This "Anime" Ruined Everything In One Episode

hi guardian spice is an absolute dumpster fire the internet told me animation is trash the voice acting is trash the dialogue sucks and there's some twitter controversy about hating men and i'm a man so therefore i have to be offended i had to see what was so terrible about high guardian spice so i went in and watched the first episode ready to absolutely tear it to shreds and it wasn't terrible but it wasn't good either you've probably heard the criticisms before or have at least seen a couple clips on youtube and have noticed the jpeg images in the background or how the voice actors seem to be using tin cans as their microphones or even just how utterly incompetent it is in regards to literally every aspect of production but all those things aside it could have been worse i didn't have a terrible time watching it i wasn't suffering and it never did anything in particular to make me angry it was just sort of not great this show is basically the cartoon equivalent of the cheapest gluten-free bread you could find there's nothing technically wrong with it you can't really get mad at it but at the end of the day it doesn't have any nutrients it doesn't have any flavor it doesn't have anything it's just boring lifeless tasteless bread it lacks so many of the most basic storytelling concepts that are needed in order to make his story interesting and because of this i couldn't even bring myself to be interested enough to continue watching anything beyond the first episode so yeah many of the following criticisms could turn out to be wrong in the long run but i'll never know because it failed to make me care enough to want to continue this is how not to start a story this is how high guardian spies fails in one episode part one these characters have absolutely no personality after much thought and trying my very hardest to determine exactly what kind of personality these two have this was the only thing i could think of this girl is the slightly responsible one sometimes and this girl is the slightly irresponsible one sometimes that's it these are supposed to be your main character they are whose journey we are meant to be following and the majority of the show will be focused on them i need to care about them but i cannot care about them if i can't even identify more than a single character trait each of them has and no i'm not saying that in order to make a good character you should just have a giant list of traits that's not how it works really if you want to establish character you need to do it through character moments or in other words action you show and don't tell whenever a character chooses to do something that is a show of who they are it doesn't matter as much how it happens because the action itself tells you so much more about the character than words can and the more of these character moments you get the more we learn about them and as a result we care connoisseur for example is a master of this if you think that i'm not giving high guardian spice a fair chance because it hasn't had enough time or something konosuba establishes light years more personality within its first five minutes there is no excuse because establishing personality is a process that only takes seconds now i'm not going to go into detail about it since i already made an entire video on it but the difference between conosuba and high guardian spice is that in connoisseur everything that happens happens because a character made it happen in high guardian spies things just happen because they happen it never comes from the characters all they ever do is react to the stuff that happens to them just following the plot instead of making the plot happen that's weak character writing i went through the entirety of the first episode of high guardian spice and mapped out everything that happened beat by beat and out of all the moments in the entire episode that's 19 plot beats the only ones where one of the main characters makes any kind of active decision that establishes any kind of character are these free that's not a lot and you could take two of them out nothing would change the first is the scene where they decide to cut the line at the train let's cut the line rosemary that would be wrong i'm thinking we should cut the line the second is the scene where rose gets impatient at sage to finish eating and pressures her to hurry up so they could go you ready give me just a minute [Music] maybe i'll take it to go right and the fur it is the scene where royce swings her sword around like a and almost hurt someone danger is like a flock of birds it swoops all into your business when you least expect it and guess what all three of these moments established the exact same thing rose is kind of a jerk all that these moments show is that rose just doesn't seem to care that much about other people which i'm pretty sure wasn't the intention of the writers since they gloss over these scenes as if they're nothing there is a concept of storytelling called the save the cat moment where a character goes out of their way to do something nice for someone or something without expecting anything in return this especially matters if they're not very good person with a lot of character flaws because it shows us that there's still a part of them worth caring about that they're human and have the potential to grow throughout this entire episode rose doesn't do a single nice thing for anyone and this is supposed to be someone we like seriously the scene where they cut the line would have been perfect for this when the orc guy crashes and gets stuck in the bridge they could have helped him but they didn't they just ignored him and moved on yeah it would have been cliche but it would have been something might want to make sure your friend doesn't stab anyone while you're out here sightseeing we aren't tourists and nobody actually got stabbed this scene with roy swinging around her sword is especially stupid for so many reasons why are you the one getting annoyed at her you