High Guardian Spice - Tumblr: The CalArt Anime

[Life is Hell...]

I'm still going on with not watching the thing aside from highlights from other people's experience past episode 1 so I originally didn't get this but that boat scene is literally an actual callback to an embarassing thing that happened earlier during like a halloween party segment.

Basically, short purple haired kid is hitting on random girls like a dork, mistakes classmate for a girl because mermaid costume. Once again, if this were ANY OTHER FUCKING SHOW this would be a funny moment kinda situation instead of forced dramatic tension.

Fun fact: that purple haired guy is actually voiced by ProZD

 

[The Lawgiver]

Fun fact: that purple haired guy is actually voiced by ProZD
View attachment 2673305

I thought he sounded familiar lmao but holy fuck

 

[5ever a crab]

Rewatched the trailer to compare the initial concept art. I think ginger dude was suppose to be an entirely different character. He looks like those cold type boys who are tsundere when showing compassion or helping someone out. sad he became some troon's missionary.

 

[Life is Hell...]

I thought he sounded familiar lmao but holy fuck

Yeah, ever since he supported the #KickVic movement, he's essentially become a major shill for the entire woke animation industry

 

[BrokenWokenBespoken]

When SJWs do make their own stuff, generally it turns out awful like this. Because they suck at making their own content, then that explains why they decide to ruin other people's hobbies and interests. This show, among other things, is proof of that.

Meanwhile the Right makes nothing at all. Believes they are somehow barred from ever creating anything and beg for Japan to save them. It's kind of sad really, I am sure if all of Kiwi Farms had the same budget we could produce a coomerbait series. We should start worrying when Disney or other big media companies decide to risk it and buy shares into porn companies to publish LGBTQ+ friendly adult comics.

 

[Kari Kamiya]

View attachment 2673322
Rewatched the trailer to compare the initial concept art. I think ginger dude was suppose to be an entirely different character. He looks like those cold type boys who are tsundere when showing compassion or helping someone out. sad he became some troon's missionary.

So he really was going to be a bishounen, but they decided to troon him out instead. So much for Raye being a big anime fan.

 

[SteelPlatedHeart]

Meanwhile the Right makes nothing at all. Believes they are somehow barred from ever creating anything and beg for Japan to save them. It's kind of sad really, I am sure if all of Kiwi Farms had the same budget we could produce a coomerbait series. We should start worrying when Disney or other big media companies decide to risk it and buy shares into porn companies to publish LGBTQ+ friendly adult comics.

We did do something similar back when that “Gen Zed” thing was supposed to be a thing. Called it “Dice Scum” and it was about a group of crappy D&D kids that played together every week or so. Had all the characters planned out and a good chunk of episodes, but nothing ever fully came of it. It’s too bad, I actually really liked what we came up with.

 

[Omnium Ultimatus]

Meanwhile the Right makes nothing at all. Believes they are somehow barred from ever creating anything and beg for Japan to save them. It's kind of sad really, I am sure if all of Kiwi Farms had the same budget we could produce a coomerbait series. We should start worrying when Disney or other big media companies decide to risk it and buy shares into porn companies to publish LGBTQ+ friendly adult comics.

Here's the economic answer - There's no free market in animation. It's a legacy industry plagued by archaic inefficient business models like ads and subscriptions. The reason we don't have great cartoons nowadays is because there's very little profit to be made, and thus no money to fund projects by talented creators due to their high budgets. Since they can't get their projects funded, what we're left with are cartoons created by hacks because low budgets are all the industry can afford.

If cartoons were sold directly to the consumer, you would have more varied high-quality cartoons, since there would now be a mechanism for profit maximization and more money to go around. Consumers would actually be able to vote with their wallets as to which content they want to support instead of paying for a subscription that gets divided up piecemeal among content they don't care about. This is why Netflix can't make cartoons worth a damn, despite the hundreds of millions of dollars they've been burning to fund their content obligations to please their investors (Do I smell a ponzi scheme?). They prioritize quantity over quality. There's no sense for them to serve the equivalent of caviar at their buffet when they're not making more money from it than everything else in their catalog. Of course, the most attractive aspect about Netflix and other services is that you only need to pay once every month for an entire catalog of content. Whether the average consumer would pay ten or twenty dollars for a singular but masterful piece of content a la carte, I can't say, but they may think they're getting more bang for their buck by going with the former.

