Tag Archives: Writing

Wrong Every Time: Gen Urobuchi and the Human Spirit

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Management: Spoilers ahead for Madoka, Gargantia, Psycho-Pass, and Fate/Zero.

It’s not a complicated question. You hold the gun, target in the sights, finger on the trigger. An innocent, no question. But the stakes could not be more clear: one or one hundred. Either you kill this one person, ending their life and putting their blood on your hands, or you do nothing, and one hundred die through your inaction. Is it morally permissible to fire? Is it morally permissible not to? You could ask them first, I suppose – are they willing to die for the sake of one hundred strangers? That would certainly be noble of them, and possibly clear your conscious. But what if they say no? What if the stakes are one thousand strangers? One hundred thousand? One hundred billion?

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Formative Experiences and Character Writing

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Management: Been a while since I’ve done a general criticism post, eh?

Question:

Are shows starring adults meaningfully different from shows starring teenagers? How about college students versus high school students? I ask because in many shows (Working! versus Servant x Service, etc), the differences seem largely superficial – the humor and character interactions all carry over.

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Trust, Agency, and The World God Only Knows

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Initially, I wasn’t really sure if there was a point to reviewing this one. I mean, it’s the third season of a self-aware harem comedy/parody. If you’re watching it, you know what you’re getting, and if you’re not, you know why you’re not. What would be the audience for a piece like that?

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized this season basically makes the show. Sure, it’s always been funny. Sure, it’s always taken pointed but lighthearted jabs at harem scenarios and anime character writing. But this season takes the gloves off. This season makes a point.

Alright, I’m gonna use one of my least favorite words here. Normally, I think it’s both misapplied and meaningless, but for once, it just might be appropriate.

TWGOK S3 completes the show’s arc as a deconstruction of harem comedies.

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Originality versus Execution

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Management: Another brief one. This topic could easily be expanded into questions like “what is originality?” and “what is the intersection of craft and voice?”, as well as the way craft and insight inherently lead to a level of specificity in storytelling which makes any good genre piece “original” enough to avoid feeling derivative or superfluous. But those are easily essays by themselves.

Question:

When forming your opinion of a show, what do you value more highly: originality or execution?

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Criticism versus Nitpicking and Grounded Conflict

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Question:

What separates a legitimate criticism of a show from nitpicking? Can one complaint be more “valid” than another, if they’re both things the show is actually lacking or doesn’t explain or whatnot? And is there a scale for this stuff – do fifty tiny complaints add up to one big one, or does it require some single significant failing to constitute a legitimate criticism?

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Thematic Integration and Philosophical Discussion

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Question:

As a fan of philosophy, I tend to enjoy shows that take the time to discuss their philosophical or ethical questions, such as Psycho-Pass or Evangelion. However, it seems clear that writers can go overboard with this, and that sometimes these discussions can seem inappropriate or even pretentious. Do you think there’s a specific pattern to when discussions like this are appropriate, and when they start to become pretentious?

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Emotional Manipulation and Storytelling

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Question:

People often describe shows they don’t like as “emotionally manipulative.” Don’t all shows do that anyway? What do people mean when they talk about “emotional manipulation” like it’s a bad thing?

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Craft Exercise – Little Witch Academia as a Series

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Management: I’m aware I basically plot out the most standard possible genre piece here. The point was not to outline something potentially groundbreaking, it was to illustrate the amount of work a first episode generally has to do regarding narrative structure. A really great first episode would require a much larger infusion of creativity than the structural hack job I perform here.

Question:

Little Witch Academia was awesome! Do you think it could be turned into a full series?

Bobduh:

It was great, but it was also solidly self-contained – it told a fun, breezy story that doubled as a metaphor for that “showy entertainment is needed to inspire the young” theme (words on that if you’re interested), and everything was written/characterized to the extent needed for this one thing. It answered all narrative questions it raised and fully articulated its thematic intent – I think it’d have to be quite different to work as a series.

Question:

Can you elaborate on that? What made the OVA unsuitable as a first episode, and what would have to be changed to make it work?

