How to Recognize a Great Anime (in just one episode) [Part 1]

I've never really understood the point of the three episode test for those who've never heard of it the three episode test is a common practice in anime communities in which viewers will allow any show three episodes to hook them in supposing that a series with a slower buildup may not really get interesting until after a few episodes however in my experience I've never actually seen a show that I ended up loving in the long run which didn't have a good first episode The Only Exception being Gintama which in misly started off with a two-part anime original filler episode that bizarrely fell short of the entire rest of the show beyond that though I've never experienced this so-called it gets good later effect sure there are a lot of shows that get better across their run given that basic narrative structure usually dictates a rising action in the story but I've never seen a show that started off bad and ended up being great hell the fact that something starts off bad is a pretty huge detriment towards being good on the whole anyways especially if you find yourself annoyed with the story and characters or have your suspension of disbelief broken early on causing difficulty with taking the story seriously or caring about it once it gets dramatic more often than not the weaknesses that a story exhibits in the beginning are indicative of the weaknesses which it will continue to have across its run just as the opposite is usually true of shows with strong opening episodes now I have seen plenty of shows which had really strong openers only to go downhill later on thanks to writing structure and production issues a good first episode isn't always indicative of a good series overall it's just that I've never seen a show that I thought legitimately started off poor and then became great later this seems to be an unpopular stance though as I've been told countless times by other fans about how certain shows have weak beginnings and then get good later on for instance this seems to be a commonly held opinion of Stein's gate one of the most popular and critically acclaimed anime series of The Last 5 Years personally though I loved the first episode of Stein's gate in fact I loved the early part of the show so much that I considered it to be a member of my favorites list after only four episodes back when it was airing obviously I must have seen something in the show that others weren't seeing at the time and perhaps this is why my perspective on the idea of shows getting good later on is so different from others and why my policy of dropping most stuff after only one episode is so confusing to some after all I asked on Twitter for my followers to tell me what shows they had loved in spite of disliking their opening episodes and all of the shows that I liked which were named were shows that I liked by the end of the first episode so in the interest of helping some of you to understand my perspective when it comes to dropping shows early and in being able to identify a great show after just one episode I'm going to write a ridiculously long video about some great and some terrible first episodes of anime and hopefully give you some tools as a viewer to distinguish the cream from the crop even faster than you might already already bearing in mind of course that this is all a matter of personal taste in the long run so for starters let's take a look at the opening episode of Stein's gate to some extent I can understand and forgive a lot of viewers for having difficulty parsing this episode because it is kind of confusing especially if you haven't seen the show already the episode is full of little hints towards things that happen later and some of the events won't really click into place until you've had a better understanding of the series narrative this actually makes the episode even better on the rewatch since there's so many little aha moments sprinkled in that you wouldn't have noticed initially but for a firsttime viewer parts of it can throw you for a loop to a lot of people including elements that the viewer can't possibly understand into the opening episode might seem like a bad thing but to me it serves a massively important purpose in helping to set the tone for the series Stein's gate is a Sci-Fi mystery thriller with a fairly dark tinge and the elements of Mind [ __ ] in the opening episode go a long way way towards establishing this erir of narrative unreliability and tension as well as in putting us in the same position as the lead character if we had completely understood the fact that okab had slipped through time and the mechanics by which he had done so then we would have spent a good chunk of the story waiting for him and his friends to figure out things that we already knew which could get annoying instead we start off the show just as confused as okab is and have to solve the narrative riddles at the same Pace that he does making each of his Revelations throughout the show that much more more impactful then when we come back for the rewatch knowing everything that's going on we're treated to all these little tidbits that we didn't get at first which keeps the show feeling fresh opening up a series in such a bold way can be a double-edged sword after all can we really trust that the show is going to deliver on its promise of a gripping narrative which can justify the confusion that we felt at the start well this