No.7909
Dang, a summer show started already? I'll give it a try later...
No.7910
you know what to do
No.7955
>>7954> I really hope every episode is as well written and visually presented as this oneThat this is a 6 episode OVA for a finished 16 chapter manga gives me hope for the future. At the very least it shows the author wrote what they wanted to write and didn’t drag it on indefinitely.
No.7977
It's misery porn, but in a thoughtful and well-done way like Punpun/Dededede
No.7980
I read the manga, it's 95% misery all the way through but at least it has a happy ending
No.7981
>>7978Also one of the lines the blonde said to the girl was something like
Your family doesn't pay taxes!Come on, man.
No.7982
>>7981I mean you're kinda missing the forest for the trees here. Marina doesn't hold a grudge against Shizuka for being poor. It's made pretty clear that all of this started over
Shizuka's mom being a whore and luring over Marina's dad to be one of her customers with Marina's mom finding out and then in some way taking it out on and telling everything to Marina. Which then translates towards Marina's hatred towards Shizuka for being related to the homewrecker she keeps hearing about. "Your family doesn't pay taxes" was just one line, but the one to pay attention to is "Give me my papa back!" No.7983
>>7982I know that, but it's something that demonstrates that these aren't characters regarded as people. It's not "What would a little girl say here?" but rather "How can I help establish a villain"?
No.7984
>>7983It's not really that unrealistic to have a girl taking whatever she can think of and then using it to degrade someone else. Kids can be wicked things given the wrong upbringing. It's probably something she's heard from her mom too.
No.7986
>>7977>PunpunInterestingly, what I didn't like about Punpun is that the guy is just way too retarded and sabotages himself constantly, too miseryporny. (I know, that's the point, I just didn't enjoy it.) If Takopii can handle its situation better, I'm all for it.
No.7987
Marina doesn't really seem to be made out to be a true 'villain' by the end of the episode. It's much more a situation where the adults are at fault for terrible decisions and neglecting giving their children proper upbringings for their own selfishness. Although in Shizuka's mom's case it may not be pure malice but just that she can't afford to do anything else.
No.7990
>>7988I mean the
willpower to hang herself thing I don't really find too hard to grasp or cheap, especially when it's established she's tired of life in general and
the one source of happiness, being Chappy, was just killed in some way or another before she takes her own life. It's just too much for her with seemingly nobody to offer any support as every day is made living hell for a reason she can understand but doesn't know how disassociate from herself. No.8005
I like the direction. Not familiar with the manga but I see it's short. So if it's dark the whole way through at least it's not padded to hell and back. Will continue watching.
No.8006
>>7990>It's just too much for her with seemingly nobody to offer any support as every day is made living hell for a reason she can understand but doesn't know how disassociate from herself.I think that last part basically speaks of why the story is weird.
In the most generous interpretation it makes me question why no one is lending any support in this situation.
The misery porn aspect of the story requires you to suspend disbelief in humanity and imagine a world where everyone is oblivious to the suffering of others.
It's just not serious and doesn't try to portray itself otherwise
No.8007
>>7982¥ that author sentiment that people who wouldn't otherwise be bullies become dedicated bullies over sentimental reasoning hate it when it's visible that a pseud writer never engaged real life yet tries to generate something without doing homework. not picking it up. literally more behind the reality of people's nature than korean manhwas
No.8008
>>8006>suspend disbelief in humanity and imagine a world where everyone is oblivious to the suffering of othersIt's not really something that requires the suspension of disbelief to imagine. The scenario is quite realistic for Japan at least in that no adult wants to rock the boat and deal with the bullying headache it might cause them and it's not like the parents give enough of a shit to make it an issue for the school. It's not being oblivious, it's active ignorance. The one person who wants to lend support seems to be Azuma, but Shizuka's too pessimistic to think anything she could do would help. Not like Shizuka's family has a good reputation around town either, I bet.
>>8007It's not really justified in any sense of the word since it's acting out and raging on someone who can't fight back because you can't stop the main source of your anger. It's more putting a target on the back of the adults facilitating this kuso scenario.
No.8009
>>8008Maybe I'm missing an implied cultural context, but it's very hard to ignore the degree that the show is pushing it.
Plus the bully is destroying class property
and the parent's property.