overstabbed her and why are you getting angry at the fact that she said you were sightseeing that's literally what you were just doing what made you think you were being called a tourist how was being called a tourist an insult in the first place what was they even going for in this scene i don't get it i like her well i don't what's funny about all this is that the writers don't even seem to be aware of the fact that rose is kind of a jerk from the way she's portrayed they seem to think she's just quirky or relatable but she's not she's just unlikable for all of these scenes rose is portrayed as if she's being totally reasonable that it's not a big deal that you're pressuring your friends to hurry up or stop eating just because you finished early instead of having the decency to wait five minutes because that's what good friends do i wouldn't have a problem with any of this if the writers actually had the self-awareness to portray these flaws as flaws rather than just thinking their quirky character traits or at least giving her even just one save the cat moment no matter how small but as it stands both our main character and the rest of the characters have no character i don't care about them i don't even like them and it's not just the characters that i don't care about because guess what the plot sucks too part two the plot this plot is about as uninspired as you can possibly get oh a bunch of characters going to a magical academy to learn magic and they go on a bunch of adventures i've never seen that before seriously when i told my siblings the synopsis behind this show they just went isn't that little witch academia okay to make things clear there's nothing wrong with this premise by itself there are plenty of anime and other media that have shown that this can be done well the problem here is that it isn't in order for a plot to be interesting the writer must ask themselves what do the characters want why do they want it what's stopping them from getting it and what happens if they don't get it well hi guardian spice only has the answer to one of these questions they want to be guardians and why do they want to be guardians i have no idea it seems to vaguely have something to do with rose and her mom's disappearance but it isn't clear and at this point we're not even sure exactly what a guardian is or what they do and while he could say that that's an explanation that comes later and i just needed to be patient this is a really important part of the story that should be explained as soon as possible the fact that this is sidelined to instead make room for a bunch of pointless world building is a failure in itself but more in that soon they treat the characters wanting to be guardians as if it's a given of course they want to be guardians that's what you're supposed to do in a fantasy story at this point it relies so much on the established tropes of its genre that it doesn't really seem to care about the fact that it barely has a plot characters still need motivation and reason for wanting to do the things that they do and the most infuriating thing about all this is that the solution was right there in the middle of the episode rose has a dream that basically tells us that rose's mom disappeared right all they had to do was just connect the two things rose's mom disappeared so she wants to become a guardian so she can find her tada you now have an interesting premise that actually sounds like an anime and for the people who have actually watched all the way through and are now screaming at me because it turns out that's exactly what the premise of the show is and i know that if i just watched one more episode let me say this this should have been established to us straight away there is no reason to hide this information from us all it does is just make us less sympathetic towards rose and makes me not interested in watching how the story plays out the fact that we don't even have a why for these characters doing anything means that we can't understand or connect with them instead we're just watching them do stuff without any real reason behind it and we feel like we know nothing about them because we don't and if i was right and rose never does have any real motivation for wanting to become a guardian then that speaks for itself okay everything i just talked about only covers the first two questions but the second two are equally as important which brings me to my next point the majority of episode one is a massive waste of time going back to these two questions if a character wants something something else needs to stop them from getting it and it doesn't hurt to make it so that there are negative consequences if they don't get what they want so that's conflict and stakes with the hypothetical situation i was talking about before with rose wanting to become a guardian to find her mum this would also introduce stakes since it means that her mom's life is in danger and she needs to save her before she dies or whatever it all connects but high stakes aren't absolutely essential they're nice but they don't have to be there from the very beginning so it's okay if high guardian spice doesn't have that the main thing i do want to focus on is the lack of conflict this entire episode is almost completely devoid of any kind of conflict that's not good if you want to know why that's a bad thing it's because conflict is quite literally the most important thing in a story that and the characters ask any competent writer so if you don't have those things you're gonna get a really crappy story so like in the beginning they need to get to their school and in order to do that they need to catch the train so what did they do they catch the train and that's it but hey look at all this cool world building then they need to find their caretakers so they find them and that's it but hey look at all this cool world building next they need to go home so they go home and have a nice breakfast in the morning but hey look at all this cool are we seeing the problem here we're halfway through