symbv wrote:You hate Seitokai-Yakuin-Domo because of the sex jokes? The characters? The structure of the anime? The animation or editing?

I can't stand SYD because of how the "jokes" are presented - It goes against any rule of how comedy works. I mean, generally in order for a joke to work there needs to be an element of surprise or some kind of cleverness so that the person hearing the joke will figure it out himself and that's what makes him laugh. But in SYD, ALL they do is have the girls talk nonsense for no reason at all (it doesn't even make sense in the context of the scene). One of the very few times they actually had a good joke for example, was when Tsuda (that's his name, right?) unexpectedly said something like "Thanks for that book you bought me, I especially liked the part where everyone circled the dancer and bukake'd her". See? It was completely unexpected of him, so it worked. But in all of the other cases the girls just say random sex "jokes" (it'd be an insult to comedy if I described their dialog as something even vaguely humorous).

A good example showing how the director simply has no clue of how comedy works was in one of the last episodes, the Christmas one: Throughout the episode Tsuda gets vibrators as a present from the girls in the series, and having Santa also give him a vibrator could have been hilarious, but THEY DID THE EXACT SAME JOKE RIGHT IN THE PREVIOUS SCENE! You could see it coming from a mile and was completely wasted.

Oh, and about the characters - Usually when a "wacky" comedy has bizarre characters, they give some kind of explanation as to why they are so odd. But not here! Obviously the most glaring thing is that the girls are foul mouthed for no particular reason, but also things like Aria being freaky and walking around with a chastity belt. Sure it was pretty funny when she mentions it casually, but at least if it's a running joke develop it somehow, i.e WHY THE HELL WOULD SHE WALK AROUND WITH A CHASTITY BELT FOR THE WHOLE SERIES?

Also why the fuck is Tsuda's sister so freaky? Let's say we can get past the girls in the school, as they are influenced by each other or whatever, but she's just in middle school. Bah. "that's because all the girls here are like that hurrr" isn't good enough.

Oh yeah, last thing - Screw Chiaki Omigawa. Seriously. There are very very few seiyuu I dislike. She is the only one I literally can't stand hearing and would actually stop watching a show because of her. For one she has no range, so she can't act well and sounds the same in all of her roles. Second of all, even her normal voice isn't good enough to be typecast imo. And most importantly it's just plain painful to listen to her. God damn it.

I wanted to like SYD, I really did. I still wanted more after BGHK that aired in the previous season and was hoping this would be similar. The main reason I kept watching it is because the art is fantastic and really really crisp. Also I like Hikasa yoko and Satou Satomi. And yes, the ED was great (it was a real good idea to copy shaft and not be discrete about it).

The original 4-koma manga gave me a lot of laughs. You can tell I quite like this kind of humor, and if it is spoken by some cute girls, I am more for it (yeah, you can say I fall for it). Quite many of jokes are quite Japanese though -- meaning it sound better in Japanese than in its translaton, or the way the joke is constituted is Japanese: The classic way in a Japanese joke is to have a Boke saying unreasonable thing, stupid thing or thing that is not proper to the circumstances, and then at a timely moment a Tsukomi would rebuke or hit back with some statement of (relative) reason. This is how Japanese humor works. The guy in SYD manga/anime is usually the Tsukomi but not always. It is quite hard to explain such humor to westerners as the sense of humor is different. What I want to say is that knowing Japanese helps a lot in this kind of manga/anime.

Yes, I'm familiar with Boke/Tsukomi comedy. After all, sometimes it feels like 80% of the comedy in anime comes from this angle.

Even so, I've seen it done well, or at least not as bad. Maybe Tsuda's seiyuu can't make deadpan humor work well, but I doubt that's the reason.

I completely understand what you mean with westerners not getting the humor, but I don't think it applies here. Take Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei for example - I often felt like if I knew Japanese the joke would be much better, but even when it was a little lost on me it was entertaining and most of the time quite clever. I think that would be a good example of how knowing the language would really improve your viewing.