And for some reason I guess I'm supposed to believe that the mother is conviniently a psychopathic sex worker(or some sort of weak woman to push a political narative from the author) who doesn't care enough for her daughter's welbeing to do something
No.8011
saw it
No.8013
I didn't see it.
No.8014
>>8011get him
(even though you're a
sager)
No.8015
Come to think of it, that's what I think of a lot of misery slop is like... everything just works out to be inconveniently convenient for the story's narrative, nothing ever works out in their favor. It's just a long string of probabilistic bad luck
No.8018
>>8015There really are stories of people in the real world where everything goes to shit and they have a genuinely terrible life, it happens. All narratives are contrived anyways, for me the question is more what is the
point of creating such a deliberately awful work, what does it achieve.
In something like Psycho Pass, I can indeed say "the situation is so insanely contrived and unrealistic (e.g. literal mutation in human nature and 100 years of total global collapse) that whatever it tries to argue is fundamentally inapplicable to the real world," but with Takopii we're at too early a point to make such a judgement.
No.8019
>>8009I mean, the destruction and defacing of class property thing is so prevalent across all forms of Japanese media that I can't imagine it's anything but commonplace. It's probably something that's completely different from what we're used to in our society that it seems out of place and just shock content. The parent's property is paid for with welfare so she won't care. And who knows what's wrong with the mother but parents that don't care for their children aren't exactly all too rare.
>>8015I've been somewhat pondering what it is that I enjoy about more misery porn series. And I think it's that they're often vehicles used to express a perspective and give more insight into the feelings of others that people can't wrap their heads around, or for people to be able to connect to and not feel so alone with their situation. In other ways it puts a microscope on a portion of society people want to ignore and forces you into confronting it head on. Maybe to instill some disgust or aversion towards the horrid way people act inside of them. Or to get some understanding that can help people resolve the issue better. In Punpun, which
>>7986 brought up, I think it's a good delve into the perspective where of someone whose entirely fed up with and disgusted by society. The opportunities one can see Punpun blowing off aren't necessarily ones he'd want to take. Life for him is just a living hell and despite everything he's forced to live it. It's inconveniently convenient that things just happen to line up the way they do, but at the same time by saying that you're denying the situations like this can and do occur.
No.8020
>>8015life do be like that, but if you feel that something is forced, that's probably just skill issue of writers who failed to make things believable
>>80192 deep for me! I just find suffering of children sexually arousing! Takes me back to my own childhood too, so nostalgic~
No.8022
>>8020oh hey i found a lost pendrive with loli guro by the entrance to the /qa/ mansion is it yours by any chance?
No.8023
>>8021stop being a burden on society anon!
No.8024
>>8022no, my loliguro is safely stored in my pxiv bookmarks! but thanks for asking, I really appreciate it!
speaking of loliguroporn and children suffering, new made in abyss chapter can't come soon enough...
No.8026
>>8018The thing is that it's trying to critique society and not a fictional scifi world. So while in psychopass you might look at it as a dramatacization of what could occur in the future(like 1984 and other futuristic tech novels).
But this is the world we're in now, so it's going to be more rigorously criticized if it doesn't make sense, since it's an assault on the world and an expectation that we should feel something about a scenario the author feels exists.
No.8027
and I guess this is why autobiographical works are much stronger for these than ambiguously created characters that are designed to evoke feelings of empathy
No.8030
>>8026>>8027I agree that if you feel it's stretching the bounds of verisimilitude then certified real events of the same kind can be much more moving, but that doesn't mean Takopii is internally inconsistent or showing an impossible situation. If you recognize that it's trying to pull your heartstrings and you don't like it or think it's too blunt (which I do think it is), that's a different issue, more about rejecting the premise.
No.8042
>>8027autobiography is fiction too
No.8049
Man, some people ITT are as naive as Takopi.
No.8050
Takopi Christ
No.8055
>>8049vagueposting is bad
No.8060
>>8059it's like being an uppity nig AND a gossipy teen AT THE SAME TIME
No.8066
Takopi had went under my radar because it was listed in the ONA section, not normal anime section, but this thread brought it to my attention.
Finally decided to watch it today.
When I first saw the girl, I knew she was a victim of bullying. When I saw Takopi, I thought I knew he was going to be the relief character for the girl. When I saw the dog, and how much Shizuka cared for it, I knew something bad was going to happen to it. Seeing Shizuka hang herself was a shock, but not something out of the ordinary for a "misery porn" show. Everything felt predictable.
