Was Winter 2010 a Good Season?
Continuing on from the last post. This post contains moderate spoilers for the tagged anime. (Source of above image unknown, found on Moe Imouto; mildly NSFW.)
If, as I said in the previous post, we say that Hoshimittu and Finale have only a small bearing on how we evaluate the season just past, we’re left with Sora no Woto and Durarara! to fly the flag for the Winter season. In certain respects, both series exist in the shadows of other anime. It bemuses me that the K-On! comparisons persist for Sora no Woto. To me, it signifies that too many anime fans are failing to look at either series beyond a superficial level (maybe if more people did this, they’d see how utterly vacuous K-On! really is). Sora no Woto was an anime that received a fair bit of flack, but I liked almost every minute of it… up until the ending. The finale infuriated me because of its complete disregard for suspension of disbelief, followed by a deus ex machina so blatant, that Rio was literally riding on a machine. The fact that the show ended with so many loose ends didn’t really help matters either. It did such a good job of setting up a vast and absorbing world, but, for various reasons, it wasn’t explored as thoroughly as it could have been. Some have blamed the directing. Others the writing. My opinion is that the show simply needed more episodes. The pacing was fine for the atmosphere that they were trying to build, and more episodes would have given them the time to explore the fantasy world and fill in some of the tantalizing gaps that they left. Nonetheless, regardless of the episode number and amount of unanswered questions about the world, the issue of the ending is a different matter and there, yeah, I agree, better writing was needed.
Durarara! has shown itself to be a very different anime to Baccano!, and comparisons are becoming increasingly meaningless. It’s very difficult to criticize Baccano!, IMO, because it was so confident about its storytelling approach and so intent of doing things with a characteristic sense of style and flair that it could call its own. You can try to criticize Baccano! for being needlessly convoluted, which is accentuated by its amorphous structure, or for taking so many episodes before the plot hit its gear, but having seen the entire series and knowing what Baccano! was trying to do, these criticism pretty much bounce of it.
Durarara! doesn’t really have the same confident, untouchable swagger, and criticisms tend to stick a bit more readily. E Minor from Moe Sucks dropped the show after five episodes, citing a lack of sympathetic characters to lead the way. He said the way they’ve executed Celty’s existential crisis makes her a weak, trite character, and that Mikado is too bland to carry the story. adaywithoutme from GAR GAR Stegosaurus dropped it an episode ago; she was annoyed by undertones of control in the Celty-Shinra relationship. I still really like the show, but I find these criticisms pretty difficult to refute. The show is mostly plot driven, which is why it’s probably slightly easier to ignore certain flaws with the characters (particularly Celty), but it’s very difficult to pretend they’re not there.
So while Durarara! and Sora no Woto are both flawed series, there’s still a lot to like about both of them, so let’s momentarily assume that they’re undoubtedly good (and in the eyes of the majority of their viewers, they are). Has Winter 2010 been a good season based on these two series, or merely average? Here’s where I’ll be gutless and not answer the question and open it up to discussion. What I will strongly stress though is that anime fans in general need to drop this attitude that a given season should be judged by the worst that it offers and not its best.
Every season (particularly at the beginning, which is the worst time to make judgment calls), there’s outcry from the same subset of doomsday reactionaries about anime reaching new lows, a trending of proliferated tropes for the worse, etc, etc, and it’s often a reaction based not on the best titles offered in the season, but on the worst. There’s an implicit assumption in this mentality, one that I, in the past, have been guilty of subscribing to: ie, that anime fans should watch as many series as possible from a given season. It’s crap, obviously, and while the hardcore audience might expect themselves to have the discipline to not drop an anime for as long as they can stand, it’s ridiculous to apply this expectation to other people. People are free to drop series as they please, and possibly come back to them if the reviews (from people they trust) prove positive. So, for the more casual fans (which, in my opinion, are going to be the most important component of the fanbase in coming years, especially if the industry is at all interested in growth), the series that are going to have the most impact are the ones that they’re going to stick with the longest which, in probability, are going to be the ones that they actually enjoy watching. These are the series that we should be considering when making our judgments on a given season, not the ones that have few redeeming qualities and are going to be quickly forgotten by the small numbers that watch them anyway. Ultimately, these series will always be made, but will never matter.
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The musical highlights of the season:
Your article was mostly about Sora no Woto and Durarara, two series that I hold in fairly high regard.