the episode and not a single thing of substance has actually happened yet there's no conflict whatsoever nothing has stopped them or gotten in the way or nothing has gone wrong which makes me feel like all these scenes are pointless since you could easily skip over all of it and lose absolutely nothing but hey at least we all got all this cool world building okay so we're past the halfway point now and we get to the scene where rose swings her sword around okay it finally looks like we're gonna get some conflict here the girl gets reasonably pissed off at them it looks like there's gonna be an argument and she walks away [Music] really okay whatever that's fine let's just move on in the next scene we finally get something when a trixie steals rose's locket and they need to get it back it's not much and at this point we don't fully understand why it's important to her and it doesn't really seem to have anything to do with anything else that's happened and also feels like we're just getting kind of sidetracked but hey it's something so after a few minutes of chasing they finally track it down to the forest okay great they see the locket they're on the floor they're ready to go get it and then more pointless world building look i get it you have a bunch of cool concepts and you want to show them off but this is not the way you do it world building is supposed to support the plot and characters not the other way around you can't spend the majority of your own time doing nothing but showing off these concepts and just forget about the story that's not how it works they need to support each other by properly integrating the world building into the plot in a way that feels natural this doesn't do that after the scene rose's locker breaks but i'm going to skip over that for now since i'm going to talk about that soon anyways so now they need to get it fixed so what do they do they need a character who can get it fixed they go home they wake up and go to school and that's the end of the episode we have gone through the entire episode and ninety percent of it was completely useless because the writers seem more concerned about its world building than having an interesting plot you could skip to the scene where they get to school and you wouldn't miss out on anything yeah there were a bunch of characters introduced but we're gonna see them anyways at the school since they're already going there and as for the caretakers you could easily fill in the gaps since when they come home from school it's pretty obvious they're the ones taking care of them you don't really need to explain that okay now at the very least we do get a scene that makes some attempt at emotional substance and that's the moment where rose's locket breaks and reveal what the picture is inside honestly it's probably the strongest part of the episode i mean that's not saying a lot considering this is high guardian spice but i at least appreciate the attempt i'm glad the episode didn't put too much emphasis on it and let it have some form of subtlety but even so it still has a bunch of problems main one being that this is a moment that centers around rose's family when we barely know anything about our family we know they exist but when it comes to their actual relationship there's nothing the show hasn't done enough to fully earn this moment and because of that it falls flat and besides that there's also just the fact that it doesn't make any sense if you think about it for a little bit why did rose make the main part of the picture the cheesecake specifically and not her actual family was she hiding it from sage why if she was hiding it and she lied to her then that doesn't make sense either because just a few scenes prior we see that sage already knows about rose's problems so there's no point overall this moment falls flat because it just didn't have the proper setup or thought behind it to earn it but again at least it didn't dwell too much on it and moved on from it quickly so i'll give it points for that but in the end because of this episode's massive lack of conflict everything that happened in this episode felt like a total waste of time i'm not saying the episode should have just started with them going to school since having a proper setup is really important i'm saying that it should have made the things that did happen up until this point have a point and in order to do that things can't always go as planned and there needs to be some form of purposeful conflict during the things that happen little witch academia is a show that many people have compared this to and that's because it's basically the same concept as high guardian spice except done right the first thing the very first thing it does is make it crystal clear as to what aku wants and why she's inspired by shiny cherry's performance and because of that she wants to be like her someday and become an amazing witch easy that's her motivation so the next thing it establishes is that akko can't use magic she isn't born into a witch family and she has no idea how to use magic and yet she remains cheerful and optimistic and decides she's going to do it anyways that's both establishing the main conflict of the series and tells us a lot about akko's character and personality then she tries to find the bus stop to the school and can't find it if she doesn't get there in time then the doors close and she can't enroll that's conflict and stakes then she meets sushi susie then she meets susie by crashing into her who in response to her over enthusiasm gives her a handshake of snakes which turns out to be a bunch of rope character then she tries and fails to get to the lane line since she can't use magic conflict she meets a lot there who decides to help arko and give her a ride despite being in a hurry of her own and never having flown two people before that's to save the cat and character moment then everything goes wrong and they all fall into the forbidden forest where susie tricks them into being chased by a giant chicken are we seeing the pattern