Until Takopi reverted time. Then I thought it'd be something like Takopi constantly trying to make the day better for Shizuka, and that drags on for another 6 episodes until happily ever after.
But then, Takopi experiences the bullying, and despite being the ball of happiness and naivety that he is, he gets scared of Marina. So scared that, despite knowing what is going to happen to Shizuka, and despite thinking that it was his fault Shizuka was going to have to go through that, he couldn't go out and take her place.
Then the story shifts focus onto Marina's household. It shows that Marina, while not in the right, isn't bullying Shizuka just because. While not a reason to bully someone, she has her own situation that's making her act as such.
This single episode was a roller-coaster ride of emotions. Takopi's naivety is endearing but at the same time sad because it's only making things worse for Shizuka in her school. Marina is the bully, but that's only the Shizuka POV and she herself is a victim too. I don't know what to think about all this.
I don't know the last anime that evoked such emotions in me.
No.8069
>>8066You have a tender soul.
Yes, the main draw currently is that it's a sticky situation, timeloop puzzle kind of deal, but with a sad reality that you (hopefully) can't doraemon gadget your way out of. Given that it's only six eps, we do know it won't drag out, so I'm wondering how exactly it'll develop. Surely it won't have three episodes of flashbacks, like some longer series do.
No.8070
>>7953It's sometimes hard to tell the difference between auto-tweens and a rotoscope but it looks more like the former to me. Because the key frames are more on model than a rotoscope tends to be.
No.8140
I wasn't expecting Marina's death to be irreversible... I thought it might happen at some point, but it's surprising if it's going to stay like this for the rest of the show.
No.8147
>>8140I feel like
they'll probably fix it at some point. But having to live with the action until then will be quite interesting. No.8149
I think the next episode will answer if this is going to be full misery porn or not.
No.8150
>>8149Frankly, I thought they would spend at least a bit of time exploring the situation, people's lives, before escalating it like this. But we didn't learn anything new, it was 16 blunt minutes of inescapable assholery like last episode in order to set up the one key moment. That is to say, it's not looking good.
No.8151
>>8150I think you're just simply mistaken to think that. It presented an overwhelmingly oppressing situation for a whole of 2 episodes without showing too much of the other side specifically so that it could resolve it in the most conclusive way possible with fanfare from the crowd. Now's a perfect time to explore how 'great' that resolution is.
No.8152
>>8151I understand, and that's precisely why I referred to it as blunt.
No.8153
￥Takopi fucking kills Marina-chanI was wondering why this show was called Takopi's Original Sin...
>>8140It looked like the
camera got wet by the blood so it stopped working, so it should work like normal once its dry. Though, Takopi probably thinks it's useless now, or now that Takopi knows the secret to making Shizuka-chan happy, he will keep up the true and tried.
No.8154
tardkopi
No.8156
yeah, I really hate this show. It's not a superficial one, it's visceral that the author would write takopii like this
No.8162
I speed read the manga and I'm basically confused.
In more ways than one it's basically a retelling of the DeadDeadDemons but not done critically enough for me to feel anything more than basic emotions out of it
No.8164
Finished the manga and did NOT speedread it.
Sadly, it doesn't do the exploration I was hoping for. It shows the cause, the frustration that leads to abuse, but unlike Punpun it does the bare minimum to humanize its problematic parents (that is to say, you've seen it before), nor does it do much with the children themselves.
Yet the biggest problem is that the entire plot hinges on Takopii being utterly retarded, I'm talking profoundly so, on par with that terminal Downie sitting in the clinic shouting aloud the same few words on repeat for half an hour until his parent takes him outside while feeling an incomprehensible amount of shame. Not only is it all caused by Takopii, it's solved by him as well, not by the children or the parents who should be the real focus. I see why
>>8162 would compare it to DDDD, but I feel the mechanism for final resolution is a lot closer to Higurashi (
anamnesis), while devoid of any of the setup Higu employs.
That is to say, not only is it considerably
more contrived than previously thought, it also has
less of a point that could justify it. I am thoroughly disappointed, 4/10.
No.8171
I gave it the benefit of the doubt since the first episode was impressively animated but this is stupid. This is going to spawn a litany of fan images. My whole twatter feed is going to be shizuka now. It's just not the same as Madoka to me. Like you could call Madoka Magica "misery porn" such a stupid term but that was art, this is dumb.
