High Guardian Spice : Worth Watching?
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 8 ก.ย. 2024
- My Patreon: / judgmental_critter
My Merch: teespring.com/...
My Twitter: / judgmentalthe
I've decided to tackle the notoriously loathed "High Guardian Spice"! Let's ignore what everyone else says and judge this show for ourselves! Is it really as bad as everyone said it was? Is there ANY redeeming qualities from this show at all? Most importantly, id it Worth Watching?
![[UNCUT] The Loyal Pin ปิ่นภักดิ์ EP.6 (2/4)](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/GgeGQOP10RQ/mqdefault.jpg)
![[UNCUT] The Loyal Pin ปิ่นภักดิ์ EP.6 (1/4)](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/m05kZ2GDKXg/mqdefault.jpg)
I think the worse matter of marketing was when this show was first announced. No animation bits or nothing, and while they did show some character concepts and art, the bulk of the teaser was the creative team going on and on about how they're "so diverse and creative and shit. This show is like nothing you've ever seen and we're a team of mostly women, because that's what being diverse means, right?"
Some people disagree with this and this is a me thing but force diversity and diversity being a driving point isn’t diversity it’s pandering. To me it’s best when it’s there and you don’t notice it and people don’t bring it to attention because that’s normal.
In my opinion, this is just a mediocre show that suffered from poor marketing. Advertised as a diverse, mature show for adults and it didn't deliver. If it was marketed as PG-13 or something, I'm sure it would've had WAY better reviews than it did. But it was marketed as an adult show and treated as such when people reviewed it.
@@heartbreak1740 that's very true for a lot of things. It's the whole show don't tell rule of visual media.
Huge agreement, the show itself is okay at best but, the marketing is what led to it getting torn apart especially LGBTQIA+ scenes, and the fact that it was attempting to call itself an anime was a huge mistake even worse as Crunchyroll users felt like their money was being wasted.
I honestly don't think it's that bad, and I do like some of the characters from the show a lot, _I'm a Snapdragon, and Mandrake fan,_ this isn't to say the show doesn't have flaws but, all shows do... the show using stock images was in my opinion hilarious but, honestly not a big deal however a ton of people used it as a another example of _"The show has bad art, look!",_ I personally like the art style, it could be better _sure_ but, I like it.
Is the show good? _No,_ not really... but, is it a _fine_ show? _Yes,_ it's the kind of show you can just play in the background, and have a decent time with. I honestly want another season but, I'm certain that's _never_ going to happen.
@@heartbreak1740 Agreed. One example I always like to bring it's Gargoyles animated series
You're right. The show's biggest sins were marketing and production. The show itself is kinda lukewarm. Nowhere near as bad as how it was blasted, but not really groundbreaking either. Honestly, it was too similar to Little Witch Academia, to the point where I was constantly asking myself why I wasn't watching that, instead. I left HGS with a feeling of apathy, which might be worse than passionately hating it. At least in the later case, it sticks around in your consciousness long enough to have some form.
People rant about this online but are quiet around shows like the live action Winx show or Fairly odder. Then you know their stance on things
@@jessegartung294 Oh dude, you have no idea how badly my friend hates that Winx reboot! XD
I messaged her once about it after we talked at length in PMs about the original show beforehand. She went off about it very passionately, she was a fangirl burned by the lazily written reboot.
I think the reason things like that aren't as widely spoken about is because we, at this point, *expect* live action gritty reboots to be bad. The only way we'd be driven to talk about it at this point is for light mentions, the show did something significantly heinous, or the show *somehow* turns out to be really good.
@@JoshtheOverlander my theory is that’s what they want. Because profit
@@jessegartung294 Wait what? I've seen way more hate towards Fairly Odder than towards HGS. All three of these shows are terrible at any rate.
@@darrelsam419 really? Because I’ve been online and I seen more people saying something is woke than anything that is actually happening I’ve written a blog about it on deviant art it’s under Cutiesaurs
I sum up this show as " needs more work, come back with completed product" cause that's what it feels like a rough draft
From Interviews with the creator and other animation workers has been that they had a very limited budget and time to actually work and fix anything like about a 1/3 of a normal episode and with production issues that happen with anything and the overreaction some people had just from it being announced it affected things and it is a shame. I think they still managed to make a decent show and enjoyed it with its obvious and reasonable flaws.
@@haruhidekiThat really doesn’t excuse the writing though. The creator should’ve had already thought out a proper story and knows what he wants to do with each episode before production even began. Sure stories always change in production and some stuff can get cut out, but a lot of HGS writing and story just feels all over the place with dialogue that doesn’t sound natural, a world that is inconsistent or poorly explained, episodes that are just filler wasting time and episodes, characters who radically change from episode to episode, etc. That's not on the budget, that on the writers.
@@brandonlyon730 I can see why if it was not for you and you did not like everything even the creator knows and acknowledges the issues the show has, but the thing is to understand why and that is the exact reason why. Budget and time connect to everything and just saying "doesn't excuse, not on the budget" is the very thing that matters and why things happen. The idea is that no matter who it is even more experienced writers would struggle and that everyone needs time to be able to refine things, no one does everything perfectly the first time and that because of the rushed and hostile environment nothing of high quality can be made like that, you can't expect cheap and fast with high quality. There are good things about HGS, but then how some people ignore it and condemn the show for the 1st season not being perfect because of understandable reasons behind it.
@@haruhideki From what I heard there wasn’t even a proper script when the storyboarding started for the first episode. All of that should’ve been done long before there was any budget involved. Like if you’re having something episodic like Spongebob where continuity and story past an episode doesn't matter then that’s no big deal, but if your going to have a contitunitg focus serialized story like say Avatar the last air bender you should have something planned out before you even start production, which from what I've heard it wasn’t and it shows.
@@brandonlyon730 also from a video I saw about this, I heard that the whole season was already finished by 2019 or sum and the whole thing has just been left to collect dust from then on, until it was finally released.
My biggest issue with this show is that he doesn’t have a clear audience target.
Also I just realise that she have more negative thoughts on Arcane than spice guardian, which is so wrong for my brain. But every one got their opinion obviously.
Yeah I thought it was for children.
@@bennyd.1862 but then there’s blood Sometimes? Also they have minor swears here and there. But then they told us what transgender means as if we were children
@@stickthelanding4785
It is for a younger audience.
It's kinda obvious and Raye even confirmed this on twitter
Like a lot of anime and other cartoons have blood and more swearing
It has target audience, the creator and its friends
@Xbox One because the art style looks too friendly
Most of the early criticism of the show did end up being prophetic, which was 'it's going to be a rushed, poorly done mess of a show and it doesn't look like they actually care about the product they're making' and that certainly came to pass. But also people were harsh on the show because Crunchyroll was meant to be a company to send money to support animators in Japan in the anime industry. So a lot of people felt betrayed when they used quite a bit of that money to form their own animation company and fund their own projects instead, and what's more, projects that weren't even anime. The whole point of Crunchyroll was to help curb pirating and paying people to continue to make anime.
Another thing was definitely the marketing. A lot of people pointed out the warning is there for the mildest of shit in HGS but nowhere is there a warning on legitimately adult anime like Berserk or even Madoka. The animation was shoddy, the writing subpar despite supposedly being marketed as a 'deep, unique adult story with stories no one has seen before' (another point of criticism, because... it's generic as all hell). If you're going to lie this much to your audience, they're going to take it out on the show. A lot of critics had pointed out if it hadn't been for the company that produced it and the sleazy marketing, barely anyone would bat an eyelash at the show. There'd still be a couple of people making fun of it, but it wouldn't be the big thing everyone would use as target practice. It's a below mediocre show, the 2020's version of He-Man and other shoestring budget garbage that will still find a small audience. But also if you're going to make an American cartoon for children that isn't anime, why hide it on an anime site mainly used for older teen and adult anime audiences and not bring it to a different animation studio that would better suit your interests?
So there are legitimate complaints to the show, it's not just "crusty male weebs". A lot of the criticisms are a lot more in depth than what it would have gotten, but I think people see it as proportional to how much they were lied to. At least that seems to me to be the pattern I see with how much something gets criticized.
Indeed, I will admit my faults and say I gave the show a lot of shit that it probably didn't deserve. Its not terrible, just a mediocre fantasy school show that doesn't do enough to establish its world as unique among the crowd. I think you're right that people judged the show because they were angry with Crunchyroll. Its biggest weaknesses in my eyes are its animation and world building. The animation is okay and even good in some places all things considered, but it dips into awful quality far too often (I find it hilarious that Critter pointed out the manticore fight looking good despite there being a scene where all they did was literally just enlarge a static image of the manticore).
The world building though is utterly nonsensical, with old magic and new magic never being properly explained beyond the bare bones "old magic is complex and hard to learn (so like magic for a wizard in DnD)" and (new magic is simple, easy to use, and better than old magic in every way! (so like a sorcerer's magic in DnD)". The problem is they really don't establish much else, and what they do is insane to the point of it potentially breaking the entire story, as in Sage reads in a book that new magic can revive the dead and grant immortality. There's also the very obvious allegory of old magic representing an "old" way of thinking, while new magic symbolises LGBTQ+ and the more modern, accepting way of thinking. On its own, that's not a bad concept, the problem is that it seems to be the only thing they gave any real thought to in regards to the magic.
@@dragonicdoom3772 Oh, totally. Like I said, there’s plenty there to criticize. I also hold to the idea that just because it’s a children’s show (which is what HGS seems to be despite marketing) that doesn’t give people the right to make garbage stories. Kids aren’t stupid and deserve more intelligent writing than what a lot of show runners give them. So I’d also give HGS a slap on the wrist for that.
It was definitely a show that only sat in the oven for 15 minutes instead of the whole hour it needed. There’s almost nothing about it that was polished and it really is a shame that it was so blatant we as cartoon/anime fans could tell from the initial trailer where they didn’t even have footage to show us. I also don’t buy the excuse that there was no time to flesh out the story. Rodriguez wrote comics on tumblr years ago, and it took quite a while to find a studio that would pick it up. He could have very easily polished ideas while querying. But he didn’t seem to.
@@twilightguardian Not to mention it was revealed that they didn't really vet any of the writing team members. It was only halfway through production that it came out that one of the lead writers was openly racist and transphobic online.....working on a show largely focused on diversity of race and identity. That individual was removed and their contributions taken out...but that's a significant amount of time that could have been spent with a writer who would have been better from the show from the beginning. The studio only found out AFTER fans took it upon themselves to look into and follow the creatives listed as part of its development, and THEY made the studio aware of their internet activities.