is where the first element of learning to identify a Show's potential comes in the form of looking at the staff list and having some context into who the creat creators of the show are Stein's gate was co-directed by Hoshi hamasaki who previously had directed another sci-fi mind [ __ ] in the form of technal along with the starkly brutal short anime adaptation of shigurui both of these shows had also started off with really bizarre confusing and thickly tonal opening episodes before diving further into their stories it's not exactly a guarantee that every Hoshi hamasaki directed show would follow the same trajectory given that he didn't write any of them and that Stein's gate came from from a different studio and was based on a visual novel but when this show came out seeing the name of such an interesting director attached to it who previously had worked on one of the most bizarrely fascinating shows that I ever considered a favorite inspired a lot of confidence in it on my part diving into the episode itself the opening scenes are incredibly Stark and thickly tonal starting with a sequence of semi-transparent images that look vaguely like the inside of the internet shots of TV static and pictures of various locations in Akihabara all laid over heavily grainy shots of telep phone wires against a stark white backdrop all of this imagery immediately establishes Stein's gate as a techno Thriller calling back to the visual trademarks of shows like serial experiments Lane and giving a sense that this story takes place within the more mysterious and Abstract parts of our technological landscape While most viewers probably wouldn't recognize Akihabara just in the few obscure glimpes of it in this opening scene those who do might also get an even deeper sense of the show's focus on technology given the city's reputation as the electric town as well as the show's heavy emphasis on otaku culture given that Akiba is widely regarded as a sort of Mecca for otaku from there we transition into a couple of shots of okab standing on the roof of a building which are filmed at uncomfortable Dutch angles further establishing this sense of tension and stress which is only Amplified by the lack of music and abundant atmospheric sound effects which will be common elements throughout much of the episode when we finally see head-on shots of our main characters it is with harsh blown out lighting and against the pale sky and each shot is framed in such a way as to make the them look overly white and washed out this aesthetic of harsh blown out lighting is upheld as we transition to the streets of Akihabara filmed once again at Dutch angles wherein some of the buildings seem to Simply evaporate into the atmosphere as they get further from the camera there's something unsettling about how this entire scene is colored as though the boundaries of reality have become opaque and uncomfortable all of this is to say that Stein's gate does an excellent job of generating a sense of mystery and suspense in its audiovisual design alone which sets you up for the unnerving nature of the episode's midsection as soon as the episode begins it's pretty rare for any anime series to put so much effort into setting such a thick and unique audiovisual tone right off the bat and most of the ones that do are fantastic so at this point it's already pretty clear that we're potentially looking at an ambitious project after a very brief moment that you probably won't understand until the very end of the series Stein's gate then gets into some of what I think the show does best its natural feeling and cas casually hilarious dialogue mayushi and oken's brief conversation by the gachapon machines gives us a lot of insight into their personalities and relationship while also managing to feel like a normal conversation about a subject which the characters are interested in while you could say it's a little forced that okarin does frame a sentence around the fact that he and mayushi are childhood friends the rest of the following things are established without being spoken in the dialogue firstly that mayushi has a very childish personality we can gather that this from the way that she refers to herself in third person and by nickname squats down and stares longingly into a machine that dispenses cheap toys is disappointed when okine refuses to buy her one and becomes exceptionally excited at the sight of a rare one secondly we learn that okine is a bit of a brat he laughs at mayushi over the fact that he refuses to buy her a toy and then goes out of his way to buy one in front of her face just to tease her later on in the scene he also insists on being referred to by his chibio madeup name hooing kyoma however thirdly we also learn that okin does seem to care for mayushi and to be probably a pretty nice guy for the most part since he hands over the metal OA once he sees how excited she is over it lastly aside from telling us about the characters's personalities the scene also gives us just a tiny bit of insight into their Hobbies as mayushi is deeply knowledgeable about these tiny trinkets whereas okine doesn't even recognize when he's picked up the rare one what makes this dialogue so great is that it can teach us so much about the character without being about the characters in a lot of shows this would have been a wacky hi tension comedy scene wherein after okine bought the gachapon right in front of her mayushi would have yelled