Fractale

Just finished watching the first episode on Funimation's website. The inevitable Miyazaki comparisons are popping up on Twitter.

So far, it seems off to a good start, but not spectacular aside from one action scene. Solid ending hook, though. Nice worldbuilding, although little not already known from the promo materials and the manga. (Is that redundant?)

I'm keeping my eye on this.

Is this the thing that reminded people of a Tales Series game from the description?

edited 13th Jan '11 9:42:23 AM by Clarste

While they felt completely out of place, I loved the Team Rocket goons. So funny...

I'm... Confused.

Also, engrish outro is engrish.

"No, the Singularity will not happen. Computation is hard." -Happy Ent

I guess it is kind of Miyazaki-like.

Nice atmosphere...it's very calming.

Nothing new that wasn't in the preview chapters already, but I'm going to keep watching.

Tumblr here.

How come we don't have a page on it yet?

Fight smart, not fair.

Decent enough. Strongly reminiscent of Miyazaki, but that's hardly a bad thing

This show is like Castle In The Sky meets FLCL

It was a decent start, anyway. I'm glad I'm not the only one who was reminded of Team Rocket by the evil loli and her goons. There was some nice Scenery Porn in there that really makes me wish I'd found I high-def version.

I guess it is.

Why oh why is Noitamina killing itself? I can't believe this crap-show is airing on the same timeslot as Nodame Cantabile and Honey and Clover did.

Because they're intentionally airing a show you don't like to sully and violate the goodness and purity of the ones you do.

You can't even write racist abuse in excrement on somebody's car without the politically correct brigade jumping down your throat!

The thing that annoys me the most is not the fact that I don't like it, but the fact that it is obviously not being aimed at the demographic Noitamina was always aimed at. They'll kill a perfectly fine timeslot by chasing away the twenty-something-women viewers. Hopefully Hourou Musuko will save it, without Noitamina my anime-watching days will be over.

edited 17th Jan '11 7:49:32 AM by fanty

...Yeah, that's entirely reasonable, sorry about that.

You can't even write racist abuse in excrement on somebody's car without the politically correct brigade jumping down your throat!

Isn't Seinen a lot wider and more profitable demographic than Josei?

^When it comes to anime, aiming at men is definitely safer (I mean, 99% of anime is aimed at either men or boys, there HAS to be some reason for it). Josei manga is plenty profitable though.

edited 17th Jan '11 8:11:46 AM by fanty

We are talking about the same programming block that aired Eden Of The East, yes? (Also, what Japanese animation studio has a broader appeal than any of the rest? And what studio's output has Fractale been compared to most of the people who've seen it?)

Eden Of The East was pretty gender neutral, as far as I can remember.

I don't understand your other two questions...

You can't even write racist abuse in excrement on somebody's car without the politically correct brigade jumping down your throat!

Well, the mood of Fractale might change as more episodes are aired. It might become a new Naru Taru...? The first episode definitely comes off as a typical "boy meets a mysterious girl and there's nice scenery" show, but I don't think that means there's no way the entire show will be like that.

I think Shay Guy is saying that Ghibli (which almost everyone has said Fractale feels like) has a pretty wide ranging audience, rather than just being for kids, so although Fractale looks like it's not aimed at the josei audience, it might have an appeal there too. I'm not sure if I'm interpreting this correctly, though.

Tumblr here.

noitaminA was never a josei timeslot. It's about not airing typical otaku stuff

@Shay Guy: IIRC, Eden Of The East actually is considered josei.

I guess it is.

"Hey everybody! Let's change the main characters' hair and eye color after we even released the promotional artwork! It's a GOOD I-DE-A."

But seriously, this is looking promising.

Eden of the East was very josei. They even hired the author of Honey and Clover to do character designs! They obviously cared about the female audience.

Fractale's resemblance to Ghibli stuff is so extremely superficial, it surprises me that people are comparing the two. No matter how much I dislike Miyazaki's stuff, he's definitely much more imaginative than this. (To be fair, after I saw that girl flying on that thing I was all "LOL Nausicaa!", but that's about where all resemblance ends (unless you think that scenery porn is all that there is to Ghibli, in which case I beg to differ, regardless of how much that studio annoys me)). To me, it seems to be following the Magical Girlfriend tradition more than anything else, which is definitely not the favourite trope of the twenty-something-women audience.

Except that most of stuff they aired there was either very aimed at women or totally gender neutral. But yes, the most important thing is that none of it felt like the typical otaku stuff, and Fractale does look like otaku stuff (Let's not start arguing about that though).

edited 17th Jan '11 9:45:51 PM by fanty

To be sure. At its core, however, it's not a "typical" josei series by any means, drawing as much as it does on The Bourne Identity and the like. Hollywood conspiracy thrillers are enough of a "guy" thing that I wouldn't at all be surprised if EotE was more popular among men than women. The point is, though, noitaminA isn't just about josei stuff — Hataraki Man was serialized in Morning and Moyashimon in Evening, after all, and Hakaba Kitaro was originally a shonen manga. Wikipedia sez: "It was launched with the intention of expanding the target audience beyond the typical young male demographic." Women are a large part of that, of course, but it's not just an "anime for women" block.

Even if it is superficial, that doesn't mean it isn't there. A lot of Japanese viewers are going to make that connection upon their first look, and first impressions are very powerful.

I don't think so. For one thing, it's not set in present-day Japan. That severely limits the male-protagonist-as-audience-stand-in factor which is so central to the mahou kanojo genre; I can't think of any other shows in it that have a fantastical setting. I'm not sure how it fits in that genre any more than Castle In The Sky does. Who's the "girlfriend," anyway? Phryne? Nessa?

I'm going to have to take issue with both halves of this statement. First of all, Fractale is reasonably imaginative. It's all stuff that's been done before, but most of it is stuff that's done rarely. The 'boy meets a mysterious girl who ultimately leads him into adventure' is the only part that's especially cliched, and even that goes an unusual route by having her leave on her own

Second, Miyazaki's stuff isn't particularly creative except in the details, things like the soot-balls or the magicians turning into monsters. The actual stories are only a few steps away from being generic, but are told well

Again, Phryne leaves at the end of the episode. She's not really following the standard Magical Girlfriend path. And Nessa certainly isn't going to be one

Also again, twenty-something-women aren't actually noitaminA's target audience. While you're allowed to complain about something that was never aimed at you doing something you don't like, you're not supposed be self-righteous about it

They're a big part of it. The block debuted with Honey And Clover, then aired Paradise Kiss immediately following.