-
I have a small amount of free time, so I will try and live tweet one (1) episode of High Guardian Spice. I'll save this thread for when I have more time starting late next week or something
-
I don't want to say I'm trying to be "unbiased". I have biases that I make everyone aware of, and proudly. Instead I wanna be honest. I wanna judge it like I would any anime I write about on here or on my blog, and then compare to how "weebs" reacted and see what went on
-
sometimes, the voice acting and the lip syncing are out of sync. I thought it was CR's player but some performances are in sync so it's an actual audio-visual thing
-
This is a minor thing all things considered, as most anime do not actually attempt nearly as many mouth shapes as this show does (the standard in anime is closed, open, mid), and get away with even more out of sync performances/audio to save money
-
there's actually multiple Black characters. it's really easy and yet
-
I screencapped an in-between which is why her eyes look like that on the left
-
Uh oh tragic backstory time
-
she might not be dead, just missing
-
My mom is also a very "nobody touches my kitchen" mom. So that's sweet an all, but I'm starting to crave a little conflict here. And we haven't gotten any so far
-
Like I like all the characters, so now they need to start doing things
-
Naive country folk getting stolen from in the big city is an annoying trope, but I guess that's what we're doing for the second act.
-
Okay so that's over. I gotta get back to work but I'll write up some strengths and weaknesses based on this one episode
-
✅ major major major props to the background artists and director. It is stunning the entire way through and easily one of the best parts of the show.
-
I said earlier HGS is paced slowly, and one part of that I think is the team knowing the backgrounds are a strong suit, and knowing to move slow enough to really show them off
-
✅ Rosemary and Sage are very well characterized. They're both cute girls who have roughly the same goal and came from the same place, so there's a tendency for those characters to kinda blur together in writing. But not here
-
✅ It's sweet and I have an appetite for sweet if you can believe it with all my "I can't wait for Shield Hero"
-
❌ The artstyle, outside of the backgrounds, isn't bad? It looks fine but the issue is I can tell which era of anime the team grew up on and wants to draw from with this style, and the thing is anime hasn't looked like that in 10 years. I understand this is a weird critique
-
❌ The animation is weak, unfortunately. I'm not comparing it to other shows, but it's not strong enough to support a lot of the world building or the emotion that the voice actors are putting into their roles
-
❌ There's a lack of contract. I said I like sweet, but this episode was sweet all of the time. Everyone is cute and in love and all the guardians are supportive and there's no conflict to balance that
-
Would I keep watching if I wasn't probably planning on writing about this and the response to it? Yes, actually. For Rosemary and Sage mainly (and to take notes on the killer background art)
-
contrast