No.8201
Haven't watched episode 2 yet (or hovered over spoilers) but I think what will determine if it's a show with value to me rests on this boy's shoulders:
>>8012. He's the one with the struggle, facing his limitations. He fulfills the role of the traditional protagonist/hero, but due to the
time looping is there really even a chance for that to happen?
I'm instead imagining this story where there's nothing extraordinary and it's instead this boy's role to grow and confront authority find a place in the world for the innocent girl and become a person that defends his friends and values.
No.8208
￥SHITzuka gets her womb bullied by the local hobo
woah... megapaste, i'm glad i read the manga
No.8447
>>8446The seduction skills are genetic
No.8449
This anime is a mix of misery porn and black comedy. Bursted out laughing when that opening exchange happened
No.8450
>>8446I guess every flower does have it's day to bloom.
Even if they're just a dirty, dog smelling girl with a home haircut and the same outfit every day.
No.8451
>>8164Madoka Magica was still a magical girl show with everything involved with watching little girls act dramatically, the only difference is it took a few ideas to a logical conclusion while exploring some existential/religious themes in the mean time. If it were miseryporn it wouldn't have any themes of underlying hope or struggle against fate, it would just be a endless spiral into suffering that justifies more suffering. At most it shows the suffering involved in endless trials and error, but love and hope is the driving message.
This is just how miserable humans are and how it's a corrupting influence to a naive-but-kind alien that isn't equipped to deal with inter-social conflict. The story hinges on how horrible people are and how solutions aren't magical. Takopi is sort of like an idealist first attempt solution to a social problem in octopus form, everything is set in a dreamlike place where only three kids and their problems exist and nothing else. Once you scratch away at the misery there's nothing that hadn't been better depicted elsewhere. Not that it's
that bad, either.
No.8452
>>8451Did you mean to reply to
>>8171? That's someone else. Anyways,
>The story hinges on how horrible people are and how solutions aren't magical.This is incorrect, because the solution
is magic. The conflict isn't solved through the human characters learning to overcome their situation, it's precisely Takopii's magic and his idealism that ultimately solves it. Your conclusions are premature and mistaken.
No.8453
>>8452Yes, I'm retarded.
>because the solution is magicI'd only consider it magical in the same way friendship is magic.
Being able to live out your idealized solution to your problems and how things won't go as you want, and see also how others attempt and fail at solving their own issues is the magical part allowed through a cheesy gadget meant to capture moments, but is this really only possible through a magical device or can it be done by anyone socially competent? Learning how to trust people and understand how you're not alone is what they got out of it.>The conflict isn't solved through the human characters learning to overcome their situationThe humans rub off on him enough where
he realizes he personally has no solution to their problems, he was just a part of the equation.
No.8454
>>8453The idealized solution IS what happens. The learning was only achieved
through magic, not only that, a
special extra-magical magic that breaks the previously-established rule that was preventing Takopii from solving things. We don't even get to see how the girls could've possibly fixed the situation with their mothers, which was the whole point, the cause of the situation. It's skipped, glossed over, totally defeating its premise.
I'll even argue it goes against the logic of
a sacrifice for
Takopii to fix things by giving up himself and his powers, because it is achieved precisely through what is supposedly
being given up. It has its cake and eats it too.
No.8455
>>8454The mothers were just set pieces to the conflict between the two of them, the only role one played was making Marina miserable.
The premise is the conflict between Shizuka and Marina, the thing they cry over is about not being able to talk things out with others. That this solution isn't magical is just me using a rhetorical device to point out how mundane the resolution ended up being.I don't get what you mean by logic. Takopii learns the concept of evil by learning how humans behave. Him sacrificing himself wasn't the point at any point.
No.8456
>>8455If the problem is reduced to just two children being unable to talk it out, then all the emphasis on family dynamics as the driving force is irrelevant. It would mean what
>>7954 and
>>7948 said about parenting and that this has a nuanced take on it is plain wrong, that the author doesn't actually care and merely used it as a distraction for a far simpler conflict. Or rather, that the obvious premise everyone would interpret from the first hour of the show wasn't the real premise, and that most of the story somehow doesn't focus on the real point, which is kind of silly. We can talk about the
sacrifice later, this is the real issue at stake.