My thoughts on Sora no Woto have been sufficiently articulated in my review. I think that the show suffers from weak writing and a lack of focus; more plot would have been better. (Most notably, Episode 8 could have been cut in its entirety.) I commend it for its vision, creativity and ability to create atmosphere, but its fatal flaw keeps it from achieving brilliance. Comparisons to K-On are foolish and misguided; Sora no Woto is a far more superior series, not only in terms of plot and substance, but in terms of animation quality and character design as well.
I find both cited critiques of Durarara to be invalid. I’ll start with the feminist critique:
Philosophical objections to a series are personal in nature, and should not be used to evaluate objectively the merit of a certain series. It is certainly valid to say that “I don’t like Durarara because women are being controlled by men” (boo fucking hoo, by the way), but I do not think that one can go on to conclude from that opinion that “Durarara is an objectively bad series.” Personal opinion is fine, but there is no way to objectively dismiss a series as “bad” (especially from our viewpoint as critics) because we have some sort of philosophical objection to the subject matter.
E Minor’s objection is a bit harder to address. I understand that he dislikes the characters because he believes that they are mundane, but thirteen episodes in, I think we’ve learned that the characters are not quite what they seem to be. In addition, I also believe that we’re not really supposed to sympathize with the characters in DRRR; rather, they are caricatures of real life people, absurd representations of human beings. Ky’s article on bullshit goes more in depth about that, so I’ll cut my analysis on this point short.
Ultimately, I think critics of DRRR mis-place the focus of the series on plot. I also think this is where Durarara and Baccano diverge fundamentally. Baccano is a fast-paced, plot-heavy shoot-em-up; DRRR is a slow, introspective look into human nature and the absurdity of existence. The plot is secondary; what truly matters are the characters, their motivations. I view Celty’s head kind of similar to the Orange Glowing Box in Pulp Fiction; what’s inside the box is irrelevant. We should focus more on the process and the motivations behind actions rather than consequences thereof. I think viewing DRRR this way makes the series much more enjoyable and fun to speculate about.
In short, tl;dr, DRRR is amazing, feminists suck.
Personally, I think Vampire Bund — despite its deep flaws — is good enough to at least be taken into consideration along with Durarara, Sora no Woto and Hanamaru Kindergarten. The show has an infuriating ratio of good-to-bad episodes, and the melodrama can be quite heavy, but it is a legitimately entertaining series … at least entertaining enough to not be lumped in with the likes of Ookamikakushi.
Anyway, Winter 2010 isn’t a definitively good season … but it’s a solid season. Whether Nodame Cantabile Finale has a large bearing on how we view the season or not, it still contributes positively overall and provides a good ending to the series. I’d say it is up there with Durarara as best of the season. None of the shows I’d consider “good” this season are “great” … but four or five watchable shows isn’t too bad.
You know, I’ve been trying to articulate what exactly is holding back Durarara from being a “great” series — aside from the criticisms thrown out against the series, which are, as you write, difficult to refute — but that lack of swagger Baccano! had is a pretty good explanation. What baffles me is that Durarara DID seem to have that swagger in the beginning, but it seems to have petered out as the show has gone on (although I’d say the latest episode picked it back up a bit more).
I think it’s largely age and experience that jades many of us. Anime doesn’t generally try very hard to impress who aren’t teens, because they’re after the low-hanging fruit. Shows like Bund, Sora no Woto, Railgun, and others prove that you can easily market to teens, but also making it enjoyable for adults is much more difficult. No one wants to take a risk by making a show just for adults.
The results are that people in my age-demo who grew up with anime tend to pine for the days where we didn’t notice how bad the storytelling really was. We didn’t have many anime under our belts or were just easier to impress. This doesn’t excuse the studios, though, who really should be growing up with their audiences.
The frustrating thing is that it’s really not that hard to please us either. I mean, a show named “Birdy the Mighty: Decode” about an alien chick in space-spandex can still move me to tears if it’s well-constructed and shows some ass (and I don’t mean fanservice).
Hanamaru’s EDs were also a musical highlight for me. Take episode 2′s, for instance.
I’ll also chime in and say that I think the overwhelming problem is that these shows have incompetent writing, despite some interesting premises that could easily satisfy me (especially Sora no Woto and Bund). I think most shows this season that underwhelmed me just needed to break out of the 12/24 episode cour format, and settle for something in-between. A pipe-dream, I know, but I strongly believe it would solve a lot of the problems.
