High Guardian Spice - Tumblr: The CalArt Anime

[ChevroletBlackboard]

I don't know if we have a full Crunchyroll thread, but reports are coming in from the Expo that the convention security are taking a hardline stance on cosplayer prop weapons that include hard plastic. In some cases they've been caught breaking props, and at least one writer for Anime News Network is looking for comments.

 

[vertexwindi]

Actually I think real writers mostly hate their own writing and the best they can say about something is that they're satisfied with it.

I hate writing, I like having written.

 

[Ponderous Pillock]

That's a good thing to bring up, by the way, when do you guys wager Crunchyrolls death?

I'd say HGS will flop, Ellation will pull the plug on Marge Dean's Pet Project Studio, hold a review, then merge the whole service with VRV after a "corporate overview".

The only reason HGS is coming out on Crunchyroll is because it's global and has the higher click count. It really belongs on VRV.

 

[One Man Bland]

Someone pointed out her bangs look really stupid, and I agree, those bangs don't work, at least not in its current style. It looks okay in the picture there, but maybe it's because it's obvious that she does have longer hair just bunched up in ponytails, though the bangs still look really weird regardless, and perhaps just inappropriate for the character as a whole. It might look better on the blue-haired girl, just not her unless she's a princess/really upper-class 'cause that's what's known as the hime cut, usually reserved for those of high-class status, and also it's accompanied by long hair. I have no clue if Rosemary's hair is supposed to be long but bunched up in invisible ponytails, or if she just has voluminous short hair, but it just looks misplaced.

I think the reason the bangs look off is because they make a straight line directly over the eyes, covering the brows as well. It takes away half of the tools in making expressions by making a half-lidded look like so:

Spoiler: Terrible anime example

It completely changes the meaning expressions, so they end up looking more serious or sarcastic. It's why those kinds of bangs are usually used for characters who are supposed to be stoic, reserved, or abrasive/stuck-up like Stocking from Panty & Stocking or Perona from One Piece. Hell, they'd likely look better on the elf girl since her whole shtick seems to be "the serious one"

Incidentally, it triggers my :autism: that the show is called High Guardian Spice, but all the main characters are named after herbs.

The sad thing is, Rodriguez has had - what - 3 or 4 years to think over this name? You think at some point he'd either notice that it rolls off the tongue like a mouthful of nails or have a friend kind enough to mention it. Hell, it doesn't even sound like a real title; it sounds like a joke title about how Japanese titles look like a jumble of random words when too literally translated.

But nope, this is the best he could come up with.

Besides "Herb Guardians" would sound better and is a better play on words since it sound like "Herb Gardens."

 

[KingCoelacanth]

Apparently they didn't allow questions at the panel on Saturday (although i guess for obvious reasons), recording was also not allowed.
But they did actually talk about the show, characters, theme, etc. rather than focus entirely on diversity. The one guy reporting on twitter was only reporting on the progressive elements

 

[ZehnBoat]

I always view it as just an open admission that whatever they're defending is a complete piece of shit, because nothing actually good ever needs to be defended this way.

"it's not for you" means jack shit
even if you're not the demographic or it's a genre of media you don't like, you can tell if something is good or not.

imagine if someone like those "pregnant elsa" youtube channels used that as an excuse?
oh shit, you right "spiderman kills pregnant joker with farts" is clearly made for children, and since i'm not a child i can't comment on the quality of it... we'll just leave it up and let the kids watch it.

then again, if someone complains about say... kiwi farms, you can always say "it's not for you" and leave it at that.

 

[sadstuck]

If the main selling point if your show is that it’s ~diverse~, that tells viewers that you don’t think your story is good enough to be sold on its own merits.

Ironically, it's also racist because most likely the only aspect to your black/gay/whatever characters is that they are black/gay/whatever and they have little to no personality to speak of whatsoever.

