What ACTUALLY Happened With High Guardian Spice 

dam i can't believe u interviewed the people involved and even they said they hated the teaser, really makes u uh, think

I can only imagine how frustrated everyone was when they were suddenly told that the show needs to aim for a more adult audience. Like what the actual hell? Everyone's already working on it, they have formed an overall idea for everything and what to do with it and suddenly this wrench gets thrown into the mix. It almost sounds like an attempt at sabotage, but I doubt that's the case. I assume the upper management just figured they'd get better profit if they aimed at an older audience on a platform that is mostly used by older people anyway, so they thought that would be a good idea. But.. you don't do that in the middle of production! You figure that out right from the start! Man I can only feel bad for everyone who worked on this.

Crunchyroll is kinda terrible, so I'm surprised more people weren't interested in the production details. Thanks for going over them!! Really interesting video.

TL;DR Crunchyroll fucked over the team with a low budget, tight schedule, and advertising in ways the creators of the show didn't want it to be advertise. The show was literally meant to be a kids show, but Crunchyroll demanded things be aged up, and meant for adults.

Now see this. THIS IS WHAT I WANTED! Even if the workers remained anonymous, all I wanted was to know what happened behind the scenes! Now knowing this information, a lot of stuff makes a lot of sense regarding how Crunchyroll botched the series.

Ah, so that's why the mature rating comes out of nowhere! Corporate meddling really happens more often than I want to believe. Though I'm always interested in what people think about a show itself (and sharing my own opinion), I do find it great to delve behind the scenes and know how things went down during production.

I'll be honest even if high guardians spice had a normal trailer this shouldn't be promoted to anime fans. The trailer would of work for something on CN. (Also yes I know it was probably pitch there)

The art style is acc really cute though. I like it. The outfits don't really work though, they're kinda boring. It sucks that the writing, voice acting and animation quality sucks, but story wise it's not my cup of tea anyways so i didn't watch it.

holy shit...i always tried to be sympathetic towards the crew, considering i felt production hell vibes from the final product, but the fact it's not only true but WORSE than i thought? i feel so sorry for everyone and i really feel sorry for raye. these characters and story were so clearly a passion project for him, considering he's had them for nearly 10 years now. i can't imagine what it'd feel like to work on a tv show starring my ocs and watch all of... *THIS* happen.

You know, I don't remember the last time they actually marketed the show as an "Anime". Giving your money to Crunchyroll is always a bad idea, what'd you expect they'd do?

Having finished the video I can see where the problems are coming from: poor management, time and money. BUT there’s one problem that Daft and no one has pointed out…did the creator write material before the show was picked up? Was there a plan? Was there a basic outline? A series like HGS should have had at least a few plot points written out and how they were implemented. You say that it started as a slow burn, which is fair, but why was a portion of episode 1 dedicated to Rosemary and Sage traveling, why did characters like Aster and the sexist dude HAVE to exist other then to push toxic masculinity, why was there filler in very inconvenient moments through the series (again episode 1 with the fairy creatures), and why was new magic implemented but not thought out despite it being a MAJOR PLOT POINT? These things matter and should have been somewhat outlined BEFORE the show was pitched. I’m saying this as a newbie who wants and is trying to get into the creative industry that in the end, while production was heavily scrutinized by Crunchyroll, Raye was ultimately unprepared before the show even got to the drawing board. As for your criticisms Daft some of your arguments are very strawman. You shouldn’t use the Cal Arts argument without understanding the argument. I actually don’t mind the art style and still understand the reason why people dislike it cause most of the modern shows use it and it’s spread significantly. You also can’t compare it to Avatar cause it’s not JUST about culture, but about its nuanced writing. The anime element was a bonus, but the story was clearly planned, the inspirations were planned, there was a reason why 90% of the filler existed and many were incorporated into the plot despite Nickelodeon’s strict standards, and even if there wasn’t a plan the writers ADAPTED to fit what they needed such as characters like Toph who was originally a muscular dude but adapted her character into what it was to further the narrative while also cracking the joke of a young blind girl beating up people. Your arguments are valid, but your implementation of those arguments is very haphazard and comes off condescending. Many will point out that you are very unbiased, and you are as I’ve seen enough videos to know that you do a very good job of being unbiased, but your now slipping into biased territory, not in hating a work but overly defending it which could be bad in giving a toxic positivity mindset to future creators, but I digress. In short for anyone who don’t want to read all of what I want to say is that there was no reason plan for this series, not-a-one. Daft failed to mention a plan and from what I’ve seen from Raye they didn’t have a plan past pitching it. Crunchyroll was at fault, but a basic AND flexible plan should have been in place. EDIT: wow I can’t believe you guys liked this comment! But I should say that this isn’t bashing Raye far from it I actually love some of the concept art and character designs of the series, in fact, I wished Raye didn’t got with an anime style and went with a design similar to Amphibia with just dot pupils. I just hope that Raye’s next project doesn’t suffer the same scrutiny as this cause HGS had potential but was stunted because they focus on the idea aspect and not the story. My philosophy with this is that it doesn’t have to be unique it just has to show how much you had fun with it in its basic form, and you might hit a slump, but it helps in the journey 👌

"Oh, btw they didn't call it high guardian herb because spice sounds cooler" that doesn't CHANGE the fact they aren't flip dip SPICES

I agree with almost all of your points. But during the mid section of the video your talking about the folly and aftermath of the production explaining it in a way that makes it sound like other reviewers should of just known this? Fully believe that other should ask questions about production, but to assume that someone who just wants to watch a show and says it's not good because they don't like all the shortcomings would go into the production say oh that's why I didn't like the show it had a low budget or had corporate meddling is mind boggling to me.

You make a point multiple times in The Release portion of your video that most of the reviews don't make an attempt to look behind the scenes or contact the creators as if this is the norm, but it simply isn't, especially contacting the creators. Expecting these reviewers to not only do research into the origin and production of the show (which wasn't really public knowledge) but to also contact the people who made the show is absurd. Imagine if these reviewers contacted the creators of every show that they didn't like. That would make production on all videos take way longer, as actually getting in contact with the people isn't as simple as just DMing them on twitter. Admittedly, these reviews could have been more informed (especially Scamboli's), but the show's history isn't very well documented, or is just kinda oversimplified. And also, knowing the issues behind the scenes likely wouldn't have changed their overall opinions of the show, just would've gave the viewers a bit more context as to why it is like this. 15:58 You also say here that a lot of the other high view-count reviews are just clips with no context, which is also the same exact thing you did with Scamboli's and Just Stop's reviews, taking random clips out of 15 and, In JS's case, 38 minute reviews. Kinda hypocritical. You were rather unfair to the reviewers in this section, but this is the only issue I have with your video, as the rest of it is very good.