Like think about that. How much time in development, how much of the extremely limited budget went to that one person whose work had to be taken out anyway? How much of the bad writing and poor world building is directly related to the team having to fill in the gaps left behind by their removal?
They were able to make sure that all of the writing team is female, and 50% of all the other creative roles were female...but didn't take the time to casually browse the profiles of their applicants?
Not to mention the series was rejected by Federator initially before it was taken to Crunchyroll. Did Rodriguez not evaluate why it was rejected and see if the concept needed tweaking? Some of the best cartoons and anime were only generated after they were rejected initially, underwent a facelift, and then was accepted.
Examples being: Kids Next Door, originally a cartoon about a boy and his monkey getting caught in the hijinks of various kids around the block, with the main antagonists being...the KnD. He was told that the boy and monkey concept was boring, but they were interested in the KnD characters. So he reworked it so that the KnD were the protagonists, completely changed the tone of the series (slice of life comedy to action) and BOOM insanely popular series.
Naruto: originally was a detective story following a kitsune who would play pranks on people and get caught up in various mysteries around semi-modern japan. Editor rejected it, and proposed "what if this was Ninjas" You can actually still find the original comic still floating around. Shouldn't have to explain what happened after that decision lol.
Bleach: Originally a story following Rukia, a scythe wielding protagonist as she fought various gun touting enemies. Was rejected by Shonen Jump, but Akira Toriyama really liked some parts of it, and coached/encouraged Kubo to rework it.
Yugioh: Originally a "game of the week" type manga, where Yugi, possessed by a spirit of Justice and master of games, would enact games of judgment upon various bad guys. Up to and including lifelong torture, permanent blindness, and death if they lost. It was a horror manga, btw. But then they did a "card game" chapter, and fans became incredibly interested in the concept of that card game. So they decided to essentially rework the manga to be about said card game, expanded on the rules, gave a proper storyline to the manga (instead of an incredibly episodic nature) and next thing you know you have a kid's card game empire that seemingly will never die lol.
So it genuinely makes me curious about whether or not He actually took any feedback on his work, and tried to implement it in this...or if he just tried to find a studio that would take it at face value (which could explain the incredibly poor funding, if the company never had any real hopes for it to begin with. I mean it was literally working on roughly 1/3 the average budget for a "normal" western cartoon episode. )
@@mercy5004 Wow, I had no idea about the writer they let go. That’s fascinating, but also very telling about how mismanaged it must have been. As the saying goes: “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
I knew about the Naruto and Yu-Gi-Oh! examples, actually! Preproduction and early versions are so fascinating to look into and see the growth process. I talked briefly about them in my Digimon Deep Dive video, and actually read the Naruto pilot while doing research. It was actually pretty good as a one-shot. Pretty moving, but definitely not something that would have been a long-running series. Then again, Detective Conan is going strong still, so perhaps. Or maybe because they already had Conan he said no.
As someone who hates this show, I humbly respect your opinion, if you got something out of it that’s fine and if you end up liking the show once your finished that’s great too your entitled to your opinion.
With that said I’ve watched those three videos you displayed showing the flak this show gets and I think your misrepresenting people who hate this show. There’s more to the bad rep HGS gets than just misogynists or male weebs hating on it because their jumping on the bandwagon or watching clips on TH-cam out of context I recommend watching those three videos once you finished.
Overall I’m glad you found some enjoyment from this unmitigated disaster than I did and I’ve enjoyed listening your opinion.
I enjoyed the review... right until she decided that it was a good idea to go after "crusty weeaboo men." At that point, all the goodwill she had been building up was thrown out the window, and she lost me as an audience member. Attacking other reviewers the way she did for their opinions doesn't make her a hero or somehow morally superior -- it only makes her look like a pandering fool who needs to get consensus for her opinions, and that makes the entire review suspect. I can't trust her words as honest nor can I believe her actions weren't motivated by malice and a desire to stick it to the haters, and that renders her review null and void to me.
@@ChaosoneX especially funny because she lambasts rwby's whole fandom for having no nuance
Fun fact I am almost done with this show do I like it yes I just don't know why they hate in by hat I mean really hate the show I guess I just don't listen to hate comment I think the show is good
Eh, I think the criticism's levied at this show were very much well deserving. However, I think much of the outrage had a lot to do with everything AROUND the show itself, from the marketing to the company itself. The show being the epitome of many of those problems. On it's own though, it's a bland, run of the mill, demographic confused, at times mind-boggling nonsense show that did nothing new, and ultimately went nowhere (seriously, they end up talking about new magic vs old magic and never fucking bother to explain how this world's magic system works and what the overall differences are and yet act like the viewer should understand it! That shit only works with a hard magic system with clearly laid out rules, not when everything is by the seat of your own whimsy!).
Frankly, as an aspiring animator, a lot of my issues with the show came from the shocking level of animation errors, art errors, and overall jank it had.
@@ARStudios2000 yeah I've seen many of those. And man, it's kinda baffling at times.
Id say my main complaint with the show is they don’t really explain what a guardian is and why they are going to school for it, like it’s implied to be an important title but what is it for and why are guardians important
Just like Huntsman in RWBY.
I only watched this review, but I assumed that guardians just fight monsters just like how Huntresses in RWBY fight Grimm. What more explanation do we need?
@@theshire9173 The Grimm in rwby are explained to have been a real threat for generations and have been trying to wipe out the world of remnant, that’s why hunters and huntresses are needed. In high guardian sure we see monsters, but it doesn’t explain why they need guardians to combat them directly or what other purpose they might serve
@@Covolio-page But why do we need that explained? Monsters are monsters. You can assume they're threats without the show explicitly telling you
@@theshire9173 we never actually see monsters attacking civilians in hgs, also it never really stated what the “monsters” are in the sense of are they mystical or natural
As someone who calls himself a fan of this show, I can tell you, the best and worst parts are not in the first three episodes.
And yes, this show was fucked over by its terrible first trailer.
“It’s not like they’re stabbing people!”
Honey you got a big storm coming!
Edit: Grammar.
I just wish their names were actual spices, and that we got a clear definition of what a guardian is.
I am going to say this counts I am deadass I came back to this comment section to see did anyone point out the fact that there names are herbs not spices
At this point, I feel like MAYBE we can excuse the name of the show, but I'm honestly still baffled (a whole month after watching it) that we never got an explanation of what a guardian is and what their significance in the world is. Should've gotten it in episode 1 or 2 tbh
A good 85% of the vitriol the show gets is due to the marketing. Along with touting the show as "mature", they didn't tell us much about the show itself and kept telling us that it was so good because it was woke, which people usually don't take too kindly to. Look at what happened to Captain Marvel.
Okay I haven’t seen anyone complain about this but you wouldn’t be able to use blacksmithing techniques to fix a locket the pieces that would’ve needed to be fixed (ie. The hinge) would take someone with a jewelers kit. All parsley did was flatten the metal of the locket. I just needed to get this off my chest
I know, right?!
Why would Sage go to a Blacksmith and not....like, a Jewelry Shop or something?
Did you really have no better way to introduce your fourth Protagonist?
Also, Parsley made a whole dagger with just 3 hits and none of the other steps.
@@lehahiah81 Well, that can be excused by the Rule of Comedy, I guess.
What I don't understand is why Parsley immediately gets moved up higher because she showed some Talent. On her first Day no less.
@@johannesseyfried7933 Yep, there were a good amount of problems. I watched the whole thing with some friends. We made a where's Waldo game with one of the background characters because of how many scenes she popped up in. If she didn't show up we just made up stories about what she was doing.
Here's what I know: this show was apparently funded with money CrunchyRoll raised to help pay underpaid animators who work themselves to the bone yet don't get the appreciation they deserve. Not the production team's fault, but definitely not a good note to start on and absolutely a bad move on CrunchyRoll's part, turning people away before the show even aired. That initial bad decision cast it's shadow over the show's production: things were rushed, corners were cut, and a show that could have been good wound up just average.
I think original people have fair argument , the first trailer dint even show the show , just a team how proud ther are how ther full female or how progresing it is ...consider ther left own way
If this was on Netflix or maybe market like a show should not have this hate
I think the big problem with high guardian spice is the marketing and Crunchyrolls *controversial* business practices. At best the shows kind of below average for me.
Thing that got people upset with this series is was handful of things.
The first was that Crunchyroll used money from premium accounts to found this. Money that Crunchyroll themselves when they first established the premium service that the subscription money would given to anime productions to help found the anime industry. And when people saw that they used their money being used to found a Crunchyroll original they felt scammed.
Another thing that got people to judge more harshly was the people who made the series. Back in 2017/2018 there was an announcement trailer that was released for High Guardian Spice. At the time of when they made the trailer they only had concept art and some storyboards. In the announcement trailer they only spent a couple of seconds summarizing a watered down basic plot. The majority if not the rest of the trailer was spent with the production crew (figuratively) circle jerking themselves by bragging how diverse the cast and crew behind the series is. At one point one people said that "We will do stuff that has not been seen in 2d animation in years." And it doesn't help that one of the main people behind High Guardian Spice has a history of being (formally according to her) a part of the # KillAllMen crowd.
And the mature warning at the start of the episodes creates a confusing mess of who is the series are for, especially with the few amounts of swearing/incorporated language is unnecessary.
HGS was basically meant to be a kid’s show, but Crunchyroll told the writers to add in more “mature” moments, I guess because they wanted it to be more like a shounen series. It becomes more obvious from episode seven onward because that’s when they ramp up the action and violence. In fact, I don’t think there’s a single swear word in the episodes you discussed (correct me if I’m wrong). Due this, there’s a weird tonal disconnect throughout the show where it can’t decide on on what audience it’s aimed at.
I’d be interested in seeing your further thoughts if you did continue the series. It seems like a very rough draft of a series with potential, especially with some of the character development of one of the “bully” characters later on.
I think people wouldn’t have cared as much or been as angry if this came out on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, HBO Max, or especially Disney+ but a lot people subscribe to crunchy with the idea that their money is going to fund the anime industry overseas and yes Crunchy-roll has never stated that they’re a non-profit or anything close to it and yes they can both support the anime industry and do their own projects but if you survey crunchy-roll subscribers and asked if they would like addition funds to go to funding their own American made projects or further support the anime industry overseas? I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t even need to see the results to know the what people would choose and don’t even get me started on what they pay their voice actors and translators.