What made your previous entry interesting, I think, was the benefit of hindsight. It is reasonable to say, four years down the road, that Spring 2006 had an exceptional number of memorable shows, a number of which had significant influence on their respective genres.
Which shows from the past season will be remembered in a few years’ time is anyone’s guess, and framing the question in terms of only a couple of series that didn’t really do anything out of the ordinary sounds sorely short-sighted. I understand that the Nihon Review didn’t pick up that many Winter shows yet, but it seems like a good reason *not* to make premature predictions or hasty assessments, doesn’t it?
@Akira
(Long comments are encouraged, they spark discussion). I actually liked ep 8. It was, IMO, a good example of SnW’s somewhat quirky sense of humour. I mean, I sympathized. There’s nothing more frustrating than wanting to go to the bathroom in the middle of doing something important. Mind you, I’d have given up long before Kanata, but that’s what made it so humourous, IMO.
As far as philosophical objections to anime (or literature in general) are concerned, I’d have probably agreed with you in the past, but I’ve since changed my mind. This particular objection to DRRR! isn’t a superficial one, it’s one which has been formed by watching the series and considering the nature of this specific relationship right down its more subtle implications. adaywithoutme has come at it from a particular point of view, one which most people watching the show haven’t strongly considered. That’s a good thing, we need a variety of viewpoints coming at the same anime, particularly now at this moment, where certain segments of the fanbase are trying to control the discourse on anime and try to discredit those who have a slightly different point of view to their own. Too often anime discourse resembles a giant circle jerk, in all honesty, so I think, right now, we ought to encourage different viewpoints. If those viewpoints don’t hold water, then they can be taken down through rational debate, but I don’t think they should be dismissed out of hand because the underlying philosophy that drives them is different from the norm.
I think it still remains to be seen whether or not Celty’s head is the same as the Pulp Fiction suitcase. It kinda depends on what happens when she finds it (assuming she finds it at all… if she doesn’t, I think we can safely conclude that it was). The point of the suitcase was precisely that it, of itself, had no point. It was something that everyone coveted, and most of the events of the story revolved around what the characters did to try to get it… but from the story’s point of view, what was inside it didn’t matter. Like you say, it might turn out that the most important part of the story isn’t Celty finding her head, but what she has to go through to get it. If this is what happens, then yeah, I agree, her head is the Pulp Fiction suitcase. However, if getting the head changes her in some fashion, then I’ll disagree, since it becomes an important and meaningful plot device in her character development. It’s a case of “wait and see”, IMO.
@Shinmaru
Vampire Bund had its moments, but it was so inconsistent. I kinda agree with Shadowmage in that, as hard as it tried, it didn’t really stand out as something that will be memorable a few months from now. It’s better than Ookamikakushi, no doubt about that (most fanservice anime are better than Ookamikakushi). “Solid” is probably the best word to describe this season, now that I think about it. Sora no Woto, Durarara, Hoshimittsu. I still haven’t seen all of Finale, which so far strikes me as a slightly better version of Paris Chapter that still can’t capture the magic of the original, but both you and Ascaloth have said that the best is yet to come. And quite a few people have nice things to say about Hanamaru Kindergarten, which I avoided at the outset due to my allergic reaction to Gainax (which is my lame excuse for having still not seen TTGL).
@temperus
Maybe. It’s certainly harder to be impressed by anime (at a more superficial level, anyway) once you’ve watched a few hundred series and have been following it for years. Tastes change, and generally become more refined and discriminating. The trope-swapping nature of post-modern storytelling doesn’t help. Nonetheless, I like to think that having that experience in anime gives you the tools to look at things at a deeper level, and to gain an even greater appreciation of anime… especially when it’s a little more subtle. Okay, you could make the argument that anime isn’t often subtle or multilayered… but occasionally it is. Those titles are more than enough to justify my interest in the medium.
@deaky
I’d love it, absolutely love it, if we saw more anime that didn’t so rigidly stick to the multiple cour episode count. The seasonal nature of TV obviously demands it, but maybe more shows need to take the Bakemonogatari route… just air your extra episodes on different formats.
