High Guardian Spice - Tumblr: The CalArt Anime

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Late last night I decided to make some "fan"-art, but as production value of both fan-art and professional art is low-effort, I've stayed true to form, minus the coloring.
SPICE FAN.png
 
Now 100% more nonbinary WoC-friendly!

DmTPPGOXcAAHLqX.jpg

On a more serious note, I'm pretty much agreeing with everyone else in this thread. This series doesn't look very promising.
 
>"[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.
It's also just a really weird thing to say when talking about the supposed inspiration for the show you're still in the process of selling an audience on. It sounds more like a backhanded compliment rather than having any passion for the genre, like "Oh I like magical girls because they were the thing associated with women that I hated the least." Imagine a creator saying something like that when talking about any other genre; it doesn't exactly inspire confidence in the final product.
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.)
And this is about what I expected: The camera angles are all flat with a lot of mid-shots & shot-reverse shot transitions, there's absolutely no stakes since the villain is weak and it's established very early that all the weapons are fake - making the main characters untouchable, and the plot meanders with no overarching theme or goal and with plot points just sort of happening with a lot of "and then"s rather than feeling like it's being driven by the characters, and the humor isn't strong enough to make up for the lack of plot. I'm sure the very first notes the Nickelodeon execs gave Raye were "So wait, the antagonist just... walks away?" Most likely immediately followed by "Why wasn't the griffin chase that was shown in the first 10 seconds the main plot instead? That was more interesting."

Also something I noticed in this that I've noticed in the work of some of the other writers on this projected (namely Kate Leth) is that they're style of writing always has this underlying... sarcasm, for lack of a better word. Like in the scene for this pitch where the villain reveals that they sell fake magical goods: she does so in a very matter of fact manner that's just feels clunky and unprompted by the current events. I think they're trying to come off a self-aware and maybe even a parody, but since the writing is so lack-luster it just ends up coming off as insincere and half-hearted; almost feeling like the writer thinks that they're too good for the medium or saddled with it. A sort of "Oh boy, here we go, don't you just hate when cartoons use cliches like this, viewers?" with a knowing eye-roll, even as it uses those same cliches completely straight. On top of everything else, I can see that being another reason Nick passed on this one: why bother with a show that knows all its cliches are tired if the show itself can't be bothered to build on them?

If this is anything what the final product is going to be like - and given the people involved and their inability to write meaningful conflict, it probably isn't that far off from the pitch - I'm guessing we'll see a lot of plots like this: things just happening "because plot" rather than because of the decisions of the characters, "action" scenes that make up a small fraction of the run time and carry no real weight in either physically or emotionally, and characters for the most part stating what they're feeling or doing while they're doing it.
DmLs_ZoXgAAJeZd

Raye, honey, no
People have to know what HGS is before they can explain it to you, Raye.
 
. . .and the plot meanders with no overarching theme or goal and with plot points just sort of happening with a lot of "and then"s rather than feeling like it's being driven by the characters, and the humor isn't strong enough to make up for the lack of plot.

So like a bad fanfiction written by someone who doesn't even like what they're making OCs for.
 
I'm calling it right now: it will be a plot point that only women can do magic, and there'll be an episode making a big deal out of the fact that an MtF trans person can do magic as a way of lecturing the audience about how trans women are real women.
 
I'm calling it right now: it will be a plot point that only women can do magic

It's pretty much the de facto rule in magical girl shows that only girls can become magical girls with some veeeeeery few exceptions (such as I Will Become the Twin-tails! and the magical boy genre getting traction), but even in those cases they still have to tweak it--

and there'll be an episode making a big deal out of the fact that an MtF trans person can do magic as a way of lecturing the audience about how trans women are real women.

...........Oh. You mean that.

Goddamn it, the magical girl genre may practically be known for having progressive/feminist ideals, but what the fuck.

That reminds me, has Chris-chan gotten wind of this yet?
 
I'm calling it right now: it will be a plot point that only women can do magic, and there'll be an episode making a big deal out of the fact that an MtF trans person can do magic as a way of lecturing the audience about how trans women are real women.

It's pretty much the de facto rule in magical girl shows that only girls can become magical girls with some veeeeeery few exceptions (such as I Will Become the Twin-tails! and the magical boy genre getting traction), but even in those cases they still have to tweak it--



...........Oh. You mean that.

Goddamn it, the magical girl genre may practically be known for having progressive/feminist ideals, but what the fuck.

That reminds me, has Chris-chan gotten wind of this yet?
 