 

[PS1gamenwatch]

Our old buddy Mr Enter gives his thoughts on what’s wrong with High Guardian Spice:

 

[Tanti-Fanti]

Our old buddy Mr Enter gives his thoughts on what’s wrong with High Guardian Spice:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=0aP5pn_QzXA

Honestly, this isn't a bad video. He mostly parrots what others have said before about how this type of "diversity" marketing never works and will just lead to companies believing having diversity won't sell when they already did a decent job at it in the past.

Nothing new or cringeworthy really. It's an alright video.

 

[Ponderous Pillock]

https://pastebin.com/r9htJMYr

Pastebin found on what "actually" happened in the HGS panel and where more show details are talked about. It sums up as "Generic as fuck: The Fantasy Anime".

6 whole episodes claimed to have been recoded, but they didn't want to show people anything and stuck to a shitty 3 second clip instead.

Also no Q&A. Smaaaaaaaaaaart.

 

[neverendingmidi]

I wonder if half the irritation of the subscribers is the idea that this will become the new standard of Crunchyroll. Not this series in specific, but American made (not good enough for Cartoon Network or Disney) crap that they’ll fill the lists with. Like Netflix originals. Most people got Netflix because they wanted to watch movies or tv shows. Now the main page is crammed full of their originals. Now there are a few gems here and there, but there’s a fuckton of crap too.

For CR, I bet most of the chunk of change they spent on this is going to set up the animation studio as a whole, rather than this series in particular. Why bother to negotiate with other studios, and then sub or dub the series when you can make something entirely in house? Granted it has absolutely nothing to do with your stated goal of importing anime, but eh fuck it.

 

[Tragi-Chan]

Actually I think real writers mostly hate their own writing and the best they can say about something is that they're satisfied with it.

To be creative, you need to be self-critical, or you can’t motivate yourself to improve. An uncritical creative is at best stagnant, at worst just outright bad.

If the main selling point if your show is that it’s ~diverse~, that tells viewers that you don’t think your story is good enough to be sold on its own merits.

By the sounds of things, it isn’t. All they’re able to say about the story is “it’s basically a generic fantasy setting and these people are learning to fight evil.” I suspect even the writers aren’t sure where this thing is going.

 

[salomadome]

Not sure if this has been posted here. The creator's portfolio has some storyboards from their original pitch of HGS, from Nick's 2015 Shorts Program. (Archive doesn't seem to be working for some reason.)

Not exactly actual footage from the show, but it's... something. Hopefully Raye isn't a storyboarder on the actual show, because even for rough boards these are... pretty bad. Content aside they have no sense of direction and feel like a comic a 16 year old on tumblr would make.

Also, kind of funny to me that this didn't even make it past a rough pitch for a short at Nick.

 

[One Man Bland]

https://pastebin.com/r9htJMYr

Pastebin found on what "actually" happened in the HGS panel and where more show details are talked about. It sums up as "Generic as fuck: The Fantasy Anime".

6 whole episodes claimed to have been recoded, but they didn't want to show people anything and stuck to a shitty 3 second clip instead.

Also no Q&A. Smaaaaaaaaaaart.

How did I know "Sailor Moon" was going to be the first thing they cited as. "inspiration." Every damn time.

Story is heavily influenced by DnD, and characters are DnD archetypes

>Pink is the "warrior" class
> Blue is "some sort of spellcaster"
>Yellow is unknown, mentions of black-smithing
>Dark elf is a rogue

Jesus Christ, so it's not just a generic fantasy jumping on the DnD bamdwagon, it's a generic fantasy jumping on the DnD bandwagon made by people who have never actually played DnD. If "guardians" are just adventurers, then why call it "High Guardian Spice"? To call something a "high guardian" implies a great level of prestige and power - someone working in the name of a higher/divine power, or the highest rank in this fictional universe - but if they're not actually protecting anything, what's the point of this title?