@mt-i
Memorability and influence and always going to be difficult things to gauge in the short term, but I think a short term assessment is just as useful as a long term one, especially when you compare them down the road. I’ve admitted that we, as a site, probably got our assessment of 2007 slightly wrong… in hindsight, we probably underestimated how good that year was. On the other side of the coin, sometimes you can spot an influential and memorable work pretty much instantly. I find it interesting that, 13 years after it was released, people still debate whether or not Radiohead’s OK Computer is one of the greatest rock albums ever. A lot of its dissenters say it’s still too early to judge, and that it’s influence on music is still being felt and has yet to peter out, but seriously, if more than a decade isn’t enough to make the call, then how long should people wait? Do we have to wait forty years before we can safely put it in the same tier as The Beatles’ best albums? Or more than a century or two before we can compare it with Beethoven? Personally, I’m just as certain that OK Computer is a masterpiece now as I was when I first heard it. Nonetheless, this is completely open to debate, especially considering how time can so drastically change impressions. Kubrik’s films have become more appreciated as the years have rolled, Disney’s, in some circles, less. Who knows what will happen in the future, but I don’t see the harm in making an assessment at this very moment, after sampling the titles that appear to me to be the most influential of the season (yes, admittedly a potentially premature call), if, for no other reason, than to help document how impressions of this season could change in years to come.
I think is great when you say we should evaluate a season taking the good series as base instead of the bad ones. Its easy to be a critic when you just watch the worst shows of the season, and then a lot of people (coughanncough) go rambling about “oh!!!the doomsday of the industry” whenever they see fanservice or moe (or both).
And thats just idiotic and narrow minded. For example, everyone trolled B Gata H Kei with the first episode or the premise (oh noes!!! is about a girl being a slut!!!), but a lot of people I respect in the blogosphere quickly took notice the good points of the series and realized it has potential to be quite the exception.
As I previously stated, Sora no Woto and Durarara!! just didn’t stand out as great series to me. Though I was…annoyed by the similar character designs between K-ON! and Sora no Woto, I just found the series uninteresting. Your review and recommendation for the series sans its ending really motivates me to watch the series again to see if it improves later.
I still stand on Durarara!!, however. I’m still watching Baccano!, and I’m really liking the series. However, Durarara!! just didn’t stand out to me as a great series. It had an interesting and unique premise as well as some neat characters, but I felt as though some fundamental part of the series was missing. I still lack the knowledge to exactly pinpoint what made me so uninterested; perhaps I’ll rewatch an episode or two and figure out why I didn’t regard the series as great. Granted, it is (or was) a good series in the winter 2010 season.
As for the part about the quality of each season, I do think that looking solely at the number of bad shows would be inaccurate and ultimately wrong. Each season does have their bad, awful, and atrocious series, and I think that everybody recognizes that. However, I do think it is important to note the proportion of the good/great shows to the overall number of shows each season in order to determine each season’s “potential.” I guess there are multiple factors that determine a season’s status as good or not and that one shouldn’t look at the bad shows, but one shouldn’t simply exclude all the bad shows and never look at them again.
The casual fan has, and perhaps always will be, an important part of the fan base. Each specific anime or genre has their fanboys and/or fangirls, but the only way that an industry can survive is to also cater to the needs and desires of the casual fan. Conversely, I do want the industry to also cater to the more dedicated and hardcore fans as well. While simply fulfilling the desire of the casual fan is necessary, the anime fan base also draws its strength from the extreme otakus, even if they may be annoying and irrational at times.
I do believe that one of the biggest problems that the anime industry should have pegged by now is the ability to write within the restraints of the cour system. They walk in knowing that they’re only going to get a multiple of 13 episodes, give or take 2 per cour, and yet there are times such as in Sora no Oto where pacing becomes a mess. I’m probably being too harsh on Sora no Oto, but while most episodes were above average, hindsight allowed me to point out some episodes that could be cut or manipulated in some way to make way for a more fluid story. Add in the fact that the characters didn’t quite get the development they could have gotten, and the result was that I felt the series left me dangling.
In fact, I’d argue that pacing and potential are the two things directors and writers need to learn NOW. Too often the pacing will either drag the show or crash the show. Potential that goes wasted comes from bad direction decisions in the story from the get go. Sometimes, if not always, one affects the other. Writers should know by now what works in 13 episodes and what doesn’t. If people actually got around to being aware of these two aspects, I could guarantee you that we’d see shows that only hit above average become spectacular.