So like a bad fanfiction written by someone who doesn't even like what they're making OCs for.
That and the kind of bad fanfics that aren't interested in anything other than the slice of life "fluff" moments and (potential) shipping (if some of the lesbian concept art made of the main characters by the creator is anything to go by), so they speed through everything else just to get to those parts, so the rest is left either as underdeveloped summaries of plot points or unearned "emotional" moments that had no build up.

Also, one thing I noticed but forgot to mention is how lackluster and unfinished the set designs and backgrounds are. Hell, some of the shots don't even have backgrounds when they really need them. It makes me think that Raye either rushed this out at the last second, or while making it thought "eh, someone else will do it when it goes into production" neither of which isn't a good mindset to have going in to trying and selling your show.

For comparison, here's some official storyboards I found on the same website: ( 1 , 2 )
 
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and there'll be an episode making a big deal out of the fact that an MtF trans person can do magic as a way of lecturing the audience about how trans women are real women.
You just reminded of this Buffy fanfic that was trying to be woke by having a FtM Slayer. Pretty much cementing that yes, her trooning ass was female.
 
Also, one thing I noticed but forgot to mention is how lackluster and unfinished the set designs and backgrounds are. Hell, some of the shots don't even have backgrounds when they really need them. It makes me think that Raye either rushed this out at the last second, or while making it thought "eh, someone else will do it when it goes into production" neither of which isn't a good mindset to have going in to trying and selling your show.
This is the impression I got as well. It seemed progressively rushed/half-assed the more I scrolled down, like the more effort he exerted, the less he cared. Like a school creative assignment with little emotional investment on the part of the student.
 
I love how one of the CR creators(?) calls anyone a pirate and goes on a tangent about piracy and how these so assumed pirates don't help the anime industry like CR when people speak out against them. Also buying merch and other things that's directly connected to a anime company is somehow not helping the industry? It's fucking strange.

I don't get them.
1.they were originally a pirate stream site
2.seeing those yuppies, I highly doubt they even help the anime industry one bit just help fill up their own pockets.

Those retards still use a shit player. Why would I pay money for that when I can get 1080p with no buffering for free or I can just buy the dvds if I'm a collector and want to support the companies.

We anime fans are just cutting out the extra chromosome having middle man.
 
I love how one of the CR creators(?) calls anyone a pirate and goes on a tangent about piracy and how these so assumed pirates don't help the anime industry like CR when people speak out against them. Also buying merch and other things that's directly connected to a anime company is somehow not helping the industry? It's fucking strange.

I don't get them.
1.they were originally a pirate stream site
2.seeing those yuppies, I highly doubt they even help the anime industry one bit just help fill up their own pockets.

Those exceptional individuals still use a shit player. Why would I pay money for that when I can get 1080p with no buffering for free or I can just buy the dvds if I'm a collector and want to support the companies.

We anime fans are just cutting out the extra chromosome having middle man.

Important distinction being were they went legit and now pay with Kadokawa locked down on an exclusive global streaming contract which acts as a significant draw.

The problem is they're not like STEAM where there's rather strict corporate neutrality the various corporate owners have underfunded this platform for a while, choosing to scalp the profits while they can rather than improve the service to bring in more people as paying customers. They've fucked about with translations, censoring their shows (apparently they pay only for the TV-broadcast version and then cut scenes if they're not to their tastes) never mind the previous near-revolt they had over their shoddy handling of Danmachi Memoria Freeze.

Crunchyroll easily clears $40m all told as since sale to AT&T they have been ruthless with cutting costs where they can. Their IT services are now handled by a company in Moldova.

There's some truth to the money and stuff supporting anime... kind of. The majority of the profits handed to anime creators actually go to the production committees pockets instead. This helps keep the lights on for the studios said committees commission, of course.

If you really really wanted to directly support the actual studios then you'd be better off donating a couple of bucks to Studio Trigger's Patreon.
 
2.seeing those yuppies, I highly doubt they even help the anime industry one bit just help fill up their own pockets.

I'm pretty sure no Japanese anime companies are doing CalArts beanface garbage.

There's some truth to the money and stuff supporting anime... kind of. The majority of the profits handed to anime creators actually go to the production committees pockets instead. This helps keep the lights on for the studios said committees commission, of course.

They had a reputation as pretty shit to start out with, so I suppose they pulled this SJW crap figuring the people already willing to settle for their shitty service (and actually pay for it instead of just pirating like a normal person) would also eat this turd sandwich.
 
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