch procedurals for the mysteries. I either watch them because I think an actor or actress is hot, or there's some hilariously good/bad chemistry in the cast that makes it entertaining in ways which go beyond the mystery. After a certain point, Law and Order stopped being about the actual cases (they still existed, but honestly, no one cared!) and was just a legal + police version of Days of Our Lives. Everyone is so familiar with the cast that it's just a matter of tuning in to see what they were up to, as opposed to actually caring about what they were really doing each week. It's just a shallow thing.

Hyouka is not a procedural though. It's a character drama. There's nothing standard about the narrative structure, and each of the major arcs play out completely differently in both narrative structure, and in tone.
 

Branduil

Member
That's a good point, and I'll like to use that to springboard some things which I think Hyouka actually does well in terms of mysteries. Because of the mundane nature of Hyouka's mysteries, how interesting the case is as it is presented is often directly related to how interesting it is to the audience. The audience has to care.

The problem with Ep6 is that it is highly unlikely that any normal audience member will actually have the opinion that Chitanda wanting to know why she got so angry at a teacher who mixed up his lesson plan is an "interesting" mystery. Being mundane isn't the problem here, being totally redundantly vapid is.

On the other hand, I find that the Hyouka mystery and the hot springs ghost mystery were actually pretty interesting cases. There is a good amount of development in the characters being invested in the mystery because it is something which would actually bother a normal person if they came across something like this. I felt that like the characters, I too wanted to know the answer to the mystery. That is what made them interesting. Not because they were of some grand importance, but because the answer could prove to be intriguing. In both cases, they did end up being solutions which gave greater insight on the characters involved in the mystery, which is another plus.

I don't think mysteries need to be of huge consequence to be interesting, but I do feel they need to be well... interesting. Otherwise it's just a matter of ticking off a series of check boxes to fit a procedural pattern in the narrative, and that's just boring and pointless.

Yeah, likewise in episode 21, the
missing chocolates
are interesting because it directly impacts characters we've come to care about. It doesn't even matter that the culprit is fairly obvious. Adding death and mayhem is not a free ticket to interesting mysteries, nor is the lack of severe consequences necessarily damning, though you might have to work harder to get respect for those.
 

Thoraxes

Member
If anything, I think the lower stakes of the Hyouka mysteries, even the one you think is boring, is more interesting than anything I've seen in a long time.
I have watched over 600 episodes on Detective Conan, and to see how dragged out they were in Hyouka was horrible for me. Especially the film arc. They basically repeated the same episode 3 times that at one point I thought I was watching the wrong episode.
 

Branduil

Member
Over the last 15 years of watching American TV, I've probably watched thousands of hours of procedural television. At that point, no weekly mystery is interesting. It's why all the shows have opted to do the double mystery - the boring mystery of the week and then the season long mystery that's supposed to keep your guessing. But even that is getting to be a tired formula now.

If anything, I think the lower stakes of the Hyouka mysteries, even the one you think is boring, is more interesting than anything I've seen in a long time.

You know, I think one show that actually got the formula right, which is funny because it's pretty old, is Columbo. This is of course because the central conceit of the show is that the mysteries literally do not matter, because there are none; we see the criminal committing the crime at the beginning of each show. The reason it works is because we're interested in seeing how Columbo catches them, not what actually happened.
 

firehawk12

Subete no aware
I have watched over 600 episodes on Detective Conan, and to see how dragged out they were in Hyouka was horrible for me. Especially the film arc. They basically repeated the same episode 3 times.
For me, the film arc was a culmination of Oreki's smugness being built up to an intolerable level. lol

Hyouka is not a procedural though. It's a character drama. There's nothing standard about the narrative structure, and each of the major arcs play out completely differently in both narrative structure, and in tone.
Well, Hyouka is probably more directly inspired by Holmes than by any television procedural. It's just that when adapted to television, the similarities being to creep in. Certainly I'm watching it on those terms anyway.

You know, I think one show that actually got the formula right, which is funny because it's pretty old, is Columbo. This is of course because the central conceit of the show is that the mysteries literally do not matter, because there are none; we see the criminal committing the crime at the beginning of each show. The reason it works is because we're interested in seeing how Columbo catches them, not what actually happened.
Yeah, Law and Order CI was the same way... although in that case, there was a greater emphasis on the psychology of the criminals beyond the typical confession scene you get at the end of a standard procedural.
 
Tari Tari 12


Everything feels average. Just average. Maybe I'm just not invested enough into the festival and school things, but everything is just moving along and I'm like ok. Sure, whatever.

At least Taichi finally found his role in the show. As a gofer.
 

duckroll

Member
You know, I think one show that actually got the formula right, which is funny because it's pretty old, is Columbo. This is of course because the central conceit of the show is that the mysteries literally do not matter, because there are none; we see the criminal committing the crime at the beginning of each show. The reason it works is because we're interested in seeing how Columbo catches them, not what actually happened.

I think another show in recent memory which got it right was CSI Miami! It works because no one gives a fuck about the mystery or how anyone on the show actually solves it, we tune in every week just to see how hard they can pun on the various specifics of the case! While taking shades off and putting them back on!

Please don't hurt me! It's true! :(
 

firehawk12

Subete no aware
Tari Tari 12

Everything feels average. Just average. Maybe I'm just not invested enough into the festival and school things, but everything is just moving along and I'm like ok. Sure, whatever.

At least Taichi finally found his role in the show. As a gofer.

No, that's the show. lol
 

Branduil

Member
Hyouka is not a procedural though. It's a character drama. There's nothing standard about the narrative structure, and each of the major arcs play out completely differently in both narrative structure, and in tone.

This is also an important point, and why the mysteries in Hyouka don't bother me unless they're just utterly pointless like in episode 6. I'm far more bothered when I'm taken out of a work by my awareness of the show's meta-structure than a mundane mystery interestingly told. It's a problem when you can solve a mystery based on show's formula rather than the clues present in the show proper, which nowadays are often used solely to mislead.
 
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