High Guardian Spice a year later 

Still can't get over the fact that this show came out a year ago. It feels like yesterday when I saw people laughing at the PNG bread XD

“Her mother is dead, but not really and gave her a magic sword and she wants to be a superhero” applies to Steven universe so strongly and I can’t help but feel like that’s not a coincidence

A whole year and we still have no idea what a guardian is supposed to be

One year later, and the greatest achievement for a show that was bad "due to budget" was a host of videos taking the piss out of it.

The reason why they let Parsley hurt a student and not Snap Dragon is because Parsley made it look like an accident. You gotta be able to cover your tracks in High Guardian Accademy.

This show is the personification of “Our expectations were low BUT HOLY SHIT”

paraphrasing what Mr Wilson once said: "Sometimes, there's more to say about a cartoon that tried to do something and failed miserably than just a good cartoon."

I can't believe it's been a year since the incident that led to Rosemary asking if everything was a food in your comment section

Reminder that a four kids dub of Pokemon explained a Pokemon Master better than this show explained the concept of being a guardian

"Does HGA just leave powerful demon summoning rituals just lying around?" Dude, it's an established death trap that poisons its students on the first day of class; this is the most consistent thing in the show. Of course they do.

"The animation value is um, it's uh, it's animated?" Carriage from episode one: *Am I a joke to you?*

The absolute arrogance of the producers to say "it gives us a chance to do what other studios have forgotten to do" only for them up produce... This.

Dave a McDonald's chicken nugget is more organic than any relationship this show has

"Amaryllis's hair looks like a stingray." I think that was the point. At least I hope so.

I remember the time when it first came out, it was treated as if art had died that day. It became clear that this was basically the part where animation had become gentrified by corporations and exclusionary ideologies, and that people like me thought that animation (at least in the West) had died in a fiery wreck. It was no different in my art school here in France. The news about HGS became a wildfire that my fellow artists started questioning what Western animation had truly become. I even recall my animation instructor blurted in a barrage of French profanities after me and my friend showed the poor writing, shoddy animation work and horrendous characterization of High Guardian Spice after our class. My instructor then explained how Raye Rodriguez and his band of writers were spineless and egotistical people who never cared to make animation for the sake of telling a good story, rather to spread ideas that we don't even believe in. At the end, he encouraged me and my friend to *make something better than High Guardian Spice, because he believes that there are more better stories out there that needed to be told.* For me as a person and an artist, I may be already infamous for commenting a lot on HGS commentary videos made by Guardian HQ and LobsterHero about my analysis of the show, going as far as comparing the technicalities of HGS to Wakfu, a better animated show made in my native country, that had stellar worldbuilding, good characterization and a better written antagonist with clear intentions, but that's just how I view this show from my perspective. It is a show that is so ridden with errors that it can no longer be saved by rewrites, and that we can even write stories better than what Raye Rodriguez wasted for nearly 10 years developing this show.

I ultimately feel bad for the people who had high hopes for the show. And I know the exist, they were on the subreddit. Because they actually cared and went against the stream to hope it was good. Just for it to suck. And seriously, to the maybe two people saying how the show is amazing and better than anything else in media, I think you need a doctor's appointment.

"Mature product looking and feeling like the one made for children" can be super good if done right. Like, "Made in Abyss" just nailed the perfect balance between adventurous and silly vibe and full-on body horror. I think HGS just tried to do something like that but failed miserably

The whole world shifted into the dark timeline after high guardian spice

I think my favorite part of this show that _isn't_ its use as a teaching tool for how NOT to execute and publish your passion project, is some of the character designs. The main 4, Amaryllis, Snapdragon, and Olive especially all have distinct hair and outfits that fit them, with good color pallette choices. I have legitimately considered drawing them despite never having actually watched HGS. Granted, I personally enjoy cartoonish designs. _(Also, as a Splatoon fan, I think calling Amaryllis' hair a sting ray should be taken as a compliment.)_

