Kemono Friends

Kaban is separated from her first and best friend, spends what's implied to be years looking for her, and at the end of the story Serval basically ditches her for her new friends. They even had the nerve to use Youkoso Japari Park e for that scene.

Considering Kaban is Tatsuki's original character it just reeks of pettiness. The Japanese audience seems to feel similarly, as that episode broke the record for most-disliked episode on Nicovideo, and apparently the first-week BD sales were only a little over 400, an over 99% decrease from Season 1.

It's just really sad to see what happened to this once promising and beautiful series, all because of Executive Meddling.

Honestly, as someone who hasn't watched season 2 yet and as someone who is on record as saying that the whole Tatsuki thing is stupid - it's not Kadokawa that ruined the series, it's the fans who haven't stopped yelling about the "controversy" since it broke and ensured that nothing could ever be said about the series again. I don't mean to come in super hot here and I don't mean to yell at you specifically, Uninstall, but there's a reason this thread has been dead. Japanese fans in particular are some of the most toxic and entitled fans I've ever encountered, and they've done more to kill this series than Kadokawa ever could.

Also, I haven't seen the last episode either, but is it so unbelievable that Serval could come home to Kaban after a separate adventure? Being together with someone doesn't mean you need to be with them 24/7.

Edited by RedSavant on Jun 11th 2019 at 8:47:44 AM

The thing is, it's not Tatsuki who has been acting insanely sketchy ever since the end of Season 1, it's Kadokawa.

We've had:

• Most people who aren't Kadokawa have come out and said that the reason why Tatsuki and Yaoyozuru were removed from the Kemono Friends 2 project (him producing Episode 12.1 "without permission" is bullshit considering the claims that Yaoyozuru was initially given the go-ahead to produce the shorts
• Kadokawa forcing the Kemono Friends voice actors to apologize for the controversy, literally hiding behind innocent seiyuu who had nothing to do with the incident.
• Kadokawa using audition scripts that Tatsuki wrote for the new season without paying him
• The director of Kemono Friends 2 acting extremely unprofessionally on Twitter concerning fans complaining about the second season, enough so to get sanctioned by Kadokawa. I understand that he was in an extremely unenviable position but he handled it in about the worst way he could
• Now there's a current controversy about the second season's BDs; they advertised that you could send in a card for a bonus disc but did not advertise that said bonus disc cost 1000 yen, which is illegal.

And honestly, I can't think of any explanation for breaking up two leads who had really great chemistry and a powerful established bond for no reason and then having one of them basically ditch the other at the end as anything other than cruel.

There was also a new infodump at an art show and much of it basically continues to shit on Kaban, including:

• The region that Kaban and Serval sailed to at the end of the first season was a lifeless wasteland infested by Ceruleans
• Human Friends are unstable and will eventually morph into the human they were spawned from, meaning that Kaban is going to eventually transform into Mirai with a Death of Personality
• If Kaban tries to reject this transformation then she'll cease to exist

Also besides Kyururu being received pretty poorly by many of the viewers, the revelation of Kyururu being male, and being meant to "connect all of the Friends retroactively takes the series in a rather uncomfortable direction, namely a quasi-harem anime.

Also hot take: graphics-wise, the second season looks worse than the first.

Basically, I don't think that it's really fair to pin this whole debacle on fan overreaction when it's clear to a lot of people that Tatsuki was done dirty. If it were really a vocal minority then the show would've still done very well since Kemono Friends is (was?) a hot commodity, but it didn't. Some people on the internet have tried to paint the big success of Tatsuki's new show, Kemurikusa, as obsessed fans trying to stick it to Kadokawa, but the show is legitimately very good and shows that Kemono Friends S1 was not a fluke.

Edited by Uninstall on Jun 11th 2019 at 10:06:32 AM

^Those are good points to make, and they're things I legitimately hadn't heard of; I've been staying away from circles discussing the show specifically because of the fan backlash. The industry politicking aside, I just find it hard to believe that they could have thrown together all of that specifically to shit on Tatsuki, or rather, the degree of pettiness it would take to do so is pretty staggering.

Overall, the whole thing sounds like a shitshow, and I don't know if anyone comes out of this looking good. I did consider giving Kemurikusa a shot, too, but it didn't really seem like anything special from the trailers... and the bits I heard about the male character really didn't sell me.

There is a lot of stuff flying around about exactly whose fault the whole ordeal is, but a lot of it is ultimately hearsay and rumors and probably won't ever be much more than that. Likewise there are rumors that Kadokawa tried really hard to get Yaoyozuru back on, but one or two powerful people blocked it. Again, rumors, and from what I've read Tatsuki just wants to move on from the whole mess.

My own personal theory of what happened was that since Kemono Friends was essentially a dead franchise before the anime, Tatsuki was essentially given close to full creative control, and once it turned out to be a red-hot property, Kadokawa wanted to take control back. And Japanese corporate culture is famously stubborn and obtuse. There honestly may be some bitterness and jealousy in there (espeically given the treatment of Kaban in Season 2), but it's smarter not to attribute to malice what can easily be explained by stupidity.

Also Wakaba (the male character in Kemurikusa) is definitely a hard sell early on, but the show is definitely worth the investment. At the very least it shows that Kemono Friends was not a fluke and that anything that Tatsuki touches will turn into gold, at least in the foreseeable future. It's just a real shame what happened to the Kemono Friends franchise, because it was such a great story of a doomed franchise rising from the ashes, and now anyone can see that it's irreversibly tarnished and it's momentum is dead.

Edited by Uninstall on Jun 11th 2019 at 12:37:35 PM

Kimura is also objectively worse as a director than Tatsuki. The callbacks to Season 1 aside, you can see frames trying to copy Tatsuki's style of zoomed out characters in high-detail backdrops, but they don't give the same level of information.

Come to think of it, are Dog and Amur Tiger the Designated Villain s?

Guys, have you heard that Kemono Friends is getting an English dub?

They're even putting up new narration from American wildlife services. Also never did see the show, so super looking forward to the dub.

The cast is absolutely huge. 46 actresses, only about 5 shared minor roles, and about 30 of those are completely fresh faces.

I'm really shocked that Discotek of all companies not only licensed the show, but are even commissioning their own original dub for it when they never dubbed anything themselves before. I'm really glad to see how far they've come as a company, and their dub for Kemono Friends looks like it'll be pretty good. I hope their release of the show is successful!

https://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-news/2019/08/21/kemono-friends-project-reveals-the-new-voice-of-fennec

We know the identity of Fennic's new VA. From what I can tell, she's something of a rookie to the VA business, although she's not totally inexperienced.

I found a link with photos of the voices actresses next to their character if anyone is interested.

Discotek is releasing the series on DVD and Blu-Ray! :D

Apparently, a blooper/outtake video was posted on You Tube recently. Check it out. It's hilarious!

Outtakes and jokes from the english dub, I get a silly smile on my face whenever I listen to it.

Looks like they had a lot of fun recording.

I've been checking out the music for this and it's fantastic. I really need to watch the series.

Just watched the first couple episodes. I LOVE this show already! <3

The show is definitely cute. And the bloopers are comedy gold. The English dub is also very well done, IMHO.