Onyx Equinox an original animated series from Crunchyroll

Two days ago, Sony (FU Ni’s parent company) bought the entirety of Ellation from Warner Media for roughly $1.2 billion. That includes Crunchyroll, Otter Media, and the distribution arm handling the original productions. The deal was done to give Sony control of the US anime market (them and Netflix now own the lion’s share of the stuff as far as domestic distribution goes) but that probably means Crunchyroll’s attempts to make non-Japanese animation are pretty much over and done with.

So this show is toast already?

I don’t know. It depends on if Sony decides keeping the Originals around is worth the effort. The purchase was done to control anime, and having non-anime around is viewed as counterproductive (as opposed to when under Warner, where creating original programming was meant to be a way to compete with Netflix originals and the growing adult animation demand).

Edited by Beatman1 on Dec 11th 2020 at 9:22:36 AM

Why does it matter so much whether or not it is anime? Do people really care that much?

I'm guessing because of the Animation Age Ghetto , where the most thick minded people think that all western animation is for kids and anime is more for adults. It's especially the case in America.

Production-wise, it didn’t matter when Crunchyroll had an internal studio and wanted to make original shows to bolster their content against competitors diving into the same pool. Now, it’s a case of Sony possibly going “we use FU Ni as a licensing arm to get stuff from an existing pool of studios. We don’t want to do the grunt work on our dollar.” If this was just a licensed show Crunchyroll picked up regardless of origin, this probably wouldn’t be an issue.

This is probably the reason Netflix labels all their adult cartoons that aren’t comedies as anime.

Edited by Beatman1 on Dec 11th 2020 at 9:44:53 AM

So what do you think its chances are? How well has the show been doing to this point?

Given its content, I don't see Sony marketing it to kids, so it would need to find a substantial adult audience.

That leads to another question. Since Sony is a Japanese company, should we really be filing this in the "Western Animation" namespace?

It was still produced in the West. Western writers, western animators, etc.

The distinction seems increasingly arbitrary, to be honest.

Trying to place it as such in advertising is something else this show has in common with Blood of Zeus. Reluctant heroes that have some manner of Cosmic Plaything in their lives thrown into a world of gods and monsters drawing upon various mythologies. Not to mention the liberal use of violence to distinguish itself.

These Crunchyroll guys are good: on every anime season there is exactly one show that makes me not unsuscribe. These days, Onyx Equinox is that one.

(I will see how it works with the acquisition).

Newest episode is probably my favorite. It actually brings back the girl from the show's very first scene, the twins weren't as overbearing, and Yaotl had some interesting stuff going on. I also liked that the kids actually had to close the gate and save the day by themselves instead of having Yaotl do all the work like he did the past two episodes.

At least in my opinion this show is much better than Blood of Zeus.

And something that called my attention is how good the music is. Normally, western-made animated series tend to suck on the OST, since it's normally the last thing they put any effort on it.

For Americans and Europeans, maybe this show could be a somewhat more shocking than usual. For us Mexicans, while I agree the show is quite violent, at least they aren't trying to sanitize Mesoamerican mythology for the sake of American viewers, and that's really something worth prasing.

Edited by luisedgarf on Dec 13th 2020 at 12:25:57 PM

Maybe, but that raises the question of whether it should be sanitized at all. Human sacrifice isn't exactly defensible. No amount of cultural sensitivity and nuance is going to make that okay.

This is a good show artistically, but I'm not so sure about its story, mainly because the human sacrifice is put front and centre. Who are we supposed to root for in this story? There are three sides in the celestial conflict, I think, so which god should we side with? Clearly not the god of the dead, who is pulling entire cities to hell to keep all the blood for himself. What about the other two? Well, they are making a bet over the fate of humanity, demanding that the protagonist closes off the underworld, with the ultimate goal being... keeping all the blood sacrifices for themselves. Okay. So we are rooting for the lesser of two evils, at best. The gods are jerks at best, and monsters at worst, treating humans like little more than walking blood bags. They're basically vampires. Possessing humans and burning them up from the inside does not exactly help this image. It is not really clear to me why they would even need to. What, the gods can't talk to each other without possessing a human? That seems a bit odd to me.

So what about the humans? Well, they are the ones practising human sacrifice, which is again a rather hard sell. You can talk about the nobility of sacrificing yourself for your people, or doing it voluntary all you want, it's still a rather nasty practice. The nobility of human sacrifice really only works when it actually works, and that's not really a fair proposition in a cartoon where the gods are unquestionably real and powerful. In real life, as far as we know, human sacrifice does not work, so the noble sacrifice thing is rather moot. As for "voluntary" sacrifices, you really have to question how voluntary that really is. There are a thousand ways to manipulate and brainwash people into volunteering their lives. Suggesting the destruction of their society if they don't is just one. Picking a family member to sacrifice is another.

