The (Absolute) State of Crunchyroll Original Anime

Crunchyroll original is perhaps one of the most tainted phrases in the entire English language sure folks have their issues with Netflix original anime too but at least for every record of Ragnarok we've gotten a Devilman crybaby or Violet evergarden when it comes to crunchyroll's offerings all there seem to be are duds no one's heard of disasters everyone's heard of disappointing wastes of potential and Tony Kawa which some people argue shouldn't even count as a Crunchyroll original because it's only a co-production even though that would also disqualify jibiate and x-arm and thus actually would be a huge net win for the brand it's kind of a pointless pedantic argument either way though and there's a lot of those surrounding this topic on account of all the culture War trenches that have been dug in all around it everywhere which I am gonna try my hardest not to trip into because that [ __ ] is just plain exhausting I started this channel because I love watching talking about analyzing and poking fun at anime and sometimes games but it's difficult to engage in or even reliably find honest thorough criticism of any piece of media in a landscape where every piece of media can suddenly become a hill that terminally online weirdos are just dying to die on so now that the Crunchyroll Originals brand is pretty well dead itself with only two unreleased shows left on the road map and no more announcements in sight I want to try to separate the 14 shows they've made so far from all that stigma judge them purely by their own merits or at least the merits of their first three episodes and see just how well they really deserve their terrible reputation as individual works and as a whole specifically by rating them on a scale from one to ten and then averaging out those scores now Crunchyroll has sponsored me in the past and I'm presently working on an 86 video with them which is why that's taken so long to come out so I understand that some of you may just not trust me me to make that assessment however I would point out that Crunchyroll Originals have taken the top slot in my worst anime of the year list for two years running now and presently freak Angels is poised to make that a hat trick I promise I am not going into this with kid gloves on I am however going in with my new official custom hidden g-fuel village headband on and with their Brand's new Naruto Shippuden Sage Mode formula in my body so that I don't fall asleep while watching some of these you may not have the same need for this product but nonetheless you need it for it is a collectible with Naruto's face on the box it compel zero Taco cells to buy it and if you want to get 30 off it and anything else at gfuel.com all you have to do is use the promo code basement when you check out now add stop no Jutsu since we're already on the subject of so-called original co-productions I think it makes sense to start our rundown of these anime there even if the subject of Crunchyroll original co-productions in itself doesn't make a lick a sense you might not be aware of this but Crunchyroll has been funding anime from the production committee side of things since long before Originals were a thing back in 2017. actually they started back in 2015 but it took two years for any of those shows to come out because the entire anime industry is stretched Beyond capacity right now and that's how far in advance you need to book an Anime Studio to get a show made remember that it'll come up later this initiative has produced a fair number of bad anime including the master of Ragnarok and blesser of einharyar but it's also given us a lot of widely loved anime like yorimoy yuru Camp kimono friends and the Kino's Journey reboot and the only reason that none of those were branded as Crunchyroll Originals is that the brand didn't exist or at least they weren't ready to go public with it at the time they came out if they had been if this color-coded DND party had been the first face of the label instead of that other one we'd probably be having a very different conversation right now and on the flip side the conversation could be evolving right now if they hadn't decided to stop branding all of their co-productions as Originals just in time to miss the boat on odd taxi though the discussion around Originals is so toxic at this point that it was probably a good idea to keep that distance it most likely would have just hurt odd Taxi's brand the point I'm trying to make here is that which co-productions end up counting as Crunchyroll Originals is an entirely arbitrary matter of timing and marketing whims and if you think about it that way it's actually a pretty [ __ ] wild coincidence that two shows as historically awful as ex-arm and jibiate both ended up making the cut I'm not gonna spend too much time on either one since I already gave them their are dressing down on the worst of the Year lists but I do want to impress upon you if you haven't seen the shows or those videos just how [ __ ] bad they really are jibiate whose plot plays like a bad onimusha Resident Evil crossover fanfic was written and produced by a guy who has zero experience writing or producing anime and so even though he was collaborating with the likes of yoshitaka Amano game composer yuzo koshiro and xiaomi Sen megastars the Yoshida Brothers his inept management and even worse script writing utterly squandered all of their efforts