Oh vey… as an anime fan from a very Irish family, that was one of the things that made me super excited for the show. It’s cool to hear about how others were excited for the same reason but it sucks to learn about the show’s creator.
I love how 90% of Yamakan's talking points boil down to "It seems today that all you see is dances and moe and k-on on TV, but where are those good old fashion anime on which we used to rely?"
2011 was a year that anime was saved. One of the best years in anime history. Its massively ironic that it was in 2011, yamakon tried to save it by going against the flow.
Legitimately fantastic year for anime, and still the one I look back on the most fondly for classics I still adore. I do remember watching Fractale, now that the video reminded me I did. I cannot remember a single thing that happened in the show. I didn't even remember it being 2011.
The sad thing is, a lot of Yamakan's criticisms of moe are (at least to me) perfectly legitimate. His major point seemed to be that moe shows were focusing on capturing the attention of microscopically small, niche sub-fandoms to the exclusion of everyone else. That's how I felt about a lot of moe shows at the time, and I remember plenty of other anime critics making similar claims about the genre. Of course, his ego was (and still is) such that he not once seemed to pick up on the irony that A) his criticisms don't mean much when they're coming from someone whose resume primarily consists of moe and moe-adjacent anime, and B) claiming to be the one to "save anime" is just gonna make you look like a tool, especially if your body of work is middling at best. I'm glad he's become a footnote in anime history, especially now that he's made all too clear what a deeply unpleasant human being he really is.
@Galactic Hobo I mean, moe slice-of-life stuff was hardly all there was back then, they were just some of the more high-profile shows, but there was still a lot of diversity if you bothered to watch than the 3-5 shows people were talking about the most. I think it's perfectly fine for shows to aim for appealing to a very specific niche audience, not everything has to be for everyone, and there was still plenty of other stuff out there.
I feel like it's rough for me to agree with him even if I agree with him because he's coming at it from the absolute wrong side. He's like oh man too much anime is moe because it appeals to the people who have the most money, so the problem is not that he can't make the new anime to save the world, the problem is that he's trying when it really should be like... A woman maybe. Or just anyone other than this guy
I think he got inspired by Hideaki Anno, who also has a complicated relationship with otaku culture, except Hideaki didn't made an espectacle of himself when the show first aired.
I feel like I'm missing some part of the story here. So he was seeking to write something as a response to the idea, "Moe is ruining anime", but what, exactly, was the story trying to accomplish? Usually that part of the story turns to, "It was trying to be a deconstruction, but it was poorly made and its point was stupid", or, "It was trying to be a throwback, but it was poorly made or stupid." But without knowing the plot or its shortcomings I just can't tell. I dunno, I guess I gotta do a little research myself here, feels like something is missing...
He wasn't trying to accomplish anything specific with the story, he just wanted to go out of his way to have it not appeal specifically to otaku. The posterchild of moe at the time was K-ON, so very overly cute girls doing cute things and that's it. Not every show was K-ON so if you're wondering what exactly he's talking about when he refers to "different than the other anime" yeah thats the point, he's nuts.
As someone who watched it, it's definitely a throwback to the sort of sci-fi/fantasy adventure anime that were more popular during the 20th-century, back before grounded slice-of-life anime set in high schools became popular. It visually looks nice (although a bit inconsistent), but its story is just kind of messy and plodding, and it often feels unsure of what exactly it wants to be (a grand, sweeping epic vs. a smaller, more intimate slice-of-life show in a unique setting). It asks a lot of big questions through the various ideas it raises but usually fails at executing the answers. Frankly, it just doesn't sell its genre to modern anime fans very well, which is not something you want to say about a show hyped to save anime. Meanwhile, Madoka from the same season felt so much fresher and meatier.
I think the only reason that Fractale stuck so hard in my memory is that it's actually one of the first anime I ever watched (not counting things like Pokemon or DBZ and the like when I was a kid). I really got into anime in 2011 and after watching a few MUST watch shows recommended by friends FMAB as such, I just decided to pick anime at random and start watching. Thus, I stumbled into Fractale. There's not much more to the story than that, it was an okay show. It is interesting to hear someone talk about it after all this time and to learn so much about the history and the community that I just wasn't plugged into at that time.
This smacks of the infamous ad for the game Daikatana "JOHN ROMERO IS ABOUT TO MAKE YOU HIS BITCH". And then, years late, the game was every bit as 'meh'.
Should be noted that John Romero himself never approved of the ad. The ad was run without his knowledge of what was going to be specifically put on it.
Wow, someone else knows that Fractale exists!? The existence of this show stayed in my mind forever even though I can't remember why or the story. I probably remember the frustration in trying to watch it, then trying again some time later. Even if you don't know what is happening behind the scenes, you'll know how it affects you.
I remember hearing about this story and learning how much of an asshole the director was during his time at KyoAni. Dude really thought he was gonna save anime lmfao 😆 😆 😆
FYI, Things Yamakan did After Fractale - Miyakawa-ke no Kuufuku (2013) a SPIN OFF OF LUCKY STAR - Senyuu (2013) Episode director, a fanstasy adventure anime, with a hero trying to defeat a demon king - 3 Effing seasons of Wake Up Girls (2014-2015), an idol anime. So, he made an anime with dancing again, as said in the video - Hakubo, (2019) a random movie no one watches. - unannounced project.
I'm like a genuine fan of Fractale and Kannagi, clanky as they may be; but seeing Yamakan carreer unfold as been for the past 15 years both hilariously funny and kinda sad because if he wasn't such a jerk he could have done good things, like kannagi season 2. Great video BTW !!
@@paranodrum9171 The author revealed that Nagi may have had "boyfriends" in the past, then the backlash happened. After that the author went ill and pretty much Kannagi was rarely mentioned again. It continued very slowly after chapter 36. Then it ended in september 2017.
This is like every old moldy dude that says "rock is dead, I'm gonna revive rock n' roll" and then proceed to make Great Value AC/DC music, except this was funny and not sad.
