This Season’s Biggest Self-Declared Failure
Surprisingly, it’s not this show.
Implicitly stated at the start of any show, anime or otherwise, is a promise of some sort to the viewers about what they can expect to see accomplished by the show. It might be a spectacular CG explosion, an opening monologue by one of the main characters, or an opening theme song with a montage of the various characters of the show doing a variety of things but, whatever it is, it’s there. If the viewer is amicable towards this promise then, chances are, the viewer will decide to continue watching the show with this promise morphing into what’s expected of the show.
Savvy creators use the formation of the show’s promise to apply spin to the viewing experience. At times only promising a little is the way to go: it’s not a shallow, failed romantic comedy but merely a well-animated fan service anime or it’s not an anime with a train wreck of a plot, so poorly constructed that a four-year old could do better but merely a fun romp that’s designed to get licensed as a kids show overseas. Other times it’s best to promise too much: that high-concept, big budget anime isn’t a failure even with it’s poor pacing, plot, characters, and characterization because it was ambitious or that anime that promises funny comedy, serious drama, and tasteful fan service isn’t a failure even when it delivers none of that because it’s fun to watch a train wreck.
Of course, promising too little or too much might backfire on the creator. The viewers might decide to move to an anime promising more or the viewers decide watching one series that fails as hard as Fractale did is enough. So, it’s really a two-edged sword for creators and in lesser hands, a recipe for disaster. This season, one anime in particular stuck out as so completely and utterly failing at what it promised to do without providing so much as a decent excuse.
That anime is Kamisama no Memo-chou (God’s Memo Pad).
The biggest, most energetic promise of Kamisama no Memo-chou is it’s an empowering manifesto for NEET’s (people not in Education, Employment, or Training) and their worth in society. It’s mentioned everywhere; it’s even specifically expounded upon by the characters in the anime – Alice repeatedly says that she follows a NEET code and that she’s a NEET detective, for example. So it’s all the more baffling to realize that the creators take great pains to actively work completely contrary to this vocal promise. Take Alice, the genius hikikomori detective, she’s not actually a NEET. She’s a self-employed detective that has an office and accepts paying clients (even the clients that don’t pay in money will render some service to her). She’s not even a hikikomori; it’s more like she’s just lazy and doesn’t like to go outside but even then she still goes outside every other episode or so. (Much more often than the woman who runs the ramen shop appears to.) Then there’s the main character; he’s so generic I can’t remember his name, but, he’s a high school student and works part-time at the ramen shop and is in training to be a yakuza gangster. He’s like an anti-NEET.
This wasn’t a hard promise to keep; look at Scooby-Doo, it fits the bill perfectly for a show about NEET detectives.
The other big promise of Kamisama no Memo-chou is the idea of Alice being a genius detective that uses the latest technology to get the information needed to solve any case from the comfort of her bed. This idea is reinforced by her impressive computer with it’s dozens of monitors but again the creators seem to actively work against this promise the moment it’s formulated. The final story arc is freshest in my mind so let’s use it. When the time comes for our intrepid detectives to find the hideout of the people behind the drug Angel Fix, what do they do? What does Alice and all her intelligence and supposed computer prowess do? If your answer starts with either Alice doing something with a computer or putting on her thinking cap than you’d be wrong. Apparently, the right answer is you need an assistant willing to take the drug himself and someone to tail him to see where he walks off to.
Asinine. Even if Alice wasn’t supposed to be genius and a computer geek, the creators of Kamisama no Memo-chou are truly and completely dimwitted.
There are so many ways our heroes could have discovered where the hideout is without anyone taking the drug. For instance, if Angel Fix was such an epidemic then there should have been a large amount of people wildly walking towards the drug hideout that there should be multiple ways to track where they go. Check and collate police reports of where they arrest people under the effect of Angel Fix; look for them on security camera footage; trawl Twitter for people who mention people acting funny in public and cross-reference their GPS data; search the backgrounds of pictures uploaded for people under the influence. I’m not even sure that Alice would need a computer A.I. to help; she might just need a moderately clever computer program. Heck, a slightly less high-tech solution would involve implanting a GPS tracker in both drug dealers and monitoring where they go. There was really no legitimate reason for the assistant to take the drug. (Even if they were so hell-bent on having someone take the drug, why not administer it one of the drug dealers they captured?)