Hate or love the show, I always will have a bad opinion because of the misapropriated crunchyroll funds. Crunchyroll is and always has been really shitty at paying their translators, and when they put funds into halfbaked projects like this, and their fucking vtuber instead of properly paying their employees, its frustrating.

when youre so girlpower you misgender your writers lmao

34:00 So your just gonna ignore the fact that there is overlap between the manwha audience and the anime audience which HGS doesn't have. The reason why Korean manwha adaptations aren't as maligned is that there is enough overlap that it's a logical next step while HGS isn't. That being said I do hold more blame to Crunchyroll for even picking this up and then mismanaging it.

Question of the Day: Why was High Guardian Spice a mess of a show? DaftPina: ... so the non-unionized staff... Me: Ah yes. Say no more I completely understand.

With all due respect, they still made a bland, mediocre show with not a wisp of originality to be seen. Usually in bad shows you can see the intent, the passion that just wasn't executed properly. This... I don't even know what a 'good' version would look like.

I've seen a bunch of reviews of the show. None of the critics enjoyed watching it fully. That should say something about the quality of the show. Yesterday I watched a breakdown of the first episode, and the guy just rewritten the first episode, making it more interesting and meaningful. I think the creators needed more time to plan out the show for it to have a proper structure, and it's unfortunate that they didn't.

15:23 One thing that i noticed about this image is that none of those character designs match with the originals. All of them are edited

OK, but a bad show is still a bad show.

Interesting to hear how things went wrong under Crunchyroll and some of the problems along the way. It doesn't make the final product better, 4/10 for me since it still came out with awkward pacing and animation. If a student were graded on this when the project was to create a show by a Japanese studio it would lose a lot of points, but I also think there should be a way to punish the teacher for creating such a short work time relative to other cartoons or anime and messing with the public presentation putting it in the worst light possible. Onyx Equinox at least shows some of the team can work when given some room, and Crunchyroll proper faced a lot of the backlash even after throwing some creators under the bus.

From what I understand of your argument, it's that reviewers didn't research the production and took out of context clips to flay the show and the production team alive which is unfair of them. I can agree with you to a point. Many of the reviews seem to make assumptions about the team behind the show based on the trailer and HGS's very poor delivery of complex real world topics without interviewing even one member of the staff. However! Looking behind the curtain only gives CONTEXT to mistakes. The overall show shouldn't be given slack because at the end of the day, regardless of what happened off stage, we still got a shitty product. Are food critics supposed to be conscious of the kitchen before their reviews are approved? Is every book reviewer supposed to research an author's life before their criticism is accepted? I know it probably wasn't your intention, but rather than arguing your stance, what you actually SOUND like you're doing is invalidating those other reviews on RU-vid by calling them out for not interviewing the production people. You say that "a lot of these critiques are pointing out a scene and pointing out animation mistakes" but the critiques I'VE seen cover a LOT more. Poor worldbuilding, characters, plot, pacing, dialogue, messaging, voice acting, etc., etc. the list is ENDLESS with some reviews going into the LGBTQ elements of the show. For instance, when you pointed out what the word Cal arts actually means, it was as though you aimed the arrow at the target, missing and hitting the wall but still calling it a day. So the reviewer might have misused the term, but you didn't refute what he was SAYING by bringing up the word in the first place which is that character faces were drawn with a simplistic bean template seen on so many other characters in so many other shows, making the design seem lazy and uninspired. Look, poor budget and time constraints might have explained why background characters don't move, but it doesn't change the fact that there were bread jpgs. People are harping on it not because they're pedantic bullies but because it makes the show come off INCREDIBLY unprofessional. And this pattern of unprofessionalism plagues the entire show which culminates into a MOUNTAIN of them too big for many people to ignore. Corporate meddling might explain why there's that weird warning and the indecisive target audience but it isn't why winners like the infamous "I'm trans" scene made it into the show. One last thing regarding Kate Leth's "some of these might be old screenshots". Okay, they might be old and people can change after some time. But when this blew up, she didn't apologize nor did she so much as say anything along the lines of not holding those misandrist views anymore. People being angry about her misandrist views isn't them having a "gotcha" moment for the trailer because they wanted to be mean to the show. They were mean to that trailer and the show by extension because of Leth's views and Leth's views were part of PR and PR is what makes or breaks a product. Disparaging people's justified outrage over her remarks is not a hill you want to die on.

I kinda feel really bad for Raye. Like I can’t imagine having all this passion and love for your characters and world only for it to crumble and shatter in such an ugly way-I’d be destroyed for months dude. Maybe even years.

This video is interestingly biased and disingenuous, we're to accept the promise that Raye had no part on the bad writing/plot/characters? , which even with the meddling it's not like being the main creator Raye would have no way to aliviate at least some of the writing, which is abysmal with the exception of maybe Snapdragon's arc which even then was pretty subpar. This show feel disjointed from the get go, something that was exacerbated by the bad animation. Besides that, it's not like the show is any better regardless of who's at fault, being given perspective on the reason it sucks doesn't make it suck any less.

I still have my personal gripes with the show, but it is very eye opening to see that even the crew disagreed with a lot of what was going on and that corporate meddling had a massive hand in so much of the weird tonal whiplash that occurred. I feel bad for the original creator and really hope they're able to make the series they wanted to produce.

Appreciate the coverage of the actual production, but that's where it ends. Talking about youtubers giving unnecessary "hate" because they all noticed the same self-evident issues isn't arguing against anything. This dismissive take on how other people critique the series is just embarrassing and adds nothing to your video. Why people's accurate representation of the show bothers you this much is sad. Plenty of people watched the actual show just to see if it's actually as bad as everyone said it is. Myself included. 4 out of 10 show. This was a waste of a video. No-one cares, nor needs to, care about the production when the end result is as bad as it was. Just like how no-one needs to be an animator to notice garbage animation. Stick with the appeal to authority fallacy. Maybe it'll work someday.

I'm sorry but Kate Leth's tweets were from 8 years ago - that would've made her 25 years old at the time. Why does 33 year old, then 25 year old get to tweet some insane, vitriolic shit and just handwave it away with "teehee I was tumblrpilled?" 25 years old. Not like an edgy teenager in high school but an actual 25 year old adult. "Leave her alone it was 8 years ago" doesn't really add up when she was a full grown adult at the time.