and if you think that's bad wait till you hear that x-arm's entire team was people who've never made anime before with a live-action TV director heading up the first ever animation effort from I'm not kidding here a company that previously made environment assets for from soft games resulting in a TV show that looks more like a steam green light trailer jibiate is one of the worst original anime I've ever watched in my life and ex-arm might just be the worst anime ever made period it's definitely the most butchered adaptation by a wide margin berserk 2016 ain't got [ __ ] zero out of 10 to the both of them but what about the other shows that got arbitrarily lumped in with them well the dungeon survival isakai so I'm a spider so what was pretty great until the production fell apart halfway through the season it probably would have benefited from getting the whole split core treatment like its winter contemporary mushokutensei instead of burning the whole staff out on a straight 23 episode run only to have episode 24 delayed into July anyway but that's just a depressingly common problem across the entire anime industry that said the show's writing and voice acting do hold up and the experience of watching a lone gamer laboriously grind and min max the low-level dungeon mob she reincarnated into while trying not to get eaten by a mini boss is unique and exciting Enough by itself to make the series worth a watch even if that story does get a little bit majorly bogged down by frequent half episode long cutaways to the heroine's classmates doing far more boring Dragon Quest type generic isakai [ __ ] a new addition to the anime that wasn't present in the light novels and uh doesn't add much to it look if your protag's not gonna rock up with a rocket launcher to kill all the monsters make the popular kid look like a chump and cuck his bully Ari ferretta style it's just not worth wasting time on that sort of side content on that note if you missed it because the cowards at YouTube age restricted it I just dropped a roast of Ari ferretta which is probably the funniest thing I've ever made so go watch that when you're done with this or if you get bored with it halfway through anywho despite those shortcomings so I'm a spider so what get 7 out of 10 for its tense plot and intense monster on Boss monster action speaking of monster fights inspector is a romantic Supernatural mystery series about kotoko iwanaga a girl who traded an eye and a leg for the power to mediate disputes between humans and Yokai and Kuro sakuragawa a handsome fella she happened to meet at the hospital and on whom she immediately pounced the second his long-term girlfriend broke up with him who also may or may not have mysterious Supernatural powers of his own if I'd only three episodes tested this series I'd probably have given it an eight or even a 9 for its remarkable sense of atmosphere and consistently high production values unfortunately for inspector I watched enough of it when it came out to see it drop off hard and then drop it as those first three episodes full of fun monster of the week Shenanigans gave way to a season-long story arc about steel lady nanasay an evil Idol ghost with these Hefty honkin biceps that she uses to carry around this I-beam and bludgeoned people to death also she has these absolutely massive tracks of exposition associated with her which go on and on for most of the show's run time after she shows up and really drag it down also also her boobies are very big but it's hard to appreciate that or any of the interesting High Concepts surrounding her when everything involving her is so damn slow and boring 5 out of 10. for those who like their Supernatural Mysteries a wee bit Stranger than that you might really enjoy Dr Romine mysterious disease specialist a show about a selfish lazy Doctor Who probably won't do much for your cough or sniffles but if you've found yourself suddenly crying mayonnaise or with your wenis having mysteriously turned into a fish cake he might just have a prescription for one ironic Supernatural life lesson with your name on it this definitely is not an anime for everyone but if you're one of those rare few cultured fans of laughing salesmen and Gage no Kitaro I could see it becoming one of your all-time faves Dr rominae also features some unusually complicated lore and surprisingly deep dynamic characters for this kind of show so if you were just expecting an episodic dark comedy without much continuity think again also I should note that one of those characters is a 112 year old grandma who looks like a grade schooler [Music] luckily not that kind in fact the first thing we see akane do in the entire show is beat the [ __ ] out of a gross pedophile for fun it's a pretty great Twist on that particular Trope and it seems like there's a lot of those here Dr Romine is clever witty and creative the ideal surreal comedy package and I give the first three episodes an 8 out of 10. last and definitely not least of The co-production Originals is Tony Kawa over the moon for you a romantic comedy about a brilliant driven student named NASA who spies a beautiful girl across the road on one crisp moonlit night falls in love at first sight and then gets hit by a truck about three seconds after that because he didn't look both ways before going to pick her up luckily the girls Tsukasa has some sort of Supernatural something going on with her so she's able to dive in and