The Promised Neverland Season 2 makes me lose a bit of my optimism, not gonna lie. Go to www.patreon.com/explanationpoint to support this channel directly and get cool rewards for yourself!
Homestuck is canon, Friendsim and Pesterquest are canon. Paradox Space is Canon. Even some of the fan adventures are canon because you know what? I like them. Epilogues who? HS^2 isn't real.
Watching ordinary videos on April 1st is always fun because I never know if they're going to suddenly turn out turn out to be an April Fools joke or not
Short version: You're *allowed* to ignore whatever you want from a series. Ignore key lines, ignore episodes, ignore a second bad season, whatever. You're allowed to do that. The criticism police aren't going to arrest you. Now, your fanbase might dismiss whatever you have to say due to that. If you say "the second season is a blatant cash grab which defies the original point so I'm going to ignore it," some people might say "I liked the second season so I'm going to ignore what you have to say because I think you're wrong." And I think that's an interesting conversation to have! Interpret with the material you find meaning in, explain up front what you're doing, then let viewers decide for themselves if they still want to engage.
Usually if the seasons are similar in quality (in my eyes), I lump them together. But if there's a stark contrast, I judge them as separate entities. The line of how similar they are is a very mushy thing so it isn't like I have a meter of 'ah yes, this is just similar enough to the first season that I can lump them together.' Analyzing media is a very complex thing so it doesn't make sense to me to have the exact same mindset for everything that I watch. But at the end of the day, you get to feel how you want to feel about a piece of media, whether or not others or even yourself would consider it fair. It's not like it's a war crime to be like "I pretend I do not see it." about an anime.
Whilst I agree with your view point in regards to a person's viewing preference/recommendations, I'm not sure if it applies in this context as '!' is making it seem more like he's asking if it's ok to ignore a part of a series in an analysis, and whilst for the most part I have avoided doing such things (specifically in an explanation to my friends about something I've noticed about a work of fiction), I have also done exactly what '!' is asking; ignoring a piece of media that I consider bad, when making an analysis of the body of work as a whole, and when I did, I made sure to explain what I was ignoring, why I did so, as well as explain that if the piece of media that I was ignoring ending up not being a throw away thing, or even if the ramifications of it existing in the series was properly handled, then I would readjust my analysis. An example of this comes from the final arc in Bleach; specifically that Hollow and Quincy powers cancel each other out, one set cannot exist in a body that has the other, and that the destruction is so potent, that it completely eradicates the other. This on it's own is fine, and does explain why Quincys can eradicate Hollows, yet the Shinigami that Uryuu fights in Soul Society are equally disintegrated, bu~ut there are exceptions to the rule, that has no explanation: The Arrancar members of the Wandanreich, Quilge Opie after absorbing Ayon, Masaki Kurosaki after being bitten by White, along with Ichigo Kurosaki whom was born with both sets, as well as Karin and Yuzu Kurosaki whom may also have been born with both sets. Now whilst later on we are given an explanation that with Shinigami powers added into the mix, it can negate the Hollow side, thus prevent disintegration, and yet the Arrancar only have powers that mimic Shinigami powers (as evident by them not utilising Shinigami specific techniques, only Hollow), Masaki was able to survive for days without any Shinigami influence, and that Quilge Opie was able to survive absorbing Ayon without difficulty only until he'd been struck down. Now again, I can come up with some sort of reasonable explanation for some of these (save the Arrancar one), but the point I'm trying to make is that based on all evidence given up until the point where we were told that Shinigami powers can prevent the disintegration, there was no in-story answer as to why these four-five exceptions to the rule existed, and even after we're told all this, the series again has another exception with the stolen Bankais of the Captains, as most the Bankais are reclaimed from the Quincys via adding Hollow powers to the Captains that said Bankais were stolen from, meaning that the Shinigami aspect didn't prevent the Hollow powers from reacting with the Quincy powers. And again, whilst I can come up with a reasonable explanation, but I shouldn't have to, as this is a major plot point that disregards another major plot point, and the story should explain itself, otherwise it's a massive plothole that can effectively derail the story if thought about for long enough. So, I ignore it; I make a disclaimer stating that it's confusing, makes no sense when analysed, and until offical sources can rectify the confusion, I'll be sticking with the prior assumption in that the Hollow disintegration is just a Quincy technique TL;DR - the Thousand Year Blood War arc of Bleach was full of many things that annoyed me, but the Quincy-Hollow dynamic is one that I majorly ignore above all others
I think in some ways he's answering his own question in this video... I think being straightforward about the different schools of thought people might have on stuff like this helps to cover the bases. like, if we're being objective about, say, the promised neverland, both seasons do exist and are presented to us as part of the same work. but if we're analyzing the work, then it isn't a bad thing to acknowledge the fact that there is a sharp divide between two parts of the same work that have huge differences from one another. like, season 2 has drastically different pacing than the first season, even if you know nothing about the manga... even if you have zero knowledge of any external factors, you can still spot the difference in the content, and that observation is valid. I think it's fair to acknowledge the way that differences like these change the story. that in and of itself can be part of analyzing the work. additionally, if these differences create such a noticeable rift, and you want to analyze the first season of a show on it's own, that doesn't necessarily mean denying the second season entirely... it just means acknowledging that the first season says different things in a vacuum than it does when you allow the second season to recontextualize that information. and in a way, it would be rather obtuse to ignore some meta elements, such as the fact that the first season probably did stand alone for a while before the second season came out, or cases where the show's audience had a fairly ubiquitous distaste for the second season, for reasons that can also be analyzed separately. literary analysis and meta analysis can coexist without meta analysis being seen as "tarnishing" your consideration of the work. I think it's fair to just lay all the cards on the table and say "my instincts are to separate these parts, this is why, but also I acknowledge that considering the work as a whole might produce different messages or perceptions, and it is intended to be seen as a single, continuous narrative, by the creator(s)." and then maybe include analysis about that too? because the comparison of two different kinds of analysis about the same media