This might be a hot take, but the "your mom wasn't always so conservative" scene legit offended me from a writing standpoint, even more so than the terrible transgender lecture in the previous one. Think about the kind of messages we normally teach in shows like this: "don't fall into peer pressure", "stand up for what you believe in", "respect other's differences", "be yourself and don't let others try to change you", etc. Instead of helping Sage stand up for herself or deal with the bullies, the cousin pressures Sage into giving up what makes her unique in order to conform to the rest of the group. This is supposed to be a show all about the "power of friendship" and going outside social norms, but here they are justifying bullying people for standing out from the group. This would be like doing a remake of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer where all the reindeer making fun of Rudolph for his abnormality were presented as the good guys. This show is so incompetent that it can't even get its own morals right.
Agreed. It also pushes the message that you shouldn’t change as you get older, and are bound to whatever you followed as a teenager, which is ridiculous. Why did no one ask what made Sage’s mom change her views on magic as an adult?
@@wingedhussar8552 But even so, why Sage's mother should be questioned on something she like more? We aren't bound to specific choices, only cultists think like that.
@@QueSeraSeraaaa that’s my point. Sage’s mom changing her mind could’ve been used to make Sage think that there were reasons to distrust new magic, but that’s never brought up.
@@QueSeraSeraaaaI mean not really. There’s always been a concept of conservatism, just not always the formal modern political party kind. There’s always been conservative types in society who dislike change and progress in favor of the status quo, and not even for good reasons either, but because most changes they oppose are literally things like “hey maybe we should stop oppressing people because our fee fees say they’re inferior”.
What I get from these triads that they said, “guardians do this and guardians do that. You know - guardian stuff.” Basically… they don’t have a f**king clue.
The guardians seem to be just hero archetypes (not to be confused with being heroes). They can fight monsters, do dungeons and have aD&D reject skills like pottery and ballet dancing. I think the issue is the lack of world building. Imagine soldiers and policemen, to know what a soldier is you need to know what war is and to know what a policeman is, you need to know about crime and law enforcement. Basically, soldiers and cops are not just people who do X, they have roles in our community. As such, you cannot explain what a guardian is without explaining more about the community (like how the existence of monsters affect daily life) and how they fit into it. HGS doesn't bother with world building, there is no explanation of how magic or the different races are integrated into the society and there is no mention at all about the government. As a consequence, it's not just that HGS doesn't explain what a guardian is, it cannot explain what a guardian is.
“Every character in this show is either horribly bland, horribly stupid, or just plain horrible.” - Mr. Enter from his Allen Gregory review. It applies here too.
This show seems to have the same problem: it hates conflict. It tries its best not to have any meaningful conflict that could offend or trigger viewers. So instead of presenting meaningful conflict, it tries to be a comfy slice-of-life show…except it also wants to be a magical adventure high fantasy
That seems to be the problem with modern entertainment. The lack of conflict between the main characters unless it makes the characters seem smart and always right.
Parsley: "I don't want to take over the family business, Dad. I want to fallow my dream and be a Blacksmith." Parsley's Father: "But Honey, we are Blacksmiths." Parsley: "Oh......Never mind."🤐
Are we gonna mention that Parsley was apparently so good in blacksmithing that she was immediately moved to the third-year class? On her first year? Like, where else is she gonna go from there?
I think the intention was the episode was going for was more like, "We are too short handed to run the business and manage your 13 siblings, so we want you to stop blacksmithing at school and come back and help with the blacksmithing that needs to be done here." It's not so much what she is doing, but where she is doing it and the fact she is not close enough to be on call for them, and it's not that Parsley doesn't want to be a Blacksmith, but she wants the opportunity to make friends her own age, but like many things in the show, was not well executed.
@@DarthZ01well, Raye Rodríguez first drew the main characters on his Tumblr ten or so years ago. I've seen some of his early drawings and comics and the first ones were mostly comical, with Rosemary looking more like an Adventure Time character. His style became a bit more "anime", but the strips were still focused on comedy. Honestly, perhaps the show would've worked better if it didn't take itself too seriously
I've always thought that HGS looking like it was made by middle schoolers with a budget to be the best descriptor for the show. The disparity between its kiddie nature and mature elements along with other mishandlings aligns with that.
@@DarthZ01the average Tumblr user mentality, back in 2013, couldn't get past the 5th grade.. They were so known to be offended over random stuffs that weren't an issue to begins with, like the lack of LGBT in past medias. By lack, they called it "phobic"..
It’s actually not too off the mark. The series is actually the creator’s story from when he was in high school and as someone who also had a story in high school that I had written on 50+ pages of notebook paper... Yeah, inconsistency and bad ideas goes with the age range it was written in.
I would say the one thing Parsley's subplot did that not every teen girl plot was is include the burden of having a large family where the older siblings lose out on their childhood because they have to help the younger siblings and how the parents will take that help for granted after a while.
Literally Brock from Pokemon. But he's a guy. Oh and the plot actually didn't suck, and (despite weird continuity errors) was made even better in a later episode made decades later by completely different writers.
@@DisplayThisOkay I remember that one. Although the conflict wasn't focused on his parents asking him to stay home since presumably the mother was dead and the dad wasn't around.
In my opinion, the issue isn’t that Rey made a story (aside from the obvious issue with Crunchyroll funding it instead of the underpaid animators they were CLAIMING to be giving the money to). It’s that he didn’t want to let go of the story he made in high school. He changed around designs to not get in trouble since some characters looked like already existing anime characters, but that was it. Making an original story in high school is cool, but sometimes that “original idea” isn’t as original as a 13-16 year old might think (magical school in a magical setting, polar opposite protag duo, “I cut my hair, so I’m going through character growth!”, etc), especially when it’s from a high school mind. It’s obvious that Rey has room to make engaging stories and characters (Snapdragon and Amaryllis’ friendship dynamic was proof of that), but he has to let go of his old ones first even if it’s hard to do so. That means he has to let go of High Guardian Spice if he wants to move towards making better stories in the future. There’s no harm in taking aspects from old stories you used to have, but latching on to old ones forever is never something you should do regardless of how much the story means to you. Keep it in your heart as a part of your past as a writer and don’t let it be the only story in your arsenal. - Sincerely, someone currently writing a novel who originally wrote a huge length story in high school and has accepted that it was cringe as hell, had an inconsistent main character that could be considered someone with literal psychopathy, and had questionable choices/solutions involved for scenarios that only got worse the more you thought about them.
That last part speaks to me on such a level, as I too am trying to write an actual novel whilst only being known for a cringey thing I wrote in high school 😅
Raye said he wants to do a reboot, so it’s likely that he’d be addressing the fundamental issues, reworking everything to be of a much higher quality. It’s impossible to make something this big without learning some lessons and running into roadblocks caused by corporate greed.
@@ShenDoodlesthe problem is, i doubt someone can make a reboot out of any shows who failed.. It's better to leave that show in the hands of capable youtubers like Guardian HQ who made the simple "trans magic potion", a scene where Rosemary was looking for her mom. It was done better.
@@QueSeraSeraaaa If you think about it, they could have Rosemary defend Snapdragon in the mermaid episode, not participating in the mission due to the use of violence against colleagues, and then Caraway says something like "you're a lot like your mom" and then tell a story about how she defended him in a case of transphobia even though it cost her classes at school. Then we have: 1) Rosemary knows a litle more about her mom, 2) Caraway talk's about being trans without the cringe, 3) Snapdragon as a litle cute mermaid... It's weird they not have choose to go for this direction (sorry for the big text)
"I thought you were Amaryllis' puppet!" Okay, my creative writing compulsion comes out. "How would I fix this?" and I'd start by having Thyme have MrEnter's exact response: "I said ONE word". Then, I'd start unpacking things a bit. Like, Sage has a lot of pressure building, so it's not just "she has mommy issues". The world's changing, everything she's seeing makes her feel everything her mother taught her was wrong, her entire sense of identity's in the air, and Thyme saying "Yeah" caused it to erupt. I'd also have the others trying to comfort and reassure her that she's amazing, that she just needs a little time to adjust, but Thyme realize what Sage needed was to vent, let it all out, VOCALIZE everything instead of being treated like a fragile little baby. I'd have it end with Sage is the one who apologizes for taking her insecurities out on Thyme when she had nothing to do with them and the others apologize for letting it get this bad, even if they had good intentions. Sage and Thyme end the episode with more of a friendship is established between them. Because I LIKE these small stories that don't do much for the overall plot, but develop characters and their dynamics. But this is High Guardian Spice, where the interesting, really good ideas are promptly thrown in the garbage. This whole angle (which took me about ten minutes while I was still waking up) probably didn't even occur to anyone.
yessss, just make Sage realize how stressed she is at school and it's affecting her relationships, maybe look for colleagues and teachers who want to use old magic, I don't know
Honestly, the thing I find most interesting about HGS, is that a lot of scenes could be salvageable with editing. It isn't a soulless no-effort project that makes you just not want to waste your time with it, there is just enough to draw you in.
I'm glad for this series, because now I finally get to understand WHY this show is the worst thing yet created, instead of just THAT it's the worst thing yet created, which is the only thing I've known about it for the last two years.
If you want more “explanations” as to what makes it so terrible, I’d recommend the TH-camr “Guardian HQ.” He has a whole playlist of video essays on the topic.
I recommend the two-part, multi-hour review/analysis of this show by UniqueNameAsaurus (think I got the name right). He goes really in depth into the problems with the show, and even provides legitimately constructive feedback. It's a really good look into the art of writing.
Even better examples of troubled production: Apocalypse Now and The Island of Doctor Moreau both essentially collapsed around the crew during production in very similar ways. They took place in sweltering tropical locations, both got hit by tropical storms, both starred Marlon Brando, drug use was rampant, the actors and crew members had a few mental breakdowns and mutinies, and shooting dragged on for months. This isn't even half of it by the way, it was literally insane what went down during these two movies, and yet one went on to be a cultural icon while the other is forgotten trash.
@@WolframHeart-xp2px the parody of the island was kind of weird, and it was the only time i could bear Ralph's stupidity. The character get so massively destroyed, he was surprisingly really smart in the episode where Lisa gave a Valentine card to him, as nobody gave him any.
@@KeybladeMasterAndy The first few seasons, maybe up to season 10, were the best. A bit more attention to the side characters would have been appreciated.
I swear I think one writer for the show heard the word "processional" and decided to use it where they could. First Floral processional in this episode, which we never get to see, and then the autumn processional later.
It doesn't help that one of the main wtiters, is a massive misandrist with a backstory of having a murderous and unhinged attitude online. Kate Leth is famous for being a massive piece of shit. When called out, she felt "tumblrpilled".