Can we even call Rosemary the main character? She has no story to tell. The only significant detail about her is that she misses her mom - but this doesn’t affect what little plot we get. Rose makes no attempt to track her mother down. The only thing she ever does strive for us to become a guardian, whatever that means. It’s the same goal her three cohorts have, but the three of them all have stories of their own on the side - terrible stories, yes, but at least they ARE stories. Rosemary is just a tagalong in her own show.

thyme should've been the main character and the plot should've focused on the rot and the bad guys by at least episode two

there's a special place in my heart for this garbage series because it's the first show me and my best friend watched together over video call, and by proxy the first time I've spoken to them verbally after three years of texting We're still watching garbage and playing games together to this day. I can't believe it's a year old already to be honest happy birthday, high guardian spice. if the show were a person I'd push them down a flight of stairs

This is a whole-ass 30 minutes video review and it feels like it didn't even scratched a surface, holy shit. I love the HGS actually. It's like a good lesson in "What things you shouldn't do". It is unironically inspiring

The worst sin of this show is, it's so horrible that we won't ever see new scenes of Amaryllis again.

You always choose the most nostalgic music for the background lol, I love it

Reviewing it now is like beating the guy who's beating the dead horse. KEEP IT UP. DO NOT LET THIS TRAGEDY BE FORGOTTEN.

It's been a whole year and STILL nothing about a season 2, good.

There was a review for the show I saw that said "the reason why Rosemary brings up her mom so much is cuz she doesn't have a real personality"

I actually adore this show, explicitly because it is so bad. While we did technically get a far more awful show just a few months later in the form of Santa, Inc., that one actually had at least a few bits of redemption, such as beautiful stop-motion. But HGS? It's almost an actual art. Literally none of this show was done correctly and exactly none of it is even memorable save for the simple fact it is _just so perfectly bad._ The Perfect Poster-Child of what not to do, and I can appreciate that.

Speaking of the animation, it reminds me of RWBY season 1 when they didn't have the budget for background characters so they just made them all silhouettes. except that was in 2013 and they were basically an indie studio back then so they had an excuse.

FOOD REVIEW sleep 10/10

Good character design is based on silhouette, exaggeration, and readability; the best character designs are ones that can be recognised just by silhouette alone, exaggerated features like big noses or noodle bodies, and how well the design communicates who the character is. Link from Twilight Princess and Link from Wind Waker are good examples - Twilight Princess Link has very sharp features, like the shape of his eyes and his pointed nose and chin, while his eyebrows sit low over his eyes in an almost permanent frown, and his iteration of the hero's tunic has chainmail underneath it; this all communicates just how dangerous he can be and how familiar he is with violence (most of the moves he learns from the shade are just brutal, like the helmsplitter or the finisher on a prone enemy). Wind Waker Link, on the other hand, has a big round head on a little body and is very cute, while still keeping the Link frown; still dangerous, but also a baby bean who goes home to grandmother for soup. Both are easily recognisable from their silhouettes. So I wouldn't say High Guardian Spice has especially bad character design, at least not from what I've seen, but it doesn't do anything well either. Even then, though, the teachers are too baby-faced for me to see them as adults and all the students just look like thirteen year olds to three year olds, but that might just be me since I don't know or care how old they're supposed to be.

I'm still dying to know what Pig-tail Orange hair girl's name is. She's truly an engima considering how often she shows up yet never does anything.

One year ago, a certain someone asked if sleep was a food

I cannot hear the theme song without wishing it was the Mentos song. Same thing for the end credits song. I will only listen to Reeses Puffs

If I remember, in Episode 6, Parsley wanted to bring Parnell to first place in the dumb obstacle course because she thought he merited it more, but Hakone didn’t really care and wouldn’t change their ranking. (Another point on negligent asshole teachers.) The only exception is if she caused grievous bodily harm to another contestant; then she’d get the boot. So, there’s still some motivation behind why she crushed Aster’s foot, but it’s still extremely stupid. Not to mention that it highlights how bad the teachers are not only for ignoring to their students, but letting them get away with harming others because “haha she listened to my advice and actually did it. Props to her” which… no. She wouldn’t have done it if you had listened to her.

I have watched an unhealthy amount of High Guardian Spice review videos and it took THIS VIDEO for me to actually find out about what the plot is supposed to be. I had never heard the words "Rot" or "Triumvirate" until now, and I think that's everything you need to know about how this show handles its "plot".