I feel like if it wasnt because of the performative activism in the teaser, it would've just been called a mediocre show. It would've just been called forgettable and that's it. It probably would've not even gotten that many youtube reviews

Am I the only one who cant follow daft pina AT ALL? like wtf is his sentence structure pronounciation. He says literal long essays, and I understand NOTHING of it. Its just humming sounds to me. Why does he do that? Daftpina is great when he just speaks monotonely. But its hell listening to if he pronounces EVERY THIRD WORD with this high tone at the end like "iuU-UH", that takes away all understanding.

Why does every sentence you say sound like youre asking a question

It is easy to point finger at the big guy(crunchyroll). As a writer myself, I know that money is not needed to have good writing. Yes, it will get a bit more polished but it's not like money will suddenly boost your writing skill. The show is terribly written because the writers and the creator just don't know how to write a good show. Raye(creator) hired his writers based on if they had genitals or not, or if they matched his politics or not, or they are LGBT or not. There's no one to blame but the creator himself. Litte money can be used wisely. There are plenty of shows with paperclip budget that has better production value and writing that HGS.

The thing is... the show was never going to be good. The premise, world, and characters are so generic and so underdeveloped in the first place. I don't see how this show could be salvaged without a complete conceptual overhaul.

I have to partially disagree with some of the points of the video. Overall though, knowing what absolute hell the production was helps put a lot of it in perspective. The fact they worked non-union is soooo suspicious. Honestly, it truly seems like Crunchyroll threw this show under the bus so people would throw the brunt of their hate over not giving the money to Japanese animators at it rather than the company. However, Raye's inexperience as a showrunner really comes through as incompetence and poor planning in HGS. Apparently he had Rosemary as a character for years and it was a webcomic beforehand, but the main elements of the show were never worked out? Just look at the title. Not only are none of the main characters named after spices, but we never find out what a guardian is. How can you build character arcs when the essential premise, "they're going to magic school to become a Guardian", is never finalized? I understand that script itself is rough and cringy because they had no money to do effective rewrites, and Crunchyroll demanding a mature show forced them to add stupid things like randomly saying "bastard", but the confusing world building and lack of story direction really is what shoots the show's plot in the foot.

God, now knowing for sure how the production was I feel so bad for the crew 😔 it seems like everything that could go wrong did. I hope Raye gets to tell his story how he wants it eventually; I'd love to see it.

I kind of feel bad for Raye. Being overtly passionate about your project only for it to be squandered is a massive blow to you. In all fairness of the show, there are some good things about it. Snapdragon is likeable, some of the environments look nice if you avoid the bread and lamppost, and the post credits scene can be an interesting follow-up. If I were one of those writers, I think I can make the second season way better than the first.

High Guardian Spice shouldn't have been a Crunchyroll original. Not that it would've been better, but at least it wouldn't have been mistaken as an anime

"Anime isn't a good comparison because their animators live in poverty." HGS: *Outsources to Korea*

As much as Crunchyroll may have interfered with the production, it doesn't change the fact that the show was dead on arrival. It could have had the most beautiful art imaginable, but in the end, the show would still be bad thanks to poor writing and characters that are as shallow as a mud puddle. Now that most of the people involved are only coming out after the show was aired, it looks more like they're trying to cover their asses. They've had close to three years to say something to an outside source or blab on social media, if they really thought this was a disaster from the start I doubt they would wait that long to say a single thing about it. Bad productions like this rarely go unnoticed, and at least someone involved with the project would have said something. Let's face it, it was a show made by amateurs. Raye hadn't written anything of substance before the show, most of the animators were new (as far as I know), and the majority of the cast were relatively new to the job with a couple of exceptions. And it really shows in almost every aspect of the show's quality. I've seen better shows on early 2000s newgrounds.

I was more annoyed that people these days act like diversity is a bran new thing. Despite you can find diversity in movies and shows made back in the 70's. Heck even in the 1950's their were shows with women main cast. Not only do they act as if diversity is new, but then they expect to be given a pat on the back for it. Which is rather pretentious and insincere. For me that's enough to just not be interested in the show. But RU-vid keeps auto playing stuff about this show.

I think even with a higher budget and better scheduling this show would’ve been mediocre at best. The concept is just unoriginal and extremely derivative from several anime eg. the ending is a blatant copy of azumanga daioh. Better animation and writing wouldn’t have fixed the lack of artistic integrity on this show.