- I'm surprised the HGS writers didn't just call Ep4 "Your Mom Sucks". - Call me crazy, but after accepting that terrasphere, Sage gets progressively worse. She was fine pre-Ep4, but now she's getting more and more self-interested. I feel nothing but RAGE when she gets pissy at Thyme for agreeing with one thing that Amaryllis said (which was about potentially missing lunch), and I'm sure to feel more rage in the episodes to come. - ...Even then, Thyme did even less with that botany assignment than Sage did - that is to say, Thyme did nothing at all. Why is Amaryllis only getting mad at Sage for slowing the group down when she at least put in any effort?! Hell, we see Ryll prune Thyme's plant for her, too, but she doesn't chide her at all! What I'm saying is, Sage was getting mad at Thyme for the wrong reasons entirely. - Actually, can we talk about the debate between Sage and Redbud about Old Magic's usefulness? Redbud only talks up how much faster and stronger New Magic is (while one of her terraspheres runs out of energy while showing off), but Sage brings up the more interesting point about "the balance" of magic. I know Redbud gets all "Balance schmalance!", but...keep this in mind for Ep11. (Really, though, I figured that the real reason Sage wanted to use Old Magic is because of how volatile her terrasphere was being that morning, and she probably didn't want to accidentally blow up the greenhouse. Buuuuut she should've led with that. Or brought it up at all.) - Really, though, I wouldn't be surprised if Ep5 only existed to prove (in the writers' eyes) that Rosemary and Sage have long surpassed Snapdragon and Amaryllis, their alleged rivals. Except...rivalries are interesting when the rivals are actually challenging EACH OTHER.
Sage is like a Reverse Strawman. The Writers want us to agree with her or atleast understand her Position, but they show her being upset over someone using a Scissor and someone saying one Word
@@georgemeyers7172 A Character that we are supossed to agree with but that is presented so poorly that it makes the View Point they try to present look bad
Episode four demonstrates perfectly why Rosemary shouldn’t be the main character. Of the four girls, she’s the only one this episode gave no storyline of her own. As awful as Sage’s, Parsley’s, and Thyme’s subplots all were, at least they all had _something_ happening. Rosemary was there to be Sage’s cheerleader, and even that might be putting it too generously. As for episode five, what starts the “conflict” between Sage and Thyme is Sage’s desire to use Old Magic in class. This is _after_ she’s accepted her own Terra-sphere and embraced New Magic. But now suddenly she wants to honor her mother’s ways again and stick to Old Magic? Why? Thyme had good reason to be annoyed with Sage and her waffling.
Yeah, you'd think that Rosemary would be concerned for her bestest friend when she confides about how she didn't want a terrasphere. Hell, she could've been hung up on Sage's worries and prompted her to open up to Anise and Aloe about them. But no, she's just a noisy background character in Ep4.
Rosemary in general is probably the most unfit main character in the whole show. Thyme has personal stakes in the plot, Parsley is a good mediator and supporter to her. Even Sage is tied into the secret surrounding the magical system. Rosemary on the other hand is completely self-absorbed with school (where she doesn't particularly struggles) and her missing mother (which she never goes looking for). Her relationship with Sage is pretty much the only thing that gives her any character development. So she's a glorified supporting character at best.
What consistently bugs me about everything I see from this show is I consistently like parts of the artwork. I genuinely like Parsley and Rosemary's designs. If they were removed from the show, implemented into a better one, maybe with a different premise, and with all the human characters more closely matching them, I think it would look perfectly fine. Parsley in particular looks like a far better character from a far better show that doesn't exist, and it bugs me.
Some early sketch are even better, It makes me wonder if there is a universe where this show didn't fail so badly in terms of script, maybe the public would overlook the animation a little
@@SunItzal I remember, when the show was first announced, some of the concept art in the trailer actually looked pretty good. A weird mixture between cartoon with some anime influences, but it looked like it could be as nice looking as Steven Universe or The Owl House. However, due to the show's apparent tight budget and the staff's lack of experience it couldn't look as good as the concept art
There's one thing one my mind about that gd dwarf baby: those eyes look like one of those ugly @$$ eyes from Gacha Life that no kid used for any of their OCs 💀
The Duke Nukem Forever point is actually more relevant than likely intended: It also had handful of good bits that really should be handled by someone more capable or caring (The octabrains and pig cops look fantastic, case in point). Look to the scene with the Teacher, for example, and see how much better it was in the hands of Jamie De Jonge. Even bad wholes can have good parts. They just need to be salvaged by someone able to.
The Monotone Woman from Wizards of Waverly Place expresses more emotion than Slimeboy, and has infinitely more entertainment value. She’s a side character whose entire thing is that she speaks in a monotone, and I lava it.
What I think stings more is that I don't think the character designs are all that bad, at least in my opinion. But good/decent designs can't save something from still being mediocrity. Like if this had better frame work, a better voice cast, scripting, characterization etc. this would've been a good series. Also using Sonic Heroes OST (Grand Metropolis) was just... *smooch kiss* Beautiful!
You can tell that those colored hair were massively overused by tumblr users. In 2013-2014, that stuff was everywhere. Lots of stuffs are awfully designed, even the food who are just PNGs..
No Man's Sky ALSO had troubled production of its own; it used to be one of the most reviled games and THE go-to example of the dangers of hype, to the point it earned the infamous reputation of "No Man's Lie". It has since turned that reputation on its head with the most wholesome redemption arc. I couldn't possibly do the story of No Man's Sky's historic troubled productions justice; if you haven't, definitely give Internet Historian's video on the redemption arc of No Man's Sky, "The Engoodening of No Man's Sky". I say all this to illustrate that troubled production is something that every artist has to face and is not something that should be leaned in to as a crutch excuse. Food Fight, the most infamously bad animated film of all time, started production in 1997 and was slated for a Christmas '03 release, but was pushed back several times and even reportedly the footage was lost due to the hard drives containing the film were stolen; I don't know if this is true, but apparently to make up the loss, they cobbled together the test animations and claimed that to be the final product; it was released in 2012 and it looked like something that predates Toy Story...which came out in 1995! I mean, granted, you could argue that a story about what your toys do when you aren't looking, on paper, sounds silly, but it lent itself well to fiction and is something I wager most of us thought about when we were kids; I have yet to meet anyone who wondered what iconic product mascots like Captain Crunch, Mr. Clean, the California Raisins, Aunt Jemima, Twinkie the Kid, and the Vlasic Stork do when we're not looking...besides, I wager the Kool-Aid Man and Pepsiman would just solve everything by giving everyone a cool refreshing drink...maybe... Eh, digression aside, this is more to illustrate the point of "Would this have even worked as a finished product?" and...I don't see it, to be honest. Sausage Party, I guess, to its credit, tried to be like that, but for an adult audience, only I think it worked more than Food Fight because it went more generic than having a recognizable cereal mascot as a supporting cast member. All told, whether something has a troubled production is irrelevant to the final product. Pokemon faced troubled productions before it even became a global phenomenon, with Game Freak developing Red & Green over the course of 6 years, teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and having to develop other games in the interim to stay afloat, yet seeing how it's one of the most profitable franchises on the planet nowadays, you would NEVER guess this multimedia mega franchise almost never even happened to begin with. O.o
Final Fantasy XIV, or 14, had such a abysmal launch but was rebooted where the whole world got sucked into a black hole and it’s now one of the top entries in the franchise. Iron Man was the make or break for Marvel movies, if it failed then that was it. But history, and a shared universe of dozens of movies and shows has happened because it didn’t. Having an iffy lead didn’t help allay concerns, but Robert Downey Jr became a lynchpin of the MCU.
The thing that would’ve made this episode for me was if Thyme had “accidentally” shot the brother with the arrow and then get chewed out by Sage, just to deadpan say, “Whoa, complete miscommunication,” no remorse, no emotion 🤌
2:16 This part reminds me of a quote from Yahtzee Crowshaw of all people. "If this isn't the most interesting part of the story, why aren't you showing us that?" Maybe in this part specifically, it's more of an opportunity than an actual thing that's happening.
"We're looking for Sage, not adventures", Ok lonely-girl but you are living in a fantasy setting. And adventures are attracted to the plots, or contributed to it.
13:52 her clothes look more punk than cyberpunk I would say. But seriously, one thing that confuses me about this show is that it doesn't have a cohesive style, it looks like a medieval fantasy, but there's a couple of modern elements like the furniture and transportation that look at least like they belong in the 20th century. Is like they didn't know if they wanted the show to be more like The Slayers or Fullmetal Alchemist
@@brandonlyon730 This reminds me of an isekai webtoon I read. The story the main character was transported into was a fantasy world with vaguely 1700-1800's European style to it, but had magic. Magic was used in everything. There was a magic snow globe made to entertain kids that would light up when you pushed a button, their were carriages that could move without horses, crystals that could copy images. The isekai'ed character speculated that the primary reason the author went for the fantasy genre was so they could have an old fashioned aesthetic with modern conveniences.
@@QueSeraSeraaaa I'd say the story takes place in an urban-fantasy world, but I think they didn't make a good job on how to representing it. I also forgot that Rosemary had a photo in her locket, so that means cameras exist I also could've mentioned that the attitudes towards same-sex couples and trasngender people are very modern, maybe even more accepting than in real life. But I don't have a problem that the show takes place in an universe where people are more accepting. Though those allegories regarding old and new magic seem to be the way the writers wanted to talk about other kinds of issues, though they didn't do a good job with it
High Guardian Spice is so… uniquely bad. Like, I know it’s terrible, and it’s unoriginal, but it has a sort of obliviousness embedded into it that I just can’t look away from. Kind of like a “So bad, it’s -good- tolerable” kind of thing. The show has this sort of contrived enjoyability, I guess, and I love when people talk about it. Like, comparing this to something else commonly regarded as the worst animated show, Velma, I feel HGS is… less horrible. Because with Velma, it talks down to the audience and just feels like a cynical cartoon done in the worst way. With HGS, it’s bad, _really_ bad, but it never feels like it has (intentional) disdain for its own audience imo. Also, Amaryllis is genuinely great. I love endearing characters with no moral compass who yet still care about their friends, and Amaryllis is one of them. She reminds me a lot of Dan VS.
Y'know what else had a notoriously troubled production on virtually every front imaginable? Evangelion. Is High Guardian Spice as well produced as Evangelion? No. And that's impressive given one of the memes Evangelion is known for is holding on a single shot for a literal minute _multiple times._ Part of Eva's (episodic) grand finale was literally drawn with crayon, and yet to this day people still think Evangelion was _supposed_ to end that way (it wasn't; it was one of the most notorious screw-ups in anime history), but people willingly looked the other way because the series had spent much of its runtime playing around with _extremely_ complicated philosophical ideas and the "final battle" basically saw the gestalt human psyche come apart at the seams anyway, so plausible deniability was all on Eva's side.
@@QueSeraSeraaaa Either way both shows are total rip-offs to watch, they swindle their audiences! And their narrative messages are super disingenuous, hypocritical as well as Woke and Cringey. Constantly sending mixed messages. Oh, it's bad for Shinji to run away from his problems but Asuka can do it?! What's that New Magic is so beneficial and has no draw backs, so why the Hell do they bother keeping old Magic?! Heck they didn't even try to tackle the philosophical trends in a very deep way all to well in Neon Genesis Evangelion. But the worse offense was that they literally switched what reality is in the Rebuilt Movies, which have been constantly stated as being the direct canon sequels to the OG Anime! like at first reality was the harsh and unforgiving, but still more akin to our own reality, World of Eva, and that Shinji was supposed to just accept the world of Eva as it is, and to stop running from it. But then they suddenly changed it to be our world with out the Evas! Like WTFH?!!! And don't even get me started on how High Guardian Spice's terrible Woke Feminist LGBTQ narrative!