might actually be sort of illuminating... like, let's say you did an analysis of season 1 back when that was the only content, and then decided to analyze the whole show in retrospect after it ended... neither analysis is dishonest, but the two might be very different, and comparing the two might yield some valuable insight. or in terms of meta analysis, I don't think it's wrong to, say, acknowledge the circumstances surrounding the release of newer content that adds to the established season, but also ask yourself if you think a casual viewer would be likely to notice the differences in the content if they were binging the seasons later on, and the timing of how they originally came out was not a factor. both would be analysis of real phenomena... this _is_ how the story has been, or will be, consumed. and, well... I'm used to media that does meta shit, and takes its medium and the circumstances under which it is consumed into canonical account sometimes. I don't think it's wrong for media to try and do this, and I don't think it's wrong when it works on the audience as intended... so why ignore the meta of how the audience received the work at all? in the case of the promised neverland, I think it's important to acknowledge that a fair few fans had read the manga and came in with expectations, because that's just true. knowledge of what happened in the manga was inevitably going to color those people's opinions about season 2... why fight that? I'm not saying "never divorce this from the context of what the manga had done already" so much as I'm saying "the impact of some fans having already read the manga is a true piece of the history of how this was received upon its release, and while you can analyze it on its own, it would be incomplete not to give a nod to the original story that this was based on"
@@loregoblin3854 it's been a year, and I just wanted to say, I watched the anime "both seasons" of The Promised Neverland first, during the 2nd Season something felt 'off' the later it got into the season, and the ending of it was rough and weird, then having bought all Manga volumes, and having read everything and having cried super hard during the last 5 volumes of the manga, I can fairly say they did the 2nd season dirty, only the first season is worth watching, and then going into the manga. Anime Spoiler: they even had IT speak a weird line going like "this isn't what you desired Emma, isn't it?" or something like that I remember, which in hindsight is really weird, was that a meta line thrown in by the creators, because this wasn't the actual work they wanted to do, but got pushed by some hire ups to deliver a sub-par product? I can't really tell, but it is a theory.
@@NoraNoita yeah, I really don't know what happened to make the second season turn out the way it did, but I completely agree... they did it dirty. I think the show had more content left to go than a single season ever should've tried to cover at once... there was never going to be a good way to wrap everything up that quickly.
The most simple answer imo is as follows: While we can't just ignore parts of a show because it's inconvenient to us, we _can_ view singular seasons as their own works, as well as the whole canon in it's entirety. And when talking about let's say what is and is not canon (like with OVAs for example) it all depends on how well you can substantiate your argument.
This is a great point! And this goes for changes in production or editors or anything really. We can definitely look at each of these things in isolation, and make analysis on them, as well as analyze they change the work overall.
I think this one is the approach I personally agree with because it allows for a creator to do what they will with a given work as long as they include the proper qualifying statements.
Agree with this because there has been a real moment in time where it was true. Before the release of the second season there was only the first season. In that situation the story was complete, forever unfinished/unfinished. The analysis that is released after that but before the second season is not inherently invalid. I think you get on shakier ground if you start your own branching timeline rather than analyzing things as if you were in a previous moment in history.
@@jr637-1 add to that the good movies and S3. S2 has gone from a dissapointing sequel to a dip in an excelent series because what followed was pretty good as well.
You once made an entire video carefully dissecting a single cinematic shot. This was an entirely appropriate thing to do, as that shot contained thought, meaning, a kind of beauty that improved your life, if only by way of its eloquence. We say the author is dead not because their voice doesn't matter, but because our voice does, the voice of the viewer who sees the art and organizes its ideas in such a way to create meaning. If the author, even within the context of the same piece of art, goes on to say that the pieces should be organized in a different fashion, that doesn't unmake your meaning. Nobody pays attention to the sequel to "To Kill a Mockingbird," because the original was an effective, self-contained story. If the first season of "Chunibyo" gave you thoughts, and you're proud of those thoughts, that's justification enough to share them.
This video is fascinating because I relate to the impulse to get super granular and reflexive about this issue, but I also find it profoundly silly since I’ve long mellowed out into the philosophy of “ignore what you want, all canon is arbitrary.” So long as your not using your selective ignorance as a foundation for value judgements, I don’t see what’s wrong with just subjectively noting something as inconsequential.
I think this is really interesting as a fan of superhero comics. Like. It is practically impossible to read every comic in a single universe. So, your personal experience is going to be different depending on what you read, if you’ve read Batman before or after the New 52 reboot where he becomes and abusive father for ransom spurts. Because of that, I think it’s so valid to focus on stories you like and ignore when those characters do something you feel is out of character. So yeah. Fuck it. Take texts from your own perspective. Throw out parts you don’t like. Who’s gonna stop you??
anyone who wants to hold a gun to your head and demand you analyze media in the exact correct way is also probably a person who isn't very good at analyzing media.
As someone who is part of many fandoms that ignore/rewrite chunks of "canon" pretty consistently I see nothing wrong with ignoring the parts you don't like as long as you are not a jerk to people who do like those parts.
Agreed. Making an analysis on an isolated part of a whole work doesn't make that analysis invalid (differentiating well intended analysis from bad faith or otherwise incompetent judgements, of course). Drawing meaning from parts of a work you find meaningful just makes sense. If you don't find part of a work meaningful enough to include into your whole opinion of the show, then there's no one saying you have to. I wouldn't call Chunibyo a bad anime, I'd just say it had a bad second season. I think if a part of a work is removed enough from another in quality, context and meaning then that is warrant to treat it as a separate entity from the original
@@bareq99 How is that him being a jerk? Most of my favourite media is from some perspective trash. My fav games, movies, childhood cartoons, anime, porn, music. He does not imply malice (whether or not he is mentioning it with malice is unknowable to us rn).