Like I said earlier, if Kamisama no Memo-chou had a good excuse like interesting and thrilling mysteries then it would have gone a long way to excusing the complete failure to live up to either of these two major promises; however, the mysteries were barely adequate. I’ll give them a little credit for being better than the mysteries found in Gosick but Sherlock they ain’t. (Check out the new Sherlock series from the BBC to see what good writing makes possible in mysteries set in modern times.)
Kamisama no Memo-chou wasn’t the worse anime of the season but it was worst self-declared failure. If only it would have better met what it promised to be or better tailored what it promised to it’s actual content then it might not have felt like such a colossal waste of time and potential.
I didn’t manage to finish Memo-chou, but I felt the same way – for supposed NEETs they sure spent a lot of time doing what looked like actual work. You could argue even if it’s not paid, being a detective is still a job/profession, so a NEET shouldn’t be doing that either. I dropped it after about five episodes in, but the other part that bugged me was the lack of background on the cast – why is Alice living there by herself with a fridge full of Dr. Pepper? If most of her jobs don’t pay anything how does she pay the bills? Where are her parents? Why don’t all those monitors trip a circuit breaker? Maybe they answer that later on, but it just seems like those are kind of basic questions about her someone would have asked by now.
Self Declared: Weakest Man in the Universe.
I remember my assessment of Juni Koki (Twelve Kingdoms). The beginning introduction was amazingly annoying because the characters were constantly complaining. This went on for the entire first arc of the story, about 10 episodes. They didn’t have much team spirit going on. Then when the Imperial Arc first showed up, it went from amazingly annoying to a great historical drama based upon a fictional setting. Then it went down to about medium when the plot arc refocused on the other kings and queens. Interesting in that it told the background story of a few supporting characters in the Imperial Arc, but not something I was going to rewatch. The Imperial Arc had excellent character and plot development. The finale was exceptionally well done and I just kept watching that because it was so dramatic.
That’s the only anime to this date that started off on such a bad foot, but ended up exceeding expectations later on. Gurren Lagann’s power ranger artwork didn’t even come close to that kind of dip and rise.
Erin Kemono in the first 3 episodes has amazingly low age expectations. Some of the logic leaps are way too simple for the importance the plot places on them. If the episodes mature as Erin matures, then it might exceed expectations made by the beginning.
It’s amazing you detected the NEETness of Scooby D.
Derp. I’m sure many people had bones to pick with Memochou, and really, starting with (actually, not really) an interesting premise won’t help when it becomes generic mystery at the end.
Though, I seriously wonder whether it was the producers that did that, or the light novelist – not to judge light novels or anything, but most of them aren’t exactly the most… solid of literature. It’s easy to fall into the trap of a generic story – look at (I don’t read light novels) say, Bleach. It used to be cool and about this guy who KILLED THE SOULS of DEAD PEOPLE and helped other souls to REACH HEAVEN, but now it’s just generic protagonist fighting generic enemies.
Bleach is a manga. Light novels are more like short stories.
One-shots are also short stories. You can’t say that a nine-volume light novel isn’t comparable to a manga.
One shots are pictures with dialogue in them. It’s like comparing a script written for a movie against a novel the movie was based upon.
So yes, I can say that a nine volume light novel is not a manga.
Scripts does not = novels, books, poems, short stories, or anything else that has “complete sentences and paragraphs” in them, not to mention a plot and world description.
One shots are in manga format. What part of a picture with dialogue in it is supposed to be a story written in paragraph and chapter form?
Bleach is a manga. It’s not a short story like the ones science fiction magazines publish. It’s not a novel. It’s a bunch of poems collected together, and it certainly isn’t a literature product from Robert Frost or William Blake. Manga isn’t literature because manga tells stories by drawing pictures of them. Literature doesn’t use pictures to tell stories because pictures are portraits and paintings, not books or fiction.
Categorization is the number 1 important thing to have right when making comparisons and assessments. Incorrectly categorizing two things is the beginning of more problems than people realize.