@@shawnwarrynn8609 I can get you started because a fantasy show. doesn't need to lecture us about feminism and LGBT rights (the Q won't be added, fck that). Even the Simpsons tried, and Lisa who became one of the worst characters, started in a very good way in the Tracey Ulman shorts, like Bart's friend. Turning a such character in a little brat was purely uncessary. Why would a 8 years old start caring about how women are "portrayed throught dolls"? That was entirely uncessary from the start. The show was rumored tp be stopped by the movie release, but it kept going.. The movie was incredibly dumb and forced itself to be "funny", i remember getting just amused when the hounds are released, or amazed by Ned being a very good father, and i wanted him to be more more in the spotlight. He treated Bart with respect, that movie showed Homer at his worst easily. The scene before and after Bart get tied to a pole.. 🙄 Those scenes were very off. By respect, i watched it till the end, without being disrespectful, but i wished that it would end.. I did it because i loved The Simpsons, but i'm sure glad that is never get a sequel. In 2023, the show is on life support, it wasn't strong and kicked by the 90s and 2000s. Bart was so disrespected, but he even get more smart, less stupid than many others like Ralph.. I've seen Ralph in the episode where Lisa gave him a Valentine card, he wasn't really the dumb kid he was, the character was rather happy with being Lisa, nothing forced, about them. People call his treatment Flanderization, i call it Homerization. "A wholesome and important character get dumbed down for cheap laughs".
Just a fact here, but when the 1st episode was released, the scenario wasn't "ready". Raye worked on it since 2013, he had time to set the show. I think both companies rejected the show, so it ended on CR.. but even the app couldn't get past more than two teasers.
I found some trivia about the show on TvTropes and it says there that Raye pitched the show to Frederator Studios back in 2013 and then to Crunchyroll in '16, so I think he had plenty of time to make an outline for the show. I know that making an animated show is difficult, and according to the trivia, the show had a tight budget and scheduling, but as Enter said, there's been plenty of shows that were done in very difficult situations. The main issue I think is that the concept wasn't as strong as they thought and that they lacked the capacities to tell a good story
The sad thing is I'm reasonably certain I could write this series better than the actual writers, and I'm not a professional. Honestly I agree with Enter that the show would be better if it was worse. The opposite of Love isn't Hate; it's Apathy. Similarly, the opposite of "Good" isn't always "Bad" (since "so bad it's good" is a thing); it's "Boring".
I literally cannot tell the characters apart by name, whenever you mention one of them I think of any of the characters but the one who actually has the name. It's just so... how did this series get greenlit?
Crunchyroll originally rejected HGS, just like all the other studios Raye had pitched the show to, as just like all the other studios, Crunchyroll realised how bad of an idea the pitch was. It was after the peeps behind its rejection left and the new bosses got hired, did they give Raye a call and the green light to start production. The reality that the team behind HGS and Raye, need to understand that what they put out, was simply bad, even if Crunchyroll didn't meddle or make any requests, gave them an extraordinarily large budget and an extremely comfortable production time, it would still have been bad! The biggest problem with High Guardian Spice, is High Guardian Spice itself and the person who came up with it! The moment the mew bosses at Crunchyroll heard the reason behind the title of the show, they should have thanked Raye for his time, shown him the back door and suggest that he goes back and retake school again, preferably starting from the 3rd grade... any adult who doesn't know the difference between herbs, flowers and spices, really should not be put in charge of any production that requires money be spent on it!
The gave the money they needed, my bet is that Raye wasted it to make merchandises of the show.. It could pay the bills rather. Or fuelling the fridge for the week.
I wonder if I could get my underdeveloped story ideas made by pitching it to Crunchyroll, or where they only willing to take that gamble once and Raye beat me to the punch.
For clarity to some who might not know, sound gets 10 times louder for every 10 additional decibels. I guess Slime Boy's VA was trying to say their lines from the other room.
Here are some ideas for what I would do with Parsley & Thyme. Parsley: In this world, Dwarves made weapon for an ancient villain. When said villain was defeated, the Dwarves fled underground to escape persecution. But Parsley's parents got banished and now live on the surface. She starts out working as a blacksmith apprentice but after being inspired by Rosemary, becomes a student at the school. Parsley hopes she can prove not all dwarves are bad. Also, Parsley's weapon of choice would be a whip. Thyme: While her mother is from Fairy-Wood, her father is an elf from desert dwelling culture (Basically Medieval Persia but with Elves). The two ran away to the father's homeland. When Thyme was 10, she was forced to live to Fairy-Wood. Due to growing up in a different culture, she had trouble making friends with the other elf kids. But she did make friends with the local magical creatures. Then a dragon attack and burned down the forest. Then a group of wizards using new magic to regrow the forest. But when the rot happen, her family was forced to leave. Her father believe that new magic caused the rot so her returns to his homeland to find a cure. Also, Thyme's weapon would be a pair of curved swords.
You know what other property I'm reminded of that did the magic concept better than HGS? Fullmetal Alchemist. It's practically the whole basis of the show: if someone wants to obtain something, something of equal value must be lost.
10:20 This scene would have been better had Sage repeated it more and more, getting angrier and angrier each time... and then she flips the table or a chair, like Robin Hill saying "Only?!" and how that became a meme.
To be fair, the parsects invasion causing the school to shut down does make sense from a sanitation perspective. There are lots of them and I'm assuming they urinate and defecate as most things do, which is unsanitary. But I also doubt the writers considered this. They probably chose the parsects because they already had those things designed so they wouldn't have to design a brand new creature. And, as we know, having to create new things is practically kryptonite to the writers of this show.
Puss in Boots the Last Wish also had a troubled production it came out 12 years after the first and instantly became one of the most beloved animated films of all time.
Ok maybe it's just the combination of her dark skin, pointed ears, and blunt demeanor, but does Thyme remind anyone else of Tuvok from Voyager? Thanks for reminding me of a show I'd rather be watching, HGS.
I was craving for more Ni no kuni, it's a masterpiece compared to HGS. Tumblrinas assumed that characters with colored hair are absolutely everywhere..
15:55 I think what I realized about DNF was that longer development does not equal a better product. In DNF case, it took 14 years for incredibly stupid reasons. Mainly that it tried to please everyone. And I think we all know how that usually turns out.
I always read Sage's cousin and her wife being the ones who gave her a Terra Sphere as being a stand-in for them being the relatives who weren't welcome because they were gay. And the mom being a "hypocrite" meant to imply that she tried same-sex relationships in college. Which still doesn't prove hypocrisy. You're a hypocrite if you say you believe one thing then do another. But if you change your mind about what you believe and act accordingly, then you're still being consistent.
Yeah it’s to bad we never got to know Sage’s mom or dad. Like how are we suppose to know how much of this is true or are just Sage stress out exaggerations if we never know much about her parents at all?
How is sage’s mother a hypocrite?? We’ve never seen any flashbacks of the mother using new magic. And why she stopped using new magic. I’m pretty sure the mother must have a reason
@@brandonlyon730 It's even more ridiculous when you consider that of all the main four's parents, Sage's are the only two that don't have any known names.
My suspicion is that the show creator had only developed the pitch for "High Guardian Spice" AND NOTHING ELSE. Crunchyroll assumed that there already was a plot outline, if not a fully developed script, and set what would have been a reasonable deadline, if the show creator already knew what the story was about and who the characters were. The likeliest reason that the character development is such a mess is that episodes were written concurrently and continuity was an afterthought. The abundance of filler came from filler being easier to write. My favorite counter to claims of inadequate budget is "The Real Ghostbusters". When I found a DVD box set, I snapped it up and showed it to my children. I had not seen any of it for about 20 years and I cringed at how bad the animation was and wondered how I could have had such fond recollections of the series. Fortunately, the strength of "The Real Ghostbusters" is the writing, and I was quickly reminded that it was the stories told that made that made "The Real Ghostbusters" so enjoyable to watch.
I can't stop laughing at a parody of Yu-gi-oh still. "Yugi, you must avenge me!" "Grandpa, are you dead?" "Of course no" "But why are you speaking like this?" "Ah you know, it's very simple it's-" "Yu-gi-oooooh!"
Slime Boys Voice sounds of because his Voice Actor is not a Voice Actor. He is a Musician, his Name is Julian Koster and he was in a Band named Neutral Milk Hotel, he even sings in a later Episode and it honestly sounds really nice
Adding to your discussion on development hell, what makes it so insidious is while a project itself may be static, the world around it isn’t. Technology and consoles change, people go in and out of projects, and what’s novel in one day is cliche in another. If you want the worst example of development he’ll, take the infamous Patrick Rothfuss, who took a picture of an alpha draft of his upcoming book Doors of Stone. 10 years ago. Last year he raised $300k during a charity livestream and promised to release a single chapter of DOS. He didn’t even do that.
It is true that Crunchyroll needed to give the time and budget needed to create an entire TV show. However, I highly doubt that if the crew got said budget, High Guardian Spice would be a great TV show because there is no premise. I came across an article that summarized various statements from the show's creator, and the only thing she said about what the show was meant to be was an LGBTQ+-friendly show. That's noble but not enough to create a fantasy show.
"LGBT friendly", in a goddam category that is very famous for the diversified species of creatures? It is already diversified as it is, even the magic isn't the same..
They could have created a more slice of life program too, without a big plot and add the story little by little (like Adventure Time did), they just need to have made the eps shorter and more focused on comedy
Was it the interview Raye gave to The Gamer website? I recently gave it a re-read and it's interesting and it explains some of the issues that the show has. In some aspects I think I can empathize with Raye, he seems truly passionate about his work and he grew watching the same shows as me, like Rayearth. On the other hand, there's plenty of talk about LGBT representation, and don't get me wrong, even if I'm not a part of them, there can be shows that deal with those themes and still be entertaining, but some of the worst aspects about HGS is that it seems to just check boxes in regards to representation and similar themes that it wants to explore, it doesn't feel as natural as other shows like Steven Universe. All I can say is that I think Raye had good intentions, but he didn't know how to make an interesting show
i'm having a bad day, but it cheered me up to see you're still going with this. i was worried you may have lost interest, so seeing you were actually just doing a double feature is a pleasant surprise.
I actually think we should be harsher, critically, on rushed productions or on productions that had slashed budgets, than we are on productions that don't have those shortcomings. When we excuse those flaws, we are telling studios we'll tolerate that stuff, which encourages it when studios come to feel a work may be at risk of not doing well critically. If we make it clear we'll tear a show to ribbons with or without behind-the-scenes problems, that tells studios that their best bet for a work that might not do well is to throw more resources at it to make it better.
16:03 Agreed. But the game wasn't regarded so warmly when it first came out. It got good to lukewarm reviews at the start with many people saying Ocarina was "far better". With that said, the fact Metroid Prime 4 is constantly being remade from the ground up by several different branches of Retro Studios kind of makes me worry.
Watching HGS (High Guardian Spice) is a form of torture that I wouldn't force on my worst enemies (at least,not all of them) However, I respect the resilience you have in reviewing this. Hope the rest of your day is going well
13:37 Technically, frozen peas have existed as long as peas. Sure, frozen peas were first packaged for sale in 1920, but before that, there was still winter. All it would take is leaving a bowl of peas outside when it's below freezing.
Ice magic sounds like pretty basic stuff for a fantasy setting, though it is funny to think someone spends years studying magic to be an ice mage and ends up just working in a grocery store to keep the food from rotting.
High guardian spice, a show that fails at being anything really, not good nor bad, not deep nor shallow, just bland lukewarm water. Like for other bad shows you could laugh at them or develop Stockholm syndrome over them getting better, but this there's nothing to go off of.