Kind of reminds me of Madoka Magica; that magical girl series single-handedly responsible for the entire depression magical girl thing. Basically, it started with 12 episodes that ended cleanly. Sure, there were some items that could have been followed up on, but all in all it ended really well in a satisfactory manner. If you’ve watched it you know what I mean. However, there was a sequel movie made called Rebellion. And some people liked it, some people didn’t, and some others sorta liked it. Basically, it ruined the well-deserved happy ending and some people took issue with that. Honestly, I don’t like it but I also don’t dislike it. It didn’t hit as hard as the original. Honestly, I consider it unnecessary. I think this has to do with the Sequel Problem. Basically, it’s easy to mess up a sequel, or at the very least make a sequel that not every fan of the original likes. Honestly, I would prefer a version of Rebellion that didn’t focus on the main caste and instead focuses on the world post-episode 12. The MC’s story is done. Which is where a particular beloved (in a few niche circles) fanfic comes in. It’s called To the Stars. Honestly, I liked it better than Rebellion, but I’d be hard-pressed to call it good sequel material. Basically, it is worldbuilding focused and details the life of a magical girl centuries in the future. It doesn’t even focus on the original protagonists all that much (although they are featured). Or at least it doesn’t feel like it. Basically, it almost cheats the sequel problem using time as an excuse. This is most prevalent in the members of the original caste that remain. The few centuries of development resulted in purposeful characterization shift that masks any unintended shifts resulting from fanficing. And it also brings in something new- it explains and expands the magic system of the original into something more concrete. And it is also a sci-fi with a novel government system and tasty hard-sci-fi technology. And the fact that I don’t particularly care about the plot or any of the characters’ lives or plot helps. Now that this has devolved into advertising To the Stars, I’m going to say that Madoka’s original 12 episodes are much better. But I don’t think any expansion could top them. So I’m great full that To the Stars half-cheated on that! Here’s the link to it. archiveofourown.org/works/777002/chapters/1461984
"I don't know if I am right or not." The secret is that there is no "right or not" for you to be. Your videos are your own creation as much as the second season is theirs, and we as an audience can consume your work for what it is as much as for what the source material is.
Okay but for an objective critique there is definitely a right and wrong. I feel like the correct answer should be that no matter what it has to be included. But the most prevalent case of “this is bad and can’t be cannon” is Dragonball GT. That steaming pile of dogshit was so bad that the community didn’t view it as cannon and the creators didn’t care enough to make it cannon either. But then who’s to say you cannot include GT in a totally objective analysis is Dragon Ball in general? The whole discussion just makes you go hmm
@@albertoparolin7170 - It is fiction. It is as subjective as you want it to be. Which is the correct ending for "The butterfly effect"? The theatrical, or the director's cut? There is a science fiction IP known as Battletech. In the 90's, there was a short lived children's cartoon that was made. It was so silly and terrible that the owners of the IP said it was cannon... as in, it was an in universe propaganda cartoon that exists, but it's stories are not cannon in terms of what really happened. Is Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic cannon? Disney says no, but who are they to decide? Just because they gave an old money a bunch of money, do they get to decide that the Star Wars stories grew up with and shaped my vision of the franchise suddenly don't count? Why? The truth is that cannon in and of itself is stupid bull shit that people put too much meaning into. Do you enjoy the art? If so, keep enjoying it. If only parts, then enjoy those parts. If not at all, then move on to something which brings you joy.
@@vianabdullah2837 a lot, but the most notable things are that the main character gave up his powers Superman 2 style for a big chunk of it, then the primary love interest said that she's not interested in him now that he doesn't have powers, and at the very end he gets back his powers exposes his secret identity and gets together with the primary love interest.
I went to college for music. In music school, we would often analyze a movement of a symphony without analyzing the whole thing. If you said "I think this movement has a story to tell that is independent of the rest of the piece," your professor wouldn't say "that's wrong, it's only valuable in context," they'd be excited to hear what you have to say about the movement, as long as you keep in mind that the movement may mean something different in the context of the whole symphony. I believe there is nothing wrong with analyzing a portion of a show, as long as you acknowledge that the other portion does exist and is the product of the hard work of professionals as much as the first portion is. And when there are changes in creator, gaps of time between the creation of the parts of a work, and so on, analyzing each section on its own can be absolutely VITAL to understanding the artwork's meaning.
Honestly, as someone who has descended into the media trash pile over the course of quarantine. I think anything you tell yourself that increases your enjoyment of a work is fair game. If you can enjoy a series by skipping through half of it, ignoring the plot, and zeroing in on subtext and metatext that might not even be there, more power to you!
Probably the most topical you’ve put out a video XD Personally I feel that while one must agknowledge that additional work exists as an analyst, one can also analyze subsections of a work as divorced from their whole. Like reviewing a book without reviewing the whole series, or like your one frame metatextual analysis of oh maidens. One can look at the themes of a single season of a show if they’re divergent enough from the rest with the qualification that they are doing so expressed up front. For example, in Kenichi mightiest disciple, the first selection of major arcs occur within the bounds of a high school, while afterward it escalates to being pure martial arts drama While both sections of the story are good, this results in very different tones and themes, and thus if you intended to analyze this, you would not be completely unreasonable to want to analyze that first section as separate from what came after
Yes, this! It's perfectly fine to analyze just a piece of the work, even through a subjective lens (like someone who watches one clip of a show and decides they don't like it), as long as you're not claiming it's an analysis of the entire thing. What matters most in an analysis is the viewpoint and the arguments being presented, not how much content it covers.