Bobduh:

Well, the main problem is that like I said, it basically answered all of its own questions, which is something a first episode generally doesn’t do (though this obviously isn’t a rule, and I’m not the story police – for instance, Cowboy Bebop’s first episode is virtually entirely self-contained, though it does actually raise the core theme of the difficulty of escaping your past identity and choices). Anyway! The conflicts Little Witch Academia raised were:

  1. The protagonist gaining acceptance and respect at her school.
  2. The protagonist proving the legitimacy of her idol.
  3. The protagonist resolving her specific conflict with her rival.
  4. The treasure hunt/dragon fight.

Additionally, the thematic point that I’m fairly sure this show as trying to make was:

“Ostensibly low-art popular entertainment like the flashy shows of this protagonist’s idol are actually not just entertaining, they are incredibly important as inspiration for the next generation – as an example, here is a story of that actually occurring within a piece of this kind of entertainment created by a group of people who were in this way inspired.”

The OVA resolves every one of those conflicts entirely (she saves the school, thus resolving 1 and 4 – she does it by using the wand of her idol, thus resolving 2 – she ends the series by being rescued by and bonding with her rival, thus resolving 3). While doing these things, it acts in its entirety as the thematic argument I outlined. This is all great storytelling, and I think the piece totally works on a surface and thematic level because of it.

However, if I were to make a full series of this, I feel something like this would act more as “proof of concept” than a first episode – you can’t really have the first episode of your show not leave any suspense, or unanswered questions, or possible new avenues for conflict, or not-fully-explored themes.

How would I go about fixing this?

The world would certainly have to be a bit broader – the current cast/characterization would possibly work for a very simple monster-of-the-week thing, but seeing as how we’re trying to make a good series here and the OVA has already displayed the creator’s interest in actually raising interesting thematic arguments, I’d like to aim a bit higher than that.

Currently, a decent bit of runtime in this OVA is dedicated to articulating the various beats of the thematic argument (the initial performance, arguments both with her rival and with her friends about her validity, all the business with the wand, the final reconciliation) – in a full series, I wouldn’t recommend this, and would probably just have a hint or two of this thematic concern.

The surface conflict would probably have to be shaved a bit and tuned down as well – having our hero save the school from a dragon probably works better for a one-episode OVA than a series that’s supposed to rise in tension throughout, plus having her save the school immediately too easily resolves the conflict of her finding her place at the school as someone who hasn’t come from a classic wizarding background.

Instead, we’d probably want a little more runtime dedicated both to characterizing her friends and rival a little more deeply, perhaps providing first glimpses of a couple more secondary characters for future conflicts, and probably providing a more full picture of daily life at the school. I feel one of the main strengths of this material is “Harry Potter but as an anime with vivid, humorous animation,” and one of the main strengths of Harry Potter was, in my opinion, how entertaining they made life at the school seem even in the absence of any crazy tension or dark forces. Again, since we’re stretching the darker stuff across a greater number of episodes here, I feel the first episode would probably be lighter in tone in general, and ride more on its humor than its adventure-adrenaline rush, as more pieces of the starting template are set in place.

That’s not to say there wouldn’t be a conflict, though – my first instinct would be to have our Protagonist’s desire to prove herself result in some disastrous consequences, with some theatrical conflict that would hopefully complicate the rivalry between her and Rival, possibly accidentally unveil a hint (perhaps only to the audience) of some larger, darker conflict to come, and likely clue the Protagonist in to the possibility that her Idol exists somewhere at the school. This would hopefully offer plenty of opportunity for the story to go in a variety of directions and hints of things to come while still offering immediate entertainment through humor, likable characters, immediately understandable rivalry, the first steps in exploring a very imaginative world, and a fun, brief dose of action to top it off.

Anyway. Those are my first thoughts on how I’d go about converting this to a series.