about how he's such a bully and he's always been such a bully ever since they were little kids instead this scene is presented without any music or Fanfare and is resolved emotionally through a brilliant piece of sound design when a chipper sounding intercom jingle is played just as oken's heart is being warmed by the sight of May y's [Music] face this is the kind of joke that I would be expecting from an Edgar Wright film and not from a typical TV anime this whole scene is also propped up by the phenomenal voice performances on the part of mamaru Miano and kanah hanazawa at least if you're watching in Japanese while hanakana is clearly using an unrealistic cute and ditsy voice in this role she nonetheless manages to sound far more grounded than a typical MOA girl character would and moo brilliantly balances the wacky side of his character against a deeper more sobering voice considering that moano usually plays far more flamboyant and wacky characters it's kind of amazing to realize that this deranged conspiracy obsessed otaku with a pensant for dramatic flare is actually one of his more restrained and down-to-earth performances if I had to describe the overall aesthetic of Stein's gate in terms of realism it would be almost anime trash but not not quite the look of the world is mostly realistic but with a slightly off-kilter color palette that would be unusual in any medium the character designs have a very pixiv esque feel to them being based on the super detailed original designs from Black Rock Shooter Creator hook yet the tall bodies and relatively normal proportions of the characters make them feel fairly realistic not unlike the designs in shows like D or kok kyokai the voice actors are clearly doing anime voices yet they perform them with more subtlety than they typic would and the sound design skews so sparse and fully focused that the events feel like they're being recorded right there in the world rather than dramatized for television it's an aesthetic that allows for the show to at once be loaded with beautiful anime girls and light otaku genre trappings while also feeling grounded and physical enough that the drama can really hit hard in the later episodes following the metal oopa scene the next 6 minutes or so would probably be especially confusing for firsttime viewers but they do provide some little hints as as to the nature of what's going on for starters okine is attending some sort of panel on the nature of time travel which ought to clue Us in right away that this will be a relevant aspect of the story particularly of interest is that okine brings up the John tier story which was a real life internet hoax of the early 2000s perpetuated by a man who claimed to be a time traveler from the year 2036 aside from the fact that certain elements of the story in Stein's gate are directly based on the John tier story making references to it gives us an interesting frame of reference into where the series is coming from I.E that it's the kind of story wherein internet sci-fi hoax from the early 2000s would be relevant to the plot and characters internet and science fiction culture both play very big roles in Stein's gate and a huge part of how the main characters interact is based on their breadth of pop cultural knowledge and vested interest in the subjects that they find themselves involved with in the story knowing that okine is obsessed enough with time travel to be so familiar with the John tier story is a a telling part of his character especially for any viewers who have heard of the story prior to watching the series okine is then dragged into a particularly confusing conversation with makis kurisu which is mostly confusing for the reason that all of the characters involved are as confused as the viewer is for whatever reason cisu seems to think that okine was trying to tell her something 15 minutes ago whereas okine doesn't seem to remember anything of the sort neither of them really knows who the other is and tin's reaction to the situation is to play up his Persona as a mad scientist on the run from an evil organization which cisu seems to see through pretty easily but still doesn't get any answers out of talking to him as weird as this scene feels in the moment I think that the rest of the episode makes a pretty good case for the viewer to try watching it over again especially for viewers who were watching the series at the time that it was airing as the episode goes along we can kind of piece together that what we are experiencing is an unclosed time Loop wherein okine Witnesses kyu's murder then goes back in time to warn her about the murder thereby causing her to take an action which ends up preventing it if this all seems terribly confusing that's because Stein's gate operates on the parallel universe's theory of time travel and the time Loop [ __ ] with our basic understanding of events as happening in a linear sequence if you can figure this out just by watching and rewatching this episode once or twice then you've pretty much figured out exactly what this show is about and from there it's just a matter of having the dramatic Stakes ramped up later on even amid the confusion of these scenes we still get a lot of insight into oken's character for one we get the sense that he's a total weirdo and social recuse who's trying very hard to be cool but it's obviously just an act which kisu easily sees through coming back to this episode after knowing more