There is an accidental symbolic thing you did throughout the video to the point that I actually thought you'd adress it. Because there is another thing that would've really overshadowed Fractale no matter how well received the series would've been. Ar same time the series aired was also the time Madoka Magica aired. Among a lot of other things that would be too long and most would be irrelevant to the video, that series felt more like it was addressing the state of moe anime better then what Fractale ever could. I really felt the irony when you showed figures from PMMM and that the cover of the magazine adressing Yamakans "retirement" featured Madoka. With how full Yamakan is off himself, it wouldn't surprise me if he resented Madoka magica for how huge the series got and had a bigger impact on the anime industry then Fractale ever did. *edit* Saw the ending of the video, this will teach me to never comment a video without watching it to the end.
What do I remember about the series as someone who watched it as it was coming out... It's about this guy who, uh, he likes old stuff like, modern era stuff. Everyone lives in this world where there's some kind of sattelites or church or something that collects, like, happiness or dreams or something. Has a ghibli moment with some nun lady who seems to be important. She teaches him some song that's been stuck in my head for 10 years. Also there's this other little girl who's weird and peppy. Uh, the guy has to get the girl to the magic happy place, he meets people who are his parents but didn't raise him, I think they bite it? There's a scene where some old ladies try to give him a bath and they freak out cause he's wearing traditional Japanese underwear. At the end, I think they find out that the little girl is a clone of the nun girl, who has been experimented on by this one creepy guy, and it's like her younger self or something that's the core of this happiness system. Fuck if I know.
My takeaway from all of this is that he was so salty about getting fired from KyoAni that he just decided to make them his sworn enemy without realizing that they didn't care. Honestly though, he just sounds like he's talking a bunch of nonsense. I wasn't on the internet to see the drama at the time, but I remember Fractale being on Xfinity On Demand back in like 2014 or so. The concept was interesting and that's all I really remember.
This is so wild to hear about because I watched Fractale in my high school anime club without any of this context and like genuinely loved it, honestly still remember it fondly to this day, but for the life of me I have never been able to get anyone else into it. Any friend that I ever recommended it to would watch a few episodes and be like, this is so boring why do you like this lmao. It was like a shock to my system to even see a video acknowledging it after all this time hahaha.
I feel like you have to be an anime vet to enjoy it because it’s kind of a breath of fresh air amongst everything that was happening at the time. It was also very pretty and had that flat coloring style of the early 2000s rather than how shiny everything was getting at the time.
Hearing Yamakan's opinions reminds me of my misspent years on 4chan in the early 2010s. He's got the exact brand of self-righteous delusion about anime that you used to see there all the time. There and Tumblr.
so i remember i watched this anime in it's entirety on youtube around when it came out as a kid, i remember loving it so much i named one of my lps toys after one of the characters (nessa or something??? i don't remember) i subsequently forgot about it completely until a couple years ago when i found some old toys and remembered i did that, but couldn't remember the name of the anime or anything about it other than "cute girl with pigtails and something about shape people" so i ended up searching everywhere for it and couldn't find anything and eventually settled on it must have been a vocaloid song that i fever dreamed an entire anime out of. that is until earlier this year when i saw a video about fractals and thought to search "anime about fractals" and suddenly found it and wanted to cry when the search was actually so easy.. and now i see this and am reminded of the pain
I know this wasn't the purpose of the video, but even a 1-2 minute segment sharing your feelings on Fractale would be a nice little mooring post for the history. I remember really enjoying Fractale until its floppy ending and then, you know, moving on. It was refreshing to see a straightforward adventure show at the time, and we're still starving for them, but things are looking better if you can fit stuff like Made in Abyss in that category. Admittedly, there's something about them that doesn't resonate with me in the same way, idk, Future Boy Conan would. I don't know the most recent anime I've seen that has that pure adventure feeling, unless we can count something like Avatar. The story surrounding Fractale reminded me a lot of Vlad Love, actually. Another case of "the anime industry is dying... I will make a mediocre genre-conforming anime to save it!" It's funny to imagine it was part of the anti-moe culture war with those Hidari designs, lol. Granted, Hidari has much broader appeal than the typical moeblob, but you don't get hired to do designs for Atelier without serious moe credentials.
...... this anime......... I was really excited when this anime first started releasing episodes, only come out of the finale wanting to give a huge middle figure to the writers and some of the other responsible staff that turned it into what the ending was
For all his hubris, I have to agree on his concerns about anime becoming too niche in its sub-categories and eventually losing appeal to a wider audience. Even though the medium is perhaps more popular than ever, there is no rule that it will stay that way. There are so many anime I wish I could show to people I know but because of certain conventions and tropes I’m afraid it would come off as too bizarre or perverse. (Still doesn’t justify him being a dick about it though).
I watched this Anime 3 or 4 times it remembers me a little bit of Serial Experiments Lain, Last Exile, Martix, Laputa and so on mixed together now i want to watch it again after years!
I find Yamakan's comments against Moe to be very interesting because 1. Moe was actually the most resented among the more analytical and/or nostalgic of Anime Reviewers, especially on ANN. 2. Fractale had moe archetypes ANYWAY, with the two female leads being an airheaded child-like Manic Pixie Dream Girl and a childish tsundere Shana-clone.
Am I the only one who was waiting for the part of the video where they explained the actual plot of Fractale? Like, I understand that the behind-the-scenes stuff is more interesting than the product itself, but I wish they could at least connected the message that the anime was trying to convey in order to explain why it failed in the first place. It literally tells me nothing to hear "this anime is bad" if you don't explain why.
Eh, not sure if it connects to anything the director was saying in his statements, but the setting was a colony world set thousands of years in the future where humans migrated to and terraformed an alien world and used VR for interacting with one another and experiencing things. The plot revolves around this girl who is basically hatsune miku, and how the people who run the world want to use her to keep the world going while the 'heroes' are introduced who are a group of terrorists who want to kill everyone who uses VR on the basis that 'technology is bad and anything that is not natural is evil' with bullet points about how medicines, electricity, and technology based farming are inherently evil because they are not natural and thus bad. Thus the protagonist and offbrand hatsune miku joins the terrorists in dismantling the VR network and all the worlds technologies so that everyone can be forced to embrace naturalism.
True was waiting for the plot for Fractale but I suppose RedBard focused more on Yamakan since the history around stuff is more of what RedBard covers rather than reviews of anime. Was thinking of looking on other people's vids on Fractale myself after this, though despite the lack of the plot, still loved this video.