No.8460
>>8456There really wasn't any emphasize on the parents. Shizuka's mom shows up without a face just to act dismissive of her, and Marina's mom's face only appears when she's doing horrible things to Marina. Even if Marina's mom knew everything about her child what her daughter ultimately was to her was just an outlet for her frustration towards her husband, and the only person she has control over. But even despite that, who Marina really wanted to talk to after
she killed her was her mom, the person who she hated enough to kill was still someone she thought she could talk out with. Despite this, I don't see how it's the obvious premise at all, the show is literally centered on the perspective of the children and the octopus.
Shizuka's dad is literally shown to be uninvolved, he appears just to show he doesn't even care about her at all. How these horrible things their parents do make the children feel is important, absolutely, but the family dynamics is just the prop to set the emotional stage for how complex humans, their emotions, and their relationships can be, and how things aren't black and white and how solutions take an understanding of other people, not just contriving machines that don't strike at the source of the problem. Takopii does not intentionally bring about the resolution to the story and Takopii even realizes himself that he can't force others to be happy. The story plays with him by telling him that just being there was what allowed for it, that his mistaken beliefs made it possible.
If anything, a consistent striking point is that everyone boils down their problems into a few issues that really aren't all that important.
No.8464
>>8460It's wrong to say there wasn't any emphasis on the parents. You could say, and I would agree, that they don't have as much going on
as characters on their own, but for all three children we spend at least half of the story seeing how their relationship to their parents shapes them. It would be like writing a story about a soldier in the middle of 2003 Iraq and saying that, actually, war is not the point, when everyone would immediately see it say "this is a war story"... because it is, armed conflict defines everything that's going on, just like how the children are defined by their relationship to their parents.
You say it's about humans being complex, when the solution is simplistic, that it's not black and white, when it's overly focused on extremes, that it's not the obvious premise, when everyone else treated it as such, and that Takopii doesn't intentionally bring about the resolution... which even if correct still misses the point, the solution continues to be magical as opposed to previous assumptions of magic not being able to solve it. You are overreaching and looking for something greater.
No.8465
>>8463
>You say it's about humans being complex, when the solution is simplistic, that it's not black and white, when it's overly focused on extremes
I have no clue how these things are contradictory.
>that it's not the obvious premise
The show is not about family problems. It's about interpersonal conflict in a very similar way Higurashi is, using children and their relationships to their family and each other as the backdrop.
>the solution continues to be magical as opposed to previous assumptions of magic not being able to solve it
The solution was not about the magic. That's what I'm emphasizing by saying the solution is not magical. It is not a literally true statement, and I didn't intend it to be taken as literally true.
>You are overreaching and looking for something greater.
These are the most basic elements I think the story is composed of. It's possible to view it from the lens of how dysfunctional families lead to dysfunctional children but I don't think this is what's meant to be focused on. The fact that no resolution between the parents and the children came, only between themselves and Takopii, makes me think this is also what the author wanted to focus on. Actually, I have no clue how you could think family interaction is the real point when the story never makes it out to be. You could make some parallels between Takopii's original sin being about misguided parents, or breaking free from the restraints of family, or something like that.
No.8467
>>8465See, your argument is that since family problems weren't resolved, therefore they couldn't have been the focus of the story. But then, how do you make sense of Azuma? His arc is entirely about his relationship to his mother and how it leads him to try and support Shizuka, there are several chapters spent building this up, yet he is ultimately irrelevant when it comes to the resolution and doesn't contribute anything to the relationship between Shizuka and Marina. What do you make of him?
To me, if a story spends so much time dealing with an element, spends a hundred pages covering it, and uses it as the setup for its characters, then it cannot be said to not be a major part of the work. To use the Higurashi example, it would be like saying Satoko's arc isn't actually about abuse, which I've never seen anyone argue, on the contrary, people constantly bring up R07's experience as a social worker to explain the care that went into it. Your argument implies that, if so, it should have had a real resolution, which is my point.