about kyu's personality makes it obvious that she probably deals with people like this all the time given that she's big into Japanese internet culture we also get a sense of oken's social class when mayushi tells him that the metal OA can be sold online for10 10,000 Yen Which is less than $100 this number doesn't just excite okine because his lab is apparently dirt broke but he even considers it enough money that he can buy what he describes as science equipment with the money you might not come to this conclusion immediately but given what legitimate science equipment would probably cost it's pretty obvious that he's really talking about thrifting around for random [ __ ] which he can use for his home experiments again this is all dialogue that tells us about oken's character without really being about him finally the scene rounds off with okarin witnessing makis kurisu's dead body followed by a bunch of trippy imagery back in the streets of akuba wherein time and space seem once more to evaporate around the edges as okine loses grip on and Trust in reality this is the last piece of the puzzle for setting up what Stein's gate is a technology- based Thriller with an emphasis on time travel characters who are strange obsessive otaku and a bit of murder mystery and psychological mind [ __ ] thrown in for spice it's only appropriate then that with all of these pieces in place we finally cut to the opening theme which is energetic fun and cool and has a video that suggests all kinds of trippy time and reality [ __ ] yet to come after the opening video okine provides a more proper introduction to himself his friends and what all of them are doing in the form of what looks at first like a fourth wall breaking monologue as he addresses the audience from the other side of the TV screen while this dialogue is very obviously forced and expository I think that the scene manages to work work exceptionally well thanks to all of the stylistic layers which are stacked on top of it for starters the fact that okine is talking into the TV seems like a pretty clear nod to the classic dystopian novel 1984 in which big brother watches over everyone in society by way of TV monitors in the corners of their rooms considering that okine is a conspiracy nut who thinks that he's living in a dystopian Society it only makes sense that he would believe that there's someone watching him from the other side of the TV screen the fact that the show which he's talking to is some kind of bizarre program where an alpaka with a man's face stares into the camera absently forever honestly makes it seem like maybe okine isn't wrong to think so aside from being a cool nod to Classic dystopian literature and a great visual shorthand for once again reinforcing the show's emphasis on technology this scene also is just really visually interesting the fishe lens perspective allows us to see the entire room all at once and okine moving around the foreground so much allows him to alter the blocking of the shot and transform it over the course of the minutes that it stays on screen when he's the only one talking then he gets in close and Hogs the camera when we need to see someone else then he backs away and sometimes moves to one side or the other to highlight one character at a time it's all around just an incredibly cool shot and what it loses in the fact that the dialogue is overly convenient it regains in how much character is packed into each line of it oken's acting here gives us a pretty clear portrait of both how he sees himself and of how his relationships work with his friends mayushi seems eager to go along with oken's Persona in the name of having fun whereas D sees it cynically as a chibio character setting and blasts him constantly with troll comments something which could be somewhat muddied in Translation is that datu speaks almost entirely in two channel lingo which is basically like if you hung out with a four Channer who was constantly spouting memes It's pretty dope to be honest famam D's dialogue particularly brings home the fact that this show is steeped in otaku and internet culture with his talk of wuss and settings and we also learn that mayushi is a resident cosplay expert to boot sprinkled throughout the following scene is a mixture of off-hand philosophical dialogue as the characters Ponder whether their reality is real or if they're really the ones inside a monitor being watched by alpacam man character and relationship building between all three of the lab members as they bounce insults and ideas back and forth and important plot details as ok becomes disturbed by the discrepancies in his memories while looking at a news report about a crashed satellite my favorite detail in this scene though is when datu breaks out a toy laser gun and uses it to change the channels on the TV in this brief moment it becomes apparent that for all of these characters as goofiness they probably do know at least enough about engineering and technology that they can build rudimentary devices in special DIY fashion when okine refers to this laser gun as futuristic machine number one it starts to feel like what these guys probably do most of the time is scavenge random appliance parts and repurpose or modify them into Fun wacky gadgets the rest of the episode mostly serves to reinforce all of the things that I've talked about with even more fun dialogue and minor character details such as okine trying to argue with his