Welp, a good start for a reply. Considering your usual attitude in ther forum, can I premise this discussion saying I'm not attacking you personally and I just disagree a lot with the choices the anime staff did for Prillya?Originally Posted by bassgs435
I'm also not a regular BL user, and I do my research before talking about anime, other than having a bit of experience and interest in the process of writing; also, I usually tend to be very forgiving of the circumstances regarding productions and I am particularly forgiving for almost all TM stuff. All of this to say that you don't have to fear me coming from a mob mentality, prejudice or general misunderstanding of the medium, this is an opinion I matured in years of being disappointed by the Prillya anime while still hoping for it to be good.
Standard anime season of 12 to 13 episodes do exist, and choosing to do seasons of an irregular number of episodes is not a valid excuse to do one of mostly fillers. It's the job of an adaptation to adapt the source material and make it fit into the designated slot.
I agree that 10 episodes were too few and 20 too many, but in-between solutions did exist. Also, 2wei herz problem is not only about the filler, but also in how the Gilgamesh battle is weirdly paced, with an hard stop right in the middle for no reason other than putting it more fanservice. Which is kinda my problem of the fillers too (and 2wei herz as a whole): they went with the most generic and boring ideas for those, basically just stretching comedy and SoL ideas to an annoying extent. And I would've almost excused that if the Gilgamesh fight would've been, in turn, heavily focused on and paced correctly. Which he wasn't, so 2wei herz was a long, painful drag to get to the actual good point that wasn't delivered.
This, again, is not an excuse. It's not unusual for an anime adaptation to end up with an open finale or a cliffhanger and not get it resolved for years, regardless of a sequel greenlit. And we're talking about a Fate property with the 3rei manga already going by the time 2wei herz aired: even without a confirmation for a sequel, they could've gone with the cliffhanger and nobody would've argued with it. Also, you know, it's an adaptation so it's their job to do it properly, regardless of how the 2wei manga ends.
I really can't excuse such a decision, in general. It was a change done for no good reason after a whole season that did things for not very good reasons.
The irregular schedule did not affect 2wei at all tho. And they, after waiting a while, had enough material for the season of 3rei they released. It just wasn't good.
Of course, a manga that has the scheduling irregularities of Prillya does create problems for an adaptation, but those problems emerge when that adaptation gets too close to the source material that it doesn't have enough to adapt. Which, up until OutS (but especially for everything leading up to the start of 3rei), was not a big issue. Again, they had the material and the ways to plan and pace it correctly regardless of how the manga was going, and my problem is that they did not do that.
No pause or hiatus for the manga can excuse the dropping quality in the anime, because the material adapted is there, it's just adapted poorly, with questionable decisions in both story progression, cuts and visual representation.
It's a moltitude of factors that is not a single person's fault, it's a collective error by the staff since it goes in many aspects regarding the anime. And I can't understand why, since most of the staff is the same across the seasons. Some names change/are added but I'm not that arrogant as to say it's those people's fault. But I will say that the drop in visual quality, adaptation and overall planning (could we say writing/storyboarding? I'm not sure it will touch what I mean) is palpable.
I'm not saying it's that simple, but it's definetly easier for Fate to reignite interest in its many spin-off compared to a single manga with a declining popularity momentum like SnK. What I'm saying is that "it's not that simple" goes both ways, and if it's not as easy as I make it sound, it's also not as hard as you say.
I hope I explained myself enough to disprove this point. If I can say, tho, you do seem act in the extreme opposite direction, in which you have to absolutely defend something and disprove what the bad, uneducated/in bad faith people are criticizing. (*)
Do I think you're actually that? No, and I wouldn't assume you are, so please don't assume what I am coming from just because I feel the anime, which started great and it's superior to the manga in the first season, had no reason to destoy its own potential disappointing me so much in the long run.
S1 was pretty good.
2wei was fine.
2wei herz was not.
3rei was definetly not.
OutS is mediocre.
SL as a studio is not to blame the same way ufotable as a studio is not to praise. I'm not saying anything specific regarding the studio, and I expressed confusion as to why the (overall) same staff would change its product and output like that. I am and will always be talking about the final product and out it turned out.