No.8470
>>8467I don't have anything as strict as an argument, I'm making it up my view as I talk. You've switched things from focusing on the parents into focusing on the family in general. His resolution is actually with his brother,
he asks Takopii to tell him to fight with his brother so he could make up with him, again the mother is just someone that helps justify the conflict in the story. Him and her mom's pancakes do not have a conclusive ending. He seems like an idiot with somewhat good intentions, and his brother is pretty dumb as well for letting his brother suffer the feeling of isolation for so long. It was showed that the reason he couldn't confide with his brother was because he feared censure in general, he viewed his brother as someone who would think badly of him but he figured out that wasn't the case at all when they just talked with each other. He was used a mouthpiece in the ending to tell Takopii
that people can be both good and evil, essentially that he's too simple-minded, that despite how wrong the situation was he still felt happy. >then it cannot be said to not be a major part of the workI didn't view them as important. They're a major part of the work and you could derive your own thoughts on that, but there's so little emphasis on how the parents are feeling. So much of the ending focuses on other things.
No.8471
>>8470You're putting your overall conclusion before everything else, as vaguely as it exists, and reshaping the story to make it fit. You decouple Azuma's mother from his relationship to his brother, and say again that it's not as important when we're repeatedly shown both are affected by her expectations, because you think the mother would've otherwise been more developed, and you don't connect her last appearance with the scene with Takopii you refer to. I think it'd be better to stop here and wait to see what other people think.
No.8472
>>8471The story focuses on the children. Even Takopii's parents aren't focused on, although he also fits the theme of acting out in order to get to some solution. This isn't a debate and I don't know what your problem is.
No.8473
>>8472It's not a debate that the children are the main characters, no. But you seem fixated on the belief that if the parents aren't focused on as characters, that parenting itself isn't important. It's a strange idea.
No.8474
>>8473You seem to work off of weird binaries that don't actually exist.
No.8710
the message is that women are EVIL
No.8711
next episode will be kinda unusual, last episode kind of a rushed conclusion, but it was like that in the manga too
No.8713
>>8710why are the women in animes so nice then?????????
No.8715
>>8709Had a feeling things would turn out like this with his brother, Azuma's just way too dense and hard on himself to notice.
No.8717
>>8714Data from recent public surveys does not support this assertion.
No.8729
>>8717I don’t believe it! Show me the data!
No.8732
>>8729It's two blocks down:
>>>/poll/7355As you can see, the women we love are overwhelmingly of neutral to good alignment. Of 19 votes, only 3 are for evil women (hara/sado/yan).
No.9270
>>8708>>8709>Shizuka is heading down a bad pathShizuka
turns into a seductress just like her mother, but with deader eyes that scares Takopi.Interesting that,
in the original timeline, Shizuka would not have died, even if chappy was killed, it was Takopii's interference that actually lead to her suicide being more than just an attempt.We don't get to see how Shizuka's life was in the future, but Marina's was still the same, but she had a good heart.I don't know what to feel about either of them.
Marina's future-self was a good girl, I felt like, while Shizuka is painted to be the "villain"; even in the current timeline she's acting all evil.
However, being bullied in school, her mom not caring about her, and losing her best friend (chappy), that would make anyone snap. She had no-one on her side growing up, while Marina at least had a good school life. Had chappy not been killed, I feel like Shizuka would've turned quite fine herself, once she graduated shougakkou.Really excited for the finale, I'm hoping it ends with a 40 minuter.
No.9271
They did this one well.
Best episode.
No.9272
Also that Ferry she goes on mid episode is pretty neat. You can plan an interesting Japan trip around it where you arrive in Sapporo, then go to Oorai to see the Girlz und Panzer city and tourism, then head into central tokyo to see Akihabara and other such stuff.
No.9420
>>9419It's not explained.
I guess having something in common to bond over was what they needed, so it worked for them. It's more or less a meaningless ending. No.9422
>>9419You're not retarded, the ending is.
No.9426
Yeah that ending was not satisfying at all.
No.9427
The moral of the story is that if Takopii just died then all missery in the world would be solved
No.9433
Was the message talking works? Pro tip it doesn't Or was this a meaningless message? That it is what it is? I don't mind that message at all as long as your honest about it. I enjoyed the show for what it was. Shizuka is a sl0t like her mother. The biggest victim was the takopi. The shota too even though he was a prick simp.
No.9434
>>9433I think it conveys a very common pure land buddhist sentiment of trial and error and learning to accept and love the dirtiness, and love, of your condition. I don't think there's a real message and it's probably more meaningful to examine individual segments of the story over focusing on the whole.