Thoughts on Formulaic Storytelling and Critiquing Entertainment

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Management: This discussion was prompted by the creator of this blog post reflecting on the role repetition plays in enabling climactic and satisfying reversals in storytelling, and how our repetition-bred expectations can lead to more resonant moments in media. It’s a great article and a fascinating subject, and I only begin to explore the artistic implications here.

Question:

Do you consider the formulaic structure so much anime adopts a problem for you?

Bobduh:

I really like the point your article raises, about formula-breaking moments containing that much more power and significance by virtue of how established those formulas were prior to that point. The problem as I see it is that those moments don’t actually validate all the formulaic stuff that came before – sure, they lend it added significance, but they don’t make it in and of itself worthwhile or artistically interesting. I don’t know if there are any easy answers here, either… hm… let me cover some other facets of this, and then I’ll try to loop back around to that.

Alright, first, I do think formula does in fact have a place in certain works. It’s generally not that compatible with tight storytelling/character-building/thematic explorations, but not all shows are about those things, or need to be – for example, I think Madhouse’s Hunter x Hunter reboot is just a very fun exploration of the shonen genre, and most of the arcs follow semi-typical shonen structures, but the show is meant pretty specifically just to entertain. Well-crafted popcorn can be its own reward, and I think formula can be used to great effect there.

But regarding shows that actually want to say something, or develop characters with emotional resonance? There, I think it’s much more difficult to argue for formula, but there are still examples that kind of ride the borderline. For example, I think Cowboy Bebop is a great show that articulates a classic but still solid theme about the difficulty of rising above your past self and redefining/rebuilding yourself, but I also think it uses formula to great effect – many of the episodes are just “bounty-of-the-week” adventures, but they work very well as independent storytelling vignettes, and they contribute both to the mood/world-building as well as the slow-building empathy the audience is meant to feel for the emotionally distant/reserved protagonists. And many great shows are built almost entirely of similar thematically related vignettes (Kino’s Journey), and many other shows use a series of utterly unconnected and similarly structured conflicts to slowly build a mood and set of characters for the underlying story (Hyouka). There are endless examples of degrees of this, and frankly, the fact that anime is an episodic medium means that for most shows, the mere necessity of an initial conflict, rising tension, and resolution each episode will result in a number of semi-similar structures. This is just how storytelling works in mediums like this.

But I think your point was treading on more difficult ground – if the formulaic structure is useful purely because it provides a structure that can create suspense and surprise if deviated from. Honestly, within a single work, I don’t think this leads to incredibly successful art – it might lead to great moments, but as I said at the beginning, the subversion doesn’t retroactively grant all the prior material meaning, character, and distinction if it didn’t have those things to start.

However, I do think the meta-narrative trick of subverting expectations with the entire scope of a work can be effective and lead to consistent artwork, as long as that work is internally consistent. This is where I think shows like Eva and Madoka fall – even if part of their power comes from changing what came before, all the parts of those shows are solid on their own merits, and in fact the first few episodes of each provide some of that original context (though obviously well-written and tonally/thematically consistent with the later parts) to provide a portion of that dramatic turn even for people not well-versed in the relevant genres. Most of what makes these shows good is not their deconstructive or genre-defying nature anyway – it’s the fact that they’re well-written and well-produced stories with a lot of good inherent ideas, regardless of their position within an artistic tradition.

Incidentally, I think another interesting example of a similar effect is Aku no Hana – I don’t think it would come off nearly as effectively if audiences were used to rotoscoping, and that the art style intentionally serves to unbalance viewer expectations. But again, I think that art choice also results in a mood that works in that show’s favor outside of medium-conditioned viewer expectations, which makes this another example of “it works partially because of this expectation-subverting trick, but it also just plain works.”

Question:

Management: I’m rewriting this question so my response makes any goddamn sense – it wasn’t even really a question initially, but the subject is so interesting that I kind of went off on it regardless.

I think there may be differences in our standards of evaluation. I look for anime to succeed first and foremost as entertainment – and that moment of unexpected subversion results in great entertainment for me, regardless of whether it succeeds as “high art.” Also, you’ve covered a variety of ways formula can affect anime, but isn’t the phenomenon I’m referring to with Mazinger a little different from the craft arguments you’ve put forth?