A few things I feel like should be said, since they were left out of the overall discussion. Don't take this as me bashing you, but rather me sharing my own opinions on the topics presented here: - A big part of the reason for the hatred towards Kate Leth wasn't just because of her posts, as the age of the posts does matter, but her ultimately, utterly unapologetic stance on the whole ordeal. Saying she was "Tumblerpilled" - a word that, as far as I can tell, she basically made up on the spot - is just a way to justify her call for the mass murder of many males. It is not an apology. If she had shown signs of moving beyond her bias, I imagine the vitriol wouldn't have been *as* severe. However, no such move was made, and she chose to blame other people - pointedly the people who were pointing out her toxic views - rather than admit that her mindset was flawed at one time or another. As humans, we all make mistakes, and grow from those mistakes. Ignorance is a lack of information or understanding, but that's ultimately fixable as we move on and grow. Stupidity is a willful lack of forward momentum and blaming others for your own mistakes, rather than owning them. Unlike ignorance, you can't really fix stupid. As the old adage says: "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink." But it goes a bit further than that. The male portrayal in the show can be downright insulting to traditionally masculine men. I can respect diversity and shout the praises of those who fight for equality, but that's the key word: equality. It's painful to notice, but a lot of people fighting for their equality seem entirely comfortable dragging someone else down and climbing onto their backs. Consider the male allies of the girls; none of them have much - if any - traditional masculinity. Now, I want to clarify that I don't think the staff was doing this intentionally. With an all-women staff, maybe just writing men who fell into the category of traditionally masculine was more difficult for them, or maybe they just simply made a small mistake, but one can very easily see how this can be turned into an argument for HGS being sexist. I will reiterate; I don't think that's the case. But people have started flame wars over less. - As mentioned at 8:00, Crunchyroll was a site with a reputation for their anime distribution. It was what made them even notable in the past, and so many people, myself included, weren't even aware they had any desire to branch off from that direction. However, this point disrupts a previous point you made; comparing HGS to Avatar. Avatar was released on Nick, which was for western style shows and animation primarily. Avatar was the exception - not the norm - with it's anime-inspired art style, and as such was much easier to label as "anime inspired" as there was no major precident I can remember on the channel. Nothing that was popular enough to get traction, at least. But in the case of Crunchyroll, they were a site primarily themed towards anime. By making an animated show, heavily inspired by anime in it's art style, and putting it on a service with a reputation for primarily being used to distribute anime... Well, I think you can see the difference. If Crunchyroll was genuinely serious about distancing themselves from anime, then they should have genuinely distanced themselves from anime. By taking a half-measure such as this, they laid a landmine at their back door, then forgot it was there, and that is nobody's fault but their own. You circled back to this at 21:50 in saying that one pitches to everybody and hopes to find *some* success, and I can agree with that sentiment wholeheartedly. That doesn't change the fact that Crunchyroll should have been less contradictory in what they were trying to achieve. - As someone who writes not just for fun, but for a living, I can't stress enough how *bad* the worldbuilding in HGS is; it's boring at best and contradictory at worst. A very good example I saw put fourth is a very simple one: naming conventions. Why are there so many people named after herbs, spices, and other plants? In Steven Universe, the gems are named after the stones that made them - or are at least the most like them, I suppose, - except for rare exceptions like Volleyball. In RWBY, children are named based off colors as a means of celebrating art and self-expression after a war 80 years prior tried to stifle individualism. Even in something as simple as the names, HGS drops the ball. The solution presented could have been as simple as "naming conventions skewed heavily towards herbs and spices, as many are seen to blend well together in cooking, giving people the motivations to interact with others of the same naming style." It's kinda silly and I literally just thought it up on the spot, but it would have been better than nothing at all. And hey, I'll even make a deal: if anyone can tell me what a Guardian is, as presented in the lore of the show, and why there's a need to train *literal children* to become them rather than properly developed adults, like any competent organization in a similar vein to this one, I'll drop the whole argument. The pacing of the writing is uncomfortable and unpleasant, but that can be excused by the deadlines and budget limitations; Crunchyroll messing it up again. I will clarify that I'm a novelist though, and writing for an animated show is a different take on the same art style. - The more egregious issue here was the hype behind it: HGS flew to close to the sun and melted those wings of wax they'd made. From 14:25, you started making light jabs at the reviews of others, but brushed over the points they made yourself, not acknowledging or denying the validity of their points. You just spent the time riffing on reviewers, rather than reviewing. By that standard, you make it seem like PNG bread and horribly compressed backgrounds are acceptable quality for a show as heavily marketed as this. Knowing that it was produced in Korea is a big eye-opener on why these shortcuts were used in the first place, but Crunchyroll *had* to know what they were getting into when they outsourced to a Korean animation studio. In a show that marketed itself so strongly, it crafted shoes far too big for it to fill. This is, as before, very much Crunchyroll's fault, but that doesn't mean these aren't legitimate problems. Just because the blame for HGS being an artistic mess is shifted, doesn't make the show any less of an artistic mess. Let's take a wild side-step here and compare this to a different genre of media entirely, just for fun. Don't take this comparison too seriously; it's a left field one. But consider Cyberpunk 2077: a game that marketed itself up and down as a game to reinvent games. Celebrities were used to hype the game, release after release sold it on a world-changing experience. And upon it's final release, it was riddled with bugs to the point of unplayability, left players absolutely stunned at the gall of the studio, and suffered from one of gaming's biggest red flags: it was kinda boring to a lot of people. Had the game not been marketed so wildly, and the reigns pulled on it just a tad, I doubt the outrage would have been so severe. To swerve the discussion back into reasonable territory; when you hype your product up to be a 8/10, you'd better be able to at least deliver a 7 or 8, if not a 9 or 10. And I will point out here, *Crunchyroll* marketed this show as amazing; the creators, artists, and writers were trapped in purgatory, uncertain of their place. Most of the blame is not on their shoulders for this show's failure to deliver. - This was just a minor point of personal frustration, so it might be a bit biased; you kept bring up lines like "an actual animator" and bringing up how people critiquing a series don't have experience in the things they're critiquing. I believe the words you used at 43:30 were "guessing and assuming." I'm sorry, but in my opinion, that's very much the wrong way to look at things. A food critic doesn't need to know how to make an authentic Italian neapolitan pizza to recognize it's amazing. Just because someone doesn't have personal experience in something doesn't mean they can't compare one work to another and see which is better. That's the very core of critiquing. If we all *needed* experience in something to critique it, we wouldn't have concepts like audience reviews for movies, because the audience doesn't understand the nuance of film production or finite camerawork. But, to get back on a track we left behind earlier, in this case we *can* compare Avatar and HGS, since they were both following a similar art style of taking inspiration from anime. And putting them side by side, there's no comparison. While HGS has it's flashy moments, it seems stilted in comparison to the bombastic animation of Avatar. It's been years since I've seen the show, yet both the first and second assaults on Ba Sing Se still stands out in my head as amazing shows of artistic talent. I can vividly remember the scenes after only seeing them twice in total. And the dragon dance performed by Zuko and Aang is a wonderful moment that needs no words or shock value to carry it's beauty and message of harmony with the world. HGS never really achieved anything even close to that. Avatar is the Neapolitan Pizza, ordered and enjoyed in Italy, while HGS is a Large Cheese from Joe's Pizza off 4th Street, LA. It's okay, but it's not great either. But it is worth noting that HGS was also much, *much* shorter, meaning less time to get it's momentum, so it must be viewed with a grain of salt on that front. And hey, I bet you that neapolitan pizza is like, triple the price of Joe's.

Gladfully the show is hopefully now dead and we can leave it alone Also really dude you gave this show a 6/10? You really have low standars, you should watch more animated shows, cause HGS is not middle to decent when compared to other western animated shows

The Sonic Mania comparison is a bit off, as Taxman and Stealth had previously worked to port Sonic games to other platforms officially for SEGA, prior to Mania.

It's ok to be sympathetic, but it's still won't excuse releasing a bad, unfinished show as a final product that dosn't know what audiance it want to attract. I think the blame is on both sides, the team who created the show and Crunchyroll. As you said, other Crunchyroll originals are doing fine. And why is that? Anime are for everybody, not just one age group. If they wanted to make cartoon for kids it was Rey's job to be more assertive and stop them from changing it so much. And it was a job of Crunchyroll's executives to realise if something wasn't working and change before it was public. Audiance have a right to be angry for getting png bread.

The show's bad, but it isn't the worst. it's good to know some of the reasons why.

Daft is acting like he doesn't know the point of youtube critque, the point is not to effectively communicate to the creators of the work, the point is too dunk on the work in a way that is entertaining to the RU-vid audience,

Cal Arts is a catch all term for a terrible art style. They don't literally mean "OMG He came from California Art school!". Art with oversimplified features, big bulging eyes and huge mouths fall into this.

yo just saw ur jaiden video wtf is up with that???

