Youjo Senki Discussion and Criticism

Hehe, her expressions in the manga are quite glorious

 

Technically, it's counted as 6.5, since they're still going to do six more episodes. They only did it because, as someone stated above, there were production issues.

 

I wonder if those production issues had anything to do with our lovely sidekick abnormal face and eyes in the anime. I honestly hope that they at least make them slightly smaller... I mean she didn't even look human in comparison to the rest of the cast.

Plus, such alteration would only require some time to fix and wouldn't require changing whole scenes for it. Thus actually doable fix, even if during mid casting.

 

Hmm.... I might just do something like that. Though I must admit I am not fond of the overemphasis that is made on that line. DEUS LO VULT that is.

Feels like they are throwing the thing into the audience face rather than keep things subtle.... though that is just me. Just feels kind of like the animation team thought the audience wouldn't be able to put two and two together so they had to forcefully mouthfeed them to make sure that the "subtle" message was very clear.

I don't dislike the phrase.... well, I didn't dislike it until they started overusing it.

Woops, wasn't planning on going into a rant. But I will keep that suggestion in mind. Probably going to go for "Youjo Senki Discussion and Criticism" since I think all three media forms of the story have their own flaws that are worth bringing up at some point.

 

There are people who after watching episode 7 go, "I have no idea whats going on anymore" or after watching episode 1 go "So edgy!", etc.

Plenty of People are dumb fucks.

 

Yeah, but I don't think dumbing down the content is the right method. Plus, I feel the execution of how the "God" (It is Gods goddamn it!) is was a cop-out from the animation studio to avoid having any sort of "controversy", which I do think is kind of silly considering half of the audience have nicknamed Tanya the "Nazi Loli". Not exactly the best repute to have for your main protagonist is there?

Plus, I think a lot of the 'adjustments' they have done in the anime so far have only made the following episodes harder to make sense and in some aspects, more confusing due to them keeping some of the stuff true to the lore of the LN rather than their alternated take on it.

My point (part of it at least) is, if you try to cater to everyone by dumbing stuff down (Or removing certain content almost entirely from the story) the end results is going to be less satisfactory than the original. Plus, how many movies, games, books that people would originally think "It is only a niche group that will like this" have exploded out of proportion once the general audience got their hands on it. A lot of them have. Yes, there are plenty of dumb people and yes, some people can't follow a subplot worth a damn, but nevertheless those same folk may still enjoy the content even if they can't fully comprehend the material. So in the end, dumbing things down will only alienate more people more so than increase its appeal to a wider audience.

 

I agree with you for the most part except for Being X. I like how the anime handled it. Makes Being X more powerful, oppressive and well Godly while increasing his pettiness. He acts like Old Testament God.

As for my example of idiots, its more like they can't for the life of them understand that a war is going on despite it being what the entire show is about with the Being X thing being a sub-plot that drives the main plot.

 

I liked the approach that showed that the Gods were no better than the humanity they deemed to rule over. Petty and pretentious. I liked that removal of a layer of actual "Holiness" from them and into more of a "Extremely Powerful and Multispacial beings" setup.

It makes them... less godly. And personally, I like that. Deconstruction of higher beings is more interesting to me than having them be 'actual' gods.

Also, Gods, as in, the plural of God

Spoiler: For those that haven't even finished the first 2 Chapters. What the hell are you even doing here then?

And I will rest my case that I like the manga execution of this particular part in the story better than the way they did it in the anime (The initial introduction of Being X I am split up about though).

 

Its all down to personal taste then. I like the way the anime did it. I mean, read the bible. You don't get a holiness from OT God's actions. You see he is genocidal and quite vindictive and petty, Matches Being X who calls himself God.

Will read the manga later. At work right now.

 

True, it is down to personal opinion of course. But I highly recommend you check how the manga does it (and in general just for the sake of reading the manga) before finalizing that verdict. Always helps to keep things open just in case.

 

I know this kind of ruined the matrix for my dad, I mean he wouldn't have liked it anyway, because its a movie abut gun fights, but..

 

Heh, may check it out.

Interestingly, according to some folk around the net, the reason Tanya and her sidekick look so different in the anime is because the LN author was supposedly horrified by the fact that people were waifu-ing the Tanya version from the manga (something about him being actually man I think). And that he asked the animation team to, and I quote, "Fuck them up" due to that.