One problem with this being made by crunchyroll, is that crunchyroll advertises itself as a company that uses the money from there subscriptions to support the animators of the anime industry. Now I don't expect all the money they make to go into that, they have a staff to pay and everything, but the fact they are apparently making enough of a profit to make their own project shows you aren't exactly getting what you are paying for.
That is an entire animation industry issue and not something to blame the show itself for. People are trying to blame the show / crunchyroll for stealing money from Japan, but they do pay license fees to the companies over there and the Japanese companies should pay their workers more.
@@haruhideki yeah, workers should be paid, no question, but think about this, crunchyroll advertises itself as using the money help elevate that problem, but they haven't. They have set their own animation studio, so now there's even more animators unduly paid. Sure they pay for the licencing fee, but they advise that the money is not for profit. While I think it's unreasonable to say they shouldn't make a profit, we now know undisputably that a majority of the money used for subscriptions, with the entention of it being used to elevate a problem, is instead being used to contribute to the problem leaves a bad taste. It's a problem Netflix or something will ever encounter, because Netflix only advertises itself as a streaming service and not as something to help tackle an issue like crunchyroll does
@@emectric1455 That criticism at Crunchyroll is valid, but I personally think it is still a bigger issue overall with the Animation industry and also would be wrong to at least to hate High Guardian Spice for these issues just for being made when Crunchyroll have made other shows too without the same blame put on the other shows.
Hi there, I just wanna say something here. I don't mind that you enjoy the show. If you liked it, good for you. For me, I don't really liked it
I watched the whole show and I found myself for the most part being really bored. If anyone find this show really good then I'm happy for them.
Honestly I kinda felt that your misrepresenting the people who has a reason to hate this show, it's not just "male weebs" there are also female reviewers that didn't liked it. As for that last part, 20:54 - 21:20
I kinda disagree with that. While there are people who are anti-LGBT I'm not gonna deny that but it doesn't mean it's the majority. Some people has legit criticism while not hating the LGBT themes. As for the LGBT people, sure others really like it but some not. There are some trans youtubers that actually criticizes the show and how it was handle.
Again (sorry for repeating) I don't hold against the people who really enjoy this show especially gays, lesbians and trans.
I agree. I'm not a straight, cis dude (literal opposite, bi, WOC) and I found this show rather mediocre and it was fun shitting on it with friends and random people online. And I've seen LGBTQIA+ youtubers dunk on it too.
I think hinting that mostly "straight white dudes" criticize this show was rather dismissive, although there's DEFINITELY people I've seen that HATE it (to a pathetic degree) just because it's "woke"
@@mochafrappawhat Yeah I agree with that
I've seen some shows that is well written and has better representation
There's a difference between being woke and someone who really cares about representation with good writing.
Or that's what I thought, who knows maybe I'm wrong
Me and My friends watched the whole thing all the way though, giving it a good old try. And We tried alright, many many misses, some nice hits, and very noticeable errors that we weren't even trying to see. But at least we tired.
another issue with the show is how they kept saying this is gonna be a unique show unlike any other
that probably got the Steven universe fans interested but again
since there's no target audience grown adults got into it
I got too bored halfway through watching the show and never finished so watched a few reviews. Your experience with reviewers on this show seems a little different with what I’ve seen. All the problems you said they had I did see with the exception of the representation being in the show, though the majority that I remember was the technical issues such as mixing and the occasional inconsistency in visuals, but most of all the poor story telling. People, even in the comments here, feel that the story is a rough draft that needed more work before being released. The further into the show you go the more obvious it feels. Apparently by the end the bully characters seem better suited to be the main characters than the 4 girls.
My favorite technical weirdness was the stock picture of the bread photoshopped on the table. 😆
They use a lot of stock images
It’s like they didn’t even try and just shoehorn it stock images, didn’t these people had like an extra three years to fix these mistakes 😂😂
@@upjohn1715 no there made it and put it in storage for a year dusted it off and put it online
@@kylethefan6062 That explains it :(
So I went looking around to see if the creators said what the target audience actually is and the topic doesn’t seem to come up. Everything point of discussion is about representation. Because of that I did learn…
Spoiler, spoiler, SPOILER!
They fully intend to have Callaway guide Snapdragon through transitioning. Way to tell the audience the end goal for what will probably be the most interesting and real world character arc the show has!
Edited: I had more but thought better than to leave it. Don’t want to mix up the topic at hand
I recently finished watching HGS and I feel like the problems of the show come down to 4 things; the people working on it, the PR for the show, budget problems and story telling.
One script writer of the show is a women who posted many tweets about killing men and she refused to apologize for it which lead to all the male characters feeling shallow and uninteresting.
The budget of the show was small (even the creator of the show admits that) which lead to many animation mistakes not to mention that in some scenes PNG images were used to fill in space and a lot of time the main characters felt like they didn't blend in the background.
Another thing that regards to budget is that the show was funded by Crunchy roll users who gave money to them in the intent to support japanese animation studios so imagine how they must have felt when they found out that instead of helping studios in Japan the money was used to fund a cartoon with anime tropes.
When it comes to the characters I find them generic and predictable and the same can be said about the story, it hasn't done anything that wasn't done before it, the art style and the way the characters interact made it seem childish even though it was made for adults in mind.
This shows suffers from "wrong place, wrong time, wrong presentation"
Maybe if this was on Netflix it would still get blasted but it wouldn't be so bad. The show itself is inoffensive but it's pretty...meh
Its inoffensive unless you happen to be born with a Y chromosome, seeing as the on screen men who are roughly in the main characters age groups (and have actual narrative relevance) are either Tools or Transgender (which means they're actually girls as far as the writers are concerned). And seeing as the Twitter Mobs usually love bringing up stuff people do years ago, its only fair I remind everyone #KillAllMen is one of the lead writers of this show.
@@tdninternet9916 see that's what happens when 99% of your cast is women. You don't know how write a guy outside of stereotypes
The best way I could say about this show is “It can be better, but you managed to miss every target despite the thing being three feet in front of you.”
But my general opinion of the show is a failed disney xd show that got overshadowed from something like the owl house or amphibia (never seen those shows but heard they’re good)
I feel like someone forced them to slap a "mature audiences" warning on it because it touched on the topic of trans people and they changed some of the lines to include more swearing and added more blood? It also went through development hell and they had a low budget. They did the best they could do with what they had, and what they were given to work with wasn't much at all. It almost seems like it was set up for failure :(
If it does get a second season I just hope the weak points of the show gets stronger, I believe that LGBTQIA representation is import and especially when it's not over the top and it's more thoughtful when presented but I think they need to work on how they are perceiving men. This show has
potential it just needs more work done on certain parts.
I don't think it's a good sign that you keep referring to High Guardian Spice as a "Kid's Show" when every episode has a content warning disclaimer. Either the disclaimer is wrong and being melodramatic or this show is confused about who it appeals to because they do swear and there is some clear sexual innuendo...not a good sign it speaks to the writer's not agreeing. However, I'm am curious whether or not your opinion changes as the episodes progress.
Also blood
Seems like someone left a comment before getting tot he end of the video.
@@thejudgmentalcritter6584 you know you don’t have to be so condescending to people right
@@kylethefan6062 You know you don't have to spam every comment in my comment section, right?
@@thejudgmentalcritter6584 it's just the fact that it feels like a kids' show while having some mild blood, swearing, and the occasional sex joke says that it's for a more mature audience and the disclaimer makes you think it'll be for a more mature audience. But then you actually watch the show and it's a kids' show. It makes me feel like the blood and innuendo weren't originally going to be there. I can understand that some people probably felt like it was a case of false advertising. However, as I said I'm curious how your thoughts shape up as the episodes continue.
Not every part of the lore was thought out, in one of the first few episodes they state that new magic can do anything without restriction and was easy to use and then contradict that by saying it's dangerous when used improperly
So basically Dark Magic.
@@Hartzilla2007 U might be onto something
The reason why people was shitting on this was
1. It's on Crunchyroll when it's not an anime (which is a stupid reason ngl)
2. No, it's actually not a children's cartoon. It's was supposed to be for adults, something that was established from the behind the scenes videos before the show was out.
The reality is that it's just a generic show that would have not been a big deal if it was in any other site/app and if it didn't have the "mature audience" tag at the beginning. Which is the biggest factor as to why people roasted it so bad. It was treated as advertised a "mature" and "adult" show and it didn't deliver. Now, as a tween/teen show it would have performed much better.
Edit: So, people told me that the main issue was that Crunchyroll was stealing money to give it to small animators and instead they used it to fund this show. Well, it turns out that no, the money did go to small animators... the whole crew of HGS were small animators.
The 1 thing is more that crunchyroll stole subscription money that they said would help low pay animators in the anime industry but was then used to fund this show
Crunchyroll said they'd give their money to underpaid animators, and they stole that subscription money to fund this project. I disagree that it's stupid to be upset about something like that, and think you're missing the point for the sake of argument.
I will admit that I didn't know that. But from what I remember seeing when the show was still on production was people mainly upset because "it was not a real anime" [which is dumb because anime is literally short for *animation*]. However, if that is true then no wonder why it was such a big deal.
@@ladybug9146 I was not talking about the stolen money, I was talking about the people complaining about why this was on the site since it was not "real anime" because that was the people who were the loudest. Which mean the morons complaining about "what is real anime" overshadowed the real issue, which *now* I know it was stolen money
@@midnightrant7487 Anime is *Japanese* animation, you know. This, however, would he considered a western cartoon.
Short answer; NO.
Long answer; If you adore unoriginal plot lines, cringe dialogue, and the blandest character, this is perfect for you.
Exactly
Damn, son.
I think it's cool that you talk about the trans character with praise, I've seen a lot of hate at that scene specifically because a lot of people don't want a queer person to explain and instead just exist so it is "subtle". Yes, subtle representation is important but so is talking about it sometimes. I also wanted to say that the blood and swearing and overall more mature theming later in the show is actually for a reason. If I remember is correctly, Crunchyroll wanted a higher age rating and the show to be targetted at older people while the show was already in production so they made the creators add in blood and swearing halfway through
From listening to most people's complaints, it isnt the fact he said something, it's how he said it. There were a number of videos saying that it didn't have to be subtle but the way he explained it was what they had a problem with but not that big of an issue
I think the main reason people complain about it is due to the warning at the start of each episode. When compared to their other shows on the service it doesn’t come close to deserving the warning
The scenes was more that it was unnecessary for what was going on and when it was done explaining they just ignored it and moved on
I appreciate that it wasn't so subtle that you could miss it. It took me a couple of episodes to realize that Raine from The Owl House is nonbinary because no one ever pointed it out. They never said that their pronouns were they/them like nonbinary people would in real life, so how was anyone supposed to notice?