I watched Fractale back in 2011, and I can assure you that I don’t remember a single fucking detail of that show. Do with that information what you will.
Fractale is supposed to be a commentary on Moe/ Otaku culture, but is too pretentious for its own good. The lines are blurred between reality and fiction, and the MC has a 2D waifu.
I love all the trixie and katya reaction images. My partner watches a bunch of there content and they're always so amazingly expressive that their reactions becoming reaction images only seemed to be a matter of time.
oh man, this title strangely feels nostalgic. I remembered stumbling on this dvd in the library one day (back then, internet was super crappy so videos eat up too much data so my anime expo was as limited as borrowing them off the shelves). I saw the cover, thought it looked pretty and well... I didn't like it. Yet I couldn't stop watching it to the end. I hated it for how weirdly mediocre it was and yet the world building was actually interesting to think about. back then I was looking for animes to fill the void after last exile and this supposedly should have scratched that itch but it failed miserably.
in my 11 years+ memory its basically a world where zuckerburgs metaverse is real, and people experience life through augmented reality/have implants to see said digital life and its also run by big religion/government? a teenage boy meets a disillusioned priestess of big religion and is given a macguffen before she is run off by some sky pirates. protag boy boops around with macguffin and finds it holds a girl?! a digital girl?!?! his house is invaded by people and he and digital girl make a run for it, meet up with sky pirate gang and team up with them to get away from house invaders who turn out to be religion/government. time is spent with fringe off-grid society contemplating the danger of metaverse life and how it corrodes human connection. rest of series is spent trying to figure out who/what digital girl is and why religion/government wants to get her so much. (turns out she might be god?) honestly i think this series would have been better received without all of the Yamakan and simulcast brouhaha
@@victoriapride7575 Thanks. Now I understand her opening line about the narrative being more interesting then the actual show itself. Seems like it had potential.
the only time i heard about fractal was from thatanimesnob annual evaluation where he mentioned the director’s ridicules statement and how the end product was a waste of time.
the way i saw later that he did the movie and first season which are my favorite parts of the whole franchise… the man is an actual good director huh.. the second season was just kinda forgettable + the switch in art style was not it… but the voice actors shading him was SO valid there were parts with weird shots that made me uncomfy for sure
I came to see what dark history related to the world of anime and its industry you brought us in this video and I stayed because of the drag race references... Excellent video!
Oh bard you should read up on what happened to the ceo of a game company called image epoch. It starts with the CEO saying he is going to save video games and then after a few games come out he mysteriously disappears, then people find him years later where he's been living under a different name as a trucker on the other side of japan. it's wild
I think I can kinda understand where the guy is coming from in terms of moe anime. Like, there’s a lot of aspects of modern anime that can really be boiled down to “moe tropes” that I find super cringey and annoying. Having those tropes be so prominent as to be a genre sounds pretty bleh, at least in terms of my personal viewing experience. However, the guy also seems like such a effing pretentious snob that it’s no wonder his work didn’t sell. That type of person tends to make boring stuff that is less interesting and clever than they are convinced it is.
Suprising to see a video about Fractale, honestly I kind of liked the show. It's not mindblowing or life changing but it's a good show to watch if you just want to sit back and relax.
I haven’t heard anyone talk about Fractale in a bit but sometimes I still sing that one song and think about the interesting premise. I watched a lot of anime but Fractale had some stand out material
I love Yamakan, he's just fascinating. He may not have 'saved' anime, but whenever I see the number '883,' I smile. The 9/11 portion of Wake Up Girls is also incredible
@@xxjay7 I replied to the other person with a link to (part of?) the scene. It's at the end of WUG season 1 where a sort of antagonist talks about idols and entertainment in relation to 9/11
Great video! Believe it or not Fractale was actually my first anime and is the reason I got into it in the first place. Yes really, this show, I literally just stumbled upon it on hulu when I was a kid and was completely enthralled by it. I liked it so much I tried to find other series like it and the rest is history. I didn't learn about all the interesting controversy around it until many years later and it's really cool to see a video covering a series that left such an impact on me, even if it really isn't all the great in hindsight
That moment when an ego trip tire fire of an anime gets demolished in the ratings by a series that no one expected would be a massive hit... how many times have we seen that before?
@@ultralight9625 I mean they didn't state he was involved in the marketing for it, it just got leaked that he was involved and he decided to make up a story saying he wanted to make something happy for once. We all know what happens next lmao
@@PipimiOden Like you said that information got leaked, so my point still stands. And besides Gen Urobuchi was far from the only familiar face know for their top tier work on the project. It is perhaps better to say that it was expected to be a major hit and preformed even better than even those lofty expectations.
9:54 what he says here echoes sentiments that Anno said about creating Evangelion, that he wanted to make an anime that would appeal to the general public, which in the late 90s, I’m sure was a much bigger hurdle. This dude that this video about seems to talk like a brilliant auteur, but it seems like he doesn’t have a lot of original ideas, even in his statements to the public. No wonder I’ve never heard of this show before.
As someone who watched (read pirated. To the point I, a child at the time, somehow got low quality downloads to make an AMV) Fractale as a kid and was completely unaware of everything happening around it: The creator's Anti-Moe position is very funny because the only god damn thing I remember about that show was the little Moe A.I. girl, smiling at people and warming their hearts.
Before watching the video: I remember being hella obsessed with Fractale anime at first, but by the end I just didn't really get what the story or message was trying to be. It's been years, I don't really remember the plot, just a little about the technology and reality thing, but even that I may be remembering wrong, actually...
The whole thing about piracy made me chuckle a bit, because I remember Fractale being one of the first anime I pirated when it was airing, purely because I could only find fan-subbed versions of it lol. I was still pretty new to watching anime online, so I wasn't privy to the media noise surrounding it, so this was an interesting watch. This video has certainly awoken some teenage memories for me, as the ONLY thing I remember from this series was laughing at the translations by fansubbers who were having the time of their lives adding as many memes they could while dunking of the frankly boring story. I could honestly say the fansubs saved this anime for me lol.
It really seemed like Yamakan was trying to be Miyazaki without having the necessary level of talent. Even his criticisms of modern anime mirror Miyazaki, and Fractale feels like what would happen if a director with relatively mediocre skill tried to make a series in the style of Studio Ghibli.