And that brings us to our protagonists. Clearly we are supposed to root for Izel, who goes to the trauma of having his sister volunteer as human sacrifice. And again the nobility of this act is rather questionable. It is a rather cruel choice, after all: let your brother be sacrificed, or sacrifice yourself for his life. The sacrifice itself is particularly cruel and brutal, and it is easy to see why Izel would hate humanity for it. So we are clearly rooting for the guy. But what exactly are we rooting for? We can't exactly expect to root for Izel accepting the role of human sacrifice in his society. That would be rather too much Values Dissonance to swallow. So then the only option left is for Izel to reject his culture as evil. And that's not exactly going to sit well for cultural representation.

And, well, that's the other central problem. It is hard to celebrate a culture that practices human sacrifice. We consider hunan sacrifice evil, and for good reason I think, and we consider people who sacrifice others to be evil and monstrous. Your gods can be ever so cool, but they still drink the blood of humans for sustenance and burn them up just to communicate with each other. These gods are monsters. It would take very little to depict them as eldritch horrors, because frankly, they are already there.

And yes, I feel rather sorry for Mexican people having to deal with this as their cultural heritage. It must be hard celebrating your mythology when that involves blood drinking gods. And Christians think Old Testament God was problematic...

Uuuuuuuuuhh...... You do realize that you shouldn't presume what other people feel? That post came across as really self righteous and disrespectful right in the end.

I have no clue what Mexican people think of their culture heritage, Aztec empire WAS incredibly brutal and hated by their neighbors But core philosophy of Aztec mythology wasn't that gods demand sacrifice, but that gods literally NEED the sacrifice or the world ends(well okay Quetzalcoatl didn't demand human sacrifices, but I don't remember all the details).

Like best I have heard it explained that religion is method to explain the reality and Aztec mythology's purpose is to explain why the world is such a brutal place where death comes easy without warning

And also again, you are telling someone from Mexico that their people should be pitied for having awful cultural heritage when they just said show should be praised for not making their heritage palatable to western tastes

Edited by SpookyMask on Dec 14th 2020 at 12:56:37 PM

That's not quite what I meant, I'm sorry if I offended anyone.

And are you saying this show is more palatable to Mexicans? Now I am getting worried.

Edited by Redmess on Dec 14th 2020 at 12:00:51 PM

I already said that I have no clue on that For all I know the reaction could be something similar to how most people seem to view vikings. Aka ignore the part its real horrible thing that happened and go for the coolness factor :p That or they could agree with you. *shrugs*

Edited by SpookyMask on Dec 14th 2020 at 1:55:43 PM

Quetzalcoaltl confuses me in this story. It makes the common mistake having him need sacrifices like the other gods when he was the only one who didn't need them yet many of the other facts and character are accurate to the Aztec myths so they should have known about this.

I'm guessing this is more notable since the show's creator (Sofia Alexander) is a Mexican American woman. In guessing she went for Artistic License.

My guess is that at one point, Izel will bring Quetzalcoatl around on the whole human sacrifice thing, providing somewhat of a backstory for the god.

I can't help feel slightly conflicted about liking this show. And I haven't even talked about Lord Edgesword yet.

Edited by Redmess on Dec 14th 2020 at 3:18:30 PM

I do think that characters are pretty unlikeable overall in first three episodes at least.

But yeah, on sidenote, what is up with every western adult animation needing lot of swearing?

I was referring to that sword, which I have dubbed Lord Edgesword, because man, that thing is edgy as hell.

It's a sword that powers up by feeding on your blood. And not just a drop, either, you have to bleed for the thing. And it talks too, telling you to let it bite you, and then it bites you hard enough to make you gush blood.

This. This thing is the edgiest goth sword I've ever seen. A sword that drinks your actual blood for power. No angsty edgelord goth teen would be seen without it, once known.

That part is great. My gothic heart loves it. It is hilariously dark.

But man, they couldn't have given the thing to a worse character. A freshly traumatized, suicidal preteen who has just lost all faith in humanity and the will to live altogether. And now he has a sword that he needs to actively make himself bleed on to even use. It's basically a sword that runs on self-harm, and giving that to a suicidal child is deeply, deeply disturbing. That is some major squick Unfortunate Implications right there. Who thought that was a good idea?

I sure hope he doesn't have to bleed on the thing every episode.

I think Shinobi (2002) has a sword that acted similarly.

Swearing and blood are basically this show's way of fighting from underneath, so to speak. The animation style already has people going “Avatar clone” so blood and foul language helps put distance from that.