I feel like show was doomed after first trailer and what was said there, surely all that backlash would go to both creators and Crunchyroll, yet they probably already signed contract and had to make show nobody asked for and nobody wanted anything to do with it.
When you dubbed in lines from The Room, I was like “why is it just this character who recorded his lines on a potato” but even the actual recording somehow manages to sound somehow worse than the others… like sound quality wise. Even though this is all presumably being recorded in the same place.
They were not. Many of these extras were recorded themselves, ie remotely, and submitted to the production teams. Slime Boy's voice actor is Julian Koster, who is a proper musician, it's not like he was recording on a potato, he has good hardware. But as the story goes, his samples ended up overcompressed (which is what he sent them) and they never came back to him for uncompressed raw files, that is to say they never told him his files were basically unusable and just ran them with them instead
The only thing I can think of is if the fauna professional is a beekeeper, and the botanist has to maintain flowers for the bees to gather nectar from.
I would watch a huge video of bees carrying pollen on their hind legs. It's kind of adorable, but also sad if you realize that their lifespan is shorter..
I was rather amused that in Mark Lawrence books of the ancestor trilogy, about a group of literal combat assassin nuns, whose martial arts classes include actual injuries; where several novices a year regularly die during training. their ultra sinister and really cool poisons teacher poisons her students regularly as punishment, and to teach them to watch out for things like contact poisons or needles on chairs. Yet even she! Does not use fatal poisons! Thanks for wading through the insanity so we don't have to.
A report on the axe could be rather interesting. The problem is we don't have anything about the ax. Like imagine if part of their exam was to magically or physically make the ax and do like a presentation about what it was used for.
Returning commenter: I've been considering a rewrite of Ep5 that switches Sage's and Thyme's roles in the botany class. This means it's Thyme who's asking if it's okay if she uses her Old Magic for the assignment in lieu of a terrasphere, of course. Sage will still be doing effort, though, practicing more control over her terrasphere. Amaryllis's impatience will be focused on more, with her just deciding to prune the rest of Sage's plant for her before moving on to Thyme, whose Old Magic is having trouble restraining her plant - could be because the plant she's working with is unfamiliar to her, or because she didn't practice magic as much as other Fairywoods elves did (which is kinda implied in Ep10). Sage isn't oblivious, just a bit intimidated by Ryll's aggression. The conflict here is that Thyme feels more out of place in this academy for being bad with Old Magic and talked down by New Magic users. Whatever incident happens in the last third of the episode could get Sage to help Thyme by syncing her terrasphere with her (as Anise and Aloe did in Ep1), and then she can offer to help Thyme master her Old Magic, no matter what the pro-News say. Oh, and for Rosemary, Parsley, and Snapdragon, the three of them could be more focused on different aspects of Gwynr's Axe - Rosemary on the battles it saw Gwynr through, Parsley on the axe's build and enchantments, and Snap on Gwynr's philosophies as a Guardian. Maybe Rosemary could be adamant about ignoring Gwynr's character, and Snap could insist that Guardians are also fellow people that they can learn from - they can then give the armor-piercing question if Rose even cares about Lavender outside of her exploits. Witnessing the end-episode incident, and how Sage, Thyme, and maybe Amaryllis resolve it, could hammer it into Rose that maybe she shouldn't be focusing solely on Guardians' epic feats and more on who these people are, especially Lavender.
The episode should have been about everybody blowing off Sage for being a pretentious bitch and Thyme being the one forced to apologise to her because no one else wants to deal with her. It's not the best story but it's just the perfect kind of subversion for this kind of show.
Forget Sage, she's the worst character! The infinite hallway would have been much more interesting! It could have been like the Backrooms! Really does show the writers' lack of creativity.
Yeah. Like, that scene where Amaryllis is "bullying" Sage is a freaking joke, and not in the intentional way. Amaryllis makes a good point: Sage is wasting her time using a magic method that is hard to use and barely works and, in the process, is wasting the time of her group partners. And Sage's only excuse for doing so is "Old Magic is sacred." Yeah, Sage, we're gonna need a lot more than that to get your point. And that's generously assuming you have a point to begin with. Honestly, Amaryllis is so right in the nose that she doesn't even seem like she was bullying Sage in that scene. She seemed genuinely annoyed with having her time wasted. It's kind of like how the show keeps wasting the audience's time. Just let us see the freaking magical hallway, Thyme! I don't care if you're supposed to be looking for Sage.
@@frankielovejoy9928Sage is a massive POS with a stupid obsession over "old magic".. The two magic can become one, you got the good spells and the terrible ones, but magic would still be needed.
Yeah, sage didn’t even defend her culture. All she got that “defense” that is old magic. That’s it and cries like a b*tch she is. She pretty did the same thing when her cousin and her wife were laughing behind her mother’s back.
So wait, a completely original series that is not dependent on any other medium for its material, and was only 12 episodes long...had a filler episode? ...So what's the over/under on this series just being a money laundering scam?
This show is to Sailor Moon and My Hero Academia what My Immortal is to Harry Potter. If that doesnt make sense, im sorry, but it made sense in my head
9:40 Can't believe I'm going to bat for HGS of all things. But- It's incredibly reductive to say that Rosmary, Sage, Parsley and Thyme's core issues are all just 'mommy issues'. Rosemary's issues have nothing to do with a strained relationship with her mother. It has to do with how she lost her mom, trying to live up to her while missing her. Sage's issues aren't a strained relationship with her mom- it's that she's been taught one way and now is being forced to handle things another way. Parsley's issues aren't just with her mom but also her dad. It's mostly correct here but that small tidbit does change things a bit. And Thyme's issue isn't with her mom per say- it's that her dad is currently dealing with a problem that she feels helpless to fight against. Her mom ends up reinforcing that feeling in trying to protect her but her core problem is not WITH her mom. To be honest, this isn't the first time I've had this issue with this series. You complain about Thyme being an asshole 'because elf' but it's rather clear Thyme's issue is because, again, she feels frustrated and helpless. It's not just because she's an elf, since the classic depiction of that is because elves are elitists. I feel like this is missing the forest for the trees here.
The Original Mortal Kombat game was a fun low budget side project a small dev team at Midway was working on as they were working on bigger projects Ed Boon never anticipated that Mortal Kombat wasnt just going to be a huge Arcade hit but would become a cultural Phenomenon
![เปิดบ้าน นาราเครปกระเทย 1 ไร่ ขายขาดทุนหลัก10ล้าน เอามาใช้หนี้!!! l [Nickynachat]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/0jz84VFWVP4/mqdefault.jpg)
This might be a hot take, but the "your mom wasn't always so conservative" scene legit offended me from a writing standpoint, even more so than the terrible transgender lecture in the previous one.
Think about the kind of messages we normally teach in shows like this: "don't fall into peer pressure", "stand up for what you believe in", "respect other's differences", "be yourself and don't let others try to change you", etc. Instead of helping Sage stand up for herself or deal with the bullies, the cousin pressures Sage into giving up what makes her unique in order to conform to the rest of the group. This is supposed to be a show all about the "power of friendship" and going outside social norms, but here they are justifying bullying people for standing out from the group. This would be like doing a remake of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer where all the reindeer making fun of Rudolph for his abnormality were presented as the good guys.
This show is so incompetent that it can't even get its own morals right.
Ths conservative thing didn't existed until the 19th century, and the show take place in the middle-age..
Or supposedly.
Agreed. It also pushes the message that you shouldn’t change as you get older, and are bound to whatever you followed as a teenager, which is ridiculous.
Why did no one ask what made Sage’s mom change her views on magic as an adult?
@@wingedhussar8552 But even so, why Sage's mother should be questioned on something she like more?
We aren't bound to specific choices, only cultists think like that.
@@QueSeraSeraaaa that’s my point. Sage’s mom changing her mind could’ve been used to make Sage think that there were reasons to distrust new magic, but that’s never brought up.
@@QueSeraSeraaaaI mean not really. There’s always been a concept of conservatism, just not always the formal modern political party kind.
There’s always been conservative types in society who dislike change and progress in favor of the status quo, and not even for good reasons either, but because most changes they oppose are literally things like “hey maybe we should stop oppressing people because our fee fees say they’re inferior”.
I love how this show can have a filler episode when they can barely explain the narrative of one non filler episode
"What is a guardian?"
"They are the protectors"
"But of what?"
*roll credits*
What I get from these triads that they said, “guardians do this and guardians do that. You know - guardian stuff.” Basically… they don’t have a f**king clue.
The guardians seem to be just hero archetypes (not to be confused with being heroes). They can fight monsters, do dungeons and have aD&D reject skills like pottery and ballet dancing.
I think the issue is the lack of world building. Imagine soldiers and policemen, to know what a soldier is you need to know what war is and to know what a policeman is, you need to know about crime and law enforcement. Basically, soldiers and cops are not just people who do X, they have roles in our community. As such, you cannot explain what a guardian is without explaining more about the community (like how the existence of monsters affect daily life) and how they fit into it.
HGS doesn't bother with world building, there is no explanation of how magic or the different races are integrated into the society and there is no mention at all about the government. As a consequence, it's not just that HGS doesn't explain what a guardian is, it cannot explain what a guardian is.
“Every character in this show is either horribly bland, horribly stupid, or just plain horrible.” - Mr. Enter from his Allen Gregory review.
It applies here too.
How dare you slander our lord and savior Slime Boy.
Our man gave us two episodes in one, let's go! Thank you for your sacrifice, Mr Enter! Good luck continuing to see this train wreck to its conclusion.
He sacrificed too much braincells for that show, but they survived, thankfully.
This show seems to have the same problem: it hates conflict. It tries its best not to have any meaningful conflict that could offend or trigger viewers. So instead of presenting meaningful conflict, it tries to be a comfy slice-of-life show…except it also wants to be a magical adventure high fantasy
That seems to be the problem with modern entertainment. The lack of conflict between the main characters unless it makes the characters seem smart and always right.
Parsley: "I don't want to take over the family business, Dad. I want to fallow my dream and be a Blacksmith."
Parsley's Father: "But Honey, we are Blacksmiths."
Parsley: "Oh......Never mind."🤐
Ahah!
That would have been a better plot 😅
Are we gonna mention that Parsley was apparently so good in blacksmithing that she was immediately moved to the third-year class? On her first year? Like, where else is she gonna go from there?
I think the intention was the episode was going for was more like, "We are too short handed to run the business and manage your 13 siblings, so we want you to stop blacksmithing at school and come back and help with the blacksmithing that needs to be done here." It's not so much what she is doing, but where she is doing it and the fact she is not close enough to be on call for them, and it's not that Parsley doesn't want to be a Blacksmith, but she wants the opportunity to make friends her own age, but like many things in the show, was not well executed.
Honestly the show feels like the random ideas of a out of touch 5th grader who then put those ideas into a fanfic and now thinks they wrote high art.
replace '5th grader' with 'adult tumblr user' and you hit the nail on the head.
@@DarthZ01well, Raye Rodríguez first drew the main characters on his Tumblr ten or so years ago. I've seen some of his early drawings and comics and the first ones were mostly comical, with Rosemary looking more like an Adventure Time character. His style became a bit more "anime", but the strips were still focused on comedy. Honestly, perhaps the show would've worked better if it didn't take itself too seriously
I've always thought that HGS looking like it was made by middle schoolers with a budget to be the best descriptor for the show. The disparity between its kiddie nature and mature elements along with other mishandlings aligns with that.