I'm not sure If this show coming out on my birthday is a curse or a blessing. Most likely a curse.

I actually like slime boy and his voice acting a lot. He deserves a better show, honestly, he has such a jarring and unique performance. If that performance was given for a konosuba character I think it would work. I think the show had a lot of good ideas and fumbled most of them but the show is definitely better because slime boy is in it.

Can't believe it's been 1 year already

it still feels like yesterday when i went through the HGS fandom page and saw that Olive was voiced by sailor moon and hinata hyuga along with Olive's species being listed as 'catgirl'

It still such, don't get us wrong and wait till they "Attempt" to do Season 2.

as much as you hope they did, they did NOT pay for the stock image of the lamp post. when you buy images from stockphoto or other similar hosting sites, you are given a download of the image with the watermark removed in your purchase history. so they really did rip it straight from google.

Considering that this was loosely based on D&D the characters should have much better designs.

The best thing to come from this show is the small community built around its rotting corpse, including your abridged series.

Just finished watching C-Puff's videos on this show, thanks for the recommendation I enjoyed them

Guardian HQ: I misspelled Ray's name that one time. Me: I do it intentionally. Because autocorrect is an idiot.

Congrats. For all that's worth. Hope for another year more.

Happy High Guardian Spice-versary yalls!🥳🥳 Thanks to this show my life changed forever. Now for the video games that I want to make in the future I know that I can't not try when making stories, characters, worlds, and writing

There are a thousand lessons in defeat but only one in victory.

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY... for the death of our sanity and mental health.

All Snapdragon needed to do was poorly play off the punching as an accident and he would have gotten off scot-free.

"Is dave a food?" 😏

Since this is the one year anniversary, I thought I may share my ideas about how the sort of main plot, that is the rot, could relate to the girls. My idea is to go with what the show hints at, the rot is caused by new magic. Further, the girls start getting close to the truth about the rot and they do so because between the four of them, they just happens to have the abilities needed for doing so. My idea with Sage is that instead of angsting about new magic, she wants to do everything she does with new magic using old magic as well. She performs the assignments she's given by the school using new magic and then tries to do the same tasks with old magic. She does so because she thinks she needs to understand and stay aware of the cost of casting spells and that using new magic does still have a cost, an unknown one (which of course turns out to be true). She does not want to take the magic for granted. Doing this gives her an understanding people who only uses new magic would not have. There can also be scenarios like she deals with rot infested area by using new magic and another infested area with old magic and in the area she relied on new magic, the rot started to affect other plants and animals while the area where she stuck to old magic fared much better in the future. Thyme has some knowledge about the rot due to her background. I'm also thinking that she should be adept at using magic that specifically affects plants and to a lesser extent other living things. We do see her use magic to move some branches at one point and that would give her a way to interact with rot affected plants and creatures. For Parsley, I was thinking that in order to make the whole learning blacksmithing thing in high guardian academy make any sense, what she is learning is to make magic weapons, armor and tools. That seems more plausible than the students learning blacksmithing. Since the Terra-spheres are basically magic items that I've decided drain magic from other living things to let the users cast spells at no cost to themselves, and then the living being drained by magic may end up afflicted by the rot, having one person adept at magic items and another at living being allows the two of them to gain some insight about the rot. Left is Rosemary. Before handling Rosemary herself, what I'm thinking about magic period is that apart from being used up when you cast spells, you also use your own magic when you use a magic item, like Rose's sword. Further, magic can work similar to the concept of ki, as life energy that makes you stronger, faster and so on. Now, my idea is that Rosemary and her mother seemingly have double the reserve of other humans and double the ability to use it to enhance their strength, speed and whatever. However, this later turns out not to be entiely the case. Most living being can, as a survival measure, only use up half of their magic before they feel drained and unable to use more magic. Rosemary and her mother however can drain almost all of their magic, thus creating the illusion that they have twice the reserve of others. When they do so, they end up empty of magic, just like say a tree may if someone completely drains it with a Terra-sphere. This gives Rosemary a way to contribute towards finding out what the rot is about and an explanation to how she and her mom can keep up with mages. With that I've also decided all other guardian students are either full magic users or hybrid fighters/magic users, no other guardian is a pure fighter. I'm thinking that being more than 50% drained from magic makes you susceptible to the rot. Further, the more intelligent a creature is, the better it can resist the rot, but the more severe it is if the rot does take hold. A plant has no mind and no mobility and is thus easiest afflicted, but it also just sits there and cannot attack anybody. An animal with low intelligence becomes monstrous, goes berserk and mindlessly attacks other creatures. A more intelligent creature is less vulnerable to be afflicted, but if it does get afflicted, it turns just as hostile towards other creatures as an animal with low intelligence would, but attacks with more cunning and gain better control over it's own transformation and thus becomes very dangerous. Humans like Rosemary and her mother would as such have a great resistance against the rot, but they are not immune. By using their special advantages, they will gradually become afflicted over the years. This will be used as the reason Rose's mom left her family and also may or may not have turned evil, she noticed something was wrong with her and both needed to figure out what is happening to her and she needed to get away from her family for the sake of their safety. Anyway, this I think ties the girls more into the plot, gives Rosemary a reason to be the main character and a way for the girls to run into a conspiracy that puts their lives in a great mortal danger.