Also, pardon the :autism:, but DnD classes are designed to fulfill specific roles in a party with their own strengths and weaknesses - that's why it's a multi-player game - and even seemingly similar classes have very different connotations and skill sets, and to mix those up can rather dramatically change the dynamic. There's no "warrior" class in DnD, so do they mean pink is a Fighter? A Paladin? Hell, a Barbarian? Because those are all technically "warriors" but each comes with very different expectations. There's also no blacksmith class in DnD, so I don't know what the blonde dwarf is supposed to be, and between the spell caster and the rogue elf being the heavy supports class-wise, it sounds like the blonde girl is going to be completely out-gunned, so what's the point of her? And them saying the elf is meant to be a Rogue, but then giving her the appearance and skills more commonly associated with Rangers is probably the biggest indicator that they don't know what they're talking about. Especially upon reading their blurb:

Thyme (Green/Red) - Elf, an immigrant from another region sent to the school against her will by her mother. Survivalist. "Too cool for school". Aloof, sarcastic. A "mini-nemesis" at the start, later becomes an ally. "Daria but anime".

Also if the elf is only coming to this region for school, implying that her mother is still in her home country and when school is finished it's expected that she'll go back to her home country, wouldn't that make her a foreign exchange student, not an immigrant? It could just be the wording, but every description I've seen of this plot point makes it sound like this is more like a study abroad program and that they're only throwing the word immigrant around to make it sound more topical.

The show is built from the Team's High school experiences as teenage outcasts, but accepted in certain groups. The characters are infused with the team's own flaws they had in high school that they later grew out of.

"Depictions aren't mean spirited but sympathetic"

There's going to be a lot of angsty boys, and a lot of angst in general. A lot of crying as well.

No Broadcast restrictions. The topics presented will be "high stakes" thematically.

"Internal looks at characters, but also monster punching"

There will be fantasy combat sequences.

> "High stakes" topics and themes
>High school drama bullshit and "no one's the real villain" / "make friends with everyone uwu" Steven Universe -tier plots

Fucking pick one.

Most of the animation is done by a Korean studio. Said studio also did the inbetweening animation on some Ghibli films.

and this right here I think is the cherry on the shit cake. So not only have they had a year to prepare for this announcement and have nothing but some concept are to show for it, but now they have even less of an excuse because they're outsourcing all the grunt work to Korea anyways. Hell,I bet that they aren't even doing the key frames either, those half-finished animatics from that sorry excuse of a trailer are probably all that those poor animation sweatshops have to go off of.

This might turn out to be even worse than advertised. Can't wait to see it pirated for the sake of the inevitable cringe threads.

 

[Tanti-Fanti]

How did I know "Sailor Moon" was going to be the first thing they cited as. "inspiration." Every damn time.


>Pink is the "warrior" class
> Blue is "some sort of spellcaster"
>Yellow is unknown, mentions of black-smithing
>Dark elf is a rogue

Jesus Christ, so it's not just a generic fantasy jumping on the DnD bamdwagon, it's a generic fantasy jumping on the DnD bandwagon made by people who have never actually played DnD. If "guardians" are just adventurers, then why call it "High Guardian Spice"? To call something a "high guardian" implies a great level of prestige and power - someone working in the name of a higher/divine power, or the highest rank in this fictional universe - but if they're not actually protecting anything, what's the point of this title?

Also, pardon the :autism:, but DnD classes are designed to fulfill specific roles in a party with their own strengths and weaknesses - that's why it's a multi-player game - and even seemingly similar classes have very different connotations and skill sets, and to mix those up can rather dramatically change the dynamic. There's no "warrior" class in DnD, so do they mean pink is a Fighter? A Paladin? Hell, a Barbarian? Because those are all technically "warriors" but each comes with very different expectations. There's also no blacksmith class in DnD, so I don't know what the blonde dwarf is supposed to be, and between the spell caster and the rogue elf being the heavy supports class-wise, it sounds like the blonde girl is going to be completely out-gunned, so what's the point of her? And them saying the elf is meant to be a Rogue, but then giving her the appearance and skills more commonly associated with Rangers is probably the biggest indicator that they don't know what they're talking about. Especially upon reading their blurb:



Also if the elf is only coming to this region for school, implying that her mother is still in her home country and when school is finished it's expected that she'll go back to her home country, wouldn't that make her a foreign exchange student, not an immigrant? It could just be the wording, but every description I've seen of this plot point makes it sound like this is more like a study abroad program and that they're only throwing the word immigrant around to make it sound more topical.