@@DarthZ01the average Tumblr user mentality, back in 2013, couldn't get past the 5th grade..
They were so known to be offended over random stuffs that weren't an issue to begins with, like the lack of LGBT in past medias.
By lack, they called it "phobic"..
It’s actually not too off the mark. The series is actually the creator’s story from when he was in high school and as someone who also had a story in high school that I had written on 50+ pages of notebook paper... Yeah, inconsistency and bad ideas goes with the age range it was written in.
I would say the one thing Parsley's subplot did that not every teen girl plot was is include the burden of having a large family where the older siblings lose out on their childhood because they have to help the younger siblings and how the parents will take that help for granted after a while.
Parentification
Literally Brock from Pokemon. But he's a guy. Oh and the plot actually didn't suck, and (despite weird continuity errors) was made even better in a later episode made decades later by completely different writers.
@@DisplayThisOkay I remember that one. Although the conflict wasn't focused on his parents asking him to stay home since presumably the mother was dead and the dad wasn't around.
@@jbcatz5 Penny from Proud Family had to deal with this big time
In my opinion, the issue isn’t that Rey made a story (aside from the obvious issue with Crunchyroll funding it instead of the underpaid animators they were CLAIMING to be giving the money to). It’s that he didn’t want to let go of the story he made in high school. He changed around designs to not get in trouble since some characters looked like already existing anime characters, but that was it. Making an original story in high school is cool, but sometimes that “original idea” isn’t as original as a 13-16 year old might think (magical school in a magical setting, polar opposite protag duo, “I cut my hair, so I’m going through character growth!”, etc), especially when it’s from a high school mind.
It’s obvious that Rey has room to make engaging stories and characters (Snapdragon and Amaryllis’ friendship dynamic was proof of that), but he has to let go of his old ones first even if it’s hard to do so. That means he has to let go of High Guardian Spice if he wants to move towards making better stories in the future. There’s no harm in taking aspects from old stories you used to have, but latching on to old ones forever is never something you should do regardless of how much the story means to you. Keep it in your heart as a part of your past as a writer and don’t let it be the only story in your arsenal.
- Sincerely, someone currently writing a novel who originally wrote a huge length story in high school and has accepted that it was cringe as hell, had an inconsistent main character that could be considered someone with literal psychopathy, and had questionable choices/solutions involved for scenarios that only got worse the more you thought about them.
Rey just failed to bring anything new at the table, nothing is original about it.
That last part speaks to me on such a level, as I too am trying to write an actual novel whilst only being known for a cringey thing I wrote in high school 😅
Raye said he wants to do a reboot, so it’s likely that he’d be addressing the fundamental issues, reworking everything to be of a much higher quality. It’s impossible to make something this big without learning some lessons and running into roadblocks caused by corporate greed.
@@ShenDoodlesthe problem is, i doubt someone can make a reboot out of any shows who failed..
It's better to leave that show in the hands of capable youtubers like Guardian HQ who made the simple "trans magic potion", a scene where Rosemary was looking for her mom.
It was done better.
@@QueSeraSeraaaa If you think about it, they could have Rosemary defend Snapdragon in the mermaid episode, not participating in the mission due to the use of violence against colleagues, and then Caraway says something like "you're a lot like your mom" and then tell a story about how she defended him in a case of transphobia even though it cost her classes at school. Then we have: 1) Rosemary knows a litle more about her mom, 2) Caraway talk's about being trans without the cringe, 3) Snapdragon as a litle cute mermaid... It's weird they not have choose to go for this direction (sorry for the big text)
"I thought you were Amaryllis' puppet!"
Okay, my creative writing compulsion comes out. "How would I fix this?" and I'd start by having Thyme have MrEnter's exact response: "I said ONE word".
Then, I'd start unpacking things a bit. Like, Sage has a lot of pressure building, so it's not just "she has mommy issues". The world's changing, everything she's seeing makes her feel everything her mother taught her was wrong, her entire sense of identity's in the air, and Thyme saying "Yeah" caused it to erupt. I'd also have the others trying to comfort and reassure her that she's amazing, that she just needs a little time to adjust, but Thyme realize what Sage needed was to vent, let it all out, VOCALIZE everything instead of being treated like a fragile little baby.
I'd have it end with Sage is the one who apologizes for taking her insecurities out on Thyme when she had nothing to do with them and the others apologize for letting it get this bad, even if they had good intentions. Sage and Thyme end the episode with more of a friendship is established between them. Because I LIKE these small stories that don't do much for the overall plot, but develop characters and their dynamics.
But this is High Guardian Spice, where the interesting, really good ideas are promptly thrown in the garbage. This whole angle (which took me about ten minutes while I was still waking up) probably didn't even occur to anyone.
yessss, just make Sage realize how stressed she is at school and it's affecting her relationships, maybe look for colleagues and teachers who want to use old magic, I don't know
@@SunItzal Exactly! We're just asking for SOMETHING.
@@TLSoulDudeAlso, maybe Thyme still shouldn’t just say “yeah”. Maybe also have her add “it’s kind of weird.”
Honestly, the thing I find most interesting about HGS, is that a lot of scenes could be salvageable with editing. It isn't a soulless no-effort project that makes you just not want to waste your time with it, there is just enough to draw you in.
@@ivorynk752 We can see that have some heart in it, just was an amatuer project in the VERY BEST options
I'm glad for this series, because now I finally get to understand WHY this show is the worst thing yet created, instead of just THAT it's the worst thing yet created, which is the only thing I've known about it for the last two years.
If you want more “explanations” as to what makes it so terrible, I’d recommend the TH-camr “Guardian HQ.” He has a whole playlist of video essays on the topic.
@@trumpeterjenGuardian HQ even re-written some scenes, and it's good.
The youtuber expanded more on Lavender, less on the "trans magic".
I recommend the two-part, multi-hour review/analysis of this show by UniqueNameAsaurus (think I got the name right). He goes really in depth into the problems with the show, and even provides legitimately constructive feedback. It's a really good look into the art of writing.
Didn't Mauler do a video on High Guardian Spice? Or am I thinking of someone else?
@JasonGodwin69 I don't think Mauler even knows it exist. If anyone in that circle would know about it, it'd be Theo or Fringy.
Even better examples of troubled production: Apocalypse Now and The Island of Doctor Moreau both essentially collapsed around the crew during production in very similar ways. They took place in sweltering tropical locations, both got hit by tropical storms, both starred Marlon Brando, drug use was rampant, the actors and crew members had a few mental breakdowns and mutinies, and shooting dragged on for months. This isn't even half of it by the way, it was literally insane what went down during these two movies, and yet one went on to be a cultural icon while the other is forgotten trash.
I thought both films were be classics.
Apocalypse got referred in a comedy film and the other one showed up in a Simpson's episode.
@@WolframHeart-xp2px the parody of the island was kind of weird, and it was the only time i could bear Ralph's stupidity.
The character get so massively destroyed, he was surprisingly really smart in the episode where Lisa gave a Valentine card to him, as nobody gave him any.
@@QueSeraSeraaaaYeah. The older I get, the more I prefer him to "I drank blue juice under the sink" Ralph.
@@KeybladeMasterAndy
The first few seasons, maybe up to season 10, were the best.
A bit more attention to the side characters would have been appreciated.
The cool thing is that High Guardian Spice also starred Marlon Brando
I swear I think one writer for the show heard the word "processional" and decided to use it where they could. First Floral processional in this episode, which we never get to see, and then the autumn processional later.
It doesn't help that one of the main wtiters, is a massive misandrist with a backstory of having a murderous and unhinged attitude online.
Kate Leth is famous for being a massive piece of shit.
When called out, she felt "tumblrpilled".
- I'm surprised the HGS writers didn't just call Ep4 "Your Mom Sucks".
- Call me crazy, but after accepting that terrasphere, Sage gets progressively worse. She was fine pre-Ep4, but now she's getting more and more self-interested. I feel nothing but RAGE when she gets pissy at Thyme for agreeing with one thing that Amaryllis said (which was about potentially missing lunch), and I'm sure to feel more rage in the episodes to come.
- ...Even then, Thyme did even less with that botany assignment than Sage did - that is to say, Thyme did nothing at all. Why is Amaryllis only getting mad at Sage for slowing the group down when she at least put in any effort?! Hell, we see Ryll prune Thyme's plant for her, too, but she doesn't chide her at all! What I'm saying is, Sage was getting mad at Thyme for the wrong reasons entirely.
- Actually, can we talk about the debate between Sage and Redbud about Old Magic's usefulness? Redbud only talks up how much faster and stronger New Magic is (while one of her terraspheres runs out of energy while showing off), but Sage brings up the more interesting point about "the balance" of magic. I know Redbud gets all "Balance schmalance!", but...keep this in mind for Ep11.
(Really, though, I figured that the real reason Sage wanted to use Old Magic is because of how volatile her terrasphere was being that morning, and she probably didn't want to accidentally blow up the greenhouse. Buuuuut she should've led with that. Or brought it up at all.)
- Really, though, I wouldn't be surprised if Ep5 only existed to prove (in the writers' eyes) that Rosemary and Sage have long surpassed Snapdragon and Amaryllis, their alleged rivals. Except...rivalries are interesting when the rivals are actually challenging EACH OTHER.
I was scared this series was canceled. I'm so gald its still going.
I am going to see this to the end of it kills me, lol.
@@TheMysteriousMrEnterkeep it up john
Your work is appreciated
@@TheMysteriousMrEnter i dont see you surviving past like episode 6 if you survive congrats enter! you're now a metahuman
@TheMysteriousMrEnter why does this remind me of that one spongebob episode where a band is forced to play Patrick god awful song and it kills them?
@@danielasarmiento3101 its that. except its 22 minutes. for 12 episodes. so about 264 minutes of suffering
Sage is like a Reverse Strawman. The Writers want us to agree with her or atleast understand her Position, but they show her being upset over someone using a Scissor and someone saying one Word
Usually the opposite of a Straw man is the mouthpiece, but she is like a straw man wearing a mouth piece's mask.
What's a Reverse Strawman? What's the difference between a Regular Strawman and a Reverse Strawman?
@@georgemeyers7172 A Character that we are supossed to agree with but that is presented so poorly that it makes the View Point they try to present look bad
@@entityontheinternet Oh. So basically Unintentionally Unsympathetic or Warped Viewes of The Author or... They accidently became a Strawman.
Episode four demonstrates perfectly why Rosemary shouldn’t be the main character. Of the four girls, she’s the only one this episode gave no storyline of her own. As awful as Sage’s, Parsley’s, and Thyme’s subplots all were, at least they all had _something_ happening. Rosemary was there to be Sage’s cheerleader, and even that might be putting it too generously.
As for episode five, what starts the “conflict” between Sage and Thyme is Sage’s desire to use Old Magic in class. This is _after_ she’s accepted her own Terra-sphere and embraced New Magic. But now suddenly she wants to honor her mother’s ways again and stick to Old Magic? Why? Thyme had good reason to be annoyed with Sage and her waffling.
Yeah, you'd think that Rosemary would be concerned for her bestest friend when she confides about how she didn't want a terrasphere. Hell, she could've been hung up on Sage's worries and prompted her to open up to Anise and Aloe about them. But no, she's just a noisy background character in Ep4.