This Is Eloquently Put. It can be a fickle process, Because to me it seems that once you get to a certain point the Impact a single Scene or Ark has is reliant on the framework set up by the previous Ark (Assuming we aren't talking about the Beginning of the story) and can have a Potent Impact Elevating the Score on the Whole Analysis. For Instance When people think about FMA:Brotherhood And Specifically Shou Tucker, Colonel Hughes, And Greed/Ling who was sadly not in Original FMA. My point Being if Your invested enough in a certain point of the Story, That will be what you refer back to When you are deciding on It's Analysis as a whole. Investment Increases the more time you spend analyzing a piece, which will result in a feedback Loop. Watching Jujitsu Kaisen right Now and DAMN! Is everyone using the Yuta-pon Cubes now?
@@GhostlyNomad130 Agreed, context defines a moment greatly, but one can still decide whether they wish to include context retroactively to future events, and some scenes can be analyzed alone in an otherwise irrelevant work. the key is to define your terms at the start
Can You Ignore a Bad Second Season? Yes, just like I ignore my bad second son. (If you're reading this, Charles, your mother and I are still very disappointed in you.)
That really depends. You can pretend the bad second season doesn't exist, but then you just have a first season that will always remain unfinished with no ending.
I'd rather that, tbh. If you think about it the people who decide what is canon and what isn't are the fans. If we all collectively decide to ignore season 2 then it will be buried with time never to be seen again.
@@EarlyOwOwl yes, but then you still have an unfinished story with no possibility of a conclusion unless you read the Manga, which can also have a dumpster fire ending.
@@kingdomkey63 Less of a dumpster fire and more of a kitchen towel got caught on fire and is unusable, but you're still fine and the kitchen is still fine. Just smells a little acrid.
@@kingdomkey63 The manga, which I have not personally read, apparently has a very rushed ending. But there's still like another 4 - 5 anime seasons worth of story that could have been adapted before that ending would have happened.
I love it when people stitch together completely detached pieces and analyse them together, so the list of ridiculous examples you gave at the end honestly made me exited. Analyse whatever parts of artworks intrigue you, whether it's just the music or the visuals or a single episode or a single season.
Fiction is made up, there is no rules. Analysis how you want. Ignore what you want, include what you want. Palpatine never returned and Rey is a nobody.
Love Chunibyo is gunna be the fourth time I’ll be watching a show because of explanation point. Watamote hit way too close to home, happy sugar life was happy sugar life, and rezero was pretty great Edit: also sao abridged (if it counts) was stellar
@@ExplanationPointAnime I'm surprised you didn't like the movie. It's the highest rated on MAL (8.15) out of all the animated Chuunibyou works. I"d like to know why. Also, considering I never viewed the show that deeply beyond a fun, comfy romance, I thought both seasons were equally "good", not one better than the other. Though I did moderately enjoy it, I wasn't extremely invested that I would be a fanatic about it (even if there were hints of bigger themes), *_so my standpoint may not hold much ground or credibility so take it with a grain of salt._* Granted, it was the 3rd or 4th slice of life I'd seen at that time. Either way, I'm curious to know why you think that (S1 at least).
@@lan6005 In my opinion the movie is slightly better, than the unnecessary, and bad S2. S2 wouldn't have been bad if it wasn't a continuation, but a reboot, but it was a continuation and failed miserably in that respect. To be honest I didn't really like the movie and I agree with Explanation Point, that the first season was finished and said what it wanted. The movie doesn't add anything to Season one and even invalidates it. Its high MAL score is simply due to the fact, that the first season is very popular and everybody saw it (many who doesn't like such shows), while the movie was only watched by hardcore fans (1/6 the people of S1), so their average rating would be higher anyway. The first season is simply very underrated due to its high popularity, and the movie is very overrated due to only hardcore fans and completionists watched it (mostly of course).
Not sure if this is just an April Fools thing, but I’m gonna engage anyway. My view comes down to the point of analysis, which to me has always been about taking lessons from media that we can apply to our life. In that case it doesn’t actually matter what you are analyzing, as long as you can draw a worthwhile conclusion from it. So in my mind it’s perfectly fine to say “here are some lessons I took from Chunibyo, but I’m ignoring the second season because it invalidates those lessons.” This also means there’s no reason not to ignore a movie or episode or line if it again invalidates a worthwhile lesson. On a less realistic scale this does mean that you can string together completely unrelated pieces of media if it gives you something worthwhile to say.
I think you're getting too focused on what counts as the "objective" work when analyzing it. For your example of a book series changing authors, who says the work of THAT second author is part of "the work"? If I were to create my own continuation of the series from the same point in time that the second author started theirs, what makes that second author's work "official" while my work isn't? Sure, if the original author officially hands off the series to that second author, that's tough to argue against, but what if it's a matter of the original author suddenly dying and it's their ESTATE handing off ownership of the series? What if it's an issue of IP ownership rights getting passed around because of other legal shenanigans? Why should IP ownership rights be the arbiter of what counts as canon? You seem to be torn up on whether your analysis about a work is "valid" if it doesn't take into consideration the work as a whole, but "the work as a whole" is an inherently nebulous concept. It's a bad premise to work from. What if a work is unexpectedly continued after you release an analysis of it? Does that make your analysis invalid? As another example, say a light novel or manga gets multiple anime adaptations, but those anime adaptations have slight variations that contradict each other. How can you critique "the work as a whole" when "the work as a whole" isn't even consistent with itself? The answer is that every single analysis of every work contains SOME limitation of scope, even if it's implicit. I mean, an analysis of any series is inherently only an analysis of the series as it existed up until the point the analysis was released, right? You can't claim to know when a series is "done". For the earlier example of multiple contradictory anime adaptations, you might have to be explicit about which particular adaptation you're referring to in your analysis, but that doesn't mean it's not a "true" analysis of the work. After all, "the work" (referring to both adaptations) contradicts itself, and even if you try to include the changes in the adaptations in your analysis, that's kind of stepping outside of "the work" itself and instead analyzing how different people tried to adapt the source material. If you're including that, then why not include how factors in the different creators' lives influenced their adaptations of the source material? What about the differences in culture between the dates when the different adaptations were made, if that had influence on their differences? What if the first adaptation had an influence on culture that then influenced aspects of the second adaptation? Do you need to include that in your analysis for it to be valid? Is your analysis invalid if it doesn't include all that? There really is no limit on scope. TL;DR: It's literally impossible to analyze "the entirety" of a work, and the easiest example of this is that a work can always be continued after you make your analysis, changing what "the entirety" is. Since there is always some limitation of scope in your analysis, you can set that limitation of scope wherever you want. People might not agree with your limitation of scope (e.g. only cutting out a single line of dialogue) or otherwise find your scope bizarre, but that doesn't make your analysis incorrect or invalid. So yes, you CAN ignore a bad second season. You should probably be explicit about your doing, so, though, otherwise it'll be confusing for your audience.