Bobduh:

I don’t really mean to deny or demean the role of entertainment in media, I just feel that even (in fact, sometimes especially) shows that exist primarily to entertain still work within structures that can be examined and discussed – they have “goals” just like any message-oriented art, those goals are just different. For example, I think Redline is a pretty perfect piece of entertainment and nothing more, but it’s far from a stupid work – it displays an incredibly high degree of craft through its mastery of propulsive storytelling structure and economy of characterization/dialogue. Its “goal” is to entertain, but it entertains by doing what it does very intelligently and well. I don’t think saying “this work is just meant to be entertaining and nothing more” means it’s not useful or interesting to critically examine that work – it might not have deep themes to discuss, but storytelling is an art form worthy of discussion even if you disregard “message” works. So when I talk about whether a work is “successful” or not (I also don’t really like the high art/low art divide, and don’t find it all that meaningful), I’m mainly talking about whether I think it did the best job it could to succeed in its own goals, be they tell a taut and entertaining story or illuminate the nature of the universe or whatever.

But your point about entertainment being a relative value is a sound one. As much as I believe there are definite ways mastery and execution of craft can be close to objectively measured, art’s effect on the viewer, and what specific elements that viewer responds to, will always be a subjective, personal thing. It’s always good to keep that in mind.

I also agree that the specific situation your article describes is different and distinctive from the ones I’ve been discussing. There’s something more fundamentally shocking there, something that really seems difficult to quantify according to classic storytelling models… if I understand the kind of series Mazinger is, it seems like it conditions you to love these characters in the context of one entire genre over years, and then flips the table on you. That’s not just deconstructing a preexisting genre – that’s changing the stakes of a world you’re already emotionally invested in. The only example of that kind of thing which immediately comes to mind for me is Clannad, which is basically one story and genre of anime for 35 episodes, then abruptly shifts to another story and genre of anime, while keeping the characters you’ve already associated with the first mode. The thing is, I don’t think Clannad actually works in the way I talk about things “working,” because, well, first the writing is just not very good, but more fundamentally because the kinds of repetition that characterize the early arcs are not the correct kind of repetition for the emotional turn it’s hoping to provoke – they reflect more on tangential side characters, and their emotional stakes are not tied tightly enough to the actual protagonists, at least not often enough.

But if a story did do that… if it used the kind of repetition I mentioned Bebop or Hyouka employing for many episodes, and then veered into a turn in the way Clannad or Mazinger does…

Yeah, I think there’s a whole goddamn lot of resonant storytelling potential there.

Damn, now I’m getting all kinds of crazy ideas…

Thoughts on Art Appreciation, Anime Culture, and the State of the Medium

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Question:

How do you think anime and manga have affected your view of Japan and its culture/people?

Bobduh:

It hasn’t really influenced my perspective on Japanese culture, because most anime don’t try to be realistic, the ones that do tend to paint Japan as a nation of people just like any other (with some cultural quirks, obviously), and anime is generally not created to cater to the sensibilities of the “average Japanese person,” if such a thing can described of any person of any nationality (it can’t).

What it has done is give me a pretty solidly negative impression of the relevant, anime-watching market. But again, that’s still not a monolithic group.

Question:

Can you you elaborate on your negative impression of the anime market? I’m curious because I always see you give pretty insightful analyses of anime in general.

Management: I promise, I would have rephrased this question to be more neutral if my own response didn’t actually address the choice of words – and I think the tone of my response is kind of critical to keeping these discussions civil, so I’m leaving it as it was originally written

Bobduh:

That’s a dangerous question, but you also flattered me, and that’s well established to be my only weakness.