I always forgive artist who were forced to rush a job. I may never forgive the final product, but due dates can be an artist's worst enemy

As for the kill all men tweets, well she works with the same people who would dig out tweets from 5 years (those in Stan Twitter) to cancel whoever is on the weekly judge seat. It all came thanks to crunchy being a d about it and more shows like high guardian with sorta same marketing making them have indirectly a bigger target on their back. While I understand Rodriguez, as a director he never took responsibility and blame. Sure there was budgets and corporate meddling but blocking people and talking how proud he was about his show to later only talk down on it one it came and people watched it and pointed out the problems made him look worse. He has now a new project and tbh I don’t know if he will do well. I want to think that now he has more experience to fix his weaknesses as a director and make a better product. Since is gonna be a romance show I hope is easier. As many have pointed out, high guardian was not in any shape or form a show who could’ve been tackled by newbies. Sure some worked in bravest warriors and other shows but what they did in said shows? Is like how Rebecca said “in times all I did was add a fishing pole on a shot in the animatic”. So regardless it needed an actual veteran. A magic show is way too much for a director who hasn’t worked in anything by himself. Heck even my witch academia had many bs moments and it was done by a better more budget high studio and they still had glaring mistakes. Just that unlike witch academia they had no good animation or artstyle to distract it. To compare I would say is like rwby. Made by newbies and had many writing messes. But unlike guardian rwby had animations to avoid the messy writing. Had not anymore. That’s why now is being more highly critiqued. Also all that was found out of crunchy: 1) paying their translators badly 2) wasting the money of subcribers on a fancy office while 1 was happening. 3) their aging and badly optimized page 4) I think the lady of ellations went under fire after some reviews of women in animation were found (?) (not sure since I lost the videos who talked off it) and how she didn’t do bs to help. 5) How many games were censored and had things cut up for “westernization” purposes yet not stating so until release. 6) said cuts making people have a bad view of the company and thinking they are doing all of it to “pander” to non anime users and the labeled “sjw” users who do not see anime and only complain of anime based on images and videos out of context. 7) Anime fans getting defensive gives all the numbers I said before and how the website has always stated they are paying anime overseas to support the industry yet for the looks of it is like they barely give them anything (same as Netflix but Netflix has a better website so is less critiqued) and makes original shows who do not follow the same standard as the anime on said website. 8) They should’ve just put it on vrv. Vrv has cartoons. Would make more sense. In conclusion, I do hope Rodriguez has learned to be more realistic and perhaps learn to make a more compelling story or confront a happy medium for his new show and excecutives. And not to block people. Even Vivzie does this but given Helluva is good animation wise and more people don’t fight her

at around 35 minutes I stopped watching. Why? 3 points: 1: Those comments lamenting misappropriation of funds don't care that CR was funding other anime. Thats what they *WANTED* that is what CR promised the money would be used for. Even adapting pre-existing Manwha with it's similar style to manga was a decent step forward. What you've created here is a strawman. Also note: It's fine to talk about "the whole picture" when reviewing something but that applies to you too. There's been a growing movement online for years now to get extra money to Japanese animators this ranges in scope from a direct donation fund to Various crowd-sourcing campaigns. CR promised they'd be the ones to do it, instead they wasted money on funding HGS while also having an archaic website dedicated to anime. Nobody wants to see an anime streaming company funding bad knockoff western anime. Period. 2: Earlier you speak of poisoning the well in terms of fan discussion. No, it's not exactly poisoning the well to wonder where the hell people's heads are in making a decision. It also doesn't matter that people with 4 years of hindsight can tell you they were horrified at the trailer. It was a bad trailer, sure, but the show itself, the final product is STILL fundamentally holding to the themes and message of that trailer. Lesbians, diversity, trans rights, and even Kate Leth's Hatred of men is found all over the god damn place - the only decent male character turns out to be trans. This isn't some mistake, and I don't buy that they were bummed out by the trailer rather it seems more likely that they were bummed out by the negative reception to the trailer. I am playing the world's smallest violin. 3: It can get annoying when people bash a product with a complicated history - but that isn't a reviewer's job. When one reviews the many terrible elements of a story, like you said, they're reviewing what they were given. HGS has no merits. It's writing is terrible, It's stories meandering, It's characters meme-tier or just downright bad. It's lore unfleshed out. And while it's very unfortunate about CR's random changes, there needs to be some form of flexibility to try and make that work for example: add blood in post. It's all superficial anyway, so just add it in post- don't go back and restoryboard a shot so blood can appear that's a spectacular waste of time and resources And with how few shots would have had it in the early episodes, its a 1 man job *Work smarter, not harder*. It's insulting because I KNOW that something like that can be easily done you have Harmony and Storyboard pro in your studio. Nahh, Instead lets just waste our precious remaining time hyping up a swinging lesbian couple and a literal child groomer. Speaking of: Child grooming has NOTHING to do with budget. The first episode is a meandering mess. No amount of revising could fix that - it was fundamentally bad. Queer-baiting and stereotypically douchey men as your antagonists and generally abhorrent representation of the male sex in your show has nothing to do with budget, and was a compounding issue with every single thing we saw in that trailer... doubly unacceptable as the writers would not shut the fuck up about diversity and "representation." Way to represent men. Strong men are evil assholes, emotionally unstable men with dysphoria? Yeah those are cool. What I'm saying is woke trailer = woke show. Finally, these issues are levied in general To both CR and the creative team behind HGS. CR was so hype for a woke show that they jumped the gun on that trailer. How do you take a cutsey pink tumblr comic and try to make it dark and gritty(CR) Why does the creator have the most obnoxious self-insert I've ever seen in animated fiction? HGS sucks. It's not a 6/10 Its closer to a 2 or 3. With how many basic issues it has I've no idea how anybody can say it's above average or 6 out of 10 (Yes, 5 is the average of 0 and 10).

The writing is garbage. Don’t discredit these actual criticisms just because you’re high and mighty about needing production experience.

I kinda feel bad now that I've watched the vid... Imagine being in Raye's shoes, having the chance to have your work (that you've planned for so long) to finally be accepted by big group - only to experience the hell of a lifetime. And the final product to not even meet what you've originally planned... If that thing happened to me, I would probably loose it especially if this is my first work in a big group... I guess the valuable lesson here is be careful when and where you pitch your own work. And expect all the unexpected hell trials if a big group accepted your work. Be smart in the workplace and keep morale up at all times...

