High Guardian Spice

Alittle too much like LWA according to the Youtube comments.

People are already dismissing it as a samey RWBY/Owl House/ LWA clone that shouldnt be on Crunchyroll.

Edited by DeanCole on Aug 7th 2021 at 8:45:13 AM

owl house?

I see no owls in the trailer,none!

It looks like another dime-a-dozen girl-centric cartoon that takes its cues from a superior product. Honestly, its biggest sin is how bland and milquetoast it appears rather than anything else that's truly egregious.

If it wasn't on Crunchyroll it wouldn't have garnered a quarter of the controversy. I fully expect it to end up like Onyx Equinox, ignored by the majority of its userbase, dumped to the side one weekend, and forgotten.

Edited by Beatman1 on Aug 7th 2021 at 11:56:35 AM

Part of the problem though is that it's apparently been totally completed since 2019 and subject to constant release delays. If it had been released then, it would have come out after the first bit of She-Ra and would have beat Owl House to the punch. I honestly think it would have worked out better for Crunchyroll if they'd just released it when it was done instead of their actual approach, which just makes them look bad in multiple ways.

If they released it and it was a nothing of a show, people would have forgotten about it. But what they did instead was take a show created by a trans person, sit on it for at least a year and a half, look like they were giving in to the people who got angry about it, giving them more confidence in the future.

The distributor getting cold feet was an admitted prolonging of the problem. At that point, you either dump it, sell it off, or just air it and be done with it. Again, Onyx Equinox, no hype, proved unpopular, but rather than drag it out for years, they aired it, dumped it after a holiday, and pretend it never happened. But if you announce a product, you basically have two choices, air it, or bury it forever, and they went "we'll air it...eventually," which only served to make everyone involved look bad.

They should have stood behind their product, and if it flopped? Shows flop all the time. It's a numbers game in the streaming world. The worst that could happen is people don't watch it and you move on, rather than make this bizarre spectacle of it all.

Edited by Beatman1 on Aug 7th 2021 at 2:31:56 PM

Well, unless you are a Latino or Mexican...

Regarding that, I saw the trailer, and, while I agree it's not the most original thing of the world, at least the characters are cute and the animation is quite decent.

According to Crunchyroll themselves, Onyx Equinox also garnered a sizable interest in Japan, in terms of the platform's top streamed content.

Edited by XMenMutant22 on Aug 7th 2021 at 4:54:41 AM

I didnt know Crunnchyroll was available in Japan...

It is, but it has virtually nothing on it except RWBY and its originals.

x11 Kate Leth is only a staff writer. For all we know, she probably wrote only one episode, yet from the way the discourse is going, she single-handled created the series.

I'm probably the only of the few who is willing to give a chance to this show. Everyone else on my feed only seem to bash it nonstop.

Its like its got a very punchable face,if that makes sense

So far this is giving me some kiddy vibes. It seems out of place on a platform mainly geared towards older teens and adults.

Otherwise, if this was not advertised as a groundbreaking diverse show getting streamed on a anime streaming service, I would not care much about it. But the fact that CR is claiming a largely white, possibly cis female staff is somehow original and amazing is not getting me sold. Does not help matters that the “group of youngins going a special school for special people” has been done near constantly, only this time with a she-ra/TOH coat of paint in a basic magical Eurocentric setting.

Maybe I am just a jaded sapphic black woman but I just want to see more content made by largely POC/ black creators that is not by the numbers fake progressivism for white millennial activist. The fact that some circles I am in are lapping this stuff up without a second thought (even out of spite) makes me feel kinda alone in my thoughts on this.

Am I sounding too angry for this?

But who knows, maybe this might do a she-ra and subvert my expectations a bit?

Edited by Kappapeachie on Aug 9th 2021 at 2:28:12 AM

I'd say "annoyed and frustrated" more than angry. The fact that we can't watch it and form our own opinions doesn't really help alleviate such concerns/points/what have you. (Frankly, I find it bizarre that they're withholding the show despite it being complete. They should know that doing so is just going to make the initial backlash worse. Just launch it then let the internet do its thing: obsessively talk/argue about it for a day before forgetting it exists and moving on.)^* This is, of course, assuming the show is just average or somewhat good instead of fantastic or awful.

