Oh wow. This episode was…not good, was it?
After some thinking about it and reading other people’s thoughts on what happened in the latest Robotics;Notes episode, I decided to talk about my position regarding what R;N has turned into. I talked about it a bit regarding my monthly summary, but the problem is that by the time Episode 19 came, I had long since stopped caring about the show so all the shit coming down didn’t affect me one bit aside from seeing some nicely directed action. If I had been able to pay more attention when I initially did that summary, I would have realized that Episode 19 was possibly one of the biggest shark-jumping moments that Robotics;Notes could have ever done. The way everything just happened really felt like somebody realized that they had dragged things out for way too long and decided to cram in every single revelation into one episode with no regard for pacing whatsoever. And whilst I haven’t paid too much attention to the show’s hinting of events to come, I’m pretty sure that some of the revelations were pulled out of the creator’s ass with no prior foreshadowing whatsoever (oh hi there Chaos;Head). It actually made this week’s Sasami-san look sensical by comparison.
Let me summarize what I understand of the situation. Aki’s sister causes a bunch of mechs to go berserk despite only existing as a hologram, Frau’s house gets invaded because she’s been looking into SERN, Kimijima Kou is an asshole, and a whole lot of explosions occur to hide the fact that the mystery has not been the least engaging whatsoever because the conspiracy stuff was mostly window-dressing the same way friendship themes are used in Haganai. If I’m wrong, feel free to correct me, but everyone I’ve come into contact with seems to agree that yes, this is what happened. Oh, and did I mention that the show takes itself 100% seriously even though one of the plot lines involves the world being destroyed by fucking sunbeams or whatever it was? Not even a wink to the audience? Hello, Towa No Quon vibes.
Oh by the way, because APR didn’t approve of the comment I sent them, this is what I thought regarding the Robotics;Notes episode in general.
This week’s Robotics;Notes will truly be remembered by most people as the episode that changed our view on the show forever. For months, we sat through episode upon episode of buildup, waiting for that obligatory semicolon payoff that always seemed like it would come, only to be snatched away from us at the last minute. We patiently told ourselves “don’t worry, this is all building up to something” as we remembered Steins;Gate and how good that turned out (Chaos;Head does not exist). But then this episode came and made me realize something important regarding Robotics;Notes: the show is terrible. To call Episode 19 a huge clusterfuck of nonsensical events (most of them not even foreshadowed properly) with stupid villains, mismanaged character development, poor pacing, and a world-destroying plot so stupid that even Mojo Jojo from Powerpuff Girls would think twice about using it would be an insult to those kinds of clusterfucks that I find entertaining. You suck Robotics;Notes. You really, really suck!
Now, I know what you’re going to say. Don’t you like plot-holed, inconsistent messes? Do I need to remind you of an anime called K? Well here’s the thing. Aside from the fact that that anime actually did wink at the audience a few times, none of the plotholes and shit people accuse K of not explaining were relevant to what happened in that anime. The stuff with the other kings? The origin of all the characters? Not the least bit important. It was just a story about a kid who was hunted by rival gangs due to murdering a certain member. There was literally nothing more to it other than a few attempts at spicing it up here and there. Robotics;Notes’ plot on the other hand is…um…actually I don’t know what the main plot is.
Initially, it was about a group of students trying to build a robot because the main girl wanted to make her sister proud. Wasn’t really sold on that plot thread since that kind of thing depends entirely on finding the characters entertaining, which I didn’t (Yes, that includes Frau. Don’t like Frau). But whatever, I could forgive that and just dismiss the show as not my thing if that was the entire point of what was going on. Thing is, Robotics;Notes pulled the same stupid stunt Rideback did and refused to make the story simple. It wanted to involve conspiracies and military and secrets that rarely gel well with the kind of slice-of-life R;N started as because it usually ends up muddled, confusing, and ultimately boring. Okay, it’s not the exact same because R;N used the cool stuff as window dressing whilst Rideback used the slice-of-life as window dressing, but that doesn’t change the fact that the combination just didn’t work out well for either of them because they cancelled out the strengths of both slice-of-life and conspiracy shit whilst emphasizing all the flaws. So basically, the main plot is group builds a robot whilst world is about to be destroyed by weird natural causes hinted in reports and somehow other robots are invol…you see the problem I’m having? And I can’t leave anything out of that statement because unlike K, those extra story additions and “holes” are too ingrained into the main story.
