High Guardian Spice - Tumblr: The CalArt Anime

[Trilby]

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.

This show's being run by complete morons is more like it.

 

[Mapo Tofu]

You know as someone who is quite fond of DnD campaigns, if this is. ""Inspired"" by DnD campaigns then why is this series not just a bunch of people discussing with the DM and then it's a shitshow of an adventure

 

[Ruin]

School girls fighting an evil organization?

The virgin High Guardian Spice vs the Chad Kill La Kill!

 

[TVB]

considering this shit is a thing, i made a meme

 

[IdaRita]

Rosemary (Pink) - One of the two main characters, childhood friends with Sage. "Likes yelling and trips a lot". High energy. Only uses a sword and punching, no magic. Based off the warrior class of DnD. The character 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"

"Only uses a sword and punching, no magic" ---> magical girl

I think this says it all about quality of the show and how well thought everything is.

Parsley (Yellow) - Dwarf. From a big family, has about 12 siblings. Went against tradition of smithing to go to the magic academy. "The mom friend." Physically the strongest character. Can make/ MacGyver anything. Favorite class in school is smithing. Written by Kate Leth. DnD basis not given.

So good in breaking those traditions.

Snapdragon - Pretty boy. "A hottie". "An angsty boy". "Representation for all angsty boys out there." The only friend of Amaryllis.

Because angsty boys are not overrepresented in romances since Bronte sisters.

Aloe and Anise - Sage's cousin and their partner. Married Lesbian witch duo. Main characters are living with them. Featured prominently in their apartment is their wedding photo together.

Sigh...

I also love how in trailer they describe this series like it was fully made in US ("we are doing what others forget how to do!") only to find out it's outsourced to Korea.

 

[Slamerella]

"Only uses a sword and punching, no magic" ---> magical girl

I think this says it all about quality of the show and how well thought everything is.

We call those Monks and Fighters.

 

[Tanti-Fanti]

"Only uses a sword and punching, no magic" ---> magical girl

I think this says it all about quality of the show and how well thought everything is.

I also love how in trailer they describe this series like it was fully made in US ("we are doing what others forget how to do!") only to find out it's outsourced to Korea.

I'm still boggled they have have the nerve to relate this to a magical girl anime or even remotely say it's INSPIRED by them. The lead character is such a Madoka rip-off it kills me. Sailor Moon makes sense because every supposed magical girl lover cites that show for publicity. But Tokyo Mew Mew? The show that had the weird alien nu-cat hybrid thing? How does that work into the story? Are we gonna get an end episode twist too?

They can't even subvert the tropes right. Madoka looks frilly and shit to contrast the dark nature of the show. And what is this show being? Super generic. It's clear to me that the creators of the show didn't even try at this point. They just saw on Tumblr that Madoka and Tokyo Mew Mew were "progressive" because "girl power" so they went and made their characters based off that.

I know I sperged a bit more in the SJW thread about not every single girl and a magical wand is a magical girl, but the creators really seem to think that's the case here.

 

[Horribadger]

"Only uses a sword and punching, no magic" ---> magical girl

Someone ain't never watched Mahou Shoujo Ore or Boueibu.

 

[Kari Kamiya]

If Rosemary doesn't use magic in combat, then why the hell is she going to a magical school to learn magic? Or is that something that's never going to be explained because reasons? Also, if Parsley is a dwarf, then why does she look like she's the same height as the other girls? If it hadn't been brought up at the expo, I'd never have guessed she's a dwarf because she looks like a goddamn elf with those ears and that haircut.

Also to go back to Rayearth, another similar series in the magical girl warrior genre is Wedding Peach, which (surprise, surprise) Momoko and Rosemary share similar physical traits as well. Magical girl warriors may not dress up in frilly clothes and other girly attire, but they still use magic while fighting evil in the name of love and justice, and may have transformation sequences/power-ups. That's why they still count as magical girls. If they were wanting to go down the route of magical girl warriors a la Rayearth but using witches/a Dungeons & Dragons/other fantasy theme, that's great, but it doesn't look like that's the direction it's going in. Hell, it appears to be suffering from an identity crisis on top of not knowing where it wants to go.

For being self-proclaimed "fans" of the magical girl series, they're sure as hell missing a lot of key elements, and a sense of creativity and appeal when it comes to just making homages to a beloved genre. Like despite all of the Sailor Moon/Madoka Magica "rip-offs" out there, it's really not all that easy to fuck up magical girls (and as fucking awful as something like CosPrayers was in execution, it still had the most basic elements of a magical girl series and kept you glued to the screen in bafflement over how bad it was; for fuck's sake, Wish Upon the Pleiades was conceptualized as fucking Subaru car commercials with magical girls, and it had some merits of charm to it to garner a (mediocre) TV series), and yet somehow these hack-job "writers" are doing a bang-up job in making an out-right generic magical girl series boring.

It just boggles the mind.

 

[Tanti-Fanti]

If Rosemary doesn't use magic in combat, then why the hell is she going to a magical school to learn magic? Or is that something that's never going to be explained because reasons? Also, if Parsley is a dwarf, then why does she look like she's the same height as the other girls? If it hadn't been brought up at the expo, I'd never have guessed she's a dwarf because she looks like a goddamn elf with those ears and that haircut.