Talking it out doesn't work and the beginning of the story has Takopii trying that himself, there wasn't enough common ground for it to lead to anything fruitful. Takopii himself didn't understand what was happening to begin with.
No.9435
>>9433The message is that parents suck, glasses never should have been involved in the first place and that Marina and Shizuka could have become friends if they had some way to talk.
No.9436
Let's talk theory.
There are times when a character in a story will have a certain goal or values, but the world differs from their hopes, so they set out to change the world accordingly. This requires some degree of effort, there is resistance, so that presents a problem which needs to be solved. A problem may be trivial to solve, in which case its narrative and emotional impact may be low, or it may be difficult, due to obstacles demanding resources, skills, and/or information beyond what the character has, making it something serious, a big deal. Something with weight, which is the requirement for payoff.
It's common to set up a problem that would be hard for most and then easily solve it to show that the character is capable (see: jobbing), but it is also possible for a character to only partially succeed and not fully achieve their goals, failing in some aspect and needing to accept this, changing themselves instead. They may even fail entirely, truly demonstrating the difficulty of the problem and/or their own shortcomings. The message of a work is generally expressed through the means the author chooses to solve this problem with, or by suggesting what the correct course would've been. They ask the audience "how could this issue be solved?" and give their opinion via the values conveyed in the narrative. They're answering the question they've set up, usually with some degree of ambiguity or else it risks becoming too preachy.
By having Takopii fail many times, by showing that bullying persists and leads to death despite trying to take different measures, by failing at trying to talk things out, the story is demonstrating that the problem is complex, gives it weight. It's beyond the alien's ability to help: Takopii can't grasp the situation, he's too dumb to solve it and doesn't have the necessary resources/skills. The message is clear: the tako can't do it. He can't magically bring a happy ending.
We would therefore expect change to take place inside of and through the other characters instead, the ones who are not a walking joke. This does happen with Azuma-kun and his brother, but it's a subplot, not the real meat of the story. With the two girls, what we have a twofold betrayal. First, a betrayal of in-universe laws, where suddenly the gadget can do something entirely new that, for no reason whatsoever, breaks the precent of Takopii's previous 100 attempts. A deus ex, simple as. Second, a solution to the situation that comes about through magic rather than through the characters we are invested in. First there is a random magical act, then a sudden reconciliation that tackles precisely zero of the previously established problems. Both of these things are a rug pull, which destroys the potential payoff of the story, and makes its message into something incomprehensible that seemingly no one can agree on, as everyone shares a different interpretation while they try to put together the scraps of this failure. Sad!
For me, the message is clear: sex with shotas.
No.9441
>>9436The only possible way it could've tackled the reconciliation is if they explained what went through Marina's head that made her stop being a bitch. Something clearly happened, but there's no solid indication of what. Takopii being a magical being that just does magic isn't too far of a stretch.
No.9442
>>9441What matters is not that Takopii is magical, it's that magic was established as a failure repeatedly, until suddenly it solved the core conflict effortlessly. That's what breaks its internal logic. It's not problematic when the Ghost of Christmas Past magically takes Scrooge for a trip, the story is doing its thing and consistently uses it to make him gain insight into his situation, gradually and logically. What would've made more sense was for change to take place in the real characters and
that being what serves to propel the magic, but the author wrote themselves into a corner by maximizing the cast's cocktail of suffering, malice, and stupidity.
No.9444
saw
No.9445
It's fine for it to be inconsistent, it's slop anyways.
There's no "message". It's just a story that the author crafted up based on some thoughts he had towards bullying
No.9448
Maybe the message was that the PTA sucks
No.9482
Forgot to give my final opinion of this.
Eh, it was okay I guess, maybe 5 out of 10. The high production values is what elevates it to that level, though. That money would have best been used elsewhere for a better story.
They never gave the boy a chance to shine
>>8201 , but he did end up as the only redeeming part of the show; the only character that was empathic and fleshed out in a way that made him human. There was no feeling of weight to anything in the story despite what should be lots of trauma and misery.
Meh. Nice visuals and some good music.
No.9485
>>9482Voice acting was good too.
No.9516
People really reach hard to "justify" not liking something this good when it's simply a genre they don't like in the first place.