Here's my solution: When you remove some part of a work in order to improve it, you are writing fan fiction. Let's call it "subtractive fan fiction", to distinguish it from the other types of fan fiction ("additive", where you provide additional stories which build on and support established cannon, and "transformative", which would be your coffee shop AUs and the like)
I actually liked the second season of chuunibyuo lmao, I can see why you got frustrated with it and I don’t blame anyone at all, there’s definitely a big regression in everyone’s development, but I was just happy to be able to hear more of Rikkas cute sounds lol. That’s all, love you vids man! (Scum’s wish episode when?)
I remember liking it for what I thought were objective reasons I liked it less for sure, but nothing offended me so much as to say it undid everything and was a thoughtless cash grab I still gave it an 8/10 on first veiwing Eh. Seeing as how the first season is one of my all time favorites, I'm sure I'll come back to it and review later
The answer is as simple as it is unsatisfying: for a long enough work, there is more than one version of the work that can be judged. There is the work in its totality (hypothetical show seasons 1 + 2) and there is the story as it proceeds up until it reaches an ending. Important to note here: AN ending. Not THE ending. THE ending is the one that exists at the end of the show in its totality, but before that are probably at least a few other points in the story where you could call the story done enough to jump off, never watch/read any more of it, and feel satisfied with the conclusion you got. This is especially true in long running works that introduce new problems to plague the characters rather than having a single monolithic plotline that extends from start to finish. Like a set of Russian nesting dolls, you have complete stories inside of the complete story. Ideally, they are all painted very well. But just because the smaller nesting dolls are painted very well doesn't mean the outermost and largest doll is as good, or vice versa. Some stories have weak beginnings but amazing endings. Some have amazing starts but awful finishes. You should recognize that the largest doll does exist, but if it looks like crap you can always just discard it and instead focus on the largest version of the doll that does look good and have that be the one that you put on display. If season 5 ruins the dish, an analysis of seasons 1-4 and an analysis of seasons 1-5 are essentially reviewing *different stories*, in the same way that a 4 nested doll that looks good and a 5 nested doll that looks like crap (but contains the good 4 nested doll within it) are different products and would be judged differently.
But we can point to one bad episode and ignore it. It's called "the Divide" from Avatar the Last Airbender. Also I am spending my time and money to consume this media, so I get to do whatever I want with it.
@@barbaros99 It demonstrates Aang's role as mediator, and also connects with the central themes of the show. The way to make things better is not to try and beat everyone else, but to work together.
I'm one of those people who actually liked Season 2. The character regression did suck but I was satisfied seeing the characters interacting again in new or old ways. I wasn't a fan of the cliffhanger ending though. The movie rectified it but the damage had already been done for some time.
The ending was the only part of S2 that stood out to me. It was like an acknowledgement that creators knew that everything I had just watched was a waste of time, and I appreciated that.
Yeah Chunibyo was always something I watched kinda just for slice of life shenanigans, so I enjoyed season 2 as well. Probably wouldn’t if I rewatched it more critically.
Yeah, while there were several issues with the second season (the most notable being the character regression for several key characters), I think the second season *did* advance some of the character a bit, in that it posed an external challenge to Rikka's relationship with Yuuta, and helped push Yuuta to commit to a relationship that he was hesitant on how to proceed with. Would I have liked it to have paid off with the ending? Yes. But the ending was still fairly decent payoff when paired with the *eventual* payoff in the movie, and I think there's something to be said for considering S2 + the Movie as a unified arc centered on Yuuta & Rikka's relationship, rather than two seperate arcs like S1 and S2.
Yeah, while there were several issues with the second season (the most notable being the character regression for several key characters), I think the second season *did* advance some of the character a bit, in that it posed an external challenge to Rikka's relationship with Yuuta, and helped push Yuuta to commit to a relationship that he was hesitant on how to proceed with. Would I have liked it to have paid off with the ending? Yes. But the ending was still fairly decent payoff when paired with the *eventual* payoff in the movie, and I think there's something to be said for considering S2 + the Movie as a unified arc centered on Yuuta & Rikka's relationship, rather than two seperate arcs like S1 and S2.
Well, if you can do a valid analysis of a show that isn’t complete yet, I don’t see why you can’t ignore second seasons. When you analyze the Promised Neverland season 1 before season 2 releases (assuming you haven’t read the manga), there is an understanding that you’re analyzing the story *as it is right now.* I think you could still do that after a second season releases, as long as you add the qualifier that you’re analyzing the story *as it was in season 1.* And if nobody’s watching season 2 anyway, that argument has value to a lot of people, as compared to an argument where you disregard a single line or episode, which a lot less people are going to be on board with pretending doesn’t exist. Right? I don’t know. You’re right, it’s definitely a tricky issue.