Being reminded that Red Garden exists with the Mari Okada mention was not something I was prepared for. That anime was the first time I understood the feelings Shakespeare was aiming for with his tragedies I think.
Oh hey I was part of a fansubbing group that subbed part of Fractale back in the day when it was airing. I remember sort of liking it? Like, it wasn't great, but it was okay. I guess people nowadays would call it mid, but it wasn't awful or anything, just a bit dull. But yeah the story surrounding it is definitely way more interesting.
Yes, Moe was annoying, but not as annoying (and boring) as Yamakan's writing. Between him and Yoshikatsu Kimura (EX-Arm's director), who declared war on all sci-fi, I chose Kimura.
Havent heard anyone talk about this one in a long time. I remember i enjoyed it so much when it aired that i went out and bought the bluray for the series afterwards even though i didnt have a player. Sad how long its been since this came out qq feel very old
Never thought id see someone mention fractale Honestly thought id fever dreamed it up after a while Im glad red is tackling the media narrative around it rather than the show I thought the show was ok at best so the media narrative i was unaware of will be an interesting context piece to what i thought of as an "ok but forgotten anime"
I liked Fractale when I watched it as a high school not knowing about any of the background, but yeah the only part I really liked about it was the ending song the rest of it was just okay.
I watched fractale at the time, it was actually one of my first animes i ever watched, i really like the opening and ending of it every once in a while i crave listening to it. Never knew any of this happened at all i found this to be a great video talking about all the history surrounding fractale release, the only thing it felt weird throughout the video is the clowning of this man felt a little bit much until 24:48 after that it all made sense, i barely remember anything about fractale the only thing i can recall is finding the ending to be kinda generic, but i cant elaborate why at this point.
I haven’t heard Fractale in years, but I remember never being able to talk about it since it was so niche 😅 Actually I can’t even remember the storyline since it was so mediocre but I remember only the fractal flowers in the opening
a part of me kinda gets where Yamamoto comes from, he sounds like a guy who just worked on alot of moe shows and wanted to try something different. but the way he described it all sounded really pretensions, especially since he hyped it up so much just for it to bomb hard. i can't defended him now tho, i didn't know he said half that stuff, it's a little funny the things he predicts. plus i didn't think fractale was THAT bad it just took it self too seriously at times.
I actually liked Fractale, there was a certain melancholic beauty to it, specially during the first half of it. Sadly the story itself didn't quite stick the landing and the conclusion was a bit too messy to ignore, it just didn't add up. So to me it's mainly disapointing because instead of commiting to its tone it tries to be more action packed when that actually hurts the vibes they seemed to be going for initially, like how they have this nice satisfying story about the protagonist's father's lifestyle of comunal-focused isolation (I know it's contradictory but it makes sense in context) at one point that works well within the stablished world, and then the female leads plot is about cloning a r**e victim to use as a power source or some bs. Man, it's been years since I last thought about that one anime and my conflicted feelings towards it, you were right about that.
I just finished watching Fractale. I went into it knowing none of this information so I had no outside bias. I thought it was fine. Perfectly watchable. I felt feelings occasionally. 6/10.
I somehow found out about this anime when I was 13 and decided I wanted to try watching it. Got like 3 episodes in before I fell asleep watching the 4th one
I remember seeing it on the internet for free. The intro gave me a migraine but I did enjoy the ending credits. Dow-hun by the-uh Sa-al-e Gar--duns . . .
Wow, Fractale. The one anime Irish anime fans can recall due to it being set in Ireland and that there was a fandub project to dub it in Gaelic.
I had no clue that the anime was set in Ireland. I have never seen it before, but I have heard of it. Thank you for disclosing that.
Wait fr? That's really cool!
Oh vey… as an anime fan from a very Irish family, that was one of the things that made me super excited for the show. It’s cool to hear about how others were excited for the same reason but it sucks to learn about the show’s creator.
my sides
*Gaeilge
glad to see Fractale getting the recognition it deserves seeing how it saved anime and all
Yeah
Oh God I remember Fractale. I remember so much hype about it, and then Madoka Magica came out and basically ate its lunch.
I love how 90% of Yamakan's talking points boil down to "It seems today that all you see is dances and moe and k-on on TV, but where are those good old fashion anime on which we used to rely?"
underrated
A small reminder that in 2011 Madoka, PenguinDrum and Stein;Gate were airing... just to name a few
2011 was a year that anime was saved. One of the best years in anime history. Its massively ironic that it was in 2011, yamakon tried to save it by going against the flow.
I think I felt 15 new greys pop up on my head reading this. 🤣 So recent, and yet so far.
Legitimately fantastic year for anime, and still the one I look back on the most fondly for classics I still adore.
I do remember watching Fractale, now that the video reminded me I did.
I cannot remember a single thing that happened in the show. I didn't even remember it being 2011.
This is the "John Romero is gonna make you his bitch" of anime
It took me a second to remember this and then it hit me like a truck
How is this so accurate?
Yamakan's the combination of that with Phil Fish's (creator of FEZ) snobbery.
(I think)
Except this one was actually his fault and not just the marketing team
At least people remember Daikatana.
The reading of "There will be no more dancing in my anime" went far harder than it needed to.
God, just hearing the name Fractale takes me back. Glad to see this being made and showing people a little insight into Yamakan's infamy.
The sad thing is, a lot of Yamakan's criticisms of moe are (at least to me) perfectly legitimate. His major point seemed to be that moe shows were focusing on capturing the attention of microscopically small, niche sub-fandoms to the exclusion of everyone else. That's how I felt about a lot of moe shows at the time, and I remember plenty of other anime critics making similar claims about the genre.
Of course, his ego was (and still is) such that he not once seemed to pick up on the irony that A) his criticisms don't mean much when they're coming from someone whose resume primarily consists of moe and moe-adjacent anime, and B) claiming to be the one to "save anime" is just gonna make you look like a tool, especially if your body of work is middling at best.
I'm glad he's become a footnote in anime history, especially now that he's made all too clear what a deeply unpleasant human being he really is.
@Galactic Hobo I mean, moe slice-of-life stuff was hardly all there was back then, they were just some of the more high-profile shows, but there was still a lot of diversity if you bothered to watch than the 3-5 shows people were talking about the most. I think it's perfectly fine for shows to aim for appealing to a very specific niche audience, not everything has to be for everyone, and there was still plenty of other stuff out there.