But in SYD's case, I find it hard to believe that Japanese don't follow basic guidelines of how comedy works, considering it's used in nearly every comedy anime I've seen. The novelty factor of SYD of "lol I cant believe it high school girls are talking about penis and sperm lol" wears off real fast.

You mean you have read B gata H kei manga?

Yes. I haven't read much of it, but it was getting translated when the anime was airing so I wanted to compare the relevant scenes. I thought the anime was better.

Yes, this is a credit for the director Yamamoto Yuusuke. I think he did the first year of Keroro Gunsou as well. 4koma offers a lot of room for the animators to string along the story and adjust its pacing. K-On and Working! all came from 4koma, but I agree that B gata H kei shows clearer progress and development, partly because such progress also exists in the manga -- most of the 4koma manga only shows progress when new character joins.

Oh, I didn't know he worked on Keroro Gunsou.

And yeah, K-ON is a good example of a 4koma adaptation done right. I'm not a big fan of Working!! and haven't see the 4koma so I wouldn't know.

(by the way, you can see what anime I've watched in my signature)

The style of SYD deliberately sticks to the 4koma. They even stated the page numbers on which their next episode would base after the end of one episode. (And I just found that they put 4koma manga on the BD/DVD jacket cover) BGHK, while having an exaggerated take on the personality of some of the charcters (the main heroine in particular), still has a certain real-life feel and it also tries to tell a story. SYD, on the other hand, has a setting and a cast that absolute nobody would think exist in real world -- although it is still a good trip to have these fantasy characters go on doing those things in that fantasy world. In SYD the jokes and the characters doing the jokes are everything -- I do not look for story that last longer than one joke. I just wait for the next joke to hit me. You can call it lazy, but it works for me -- especially during re-watch I can just pick and choose the jokes that worked for me and go over them again, kind of like having some light snack.

I think Azuma was right when he said that anime can't depict 4koma comedy successfully. It just doesn't translate well and the jokes are lost. But in SYD there isn't even anything subtle or clever behind the jokes, so I can't even appreciate them for that. And since it doesn't try to have down to earth and likable characters, even that source of entertainment is lost. (unlike, say, Azumanga Daioh or K-ON)

True. There is some coverage on the guy's sexuality but I think the main focus is the process of the girl going through the "trials" to hit on her "first target", with unexpected consequences (at least to her). The girl only tried to get sex friends because she thinks it's time to "do it" while having absolutely no knowledge or mental readiness to handle the other gender. She wants to get to the "goal", but she is not ready on what she needs to face first. It is very much a process for her to discover herself -- who she really is and what she really wants.

Yeah, BGHK while being funny actually has an interesting story going on. You can see on my MAL profile what I thought of Yamada.

It's nearly certain BGHK won't be getting a 2nd season, is it? Do you have any idea how it sold? I've seen figures but they were probably bogus.

toe mash wrote:I can't stand SYD because of how the "jokes" are presented - It goes against any rule of how comedy works. I mean, generally in order for a joke to work there needs to be an element of surprise or some kind of cleverness so that the person hearing the joke will figure it out himself and that's what makes him laugh. But in SYD, ALL they do is have the girls talk nonsense for no reason at all (it doesn't even make sense in the context of the scene).

As much as you loathe SYD, you remember the contents quite well. Glad that it is an anime that leaves you some impression, albeit it is not a good one. But I know we are really talking :) I will not try to persuade you to like this anime. I just want to share how I enjoy this anime. There may be a rulebook for comedy, but given the fact this anime is enjoyed by so many, it just shows that how difficult it is to write a rulebook for comedy :)

A few points here

- In the manga, one scene is independent of another scene and there is no link between the scenes. I believe the animation staff took a look at the original manga and decided that the format in the anime is the best approach. Adding extra bits to try to explain the background or link the scenes to a longer story would just hurt what makes the manga so funny, namely a series of encounters between the characters having strange conversations, and so slow down the pace. Honestly I did not find all the jokes funny, but with hit rate of 60-70% (and of course add the cute girls) and in particular the fast pace, my enjoyment level never slipped.

