High Guardian Spice

Well they definitely pushed the show away from the forefront of Ellation advertising if their panel at NYCC was any indication.

Again, with the obviously rising revenue they're gathering from subscriptions and client budgets, you would think Crunchyroll can afford to hire people who are actually experienced in marketing your original series.

I'm pretty certain what happened was they wanted to talk about Ellation at the expo, but thought it would be weird to not have any shows attached to it. So they decided to announce the one that was closest to being done, and asked them to put together something resembling a trailer. But now that the HGS isn't immediately upcoming they don't see a reason to actively work on marketing it for a while yet

Edited by Hylarn on Oct 7th 2018 at 9:03:20 AM

The way it came off was "Ellation Studios featuring shows like High Guardian Spice" during the very brief intro for it, as opposed to "High Guardian Spice, coming soon and we're proud of it.". The focus was on their demo reel, rather than anything specific.

BTW, for what it's worth, the Ellation portion of the panel did not get a big response. The crowd actually popped bigger for Gary and His Demons, which was shown to demonstrate what VRV was doing. Keeping in mind this was an anime panel, I'm actually pleasantly surprised that the crowd was pretty into the VRV offerings judging by their reaction. Ellation not so much.

Edited by Beatman1 on Oct 7th 2018 at 12:31:31 PM

Found this thread after watching video about anime and how it's defined. Was looking for HGS page, but alas there is not one yet. But this thread had discussion about definition of anime and figured the video would fit right in.

Summary please?

And don't say its in the title

But... that's it. He talks about how term 'anime' is defined and concludes that it's a brand nowadays. He also touches on HGS controversy and comparest it with Castlevania series. And no, he doesn't talk about social justice stuff.

The tl;dw watch version is that High Guardian Spice doesn't feel at all like anime, thus it doesn't fit in with Crunchyroll's MO as an anime platform or appeal to its main audience. Gigguk also points out that it (probably) wouldn't have attracted as much controversy if it was a Netflix original.

Edited by Karxrida on Mar 9th 2019 at 10:59:47 AM

Does this thing even exist still? It showed up, caused a ton of controversy by its mere mention, and then vanished. For bonus points, everyone who attacked CR over what was admittedly a really bad idea to make their flagship original program IMMEDIATELY went and defended them over the freakout that followed The Rising Of The Shield Hero. It was hilarious, well that and it proved Crunchyroll’s only true loyalty was to the almighty dollar.

Edited by Beatman1 on Mar 9th 2019 at 2:58:56 PM

Feels like they announced just after they started working, to be honest.

Well, then Gigguk's point is true. Anime's definition is now a BRAND, which means CR knows how to control their customers support after a debacle like that by strengthening the BRAND of their further acquisitions.

Edited by kyun on Mar 9th 2019 at 4:13:21 AM

If this show is still in production, it's gonna be fucking awkward as hell given the MASSIVE push they've given Shield Hero and it's rather problematic issues.

Shield Hero was also a huge success, while the announcement of HGS’s existence had people going to cancel their CR and VRV subscriptions, subscriptions that got renewed when Shield Hero came out. You gotta go with the girl that bought you.

The cartoon missed its due date of May 2019, but a June tweet mentioned that the theme song has been mixed.

If I had to guess, I would wager the next time news on this show will break at the Crunchyroll Expo, which is at the end of August 2019, although there’s no news about any staff attending as of yet. Still three weeks though, plenty of time.

Bear in mind the studio making this show, Ellation, was founded by Crunchyroll just before AT&T took over and began to dramatically streamline and cut the excess of the Time Warner empire (a sharp contrast to the previous owners, who encouraged intra-company rivalries). They also consider Crunchyroll a major part of their offerings since the upcoming Netflix killer HBO MAX has a Crunchyroll section as part of its offerings. What this means for Ellation is anyone’s guess at this point.

Having read through this thread after it popped to the top of the forum....

Does anyone actually know what this show is about? All I see is (a) complaining that being on Crunchyroll is displacing some "real" anime, and (b) something something SJW something.

It's basically standard fantasy high school stuff.

The trailer pitch was that it was going to be about four girls who go to a school to become Guardians. That is all we know from a plot perspective. There’s four girls, the Theme Naming is done around spices (hence the title), a few pieces of concept art including the title, and that’s all we have to go on. No casting announcements, no character descriptions, no updated ETA for release, etc.

I could've sworn we got descriptions of the characters, albeit the "bare basics" kind.

Actually, the only video we got about HGS was more about buttering up the diversity of the writing crew than the show itself. Which, the more I think about it, the more I'm a little miffed that they barely dedicated time for the very show they were advertising.

I mean, guys? You want the writing team to be diverse, that's 110% fine, but it shouldn't be at the expense of your project. Mighty No. 9 had a lot of good things going on based on the crew's pedigree, but the final product turned out less than great no thanks to behind-the-scenes drama.

For reference, the original trailer debuted in August 22, 2018. We’re approaching the one year anniversary and that trailer where they use diversity as their primary selling point is the only real piece of advertisement seen. Every other time it’s mentioned online, it’s when Crunchyroll releases an anime with controversy and it serves as a phantom boogeyman to drive the views of those shows (and considering how popular The Rising Of The Shield Hero became, it worked flawlessly).

Raye Rodriguez (the original creator) is still promoting the show, still saying it’s going to happen, but until we actually see it, we cannot say anything positive or negative about it.

I don't know if the show is Magical Girl-esque or Cute Witch-esque. Apparently it's based on a webcomic too?

It's apparently been taken down, so if anyone could share the premise with some detail, it'd be nice.

The setting is one of those standard JRPG worlds, where there is a high school where people can learn to become Guardians, which is basically magical warriors of some sort. The show follow four (five?) students with names like Thyme and Rosemary of said school as they go on wacky adventures.

Like, that's it. That's everything we know about it.

So it's like RWBY but with a larger focus on diversity.

Doubtful.