Omg, they’re re doing Evangelion… again?
This isn’t a question of literature – this is a question of short stories. Short stories are not bound to any particular format – short stories are just that. Short. Stories.
Or are you saying that manga doesn’t tell a story?
The question is not how the manga and light novels are presented – the question is the content that they contain.
“Though, I seriously wonder whether it was the producers that did that, or the light novelist – not to judge light novels or anything, but most of them aren’t exactly the most… solid of literature.”
If it isn’t a case of literature, then do not use literature as a standard to test.
Now you shifted from literature to short stories, as if you were talking about only stories to begin with, irregardless of format. No, it’s quite apparent you mentioned one specific format, literature, and compared mangas against it. That can’t be gotten away from in the open here.
And before we get to any other track, I clearly understand what your point was that you were attempting to make. No matter how it is looked at, it is wrong. If the thesis is that X is good/bad literature, then the justification and support cannot come from “I don’t read X, but I know that stories like manga are stuck”. That has nothing to do with X being bad literature. Completely irrelevant. It’s even worse if the idea is that mangas and light novels are both stories, so that means one can take a manga, and then use it to judge a light novel, because obviously standards for manga applies to light novel. No, they do not. That’s an even worse method of determining relative worth and absolute standing.
The supporting statement only supports the thesis, when it’s relevant and it has some justifications that reasonably demonstrates the truth of the thesis. If it is supposed to be bad literature, there must be a reason why it is said to be bad. If light novels are said to lack story or literature worth, there must be a reason why light novels are that way: specifically.
The whole argument must be scrapped and reformed if the author wishes to make a point with it.
So basically, for someone that doesn’t read light novels, they can’t have a justified view on light novels that they never read. It’s an argument out of ignorance. Doesn’t work. If they read mangas, they can only make a claim about mangas. Nobody thinks Olympic swimmers should be able to beat everyone at soccer and basketball. But a lot of people seem to think whatever expertise or experience they have in field A somehow transfers over to field B. Doesn’t work like that.
The reverse also doesn’t work. Meaning, someone can read a story told in one format, such as a manga, and that means they can now judge the worth and status of other story formats. Not necessarily. This is only true if the person has experience, first hand, of both story formats. There’s no intuitive way to understand manga story telling or light novel story telling or poetic epic story telling, just by experiencing their cousins. One must at least have two things to compare here. One can’t compare mangas to nothing. Nothing true comes out of that analysis.
So the person having read a manga like Bleach, can wonder if light novels get into the same problems. They can wonder, but they cannot know nor Claim to know anything on this matter. Because they lack the required justifications and reason to believe.
It’s just a fundamental aspect of epistemology.
I really hate to argue the point any further, so I’ll stop after here (besides, my position has already fallen apart).
My first post was in two separate clauses. The first was saying (in ignorance) that most light novels aren’t very good literature. Light novels are literature, right? The second clause was saying how it’s easy to make something become a generic story. Not a generic piece of literature. It’s easy to make a manga become a generic story, and thus, I’m assuming it’s also easy to make a light novel become a generic story (which may be flawed).
The similarities are still not in their presentation, but their content. Most manga and many light novels (I daresay almost all light novels that have become anime) are serialized before publication in book form. As they’re serialized, the author must regularly churn out ideas onto paper, compared to most other story formats, such as books, where the author can take his time between writing chapters, and always go back and edit it if the book has not been published yet.
There’s a reason that light novels and manga are so intertwined with each other, and that allows me to judge light novels similarly to manga. Just because somebody is an Olympic 100m-sprinter does mean he’s better than most (non-Olympic) marathon runners, even though the training for the two are completely different.
Guilty Crown left a strong first episode impression on me. Wrote up the thoughts elsewhere, but that’s a nice summation. Horizon, however, was a bit more divided. A light novel with such an intricate cast and surprisingly novel backstory, is very difficult to pull off in anime format. At least, if one has less than 110 episodes (LOGH).
Mirai Nikki had an interesting premise in the first episode but the format didn’t seem all that advanced. Until the second episode, where the plot complexity really started becoming richer and thriller/psyche like.
The different endings for each episode and innovative episode previews are also pluses in its favor.