@@theshire9173 because its called normalization
Personally, except if you are a fan of the fantasy/heroes save the day genre, I wouldn't recommend it because its concept doesn't add anything new and the writing itself is all over the place. Hopefully if it has a 2nd season they get better resources but from the 3 episodes I've seen, High Guardian Spice isn't anything especial and the fact that the main girls are named after herbs and not spices angers me on a personal, very petty level😤
14:25 I'm sorry, but how could anyone not notice that Pearl had a crush on Rose? She's very clearly jealous of Greg and always speaks of her time with Rose so intimately. They never dated because Rose never returned the feeling, but Pearl was so obviously in love it's impossible to deny
And Korra and Asami straight up kiss on screen. So I wouldnt really say it is just "implied"
"Show, dont tell" just works
Yeah. The only way to make that one sided crush any more canon would have been to literally spell it out on a neon sign.
Over all those examples just wheren't...the best.
Korra and asami are in a relationship as fare as the book series is concerned which takes place after the series and was done by the creators themselves.
Course that depends if you consider that Canon.
The marketing for the show was something that really put people in a generally bad mood regarding the show.
First is the lack of clarification surrounding the money used to fund this show, cause those (like myself) with CR accounts will believe that our money will go into supporting animators in the anime industry as CR advertised. With no clarification people will assumed that CR's prime revenue from it's subscribers will fund the show.
That would not have been so bad if they could show something good which lead to my second point.
The trailer was trash. It was more of a behind the scenes video you would expect on a dvd. It did not help that in the trailer they sounded really arrogant, claiming that they were going to tell a story that has not been told before, and do 2d animation that other studios have forgot about. That kind of arrogance does not sit well with people unless you got some serious credentials as creative creators and none on the project had that to make people think otherwise.
And then there was the intended 2019 release that got held back for like 2 years, and after watching it, it did not seem like they used those 2 years to polish the show, but just put it on a shelf, waiting for people to kind of forget about it after the negative reception.
And once it was released it had to many flaws to even entertain the idea that it would get better as time went on. A lot of animation errors, bad dialogue and a lack of actual intrigue in the world they created. Nothing in it makes the viewer interested in what is happening, or care for the people in it. Rosemary is a clumsy idiot who is not funny or charming enough to make it work as a positive thing, Sage is a sexist bland piece of cardboard, Parsley is just there and Thyme is kinda forgetable. And most of the side characters are not much better, the teacher and the school itself manage to be worse than hogwarts regarding the students safety.
Starting day one of potion class with poisoning all the mage freshmens is laughable cruel. And the fact that the only one who could make an antidote did not get poison kinda kinda makes the whole thing kind of meaningless.
The only characters that are somewhat likeable is Snapdragon and Amaryllis Mcmoneybags. (Which is a name confirmed by the creator) Despite being presented as bullies they manage to come off as better friends than Rosemary and Sage, and the fact they manage to do it without being annoying is also a huge plus.
But the worst offender of the show is the fact that it is both uninteresting and boring. It is a chore to get through, it feels like nothing important or interesting is ever happening on screen, or worse waste our time like with the locket mating ritual.
Overall, I am glad you found some enjoyment out of it, but as a whole, objectively this show is one of the worst shows I have ever seen. It is poorly written, animated and voiced acted. And after the creator came out with why it is so bad, saying it is because of money and time, and the fact they made it a 24 minute per episode, when the usual runtime for western animated shows are half of that, did not make the situation better since it just shows that Raye and the other creative heads of the project did not know what to prioritise. It is the same with RWBY when we hear that they don't have enough time to show what needs to be shown, but still insists that having the characters do nothing for most of the time is the best course of action.
I don’t really see a reason to continue with the show personally. In middle school I grew up with shows like Young Justice, Teen Titans, Star Wars the Clone Wars, and this just feels like it’s not for me at this stage in life. There’s nothing there that really wows me. It is probably overly hated but honestly that’s probably the only reason people remember it to begin with.
High Guardian Spice was a real mixed bag for me on one hand I do enjoy multiple characters from the show and like how they handle LGBTQ+ characters but on the other hand I can't shake the feeling that this show is half-baked and wasn't released in a completed state, Hopefully if they do ever get a Second Season they can expand on the good elements of the show and hopefully just some better overall animation cause honestly it could get pretty jank here and there which leads back into the feeling of the show not being ready.
I hope you cover Magic Knight Rayearth in Magic Girl May. Its a a SciFi spin on the genre and I'd like to hear your thoughts on it.
With giant robots too
Okay, I’m a minute and 20 seconds in, and I’m just gonna come out and say it: DONT THROW THE “What’s Worldbuilding” IN WITH THOSE OTHER VIDEOS! IT IS A GENUINELY INFORMATIVE AND PHENOMENALLY PUT TOGETHER VIDEO
I've watched Uniquenameosaurus's videos on the show so many times
Most if the videos she showed were actual well done critiques that didn't match what she was saying. I actually watched a number of them
"I think it's you guys are spoiled that kid shows are being too good"
Every episode starts saying this isn't for kids, which is the problem with the show
Edit: she brings this up later I’m just dumb
The art style reminds me of 90s/early 2000s magic girl anime, expecially the colours and the background art. I'm gonna give this one ago, I'm pretty happy watching stuff that isn't very deep and just looks cute
It isn't a magical girl show, haha, it's more of that like adventurer high school thing that came about when people started mashing the magical high school trope with dnd and JRPG tropes. (RWBY being another show which does this, although rwby has actual magical girl influences while HGS mostly focuses on D&D for it's inspiration, albeit very loosely.)
“Takes a good look at Neppy Cat’s design” Rusty/Firestar? When did you get so buff?
The fundamental issue was that Crunchy made a show that most of their viewers wouldn't watch, advertised it knowing that the people who used their service wouldn't watch the show, and then proceeded to release a show that their audience was never gonna watch. And that's BEFORE we get to the artwork, the story, the writing, EVERYTHING!
If it was Crunchyroll's attempt to reach an audience of non-anime fans, they didn't really do enough because why would I subscribe to Crunchyroll to watch one show?
@@TuesdaysArt You see, you think that they thought, but they didn't.
As for HGS itself, IDK, I did watch the whole thing but it falls into the same sorta headspace Ladybug or RWBY does for me, where like there is a lot of very good potential here, but the execution utterly fails to capture any of it.
Honesty it surprising that you liked the show but it's good you had fun with it.
From what I seen a lot of people who criticize the show have valid points, that you can see being repeated from video to video. I think even if it was released on time and had accurate marketing, people would still dislike the show but at least they would know to who it was directed to.
I think it's just alright, I personally think the hate was overblown. I think the blood is just jarring cause the show targets audience is quite unclear and the swearing is still jarring.
If this was targeted for kids this would been fine without the swearing and blood it just feel Jaring to me,
I think originally it was going to be a kids show, but Crunchyroll behind the scenes decided to change the target audience to be aim for Adults.
I wouldn't label it as a "kid show" or "Adult show" I'm more or less confused I guess um it would be Pre teens????
I think representation is good, not perfect, but I think it's good.
I would give it a 6/10 than anything because I think there's other show that done way better ways with this concept and recommend then High Guardian Spice. For example Steven universe, Little Witch Academia, Owl House, even like early Volume Rwby.
My main issue is that I personally don't like the writing. For example, why take a bus and 2 trains when you could just use a broomstick? I understand showing the worldbuilding, but don't bring out the broomstick, or else inconsistencies like this pop up.
And pacing is another thing I don't think is done well. As you said in the video, it took a whole episode to have 3 minutes worth of plot. The locket, the mating ritual and the broken locket getting to a repair place.
Spoilers for this show now, just FYI.
Personally, I don't care one way or another about the representation. The writing for the transgender stuff could have been saved for the other trans character who gets the potion FROM the trans teacher. There's no reason why the sword repairs couldn't happen with the blacksmith teacher, and that way parsley gets something to do. Anyway, that's a rant for another time.
Spoiler over.
My main takeaway from this show is that it could have an editor checking the scripts before the thing goes to print. It's very rough.
They probably could have established that it would've been exhausting for Sage to fly all the way from Pebble to Lingarth (like the equivalent of biking from Miami to Toronto), but otherwise it feels sorta redundant even if I'm supposed to understand it's a long distance.
@@TuesdaysArt there doesn't seem to be any downsides to magic, just understanding of the theory before casting.
@@jk2782 Fair enough. I just think magic without limits isn't as interesting. If magic isn't physically draining or labor intensive, what's stopping any of these characters from being tyrannical gods besides their morality?
@@TuesdaysArt oh yeah, totally agree. The only limit seems to be the theoretical knowledge needed and also there's apparently a limit on what you can do, because the magic spheres amplify the amount of magic or something
I would watch a second season.
Your criticisms were spot on but the main one you got that most people I have seen snagged on to, was the marketing / opening warning. Everything else is a style, pacing, quality issue.
Though I understand wanting to change bring in a new audience, it didn't turn out "finished" to peoples standards. I watch a bit of everything so it was fine.
The LGBTQIA+ conversation with Rosemary caught me off guard, but as she was a younger person, she might not have known.
SPOILERS
The Conversation with Snapdragon, closer to the end of the show, started great then threw me for a loop; When he suggested Transformation magic off the jump. It seemed like a big jump for the curiosity/ frustration I was getting off Snapdragon (this from a guy who is straight so.....)
Other than that if you were not knocked by the pacing or other things in the first three episodes, it gets better.
Some criticisms for this series really went of the rails. I deadass once saw something like" Its called High Guardian Spice, but characters aren't even named after spices, but herbs"😶😶😶
I mean, yeah, if someone's into thematics and symbolism, that is a pretty funny error to notice.
In my opinion, this show sucked.
Though, if you liked it, I respect your opinion.
Now that Crunchyroll has absorbed Funimation into itself, it shall use all of its assets and voice actors to improve High Guardian Spice with Season 2.
The shows been dead for years the only reason they released it was because it was collecting dust for a year after it was made
@@kylethefan6062 Wasn't there an acquisition right before the show released?