As a complete outsider who is only here because I enjoy listening to people critically breakdown something they are passionate about, I think this episode has a very defensive feel. I can 100% believe all the terrible things that happened to the studio but there seems to be a complete lack of accountability from everyone involved in what's being framed as the 'good' part of the process. I'd have loved to have at least seen a small glimpse of ways internally they could have improved because from just a human standpoint I have a hard time buying the "It is literally every single person involved except me" mentality. Even the Kate Leth tweet you presented as an apology(?) or justification for the things she said on twitter is really just a "Its not my fault, get over it" which just leads me to believe this studio likely learned nothing of how to improve or grow themselves. It's really sad that this is the way industry is, I think people forget that just about every labor based job RUNS 24/7/365 on crunch time and we just publicize it when it comes to entertainment industries but this is a worldwide work culture issue

do you know they dont bother to reach out to the people behind it? because it does not matter, its not the viewers responsibility. you have a ugly show with bad writing and released it. you may know some people behind it so you are siding with them but that is not an excuse for a show performing this bad.... this is like raye blaming the budget for everything.

I may have not liked the show but I do feel for everyone involved. They should've gotten more time and a bigger budget.

"No-one ever claimed this was an anime" But if you went to vegetarian restaurant and your meal had meat in it, wouldn't you take issue? Just because it was not labeled as a vegetarian meal, that makes it against complaint? I disagree. This is like when Cartoon Network tried to do live action shows, and people got really mad. The name and title of your business, the thing you used to gain a fanbase, that all DOES matter. Much more than how you label something. Crunchyroll does anime. So yes, High Guardian Spice was marketed as an anime. Saying otherwise is just misleading and unreasonable. Bad take. The misgendering of their own employee is a big oof. I'm surprised I'd not heard about that before. Kate Leth who had been making bigoted posts for years, even up to 2017, is also something you cannot blame the anime fans for. She made her decisions to make those comments, and the HGS team made a decision to hire her, despite knowing that she was a cunt. One who refused to apologise for her comments when they were called out, showing that no, this was not a case of diggin up old mistakes. People are sorry for mistakes. She wasn't sorry. And her being part of the team matters. Or do you think anyone boycotting Amazon are wrong because they're judging a company based on just what the CEO is like? The tiny different is that Kate is not a CEO, she is part of a bigger team. But she's still one of the head honchos. HGS deserved to all the negative assumptions it got so long as Kate remained part of the team. You did a surprising lack of research here. Or maybe you left the facts out that went against your narrative. Your next defense is just you doing the "actually this meme is wrong because..." speech and entirely forgetting what this video is about, because you want to refute a peice of criticism technically, instead of... actually refute it. This feels desparate. I think we all know that bean-mouth style being called cal-arts style is wrong by now. That doesn't have any bearing on anything though. I didn't think the comparison to Helluva Boss would come up in this video, but it was one I was going to make. HGS has animation that screams of being indie. Whilst actual indie shows can manage to look like they are well funded. And your comment on time felt unfair when HGS took 3 years, but, I didn't realise how little of that time was given to them for the actual production. The hiatus really created a false sense that they were acting like an indie studio and taking their time. It always weirds me out when reviewers overeact to the swearing and violence. Given that it's on an anime platoform, none of that comes off as unsuitable for children. It was one of the least noteworthy things. Something to complain about just in the hopes of getting viewers more mad, that's how it looked. But it was a request from Crunchy? That surprises me. I personally liked the unexpected tone shifts. That's one part from anime I feel like western shows are adopting. There's a lot of dark shit in things like Steven Univers and Star Vs the Forces of Evil, and Gravirt Falls, and Amphibia, and Owl House... Every good modern western show. They're all more mature. HGS just did it in a way that was a bit, jarring. But it did not feel like a bad change nor did it feel like the audience had changed. Still it is worth knowing that they were given confusing instructions from Crunchy. "Amphibia is a simplistic comedy cartoon" hold up. If you're gonig to use that label for Amphibia, then... Is there anything that doesn't fall under tha label to you? Just HGS? HGS though tonally feels like it was trying to match with Amphibia. And whilst the art style for Amphibia is less anime inspired, it's not really simple. Hearing about the crew not liking the trailer either, and these other things that no-one else ever bothers to look up, has been really interesting. It feels like this is a show that should have had more people dive more deeply. It's just a shame you think that beating bias means being biased in support of the show, to a level that becomes dishonest. This isn't how you defend a show. You went about this very wrong. Your bad arguments and blame shifting make you so much harder to trust, rather than making me distrust the more vicious reviewers. Because at least the bad ones didn't bullshit me. Also anime is not japanese by definition. Avatar is anime. Those other originals, anime. HGS, not anime. Don't use the whining of a few as the consensus for all. Only the losers get made over 'fake anime'. HGS was still the standout non-anime on the anime-only service. I did learn quite a few things from this video though. It had some mistakes but was worth watching. Much like High Guardian Spice itself.

Look, I see HGS is a 3/10 (final). But thanks for a better explanation of production. This is the info that fans want to hear, not Raye just tweeting about the budget. Thank you for this video.

At the end of the day I don't hate the creators I hate the final project because crunchyroll made it to fail by framing the marketing poorly and under funding it.

While I understand your goal and trying to look at both sides that you boil down the opposition into whataboutisms and they never said that soliloquys is being very dismissive of the legitimate criticisms of cutting out promised programs and fundraising and instead appropriating that money for the expansion of their own business assets basically performing a bait and switch on their audience.

As much as I understand that DaftPina is trying to highlight the behind the scenes, it dont change the fact that what we still receive is a pretty shit show. Knowing what problems the creators went through wont boost most peoples 2/10 to a 6/10 because what we still want is good media, which we didnt get in this case.

Holy shit, the amount of covering up and misleading here is ridiculous. For example. With Kate, when she was asked about the KillAllMen comments, she refused to apologize, but sure, not only ignore that, and that some of the men-hating posts are still on her Twitter and Tumblr, make people believe the comments are faked by saying they had different profile pics, without going any further and ACTUALLY looking for the comments.

16:00 Anime America's video on High Guardian Spice was an actual review though. Sure, she went on a tangent about how bad it was and how frustrating it is, but over all her biggest problem with it was that it was really bland.

is it just me that notices daftpina ending every sentence really strangely on a higher vocal note on usual? It's incredibly offputting and makes his voice hard to listen to, it's not his usual monotone.

It was just unlucky that normal animation networks didn't pick it up. People have had bad blood with Crunchyroll forever so it was pretty much doomed from the start, that lady's tweets with crappy marketing and a company people keep getting angrier at all make a very easily hateable target.

No, no , no. Watching the entire video, It still doesn't explain or excuse the lack of originality, the lack of a sense of passion within the story, the bland cliche plot, the awful dialogue, and the sexist themes. Even with constrained time and limited budget, if you had an already made plot that would have served as the basis for the entire series, then the storywriters and storyboard should have been able to layout the important parts that would make up the main storyline. But Raye didn't really have a finished story plan in mind. They were still just rolling along and building it up from scratch which is why the story feels as if it's going nowhere.