> "High stakes" topics and themes
>High school drama bullshit and "no one's the real villain" / "make friends with everyone uwu" Steven Universe -tier plots

Fucking pick one.


and this right here I think is the cherry on the shit cake. So not only have they had a year to prepare for this announcement and have nothing but some concept are to show for it, but now they have even less of an excuse because they're outsourcing all the grunt work to Korea anyways. Hell,I bet that they aren't even doing the key frames either, those half-finished animatics from that sorry excuse of a trailer are probably all that those poor animation sweatshops have to go off of.

This might turn out to be even worse than advertised. Can't wait to see it pirated for the sake of the inevitable cringe threads.

You took the words right out of my mouth. Everything about this project is so mishandled it astounds me. From the lack of an actual animation to show (which is a big warning flag with neon lights on an ANIMATION project) to the awful use of DND for inspiration on an anime, it all looks like such a slip-slod project.

And yeah, it's clear this is only for the creator's agenda. Sailor moon is only listed Everytime because that's all these people can use as the "girl power" motif. You see it Everytime because they probably grew up on it and it's the only "girl power" anime they can cite without it devolving into complete cringe.

The foreign exchange student thing really bothers me though. You are not an immagrant if you are going to school in another country. You are an exchange student like others say. You can either be on a student-visa and compete your eduction or live someone far away and become a citizen to participate in school. But nevermind my sperging, it's just that the creators clearly don't know how shit works and it will be so obvious when they force the "immagrants and illegals are totes the same thing". I'm calling it.

 

[One Man Bland]

And yeah, it's clear this is only for the creator's agenda. Sailor moon is only listed Everytime because that's all these people can use as the "girl power" motif. You see it Everytime because they probably grew up on it and it's the only "girl power" anime they can cite without it devolving into complete cringe.

I think the other part of why every single creator claiming they were inspired by anime ends up citing Sailor Moon is that it's one of the few anime outside of maybe Pokemon and Dragon Ball (maybe Naruto depending on who you ask) that broke out of the anime nerd/weeaboo circles and into the mainstream consciousness. Even if you've never seen any other anime, you'll at least have a vague idea of what Sailor Moon is, so to try and compare your product to Sailor Moon and then a few lesser known but similar series is a trick I often see these people use to make it seem that they know more about the medium than they probably do by listing something extremely familiar to the majority, and then listing one of two similar series that same majority probably won't be as knowledgeable of. This seems to work fine in other markets where there isn't a whole lot of overlap, but I doubt will fly when your target market is seasoned weebs.

It's why at this point I take it with a grain of salt if a creator talks about anime being an influence, but then only cites Sailor Moon. Especially when a lot of these people are old enough to have witnessed when anime was really getting big in U.S. with things like the Naruto boom or Toonami and Adult Swim hosting multiple anime shows that were huge hits or are now considered classics that none of these people ever cite or mention.

It's like how every horror film hack references Jaws or Psycho when talking about their generic slasher/monster. They're banking on their audience being ignorant of other films to make you think they know their stuff in hopes that it will make you think their film will have the same impact as two cultural pillars in the same genre.

 

[Cubanodun]

https://pastebin.com/r9htJMYr

Pastebin found on what "actually" happened in the HGS panel and where more show details are talked about. It sums up as "Generic as fuck: The Fantasy Anime".

6 whole episodes claimed to have been recoded, but they didn't want to show people anything and stuck to a shitty 3 second clip instead.