The first bit had more weight. Especially since "review of season 1" already implies the seperation. And reviewing seperate seasons or books is common, since even if it is all out when you make the review, doing each seperate "chunk" of work can still make sense. If you take it further, even episode by episode reviews makes sense since that is also a discrete presentation of the work. But following episodes are then still presented with the previous episodes as happening, so you cannot ignore them, even if you can reccomend a personal taste that certain bits are better skipped or would have been better cut. Line by line is also where it drastically shifts into a personal revisionism.
I think it’s useful to analyze works as complete pieces of media as they were presented. For example: If you’d made the video on season 1 prior to season 2 airing, would you be wrong? No. You are analyzing a complete work (one season) to which you had no reason to believe would get a second work. This goes for a lot of books and movies, too, imo. Look at what is presented to be a complete story. There’s a reason people tend to ignore sequels to movies... We culturally understand a movie should be a complete entertainment experience due to how long it takes to create one. That’s where I sit on this. 🤷♂️ Analyze the work as it is presented.
Depends, can you say most any filler is “cannon” it doesn’t interact with the rest of the story, and it lives in its own bubble of consequence. Therefore I can’t say a cash grab that has little to do with the actual story and is so clearly removed from over all is cannon, simply because it doesn’t interact with the story and it seems to be filler and removed from consequence.
Sure you can ignore entire episodes and seasons if they're devastating to your case. SAO fans do that all the time to ignore how huge a hack writer Reki Kawahara has, is and always will be.
as a fellow Sao fan, in my exact, definitive, faultless and objective opinion, Sao is a single episode ova, with three spin offs, GGO, Rosario, and something witty.
I feel like, as long as you're clear over what portion and components of a work you're analyzing, be it half of it, all of it, how it functions as an adaptation of its source material, it's completely valid to analyse whatever you want.
I think you touched on very well yourself, if we are able to derive meaning from anything we want at all we should just as simply disregard, or rather take time to explore and specifically point out the failings of a work at our leisure. As easily as somebody can ramble about a single shot for a whole video finding so many things to talk about and expand a single precious moments into everything it represents, we can take an entire season and crunch it down and say "well that sure happened, what a shame, let's return to the meaningful conversations shall we?"
This reminds of of some thoughts I have, when Haruhi Suzumiya was first released it was regarded as a novel and good work but now a days the opinion of the show is low. I was going to write more but realize its going to take too long to write.
I don't think it is possible to *ignore* but it is possible to *forget*. I did this with the second season of Planetes. I made myself deliberately forget it. There is a real danger though. Years later I watched it again thinking it was my first time. So I got all the anguish of experiencing a bad second season twice.
this is a really great and thought-provoking video! i almost feel bad for expecting it to be a prank. almost. now i'm gonna go rewatch your hunter-hunter video and pretend to understand french.
You can if you were in the Black Butler fandom! Fuck that second season and all it stands for, so we just gonna pretend it never happened and they didn't fundementally screw up the timeline of events. Edit: how dare you make me look up whether Bisco Hatori died??? (spoiler: she's not)
About chuunibyou's second season; while it does not completely redeem it, the movie Take On Me recontextualises a lot of Rikka's actions and mental state throughout, making rewatches a lot less painful, -even if it ruins it in the after credits scene god f*cking d*mnit Kyoani-
Speaking as someone with no familiarity with "Love, Chunibyo, and other Delusions" but a moderate grasp on critique, I'd say that a case can be made to discount a work from critical canon through incongruities. Does the portion of work under scrutiny do enough that contradicts its prior entries to prove that it doesn't care about what came before? You mentioned that they completely flipped the race of one of the characters for no discernable reason. That tells me in no uncertain terms that season two does not care about what was established or executed on in the first season. If it missed blindingly obvious surface level details, how can anything it says beneath the skin be regarded as anything but suspect? You can tangibly prove that season two is a misfit just like you can tangibly prove any other point. I'd say you at least laid the groundwork for that very case right here. Suppose, though, that you make such a call and people disagree. That's the language of ongoing critique in a nutshell. Heck, it's the execution of an idea that you, implicitly or not, put forward in this case. Even if someone is right once, it does not mean they will always be right. Season one was right, but season two was wrong, in really basic terms. Even if it ends up that you were mistaken, you still prove your overarching point as feasible with yourself as the model. You have contributed, however minutely, to the discussion no matter what. And I'd argue further that, even if you were wrong that one time, no one whose opinion is worth much would hold it against you in the long run. Calling part of a cartoon bad is not worth a grudge to any reasonable person. At worst, it's a bump in the road with a few good lessons on wearing your seatbelt.
I'm typing up a whole damn thesis paper on the impossibility of ignoring all context and how this spiral of thought is the only conclusion when you try, only to then see the post date. This is a comment I now make out of a shame to admit I was got.
I'm a bit confused about what you specifically mean at 7:28 when touching upon "we only have 'the work'." Obviously extratextual things don't relate to it and cant build up or bring down the quality of the story (arguably unless the work alludes to another work) but culture not having any effect? Culture is a heavy influencing factor in ANY aspect of life let alone literature. If I didn't know about Kintsugi then Kylo Ren's helmet just looks cool to me and that's fine, but to claim the cultural significance of Kintsugi can't be acknowledged in the film means that it IS just a cool helmet without any metaphorical depth and leans towards the slippery slope into the "overthinking things" idiocy. If there's a story that is full of Deus Ex Machinas and hamfisted morals, modern literature practice states it's probably a terrible tale but to someone who's culture is heavily theistic it could be seen as spectacular. Which also factors somewhat into public perception and what the majority of the modern world deems as a story worth telling? But I'm sure that this is me stretching your statement like fresh can of silly putty and I've now gotten it smothered all over the carpet that is "the point you are actually trying to make."