I genuinely feel bad for all the people who worked on High Guardian Spice. I'm glad to see someone who went into the went into the issues with its production and I'm glad to see reviewers not just chalk it up to "being for SJWs."

This show is less like an anime and more like a budget cartoon network show

Look, I like Ray(e) Rodriguez as a person and what he's trying to do, and the other people behind HGS, and I do genuinely believe in more diverse make-ups of crew composition behind and in front of the camera but I think it's disingenuous to "pull a Sarah Z" and make a bunch of really bad (and bad faith) takes (and also engage in subtle anti-Korean racism) to call out legitimate criticism of plotholes and characterization holes as being bigoted and transphobic and being bad faith/bad takes in turn and... ...wait why am I arguing this, all I have to say in order to show that your takes on this are bad is "DaftPina gaslit Just Stop into making the most embarrassing video physically possible all because Just Stop wanted a three-way with LSMark and his wife"

I still think this is the worst cartoon I've ever seen. Even worse than Ren and Stimpy: Adult Party Cartoon. I feel bad for Audu Paden, though.

We re ok with onyx and tower of god bc they were good

I'm sorry but like your whole video is just saying yeah you're right it was trash but you should like it anyways and you list all the reasons from mismanagement not having up enough resources and bad writing and you list a bunch of different shows that done it right with the resource that they had and they did have a union w i a that was working with them and that union in the past was shown to still money from their workers

Damn, this made me sad. I can't believe this show went to shit ONLY because of Crunchy Like, They really should have went to Netflix. -They probably would have given full freedom in the writting -The Teaser wouldn't been shit -The show would had a Slow start introducing characthers in a good matter -The Main characthers would be written as friends. -The tone would have stayed consistent. -Maybe they would ending up with better backgrounds since they would have getting more time. The fact that all of this was Crunchy, IT'S DEPRESSING. And it doesn't help that the team was getting paid Pennies for hours, YIKES.

Yeah, High Guardian Spice had a terrible production and definitely went through a lot getting it out. They got a lot of unfair criticism, like every other piece of media in existence. So what? Fact is, the show's written terribly, the animation is subpar, the pacing is god-awful, and the entire show's premise is the furthest thing from appealing to their core audience. Regardless of the excuses regarding production and unfair critiques, at the end of the day, the show is simply garbage.

People compare it to anime because crunchyroll is an anime platform and people subscribe to support the artists that create the anime they like. If they wanted whatever high guardian spice is they’d subscribe to Cartoon Network or something not built entirely around anime.

It doesn't really matter if it wasn't meant to be an anime, it is an animated show on what is generally a purely anime streaming service. It is going to be compared for better or for worse. The production problems are also no excuse for the shows writing and animation. I understand where you are coming from about cutting the crew slack however.

Something major not mentioned here is still the fact that Raye did not have a concrete plan on the story which should have been the backbone of the entire series. It's like every episode was built from scratch as they went along but you can't do that with a series.

You should never really be too harsh on the production staff, as we never really know what happened, but crunchyroll even made THAT hard because of the trailer (making the team seem so insufferably smug and hypocritical). That said it doesn't matter what went on behind the scenes, the final product is what we get and critique, no matter how harsh the budget or passionate the staff. I will say I found your stance on Kate leith (lyth.. leth?) and twitter use to be annoying and sort of inconsistent. Kate was blatantly sexist and rude in a way that attracts toxicity on any production she joins, and hasn't actually apologised, only justifying the actions by saying she was "tumblr-pilled"... but you said it was a while ago... so it's okay? You then criticise someone else for airing their frustrations on pitching to twitter saying they're "burning bridges", but are happy with Ray's twitter thread which essentially outs crunchyroll as the bad guys?... You're all over the place in this regard. I get what Kate said was a while ago, but seeing how it was problem that was brought up A LOT, a simple apology would have been appropriate. Her not apologising at the very least is rude to her team (and suggests she stands behind what she said).

I find it quite Bias on how Daft pina talks about the creator for HGS putting him rather sympathetically while for Mr Enter he never bothered to be sympathetic at all for any forms of harrassment he received and Enter been having it for years on end and arguably has more reason to be mistrustful to others that aren't his friends when they give him criticism. As much people say they can handle harassment, how is over 3 years, has any RU-vidr received that much and can still have the same face? I know I am myself bias seeing this the way that I am, but that dosen't stop from the fact how like I said, Daft pina didn't bother to bring it up, sure most likely as if it dosen't entirely matters and to an extent it dosen't, but when you have a similar situation but handle it much differently, that's where I have to call it out for what it is. Another thing as many shortcomings a creator has, a bad product is still a bad product. Just like the creation animation wise for Beserk (2016-17) everyone just bashed the show in general just for the soul reason the animation looks bad. There are a few video also making it clear how it happened and to sum it up, it was also due to lack of budget, the amount of people, the time restrictions, and limited resources like the technology was old and the said people they did had was newly graduated students. Yeah..... as far as I'm aware little to no one actually was sympathetic to the animation team and just bashed it for what it is. Odd he also never brought this up either, because the info about this is plentiful as well as notorious. Because he did brought up anime budgets and problematic production.

I dunno, this also strawmans the hell out of fundamental criticisms that have barely to do with production problems like the overall script and story arc. Like we don't know what a guardian actually is. Thyme is still an asshole. Shapeshifting, all co-ed performances, hiring heavily sexual people like the self insert just barely admitting he's a swinger with their cousins, and LGBT relationships all are extremely common yet the show still hamfists real world intolerance. Most of which is from the only masculine boys. Much like Santa Inc had to make a drug dealer to even make him remotely in the wrong about the Mc's blatant apathy and ego which makes her entirely wrong for the role.

People who badmouth the show, wanted the show to fail and didn't finish watching it? ... As someone who tries to badmouth it as often as he can, I can assure you that's not true. We for a fact wanted to be proven wrong and would actually like a second season, to see how much the team has learned. Even the 'kill all men!'-member. We won't care what horrible thing she does, as long as she makes something good. Saying we should be exterminated, will get her backlash and it will be pointed out that she's for a feact not a tolerant person, but we will watch her stuff again. Speaking about bad people doing something bad, still being able to do things of value and have opinions worth considering. You seem to assume, that the videos are EITHER valid criticism OR someone being a complete anti-diversity dushbag. Those are not mutually exclusive things. Some anti-diversity people had valid points and some people who weren't anti-diversity, had worthless videos without valid criticism.

My cursory observation and comparison is such: "High Guardian Spice" is to the anime scene in an unnervingly similar, if not the same way that "I Am Not Starfire" is to the manga/comicbook scene.