here this continues throughout the entire episode every single thing that happens either has conflict or character or many times but they have goals motivation obstacles that stop them from reaching those goals and nothing ever goes according to plan and we get tons and tons of character establishing moments it even has a bunch of world building details but this time it actually plays a part in the story rather than distracting from it hi guardian spice does none of these things the difference is light and day and the thing is little wish academia didn't even do anything special these are just the basics it just uses the same storytelling techniques that any anime with somewhat competent writing would use plus it has decent animation and production value but with all that said all of these things aren't even the worst part about the show to me a show doesn't have to have perfect writing or production value in order to work it doesn't have to have the most mind-blowing ideas of funny one-liners or anything like that in my conosuba video i mentioned about how whenever everyone working on a project puts a lot of passion and effort towards it and have a ton of fun doing it you can tell but what i didn't mention was how the opposite can be true as well all of the problems i've talked about throughout this entire video are really just symptoms of a bigger issue and that's that nobody ever felt like they really tried this entire episode on every level of production from the voice actors to the animators the composers and especially the writers felt half-assed budget here wasn't an issue connoisseur had a shoestring budget even for most anime and none of their voice actors or anyone else on the team from what i know of were well known at the time and yet they still managed to create something amazing something imperfect and flawed sure but it had life to it high guardian spice doesn't have that i can forgive flawed riding and i can overlook cheap production value but what i won't forgive is laziness and i believe the main reason it feels so lazy is simple from what it seems like this was made for political reasons rather than artistic ones now to make things clear there is nothing wrong with having political ideologies and storytelling in fact some of the greatest movies and shows are centered around that and there's nothing wrong with representation either in fact i can agree i encourage more representation of minorities in more mainstream shows that's a good thing but the difference is that these movies understand how to integrate those ideologies into the story in a way that enhances its themes and creates something meaningful many other shows however don't do that instead they act as if because they're doing something that's in support of their particular political belief that the actual story is irrelevant that because they have all this representation because they have all of this quote unquote diversity in their staff that they don't need to work to make something good and if anyone dares to criticize what the end result is is not because they think the writing's bad it's because they disagree with your political ideologies and at that point the show isn't really a show anymore it's propaganda the fact that the very first trailer for high guardian spice tells us absolutely nothing about the actual show and only seems to care about the type of people who are making it is very telling for where their priorities were the writers from what it seems like didn't really care about telling a good story that anyone could enjoy all they cared about was pandering to a very specific target audience who'll love it no matter how bad it is purely because they have the same political beliefs do you want to know who else does that crappy christian cartoons yup these things they do almost the same thing it's pretty ironic that despite having the most opposing beliefs these two are on the same level the sad thing about all of this is that in the end they're really achieving the opposite of what they were trying to do think about it if the majority of movies and anime don't have this kind of representation but the few that do suck what does that say about your community shouldn't it be the other way around that because you're one of the few shows that can represent your community that you should try your absolute hardest to make something decent i'm not saying high guardian spice had to do all of the things i talked about in order to work heck many of my favorite shows are ones that break the rules of storytelling and many of the shows that i cited as examples don't do all of these things either all high guardian spice needed to do was at least do one of these things well anything something that showed that these people gave a damn about this character's or its plot rather than just viewing it as a product my biggest problem with high guardian spice isn't poor dialogue or lack of conflict lack of good character writing or its terrible production value my problem with it is what it represents and no it doesn't represent the lgbtq community it represents a mindset a mindset that says i don't need to try or who knows maybe it does get better and this entire video was a pointless waste of time my name is brandon riley donate to teams did like the video follow me on twitter and i made this video the way i did because i couldn't be bothered to watch the entirety of high guardian spice sorry not sorry thanks for watching you

Channel: Brandon Talks

Views: 628,843

Keywords: anime video essay, analysis, video essay, high guardian spice, high guardian spice review, high guardian spice video essay, high guardian spice transgender, high guardian spice episode 1, high guardian spice is bad, high guardian spice is trash, high guardian spice is worse than you think, squid game, little witch academia, why high guardian spice is bad, why high guardian spice is hated, high guardian spice rant, crunchyroll

Id: XKwMY5fu518

Length: 20min 38sec (1238 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 21 2021