Great video! I was...sad with the second season of The Promised Neverland, to say the least. Was not expecting the Wheel of Time reference here, love the series!
I mean, for promised Neverland we have the actual story, it's kind of like a Fullmetal Alchemist vs Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood. The canon ending is the brotherhood one. You could still analyze the original anime independently, but it's seperate from the rest of Fullmetal Alchemist.
I see art as a dialogue between the work and the audience, if a person decides to ignore a part of said work for whatever reason then who is to say that person is wrong, if a tree falls in the forest does it make a sound? if everyone acts like the tsukihime anime doesn't exist then it might as well not.
This reminded me a lot of the stuff you said about french frozen being a different work, and I think you can sort of apply a similar idea here. Like, season 1 by itself is a work, season 1 and 2 together is a different work. You can include or exclude whatever you like in order to make something with a different meaning, but in the instance of "season 2 bad", it's very easy to share that season-1-only work and its meaning with others since the cutoff is clear and easy. Removing episodes or lines, or remixing whatever you like is all good as far as making your own art to enjoy, but the question is whether others can or would join you in the audience of that work you've constructed.
The Star Wars fan in me is getting a lot from this video. :edit: Also, Community is an interesting case study (I think). You have the original creator of season 1-3 leaving; season 4 under a new creative team is seen as relatively bad by the fan base; original creator comes back for season 5 and declares season 4 to be the result of a gas leak. It's not really ignored, but it's definitely acknowledged in universe as a bad time.
Hearing how crisp your voice is in this video compared to your old videos is so satisfying to my ears, and my audiophile soul It's so clean, there's a little bleed and some clicking but there's no background noise anymore, and the bleed doesn't take away from the content in any way
I'll be honest, I think that you CAN and also SHOULD ignore bad episodes and seasons when the rest of the show as a whole can still work without them. And if the show, anime, book or comic can't work without the bad parts, then that just means the work itself is not that good to begin with.
Comment for the algorithm! Also I would say that there is nothing wrong with doing literary analysis on a piece of work in chunks, that is to say since the first season of Chuunibyou tells a complete a seemingly contained story or arc there is nothing wrong with analyzing that story regardless of whether any additional stories exists after or before that story. While later stories may recontextualize the earlier portrayals of characters I would say that the earlier analysis still has value since it draws on and informs the understanding people have of the text at that point in the text.
dude last night i had an entire dream that u uploaded another video and my brain went so far as to completely make up clips and synopsises for anime that dont exist and mimicing ur editing style please come back
As an example, I've always had this struggle with Wonder Woman (2017). Its overall value aside, I remember really enjoying it and its message about how humanity is complicated and how events can unfold irrationally. Diana's naivete on human kindess ultimately being unraveled when the War goes on despite her having beaten the apparent Ares, God of War, as she set out to do from the start of the film gave me such a nice feeling that I wasn't expecting from "just another superhero film." I describe the movie this way, but in reality, there's 20 more minutes or so wherein it's revealed Ares is actually a different person and he *is* actually the root of all evil, and his defeat leads to everyone hugging and the War ending. To this day, I'm so baffled by their trying to have their cake and eat it too when the final product could have been so much more poignant. Now, can I just ignore said last 20 minutes and pretend that the overall movie was good? For my own sake, I've done just that. I try to remember the movie fondly, without letting the real ending linger in my mind. But when it comes to ever recommending the movie, I typically opt against it, because I understand that others will not necessarily share my headcanon. It's the same with the Machete Order in Star Wars: The proposal is ultimately a headcanon that its creator thought best consolidated Episodes I-VI into a single experience despite outright cutting I due to its argued pointlessness. Is it objectively the right way to watch these movies? Almost certainly not, but it doesn't have to be. The point is, someone derived meaning from a piece of media by means of exclusion, which has its merit, even if there are those who didn't notice or who outright enjoyed what was excluded. Wonder Woman (2017) had a neat message at its core and defined my understanding of the character as a hopeful badass going forward, even if to appreciate that, I feel compelled to ignore the parts I think were unnecessary.
i still love this video so much. like, hell yeah, my favorite creators don't have all the answers. they trust me to use my own knowledge and experience to navigate this big bright beautiful world
I would say that if a text contradicts itself, then for us to make any truth claims about what the text says, we must choose to resolve that contradiction. If for example the "hey actually guys" scenario you outline at 5:12 happened, we would have two halves of a show that argue contradictory claims. This forces logical analysis of TPN into one of two frameworks: either we presuppose season 1's claim is true, and season 2's claim is false, or vice versa. Then we can complete separate analyses for each framework.
It's good to scream into the void occasionally! I vividly remember having feelings on some series of 'Watch until this point, then write fanfiction for the remainder and it will be better than the official content.' I have accepted this to the point that I no longer remember the original series in question that made me start that thought, it's entirely possible that it was Naruto, but the decision was made with the subjective thought of 'I gained more from this series in it's incomplete state and decided to fill in the blanks myself to explore those thoughts.'
i havent tested it out yet but ive conceived the hypothetical ideal Naruto viewing order of "watch all of Part 1 minus filler, the Gaara Rescue, Hidan, and Pain arcs from Shippuden, and then pretend that after Sasuke leaves the village he just stops existing in the story"
In the sense that literary analysis can be focused down to a single instance of "text" i feel like we can look at single seasons/storylines/periods of work in an anime as a text. You can see meaning and make connections in a single season that stand as valid interpretations of the art as it is perceived. No law of literary analysis demands a work be "whole or complete". The demand for familiarity is an oft cited reason Superheroes and comic books get rebooted and extended long past their natural conclusion, but nobody says you can't close read the killing joke because BVS exists somewhere. Stories are by their nature self contained and part of a larger canon.