Honestly, the fact that the initial marketing focused more on diversity than the actual content of the narrative tells me that even the writers think the story is paint-by-numbers. And that they're hoping to draw eyes based on diversity alone.

In order to truly hook someone onto your story, you need to tell them about your story; what's the plot, the main characters, what are they fighting for and why, etc. True, there are people who will watch/read something simply because they want to support such endeavors, but the general public needs more to sink their teeth into before committing their time and money to a particular narrative.^* The last time I read a book just because it had representation- in this case, a lesbian couple with a family- I wound up reading about a group of clueless, unlikable parents. (And that's not even touching the portrayal of a gang rape survivor as a stuck-up hippie who cheats on her husband by seducing one of the other parents. Yeah.)

ETA: *posts this* *immediately realizes that this discussion might be more suited for different thread* ... Oops. :")

Edited by Oratel on Aug 9th 2021 at 1:53:09 PM

You're making the assumption that the showrunners and writers have complete control of the marketing, which is far from the case.

I mean of course they don't, that's on the PR and marketing department to sell a product to the general masses. Rarely do the creators in question have a say on it. The fact that everyone assumed kate leth was heading the project despite just being a writer shows how manipulative marketing was for it. It's like they wanted to riled up people for a few slapfights on the interwebs.

This is a trend I've been seeing as of late and i'm generally not jelling with it.

True; I forgot that they generally don't.

I don't think you can really blame marketing that much. Like, that first trailer was absolute crap at selling the show to audiences, don't get me wrong, but the video doesn't paint her as a major creative force, just as one of the writers. It doesn't try to hype things up as "Guess what, we've got Kate motherfuckin' Leth!" She even appears after someone who is explicitly labeled as the story editor.

Kate Leth is just the most immediately recognizable name out of all the people in that first video, so people were going to latch onto that whether she appeared for three seconds or the entire trailer. (For my part, I honestly completely forgot Kate Leth was even involved with HGS.)

It could be worse: Part of the reason why Onyx Equinox failed to made an impression, besides the content, is the fact many people felt the show was a Mexican show made for a Mexican and Latino audience, and created with American money. Considering the love/hate relationship between Mexico and the U.S. dating centuries, it's obvious why many people are wary of such attempts.

And the same goes for Cannon Busters and Yasuke: These were American animated shows created by an American and for an American audience, but made with Japanese money and resources.

Your post is amazing. I laughed a LOT. "Kate Motherfuckin' Leth" indeed.

I don't know, even with the Mexican showrunner and the focus on pre-Columbian Mesoamerican mythology, the show still felt like an American production, just like how any American production that handles Greek, Norse, Asian, etc. mythology doesn't mean it's exclusively aimed at those cultures.

I can't speak for the entire Mexican fanbase, but I always felt like the show resonated more strongly with them because it was a (relatively) high-budget production that took the mythology seriously.

and knowing chuds and their nonsense culture war theories, I wouldn't blame them on the mistake and i'm not really trying to sell that people assume she was the main force working on it, it was mainly because her general rep that everyone assumed it was the case despite contrary rebuttals to the idea.

I do apologize for that obvious mistake though.

The designs of the show were enough to get the torches and pitchforks out from the usual crowds, not helped by the all-too-common tactic of mixing in legitimate criticisms (yes, translators are underpaid and when your company is sold for $1.2 BILLION, they deserve a bigger piece of the pie) with nonsensical ramblings. Add in someone like Kate Leth and the outrage machine goes into overdrive.

All that being said, now that the Crunchyroll sale is complete, the Crunchyroll Originals are probably all going the way of Tokyopop style OEL manga. When you control that much of the market and you can be on the production committees (vs. the Netflix strategy of trying to circumvent them with money and a willingness to greenlight just about anything), there's no need to make original shows and run a studio, particularly given the rather poor reputation of the Original line.

I don’t even know who the fuck Kate Leth is. Who is she?

Edited by slimcoder on Aug 10th 2021 at 7:40:48 AM

It's probably going to be another magical girl friendship power show that's inoffensive and only garnered hatred because of the marketing and the fact that CR uses the subscription money to fund it.

I used to have faith in the project, but after several delays and EX-ARM, i don't think i can trust them anymore. Just sailing the high seas ever since.