No.9554
>>9419I think I lean towards agreeing with
>>9425 in a way that it it's similar to where in Higurashi the normal bad end routes were avoided through a miracle in the space time continuum or whatever. Takopii left a lasting impression on the both of them the manifests through the loop.
>>9436>>9446I think you're missing the point that Takopii did actually end up saving the two of them through his actions. That little speck of memory shared between the two of them was what allowed for a connection to take place further followed by Shizuka and Marina reconciling over their respective situations given a chance to see the whole of one another. It may be offscreened and some will say that this reduces the impact, but I think that showing it fully onscreen would be a bit redundant because the entire anime is about setting up and explaining each of their situations that lead them to becoming the way they are in the future. The message is that by understanding their respective situations through connecting instead of demeaning one another, they're able to form a friendly bond and come to like one another. A bit of a nice and optimistic take on humanity as opposed to the "misery porn" people have been trying to call it. I think Punpun is far more misery porn than this could ever be.
Maybe there could also be a religious tie-in for the way this played out given the title. Takopii's original sin was acting out of vengeance and going to murder Shizuka, and in that sense maybe that's why the author has him take on a more jesus-like role in absolving the two of their respective sins through his sacrifice. It seems a bit off to say, but I don't really get the Japanese interpretation of Christ.
No.9557
>>9516vagueposters will be executed
No.9560
>>9516I think people just get an idea in their head and will defend that their idea of what something was was right until the end. This series wasn't just misery porn.
No.9561
>>9554The problem with your interpretation is that most of this "shared memory" isn't a shared experience to begin with, and was known prior to any time travel taking place. In Higurashi this move works because there's an extensive SoL part where the characters grow close as friends broken up by things going wrong, and when they tap into those memories they can see how things went wrong and realize the value of what they have and the risk of losing it. In this show that's not what happens, Marina and Shizuka never share any positive moments together throughout the loop, and even if they began to share memories through a rule-breaking asspull there's still nothing worthwhile to bond over, just the piles of suffering that they both knew already each other had, and which had been shown before to
not be solvable through any form of communication. It would be even worse, because Shizuka would remember the hundred times that Marina drove her to suicide. In that sense it's a double-layered deus ex, because not only is the asspull a magical solvent, it doesn't even face its own implications.
No.9562
>>9554It isn't very optimistic, the situation that requires someone to understand who someone else is to an appreciable degree takes so much effort that it's best shown to be essentially magical. All any of the characters could do for each other is to be aware of them and to just be by them, to be aware of who they are and why they became what they are, there is no easy solution provided. The nature of that message alone would lead to an anti-climatic end, I feel.
The miseryporn aspect comes from how comedically cruel the characters can get, mostly.
>I think Punpun is far more misery porn than this could ever beI don't remember Punpun being anything other than a downward spiral for no point, so yeah.
No.12602
>>12601Dubious. You don't need religion for a literal whore to be considered filthy, and avoiding those related to undesirables is just a normal Japanese practice tied much more to politeness and social standing than to religiosity. Corralling people into a subhuman underclass is indeed awful, and I knew about it beforehand, but there's not much indication within the story that this is being done as a form of conscious social organization. Either way, it's subtext at most, and even if it were true it wouldn't affect my opinion of the story any more than trivia and neat details would.
No.12603
>>12602Religions are baked into the culture. Shinto is very
purity coded and you see this in how people react and respond to social drama.
No.12604
>>12603Yes, but for Shinto to ever become purity-coded, more so than other forms of nature worship, it requires a surrounding culture prior to it already holding such values. You can't use Shinto as an explanatory factor without also considering its own origin, it didn't suddenly spring up fully formed for no reason.
No.12605
>>12604are you trying to say something like... because prostitution is an objectively disliked trade(it's not, see India) we can't draw ties to it and compare how it could be different in a culture that saw anyone, even butchers, as filthy people.
No.12606
Anonymous, it's bullying because the whore mother ruined Marina's family, nothing religious, nothing cultural. Any kid would make fun of you if your mom was a whore. In this case Marina hated Shizuka because said whore mother caused her family to collapse.
Anons fight over anything these days...
No.12608
>>12606i'm trying to understand his position
No.12615
>>12604There's no reason to believe culture and religious beliefs do not inform each other in equal measure.
No.12618
>>12601I thought tanners and executioners especially are considered untouchables by most cultures. I don't see anything mentioning prostitutes in those wikipedia pages.