Let me preface this by saying that these are all my opinions, and most of what I’m talking about are things that are frustrating for me specifically as a consumer of media who would like to see more media that appeals to my interests. They are not value judgments on anyone outside of myself, and obviously people like media for different reasons, and that’s totally fine. People find their bliss in all sorts of ways; that’s totally cool. And I’m being reductive here as well, and I admit that, and I understand people are complicated organisms. And in addition to that, I don’t personally live in Japan, so everything I’ll be talking about will be inference based on the media I’ve seen, the ways I’ve seen audiences interact with that media, and the news surrounding fandom that has reached my distant, obviously not-fully-informed ears. One more time: these are all just my opinions, based on what appeals and matters to me. Alrighty.

Well, first there are the issues that could be leveled at the general audience of virtually any medium: the audience places a heavy premium on works that don’t really challenge them, they highly value familiarity and specific, sometimes problematic, sometimes just storytelling-averse tropes, they judge shows based on a variety of surface details as opposed to their underlying quality and nature, they judge all shows within similar frameworks of their own media desires, and will condemn or simply not engage with shows that have goals and ideas outside of their specific avenues of appreciation…

But as I said, that’s pretty much every medium. Anime seems to combine this with a few distinct and in my opinion negative additions: a pervasive acceptance of and even desire for sexist works, a particularly virulent desire for catering to their specific media and cultural preferences (Sakurasou getting attacked for containing a Korean meal, of all things), a predilection for “untroubled worlds” that don’t reflect any aspect of real experience and are generally storytelling and meaning-averse, a strange conflation of their media preferences and actually real-world identity and opinions (which is fine in moderation, but that’s not what I’m referring to here – and when you combine this with that fetishizing of “untroubled worlds” that don’t reflect reality you get things like the Aya Hirano slut-shaming scandal or the general idea of “idol purity” as something to be valued), and a related near-idolizing of various elements of their media (Love Plus vacation experiences, etc). Basically it seems like a portion of the audience’s attitudes and the industry’s need to cater to those attitudes to survive creates some kind of media obsession feedback loop that strikes me as socially limiting and also predisposed to result in awkward, artistically uninteresting media (which brings us back around to this being a problem primarily because I’m mad not enough people like what I like to dictate the majority of what gets produced, not because people don’t have the right to be who they are and like what they like, which they obviously do).

Question: 

It seems like you’re implying that anime will only continue on a downward spiral due to continuous re-enforcement of what you view as negative tropes (although I say “what you view as,” I’m pretty sure 90% would also regard those same tropes as negative). Think there’s any realistic way the current models can change?

Bobduh:

I honestly don’t think the situation is quite as dire as my post possibly implies – in fact, although many shows do seem to reflect the things I bring up, I’d say we’re actually entering/living within a period of relative artistic vitality.

Many people complain of desiring a return to anime’s “good old days” of the late 90s/early 00’s – perhaps there is something to this, but I personally I think this is partly nostalgia infusing old shows with merit they didn’t actually possess, partly a compression of the greatest hits of a ten year period and disregarding of the actual “average show” of that period, and partly a fact that the mainstream entertainment back then just catered to a different audience – the action and adventure shows that came across as more popular then weren’t necessarily “better” than the current trends (less psychologically questionable might be a decent argument, though), they were just different trends that appealed to different people.

It seems to me that, although the anime-culture trends I’ve referred to aren’t really positive ones, there’s actually a greater variety of solid works coming out these days, and certain studios are taking creative risks, whether they end up being rewarded or not. And there’s a whole gallery of talented and creative writers and directors who are being given a great amount of artistic free reign in spite of any ostensible market trends. The market also seems to be growing – charts like this one seem to imply more people are buying anime in Japan in general, which can only be good for the diversity of productions. And though obviously some people could happily watch shows catering towards the market I was describing forever, I think the law of diminishing returns applies here, and most of the audience will move on towards the next big thing soon enough. Regardless, it seems like there’s still room for shows to make at least reasonable profits without bowing to any perceived fandom needs.

Most things in most mediums will not be that artistically profound or interesting, and I don’t think anime’s entering any kind of death spiral in that regard. I just think some mainstream views within anime culture/fandom are pretty problematic in a very specific way, and that appeals to those attitudes tend to be reflected in too many works.