save him and after he gives a heartfelt spur of the moment confession she even agrees to marry him then disappears on his ass for several years but when she comes back true to her word they tie the knot the very next day and the show follows them from that point forward as they build their new life together and get to know each other along with all the friends and neighbors around them and also tsukasa's weird Super Rich family and don't think we forgot about that Superhero [ __ ] she pulled when her future mans was about to get isakad there's some a plot here not too much though mostly Tony cab is just a relaxing Slice of Life Comedy full of Doki Doki moments of romance and plenty of hearty laughs there's a reason this is the One Crunchyroll original that even the hardest core haters won't hate on 8 out of 10 which brings the average score for these co-production Originals to 4.6 out of 10. as you'd expect of what is effectively a random selection of anime it's a mixed bag of nuts give or take a couple rat turds so how does that compare to crunchyroll's more deliberate original anime programming namely the series of collaborations they've done with webtoon and Adult Swim I think it's safe to say that the webtoon collabs god of high school Tower of God and noblesse generated the most positive Buzz for Crunchyroll Originals out of anything they put out at least ahead of their release a lot of people love them some Korean style tall web comics and manwa has long been deserving of a bigger place in the culture conversation so these shows were in a very real sense game changers for anime people were understandably hyped but when people get hyped for something and then it doesn't really live up to that hype those feelings can really sour really fast and unfortunately only one of those shows Tower of God gave webtoon fans anywhere near what they were hoping for mostly that's an issue of pacing while they're all fairly impressive in terms of their sakuga fight choreography and overall production values all three adaptations field to some extent or another rushed as I said Tower of God which has been called by some the one piece of webtoons suffers the least in this regard as it's only been sped up just enough to reach a comfortable end point to its first major story arc in 12 episodes it still hits a lot of important world and character building beats along the way to that goal and each of the tests our heroes are faced with as they climbed the tower that is their entire planet is given enough breathing room to be tense and satisfying as its own little story the show also features some seriously incredible action scenes enhanced by a beautiful art style that's designed with fluid sharp Motion in mind and underscored by the always memorable music of Kevin penkin Tower of God is just a darn good anime a true treat for all the senses and not a half bad story on top of that easy eight out of 10. sadly only the first half of that last sentence describes the god of high school in the hands of Jujutsu kaiza and songhu park the fights that make up the show's titular teen Martial Arts Tournament are breathtaking with thrilling Dynamic camera work and snappy hard-hitting character movements that sync perfectly with Alisa okay hazama's Jam slapping genre blending soundtrack just like the fights in Jujutsu Kaizen do how however outside of those scenes the rest of the show pretty much may as well not be there the problem is this anime is just laser focused on covering as much of the tournament as possible in 12 episodes and absolutely nothing else every other part of the plot just gets cut down to a Cliff's Notes version of itself to make room for more fights one character goes from being single to having an arranged marriage and hating it to being okay with the guy actually to backing out of it in the space of a single episode high on God school's pacing feels like you know that gif of baby Deku rocking back and forth in the chair imagine that you're on a bullet train and he's holding the throttle this anime gave me physical Whiplash 4 out of 10. that just leaves us with no bless a show about a handsome Noble vampire boy fighting evil with his various demi-human Associates while also attending a High School which to be honest even after watching three episodes I still don't really get part of that's because apparently the TV team at production IG decided to just start the TV series right after the OVA they'd already made meaning that if you watch the show you end up missing all the setup that should have been in episode one but also again the pacing is just off not necessarily rushed in this case but just not well put together the show pivots between light character comedy tense serious drama and heavy action on a dime without doing anything to smooth the transition each episode feels less like a coherent self-contained plot made of interwoven scenes and more like well a handful of webcomic chapters stapled together without any transitions it's not an unpleasant viewing experience the jokes can be funny and a few of the fights go pretty hard it just never comes together into anything greater than the sum of its very uneven parts 6 out of ten which sets the average for webtoon Originals at 6 out of ten not bad but for a trio of shows meant to change the face of anime not nearly enough as for the Adult Swim collabs the reason they exist is self-explanatory if you know anything about the business side