Also no Q&A. Smaaaaaaaaaaart.

specifically Hikaru from Magic Knight Rayearth

10 bucks that they did not know about Rayearth until people began to bitch on Twitter how they were ripping off big time that series

Sage (Blue) - One of the two main characters, childhood friends with Rosemary. Magic caster. The duo are living with Sage's cousin and their partner, Aloe and Anise, while in Lyngarth. No other information was actually given about this character. Most likely based off of one of the spellcaster classes in DnD

If you look her in another perspective she is actually Link from Link's awakening with other palette of colors and longer hair

The rest is uuhh dont know what to say, Japan as already covered several times the setting and do it better, dont know how this was even approved, but like always nepotism is almost certainly the answer

 

[AnOminous]

I think the other part of why every single creator claiming they were inspired by anime ends up citing Sailor Moon is that it's one of the few anime outside of maybe Pokemon and Dragon Ball (maybe Naruto depending on who you ask) that broke out of the anime nerd/weeaboo circles and into the mainstream consciousness.

It's like saying you're a huge fan of Italian food, you love Olive Garden so much.

 

[Kari Kamiya]

https://pastebin.com/r9htJMYr

Pastebin found on what "actually" happened in the HGS panel and where more show details are talked about. It sums up as "Generic as fuck: The Fantasy Anime".

6 whole episodes claimed to have been recoded, but they didn't want to show people anything and stuck to a shitty 3 second clip instead.

Also no Q&A. Smaaaaaaaaaaart.

>"Show is inspired by older Shoujo magical girl anime (Sailor Moon, Tokyo Mew Mew, Magical Knight Rayearth, etc)"

That feeling when Tokyo Mew Mew is considered old.

Magical Knight Rayearth makes more sense, but the characters all still look like they came from Madoka Magica. And if it was inspired by Mew Mew, then expect all sorts of environmental messages or just a sudden alien invasion (whether or not they're trying to change the earth's environment) as the "seventh episode twist" (you know they're going to try to pull off a twist if they only "revealed" six episodes to be in the making) because otherwise they were just "aesthetically" inspired. Which is typically what this all boils down to, at the end of the day. Except I can't see how Tokyo Mew Mew inspired this series outside of the theme-naming.

Honestly, if this was more inspired by Winx Club, I'd probably just shrug it off and go "Okay then", and at least we'd know it wasn't inspired by anime, just an animesque Italian series. But it looks like they're just trying to take all of the magical girl series they've watched and smush them all together into a pulp.

>"The show will be doing an in depth look at female friendships"

That's what fucking magical girl series are. Nothing special.

>"The show is built from the Team's High school experiences as teenage outcasts, but accepted in certain groups. The characters are infused with the team's own flaws they had in high school that they later grew out of."

>"There's going to be a lot of angsty boys, and a lot of angst in general. A lot of crying as well."



>"There are first time VAs, as well as 'Voices you might recognize from other anime'"

What the fuck does that mean? These wouldn't be "big name" voice actors, I'd take it? Or is that where all the budget went?

>"A lot of cats are in the show."

Oh, there's the Tokyo Mew Mew inspiration. And Sailor Moon.

>"'So much love and depth was put into this show'"



>"[Rosemary] was conceptualized from the creator's (Raye Rodriguez) ideal self image as a cool magical girl from when they were a kid, specifically Hikaru from Magic Knight Rayearth, before realizing they were trans. 'Well if I'm going to be a girl, I want to at least be this cool magical girl'"

Hikaru's still going to be the better character in the end. She was also designed better, on top of that.

Outside of learning Parsley's actually a dwarf and not an elf (whoops, guess I've mis-specied... raced... um....), bleh, just comes off as an hour-long character sheet you'd find through DeviantArt or Tumblr for their roleplay blogs. Boring. What a bunch of boring people. I'm not going to be surprised if they have an entire episode centered around a coffee shop, that's how boring and safe it all sounds.

 

[Ponderous Pillock]

What a bunch of boring people. I'm not going to be surprised if they have an entire episode centered around a coffee shop, that's how boring and safe it all sounds.

Wasn't coffee an attempt at a running joke in Hellcat under Kate Leth?