Durarara suffers more from its narrative style, which is a blessing and a curse. On one hand, we arguably get a deeper look into characters and their quirks, the kind of thoughts they may be thinking and the obvious things they are not saying. However, it means that they have to leave their characters bare, which causes them to look like simple characters when they’re clearly not. Likewise, there are times when it abuses the narration a bit too much, which doesn’t allow us to draw conclusions based on actions alone, which ultimately are what make these characters complex. I think this is why E Minor dropped it so quickly; it’s too easy for the characters to be limited by the narration when they shouldn’t. It’s still an awesome series, it just needs to know when to push forward and when to pull back.
Now onto the main point of the article:
I’ve never quite really seen people judging seasons as looking at the worst shows until you put it into context, but I’d have to agree with you that that’s completely absurd. We’ve always had that chaff.
However, I have to side with Akira on objectivity. The kind of philosophical objections are valid reasons to dislike the show, but I’d hardly call them indicators of demerit. They are personal opinions that could sway a review, as all reviews are ultimately subjective, but in the eye of objectivity, such an aspect shouldn’t be viewed with that biased perspective. Now granted, as I said before, it’s a valid point, and it’s something one should take into consideration now that it’s brought up, but it needs to be judged under the pretense of “Ok, the series implies this. Now does having such an aspect necessarily detract from the presentation as a whole without such bias?” Outside the eyes of a feminist, I would say no.
But for the season as a whole, I find it hard to judge whether a season is better than another in context of shows of differing levels of greatness. Is a season with all filler and one breakout hit better than a season with 3-4 solid shows? Most of us would say no, but it’s those great shows that show us the boundaries of this medium. Still, I guess a handful of solid shows indicates a more uplifting trend: that more people in the industry have a handle on what makes a good show different from a bad show, giving us more chances to see great shows in the future.
tl;dr Pacing should be part of the industry’s “You should know this already”, Durarara’s narration is hax/is sux, good seasons have good shows, all points are valid unless objectivity screws them over, and judging seasons is nonsense.
I do agree that Vampire Bund isn’t particularly memorable — more entertaining (to me, at least) than it is given credit for, but probably won’t survive far beyond this season. (I was as baffled as anyone at the licensing announcement. :p) As for Nodame, yeah, the beginning is unfortunately weak and aimless, but the show gets stronger once it finally focuses more on Nodame and Chiaki. The last few episodes are some of the best in all three seasons, period.
And just to follow the viewpoints tangent, I personally like reading a number of bloggers whose views on anime don’t jive with mine to a large extent. Thinking about the series you watch isn’t a bad thing (not to suggest anyone here believes otherwise); doesn’t have to be heavy-duty literary criticism (lord knows I offer nothing like that when I write), but I don’t like to be lost in mindless praise. It’s fine when I strongly disagree with another person, as long as the disagreement gets me to think a bit deeper about what I’m watching. And with some people whose views run counter to mine a lot — Landon of Mecha-Guignol pops immediately to mine — when we both enjoy a series, those writers often tackle the works using angles I don’t always see. That’s the benefit of having a ton of viewpoints rather than HIVEMIND.
(Amusingly enough considering this tangent, you’re probably the blogger whose views most closely reflect my own, although you’re also a tougher grader than I am, which is basically irrelevant to me, haha.)
I’ll agree with the second half of this sentence, as it is something that is disturbing me about the anime fan base.
But the first one is bullshit. I don’t mind having a variety of viewpoints on the same anime either, but if the variety of viewpoints are stupid, misguided, and / or not objective, then their assistance is minimal. The feminist angle against DRRR! reeks of a personal objectivity issue or a world view paranoia. Either that, or they just have no grip on reality. E-Minor, whom I have already disagreed with before on a couple of points, is blowing one off way too soon.
I welcome constructive criticism, but not nitpicking or self-felatting posturing.
It’s great to judge a season with the best title it offers, not the worst. But the number of solid titles also matters. Thus, I think this season, with only two-three solid titles, is not that strong.
I like Sora no Woto for its creativity and world building. The ending is just a little rushed but I was satisfactory with its pacing overall. I’d also like to defend the anime for the underexplored questions and loose ends; I think the series’ mystery and ambiguity is part of its charm.
Canne,
I only partially agree about judging a series on it’s best and not it’s worst. However, if the broadcasters are viewing a particular season as a “weak” one for viewership, there might be more “shit” as they punt that season and wait for the next.
Winter has not been known to be particularly strong for anime. Summer sometimes isn’t either. Spring and Fall generally get the most “high profile” shows.