The very premise of High Guardian Spice is flawed beyond repair right out the gate. It's about four girls attending a magical academy, but their core motivations don't give them any good reason to do so. Thyme wants to save the Fairy Woods, which are on the brink of destruction. How does attending High Guardian Academy help her? She and the rest of the elves need help from experienced Guardians and they need it _today,_ not three years from now. We may not know exactly what Guardians are or how they operate, but why haven't they already acted on a disaster that threatens to wipe out an entire region? It doesn't make any sense. Parsely wants to escape her home life at her family's smithy. How does attending High Guardian Academy help her? She is already a professional blacksmith who is more than qualified to get a job at a different smithy in a different town. Why would she choose to spend three more years in her hometown, studying a profession that she already knows? It doesn't make any sense. Rosemary wants to find her missing mother. How does attending High Guardian Academy help her? Unless she thinks she will surpass her mother by the time she finishes school, she needs help from experienced Guardians. Speaking of which, why don't the other Guardians care that a famous and powerful Guardian has gone missing? What happened to the mission she was on, did nobody else get sent to complete it in her place? Caraway at least should have cared about his best friend and tried to figure out what happened, yet not only did he apparently not do that but Rosemary didn't even bother to ask him about it! It doesn't make any sense. Sage wants to become a healer using Old Magic. How does attending High Guardian Academy help her? High Guardian Academy only teaches New Magic because it's so much better ... at least, until Mandrake traps the students and it is revealed that half of them are Old Magic users, somehow. So either Sage is attending an academy that only teaches New Magic, or she is attending an academy that teaches Old Magic but she still purposely signed up for only New Magic and combat classes. Either way, it doesn't make any sense. The premise of High Guardian Spice is fundamentally flawed because the characters and the setting contradict each other. Unless you are trying to tell me that Raye's pitch was missing one or both of these core elements of the show, this contradiction cannot be blamed on corporate meddling or budget constraints.

I never watched the show, but have seen summaries, clips and reactions of every episode and to me the show is a 4-5, 6 is pushing it a bit. If the show had a proper introduction to the masses and not that god-awful teaser, it would have recieved a lot less hate. Do feel bad for the production team for all the hate that they got.

10:42 The show would have been better if they stuck with this art style

I always appreciate that you try to remain unbiased for 95% of your commentaries lengths. I would be lying if I said I don't watch RU-vidrs that purposely shit on things because it's popular to do so (it still entertains me), but giving at least an insight into the artists and production can be a concern. Nice DaftPina :)

Never thought you were gonna make a video on this but…I just wanna say I’m glad you made a video on it(despite you being a couple months late).

I’m gonna be honest, I kind of like it. Like a guilty pleasure, cause it is really bad, but it has this weird appeal that makes me laugh while watching it. Great and fair review!

This is genuinely disappointing, I feel like this show could have been something great if it got proper treatment I hope that the creators get to make that comic some day, I’d like to read it

The advertisement never stated it as a anime... yet its on a anime only site... unless stated otherwise it should be assumed its anime

I definitely agree, it's not the worst show ever, many other contenders for that, though budget and time frame does not explain everything, nor would providing more of either guarantee a good finished product. We can look at stuff from yesteryear and current day to dispel such thinking: let's go back to the 80s, with Filmation's She-Ra Princess of Power, a fraction of the budget per ep than HGS, 93 episodes 24min long over 2 years, working in analogue, ie paper, ink, celluloid sheets, xeroxing and paint... they managed to do all that with very little, HGS had all the modern advantages at their disposal and still failed, regardless of the little amounts of trouble they suffered. Now from modern day, live action this time around though, The Eternals several years of production, oscar winning director, several hundred million dollars budget, and it still sucked! Also again not the worst movie ever made, Thor Darkworld is worse, but this shows budget and production time does not guarantee a good final product. At the end of the day, it has to come down to the competency and abilities of the people who were in charge of producing it, the final product just shows that they weren't ready to undertake such an act. And I don't think making a SFW version would actually make it be less bad, the only thing that could make that show any better, would be to not make it in the first place, or if have to try, have somebody else produce it entirely, along with calling it something other than High Guardian Spice, as it made no sense in context with the show. 3/10

Reminds me of what happened with Korra where they were denied 4 seasons and given 1 and then later changed their minds and it affected the progression of the show. This info makes me appreciate the show a bit more overall. I can see the desperation of the business decitions taken to where even the people involved in the show cringed at the teaser but couldn't do anything about it. Though I think you go on the other extreme of most reviews and lean a bit much in favor of it. Mainly 2 things that come to mind: -Kate Leth could have dealt with it better. Just write a short and formal "yeah sorry about that, but I'm better now" message rather than the equivalent of "you dumb? it was tumblr's fault, leave me alone". I get separating art from author but come on, that had an easy way out that would have gained a lot of people over, now more people are aware of her than ever and I think many will avoid anything with her name in the staff from now on, those twits weren't light stuff. -Second, many reviews might be more on the hate train and even out of context with pointing out crap, but for the videos that are more along the lines of "I did watch it and here's why I didn't like it" that don't go behind the scenes, I think their opinion is still valid. Judging your affinity with a final product on itself I think should be valid. It's neat that you went to the trouble of getting all this additional information that shines a new light onto the project, but it shouldn't be necessary to deem an opinion/critique focused on judging the final product by itself good or valid enough. They are talking about their experience with it as intended, where digging through backstage baggage of "we got screwed over but tried very hard" wouldn't factor in improving said experience. I appreciate it myself but still.... it's a different perspective, and not saying all this backstage info isn't valid either.

I am still firmly in the “this show sucks” camp! It doesn’t matter how much the creators make excuses about “budget”! There are a LOT of fundamentally problematic things with the show! The unoriginal concept! The terrible lines and writing! There are so many terrible dialogues that no one with basic experience in writing will ever make! If it’s up to me, this show would’ve never get picked up by any studios in the first place! What’s even worse is you’re just as biased towards the creators the same way you accused people who criticized the show for being biased! You only hear THEIR side of the story! Keep in mind these are people who wouldn’t even admit that they messed up or that they could’ve done a better job! They’re constantly on their egotistical woke high horse!

Crunchyroll doing shady stuff behind the scenes yet again. I knew the show was bad, but damn this is crazy. I’ll never support Crunchyroll and I’ll buy directly from the companies themselves in Japan. Or pirate. Also its still a 5/10 even with all of this exposed, hopefully the animators are working in better environments

L channel L content + ratio

The staff, the production company and the product itself were and are garbage, nothing new.

I dont know why u so nitpicky discussing the 'youtuber review' more than the show itself ? honestly I see the title and watch for some view about the show

this show just kinda felt sexist, it keeps on giving me a hint in “men are bad” and the animation felt like some high school kids made it as a joke