I'd like to point out that "my mind remains unchanged" does sounds a bit too antagonizing in such a discussion (especially when said in your statement before the other person's reply), but I know you didn't mean it that way so I won't take it at face value, I am just pointing out that you words can be easily misinterpreted as far more aggressive that you yourself realize. (**)
But I also have to add that my mind too remains unchanged, since I don't feel your arguments brough anything new to the table for my assesment (as I hope I've explained by now). I don't think my points changed your perspective either, nor did I plan them to, as I was merely expressing my reasoning, a reasoning that I felt slightly challenged.
Different perspectives for different people. There is the whole "everything is subjective" discourse that applies very well in this instance, since what I want and what you want from Prillya are clearly different things.
I'll reiterate that I keep hoping for a good Prillya adaptation, but for me everything past S1 had a very tangible drop in quality, and even the movie was, on a technical level alone, pretty mediocre. Just getting back to the level of S1/early 2wei would be enough for me to be satisfied, while it looks like you'll be satisfied as long as it doesn't turn out like those dreadful adaptations we don't talk about (the ones you mentioned). Do I have too much high standards? Do you have too much low standards? That's not a question that can be asked, since from the very beginning we want different things and we estrapolate different emotional responses form the product. Heck, we probably also have different approaches to what we want strictly speaking about animation.
So, no matter how long we argue about it and how many reasons each of us provides for why Prillya it's/it's not fine the way it is, the other wouldn't buy them and there would be probably three different group of thought: those who agree with me, those who agree with you and those who disagree with both of us.
Although, I do feel like my fear for the new movie is justified for now: we know they had to cut some stuff from OutS to fit it into a movie format, and this movie wants to cover a far longer arc than that? That's bound to create issues. That's assuming it's only one movie, of course, but for that we'll have to see. If it is seriously one movie for the whole arc... eeeh I don't think it's arguable that there are gonna be many problems.
Again, I'm arguing for staff decisions that resulted in a disappointing final product. I always assumed 3rei would get an anime eventually, so when they ended up 2wei herz with a perfect setup for "We can make another season like this, with 7 episodes of filler and the last 3 to get back to the plot", I was bound to assume the worst. When the first episode of 3rei basically undid that whole setup, that just screamed "Alright so it didn't work and we have to go back to the plot immediately, whoops" to me. I admit I don't know the authorial intent for those scenes, but many elements from 2wei herz and the specials led me to believe there was too much focus on the fanservice SoL stuff, and I didn't like that path for the series.
The fight with Gilgamesh has highs and lows, if I have to summarize it in one word I'd say it's inconsistent. Especially for the random pause in the middle of the rising tension just to have a bit more of fanservice, which I already explained before (and it's also one of those aspects that strengthened my assumption about this wrong path the series was heading to).
3rei as a whole seems unfinished or unpolished, and I feel the drop in visual quality reaches its lowest right in the climax, which is my main issue with it. I also watched the blu ray version of the episode, and basically nothing changes. S1 still has better effects, better choreography and a better flow in general in the Saber fight (and it's not anything exceptional, nor this unreachable sakugafest I should not dream of seeing again), which led me to assume a different focus for the series. I mean, when you compare the three most important fights in each series up to that point (Saber, Gilgamesh and that all-out chaos in 3rei) and you see a stark drop in detail and overall quality, you'll inevitably start to question some decisions. And that's what I did, I'm sorry but that's the effect the anime had on me, that's my reaction to it.
It could be different from yours, but it's not wrong per se, and I hope I at least managed to clear up my supposedly "not arguing in good faith".
Just a heads up, the same thing I said for points (*) and (**) a bit above applies here. It comes off as really aggresive/condescending. I'm again assuming this was not your intention, as I'm not assuming you're arguing in bad faith (you like Getter Robo, as far as I'm concerned you're a good person).
Ultimately, that's my issue: I want a good adaptation in the style of how it started (which I feel is a long lost dream by now), not a simple "If it doesn't suck, it's fine". And I especially don't want to end up in a situation where any moment of quality even remotely close to the one of prior seasons (which again, it was pretty standard quality and not at all a sakugafest) has to be taken as a "bonus" instead of the basic level to be expected.
I'm not asking for the Moon. Between "very good" and "terrible" there is a whole spectrum of possibilities.
And the one possibility I really don't want is complete mediocrity.
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