Idk man, l think there's nothing wrong with a work that appeal to a small niche audience.
I’m watching the video right now and I’m honestly shocked how much I’m actually kinda agreeing with him.
I feel like it's rough for me to agree with him even if I agree with him because he's coming at it from the absolute wrong side. He's like oh man too much anime is moe because it appeals to the people who have the most money, so the problem is not that he can't make the new anime to save the world, the problem is that he's trying when it really should be like... A woman maybe. Or just anyone other than this guy
I think he got inspired by Hideaki Anno, who also has a complicated relationship with otaku culture, except Hideaki didn't made an espectacle of himself when the show first aired.
I feel like I'm missing some part of the story here. So he was seeking to write something as a response to the idea, "Moe is ruining anime", but what, exactly, was the story trying to accomplish? Usually that part of the story turns to, "It was trying to be a deconstruction, but it was poorly made and its point was stupid", or, "It was trying to be a throwback, but it was poorly made or stupid." But without knowing the plot or its shortcomings I just can't tell. I dunno, I guess I gotta do a little research myself here, feels like something is missing...
Ya
He wasn't trying to accomplish anything specific with the story, he just wanted to go out of his way to have it not appeal specifically to otaku. The posterchild of moe at the time was K-ON, so very overly cute girls doing cute things and that's it. Not every show was K-ON so if you're wondering what exactly he's talking about when he refers to "different than the other anime" yeah thats the point, he's nuts.
@@almondy24 Welp, add the Bard's description of the lead up to the list of, "Things more interesting than the anime itself."
she talked about the scores and the interpretation was that it was boring and uninteresting
As someone who watched it, it's definitely a throwback to the sort of sci-fi/fantasy adventure anime that were more popular during the 20th-century, back before grounded slice-of-life anime set in high schools became popular. It visually looks nice (although a bit inconsistent), but its story is just kind of messy and plodding, and it often feels unsure of what exactly it wants to be (a grand, sweeping epic vs. a smaller, more intimate slice-of-life show in a unique setting). It asks a lot of big questions through the various ideas it raises but usually fails at executing the answers. Frankly, it just doesn't sell its genre to modern anime fans very well, which is not something you want to say about a show hyped to save anime. Meanwhile, Madoka from the same season felt so much fresher and meatier.
This sounds like the Japanese version of YIIK: A Post Modern RPG, down to the extremely pretentious creator. I love it
Fractale came out, and anime still exists. We have him to thank for that.
I think the only reason that Fractale stuck so hard in my memory is that it's actually one of the first anime I ever watched (not counting things like Pokemon or DBZ and the like when I was a kid). I really got into anime in 2011 and after watching a few MUST watch shows recommended by friends FMAB as such, I just decided to pick anime at random and start watching. Thus, I stumbled into Fractale. There's not much more to the story than that, it was an okay show. It is interesting to hear someone talk about it after all this time and to learn so much about the history and the community that I just wasn't plugged into at that time.
This smacks of the infamous ad for the game Daikatana "JOHN ROMERO IS ABOUT TO MAKE YOU HIS BITCH". And then, years late, the game was every bit as 'meh'.
Should be noted that John Romero himself never approved of the ad. The ad was run without his knowledge of what was going to be specifically put on it.
Wow, someone else knows that Fractale exists!? The existence of this show stayed in my mind forever even though I can't remember why or the story.
I probably remember the frustration in trying to watch it, then trying again some time later. Even if you don't know what is happening behind the scenes, you'll know how it affects you.
I remember hearing about this story and learning how much of an asshole the director was during his time at KyoAni.
Dude really thought he was gonna save anime lmfao 😆 😆 😆
FYI, Things Yamakan did After Fractale
- Miyakawa-ke no Kuufuku (2013) a SPIN OFF OF LUCKY STAR
- Senyuu (2013) Episode director, a fanstasy adventure anime, with a hero trying to defeat a demon king
- 3 Effing seasons of Wake Up Girls (2014-2015), an idol anime. So, he made an anime with dancing again, as said in the video
- Hakubo, (2019) a random movie no one watches.
- unannounced project.
I'm like a genuine fan of Fractale and Kannagi, clanky as they may be; but seeing Yamakan carreer unfold as been for the past 15 years both hilariously funny and kinda sad because if he wasn't such a jerk he could have done good things, like kannagi season 2.
Great video BTW !!
So much good art made by such awful people, it really sucks sometimes.
Kannai was pretty great but the manga scandal tanked any and all chances of a continuation.
@@MasterN64 Manga scandal?
@@paranodrum9171 The author revealed that Nagi may have had "boyfriends" in the past, then the backlash happened. After that the author went ill and pretty much Kannagi was rarely mentioned again. It continued very slowly after chapter 36. Then it ended in september 2017.
My favorite Venn diagram is the one overlapping weebs and Drag Race fans. Please never stop ❤️
The voice actor voicing Yamakan sounded like they really enjoyed their narration XD
This is like every old moldy dude that says "rock is dead, I'm gonna revive rock n' roll" and then proceed to make Great Value AC/DC music, except this was funny and not sad.
There is an accidental symbolic thing you did throughout the video to the point that I actually thought you'd adress it. Because there is another thing that would've really overshadowed Fractale no matter how well received the series would've been. Ar same time the series aired was also the time Madoka Magica aired. Among a lot of other things that would be too long and most would be irrelevant to the video, that series felt more like it was addressing the state of moe anime better then what Fractale ever could. I really felt the irony when you showed figures from PMMM and that the cover of the magazine adressing Yamakans "retirement" featured Madoka. With how full Yamakan is off himself, it wouldn't surprise me if he resented Madoka magica for how huge the series got and had a bigger impact on the anime industry then Fractale ever did. *edit* Saw the ending of the video, this will teach me to never comment a video without watching it to the end.
"[Moe is] a reason to live. If it were to be taken away, many people would no longer be able to survive."
- Jun Maeda, writer for Kanon and Clannad
What do I remember about the series as someone who watched it as it was coming out...