@@TuesdaysArt I do not believe so the only acquisition that camoes to mind was the crunchyroll and funimation thing but that happened after most if not all of the show was finished by at least a year or two
To be fair the gems in Steven universe don’t have blood in them as their bodies are made of light
Also Rebecca Sugar wanted to have more lgbtq in her show but the network airing her show wouldn’t allow it and the ones we did get was all her and her team could managed to get
@@area52ronIt's still pretty impressive how much Rebecca got away with on CN.
I see this show as a "I am not Starfire"
A lot of reviews are misogonystic and homophobic af, but at the same time I also dont think the product was good either. I watched reviews that were made by women, POCs , and members of the LGBTQ+ community and a lot of them didnt seem to like it either. Maybe watch some of those because I don't think chalking up ever bad review as whiny crusty white men was fair either.
I feel like with this and "I'm Not Starfire" they got completely torn to shreds before coming out and neither were perfect but neither were completely horrible or the worst thing in their medium. I actually read "I'm Not Starfire" cause I really like Starfire in the comics, I read all the Wolfman/Perez run and she was my favorite character since her sensitive, altruistic personality was just so endearing, without ever feeling like she was patronized by the author, and I liked her interactions with her fellow Titans. I actually came out of "I'm Not Starfire" feeling like... it was such a missed opportunity, though not all bad. I liked the artstyle (for the most part) and the concept of a superhero not understanding their child but still loving them and a child of a hero feeling inferior by comparing themselves to their parent. I feel like the author had some good ideas and Mandy had good aspects but the execution was bad. Having Mandy be Dick Grayson's daughter and making Starfire more in character would have done wonders and making Blackfire less flat would have made things so much more exciting. I even liked that Mandy was plump and short to contrast with her tall, slender mom, yet every re-draw/"Fixed It" artist missed the point and drew her as a conventionally attractive model.
HGS was so overhated and lacking in any actual massive flaws (the best flaw I can muster is that the art cuts corners and isn't always great). It was just a middle of the road cute first season with an actually pretty likable cast. I feel like the hate-train went so hard against it that maybe I'm looking at it expecting bad only to see "good actually" but I genuinely feel like it had potential if it had more episodes cause it reminded me of Final Space where it started out a bit wobbly but ended up being very good.
I really couldn’t stand this show but I think that it’s great that you like it! I think the writing isn’t that great nor was I very compelled by the characters,, I feel like I could have a better experience watching any other magical girl show where they have a clearer idea of what they want.
Also the advertisement, YIKES. They set themselves up! They kept on about how unbelievably amazing and groundbreaking their team was and never bothered to show the show. I hated that.. they came off as super condescending especially when they made a lukewarm show at best 😬
Jesus that marketing was hot garbage 🗑
In my opinion, I think the art style is fine. Though it is a bit cartoony for an adult show (btw, it is meant for adults) but just look at Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss. Also anime is a cartoon from Japan not like HGS. The animation is lazy, there are obvious mistakes and they don't try to fix it at all. Some bg stuff are literally png's from google and they just used a smudge tool. The bg characters doesn't even move. The voice acting is meh, but sometimes you couldn't tell what the characters are saying, the music made it worse because it's too loud. The writers focused more on the characters life problems and what they are, forgetting most of the plot and characters' actual personalities, the characters feels bland except for Amaryllis, Snapdragon, and ig Slime boy. I'd say on later episodes, I do think the story is interesting but it executed horribly. The writing is pretty bad, it has a lot of fillers, like I said about forgetting the plot. The beginning/intro of the 1st episode is a bit too short for me, and I feel like instead of showing them going to different transportation, they should at least show the rest of the world building, not just the city and school. And there are some sexism here to men, because of course one of the writers is a toxic feminist and I've heard from transgender people that they didn't like the scene from Carraway's coming out which I agree since it is targeted to adults and the writers think adults doesn't know whats transgender. The age rate of this show is confusing, they say it's for adults but it does look like a kids cartoon. Which means it failed. Also this took two years and they didn't even try to fix stuff, ik about the budget but the project doesn't need budget to be good. It is boring but watching people reviewing it is entertaining because they make it so much better.
I'd say HGS would be better if it didn't got sexist writers, a greedy streaming company, and lazy artists.
I'm sorry but I disagree. I watched the first five minutes of the show to check if it's really bad, and ngl I cringed.
Note to self, don't write and animate like the HGS team.
Btw, it's ok to like something that a lot doesn't like.
Halfway through... i just wanna say, this show wasn't meant to be targeted to children lol.
Edit: just saw her reaching the blood part. Yea... ngl idk why the show has such a weird disconnect with target audience. Iirc the creator(s) said it was mature, but the actual execution of covering certain topics is rather "for kids" so it's confusing.
Anyway, I think HGS is... not good, but it definitely has way too much hate that's not exactly warranted.
According to ray, the show actually WAS intended to be for children, but then crunchyroll was like "woah woah woah, you guys know this is for crunchyroll, right? A site with a mainly adult demographic? You need to add some gore" and then they went in and did exactly that... added random gore and profanity
@@scatmanjohnfan22 no way, if that's the case I feel so bad for Ray. Having your vision meddled with will just lead to the product feeling... off. Unfortuante, I think HGS had good potential to be a fun/relatively mature kids show.
The show looks so easy and fun to watch(if that makes sense), i'll definetly take a look at it myself now. Hope you're doing well Critter!
I completely forgot they made a 2ed season of gen lock.
People want unbiased reviews that don't factor in controversy and recognize the intended audience for the media, based JudgementalCritter does exactly that and everyone starts malding.
There's already a million reviews shitting on the show, even if like me you think it's shoddy, it's refreshing to hear a different opinion on it.
If you liked this series then that’s great more power to you it’s your opinion and I respect that my thoughts of series are it wasn’t really my thing I mean production of the series started way back in 2018 so they had loads of time to make it and also the story felt like it was ripping of tons of shows and movies like rwby, Harry Potter, she ra and the princesses of power (for the art style) and little witch academia and it’s kinda sad really the fact that one of the reasons that this show was criticised was because this was put on crunchyroll I feel like if it was released on like Netflix or Cartoon Network then maybe it would have gotten less criticism but yeah even though the series did end on a cliffhanger with the negative criticism it’s gotten and the fact that crunchyroll literally released all of the episodes for free on their website I’m not expecting them to make a second season of high guardian spice any time soon but again if any of you guys liked this show then that is great it truly is
I frankly think they could've done better. I feel like other shows done way better with what they were given and still make a good show. HGS doesn't really feel like it's thought out enough and not a complete project.
Like, for example, they could've cut a lot of that stuff in the first episode, like just using the broom to get to the train and skipping the other sequences. There's world building and then there's just wasting time. They could've used their run time better and effectively.
I don't expect the show to be perfect but a lot of these smaller stuff does add up and I think that's what brings the show down imo.
They also worked on this show for I think 2 or 3 years but later on they just outsourced it to another animation studio and by then everyone had already moved on to other projects.
I'm just not convinced this show would've made it with the way it was. It needed a lot more work.
I just wasn't interested in the show so I haven't watched it, but one criticism? Nit pick? Point? I've heard that makes me chuckle is that the Spice portion of the title comes from the main character's names, but then everyone of them is named after an Herb. I don't know if every single character in the show is named after an herb, but I know the main cast are, for the most part at least, and I just find that funny more than anything else.
But yeah I had a friend tell me he'd think I like it cause I also like cutesy shows, from what I can tell, it seems like crunchy roll really failed this show. Because instead of just letting it be about the show they wanted to make a statement. They propped it up for being written by mostly women and being inclusive and for "Doing things other studios have forgotten how to do." which honestly put the show on such a pedestal it poisoned the well for it. Crunchy Roll said the show was going to be great because we the studio are great, rather than just letting the show be itself. Now people who likely wouldn't have cared had their eyes on it because of what was thrown out there and spread around. Hell one of the most constant things I've ever heard was, if it wasn't for this trailer/if it released on like Netflix, nobody would care. The show itself didn't do anything wrong.
As far as it goes for critics of it. I usually take most of that stuff with a grain of salt, I tend to trust Just Stop, mostly because I get the impression he tends to just explain how he felt watching it, and not going into a review in bad faith. But even I can admit for all I know he could have been influenced by the marketing as well, I feel that way with Mangakamen as well because while he can be more negative, he usually genuinely tries to be fair and is just speaking his mind, and importantly never condemns anyone for enjoying it just saying yeah not my cup of tea for these reasons. As long as the critics aren't being toxic and blatantly sexist or phobic of some kind, I can at least understand that unfortunately they were influenced in a negative way and that watching it in good faith was less likely cause now they had a negative lens to view it through, and now small things that are wrong that don't matter are going to be used as huge points, again because of how revolutionary Crunchy Roll said it was going to be. Which is honestly just sad at the end of the day, like I remember when I first saw the designs with no context I thought it looked pretty cute, and even now I still admit I like the art style, but also admit that for how it was advertised, that it falls way below any expectations that would have set.
Beyond that would I watch it? Don't know honestly nothing about it ever captured my interest other than liking the art, and for the most part I'd say I'd like to see illustrations in that style or maybe a webcomic. Your review I would say has peaked my interest with it a bit since I tend to trust you and your sister's opinions since you both are always so genuine about stuff, you have clear passion, and always find little things I never could see, always very insightful!
The only argument I can't truly get behind mostly just because of how muddied the waters are is that it was made for kids, to explain, with how you've described it I do agree that it feels written for those crowds, but I don't think I've ever seen it expressed by the crew or the writer. At best I would have to assume that the intention was a kid's show, which I find strange to go to a anime streaming service to make, but whatever I'm not here to fight that battle, but I think this would have been an example of Crunchy Roll wanting a mature show for adults to make a statement about the progressive side of things, they picked up a show that had a lot of what they wanted, and tried to basically force it to be for adults in how it was advertised, like you can't tell me the "trailer" was intended to grab the attention of children, that was the most blatant call for young adults I've ever seen, cause I know when I was a kid I never cared if the people writing it were men or women because I still thought cartoons were real, and I was certainly too young to comprehend the disparity of women in certain rolls in Western media industries, so again like it's hard to support the meant for kids argument, solely because of how muddied the water is. Has the creator come out and said it was supposed to be that way? I wouldn't blame them for not because ya know contracts NDA's not wanting your boss to fire you can keep the IP you created, or anyone else on the crew? And I don't say this to be unfair I just generally hate assuming things without evidence, it's why I only say can't get behind rather than say you're wrong.
Either way great video as usual Critter!