10:55 that was perfect sync

Man ONLY a year? I honestly feels like it's been forever but that may be due to the delays in release at the start

14:57 This face right here gave me an aneurysm. Thanks, Crunchyroll!

Happy(not really) high guardian spice anniversary!

Today is this show's Anniversary? Ha! That is Hilarious how something can go to memory this Hard.

Anime America's Review of High Guardian Spice was amazing, It was like Spectrum Pulse's Review of AJR's The Click Review Level of Rage and Frustration, we got her IDGAF song because of that review.

I think the biggest issue with High Guardian Spice is that they spent too much time focusing on diversity and less time on story. There is all sorts of representation in HGS, but it amounts to nothing because the characters lack attributes that make them interesting. For example, Thyme has an amazing look and she has a noble goal. But Thyme's broodiness is so over the top that it makes her annoying. The writers didn't know where to focus their efforts and figured simple characters that are diverse would be sufficient. Oh well. Here's to a year of High Guardian Spice.

I swear Raye and crew had this on paper when they hired writers: Four lesbian protagonists, a transgender teacher, new magic vs old magic and lesbian aunts. Then told them to make it 12 episodes

One year later, and Guardian HQ is STILL torturing himself with this show. Congrats...but please take some much needed R&R after this!

Finally a review. Took long enough dave.

Oh god, I thought this was a short video when I clicked on it, but here I am I guess 😅

Amazing how they hyped it up like it's going to be groundbreaking and incredible when the only groundbreaking and incredible thing about is how bad it is. Sidenote, I admire the dedication and spite to make an entire channel with the purpose to analyze how bad a show really is and I am all for it.

It's funny because "there's nothing to get attached to" really describes this show. It shakes you off like a dog tries to shake off its ticks. I wanted to watch the show for studies, by latching on to Sage because I wanted to attach to the level-headed nerd. One video later, I learned Sage was a manipulative sociopath so I settled for the abridged series, so at least I kinda got what I wanted.

I've never actually watched High Guardian spice. Fortunately I don't need to since you give me all the info I could need on why I really don't want to watch

I've never seen the show but I would've thought it was a RU-vid series. The animation has the amateur feeling where they're only capable of animating one thing at a time y'know? I'm not an animator so its hard to explain what I mean.

The funny thing is, Twitter, a website which is know for it's toxicity, actually loves this show and wants more. Talk about irony, am I right?

Okay you just taught me that ProZD voices a character in High Guardian Spice. Now I'm going to go watch it. I have to hear that.

Hannah Barbara had a budget of the change found in three couches and whatever they could get in the classifieds section of a community College newspaper for each of their shows; yet they still made classics. Budget is no excuse.

I still feel weirdly connected to this show - I can strongly feel what the writers TRIED to do and it's very appealing to me for some reason.