Kind of hilarious in hindsight considering that now there exists more 18+ artwork of the anime version on pixiv than the manga.... Actually I don't think I have found more than 1-2 (if any actually) that are based on the manga design... suspect that is due to the manga artwork being a bit more complex than the one in the anime and thus harder to replicate.

If this is true I have a suspicion that our good writer is a lot less Internet savvy than I initially thought. I mean, the Internet goes rule 34 for everything. Heck, I have seen rule 34 being applied to bloody seal clubbing (Don't ask)!

So him thinking that making her look less normal is going to change anything strikes me as bit odd and honestly kind of immature and rash decision.

Of course I have only heard this second/third hand so this may be incorrect information. Would be nice to get a confirmation if it is correct info or not.

Nevertheless, what are ye all thoughts on this?

 

Personally, I find it amusing as Hell. Any series that gains any sort of traction on the net is going to end up Rule 34'd. It'd take a really non-net-savvy person to fail to realize this. If it's really true, then it's kind of hilarious, in a sort of schadenfreude kind of way, at the author's expense.

 

I watched up to episode 6 recently and I noticed something that has been bothering me about some of the stories like this one, where the main character is someone from the "real" world put into a fantasy world, and it is the fact that the main character is more or less the smartest person in the fantasy world. I noticed this in Drifters where the titular Drifters (historical figures from our world) are put into a generic fantasy land and proceed to conquer it utterly. The locals of this world are more or less hopeless against them and stand no chance at all.
I will admit that Youjo Senki at least has the excuse of being set in its world's version of World War One so it makes sense that they have no idea how the fight a modern war. It just kinda bothers me that the main character and her group just stomp things easily. But I will admit that there is stuff I haven't seen so I am probably wrong and just talking out of my ass, but that is just my opinion as of now.

 

Tanya has trained her troops using special forces training. Her troops are not rookies. They were already Imperial mages, she made them better. She was gifted with OP magic and jewel and her troops have an more advanced jewel based on her own.

And yet despite all this, and they should be weaker then the enemy? Are you serious?

 

Oh god, I loved Tanya this episode.

Just that moment the good mad Doctor burst through the door and she suddenly realized what the rest of her day was going to be like.

Also her wondering about how her life got to where it is.

 

So what do you guys think the shock and awe plan of Episode 9 is?

I think its mass explosives being detonated. Said explosives being all buried on all the land the NotFrench are marching on. any survivors gets killed by artillery. Right flank troops being drunk and overconfident get overrun by Empire troops.

 

The little cartoon wolves in the manga are the best.

 

Agreed. Kinda wish they mept them for the anime.

 

Those animal people representing the nations and troops were hilarious.

A shame too they weren't included. What really irritates me about Youjo Senki is how people even on SB call Tanya and the empire nazi. Some even use the arene city bombing as an example of this. I want to bash wikipedia articles of the dresden bombing, the nuclear bombings, the attacks on baghdad and the "collateral damage" times were weddings get massacred to these dimwits faces. Atrocities does not make one a nazi!

 

People ignore and forget things that make them unhappy. And people forget that back during WWI and WWII, there was no side that was the good guys, just lots of propaganda. Well, calling the Empire "Nazi" might not be off however, considering how the halls the generals work in look so much alike to Nazi Germany's. Artistically, there are similarities.

 

From what I can see, its more people are too liberal in accusing each other of being nazi, fascist, racist, etc without understanding what these words are supposed to mean or define.

That doesn't mean much. Are they employing Nazi goals such as extermination of slavs, jews, etc? Are they allying with NotJapan and talking about inferior races?

So far as I can see, no. The halls don't mean anything. The Nazi's took over from the weirman?? republic who took over from Imperial germany. So unless your theory is that the Nazi's burned all the buildings to the ground and then built their own, its more likely they just took over existing buildings.

Hell the swaztika was IIRC something from Hindu or Buddhism.

 

The Nazi swastika is a version of a folk symbol used by the Germanic people in both pagan and Christian contexts.

Though it might well be old enough to come from the same root as the Hindu and then Buddhist symbol. Protoindoeuropean is the ancestor of both Proto Germanic and Sanskrit after all.

Which actually strengthens your point, before the Nazis plastered it over everything the swastika was just an old symbol, mostly forgotten, but with canotations of the salt of the earth old timey folk.

And in fact legitimizing their rule by tying them selves to earlier empires was a huge part of Nazi propaganda.

 

To anyone paying attention its clearly ww1. And frankly Tsarist Russia is significantly more "evil" then Imperial Germany. And neither were usually bad for the type of governments they were, afaict.