Great vid critter :) just saying you got a patreon outta me 😂
As someone who finished the whole season, I agree that the show gets a lot of unfair hate from people who went in looking for confirmation bias. I actually think that there's a good chunk of fair criticism of the show out there, but at the end of the day, I think the shows's biggest problem is that it gets boring after a while, especially if you go in being already familiar with the tropes used in the show. It's fine for a show to not want to be revolutionary or anything, or to want to watch a chill show (I watch slice of life anime I'm not about to judge) but hgs probably isn't going to be your thing if you want a bit more substance
8:14
The release delay *really* didn't help this show at all, even beyond the budget constraints making it feel like everything is a first draft, the show was originally supposed to drop at the end of 2019 but kept getting pushed back for the backlash. If the series came out before The Owl House, I feel like the general blandness around it might've been easier to take. Instead it came out a season and a half into Owl House's run, which did it no favors in falling short in a similar magic world magic school concept.
The show definitely isn’t nearly as bad as people make it out to be but I do find it to be pretty mediocre-bad especially later on,
also I don’t know how to feel about the “it’s a kids cartoon” excuse when it’s debatable if it even is a kids cartoon in the first place, crunchyroll certainly doesn’t think it’s for kids, and also there are legitimately tons of kids shows that are still good and enjoyable for older audience (Avatar, Adventure Time, Infinity Train, Amphibia, Owl House, etc.
I feel like kids deserve to have legitimately good content especially if they are around middle school age and are more capable of grasping more mature and slightly dark themes
The writing gets more consistent not too much later. Mainly they went from multiple writers per episode to one. It feels like this series was definitely built with streaming mind that most likely affected the pace.
Two important points though: This wasn't funded with subscriber money. Crunchyroll worked out a separate deal to get funding. However, the budget they did get was literally half of what a show like this would get.
Consistent? Redbud's opinion on New Magic, the healing water's effects, and other things suggest otherwise.
That time of year again for magical girl may
I remember I saw this show like right after it came out I actually liked it and some of the things people were complaining about just were the basically all the same thing but I think people fail to realize that they've seen all these tropes that these characters are doing before but for the younger audience watching this is their first time probably seeing these tropes so to them a lot of the stuff that happened and this will probably be cool and groundbreaking like when people watch demon Slayer or whatever nowadays for these kids watching this and it's like their first animated show or whatever this is going to be the coolest thing
I understood that most kids stuff is heavily censored, but stuff like Watership Down was still technically made for kids, and it's so gory I can't watch it. Nothing in this show compares to that. Plus, Gravity Falls has a river of blood in one episode.
People hated this show before it even came out and ANY positive opinions were drowned out. I wanted to give the show a fair chance so I watched 4 episodes with a friend. My friend went in expecting it to be as bad as the reviews even told me that I would end up seeing it as bad. The funny part is that we BOTH ended up thinking it was unfairly hated since the worst we noticed was here and there the character sizes were off (something Steven Universe was notorious for) and the voice acting wasn't always up to snuff (something I saw in Early RWBY); but neither of us thought it was half as terrible as people treated it.
I actually plan to finish it at some point cause it was generally something I thought had promise. I actually kind of liked the wholesome vibes the cast had. I get the impression that people have so little tolerance for fictional girls acting rambunctious and silly than they do with fictional boys who do the same, just like when Turning Red got called cringe for having girls act funny and playful.
I actually found myself enjoying the landscapes/set designs and color palette in HGS a LOT more than the other D&D show people PRAISED, Vox Machina, which I found highly overrated. Every VM character was trying to grab the focus leaving me not caring about ANY of them, the magic system and world/sets were boring, and the artstyle was more generic than HGS. I wouldn't say HGS was a masterpiece but I definitely saw it as having potential that people weren't giving it credit for ALL because HGS came out of the gate banking on pushing the "Our whole team is women," which SHOULD be seen as a neutral factor, but people are inclined to be kind of misogynistic. It's too bad cause it's the kind of show I saw as having growth potential since a first season rarely perfects the formula and needs to find roots.
It gets a lot better in the second half, so definitely give it a shot! If you kinda liked the first bit, you'll love later episodes, especially the episodes 7 and 8 two-parter.
I know you said why people hate HGS but I'm going to put my guess there as well. I think people hate HGS because of the targeted audience. It's meant for adults but the contents are tame compared to other shows where it has a lot of gore and more vigor language. But HGS feels like a teen show for High schoolers or Middle schoolers. Adults can be entertained by it, but it feels like it's supposed to be for teens. Another reason could be the representation. The staff is full of women and the characters also have some representation to LGBT. They maybe thought that the representation wouldn't be handled well because of its confusion with the world and how LGBT changing works. And there are some animation errors (for example the scene where Rosemary and her friend go to the bus and the bus either changes heights or windows or just areas in general). And people say that Rosemary us an idiot because of how irresponsible she is but perhaps she has developed. There is also the long wait for HGS to finally come out as people have waited years for it to come out and found the show disappointed when it finally came out.
Mind you, I have not watched this show so I don't know what happens in the show or how this show is doing either well or fine in my perspective. And from what I have seen, I also don't get the hate as well. It probably doesn't really deserve this much hate. It looks like an okay show. Would I watch it? No... sorry
From what I've heard, the intention was always for it to be aimed for kids-teens, but halfway through production the company decided suddenly to "make it more mature" so they had to scramble to add some adult themes (like blood and swearing) into what was already set up as a kids show. And they had no budget to go back and make the earlier episodes any more mature.
The staff is full of woman when the creator is a guy funniest thing I heard
@@kylethefan6062 honestly, I could have lived with it if they weren't so arrogant about it in the initial trailer.
Can I even call it a trailer? It didn't actually tell anything about the show.
I have to ask Critter and I don't mean to come across as confrontational but what criticisms have you ACTUALLY watched on the show? Because NONE of the ones I have seen have just been some "GRR WOMEN KID SHOWS GRR!" I have no doubt there are those vids on that too. But the vids I have included Uniquenameosaurus's videos which come across very measured and fair critiques with them continually giving the show the benefit of the doubt AND offering ways for it to improve. Or how about Queen Serafina's (who is Trans) video and watchs through bits of the show with a friend (also trans) who point out various issues with the animation. Some of which are utterly inexcusable if you judge it to the bare minimum of other shows. Oh hell another video is "High Guardian Spice: A Show That Meant Nothing" That again takes a measured approach but clearly points out a lot of the flaws of the show.
Granted I haven't watched EVERY video ripping into HGS. But these were all videos done MONTHS and months ago. I'd feel comfortable saying they were likely some of the most popular. So I can't really see how if you exposed yourself to actual videos on the topic you couldn't have come across these specific videos. Especially if you were looking for the trans perspective present on youtube about the show.
The actual difference between you and them is NOT that they are trying to force a kids show to be more and you seeing it as what it is. The issue is what being a kid show ACTUALLY means. In "High Guardian Spice: A Show That Meant Nothing" the youtuber goes over the main issue with things like the cursing and blood is it ruins the tone of the show. To use a popular example take the dance scene from Spiderman 3 where Peter goes on this goofy funny dance only to then hit someone and it suddenly cut to him brooding by hanging staring at himself in his black suit. These scenes by themselves are fine and maybe even good but when you cut the tone like that it comes across as a confusing mess.
In Uniquenameosaurus's vids he brings up the vows of the whole Guardian thing. They point out how it could have been a good thing to be used to inform character but that just making an ACTUAL answer just robs the show of that introspection. Allow me to use an example. Imagne if in RWBY Volume 2 that moment when Blake, Yang, and Weiss talk about why they became Huntsmen that instead of them sharing their own motivations Obleck chimed in and said "Ah but we are huntsmen to fight Grimm and protect people." That's kinda what the vows in the show ultimately are. If there was just going to be an "actual" answer then why waste the time acting like there isn't one?
Queen Serafina's videos are LITTERED with numerous animation errors that are frankly inexcusable. When you make a product it is going to be compared to its comtemporaries. And in that vein HGS is LAUGHABLE with issues that are just not present with its competition. And no I am not just talking about the photoshopped bread.
I get some of the things you are arguing for here. And with some I agree. I have never been one to be annoyed by a character's voice (except for Ed from Cowboy Bebop who I wish would die in a fire to be fair) so the criticism against Rosemary's voice never really hit me. I mean if we could accept Dipper Pines voice I don't see why we can't do the same here. Though the actual performance is bad. While I also agree that its nice for a show to just be "yeah we're trans in here boi!" The actual scene of that is awkward and feels more like a lecture than two characters talking. The reveal isn't the Professor is like this the takeaway is "The Professor is Trans" which is only a fact and NOT a character trait.
Lastly I find it funny with you bringing up people not wanting the LGBT representation since the promotion for the show was it being so grand and unique with the representation. When ya know you point out several points of representation here that predated the show.
While I was making this video? I had seen some of the top rated tik tok vids about it, and this channel called "spilledmilk" (I think that's what it was called?)
AFTER making this vid, I have since watch DaftPina's video about HGS and it was really good!
Jesus, hasn't even been out for long and the comments are more toxic than i've ever really seen on this channel.
Just to be clear I'm not even a fan of this show, not big on it personally, but even i can tell people in these comments aren't wanting to even engage with this video, when it was, honestly just interesting to see someone actually come out of this show with a positive experience that you had.
Hopefully the comments sorta calm down from here on, but in whatever case, great vid as usual!
Honestly, not nearly as bad as the comments on my Arcane vid!
And thank you so much! :)
Given the 3 episode rule , I would honestly stop watching and forget the show until someone brings it up in conversation
Given the 3 episode rule , I would honestly stop watching and forget the show until someone brings it up in conversation
"I can already tell the details and the lore in this world are thoroughly thought out"
And now i can only think how dissapointed critter will be when later episodes contradict litterally everything shown so far.
Oh dude I need to see you review Genlock Season 2
I think you have brought up a lot of intresting points in the video and even if I don't agree with all of them it was nice to see a different perspective about the show.
Suggestion for a video a review of the hebrew dub of Sailor Moon
Tbh I feel the "3 episode" format doesnt really go well with this series imo, since the series does a really rought turn latter about some sort of ancient conspiracy in witch country and it goes from slice-of-lifey cute series to pseudo-deep adventure with a council of witches planning the protagonist downfall and the mother was [insert spoiler here] and it feels like it wants to do both but cant be neither due to its awful use of time, the most questionable moments like the "female friendships are more deep than men's friendships, men dont understand feelings" or the weird assasination plot dont happen until latter
Literally every time I do one of these there's always someone going "uhm, 3 episodes doesn't work for this show."
Like... I think you're really missing the point of the 3 episodes rule.