I still can't properly comprehend the difference between old and new magic after the whole mixing thing

Its been a year since these vids were made by you, yet im still entertained to watch them when im bored Show is only good to be trashed on

0:30 _”High Guardian Spice was a Crunchyroll original that did not meet expectations, if there were expectations at all.”_ I actually did have expectations for HGS: I expected a half-rate anime knockoff that promoted “diversity” over story, with Mary Sue protags, shipping fuel for Twitter, and nonstop virtue signaling. And the show met them all. The only thing I didn’t expect was for so many people to still be talking about HGS after a year - not that I’m complaining, because ripping on this show will _never_ get old for me! Thank you for helping to pull some real entertainment value out of this animated travesty.

29:28: I agree. Am really enjoying some of the interesting elements you've introduced in the Abridged, particularly Demon Rosemary (and her ripping up and devouring Aster), and also the spiked cookies from the first episode.

If they wanted the hammer scene to work, during the obstacle course have the grip strap come off of the hammer earlier. She almost drops the hammer in the pit but catches it last minute. Then have it actually slip out her hand later to hit his foot. Foreshadowing and payoff. I haven't even seen the show, just watched reviews, so maybe I'm missing something but why didn't they do that? Oh right, they're bad writers.

OKAY THANK YOU FOR YOUR ADVICE AT THE END YOU JUST FLIPPED MY PERSPECTIVE. I'll go watch it

Me viewing the art in HGS: "You know, this doesn't look so bad" When the characters enter the picture: "Oooooooooooooh....." The Wizard101 soundtrack in the background. Well, that was a quick half hour.

I feel old already

I like how you were basically the demon teacher saying all that shit and sighed in defeat as you talked about the writing

Happy Anniversary!

As for "this isn't anime" argument well anime have a lot of different artstyles so there isn't one that is defining what is anime and what not. But yeah it looks like something from CN

I think when the dude said, "2D animation...studios had forgotten" he was referring to how over dependant America has gotten on CGI and 3D animation. Although they didn't really do 2D animation justice with their crudey dog shjt art style.

The funniest thing is that a side character, Axe girl, was the best character in the show because she was written to represent all the things the creators thought made a person “bad.” 😆

How to give the bad guys an obvious goal. “We have a way to cure the rot. First we let it grow out of control and cause problems for the world, then we offer our cure to the world and become rich and regarded as heroes.” Ta-da, I did it.

the background characters sometimes look more interesting to look at than the main characters lol

Amazing that the show's legacy is an autopsy for writers.

Also I noticed a few of the students don't have costumes on at all, you know, seeing as it's supposedly against the law not to wear one, and considering how the school is so barbaric against its students, I have no choice but to believe that the whole kingdom is like that and that breaking that law probably has the death penalty.

i like the video so far, but i can't get over the bg music in the beginning. hit me in the gut with nostalgia, why don't you! lmao

ok but the wizard101 music makes this video so much easier to sit through thank you so much.

It's only been a year? It felt like at least five.

I haven't seen this show, but the absolute horror I felt when you played the Death Note theme while discussing it at 11:15 is probably more intense than any emotion that the show manages to pull off.

i have stockholm syndrome

When it comes to the writing of the series, something tells me that there probably was a lot of headcanon and world building the crew made and talked about to the point they knew by second nature, but they forgot to put it into the series. It's like when you try to teach someone something you're really good at, but you forget to teach them minor details because it just comes naturally to you. To them, the story must make perfect sense because they know all the details. But forgot to tell us what to tell us what those details were.

Wow, "slightly aggressive tree stump" is certainly one way to describe a character

A review. Didn't realize you didn't make one yet. Yeah this show wouldn't nearly have gotten much hate if produced on Disney or Nickelodeon. Seriously Crunchyroll ticked off people who understandably didn't want their money going to non anime projects. Like I said before, if the side characters were main characters, this show would've been more entertaining and less bland. I just wish the plot was fleshed out more or certain elements were given more focus. Lots of shows take a while grabbing an audience but this doesn't pass the three episode rule.

Good video, great work.

Dayum. You really in the spirit of Halloween by uploading this video.