If you’re having trouble understanding my messy attempt to understand this clusterfuck, what I’m basically saying is that R;N has become a mess, but it’s not the kind of mess that I enjoy. It’s too much of a blender of different elements that are too engrained into the main plot for me to ignore and I don’t think the show can recover from here. The only good thing about what happened regarding this episode in my totally biased, “incorrect to everyone but me” opinion is that I stopped caring about the show long ago so I didn’t get mad at what happened. I didn’t laugh either. I was just stone cold apathetic throughout the entire thing, which is pretty bad in its own way.
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Stingers
- I’m probably going to replace Type-Moon with this anime on my “Anime That Suck” list once it’s over.
- I honestly think Chaos;Head is better than R;N. At least that anime was fun and pretended to have a plot for its first half.
Good going there, flawfinder.
Sometimes, I wonder if I watched the same show as other people.
Especially when I read Enzo’s website.
How the hell is this episode good?
How did it say “Take that!” to the show’s countless critics?
This anime, especially this episode, is a hot mess.
Let’s talk about one the most glaring flaw, among many glaring flaws.
“Those Kimijima reports are intended to trick people into thinking that he is a good guy, a victim, hiding the fact that he is the big bad boss instead,”
Woow~ LMAO. ROFL. Is this guy dumb or what? Who is he trying to trick? What did they achieve? Zilch. Zero. Considering how badly written / unscientific / messed up those reports are, everyone will obviously think that they are just hoax, stupid diary written by a chuuunibyou person. This big bad guy is wasting time staging/planning all those complicated tricks required to download the reports. How dumb. What a waste of time anime. But it’s too late to drop it now.
I read Enzo’s take. It was definitely a “take that” to those who complained that something needed to happen, but it introduced new problems in its wake. Enzo likes the characters, so it’s not really a problem for him. I…don’t.
It’s not too late to drop the anime. I just choose not to because I hate myself.
Steins;gate is easily the best of the three.
I love that you keep keep watching shit that you don’t like for the sake of blogging ha ha you’re just begging to get skull fucked by a big brown bear!
Being a critic requires you to sit through some crap. However, I should note I only sit thru crap that’s interesting to talk about. Plus, I only sat thru R;N because it was Noitamina + 5pb.
No only fools sit through shit they don’t like sane people watch want they like and are hellbent on not seeing the shit they deem horrid but clearly you’re not sane and without keeping up with trendy anime your blog would tank in views in a matter of weeks.
Of course I’d have to keep up with anime people care about in order to get views. That’s common sense.
I would review and talk about the anime I wanted not because its trendy and will give my blogs views but because I have an genuine interest in.
That’s just me tho and clearly if I had a blog it wouldn’t get many views because I wouldn’t cater to the masses.
Sorry, but it’s not as simple as that. Writing what you like without any regards to your audience sounds like a good idea in theory, but if you didn’t want people to read you, then why are you making your views public rather than keeping it all in your head or using Microsoft Word? You’re basically talking to a wall when you do something like that. And there’s nothing more useless when it comes to writing than talking to an audience you don’t care for.
With that said, I review hentai at times for godsakes, so I obviously don’t just blog something because it’s trendy (unless porn is the new fad nowadays). Also, I fail to see the logic in only writing about what you like. That makes you out to be a boring unbalanced critic who you can’t trust to make judgments on what’s good or not, and they annoy me as much as the ones who hate everything.
Finally, as I’ve said before, I wouldn’t have written about this Robotics;Notes episode if I didn’t find it interesting to talk about!
I don’t think he’s that much of a masochist. I think many people picked Robotics; Notes hoping it will be as good as Steins; Gate, only to be deeply disappointed.
Nah, I had no hopes that it’d be as good as Steins;Gate. Nothing I read about this convinced me I was going to like it.
It’s a mess, but not really because the plot is a mess (It is. And at best it’s boring, at worst it’s very bad(Aki crying over her favorite TV Show).
There was no real foreshadowing, but it wasn’t completely impossible.
It just transformed it into a basic plot, with Evil wanting to take over the world.
I don’t remember already seeing a twist that makes the story even less interresting (Mainly, sub C;H)… Yes, in retrospect, it completely ruined any depth this show had (or pretend to have), and it already haven’t a lot of it. And told us that we completely wasted many hours of our life for nothing…
The problem is this show have no I dea what it’s trying to achieve. That’s more or less the same problem Maoyuu Mao Yuusha has.
K was better directed, because he just tried to look cool, and panning to the largest possible audience.
And Lain is also a big mess of a plot, but that was intended for the start, and doesn’t come as bad writing.
Here it is just bad writing that jump on all the worst traps amongst the way.
I think it’s mostly the pacing that’s the problem. The writing is definitely terrible, but if the pacing had been better, some of what I complained about could have been avoided.
Man this blog has went to shit.
Going to have to disagree with that.