Also if your reasoning as to WHY someone should watch more than 3 includes listing off every single major plot point and spoiler for the show, then yeah. At that point you're just telling someone to watch the whole show.
I've basically watched the entire season, this show doesn't deserve all the hate but most of the hate, it's bad
tbh if the creator of the show slowed down for a moment and took their time with the story unlike what they said on Twitter where they storyboard the first episode before the first script was even finished then maybe the show would've worked out.
Heh. Thought out well building. I dont think they even say what guardians do
Hey umm Critter, did you watched these videos featured in this video before making your judgement on them? Because as much one particular video has a section I heavily disagree with, I feel like you should watch them to at understand where they're coming from, rather than you just assuming they're just misogynist male weebs.
I did not! I felt like that would've sorta defeated the point of going into the show blind.
I didn't show any of the "misogynist male weebs" in my vid because I don't want to accidentally start a hate parade towards them.
@@thejudgmentalcritter6584 That's understandable. Maybe once you finish watching season 1 and make your own conclusions on how you feel for the overall product, maybe watch these videos to get better context as to why this show gets so much flack.
Oh and I forgot to mention the world building is crap, because the writers don't bother keeping their own lore. They'll say one thing then do the opposite later. Case in point, High Guardian Academy is said to only allow the best of the best...and yet we have characters that make you wonder how they got in, the school has questionable conduct, and then there's Everything Hours. Why the heck would a school that is specifically intended to train future Guardians, which we assume are warriors and/or mages who probably do dangerous stuff allow its students to have essentially a time to practice any skill they want...which includes dancing, pottery, and playing the lute. Okay the instrument might be useful in a pinch, but how is dancing and pottery making supposed to help them avoid getting horribly maimed by the next monster they face?
No, they say "You each have been selected for your exceptional qualities". That could mean anything. Good at spell casting, good integrity, good family lineage, who knows? They don't specify.
"The school has questionable conduct" Lol, yeah, and other schools like Hogwarts and Naruto's Ninja academy where just pristine in that category, huh?
Yeah! We all know in the real world, soldiers, police officers, and fire fighters NEVER are allowed to explore hobbies! Right?
@@thejudgmentalcritter6584 Okay, if we want to play this game, let's play. Lol. Selected for your exceptional qualities. The smithing teacher has no idea how good Parsley apparently is at smithing, despite her having been working in a forge since a young age, definitely something that would be important to know, and almost definitely her 'exceptional quality.
Also if you want to go with Hogwarts and the Ninja Academies, at least they didn't have a teacher trying to deliberately kill the students on the first day. The crazy potion's teacher anyone? Severus Snape may have been an asshole but at least he didn't go poisoning his students and then expect them to make an antidote...before even teaching them how to.
Oh and small spoiler, sending first year students into a dangerous mission unsupervised, which is built up into being a dangerous mission that has always had people dying. And yet nobody did. Whether you look at it from a writing or story telling lense, there's something wrong there.
Naruto ninja academies at least waited for the students to graduate before throwing them into missions and even then they at least had a Jonin with them to at least give them better odds of surviving.
@@tdninternet9916 OR the school wasn't aware of just how exceptional she actually was at smiting? I've had teachers pull me aside and tell me I needed to be changed to a higher curriculum level. It's actually pretty common.
OR smiting wasn't her exceptional quality, and perhaps helping raise her multitude of brothers is what really caught the school's attention.
Naw, Hogwarts just had a giant lake that several students got attacked by the giant squid by, and a dangerous forest just a few feet away from their main entrance where a kid could wander into.
I also find it hilarious, that you think the smith teacher should've known what Parsley's skill level should've been, but on the flip side you don't think the potions teacher could've know what her students skill level could've been? Obviously the potions teacher knew the students should be capable of at least crafting the simple cure for her poison. It's like taking a pop quiz.
"There are too many stakes for the show! This episode would've been better if Sage had literally nothing to worry about or overcome" Does that sound better to you?
@@thejudgmentalcritter6584 ....um...did you watch the episode? Everyone EXCEPT Sage (and Amarylis) was scrambling and screaming like chickens without heads, and the poison literally mutated some of them in ways that meant that they couldn't use their hands. Does that LOOK like a class that knew about and was capable of crafting a 'simple cure' for her poison? And let's not forget the only reason Sage was able to fully function was because Amarylis went out of her way to be a jerk and spilled her tea, and thus Sage wasn't literally feeling the life seep out of her on top of having the life of everyone in the room save the crazy teacher hanging in the balance. Pop Quizes don't come with the stipulation that its either do perfect or die.
@@tdninternet9916 Yeah. And because both me and the professor has eye balls, it was very quickly apparent Sage knew what she was doing to fix it.
Wow you're just playing head canon galore here now huh?
"Feeling the life seep out of her" gimme a break! XD Only 1 kid had their hands change into something else, everyone else was perfectly capable of being able to read a book and put together a potion. Even if Sage did drink it it's pretty dang obvious she would be able to make the cure anyways.
Watch, I can play headcanon too! "The teacher was probably lying to see how the kids would handle themselves under pressure. After all, when you're selected to the the best of the best, gotta make sure your students don't chicken out the moment something foes slightly wrong". Wow, you're right it IS easy to back up an argument when you headcanonn most of it! XD
One thing you must admire about this show is how it really goes for that green screen effect even though it is animated
Because the characters are just floating and walking through the background and are not part of that world, sometimes even going through objects and plants and such
when she gets to the episode where a character says "i dont mess with that SHI@"
her :O
also her " dont judge a show by its first episode.... so if you add two more no matter how long the show is and not accounting for possible tonal shift it will be fineeeee"
Do you... really think I made the "watch 3 episodes rule"? Honey, this has been a thing for decades.
@@thejudgmentalcritter6584 no did what i wrote imply that honest question im sorry if it did also this is the second time a TH-camr has replied to a comment by me today so yeah me i can now scratch that off my bingo card 👍👍👍
I watched the first episode and it was fine, but I think 3 main things caused it to be judged way more harshly than deserved-
1. The show being made with subscribers’ money that Crunchyroll promised would go to pay Japanese animators better, while this was a problem with the larger company HGS got a lot of hate right out the gate for it
2. The marketing and advertising not showing hardly anything for years and instead focusing on the writers that people didn’t care about, and some of the writers have had a history of being hostile to fans online
3. It being categorized with the Crunchyroll originals anime lineup, this is not the kind of show most anime fans will latch onto, it should have been marketed to the Steven universe/Cartoon Network audience instead IMO
I felt bad for a lot of the rage it got, the creator seems like a very nice person and I think there were some cool ideas here that were just mismanaged and had sloppy direction. Honestly I’m still surprised the show even came out after like 3 years of silence and I believe some of the production studios being shut down. It’s nice to see a fair review on this though, with critiques I think the writing itself deserves. Also, apparently it started as a webcomic, but I haven’t been able to find nearly anything for it online.
Actually it wasn't funded by subscriber money. They where paid by an outside studio that also paid for all the other Crunchyroll exclusives, like Onyx Equinox.
But also, yeah the marketing was pretty terrible. Apparently it was something Crunchyroll decided to do and the team on HGS was also surprised and disappointed with how the marketing turned out.
Also apparently Raye Rodriquez already tried pitching HGS to all those places, among others, but Crunchyroll was the only one who picked them up.
I hope they can bounce back for their next project! Get a better team, better budget, but production studio, etc! :)
@@thejudgmentalcritter6584 Yeah, there was a lot of potential here and I hope Raye gets picked up for projects elsewhere
Honestly, I also felt bad for the creator, Ray, too, (I know what it's like putting your all into a story you enjoyed to write) but on learning he blocked people (like MangaKamen) who criticized the show, I pretty much lost any goodwill I had for the dude.
"That's a good way to explain transgender to kids"
Me: if this WAS a kid's show
I have some... criticisms about a few of your points Critters. I'm a long time watcher and watched this video a few months ago. I've had some problems with some of the points you've made for a while now. I'm not criticizing the fact that you liked the show(or at least the first 3 episodes). I just want to say some things that I think bring the video down for me. This will be long,
7:58 There were plenty of times when Steven Universe received the same criticism as HGS over not being as stimulating for adults when it's a Kids Show.
Another show that has also received this criticism "Rise of TMNT". I'm not a TMNT Fan-girl or anything, but from what I've read, because the show that was preceding it was a lot darker(even visually it was pretty dark! Like some of the Day scenes looked dark?) a lot of people had trouble adjusting to the newer show, among other things, obviously!
The difference between SU and both TMNT shows when compared to HGS is they were marketed to kids and accessible to kids with all of them being on kids networks. High Guardian Spice on the other hand was barely marketed to began with. While I'm sure Crunchyroll has a lot of anime for kids on it, I'm not sure if parents who already don't watch a lot of anime would let their kids watch the show with an undeserving content warning on an anime service. I still remember when I was like maybe 8 and so many news channels (both right and left!) Plastered a certain hentai anime cover all over the screens and acted like that represented all anime. Years later I still see people viewing all anime like hentai and nothing else where I work, shop, etc.
I do know that the Show Runners tried the channels that SU and TMNT were on and kinda had to settle for a site that wasn't the best fit for their show, but that still wouldn't have changed the very limited marketing.
14:59 There have been a few shows for kids that showed or used the word "blood"; Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Gravity Falls, and Young Justice. While I've always found censorship in Kids Shows to be... weird(Regular Show could cuss and show on screen deaths, but I can't remember if there ever was a scene that showed blood. Adventure Time had Finn get beaten up multiple times and lose an arm twice, but he wasn't bleeding either time! A Protagonist's parents could be dead, but almost never divorced and Characters could die if they were immediately brought back with the power of love.)
From what I've heard though, making the show have blood and cussing was a push from Higher-ups. I don't know for sure if thats true, but considering the channels they were trying to put the show on originally, I'm am inclined to believe that.
15:07 People also Criticized fact that shows like "Goblin Slayer" didn't originally have Content warnings and had to be added later, but HGS had one from day 1.
19:14 I would say there are technically a lot Animated Shows for middleschoolers that aren't just anime,
• Avatar: the last Airbender
• The legend of Korra
• The Dragon Prince
• The Owl House
• Amphibia
• Regular Show
• Invader Zim
• Dan vs.
• Dead End: Paranormal Park
• Transformers: Prime
• Ben 10 Franchise
• W.I.T.C.H.