It's about this guy who, uh, he likes old stuff like, modern era stuff. Everyone lives in this world where there's some kind of sattelites or church or something that collects, like, happiness or dreams or something. Has a ghibli moment with some nun lady who seems to be important. She teaches him some song that's been stuck in my head for 10 years. Also there's this other little girl who's weird and peppy. Uh, the guy has to get the girl to the magic happy place, he meets people who are his parents but didn't raise him, I think they bite it? There's a scene where some old ladies try to give him a bath and they freak out cause he's wearing traditional Japanese underwear.
At the end, I think they find out that the little girl is a clone of the nun girl, who has been experimented on by this one creepy guy, and it's like her younger self or something that's the core of this happiness system.
Fuck if I know.
My takeaway from all of this is that he was so salty about getting fired from KyoAni that he just decided to make them his sworn enemy without realizing that they didn't care.
Honestly though, he just sounds like he's talking a bunch of nonsense. I wasn't on the internet to see the drama at the time, but I remember Fractale being on Xfinity On Demand back in like 2014 or so. The concept was interesting and that's all I really remember.
This is so wild to hear about because I watched Fractale in my high school anime club without any of this context and like genuinely loved it, honestly still remember it fondly to this day, but for the life of me I have never been able to get anyone else into it. Any friend that I ever recommended it to would watch a few episodes and be like, this is so boring why do you like this lmao. It was like a shock to my system to even see a video acknowledging it after all this time hahaha.
I feel like you have to be an anime vet to enjoy it because it’s kind of a breath of fresh air amongst everything that was happening at the time. It was also very pretty and had that flat coloring style of the early 2000s rather than how shiny everything was getting at the time.
Hearing Yamakan's opinions reminds me of my misspent years on 4chan in the early 2010s. He's got the exact brand of self-righteous delusion about anime that you used to see there all the time. There and Tumblr.
Yep people forget both sides can be pretty extreme. Albeit part of it is likely Yamakan was being hyperbolic for sales.
I missed the drama on this when it came out, but hoo boy...it sounds like a ride
The trip down memory lane I didn't know I needed.
so i remember i watched this anime in it's entirety on youtube around when it came out as a kid, i remember loving it so much i named one of my lps toys after one of the characters (nessa or something??? i don't remember) i subsequently forgot about it completely until a couple years ago when i found some old toys and remembered i did that, but couldn't remember the name of the anime or anything about it other than "cute girl with pigtails and something about shape people" so i ended up searching everywhere for it and couldn't find anything and eventually settled on it must have been a vocaloid song that i fever dreamed an entire anime out of. that is until earlier this year when i saw a video about fractals and thought to search "anime about fractals" and suddenly found it and wanted to cry when the search was actually so easy.. and now i see this and am reminded of the pain
Wow fractale, one of those 100+ backlog list shows I haven’t watched yet. I remember the saving anime meme. Moe was the isekai of 2000s
I know this wasn't the purpose of the video, but even a 1-2 minute segment sharing your feelings on Fractale would be a nice little mooring post for the history.
I remember really enjoying Fractale until its floppy ending and then, you know, moving on. It was refreshing to see a straightforward adventure show at the time, and we're still starving for them, but things are looking better if you can fit stuff like Made in Abyss in that category. Admittedly, there's something about them that doesn't resonate with me in the same way, idk, Future Boy Conan would. I don't know the most recent anime I've seen that has that pure adventure feeling, unless we can count something like Avatar.
The story surrounding Fractale reminded me a lot of Vlad Love, actually. Another case of "the anime industry is dying... I will make a mediocre genre-conforming anime to save it!" It's funny to imagine it was part of the anti-moe culture war with those Hidari designs, lol. Granted, Hidari has much broader appeal than the typical moeblob, but you don't get hired to do designs for Atelier without serious moe credentials.
...... this anime.........
I was really excited when this anime first started releasing episodes, only come out of the finale wanting to give a huge middle figure to the writers and some of the other responsible staff that turned it into what the ending was
Reminds me of Kenji Inafune with his whole "Japanese games are dead."
For all his hubris, I have to agree on his concerns about anime becoming too niche in its sub-categories and eventually losing appeal to a wider audience. Even though the medium is perhaps more popular than ever, there is no rule that it will stay that way. There are so many anime I wish I could show to people I know but because of certain conventions and tropes I’m afraid it would come off as too bizarre or perverse.
(Still doesn’t justify him being a dick about it though).
I watched this Anime 3 or 4 times it remembers me a little bit of Serial Experiments Lain, Last Exile, Martix, Laputa and so on mixed together now i want to watch it again after years!
Kinda glad that I was on a break from anime during this era and didn't come back till Madoka.
I find Yamakan's comments against Moe to be very interesting because
1. Moe was actually the most resented among the more analytical and/or nostalgic of Anime Reviewers, especially on ANN.
2. Fractale had moe archetypes ANYWAY, with the two female leads being an airheaded child-like Manic Pixie Dream Girl and a childish tsundere Shana-clone.
Am I the only one who was waiting for the part of the video where they explained the actual plot of Fractale? Like, I understand that the behind-the-scenes stuff is more interesting than the product itself, but I wish they could at least connected the message that the anime was trying to convey in order to explain why it failed in the first place.
It literally tells me nothing to hear "this anime is bad" if you don't explain why.
Eh, not sure if it connects to anything the director was saying in his statements, but the setting was a colony world set thousands of years in the future where humans migrated to and terraformed an alien world and used VR for interacting with one another and experiencing things.
The plot revolves around this girl who is basically hatsune miku, and how the people who run the world want to use her to keep the world going while the 'heroes' are introduced who are a group of terrorists who want to kill everyone who uses VR on the basis that 'technology is bad and anything that is not natural is evil' with bullet points about how medicines, electricity, and technology based farming are inherently evil because they are not natural and thus bad.
Thus the protagonist and offbrand hatsune miku joins the terrorists in dismantling the VR network and all the worlds technologies so that everyone can be forced to embrace naturalism.
True was waiting for the plot for Fractale but I suppose RedBard focused more on Yamakan since the history around stuff is more of what RedBard covers rather than reviews of anime. Was thinking of looking on other people's vids on Fractale myself after this, though despite the lack of the plot, still loved this video.
I watched Fractale back in 2011, and I can assure you that I don’t remember a single fucking detail of that show. Do with that information what you will.