Rosemary in general is probably the most unfit main character in the whole show. Thyme has personal stakes in the plot, Parsley is a good mediator and supporter to her. Even Sage is tied into the secret surrounding the magical system. Rosemary on the other hand is completely self-absorbed with school (where she doesn't particularly struggles) and her missing mother (which she never goes looking for). Her relationship with Sage is pretty much the only thing that gives her any character development. So she's a glorified supporting character at best.
What consistently bugs me about everything I see from this show is I consistently like parts of the artwork. I genuinely like Parsley and Rosemary's designs.
If they were removed from the show, implemented into a better one, maybe with a different premise, and with all the human characters more closely matching them, I think it would look perfectly fine. Parsley in particular looks like a far better character from a far better show that doesn't exist, and it bugs me.
Considering that Parsley is talented and doesn't have that obnovious hair or attitude..
Underutilized, that's a shame.
Some early sketch are even better, It makes me wonder if there is a universe where this show didn't fail so badly in terms of script, maybe the public would overlook the animation a little
@@SunItzal I remember, when the show was first announced, some of the concept art in the trailer actually looked pretty good. A weird mixture between cartoon with some anime influences, but it looked like it could be as nice looking as Steven Universe or The Owl House.
However, due to the show's apparent tight budget and the staff's lack of experience it couldn't look as good as the concept art
There's one thing one my mind about that gd dwarf baby: those eyes look like one of those ugly @$$ eyes from Gacha Life that no kid used for any of their OCs 💀
The Duke Nukem Forever point is actually more relevant than likely intended: It also had handful of good bits that really should be handled by someone more capable or caring (The octabrains and pig cops look fantastic, case in point). Look to the scene with the Teacher, for example, and see how much better it was in the hands of Jamie De Jonge.
Even bad wholes can have good parts. They just need to be salvaged by someone able to.
The Monotone Woman from Wizards of Waverly Place expresses more emotion than Slimeboy, and has infinitely more entertainment value. She’s a side character whose entire thing is that she speaks in a monotone, and I lava it.
What I think stings more is that I don't think the character designs are all that bad, at least in my opinion. But good/decent designs can't save something from still being mediocrity. Like if this had better frame work, a better voice cast, scripting, characterization etc. this would've been a good series.
Also using Sonic Heroes OST (Grand Metropolis) was just... *smooch kiss* Beautiful!
You can tell that those colored hair were massively overused by tumblr users.
In 2013-2014, that stuff was everywhere.
Lots of stuffs are awfully designed, even the food who are just PNGs..
No Man's Sky ALSO had troubled production of its own; it used to be one of the most reviled games and THE go-to example of the dangers of hype, to the point it earned the infamous reputation of "No Man's Lie". It has since turned that reputation on its head with the most wholesome redemption arc. I couldn't possibly do the story of No Man's Sky's historic troubled productions justice; if you haven't, definitely give Internet Historian's video on the redemption arc of No Man's Sky, "The Engoodening of No Man's Sky". I say all this to illustrate that troubled production is something that every artist has to face and is not something that should be leaned in to as a crutch excuse. Food Fight, the most infamously bad animated film of all time, started production in 1997 and was slated for a Christmas '03 release, but was pushed back several times and even reportedly the footage was lost due to the hard drives containing the film were stolen; I don't know if this is true, but apparently to make up the loss, they cobbled together the test animations and claimed that to be the final product; it was released in 2012 and it looked like something that predates Toy Story...which came out in 1995! I mean, granted, you could argue that a story about what your toys do when you aren't looking, on paper, sounds silly, but it lent itself well to fiction and is something I wager most of us thought about when we were kids; I have yet to meet anyone who wondered what iconic product mascots like Captain Crunch, Mr. Clean, the California Raisins, Aunt Jemima, Twinkie the Kid, and the Vlasic Stork do when we're not looking...besides, I wager the Kool-Aid Man and Pepsiman would just solve everything by giving everyone a cool refreshing drink...maybe... Eh, digression aside, this is more to illustrate the point of "Would this have even worked as a finished product?" and...I don't see it, to be honest. Sausage Party, I guess, to its credit, tried to be like that, but for an adult audience, only I think it worked more than Food Fight because it went more generic than having a recognizable cereal mascot as a supporting cast member. All told, whether something has a troubled production is irrelevant to the final product. Pokemon faced troubled productions before it even became a global phenomenon, with Game Freak developing Red & Green over the course of 6 years, teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and having to develop other games in the interim to stay afloat, yet seeing how it's one of the most profitable franchises on the planet nowadays, you would NEVER guess this multimedia mega franchise almost never even happened to begin with. O.o
Final Fantasy XIV, or 14, had such a abysmal launch but was rebooted where the whole world got sucked into a black hole and it’s now one of the top entries in the franchise.
Iron Man was the make or break for Marvel movies, if it failed then that was it. But history, and a shared universe of dozens of movies and shows has happened because it didn’t. Having an iffy lead didn’t help allay concerns, but Robert Downey Jr became a lynchpin of the MCU.
@@jbcatz5 This is true. :3
Thank you Mr. Enter, for putting yourself through this. Otherwise, I know my own morbid curiosity would have gotten the best of me at some point.
There are other reviews of the show, so you wouldn't have had to actually watch it. But of the two I've seen, I prefer Mr Enter's reviews.
The thing that would’ve made this episode for me was if Thyme had “accidentally” shot the brother with the arrow and then get chewed out by Sage, just to deadpan say, “Whoa, complete miscommunication,” no remorse, no emotion 🤌
It doesn't cost to make the character saying.
"Hey, watch out with that thing!"
Dude. I fucking love Slime Boy. Hearing his VA's interview with NPR... I just want to put this guy in a room with a Christmas Tree and hear him talk.
2:16 This part reminds me of a quote from Yahtzee Crowshaw of all people.
"If this isn't the most interesting part of the story, why aren't you showing us that?"
Maybe in this part specifically, it's more of an opportunity than an actual thing that's happening.
"We're looking for Sage, not adventures",
Ok lonely-girl but you are living in a fantasy setting.
And adventures are attracted to the plots, or contributed to it.
13:52 her clothes look more punk than cyberpunk I would say. But seriously, one thing that confuses me about this show is that it doesn't have a cohesive style, it looks like a medieval fantasy, but there's a couple of modern elements like the furniture and transportation that look at least like they belong in the 20th century. Is like they didn't know if they wanted the show to be more like The Slayers or Fullmetal Alchemist
The show take place in the middle-age, but none of their designs fit in, outside of Parsley..
Then there’s the existence of VR games and a mechanical robot octopus in later episodes.
@@brandonlyon730i forgot this scene.. 😂
@@brandonlyon730 This reminds me of an isekai webtoon I read. The story the main character was transported into was a fantasy world with vaguely 1700-1800's European style to it, but had magic. Magic was used in everything. There was a magic snow globe made to entertain kids that would light up when you pushed a button, their were carriages that could move without horses, crystals that could copy images. The isekai'ed character speculated that the primary reason the author went for the fantasy genre was so they could have an old fashioned aesthetic with modern conveniences.
@@QueSeraSeraaaa I'd say the story takes place in an urban-fantasy world, but I think they didn't make a good job on how to representing it. I also forgot that Rosemary had a photo in her locket, so that means cameras exist
I also could've mentioned that the attitudes towards same-sex couples and trasngender people are very modern, maybe even more accepting than in real life. But I don't have a problem that the show takes place in an universe where people are more accepting. Though those allegories regarding old and new magic seem to be the way the writers wanted to talk about other kinds of issues, though they didn't do a good job with it
Julian Koster just sounds like that. He's a real chill dude. Unironically the best member of the cast.
I think a Smileboy spin-off would be more entertaining than a season 2 of HGS. & that horrible Sage face at 4:45 is the stuff of legends. lol
When you find a mysterious broccoli:
Slime Boy Drama CD when
@@agar322 "Slime Boy Drama CD: ASMR Edition".
High Guardian Spice is so… uniquely bad. Like, I know it’s terrible, and it’s unoriginal, but it has a sort of obliviousness embedded into it that I just can’t look away from. Kind of like a “So bad, it’s -good- tolerable” kind of thing. The show has this sort of contrived enjoyability, I guess, and I love when people talk about it.
Like, comparing this to something else commonly regarded as the worst animated show, Velma, I feel HGS is… less horrible. Because with Velma, it talks down to the audience and just feels like a cynical cartoon done in the worst way. With HGS, it’s bad, _really_ bad, but it never feels like it has (intentional) disdain for its own audience imo.
Also, Amaryllis is genuinely great. I love endearing characters with no moral compass who yet still care about their friends, and Amaryllis is one of them. She reminds me a lot of Dan VS.
Y'know what else had a notoriously troubled production on virtually every front imaginable? Evangelion. Is High Guardian Spice as well produced as Evangelion? No. And that's impressive given one of the memes Evangelion is known for is holding on a single shot for a literal minute _multiple times._ Part of Eva's (episodic) grand finale was literally drawn with crayon, and yet to this day people still think Evangelion was _supposed_ to end that way (it wasn't; it was one of the most notorious screw-ups in anime history), but people willingly looked the other way because the series had spent much of its runtime playing around with _extremely_ complicated philosophical ideas and the "final battle" basically saw the gestalt human psyche come apart at the seams anyway, so plausible deniability was all on Eva's side.
Evangelion was just eye-candy, High Guardian Spice is just more a rip-off of any good medias about magic.
@@QueSeraSeraaaa Either way both shows are total rip-offs to watch, they swindle their audiences! And their narrative messages are super disingenuous, hypocritical as well as Woke and Cringey. Constantly sending mixed messages.
Oh, it's bad for Shinji to run away from his problems but Asuka can do it?! What's that New Magic is so beneficial and has no draw backs, so why the Hell do they bother keeping old Magic?!
Heck they didn't even try to tackle the philosophical trends in a very deep way all to well in Neon Genesis Evangelion. But the worse offense was that they literally switched what reality is in the Rebuilt Movies, which have been constantly stated as being the direct canon sequels to the OG Anime! like at first reality was the harsh and unforgiving, but still more akin to our own reality, World of Eva, and that Shinji was supposed to just accept the world of Eva as it is, and to stop running from it. But then they suddenly changed it to be our world with out the Evas! Like WTFH?!!! And don't even get me started on how High Guardian Spice's terrible Woke Feminist LGBTQ narrative!
@@shawnwarrynn8609 I can get you started because a fantasy show. doesn't need to lecture us about feminism and LGBT rights (the Q won't be added, fck that).
Even the Simpsons tried, and Lisa who became one of the worst characters, started in a very good way in the Tracey Ulman shorts, like Bart's friend.
Turning a such character in a little brat was purely uncessary.
Why would a 8 years old start caring about how women are "portrayed throught dolls"? That was entirely uncessary from the start.
The show was rumored tp be stopped by the movie release, but it kept going..
The movie was incredibly dumb and forced itself to be "funny", i remember getting just amused when the hounds are released, or amazed by Ned being a very good father, and i wanted him to be more more in the spotlight.
He treated Bart with respect, that movie showed Homer at his worst easily.
The scene before and after Bart get tied to a pole.. 🙄
Those scenes were very off.
By respect, i watched it till the end, without being disrespectful, but i wished that it would end..
I did it because i loved The Simpsons, but i'm sure glad that is never get a sequel.