• Teen Titans
• Batman: the Animated Series
• Superman: the Animated Series
• The Batman
• Batman Beyond
• Justice League/ JL Unlimited
• Avengers Asembled
• Total Drama
• The Looney Tunes Show
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars
• Young Justice
• Gravity Falls
I don't exactly think any of them are marketed to middle schoolers specifically though. I will say that there's a bit of a stigma when comes to watching cartoons(and seemingly only cartoons) when you get to be a certain age, unless their aimed at adults, specifically. I remember getting made fun of for liking the Monster High web cartoons in middleschool, but no one said anything when another girl read the MH novels. I'm not saying that's the show or Crunchyroll's fault, just that it sucks that thats the way some people see Animation.
19:55 again not trying to be rude, Honest, but who were you watching/asking. I've seen a variety of people of all genders, races, and sexual orientations criticize this show. Enough that someone made a tier list for "HGS Review/Criticism videos" and I don't even think it covered 1/10th of the videos. I've also seen plenty of "crusty-old men" like the show, and even defend it.
20:54 I saw plenty LGBTQ+ people criticize the representation. Especially when it comes to the Trans characters.
Interestingly enough though, it seems like they were torn on who they thought was good rep vs. who they thought was bad rep. Some say Snapdragon was great while Caraway was bad. Others say Caraway was great while Snapdragon was bad. Since I was willing to list a bunch of TV shows I'll try to list all the LGBTQ+ people I at least saw criticize the show. I doubt I'll get all of them, but I'm also only picking people who's videos I watched so, theres that,
• Queen Serafina
• Moonlit_Star
• Lilly Orchard
• Noble Lucy (during 1:19 you actually put a photo of one of his videos in your own)
• Kameno -o
• C-Puff Person
By no means am I saying they 100% hated the show either. They again, seemed to have a variety of opinions on the Show.
20:28 I kinda already made this point at a different spot, but I think its worth saying again,
Its kinda like with Glenn Martin, DDS. I don't know if anyone remembers this show but, it was an Adult Animated sitcom that aired on Nickelodeon's "Nick@Nite" block... usually right after Spongebob. Not only was it already one of Nick's only Adult Animations, but they would play it right next to Spongebob, que all the angry parents. I'm not saying that show would be "beloved" or anything, but I doubt the bad airing time and angry parents helped.
Crunchyroll kinda had that same problem with HGS. Not only did it seem like it was one of the only Original shows they made that was aimed for a younger audience but, it also had a more "Western" style and honestly, probably would've fared a bit better on CN or Netflix instead.
Throw in Crunchyroll barely advertising it at all, it really made it seem like they had no faith in their own show. What's the solution to all the criticism the trailer got. Delay, Delay, Delay, and I'm not saying Crunchyroll sabotaged the show or anything either. It just reads to me like a lot of rookie mistakes put together.
I’ve never heard of this show and I adored your breakdown of the episodes. It was very enlightening!
Naturally I then made a mistake of going into the comment section and WOW people sure do have Opinions (tm). I’m just going to slowly back out of the room, but thank you for delving into such a controversial fandom space so the rest of us don’t have to! The true hero of the people.
14:21 Actually in the final season of MLP they did show Lyrabon getting married. Nothing groundbreaking but at least they confirmed it was real instead of implied.
Oh! I saw a picture of that when I was editing the vid, but I just thought it was fanart! My B, I never finished MLP. I just got so tired of repeating the same old plot threads for the mane 6.
@@thejudgmentalcritter6584 Yeah in the penultimate episode before the 3 part finale. We see them proposing in the background and then in the last episode we see them married in the newspaper. I recommend finishing MLP. The last season was a good sendoff for the characters.
The reason why I despise High Guardian Spice, besides the animation errors, besides the worldbuilding, besides the unexplained magic system, besides the problematic messages, besides writing, besides the characters, it's that...it's absolutely generic. It is the most generic thing ever, that's it's boring, and that's why I despise it.
What problematic messages?
@@thejudgmentalcritter6584 Mostly in the later episodes, and I give the creators that it's probably unintentional, but...
Before I talk about the problematic messages, have you seen the rest of the show? If not, would you want me to spoil some of the later episodes
@@gamebawesome I've seen parts, haven't gotten around to watching the whole thing but you can spoil it! I already found a bunch of spoilers when researching for this video.
@@thejudgmentalcritter6584 Thank you for letting me discuss. But where to start...
First problem with Sage's conflict and the whole concept of New and Old Magic. Now some said that it’s an interpretation that said that New and Old Magic were an allegory for Progressivism and Conservatism/Traditionalism. And I can see why, as I believe episode 4, with Sage's cousin Anise literally saying that her mother, who hates New Magic, "Your mom wasn't always so conservative", and now while this is probably taken too literally, I can see some viewpoints.
Speaking of Sage's Mother, in the same episode, Anise's partner, Aloe, previously called Sage's Mother a hypocrite, because when she was younger, practiced New Magic, and that since her mother did it, Sage should too. The problematic with that, 1) Her mother isn’t a hypocrite, since she tried it and knocked it, and isn’t practicing it, and 2) It’s like saying “Hey, your mom shoplifted when she was younger, but stopped. So, you should do it now because she did it."
And more on New Magic, in I believe episode 5, her teachers and Amaryllis told her to stop using Old Magic when Sage wants to use it for a class assignment, as it’s outdated and New Magic is “Just better”, and she’s bullied for it. That’s almost like bullying a Muslim to go to Mass, even if they don’t want to. But Sage doesn’t help her case, as she keeps saying that Old Magic is sacred but never explains why, only expecting people to accept it and becomes emotional when someone else doesn't automatically agree with her.
Another problem with New Magic and Old Magic, it’s that it isn’t really define or explained. For instance, Sage says you have to “give back” to use Old Magic, while New Magic “There is no Cost”. Now it’s implied to be energy or mana, but later in Episode 5, Sage said her mother planted a tree everytime she used Old Magic, meaning it’s confusing if it’s Mana or something else. Meanwhile, New Magic is also implied to be the cause of the Rot, that is destroying nature, which, if that whole idea it’s an allegory Progressivism and Conservatism/Traditionalism is true, it’d unintentionally make Progress look bad for destroying the Earth. (Although to be fair, there is some truth to that).
Next, we get into Snapdragon…Before I say anything, I am not transgender, but I do agree that things like good Trans representation and LGBT representation is needed. However, with Snapdragon’s conflict…
Starting with Episode 6, Snapdragon and Sage are paired up for an obstacle course. Meanwhile, Sage is complaining about Rose’s new crush, named Aster (We’ll get to him), and no joke, tells Snapdragon, and I’m quoting, “Guy friendships are different. It isn’t the same. Guys don’t talk about their feelings.”. I’ll give her this, she does apologize about it at the end of the episode…But the problem with this, it’s kind of hypocritical of her, since she literally met Parnell, a male character who talked about his feelings in Episode 5. So, it’s kind of like she forgot Parnell existed, or at worst didn’t care. But there’s a big problem with Sage telling Snapdragon this, and I’ll get to that soon…
Anyway, Snapdragon is revealed to be transgender after a talk with Carroway in episode 11. The reason why, it’s because it's framed suggests that "if a guy likes looking and acting feminine, then he must be trans". While, in some cases it can be true, it ignores that boys can like girly things, and vice-versa, with girls liking boyish things.
The major problem with his transition in a way, nullifies Sage's apology and possibly the lesson that guys can also understand feelings, by unintentionally implying Snap can sympathize with her concerns only because "he's actually a girl the whole time". In the same episode, it also unintentionally proved another bully’s, Cal, comments against Snapdragon, taunting him on wanting to be a beautiful mermaid because he wanted to transition into a girl.
So, in conclusion, those are some of the many problematic messages of High Guardian Spice. I can respect your opinion about the show, and if you found it fine, that’s okay. But for me and a lot of others, it’s that these problematic messages, along with the bad animation, the bad story, and characters, make this show so bad. All we can do is just, agree to disagree.
I don't think it's a fair comparison to say "Your mother shoplifted when she was younger" as your example. Why default to such a negative thing? Why not use the example of "Your mother used to donate blood when she was younger, you should too." ?
The part about wanting to use old magic for an assignment is just... a conflict? Sage faced discrimination for using an outdated practice, but she holds onto her transitional beliefs. That's just a character conflict to overcome, face bullies who look down on you for something you believe in. Fight for your beliefs, etc. Not a "problematic message". It's not like it's saying "people are bad for holding onto their beliefs".
I don't know where you're getting this "mana" thing from? Sage explained in episode 3 one of the things to use is cutting your own hair for old magic. Never one is there a "mana pool" type of system ever stated?
Onto Sage and Snap. It just sounds like Sage faced another conflict and had to overcome it. This time, Sage being in the wrong for incorrectly assuming boys don't talk about feelings and it sounds like she learned her lesson. Characters can be flawed and grow from their mistakes, you know?
Also Parnelle is a girl.
Snap can transition and Sage can still learn from her past mistakes. Just because Sage could see snap transitioning, that doesn't mean she'll suddenly flush the moral lesson she learned out of her head. It was wrong to assume boys don't talk about their feelings. And also, Snap transitions. They don't have to be mutually exclusive.
the marketting really didn't do the show any favours putting that aside I was just uninterested mostly I wasn't really vibing with it after I finished the first season but I'll take it over genlock though that whole show is torture and agony to watch.
Nah the show still deserves a lot of the shit it got by virtue of being poorly constructed garbage. Calling it blandly passable is not exactly the compliment people keep insisting it is
Edit: I also find it hilarious that you keep listing criticisms and just brushing them all off in the same breath. This also was NEVER meant to be a kids show, so I'm not sure why you're leaning so hard into that excuse.
At the beginning of each episode there is a mature content warning so I don't think it's actually meant for kids( even if there isn't anything worth giving that warning). Also don't know if lots of really young kids are gonna be watching since crunchyroll cost money unless their parents are also anime fans(even though this show was free)
You can watch most everything on crunchyroll for free.
Also, a lot of parents are anime fans.
as someone who didn't like it my ultimate problems with the show was...
1.) despite being in development hell for like 5 or 6 years it still has alot of errors in animation & voice quality that makes it feel really amateurish.
2.) it's a really generic show created for a market that (when it was announced) is way too oversaturated to not do anything to stand out in. you could just watch steven universe, little witch academia, owl house, she-ra and even RWBY of all things and get an arguably better but similar experience than HGS.
I agree the marketing wasn't that impressive, but like, that's more crunchyroll's issue and not something that shouldn effect how to look at the show.