of Crunchyroll a former subsidiary of Otter Media a subsidiary of Warner media a subsidiary of a t as well of course as the business side of Adult Swim a mature programming block on Cartoon Network a division of the kids young adults and classic division of Warner Brothers entertainment a subsidiary of Warner media a subsidiary of a t before the anime streaming boom Adults Swim in Toonami on Cartoon Network were the places where Americans with an interest in anime developed an actual taste in anime which inevitably LED them to looking for the harder stuff online on top of that the teams at Cartoon Network were commissioning original content from anime Studios long before Originals were even a thing so having them partner with Crunchyroll to develop another new IP plus two big ticket adaptations just made sense one of those adaptations shenmue is coming out possibly the day I published this video so uh I don't know if it's good or bad you'll have to tell me in the comments but I will say that trailer looked pretty dope and just on the grounds that you don't have to actually play it if it lives up to that it's got a pretty good shot at being the best shenmue thing by default their other big ticket Legacy IP show Blade Runner Black Lotus follows up on the 2017 shinichiro Watanabe directed Ona Blade Runner blackout 22. this time with Watanabe and the producers chair as 3D anime directing Duo Shinji aramaki and Kenji kamiyama of Ghost in the Shell Standalone complex Star Wars the ninth Jedi and metabots fame taking the Reigns I know a lot of you out there have a very strong distaste for 3D CG anime of all kinds and aramaki and kamiyama's shows don't always do the best job of dispelling that stigma with their at times clumsy motion capture but they always at least feature sharp interesting cinematography and editing and pretty great fight scene across the board that do things that just aren't possible in 2D and while all of the human models in Blade Runner Black Lotus are as rough and awkward as the characters in any of their shows the modeling and shading of the props and backgrounds is just spot on to the production design of the film from void conf machines to billboard Geisha to the little architectural embellishments this is unmistakably Blade Runners La what's not quite as on brand is the story which follows a badass mechanical lady as she Kung Fu fights her way through an identity crisis and I mean you heard what I just said it's pretty much just Ghost in the Shell but in Blade Runner it's not a particularly well told story either at least not in the first three episodes but with one of the actual Ghost in the Shell guys directing it that mix of two iconic cyberpunk Vibes does at least work surprisingly well and if you're a hardcore enough cyberpunk Fanboy to want to see that but not hardcore enough that you would care about all of the lore problems it creates you probably have a good time with it six out of ten on the subject of pretty capable ladies discovering who they are while also kicking some ass fenna pirate princess is that new IP from production IG that I mentioned they were making in telling its tale of high seas Adventure starring a boisterous orphan girl with a mysterious Destiny and her retinue of Steampunk ninja pirate bodyguards fenna does a great many things right it is a stunningly gorgeous anime with consistently impressive action and Nation fantastic music and a rare impeccably crafted atmosphere that could give the best pirate fantasies out there a run for their money for 10 episodes straight it delivered a darn near perfect feeling of Adventure that made it impossible for me to put down sadly it is 12 episodes long and those last two I won't spoil things for you but let's just say that the answer to what fenna's Destiny is is some cliche ass [ __ ] that completely robs her of her agency as a character while trying to pretend that The Core theme of the story is Choice then slaps you directly in the face forever being stupid enough to get invested in her Arc with a better finale this could have been a nine maybe 10 out of 10 anime but that ending is so bad the best I can do is a six still worth watching just maybe not worth finishing that leaves just one final category by far the most contentious one the native English dubbed Crunchyroll Originals hi Guardian spice Onyx Equinox and freak Angels some might call them the ones that aren't anime but since freak Angels was produced in Japan by a mostly Japanese creative staff it doesn't really fit that label no matter which definition of anime you use though I'm pretty sure Onyx Equinox was actually recorded in Spanish before English so my label's not perfect either but it does at least highlight the one major problem that all of these series share that because they didn't need the subtitles for translation purposes Crunchyroll just didn't bother subbing these shows at all and that's not just a problem for their deaf and neurodivergent viewers because the audio mixing of those dubs just so happens to be completely atrocious I mean borderline unintelligible in places I am slime boy you're you're what now is what everyone calls me I kind of like it uh you know it's the same slime and then boy and I guess that brings us to the most infamous of these series High Guardian spice this was of course the first original that Crunchyroll ever announced the bean-mouthed face of the entire brand which was perhaps not the