landlord over a less than $10 TV repair fee and mayushi revealing that she's the only one in the gang who seems to have any sort of allowance minor stuff aside though there are two other important pieces of information to pick up before the climax firstly that when confronted about why she continues to hang out with a loser like okine mayushi claims that she serves an important role as his hostage this at first seems like just some ditsy character setting aspect but then later on when okine sees her looking up at a tree we get a flashback to her doing the same thing in front of a large headstone from this it seems likely that mayushi hangs around with okine and acts so childishly out of some kind of emotional trauma that she's experienced due to someone's death and that maybe cadine is playing more of a caretaker to her than it first appears secondly the scene with the gel banana makes it evident that as goofy and ridiculous as the labs machines may be they do seem to be producing some kind of unnatural results the gel bananas are taken as equal parts useless and harmless by the characters yet they still work as evidence to the fact that these kids might be on to something from there the episode rounds off on a couple of quick twists and turns it's revealed that oken's text message seems to have traveled a week back in time having been cut into thirds in the process and then we find out that makis cisu is very much Alive and Kicking this is what I meant when I said that the episode gives you enough to go on that you might have gone back and rewatched it to try and figure out what was going on before episode 2 came out knowing what we know at the end gives a lot of insight into what was going on before and makes it a lot easier to pick up on where the story is going after just this one episode so taking stock of what we've discussed so far I think it's pretty clear that the first episode of Stein's gate had a lot going for it the characters were firmly established in their personalities and relationships from the get-go and their back and forth report was a blast to listen to thanks to excellent writing and voice acting we've got callbacks both to Classic science fiction stories and to more contemporary internet conspiracy stories and Message Board culture which creates a fairly Unique Kind of tone for a modern sci-fi story there's a plethora of well-directed scenes memorable imagery and even funny moments of sound design suggesting a carefully handled production alongside bold choices being made from very early on in the name of creating the kind of atmosphere which would be most beneficial to the storyline top all of that off with Gorgeous character designs a pretty cool setting for those who worship at the altar of otaku and all kinds of hilarious details like the alpaka Man TV show and futuristic device number one and there's more than enough going on in this episode to suggest the possibility that this show was going to be great now none of this is to suggest that it was obvious from this one episode that Stein's gate would eventually be as good as it ended up being nor is it to say that I even picked up on half of this stuff when I watched the show for the first time the post that I wrote about it on my blog back in 2011 mostly talks about how cool it is that the show is weird and confusing and reminded me of Welcome to the NHK but then my writing was pretty [ __ ] terrible back then still the point I'm getting at here is that if a new season of anime started up and I was looking at this opening episode next to all the other ones that came out I'm pretty sure that this one would have blown just about everything else out of the water even if I had no idea what was going on in the story and was just kind of drinking in the episode's wall of eccentric information the fact that a show would start off with so many points of interest would have had my attention immediately there's no way in hell that I ever would have dropped steinsgate after just the first episode because it probably would have been one of the most interesting things on TV at the time although In fairness spring 2011 was actually a really solid season with a lot of really good First episodes to go around so all right we've made the case now that the first episode of a great show will probably lay a lot of the groundwork for what's good about the series as a whole but what about when the first episode is something really weird that throws the audience for a loop and doesn't seem to have anything to do with the story even though it turns out to be a good show and what would an unconvincing first episode look like from a show that never quite makes it to the level of being great I'll be tackling both of these questions as this video series continues use so be sure to stick around on my channel if you want to learn more if you haven't had enough of my voice yet then be sure to check out the procrastinators podcast which I do with my friends once a week and subscribe to my vlogging Channel where I constantly [ __ ] about everything also if you want to help me to keep my channel going then consider supporting me via patreon by using the links below thanks again for watching and I'll see you in the next one

Channel: Ygg Studio

Views: 1,034,127

Keywords: steins;gate, episode 1, analysis, review, commentary, anime

Id: 0kQrT8S2Mrw

Length: 24min 20sec (1460 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 22 2016