- Because one scene is independent of another scene, basically I just reset everything back to the original setting as soon as the scene ended. I did not try to bring what happened before into the scene I was watching. Of course sometimes one event of a past scene might be brought in, but I did not think too deep about it. I just let the characters to work the joke, with only the basic background of the characters in mind.

- In fact the animation staff did try to add their own jokes and tried to add some narrative to extend some scene or link some scenes. And I found that it usually had an adverse effect, either it slowed down the pace or worse made things unfunny (more on that later)

toe mash wrote:One of the very few times they actually had a good joke for example, was when Tsuda (that's his name, right?) unexpectedly said something like "Thanks for that book you bought me, I especially liked the part where everyone circled the dancer and bukake'd her". See? It was completely unexpected of him, so it worked. But in all of the other cases the girls just say random sex "jokes" (it'd be an insult to comedy if I described their dialog as something even vaguely humorous).

You even remember the guy's name! Wonderful!
As for the random sex jokes, while some may sound better in Japanese (not sure how well they were translated), but I agree that many are quite juvenile and it could sound like jokes dreamt up between two hentai-thinking teen boys fantasizing over some everyday item or daily conservation or some seemingly innocent situation. I also admit that I may not laugh as hard (or at all) if the jokes are shown to delivered by two hentai boys. So there you have it: for me those juvenile sex jokes plus the cute girls did work :) :)

toe mash wrote:A good example showing how the director simply has no clue of how comedy works was in one of the last episodes, the Christmas one: Throughout the episode Tsuda gets vibrators as a present from the girls in the series, and having Santa also give him a vibrator could have been hilarious, but THEY DID THE EXACT SAME JOKE RIGHT IN THE PREVIOUS SCENE! You could see it coming from a mile and was completely wasted.

This is one example when I said when the animation people added their stuff, more often than not they caused adverse effect. I also found that joke not funny and entirely predictable, and that is NOT in the manga.

The soundbite in the break between each scene (with those chops stamping on a board) was also not in the manga, and that I usually did not find it funny either.

toe mash wrote:Oh, and about the characters - Usually when a "wacky" comedy has bizarre characters, they give some kind of explanation as to why they are so odd. But not here! Obviously the most glaring thing is that the girls are foul mouthed for no particular reason,

Oh you don't want those explanation. As I said earlier, it is a fantasy world and the setting is we had these very very strange girls interacting each other resulting in a bunch of comedy moments. I never ever tried to think what cause them to be like that.

toe mash wrote:but also things like Aria being freaky and walking around with a chastity belt. Sure it was pretty funny when she mentions it casually, but at least if it's a running joke develop it somehow, i.e WHY THE HELL WOULD SHE WALK AROUND WITH A CHASTITY BELT FOR THE WHOLE SERIES?

The chastity belt -- as I said earlier all scenes are independent of each other. So I interpreted the chastity belt as a one-scene only thing. It was referring to the scene where there is a boy (Tsuda) coming to her master's (Aria) holiday villa so Dejima put the belt on Aria. Once that scene ends, I no longer assume she is wearing chastity belt.

toe mash wrote:Also why the fuck is Tsuda's sister so freaky? Let's say we can get past the girls in the school, as they are influenced by each other or whatever, but she's just in middle school. Bah. "that's because all the girls here are like that hurrr" isn't good enough.

Again I did not ask why. I just take her as is, and some of my biggest laughes came from her -- mistaking the ear-cleaning between Tsuda and Shino, the sudden outburst of "pedo" at her brother at the genkan, the school interview....

And again I want to stress that quite many jokes have to do with Japanese. One of my biggest laughes (really got me roll on the floor) was when the discipline rep (the one with twin pigtails) warned Sihno about the serious consequences of a scandal between Shino and a male student (Tsuda) -- which is "kainin" 解任　(fired from the post), a long moment of silence ensued, and Shino replied there is no "kainin" 懐妊 (pregnancy) for her. Really did not see it coming. It is even better than the manga because the anime can take its time to build up the tension and made the revelation of the joke funnier.

toe mash wrote:Oh yeah, last thing - Screw Chiaki Omigawa. Seriously. There are very very few seiyuu I dislike. She is the only one I literally can't stand hearing and would actually stop watching a show because of her. For one she has no range, so she can't act well and sounds the same in all of her roles. Second of all, even her normal voice isn't good enough to be typecast imo. And most importantly it's just plain painful to listen to her. God damn it.