Fractale is supposed to be a commentary on Moe/ Otaku culture, but is too pretentious for its own good.
The lines are blurred between reality and fiction, and the MC has a 2D waifu.
@@terraventusaqua123 Same, not one thing about it other than that it was supposed to save anime.
oh my god i remember this
So glade finally someone is talking about this masterpiece everyone should give this anime a try worth it
I don't I want to be that asshole but it's "glad"
I love all the trixie and katya reaction images. My partner watches a bunch of there content and they're always so amazingly expressive that their reactions becoming reaction images only seemed to be a matter of time.
oh man, this title strangely feels nostalgic. I remembered stumbling on this dvd in the library one day (back then, internet was super crappy so videos eat up too much data so my anime expo was as limited as borrowing them off the shelves). I saw the cover, thought it looked pretty and well... I didn't like it. Yet I couldn't stop watching it to the end. I hated it for how weirdly mediocre it was and yet the world building was actually interesting to think about. back then I was looking for animes to fill the void after last exile and this supposedly should have scratched that itch but it failed miserably.
I’m always excited for a new Red Bard video 🎉
Omg thank you so fricking much.
I've been trying to find the name of this anime for YEARS.
Having never watched fractale i wish i knew what fractale is about.
in my 11 years+ memory its basically a world where zuckerburgs metaverse is real, and people experience life through augmented reality/have implants to see said digital life and its also run by big religion/government? a teenage boy meets a disillusioned priestess of big religion and is given a macguffen before she is run off by some sky pirates.
protag boy boops around with macguffin and finds it holds a girl?! a digital girl?!?! his house is invaded by people and he and digital girl make a run for it, meet up with sky pirate gang and team up with them to get away from house invaders who turn out to be religion/government.
time is spent with fringe off-grid society contemplating the danger of metaverse life and how it corrodes human connection.
rest of series is spent trying to figure out who/what digital girl is and why religion/government wants to get her so much. (turns out she might be god?)
honestly i think this series would have been better received without all of the Yamakan and simulcast brouhaha
@@victoriapride7575 Thanks. Now I understand her opening line about the narrative being more interesting then the actual show itself. Seems like it had potential.
The animation looks pretty at least!
the only time i heard about fractal was from thatanimesnob annual evaluation where he mentioned the director’s ridicules statement and how the end product was a waste of time.
Fractale-my favourite Galway based anime
ICB the director for Wake Up Girls was this much of a mess lmaooo I love that anime (esp first season)
the way i saw later that he did the movie and first season which are my favorite parts of the whole franchise… the man is an actual good director huh.. the second season was just kinda forgettable + the switch in art style was not it… but the voice actors shading him was SO valid there were parts with weird shots that made me uncomfy for sure
I came to see what dark history related to the world of anime and its industry you brought us in this video and I stayed because of the drag race references... Excellent video!
Oh bard you should read up on what happened to the ceo of a game company called image epoch. It starts with the CEO saying he is going to save video games and then after a few games come out he mysteriously disappears, then people find him years later where he's been living under a different name as a trucker on the other side of japan. it's wild
I think I can kinda understand where the guy is coming from in terms of moe anime. Like, there’s a lot of aspects of modern anime that can really be boiled down to “moe tropes” that I find super cringey and annoying. Having those tropes be so prominent as to be a genre sounds pretty bleh, at least in terms of my personal viewing experience. However, the guy also seems like such a effing pretentious snob that it’s no wonder his work didn’t sell. That type of person tends to make boring stuff that is less interesting and clever than they are convinced it is.
Suprising to see a video about Fractale, honestly I kind of liked the show. It's not mindblowing or life changing but it's a good show to watch if you just want to sit back and relax.
I haven’t heard anyone talk about Fractale in a bit but sometimes I still sing that one song and think about the interesting premise. I watched a lot of anime but Fractale had some stand out material
I love Yamakan, he's just fascinating. He may not have 'saved' anime, but whenever I see the number '883,' I smile. The 9/11 portion of Wake Up Girls is also incredible
The... The *what*
please don’t just say that and not explain
@@xxjay7 I replied to the other person with a link to (part of?) the scene. It's at the end of WUG season 1 where a sort of antagonist talks about idols and entertainment in relation to 9/11
Great video! Believe it or not Fractale was actually my first anime and is the reason I got into it in the first place. Yes really, this show, I literally just stumbled upon it on hulu when I was a kid and was completely enthralled by it. I liked it so much I tried to find other series like it and the rest is history. I didn't learn about all the interesting controversy around it until many years later and it's really cool to see a video covering a series that left such an impact on me, even if it really isn't all the great in hindsight
That moment when an ego trip tire fire of an anime gets demolished in the ratings by a series that no one expected would be a massive hit... how many times have we seen that before?
I don't think "no one expected to be a massive hit" is the right words for something by Gen Urobuchi
@@ultralight9625 I mean they didn't state he was involved in the marketing for it, it just got leaked that he was involved and he decided to make up a story saying he wanted to make something happy for once. We all know what happens next lmao
@@PipimiOden Like you said that information got leaked, so my point still stands. And besides Gen Urobuchi was far from the only familiar face know for their top tier work on the project. It is perhaps better to say that it was expected to be a major hit and preformed even better than even those lofty expectations.
@@ultralight9625 this all happen in 2011, the only thing of note that Urobuchi has made at the time was Saya no Uta and the Fate/Zero LN
I'm so glad you're making videos again! I really missed your awesome anime content
This is a wild story! And I just want to say It's been sooo nice seeing you make videos again these past few weeks, happy to have you back Red Bard!
Yamakan talks like Jordan Peterson whenever he talks about anime
9:54 what he says here echoes sentiments that Anno said about creating Evangelion, that he wanted to make an anime that would appeal to the general public, which in the late 90s, I’m sure was a much bigger hurdle. This dude that this video about seems to talk like a brilliant auteur, but it seems like he doesn’t have a lot of original ideas, even in his statements to the public. No wonder I’ve never heard of this show before.
As someone who watched (read pirated. To the point I, a child at the time, somehow got low quality downloads to make an AMV) Fractale as a kid and was completely unaware of everything happening around it:
The creator's Anti-Moe position is very funny because the only god damn thing I remember about that show was the little Moe A.I. girl, smiling at people and warming their hearts.