The problem isn't a lack of talent, but a lack of profitability. And that is why Western cartoons are shit nowadays.

 

[Valstrax]

We did do something similar back when that “Gen Zed” thing was supposed to be a thing. Called it “Dice Scum” and it was about a group of crappy D&D kids that played together every week or so. Had all the characters planned out and a good chunk of episodes, but nothing ever fully came of it. It’s too bad, I actually really liked what we came up with.

Funnily enough, that's the name of a D&D-themed podcast I watch...

 

[SteelPlatedHeart]

Funnily enough, that's the name of a D&D-themed podcast I watch...

Since the idea was to do a better Gen Zed, the name was a play on “Die Cis Scum” and the main character was trans. Sort of a “KF can do trans rep better than THE FIRST TRANSGENDER ANINTED VOICED CHARACTER EVER crap GZ claimed” essentially.

 

[Lil Miku]

View attachment 2673322
Rewatched the trailer to compare the initial concept art. I think ginger dude was suppose to be an entirely different character. He looks like those cold type boys who are tsundere when showing compassion or helping someone out. sad he became some troon's missionary.

Such a shame because he actually looks like a more interesting character there.
(Also looks like he was supposed to be Sage's love interest since the begining.)

 

[Boobie Bomb]

Fun fact: that purple haired guy is actually voiced by ProZD
View attachment 2673305

The fat pedo fuck still raping underage troonies? Did I miss something?

 

[MooseGump]

The fat pedo fuck still raping underage troonies? Did I miss something?

He didn't find much success in the real world so now he must go beyond

 

[madethistocomment]

The fat pedo fuck still raping underage troonies? Did I miss something?

I'm gonna need you to elaborate here, man, because holy shit

 

[Kari Kamiya]

The fat pedo fuck still raping underage troonies? Did I miss something?

Did you mistake a fattie Korean with Hazukari of ANN, or am I missing something?

 

[Local Coyote]

So I too sat down and watched this abortion. And while Kari Kamiya broke down the first episode well there's a few things I noticed as well.

- It's not just inspired by Steven Universe. It just outright rips off SU with the pink haired girl's backstory. Even her dad looks like Greg Universe if Tumblr happened to him. It is hilariously blatant.

- The lesbian cousins/aunts/whatever act like they just started dating. Every time they're in a shot they are doing PDA to make damn sure you know they're lesbians. When realistically married couples after a while don't hang all over each other, gay or straight.

- Nothing happened in the first episode. Like it's 23 minutes of painfully boring nothing. We never learn what a guardian is, we learn nothing about these characters, there's no establishing a direction to the show, it's just a series of scenes leading to nothing. For funsies we watched the first episode of Goblinslayer just to compare fantasy show to fantasy show. You meet the characters, learn their motivations, you are given stakes to get invested in, and you learn why this story is being told at all.

- Only four VAs have IMBD credits. Pink haired girl sounds like Ash Ketchum but the difference is Veronica Taylor is talented.

I might keep torturing myself while I do chores tomorrow. Lord knows I got nothing else to do with my time.

 

[ロボ﹏§¤r﹏h¶rœ]

Here's the economic answer - There's no free market in animation. It's a legacy industry plagued by archaic inefficient business models like ads and subscriptions. The reason we don't have great cartoons nowadays is because there's very little profit to be made, and thus no money to fund projects by talented creators due to their high budgets. Since they can't get their projects funded, what we're left with are cartoons created by hacks because low budgets are all the industry can afford.

If cartoons were sold directly to the consumer, you would have more varied high-quality cartoons, since there would now be a mechanism for profit maximization and more money to go around. Consumers would actually be able to vote with their wallets as to which content they want to support instead of paying for a subscription that gets divided up piecemeal among content they don't care about. This is why Netflix can't make cartoons worth a damn, despite the hundreds of millions of dollars they've been burning to fund their content obligations to please their investors (Do I smell a ponzi scheme?). They prioritize quantity over quality. There's no sense for them to serve the equivalent of caviar at their buffet when they're not making more money from it than everything else in their catalog. Of course, the most attractive aspect about Netflix and other services is that you only need to pay once every month for an entire catalog of content. Whether the average consumer would pay ten or twenty dollars for a singular but masterful piece of content a la carte, I can't say, but they may think they're getting more bang for their buck by going with the former.