I see I see you hate Omigawa Chiaki. Fortunately she did not feature so prominently in SYD. I guess you did not watch Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru then? Actually even in Japan there are anime fans who hate her voice. I am not a fan of her and I agree that her voice is really an acquired taste. If you don't like her, I can understand :) :)

On the other hand, whenever Arai Satomi (the photo club president -- Kuroko in Railgun) showed up it almost always made me laugh :)

toe mash wrote:Take Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei for example - I often felt like if I knew Japanese the joke would be much better, but even when it was a little lost on me it was entertaining and most of the time quite clever. I think that would be a good example of how knowing the language would really improve your viewing.

To enjoy SZS to the full, Japanese language helps A LOT, but on top of that one would even need some knowledge about Japan culture, society, latest news etc. It is very tricky for people outside Japan. I have a feeling that it got so well-known in the west mostly because it was done by SHAFT, less because of its contents.

toe mash wrote:But in SYD's case, I find it hard to believe that Japanese don't follow basic guidelines of how comedy works,

Since so many people find it funny, shall we say that there may be more than one set of guidelines for comedy? :) :) I believe comedy is one thing that is more rooted in culture than other genres are. I do not expect to change your mind about SYD, but if we can see things from other perspectives and you can come to see how some people may find it funny, then this discussion would be a very worthy one.

toe mash wrote:I think Azuma was right when he said that anime can't depict 4koma comedy successfully. It just doesn't translate well and the jokes are lost.

4koma presents its own challenge for animation. But just like other adaptation there will be things lost and gained during the process. 4koma allows more room for the animation staff to add material but it also presents a framework that restricts how you pace things, because by its nature 4koma will always be a series of very short episodes, with its small surprise at every turn that serves as the joke. Some 4koma is easier to be adapted into a continuous story but some is not that easy. I think SYD is the latter.

And the very strange characters (creepy or freaky in your word) are the real attraction in the manga and thus anime. So if you find it hard to accept them as they are, then most likely the fun will be severely curtailed.

toe mash wrote:It's nearly certain BGHK won't be getting a 2nd season, is it? Do you have any idea how it sold? I've seen figures but they were probably bogus.
.

Unlikely. I have the first week sales figure for the BD (DVD is estimated to be <100)

01　1,358　10.08.06
02　1,115　10.09.03
03　　,936　10.10.02
04　1,014　10.11.04
05　　,914　10.12.03
06　　,878　10.01.07

Does it fit the figures you know?

As comparison, here are the first week figure for SYD. I added the much more popular Qwaser and Angel Beats for comparison too.

SYD
01　3,137(1,395)　
02　3,675(1,598)
03　3,607(1,430)
04　3,907(1,523)
05　3,839(1,515)
06　3,975(1,596)

Qwaser
BD (DVD)
01　4,994(2,360)　
02　4,740(2,128)　
03　4,289(1,975)　
04　4,211(1,841)　
05　4,256(1,873)　
06　4,006(1,656)　
07　3,781(1,512)　
08　1,941(??)　

Angel Beats
BD(DVD)
01　23,497(11,360)
02　20,556(10,103)　
03　19,665(*9,801)　
04　18,007(*8,851)　
05　17,956(*9,225)　
06　17,507(*8,894)　
07　19,329(10,468)　

To be honest, I am not sure how BgHk could recoup the cost by disk sales....

Thanks for replying, you reminded me of a few important points I forgot to mention:

As much as you loathe SYD, you remember the contents quite well.

Yep. Well, besides boasting a pretty good memory, I DID watch all of the show and have discussed/argued about it several times so I knew more or less what I wanted to say.

I will not try to persuade you to like this anime. I just want to share how I enjoy this anime.

Same here - I'm not trying to "convert" you or anything, but it's important we see each others view at least.