As someone who makes things, it's scary to think that there's a possibility that someone else could drag my work through the mud after I'm dead, and then have that reflect on what made in the first place.
I take two main factors into account when deciding whether to ignore part of a work or not. The first is when it was made relative to the rest of the work. If it's in the middle I can't really ignore it, but if it's after then I'm much more likely to be able to. And there are even some cases where it comes before that I can ignore, whether it's deeming it to be stumbling before hitting its stride, or because it's some sort of prototype. That one's a very case-by-case basis, and I wouldn't get far trying to generalise. The second is if/how it contradicts the previously established story. Even if it continues something I think shouldn't have been continued it's difficult to ignore if it stays consistent to what came before. However when it does something like to trying to break its own world, such as by having a bad guy using powers that are explicitly supposed to be unable to provide immortality despite that being what the user seeks as a great irony coming back from the dead (totally not throwing shade here *cough cough*), then I can probably ignore it. There are other potential factors too, like if it's an adaptation straying from its source material, or if it's overwriting things that were previously canon, especially when taken over by someone else, but these are all far more minor and situational. So for Chuunibyo in particular while I wouldn't choose to ignore the second season, I'd say you can, especially if you're not also looking at the movie. Treating a first season as a self-contained work is pretty much fine in my books.
I mean, when you evaluate a series you take for yourself what is important and what is not. Most fictional media is incomplete or have shitty endings, the few that have a closure may get unwanted sequels or remakes. Sometimes even if a series is brilliant, if the viewer is not in the right mood he could skip the message, sometimes we’re not capable of getting it, sometimes we’re trying too hard get them. If you already have a good impression of what you’re watching you’ll enjoy it even more and tend to focus on the good side, maybe even skipping or ignoring the ugliness. It’s difficult to draw that line, knowing when to part ways with something you love is what’s really important for me.
I too enjoy the screaming into the void. I bet the void enjoy listening to your videos tho. I couldn't help but think of one anime while watching this video. Looking at you SAO season 1
For me, it's something like, going outside to enjoy a nice sunny day. You can enjoy a lot about it- but your underwear might be bunched up wrong, or you stub your toe walking outside to enjoy the outdoors, but you can ignore those things I believe a similar thing applies to things you enjoy. Also, there are people who straight up hate a series, but still watch it for their characters. Or hate the characters, but want to know how the series goes/ends. Canon is a garden that you can take what you like from. or alternatively, set it on fire.
God, 1. I love the way you explain things, it's ingenious and 2. The best part if this video is that literally nothing happened. We started at a point and took 20 minutes just to end at the same point lol
god i felt this video so hard when I was younger I was very staunchly "everything is canon including this thing the author said six years before the work was published" but in works like Star Wars or comic books where the text contradicts itself that got really confusing really quick, so I switched to more of a "it's my media experience so I get to choose the canon" mindset, which I'm also hesitant about, because like... am I allowed to do that? It also gets tricky when we're talking about franchises when there's multiple interpretations and a lot of canon and... I think at the end of the day there's a difference between analysis and personal consumption/enjoyment, and that in the case of analysis you can analyze select sections as a self-contained story with the simple disclaimer "i'm only analyzing the first season", full stop. Like, yes, you could only hold Brandon Sanderson's works as canon and not Robert Jordans if you wanted to, if the point of your analysis was to analyze those parts. Also, it gets tricky when something is broken into multiple parts, like multiple seasons or volumes, because while they do relate to each other and the audience understands they are taking place in the same reality they are technically all separate entities. The bottom line being idk where I'm going with this but it's interesting to think about and sometimes you need to chop certain things out of your mental canon in order to have a more enjoyable or cohesive experience. Is that technically "correct"? No, but I'm doing it anyway
That sentiment of "I love it but give it 7/10 but love it anyway" is how I feel about Log Horizon season 2. Yeah, it's not as good as the first season, but it's still got great characters doing cool things. It had two complete arcs covering both raiding (where Akatsuki plays the part highlighting the perceived gulf between raiders and ordinary players, an important theme to MMOs that never really gets covered elsewhere and where Silver Sword really highlights the 'bang your head against the skill and/or gear wall until the boss dies' mentality of actual raiders) and adventuring - since our favorite top tier players are already max level, the author had to use the B-team. It worked well in their favor as they got to be better fleshed out as a result of the increased screentime, even though it was less clever and calculating than the first season, since Minori is no Shiroe. It then concludes with that epic battle to SHOW what they TOLD us earlier in the season about the world still changing - this is not a static world like a computer game would largely be - and serve as a neat denouement pulling the earlier plot threads all together, but dangling Kanami as a motivator for Shiroe and Crusty as a next season plot hook. And, I'm on the "you can like a thing while glossing over the blemishes" side because everything has blemishes - Avatar the Last Airbender has "The Great Divide" for one, and that godawful M. Night movie that, by your standards of including stuff by different teams, counts. As far as glossing over scenes or even individual lines... fan ships do that all the time, so it is something casual fans can get away with, but professional reviewers are obligated - and hardcore fans obsess - over including them for the sake of completeness. Professionals are allowed to have opinions, though. It comes down to pointing out that "yes this exists" then expounding on why it doesn't tarnish the rest of the package in your opinion.
Getting some *weird* parallels with the debate around 'Mediterranean' as a category in the study of history. Not sure why I wanted to mention that besides it being interesting!
This completely lack of final point and direction is kinda beautiful to watch. Like a forest fire, growing larger and larger until there is no more forest, only fire. It's a really good question too!! Like... you can think of the inverse situation (kinda) with FMA and FMA Brotherhood. FMAB is closer to the manga but the first FMA still had it's own story and it's own moments and it's own canon.
