Akatsuki no Yona puts all it’s cards on the table this week. The animation is noticeably more… animated, actually. Color, drama of the situation, and the emotional tension of Yona and Hak falling off a cliff mere minutes after the episode started all put me in the best mood this show has managed so far.
Then it tossed all my good will out the window with flashbacks OF CONTENT FROM ITS OWN EPISODE, lazy, humor-free jokes about a guy who’s 25 acting like an old man, and meeting a priest who’s a kind-natured bumbler in the most cliché of ways…
Soo-won apparently bathes behind a quarantine tarp…
ARGH! Yona why are you so uselessly pedestrian and what the heck is wrong with everyone rating you so high on MAL?? Is it just that Korea gets so little attention, anime wise?
Or is there some value that your plain-jane animation, stodgy character design, and plot that’s gone nearly nowhere in six episodes is hiding from me?
The above image was my favorite part of the episode. In it, an unimportant side character urinates into Yona’s mouth. Then, when she wakes up from her 5,000 foot fall into the valley, he tactfully offers her a fresh orange to suck on.
Classy!
Good grief people? Why are any of us watching this???
*Yes I know I’ve dropped this multiple times in the past but I’m serious this time! :(
RABUJOI - An Anime Blog 
I know why I am watching it. The important question is why are YOU watching it? Surely an extra 100 readers can’t be worth you going through all this stress. I am a fan of the manga so I can tell you this isn’t going to get any better for you.
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readership has dropped off actually. Bizarrely, Episode 1’s review continues to get readership — and this week it got more than the week’s actual review :( blargh. I gave it 6 episodes and feel fine dropping it
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Are you SURRRRE you’re dropping it? ;)
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This show is totally not your show & every episode review is basically you shitting on it. Thank goodness you’re dropping this.
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There’s a difference between shitting on something without reason and giving critical reasons why a show is failing. In no way has Yona done anything, objectively, above average in 6 episodes.
On the same point, no one has given any reason — not a single reason in any comment here or over twitter — why Yona should be considered a good show. Just “I like it” or “I loved the manga” and one will even explain why they liked the manga either. Liking something is fine but subjective. If subjective reasoning is the only thing you care about, then why read reviews? On a subjective level, there is nothing anyone can ever say that you will agree with, unless it conforms to your subjective belief.
I’m not saying you can’t like it, obviously. But if no one will give examples of how the show exceeds conventions or how it’s structure is superior than average, then why expect it to receive a high score from a structure-focused objective reviewer?
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Just to push back on one small point (I have no opinion on AnY): All reviews are subjective. It’s your opinion on something. An objective review would simply be stating “This is an anime. It ran for X minutes.”
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Oh hush :*
Statements like “this anime attempts to structure it’s scenes to emulate how the protagonist is viewing the world around him” are objective, non-summary statements. Likewise, describing a show’s structure/viewpoint/execution as generic (as in, consistent with the majority of shows past and present) or unusual (as in, not the standard for shows past and present) is also objective. Talking about structure, considering how effective, unexpected, unusual and even how aesthetically complex the visual elements are, is the basis for objective creative criticism.
I’ll grant you subjective elements enter into the discussion, especially when discussing a reviewer’s emotional responses, but it’s nonsense to paint objectivity in stark black and white.
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addendum relating to AnY:
Objectively, it is not a visually complex show. By the standards of Anime this season and of past seasons, the character design has limited detail and a small color pallet. Figure gestures and angles from which figures are drawn are generally eye-level and often cropped close to the camera, which is both a simpler to render and not unusual for anime.
As noted in this review, the opening fight sequence in this episode was an exception to Yona’s presentation standards. In that the gestures were more fluid and the angles were more extreme. These choices, being less common among the broad spectrum of anime, made the opening more striking than previous episodes. owever, as the art style reverted immediately after the fight sequence, the over all impact was limited.
Now, the above break down puts most readers to sleep. So we shorten some of the points to statements like “the art style is generic,” without having to cite hundreds of shows that establish the definition of generic and the outliers that are aesthetically more complex that establish what is not generic. That short hand can smell subjective but is not always the case.
I appreciate the push back though — it’s good practice. I have to review, rate, and give feed back on about a hundred high school student’s portfolios in a couple of weeks…
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I understand what you’re saying, but I’d like to just clarify my main quibble (Is that an oxymoron? Maybe.)
I think you’re a good reviewer. I do not agree that you are an objective reviewer, as you mentioned in your previous comment. I don’t think an objective reviewer would be worth all that much. Your subjective opinion is informed by your base preferences, experiences, and knowledge of the medium.
I agree, though, that some things can be declared poorly made from an objective standpoint. I remember assisting a class where a student wanted to argue that, in his opinion, Susan’s singing in Citizen Kane was pretty good. I had to shoot him down on that one. Failing to hit a note is failing to hit a note. Bad animation is bad animation. But the impact of that detail becomes subjective when you incorporate it into an overall evaluation of the piece.
I have had to cover some pretty awful scripts over the years. A few were even morally offensive to me. I can’t bring myself to say that any were objectively bad. That gets into audience reaction, demographics, synergy, and all sorts of other nonsense that I have a hunch we’ll be able to talk about some other time on some better show (that involves some fighting over some cup).
Maybe I’m just quibbling because I don’t want to go back to work.
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I am right with you on the show having average writing, animation, and characters but i think there’s something about the prospect of the story that has hooked anime viewers. I think the idea about the princess who has to fight for her kingdom gives off an air of epic fantasy that has people enthralled by the anime regardless of the fact that, at least in my opinion, none of the story-telling mechanics are particularly excelling. The show aint bad at all, it’s just very average. I guess the fact that the show hasnt really committed any crimes and it has the potential to evolve into a epic fantasy is why viewers are really digging it
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that’s a legit explanation, honestly. “it’s from a genre that people are drawn to, there isn’t any competition in that genre this season (unless you count the Mecha/Boob/Murder bag that is Cross Ange) and it hasn’t done anything terrible.”
I’m still confused why it’s rated really high but, as a reason to want to watch the show, I appreciate and understand this as feedback ;)
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ooooh my god xD that last paragraph had me in tears xDDD i finished series to see what all the hype was about and it does get slightly better after this episode^^ some of the challenges yona is forced to face and also some other choice decisions other characters make really do a good job of character building and explaining everyone’s motivations. i will say though that i still am not a fan of the audio in this series and the overall editing. the openings completely spoiled the surprise of all the dragons and i can confidently say that the openings are probably the most boring openings i have ever seen in anime. the drama could have been more intense and clever in its delivery but was executed poorly and made it hard to feel emotionally invested for the majority of the series and the humor missed more than it hit. this series could have been much better but was still moderately enjoyable if you have the patience to ride it out until the end. and speaking of the end, it was really rushed in the last episode and left a huge cliffhanger.
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