In the manga, one scene is independent of another scene and there is no link between the scenes. I believe the animation staff took a look at the original manga and decided that the format in the anime is the best approach. Adding extra bits to try to explain the background or link the scenes to a longer story would just hurt what makes the manga so funny, namely a series of encounters between the characters having strange conversations, and so slow down the pace. Honestly I did not find all the jokes funny, but with hit rate of 60-70% (and of course add the cute girls) and in particular the fast pace, my enjoyment level never slipped.

I can agree that the character design is good, but I think what they did was quite lazy - I'll explain what I mean further on.

Because one scene is independent of another scene. Basically I just reset everything back to the original setting as soon as the scene ended. I did not try to bring what happened before into the scene I was watching. Of course sometimes one event of a past scene might be brought in, but I did not think too deep about it. I just let the characters to work the joke, with only the basic background of the characters in mind.

A smart/good comedy DOES have jokes that are both standalone, and just as important are the jokes that have some kind of connection to past scenes or maybe a good reference.

In fact the animation staff did try to add their own jokes and tried to add some narrative to extend some scene or link some scenes. And I found that it usually had an adverse effect, either it slowed down the pace or worse made things unfunny (more on that later)

Well, I'm criticizing both the original work and the adaptation here, but a more specific disappointment with the staff is that they didn't try to connect scenes somehow. Again, look at K-ON - Not only did they add original scenes which were often great, they actually chopped up the order of the manga and inserted random scenes in some other stories making it work (like the "Romio" and Juliette episode - afaik the scene where they serve tea in a luxurious cafe place wasn't in the manga, but they put it there because it was a good scene and they managed to connect it to the story arc).

In SYD they just shoot themselves in the foot and say at the end of each episode exactly which panels are going to get animated. Talk about being uncreative and lazy, imo.

As for the random sex jokes, while some may sound better in Japanese (not sure how well they were translated)

Oh I totally forgot to mention the translation part. Here's basically how it went:
There is a certain fansub group that is known for being fairly "lenient" with the subs, localizing them and making them sound well to western audiences. I love their subs and the work they did on BGHK was fantastic because it kept the flow of the series while the second group doing it had these blocky, awkward subs.

I was hoping that they'd do SYD, but instead 2 really mediocre groups did it, each one missing out on jokes (remember one of the first episodes when Shino took a suggestion box and drew an ona-hole or something on the lid? Yeah, they forgot to translate the text on the box (it was obvious what she meant as it was censored with a mosaic (lol), but other text that was written on the whiteboard as part of the joke was lost.

At first I complained that the show loses its humor because of these groups, even watching the same episode twice with both subs (!).

The soundbite in the break between each scene (with those chops stamping on a board) was also not in the manga, and that I usually did not find it funny either.

Say, at the beginning of each episode they had these "lesson number #". They were horribly unfunny and just gave me a bad mood at the beginning of each episode. Do they somehow make sense in Japanese? Were they in the manga? Seriously, what they said there can't even constitute as a joke. Only like one of the 13 was worth anything.

Once that scene ends, I no longer assume she is wearing chastity belt.

It's a shame they mentioned it several times throughout the series when it just ruined it, then.

Again I did not ask why. I just take her as is, and some of my biggest laughes came from her -- mistaking the ear-cleaning between Tsuda and Shino, the sudden outburst of "pedo" at her brother at the genkan, the school interview....

She COULD have been funny, but why oh why is she like that? I just can't let it go. Even in SZS everything regarding the characters behavior has some kind of vague explanation (i.e their names when written horizontal)

And again I want to stress that quite many jokes have to do with Japanese. One of my biggest laughes (really got me roll on the floor) was when the discipline rep (the one with twin pigtails) warned Sihno about the serious consequences of a scandal between Shino and a male student (Tsuda) -- which is "kainin" 解任　(fired from the post), a long moment of silence ensued, and Shino replied there is no "kainin" 懐妊 (pregnancy) for her. Really did not see it coming. It is even better than the manga because the anime can take its time to build up the tension and made the revelation of the joke funnier.