most calculated marketing move they could have made toward a fan base that's partly defined by its aversion to western style cartoons specifically but would probably have gone over a lot better if there was any footage of the show to you know show instead we got a short Montage of interview clips that seemed Precision designed to specifically piss off the anti-sjw crowd without actually providing the opposite side of that with any good ammo to defend it it was kind of the perfect PR [ __ ] storm and that left Crunchyroll management feeling uneasy about publishing or even promoting the show anymore so even though it was purportedly finished and ready to go out in 2019 we saw nothing more of it till last year at which point it was just too late almost no one but the haters cared anymore and on release it was immediately received as in so immediately that it hadn't been out for as many hours as it was long before people started putting in one star reviews as one of the worst affronts to the concept of visual storytelling in the history of History which normally would excite me I am after all a trash connoisseur and lover of hate watches I do enjoy a good train wreck but I had a sneaking suspicion there was some confirmation bias at play there as often happens when a thing is hated for what it represents and sure enough when I watched it myself it was just kind of mid sure it's an extremely cheap show with an animation style that due to how it's implemented comes off less as simple shapes allow for lots of dynamic motion and more if every frame looks equally sloppy that's technically an aesthetic and sure the world building's flimsy the main characters have fairly flat personalities and the episode plots all feel contrived and cobbled together but to put this merely mediocre Pretender in the same trash fire Pantheon as x-arm jibiate master of Ragnarok and hand shakers that's just blasphemy my friend to be clear I would rather watch any of those shows than this one I mean I finished all of them for their respective roasts whereas High Guardian spice is gonna stay dropped at three episodes until the day I die but that's only because I'm a freak who prefers being confused angry and or frightened by the media I watched to just plain board and High Guardian spice is just plain boring 4 out of 10. that's not to say there are no good reasons to be apprehensive about it though I don't agree with the most frequently stated complaint about the series that an anime streaming company should just never ever fund Western animation the industry is as I said at the top of the video extremely overburdened at the moment so pushing crap like jibiate through the pipeline can potentially hurt other anime by taking away freelance animators from their production whereas High Guardian spice exists on its own bubble no my issue with the series is that Crunchyroll tried to fund it specifically like an anime with a budget that the Creator equated to what Cartoon Network would typically spend on an 11 minute episode of one of their shows or to put it another way less than half of what is typically needed to make a good 24 minute episode which not only puts some of its failings in perspective but also frames its failure as kind of a good thing over overall at least for American animators who I presume would not want to see a precedent set to underpay them even harder for even harder work putting that huge issue aside while High Guardian spice definitely is not the show for me I can see a hypothetical teenager who really loves Steven Universe using it to scratch that particular itch if they've already seen all of Adventure Time and amphibia and Owl House and little witch Academia and infinity train and Hilda and Ray Earth and Bravest Warriors and star vs the forces of evil and kepo in the age of Wonder beasts and Shira and Gravity Falls and the dragon Prince and My Little Pony and Sailor Moon and every other kunihikuikahara anime but even if I just described you I do think that there are much better uses for your limited time on this Earth and frankly that goes double for the haters I'm sorry but if you're a contributor to the terrible TV shows Wiki and you're reaching for a burn like quote rosemary sage Thyme and parsley are named after herbs grasses in Latin which are not spices maybe it's time to move on to richer material might I suggest what is it about the apocalypse apparently that makes me so dumb thirsty Christ what if I'm apocal pregnant how [ __ ] cliche the concept of psychic superhuman White Chapel chavs vying for dominance over an apocalyptically flooded England sounds pretty cool and Hell sunken post-apocalyptic diesel Punk one didn't even looks pretty cool from a distance if you squint but when said psychic superhumans talk like what you just heard and band together under a group name that sounds more like a Chris Angel fan club than a psychic Super Street gang it feels like we're falling a mic short of that concept's full potential freak Angels capital F capital A all one word adapted from a webcomic of the same name by artist Paul field and prolific comic writer Warren Ellis was one of the first Originals Crunchyroll announced with their big trailer back in February 2020 but then in June of 2020 we got the surprise announcement that Warren Ellis is also a prolific sex pest Netflix fired his ass from Castlevania immediately and Crunchyroll just stopped talking about this show for two entire