In 2023, the show is on life support, it wasn't strong and kicked by the 90s and 2000s.
Bart was so disrespected, but he even get more smart, less stupid than many others like Ralph..
I've seen Ralph in the episode where Lisa gave him a Valentine card, he wasn't really the dumb kid he was, the character was rather happy with being Lisa, nothing forced, about them.
People call his treatment Flanderization, i call it Homerization.
"A wholesome and important character get dumbed down for cheap laughs".
How was the show supposed to end?
@@cosmicspacething3474 Basically the _End of Evangelion_ movie.
Just a fact here, but when the 1st episode was released, the scenario wasn't "ready".
Raye worked on it since 2013, he had time to set the show.
I think both companies rejected the show, so it ended on CR.. but even the app couldn't get past more than two teasers.
I found some trivia about the show on TvTropes and it says there that Raye pitched the show to Frederator Studios back in 2013 and then to Crunchyroll in '16, so I think he had plenty of time to make an outline for the show.
I know that making an animated show is difficult, and according to the trivia, the show had a tight budget and scheduling, but as Enter said, there's been plenty of shows that were done in very difficult situations. The main issue I think is that the concept wasn't as strong as they thought and that they lacked the capacities to tell a good story
The sad thing is I'm reasonably certain I could write this series better than the actual writers, and I'm not a professional. Honestly I agree with Enter that the show would be better if it was worse. The opposite of Love isn't Hate; it's Apathy. Similarly, the opposite of "Good" isn't always "Bad" (since "so bad it's good" is a thing); it's "Boring".
Slime Boy: Oh hai, Sage. What's new with you?
I literally cannot tell the characters apart by name, whenever you mention one of them I think of any of the characters but the one who actually has the name. It's just so... how did this series get greenlit?
All the characters are named after kitchen herbs.. 😂
That's something i did when i was still really young, but i grew bored of it.
the only one i remember is slime boy lol
@@QueSeraSeraaaa Yes, but which one is which? That was my complaint, that when he said "Thyme" I thought of a character that wasn't "Thyme".
@@EntityofDarkness696Thyme is that random red haired elve girl which was a rip-off of Shadow.
It took me time to figure which names is which! 😂
I remember them as this: Pink puffball, blue haired codependent, short blonde, and dark elf.
A lovely article about potatoes! 9/10, would potato again.
Crunchyroll originally rejected HGS, just like all the other studios Raye had pitched the show to, as just like all the other studios, Crunchyroll realised how bad of an idea the pitch was. It was after the peeps behind its rejection left and the new bosses got hired, did they give Raye a call and the green light to start production.
The reality that the team behind HGS and Raye, need to understand that what they put out, was simply bad, even if Crunchyroll didn't meddle or make any requests, gave them an extraordinarily large budget and an extremely comfortable production time, it would still have been bad! The biggest problem with High Guardian Spice, is High Guardian Spice itself and the person who came up with it! The moment the mew bosses at Crunchyroll heard the reason behind the title of the show, they should have thanked Raye for his time, shown him the back door and suggest that he goes back and retake school again, preferably starting from the 3rd grade... any adult who doesn't know the difference between herbs, flowers and spices, really should not be put in charge of any production that requires money be spent on it!
The gave the money they needed, my bet is that Raye wasted it to make merchandises of the show..
It could pay the bills rather. Or fuelling the fridge for the week.
I wonder if I could get my underdeveloped story ideas made by pitching it to Crunchyroll, or where they only willing to take that gamble once and Raye beat me to the punch.
Pretty much like Wownow Entertainment
I hadn't heard from you in two weeks. Im glad I waited so we could suffer through this together lol
For clarity to some who might not know, sound gets 10 times louder for every 10 additional decibels.
I guess Slime Boy's VA was trying to say their lines from the other room.
Enter: "The round peg does *not* go into the square hole."
HGS Writers: "Sez you!" (forces it in)
Here are some ideas for what I would do with Parsley & Thyme.
Parsley: In this world, Dwarves made weapon for an ancient villain. When said villain was defeated, the Dwarves fled underground to escape persecution. But Parsley's parents got banished and now live on the surface. She starts out working as a blacksmith apprentice but after being inspired by Rosemary, becomes a student at the school. Parsley hopes she can prove not all dwarves are bad.
Also, Parsley's weapon of choice would be a whip.
Thyme: While her mother is from Fairy-Wood, her father is an elf from desert dwelling culture (Basically Medieval Persia but with Elves). The two ran away to the father's homeland. When Thyme was 10, she was forced to live to Fairy-Wood. Due to growing up in a different culture, she had trouble making friends with the other elf kids. But she did make friends with the local magical creatures. Then a dragon attack and burned down the forest. Then a group of wizards using new magic to regrow the forest. But when the rot happen, her family was forced to leave. Her father believe that new magic caused the rot so her returns to his homeland to find a cure.
Also, Thyme's weapon would be a pair of curved swords.
You know what other property I'm reminded of that did the magic concept better than HGS? Fullmetal Alchemist. It's practically the whole basis of the show: if someone wants to obtain something, something of equal value must be lost.
10:20 This scene would have been better had Sage repeated it more and more, getting angrier and angrier each time... and then she flips the table or a chair, like Robin Hill saying "Only?!" and how that became a meme.
"Hey yeah!"
"Yeah!"
"YEAH?"
"YEAH??"
Kinda like The Iron Giant.
"Hey!"
"Yeah?"
"You are in the middle of the road-"
"YEAH?"
"Nevermind!"
To be fair, the parsects invasion causing the school to shut down does make sense from a sanitation perspective. There are lots of them and I'm assuming they urinate and defecate as most things do, which is unsanitary. But I also doubt the writers considered this. They probably chose the parsects because they already had those things designed so they wouldn't have to design a brand new creature. And, as we know, having to create new things is practically kryptonite to the writers of this show.
I'm 100% convinced Slime Boy's VA showed up to the recording high as a kite.
Puss in Boots the Last Wish also had a troubled production it came out 12 years after the first and instantly became one of the most beloved animated films of all time.
Ok maybe it's just the combination of her dark skin, pointed ears, and blunt demeanor, but does Thyme remind anyone else of Tuvok from Voyager?
Thanks for reminding me of a show I'd rather be watching, HGS.
I was craving for more Ni no kuni, it's a masterpiece compared to HGS.
Tumblrinas assumed that characters with colored hair are absolutely everywhere..
15:55 I think what I realized about DNF was that longer development does not equal a better product. In DNF case, it took 14 years for incredibly stupid reasons. Mainly that it tried to please everyone. And I think we all know how that usually turns out.
Reminds me of Limbo of the Lost which took 15 years to make, yet the end product looks like it was made in 5 DAYS.
I always read Sage's cousin and her wife being the ones who gave her a Terra Sphere as being a stand-in for them being the relatives who weren't welcome because they were gay.
And the mom being a "hypocrite" meant to imply that she tried same-sex relationships in college.
Which still doesn't prove hypocrisy. You're a hypocrite if you say you believe one thing then do another. But if you change your mind about what you believe and act accordingly, then you're still being consistent.
Yeah it’s to bad we never got to know Sage’s mom or dad. Like how are we suppose to know how much of this is true or are just Sage stress out exaggerations if we never know much about her parents at all?
That's like random people calling someone an hypocrite, without backing this up.
How is sage’s mother a hypocrite?? We’ve never seen any flashbacks of the mother using new magic. And why she stopped using new magic. I’m pretty sure the mother must have a reason
@@brandonlyon730 It's even more ridiculous when you consider that of all the main four's parents, Sage's are the only two that don't have any known names.
@@Muna-Jlore0997 I think the comment is trying to _disprove_ the notion that Sage’s mom is a hypocrite, as also shown in the video
My suspicion is that the show creator had only developed the pitch for "High Guardian Spice" AND NOTHING ELSE. Crunchyroll assumed that there already was a plot outline, if not a fully developed script, and set what would have been a reasonable deadline, if the show creator already knew what the story was about and who the characters were. The likeliest reason that the character development is such a mess is that episodes were written concurrently and continuity was an afterthought. The abundance of filler came from filler being easier to write.
My favorite counter to claims of inadequate budget is "The Real Ghostbusters". When I found a DVD box set, I snapped it up and showed it to my children. I had not seen any of it for about 20 years and I cringed at how bad the animation was and wondered how I could have had such fond recollections of the series. Fortunately, the strength of "The Real Ghostbusters" is the writing, and I was quickly reminded that it was the stories told that made that made "The Real Ghostbusters" so enjoyable to watch.
Slime boy reminds me of that one kid from Yu-Gi-Oh GX that used Mokey-Mokey and acted like he was constantly elevated.
Blonksy was hilarious to watch though. This is just a warcrime against writing.
I can't stop laughing at a parody of Yu-gi-oh still.
"Yugi, you must avenge me!"
"Grandpa, are you dead?"
"Of course no"
"But why are you speaking like this?"
"Ah you know, it's very simple it's-"
"Yu-gi-oooooh!"
Whats funny is that they teased the infinite hallway scene on the trailer like it was something epic or important
You bringing up the color red at 9:37 is a good metaphor for what this show really is: a red room.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought Slime Boy sounded like Tommy Wiseau.
Slime Boys Voice sounds of because his Voice Actor is not a Voice Actor. He is a Musician, his Name is Julian Koster and he was in a Band named Neutral Milk Hotel, he even sings in a later Episode and it honestly sounds really nice
Adding to your discussion on development hell, what makes it so insidious is while a project itself may be static, the world around it isn’t. Technology and consoles change, people go in and out of projects, and what’s novel in one day is cliche in another. If you want the worst example of development he’ll, take the infamous Patrick Rothfuss, who took a picture of an alpha draft of his upcoming book Doors of Stone. 10 years ago. Last year he raised $300k during a charity livestream and promised to release a single chapter of DOS. He didn’t even do that.
300k?? Why people even donated to any morons online?
You got people who needs donations and an actual life.. Not random bullshitting scammers.
It is true that Crunchyroll needed to give the time and budget needed to create an entire TV show. However, I highly doubt that if the crew got said budget, High Guardian Spice would be a great TV show because there is no premise. I came across an article that summarized various statements from the show's creator, and the only thing she said about what the show was meant to be was an LGBTQ+-friendly show. That's noble but not enough to create a fantasy show.
"LGBT friendly", in a goddam category that is very famous for the diversified species of creatures?
It is already diversified as it is, even the magic isn't the same..
They could have created a more slice of life program too, without a big plot and add the story little by little (like Adventure Time did), they just need to have made the eps shorter and more focused on comedy
Was it the interview Raye gave to The Gamer website? I recently gave it a re-read and it's interesting and it explains some of the issues that the show has. In some aspects I think I can empathize with Raye, he seems truly passionate about his work and he grew watching the same shows as me, like Rayearth. On the other hand, there's plenty of talk about LGBT representation, and don't get me wrong, even if I'm not a part of them, there can be shows that deal with those themes and still be entertaining, but some of the worst aspects about HGS is that it seems to just check boxes in regards to representation and similar themes that it wants to explore, it doesn't feel as natural as other shows like Steven Universe.
All I can say is that I think Raye had good intentions, but he didn't know how to make an interesting show
i'm having a bad day, but it cheered me up to see you're still going with this. i was worried you may have lost interest, so seeing you were actually just doing a double feature is a pleasant surprise.