The problem isn't a lack of talent, but a lack of profitability. And that is why Western cartoons are shit nowadays.

Cartoons in the past relied heavily on toy sales - how did that change?

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

Cartoons in the past relied heavily on toy sales - how did that change?

Kids don't buy as many toys anymore and consoomer manchildren want yet another palette-swapped Transformer or MCU action figure (and spend most of their money on overpriced old figures anyway, seriously, just look how overpriced older Star Wars figures are now).

It happened in Japan too, but even worse since there aren't that many kids anymore anyway. That's why it's all waifu merchandise along with shit like slapping the Gundam V-fin on all giant robots so they can make a gunpla model of it rather than some original mecha show whose models very few will buy.

 

[Hammr]

I'm still going on with not watching the thing aside from highlights from other people's experience past episode 1 so I originally didn't get this but that boat scene is literally an actual callback to an embarassing thing that happened earlier during like a halloween party segment.

Basically, short purple haired kid is hitting on random girls like a dork, mistakes classmate for a girl because mermaid costume. Once again, if this were ANY OTHER FUCKING SHOW this would be a funny moment kinda situation instead of forced dramatic tension.

Depends on how they are going to do "character development", it can be decent. Whether the purple hair kid still presents as a cringe alphabet-phobe or becomes more open minded. With current days western media writing, it's optimistic to expect the latter.

About the mermaid outfit, maybe something something referencing to Mermaid trans kids stuffs. However, it rubs me another kind of wrong feeling, not the uwu girly, but the young teenage boy horny/fetish kind. You know, after reading a few horror stories on here about troons or bad kids secretly trying on or jerking off mom/sister/cousin undies. similar to that kind of feeling.

If he had picked a princess or fairy costume, that's fine. But mermaid, it's a bit more revealing outfit choice compared to others. I mean the purple hair kid even complementing on "tipping the scale of sexy".

 

[madethistocomment]

Decided to torture myself with watching the first episode, and I'll be liveblogging (can't think of a better term lmao) my thoughts on the episode as I watch it.

Spoiler: My thoughts

Okay, firstly, the animation isn't great, and holy shit you guys weren't kidding when you said Rosemary has a shounen protagonist's voice. She straight up sounds like a boy. I get that maybe they were trying to show she's adventurous and action-y, but you can have a girl with those traits still sound like a girl. Also, why were they coming up to their families waiting at the crossroads? Wouldn't they have come there all together?

Rosemary trips on air because teehee she's so quirky and clumsy like damn near female protagonist in Western animation anymore. Very creative, now please gag me with a spoon because I am fucking sick of this trope.

LMFAO Sage's dad looks like he'd snap in two if you elbowed him in the ribs. How the hell do you make a mage that specializes in health look so sickly and pathetic?

Side note, her brother seems to be all smiles and supportive when he's saying goodbye to her, even telling her that her mom is proud of her instead of that she would be and giving her a warm hug, but then in the opening he seems like he's really cold and surly towards her? Like in every clip of the opening that he's in he's got a pissy look on his face and/or side-eyeing her, and he's the only one not waving at her when she leaves even though he literally did in the show. Did his character change between animating the opening and the first scene? Is it trying to imply he's bitter or resentful towards Rosemary? I don't know and am probably looking way too hard into this.

The fact that Raye got second place on the directing credit of her own damn show's pilot is hilarious.

Rosemary's ridiculous poofy hair takes me out of every single scene. It just looks stupid and weightless and I have no idea how they connect to her head other than being glommed on like two pieces of chewing gum. Also, again, the animation is bad. Nothing has weight or speed and a lot of stuff seems.... clippy.