years before quietly sharting it out at the end of this January even without the Scandal though I can see why they wouldn't want to call attention to this one it is bad the line art makes all of the characters look like paper jam Dipper half the time they fit about as seamlessly into those 3D backgrounds as the roadside audiences of Initial D season one The Plot just ping-pongs randomly between seemingly disconnected story beats and the dialogue is as you just heard so [ __ ] atrocious that not even the tried and true Warren Ellis method of inserting [ __ ] swear words randomly into every shitball sentence can disguise its many shortcomings [ __ ] I am really looking forward to fully dressing this one down come January the show does at least have some very nice background art and quite ambitious storyboarding you can tell the animators wanted to have some fun with it but as is all too common within the human condition it turns out they wanted what they couldn't have one out of ten The Last of The Originals we have left to talk about is Onyx Equinox and since I spent so much time dunking on the other two I'll just cut to the chase it's pretty good it was animated by the same team as High Guardian spice and you can tell they learned a lot from their missteps on that show the more anime-esque art style fits the limited animation techniques they're using better and the creature designs especially with their harsh contrasting bodies look really good even at low frame rates more importantly its story a fantasy adventure with deep roots in Aztec history and culture about a Meek young man chosen by his cruel Gods to save the world is pretty goddamn metal like imagine Avatar but instead of oppa Aang is accompanied by a vicious man-eating Panther who hurls constant verbal abuse at him also he has no special skills whatsoever and almost gets murdered every episode while a lot of other people do get murdered all around him all the time if you like apocalyptic Dark Fantasy with blood magic and [ __ ] this is an edgy good time I suppose I should disclose that I'm also just a sucker for Mesoamerican fantasy Aesthetics in general shell isn't the only part of Road to El Dorado that's stuck in my brain forever so I am a bit biased in this Show's favor Maya of the three on Netflix is way better especially in the visual department but Onyx Equinox is still a solid 7 out of 10 in a severely underserved Niche that sets the average for non-japanese Originals at 4 out of 10 on the dot and the grand total average for the whole Crunchyroll Originals project minus the two that aren't out yet is 4.4 out of 10. not a great showing or even a good one really five out of the 14 shows do sit around the high end of good low end of great but a lot more of them range from Men to Blair and of course two of them are quite possibly the worst anime ever made so that skews the score down a bit more if you took those out of the equation it'd be a barely passing 5.1 but then you'd also have to take out Tony Kawa so actually 4.8 that's close to not failing though original series should be something to get excited about in the growth obsessed stage of capitalism we're currently at basically all Commercial Art needs to serve as an onboarding platform for further merchandising and or monetization opportunities to justify its initial investment just look at how every other third-party AAA video game these days has live service [ __ ] baked into it assuming there still are third-party video games in the far future of two days from now on the flip side of that console exclusives from bloodborne the breath of the wild tend to be more self-contained finished high quality experiences that you can enjoy fully out of the box and they can be that because instead of just selling themselves in some micro transactions these games exist to sell the very platforms they're on there's an economic incentive for the platform makers to give the devs enough resources to actually make them good so that people will buy more PlayStations eventually when the crypto Market collapses and we have chips Again by the same token Good original content sells streaming subscriptions and thus in theory streaming Originals should be of higher average quality than standard license Acquisitions and the fact that crunchyroll's originals are so far the opposite of that speaks in my ears at least to a lack of vision and confidence in the project behind the scenes which is I think what really killed it after that initial backlash maimed it that's just my take on these shows though and I'd love to hear yours in the comments below especially since I couldn't finish all of them did I miss the mark on a show that gets great later or dodge a bullet with something that goes downhill fast after episode three and most importantly did you remember to drink your G fuel I'm Jeff through apocal professional G fuel dealer signing out from my apocal partment which is kind of like a regular apartment just with slightly less wall

Channel: Mother's Basement

Views: 814,492

Keywords: Mother's Basement, Anime, Anime Analysis, crunchyroll, chrunchyroll originals, tonikawa, high guardian spice, tower of god, god of highschool, noblesse, fena pirate princess, freakangels, so i'm a spider so what, dr ramune, gibiate, Ex Arm, bad anime, curse anime, anime roast, anime recommendations

Id: MkgiHGgz64M

Length: 34min 37sec (2077 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 06 2022