Well, I'm used to not finding pun jokes funny because I wouldn't get it without a translator note or whatever. They rarely work if it isn't a more kind of visual joke.

I see I see you hate Omigawa Chiaki. Fortunately she did not feature so prominently in SYD. I guess you did not watch Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru then? Actually even in Japan there are anime fans who hate her voice. I am not a fan of her and I agree that her voice is really an acquired taste. If you don't like her, I can understand :) :)

I watched the first 2 or 3 episodes, then stopped. It wasn't an amazing show as it was, and my opinion of her didn't help as I was quite bias in any scene she was in. I wish SHAFT would have used one of their regulars for the MC.

Since so many people find it funny, shall we say that there may be more than one set of guidelines for comedy? :) :) I believe comedy is one thing that is more rooted in culture than other genres. I do not expect to change your mind about SYD, but if we can see things from other perspectives and you can come to see how some people may find it funny, then this discussion would be a very worthy one.

See, here's the catch - A lot of western fans DO like SYD. It is rated quite high on MAL and received a lot of love on /a/. But similarly a lot of people like crappy American comedies, and I don't care what they say, some of those movies suck (Rat Race - DO NOT WATCH, -5/10)

Just because a work is widespread and mainstream doesn't necessary mean it is doing it right (usually the first example given is Naruto). As I said, I think most people just like the fact that high school girls are swearing like drunken sailors, regardless of how bad the execution may be.

And the very strange characters (creepy or freaky in your word) are the real attraction in the manga and thus anime. So if you find it hard to accept them as they are, then most likely the fun will be severely curtailed.

I suppose. But the girls here barely have a personality - Shino, Aria and Tsuda's sister are basically the same girl in different shoes.

Unlikely. I have the first week sales figure for the BD (DVD is estimated to be <100)

01　1,358　10.08.06
02　1,115　10.09.03
03　　,936　10.10.02
04　1,014　10.11.04
05　　,914　10.12.03
06　　,878　10.01.07

Does it fit the figures you know?

I don't have here the numbers I've seen, it was just the numbers during the first week of BD sales when BGHK came out. Meh, this sucks. I heard some fans of Yukari Tamura (which did brilliant work in BGHK) were asspained about her playing a "slut" and threatened the studio or something. Jeez.

Oh, and here's a little surprise:
Yes, I was in Akiba and bought the character CD of BGHK and ED single of SYD (I told you I like the ED :)) among other things. I felt like it was important to somehow support my failing series, and some of the songs there turned out to be good (they should have used Yukari's character song as the OP, seriously). Ironically I supported SYD more than 98% of western fans that actually do love the show.

toe mash wrote:A smart/good comedy DOES have jokes that are both standalone, and just as important are the jokes that have some kind of connection to past scenes or maybe a good reference.

I do not dispute that, but if it can generate laughing moments without making the connection, I would say it is good enough (if they strive to be something higher then all the better) :)

toe mash wrote:Well, I'm criticizing both the original work and the adaptation here, but a more specific disappointment with the staff is that they didn't try to connect scenes somehow. Again, look at K-ON - Not only did they add original scenes which were often great, they actually chopped up the order of the manga and inserted random scenes in some other stories making it work (like the "Romio" and Juliette episode - afaik the scene where they serve tea in a luxurious cafe place wasn't in the manga, but they put it there because it was a good scene and they managed to connect it to the story arc).

There is no question why K-On is the new classic, because KyoAni deserved a huge amount of credit of making the story work. The material they added enhanced the narrative and assisted the character development, and it looked seamless to the original material. That said, I still think SYD is not that well suited to be made into a continuous story. It needs the density of the joke scenes to work because unlike K-On which has small events taking place generating good mood for everyone, SYD is very particular on short and sharp delivery of the punches in the dialogues. It *may* be possible to link them all up, but I would say it would need a lot of effort and it may not even please the fans of the original manga (which is very important).

toe mash wrote:In SYD they just shoot themselves in the foot and say at the end of each episode exactly which panels are going to get animated. Talk about being uncreative and lazy, imo.