The gay cousin (I swear she was Sage's aunt?) and her wife have like, zero personality. You'd think there'd be some sort of establishing scene at the train station to demonstrate their personalities (as an example and to be very stereotypical, butch cousin is very boisterous and welcomes the girls with a bone-crushing hug, while elf wife is much more subdued and sweet in her greetings) but no, we've got nothing so far. Also I swear that the elf wife was originally gonna be a transbian. Guess that got shafted over to poor, poor Snapdragon. Also, I remember the cousins' entryway being one of the pieces of concept art shown in the trailer. It looked better before they colored it.

The mom's voice actress sucks, lmao. Also, why does she look more like a man than 99% of the male characters in this show? Also, the flowers in the nightmare sequence look out of place with the background and totally fuck up in scaling because they don't change their size depending on shot distance. So the flower that only comes up to her dad's ribcage while he's sitting also is the same size as a whole-ass Rosemary who's kneeling on the ground. It just looks bad. Also, Rosemary looks better with her hair down.

I burst out laughing at the fucking bread png. Who thought that looked good??? Actually, all of the styles of the food look weird. They need to fire their art director because clearly they cannot keep a team all drawing on model. Also, how old are these girls? They're old enough to be cussing, fighting monsters, dating, living in boarding schools, and apparently transitioning, but they no joke look like they're like, 13 max. Most of the time they look about ten.

Don't know why they're framing Thyme as being a dick for being pissed off at Rosemary for nearly taking her face off with her sword. Anyone with weapons discipline like that doesn't deserve to wield one, let alone get into a magical school for protectors. (I assume. They still haven't explained what the school is or does yet and we're halfway through the episode.) Seriously, how on Earth did Rosemary get in? I can understand Sage since she seems to be the braniac type, but Rosemary's a total dipshit who doesn't know to not swing a sword around without looking, in a public marketplace, without any sort of present danger. No school that's training people who are explicitly protectors are gonna take in someone with room temperature like that. Also, none of the background characters move at all. I'm not saying it has to be bustling and ghibli levels of animation quality, but at least have them move a little bit.

The trixies are cute as hell, not gonna lie.

Parsley's voice actress isn't great. It sounds like it's her very first role. Also, why did they go to a blacksmith instead of a jeweler or a goldsmith? The latter two are the type of people who would know how to fix a locket. Blacksmiths tend to handle larger-scale jobs. Rosemary's reaction to Parsley's absurdly high amount of brothers was the first time I laughed. The delivery of "Twelve???? Twelve brothers." was actually pretty funny. Reminds me of the time that my Orthodox buddy told me his priest had eight kids and I choked on my water.

"You got to be a guardian, in a way. You protected a precious creature and let it find its perfect partner. And that matters so much." Girl, they didn't protect shit. The only thing they did was not kill it for yoinking her locket. That's not really protecting. Immediately after I typed this Sage and Rosemary said pretty much exactly this, which is uninentionally hilarious imo. I love how they tried to make it this big sappy learning moment only for the main characters to pretty much say exactly what the audience is thinking. Though they have the cousins exchange looks like they're thinking "One day these kids will get it!" but like, what is there to get?

When the fuck will they actually explain what a guardian is? Or what this school is about?

Did they just go to sleep without a blanket?

I outright laughed at
*Dramatic swelling music*
*Rosemary and Sage gasp as cymbals crash*
*cuts to reveal the most underwhelming magical school that I have ever seen in my life*
The school literally looks like a dollar store brand Alfea, and that is an insult to Alfea. They couldn't have gone with anything more impressive? Like, I dunno, the massive castle in the middle of the city?

Did they really just have their entire first episode run through and not explain a single fucking thing???? What?? It's practically written into the screenwriting rulebook that you establish shit in the first episode so your viewers know what the hell is going on and what exactly the characters are striving towards. They did absolutely none of this and wasted the whole 22 minutes. Jesus, man. This offends the writer in me on a visceral level.

The credits art is cute, not gonna lie. I like the expressions and the more pastel color scheme and painterly, watercolor backgrounds are legit pretty. I wish they'd gone with this style for the whole show. Could do without the song. Also, no Japanese names in sight despite CR's promises.

TLDR: They don't explain shit and I want those 23 minutes of my life back.