Slime boy is a f*cking treasure
The literal best part about him is that his voice actor is just being himself.
@DespairDoctor and you know what, I salute him for it.
@@billiezeiszler608 me too
Slime Boy is PEAK
@@DespairDoctorhis mic was a huge disgrace, i could barely hear him..
I actually think we should be harsher, critically, on rushed productions or on productions that had slashed budgets, than we are on productions that don't have those shortcomings. When we excuse those flaws, we are telling studios we'll tolerate that stuff, which encourages it when studios come to feel a work may be at risk of not doing well critically. If we make it clear we'll tear a show to ribbons with or without behind-the-scenes problems, that tells studios that their best bet for a work that might not do well is to throw more resources at it to make it better.
Hilarious what you did for the video description Mr. Enter😂😂
16:03 Agreed. But the game wasn't regarded so warmly when it first came out. It got good to lukewarm reviews at the start with many people saying Ocarina was "far better".
With that said, the fact Metroid Prime 4 is constantly being remade from the ground up by several different branches of Retro Studios kind of makes me worry.
Mr.Enter says Thymes voice is draining and the accompanying clip just gives me the impression that both the character and VA don't want to be there.
Her VA was probably taken as hostage..
You know who could make that round peg fit into the square hole? Depending on what it’s made of, perhaps a … blacksmith?
I don’t know..
Watching HGS (High Guardian Spice) is a form of torture that I wouldn't force on my worst enemies (at least,not all of them)
However, I respect the resilience you have in reviewing this. Hope the rest of your day is going well
I prefer HG/SS.
It would be interesting if you reviewed children of the ether for comparison. I thought it was pretty good.
13:37 Technically, frozen peas have existed as long as peas. Sure, frozen peas were first packaged for sale in 1920, but before that, there was still winter. All it would take is leaving a bowl of peas outside when it's below freezing.
Not defending the show, it was just a poor example.
Even a bowl of peas is more interesting than this show.
Ice magic sounds like pretty basic stuff for a fantasy setting, though it is funny to think someone spends years studying magic to be an ice mage and ends up just working in a grocery store to keep the food from rotting.
Is it just me or does that baby have Jigglypuff hair?
"The round peg does not go into the square hole".
Yes it does. Everything goes into the square hole.
"it's all in the wrist of your brain."
Yup. That's it. I'm sold. Best character. Fight me.
High guardian spice, a show that fails at being anything really, not good nor bad, not deep nor shallow, just bland lukewarm water.
Like for other bad shows you could laugh at them or develop Stockholm syndrome over them getting better, but this there's nothing to go off of.
"Luke"
"Yes Yoda?"
"WTF Luke?"
This is what i think about Starwars! 😂
I feel like show was doomed after first trailer and what was said there, surely all that backlash would go to both creators and Crunchyroll, yet they probably already signed contract and had to make show nobody asked for and nobody wanted anything to do with it.
When you dubbed in lines from The Room, I was like “why is it just this character who recorded his lines on a potato” but even the actual recording somehow manages to sound somehow worse than the others… like sound quality wise. Even though this is all presumably being recorded in the same place.
They were not. Many of these extras were recorded themselves, ie remotely, and submitted to the production teams. Slime Boy's voice actor is Julian Koster, who is a proper musician, it's not like he was recording on a potato, he has good hardware. But as the story goes, his samples ended up overcompressed (which is what he sent them) and they never came back to him for uncompressed raw files, that is to say they never told him his files were basically unusable and just ran them with them instead
@@gtf234 this is… so thorough. Thanks!
Wait, technically being a botinest can work for the fauna processional IF the animals carry around flowers and stuff... but we'd never know!
The only thing I can think of is if the fauna professional is a beekeeper, and the botanist has to maintain flowers for the bees to gather nectar from.
@@ArendAlphaEagle that would make sense! Too bad we never see it.
I would watch a huge video of bees carrying pollen on their hind legs.
It's kind of adorable, but also sad if you realize that their lifespan is shorter..
These reviews are making me go back and forth over whether I should watch this. I kinda wanna see slime boy in action
Thank god its not getting a second season
And i'm very happy about it.
I was rather amused that in Mark Lawrence books of the ancestor trilogy, about a group of literal combat assassin nuns, whose martial arts classes include actual injuries; where several novices a year regularly die during training.
their ultra sinister and really cool poisons teacher poisons her students regularly as punishment, and to teach them to watch out for things like contact poisons or needles on chairs.
Yet even she! Does not use fatal poisons!
Thanks for wading through the insanity so we don't have to.
All of a sudden I’m craving potatoes
"Potato McFries" 😂
6:25 It sounds like someone trying to do an impression of drunk Tommy waso but they can’t act.
Slime Boy's VA sounds like he's delivering his lines at gun point -.-
A report on the axe could be rather interesting. The problem is we don't have anything about the ax. Like imagine if part of their exam was to magically or physically make the ax and do like a presentation about what it was used for.
I’ve seen slime boy’s scenes before and I genuinely didn’t notice you dubbing him over with Tommy Wiseau at first. Now I can’t I hear it
If a show needs to be re-dubbed, It's clearly not a good sign..
Thankfully, none is really defending the show.
I was wondering when this would come out.
The saving grace in the episode was the introduction of slime boy ❤
Returning commenter: I've been considering a rewrite of Ep5 that switches Sage's and Thyme's roles in the botany class.
This means it's Thyme who's asking if it's okay if she uses her Old Magic for the assignment in lieu of a terrasphere, of course. Sage will still be doing effort, though, practicing more control over her terrasphere. Amaryllis's impatience will be focused on more, with her just deciding to prune the rest of Sage's plant for her before moving on to Thyme, whose Old Magic is having trouble restraining her plant - could be because the plant she's working with is unfamiliar to her, or because she didn't practice magic as much as other Fairywoods elves did (which is kinda implied in Ep10). Sage isn't oblivious, just a bit intimidated by Ryll's aggression.
The conflict here is that Thyme feels more out of place in this academy for being bad with Old Magic and talked down by New Magic users. Whatever incident happens in the last third of the episode could get Sage to help Thyme by syncing her terrasphere with her (as Anise and Aloe did in Ep1), and then she can offer to help Thyme master her Old Magic, no matter what the pro-News say.
Oh, and for Rosemary, Parsley, and Snapdragon, the three of them could be more focused on different aspects of Gwynr's Axe - Rosemary on the battles it saw Gwynr through, Parsley on the axe's build and enchantments, and Snap on Gwynr's philosophies as a Guardian. Maybe Rosemary could be adamant about ignoring Gwynr's character, and Snap could insist that Guardians are also fellow people that they can learn from - they can then give the armor-piercing question if Rose even cares about Lavender outside of her exploits. Witnessing the end-episode incident, and how Sage, Thyme, and maybe Amaryllis resolve it, could hammer it into Rose that maybe she shouldn't be focusing solely on Guardians' epic feats and more on who these people are, especially Lavender.
The episode should have been about everybody blowing off Sage for being a pretentious bitch and Thyme being the one forced to apologise to her because no one else wants to deal with her.
It's not the best story but it's just the perfect kind of subversion for this kind of show.
12:55 actually he DID give us his name in episode 2. 😅
Who's scarier? Dirtgirl or Dwarf baby?
Greetings and Yes, it is
greetings!
The closest that would work would be about as similar as MLP:TYT is compared to Fallout: Equestria.
If this show represented anything, it would be a void without talents, without art, without style.
It would be nothing.
Forget Sage, she's the worst character! The infinite hallway would have been much more interesting! It could have been like the Backrooms! Really does show the writers' lack of creativity.
Yeah. Like, that scene where Amaryllis is "bullying" Sage is a freaking joke, and not in the intentional way. Amaryllis makes a good point: Sage is wasting her time using a magic method that is hard to use and barely works and, in the process, is wasting the time of her group partners. And Sage's only excuse for doing so is "Old Magic is sacred."
Yeah, Sage, we're gonna need a lot more than that to get your point. And that's generously assuming you have a point to begin with.
Honestly, Amaryllis is so right in the nose that she doesn't even seem like she was bullying Sage in that scene. She seemed genuinely annoyed with having her time wasted.
It's kind of like how the show keeps wasting the audience's time. Just let us see the freaking magical hallway, Thyme! I don't care if you're supposed to be looking for Sage.
@@frankielovejoy9928Sage is a massive POS with a stupid obsession over "old magic"..
The two magic can become one, you got the good spells and the terrible ones, but magic would still be needed.
Yeah, sage didn’t even defend her culture. All she got that “defense” that is old magic. That’s it and cries like a b*tch she is. She pretty did the same thing when her cousin and her wife were laughing behind her mother’s back.
Just the fact that they thought a 12 episode series had room for filler reeks of incompetence.
10:34 that would be too great a leap forward in terms of this show's quality.
So wait, a completely original series that is not dependent on any other medium for its material, and was only 12 episodes long...had a filler episode? ...So what's the over/under on this series just being a money laundering scam?
The show is a scam itself, CR didn't donated money to Japanese animators who were underpaid.. They donated it to random tumblrinas..
Was every script a first draft?
When the 1st episode was released the script wasn't finished..
Donkey Kong Country has more consistent source material in every episode over this episode HGS episode.
I absolutely love Donkey Kong Country 2 even better than the 1st. ^^
I have the, "the 2nd game is better" stuff.
@@QueSeraSeraaaa I think he's talking about the show, not the games.
@@shaynemack3017 still a very good one, no matter how dated it is.
Fair point.
Surely, SURELY this should can get worse, right... RIGHT?
"No 2nd season!"
"MY.. MY.. MONEY!"
This show is to Sailor Moon and My Hero Academia what My Immortal is to Harry Potter. If that doesnt make sense, im sorry, but it made sense in my head
Sailor Moon deserves better than this..
What a way to diss My Immortal
I love the intro to this youtube series
9:40 Can't believe I'm going to bat for HGS of all things. But-
It's incredibly reductive to say that Rosmary, Sage, Parsley and Thyme's core issues are all just 'mommy issues'.
Rosemary's issues have nothing to do with a strained relationship with her mother. It has to do with how she lost her mom, trying to live up to her while missing her.
Sage's issues aren't a strained relationship with her mom- it's that she's been taught one way and now is being forced to handle things another way.
Parsley's issues aren't just with her mom but also her dad. It's mostly correct here but that small tidbit does change things a bit.
And Thyme's issue isn't with her mom per say- it's that her dad is currently dealing with a problem that she feels helpless to fight against. Her mom ends up reinforcing that feeling in trying to protect her but her core problem is not WITH her mom.
To be honest, this isn't the first time I've had this issue with this series. You complain about Thyme being an asshole 'because elf' but it's rather clear Thyme's issue is because, again, she feels frustrated and helpless. It's not just because she's an elf, since the classic depiction of that is because elves are elitists. I feel like this is missing the forest for the trees here.
Another late Saturday Night at High Guardian Academy with the esteemed Professor Enter.
The Original Mortal Kombat game was a fun low budget side project a small dev team at Midway was working on as they were working on bigger projects Ed Boon never anticipated that Mortal Kombat wasnt just going to be a huge Arcade hit but would become a cultural Phenomenon
Sonic X was also made on a small budget, but the show was damn good!
Brb, spending the rest of my evening laughing at "the wrist of my brain" xDDDDDD
Ah, the old I take "offense to that last one" trope.