I have loved these last few video! Excited to see more of them when you have the time!
Before watching the video: I remember being hella obsessed with Fractale anime at first, but by the end I just didn't really get what the story or message was trying to be. It's been years, I don't really remember the plot, just a little about the technology and reality thing, but even that I may be remembering wrong, actually...
The whole thing about piracy made me chuckle a bit, because I remember Fractale being one of the first anime I pirated when it was airing, purely because I could only find fan-subbed versions of it lol. I was still pretty new to watching anime online, so I wasn't privy to the media noise surrounding it, so this was an interesting watch. This video has certainly awoken some teenage memories for me, as the ONLY thing I remember from this series was laughing at the translations by fansubbers who were having the time of their lives adding as many memes they could while dunking of the frankly boring story. I could honestly say the fansubs saved this anime for me lol.
Truly the anime of all time.
I remember watching fractale when it came out, and something about it just struck such a resounding chord within me. It's never really left my memory.
It really seemed like Yamakan was trying to be Miyazaki without having the necessary level of talent. Even his criticisms of modern anime mirror Miyazaki, and Fractale feels like what would happen if a director with relatively mediocre skill tried to make a series in the style of Studio Ghibli.
Thing is that Miyazaki's opinoons are also kinda 'tarded tbh.
Having recently gotten into Drag Race I can really appreciate all these clips now.
I missed your videos. Glad you're still around!!!
Did I just hear fucking BLASTED SALAMI narrating!?!?! This is the crossover I never knew I needed!
Being reminded that Red Garden exists with the Mari Okada mention was not something I was prepared for. That anime was the first time I understood the feelings Shakespeare was aiming for with his tragedies I think.
As much as I hated the prominence of moe back in the day, I would gladly take over the OP isekai protagonists currently in vogue
To think this started basically because of disliking Moe.
I remember watching Fractale for the first time a couple of years ago. I actually never knew about all of this other stuff surrounding it.
How did I miss all of new your videos except this one, so happy you're back
I caught that momentary use of The House In Fata Morgana OST 🥲
Oh hey I was part of a fansubbing group that subbed part of Fractale back in the day when it was airing. I remember sort of liking it? Like, it wasn't great, but it was okay. I guess people nowadays would call it mid, but it wasn't awful or anything, just a bit dull. But yeah the story surrounding it is definitely way more interesting.
Yes, Moe was annoying, but not as annoying (and boring) as Yamakan's writing. Between him and Yoshikatsu Kimura (EX-Arm's director), who declared war on all sci-fi, I chose Kimura.
>Yamamoto Yutaka
Yeah, I can see where the controversy begins.....
Yamakan, my favorite anime villian.
Havent heard anyone talk about this one in a long time. I remember i enjoyed it so much when it aired that i went out and bought the bluray for the series afterwards even though i didnt have a player. Sad how long its been since this came out qq feel very old
wow that was a hoot so much crazyness for something i've never heard of lol thanks for another incredible video kennedy :D
I feel like I must the only person who watched Fractale when it aired without knowing any of this nonsense was happening.
It was fine.
Never thought id see someone mention fractale
Honestly thought id fever dreamed it up after a while
Im glad red is tackling the media narrative around it rather than the show
I thought the show was ok at best
so the media narrative i was unaware of will be an interesting context piece to what i thought of as an "ok but forgotten anime"
The OP slapped.
Can't remember a single thing about the anime itself, though...
Yamakan really took the, “Watch stuff that’s outside your normal interests every now and again,” argument and turned it up to 11.
I remember the hype, and how it was completely forgotten the day it released.
I liked Fractale when I watched it as a high school not knowing about any of the background, but yeah the only part I really liked about it was the ending song the rest of it was just okay.
Yes the ending song was really pretty, that's mostly what I remember too.
Nice coincidence I just finished madoka, it was gooooooooood!
I watched fractale at the time, it was actually one of my first animes i ever watched, i really like the opening and ending of it every once in a while i crave listening to it. Never knew any of this happened at all i found this to be a great video talking about all the history surrounding fractale release, the only thing it felt weird throughout the video is the clowning of this man felt a little bit much until 24:48 after that it all made sense, i barely remember anything about fractale the only thing i can recall is finding the ending to be kinda generic, but i cant elaborate why at this point.
im so glad you are doing videos for youtube again, kind of miss you
I sobbed so bad watching this I think ? It's been years
I haven’t heard Fractale in years, but I remember never being able to talk about it since it was so niche 😅 Actually I can’t even remember the storyline since it was so mediocre but I remember only the fractal flowers in the opening
Something about a nun and an ai fussing into one to make the ultimate deity I mean wait what
excellent translations by Steiner there 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
a part of me kinda gets where Yamamoto comes from, he sounds like a guy who just worked on alot of moe shows and wanted to try something different. but the way he described it all sounded really pretensions, especially since he hyped it up so much just for it to bomb hard. i can't defended him now tho, i didn't know he said half that stuff, it's a little funny the things he predicts. plus i didn't think fractale was THAT bad it just took it self too seriously at times.
I actually liked Fractale, there was a certain melancholic beauty to it, specially during the first half of it. Sadly the story itself didn't quite stick the landing and the conclusion was a bit too messy to ignore, it just didn't add up. So to me it's mainly disapointing because instead of commiting to its tone it tries to be more action packed when that actually hurts the vibes they seemed to be going for initially, like how they have this nice satisfying story about the protagonist's father's lifestyle of comunal-focused isolation (I know it's contradictory but it makes sense in context) at one point that works well within the stablished world, and then the female leads plot is about cloning a r**e victim to use as a power source or some bs.
Man, it's been years since I last thought about that one anime and my conflicted feelings towards it, you were right about that.
I just finished watching Fractale. I went into it knowing none of this information so I had no outside bias. I thought it was fine. Perfectly watchable. I felt feelings occasionally. 6/10.
I somehow found out about this anime when I was 13 and decided I wanted to try watching it. Got like 3 episodes in before I fell asleep watching the 4th one
that guys speaks like Metal Gear Villain
I remember seeing it on the internet for free. The intro gave me a migraine but I did enjoy the ending credits.
Dow-hun by the-uh Sa-al-e Gar--duns . . .