You can say they played it on the safe side. Judging from the result, I can't say that they made the wrong decision..

toe mash wrote:Oh I totally forgot to mention the translation part. Here's basically how it went:

I see. That could be part of the reason....

toe mash wrote:Say, at the beginning of each episode they had these "lesson number #". They were horribly unfunny and just gave me a bad mood at the beginning of each episode. Do they somehow make sense in Japanese? Were they in the manga? Seriously, what they said there can't even constitute as a joke. Only like one of the 13 was worth anything.

Not in the manga either. I believe the aim is to shoot for the unpredictable - some are nonsense but sometimes something normal came up. It seems more like an expectation game for the watchers. And I did not find them too funny either.

toe mash wrote:She COULD have been funny, but why oh why is she like that? I just can't let it go. Even in SZS everything regarding the characters behavior has some kind of vague explanation (i.e their names when written horizontal)

My suggestion is do not try to think why. Just treat it as a fantasy and these characters are there to deliver the jokes.

toe mash wrote:I watched the first 2 or 3 episodes, then stopped. It wasn't an amazing show as it was, and my opinion of her didn't help as I was quite bias in any scene she was in. I wish SHAFT would have used one of their regulars for the MC.

The result of Shaft doing Soredemo is quite good. Fans of the original manga did complain about the change, and I can see there are touches of Shaft here and there, but overall I find it entertaining enough to follow through the whole series. The artwork is very good, and the characters are interesting. The stories are pretty refreshing too -- it did bring up the unusual in a supposedly mundane shitamachi neighborhood environment. OP/ED is marvelous. But Omikawa Chiaki has the dominant presence there, so it would be the decisive factor. The choice of using her actually caused some controversy in Japan fandom too. Not sure why she was picked though.

toe mash wrote:See, here's the catch - A lot of western fans DO like SYD. It is rated quite high on MAL and received a lot of love on /a/. But similarly a lot of people like crappy American comedies, and I don't care what they say, some of those movies suck (Rat Race - DO NOT WATCH, -5/10)

MAL is... ? I do not get quite a lot of the American comedies (though some are funny but probably I would prefer comedy in anime/manag more) particularly the slapstick ones (including old time Warner Brothers ones) but there are so many people love it so I guess they must have hit the right nerve for those people......

toe mash wrote:Just because a work is widespread and mainstream doesn't necessary mean it is doing it right (usually the first example given is Naruto). As I said, I think most people just like the fact that high school girls are swearing like drunken sailors, regardless of how bad the execution may be.

I would be reluctant to comment the same -- as I said above, if so many people are loving it, then the comedy must have served its purpose of making people laugh. This is why I said it may be difficult to have one rulebook for comedy. There will always be many types of comedy, some maybe more low-brow than others, but I for one would find it hard to judge one comedy to be "more right" than another.

And by the way, I don't think the high school girls in SYD are swearing like drunken sailors. Actually they spoke calmly and politely, but just the contents are of R18 level. If the Eng subtitle ever used words like fuck or dick, then it was already wrongly translated as such words were not in the manga or anime. The gap between the contents and everything else (the politeness level of the speech, the calmness of the delivery, the cuteness of the girls) is one factor of creating a certain funny effect.

toe mash wrote:I suppose. But the girls here barely have a personality - Shino, Aria and Tsuda's sister are basically the same girl in different shoes.

They do have different style of doing things and different preference for their R18 contents, but you can say that this does not constitute as personality.

toe mash wrote:I don't have here the numbers I've seen, it was just the numbers during the first week of BD sales when BGHK came out. Meh, this sucks.

Since my figures are also the first week sales, this means the numbers you saw should be close to the number I gave....

toe mash wrote:I heard some fans of Yukari Tamura (which did brilliant work in BGHK) were asspained about her playing a "slut" and threatened the studio or something. Jeez.

Hah?? What about those seiyuu who did Qwaser?? Some of them also voiced children anime -- Sanpei Yuuko (Sasha) voiced a lead character in PreCure5 for example....

toe mash wrote:Ironically I supported SYD more than 98% of western fans that actually do love the show.

You said it. My salute to you for supporting Japanese anime.