Shoot. Didn't even think of that. Now if these writers were smart they could tell us the intricacies of how the world works. Maybe this school is a combination of other subjects, but mainly people go there for magic due to it's accessibility or close proximity to magic. Maybe they have it in like just how in our world, you need some sort of technical skill in order to use magic, but some excel more than others so-

-who am I even kidding? They shot themselves in the foot the moment they said the main character wouldn't use magic. Even if this does somehow subvert our expectations. Why wouldn't you want to show off the cool shit? People have seen sword fights more times than they can count in anime. You aren't special for doing it in your's.

That's another thing that bothers me about this show. It feels like they think they're the first ones in anime to be diverse or progressive when they clearly aren't. I can't see how anything they put out can be better than any anime I've seen in the past 20 years.

 

[madethistocomment]

https://www.scribd.com/document/271056330/High-Guardian-Spice-Boards

Found the storyboards of the original short that this whole shitshow was based on. Again, it's so generic. The dialogue is generic, the setting's generic, everything.

(also, the villain just.... walks away at the end. and that's it. It comes off like Raye didn't know how to wrap it up and just went with the quickest solution even though it doesn't even make sense.)

 

[Kari Kamiya]

https://www.scribd.com/document/271056330/High-Guardian-Spice-Boards

Found the storyboards of the original short that this whole shitshow was based on. Again, it's so generic. The dialogue is generic, the setting's generic, everything.

(also, the villain just.... walks away at the end. and that's it. It comes off like Raye didn't know how to wrap it up and just went with the quickest solution even though it doesn't even make sense.)

Woooow nothing happens, basically. No exciting magic spells, items, trinkets, battles, nothing. We don't even know why it is they had to capture some bird creature to get money--are they like witch bounty hunters or something? No wonder Nickelodeon turned it down.

Also Rosemary's not being an airhead, she's just a dumb-ass, and not a lovable dumb-ass. Sage I guess is supposed to be the straightman of the two, possibly a foil to Rosemary, but I don't see it. Even the "villain" has nothing to her, and she's basically the audience surrogate when you think about it (the way she yawns and walks away from the store out of boredom, just like the actual audience), and that's being generous.

 

[Tanti-Fanti]

https://www.scribd.com/document/271056330/High-Guardian-Spice-Boards

Found the storyboards of the original short that this whole shitshow was based on. Again, it's so generic. The dialogue is generic, the setting's generic, everything.

(also, the villain just.... walks away at the end. and that's it. It comes off like Raye didn't know how to wrap it up and just went with the quickest solution even though it doesn't even make sense.)

Man, I just scrolled through that and this storyboard is really boring and dull. There are literally scenes of nothing happening. You could cut several scenes and the plot would flow much smoother. It feels like the artist is making a basic beginner's mistake. Trying to fit everything into one panel for each and every scene. You don't need it for everything. You just need it for what's interesting. Nothing about this remotely works.

 

[AnOminous]

Woooow nothing happens, basically. No exciting magic spells, items, trinkets, battles, nothing. We don't even know why it is they had to capture some bird creature to get money--are they like witch bounty hunters or something? No wonder Nickelodeon turned it down.

So this is loony troon "Growing Around" and only given attention because it's by a few dangerhairs instead of an autistic white male.

 

[Ponderous Pillock]

"Only uses a sword and punching, no magic" ---> magical girl

I think this says it all about quality of the show and how well thought everything is.

OH MY GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWD THEY DID IT THEY SUBVERTED MY EXPECTA-

Oh wait, we already had a character who went to a nominally magical school without any apparent powers back in 2013. Raye's been working on this show since 2014.... ohhhhhhhhh.

So good in breaking those traditions.

It's like the playboy trope where it turns out the dude spent all his 20s partying to make contacts and strategic friendships while also pretending he wasn't going to take over the family business.

I also love how in trailer they describe this series like it was fully made in US ("we are doing what others forget how to do!") only to find out it's outsourced to Korea.

Thus continuing a proud american animation tradition since The Real Ghostbusters.

Also they have a goddamn Korean studio doing their shit, but could only muster up 3 seconds for the expo.

LOL.

 

[tumblrkek]

That's what made me finally cancel my crunchyroll sub. It's hilariously bad and embarassing, I hope I'll have fun watching it drunk.
Man that sucks. Guess pirating everything and supporting the shows/studios I like through patreon and collectables is the way to go.

 

[TVB]

Honestly, I never touched Crunchyroll. The only time I did is when I installed the app just to see what it was like, then to uninstall it a couple seconds later. I'm better off watching anime on WatchCartoonsOnline.

...plus, that's probably a good reason why shit like High Guardian Spice made me wanna give less and less fucks about Crunchyroll.

 

[madethistocomment]

Raye, honey, no

 

[Ponderous Pillock]

Raye, honey, no

Raye actually seems to be popular among the weebs. His work actually seems to have some genuine heart to it and whenever anyone sees anything of his Fox ADHD shorts (where he one man banded it) they actually genuinely like him. You can see it over and over in the forums on CR where people have in their signatures stuff like "Give Raye the staff he deserves."

Mostly because, ya know. Kate Leth.

EDIT: Even some basement dweller on 4chan:

 

[madethistocomment]

Raye actually seems to be popular among the weebs. His work actually seems to have some genuine heart to it and whenever anyone sees anything of his Fox ADHD shorts (where he one man banded it) they actually genuinely like him. You can see it over and over in the forums on CR where people have in their signatures stuff like "Give Raye the staff he deserves."

Mostly because, ya know. Kate Leth.

EDIT: Even some basement dweller on 4chan:

He honestly seems like a sweet guy who's got a lot of heart. Too bad CR is doing everything in its power to turn his passion project into trash. I feel pretty bad for him, ngl.