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tsob posted:So can you explain what the problem is (as opposed to just saying it's a problem and then not illustrating why) so that I may be able to get past it, because right now I think it's just bad writing on the part of the team muddling the point they were trying to get across and making a character look worse than they intended her to. Calling a women a "oval office" and "bitch" because she gave her younger brother some life advice is not a healthy reaction.
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Oct 23, 2013 16:12
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So like, we're not going to go into the part where we just outright dragged misogynist slurs into this conversation about the socioeconomic ethics of being a fruit samurai in a childrens show. It comes down to the Spiderman thing again. Like, your labour is supposed to benefit society. The value you generate is supposed to be for everyone, and yes, working at a grocery store, helping people get food is more ethical than say, being a street performer. And Kouta's not even doing that much, he's showboating his fancy armour, while he's claiming to be an adult, a 'new man', by beating up people he's claimed to leave behind as children. He's playing with toys. Kouta's sister doesn't just want him to earn money, she wants him to act like a loving adult, and this catches up with him in the episode, because it's his showboating and grandstanding that escalates the Inves game into the Rider War. It's much like how Spiderman's wrestling led to Uncle Ben being killed, except in this case what Kouta has done is completely undone the fabric of his subculture. Remember in Japanese society, family and society come before literally everything else. As far as the rankings thing, it's shown that the people watching the streams vote on what team they LIKE, street dancing was just the primary way to do this before the Inves Game came into full swing. Even though everyone's bad at dancing, it's secondary even now to how good they are at the Inves game. Remember in the first episode, people aren't voting that Baron were good dancers, they were voting that Baron beat the crap out of Gaim at the Inves game, and Team Gaim embarrassed themselves by dropping the lock. We've entered the setting at the time where the actual street dancing is actually phasing out of popularity due to the increasing number of Lock Seeds being peddled.
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Oct 23, 2013 16:12
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HKR posted:Calling a women a "oval office" and "bitch" because she gave her younger brother some life advice is not a healthy reaction. As far as I'm aware those words have an in-built reference to women. I'd have used bastard or dick if a man had said it. Apparently you only read those words and not the actual content or why I had a problem with what the person in question said though. Rei_ posted:Like, your labour is supposed to benefit society. No, it isn't. Your labor is only really supposed to support your lifestyle, and maybe that of your partner or family as well. Your friends if you're really lucky. No-one, anywhere, ever, actually works for money for other people. People who work for others do it for charity, and those people are great people - but there is nothing wrong with what Kouta is doing outside of perhaps his attitude regarding it.
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Oct 23, 2013 16:16
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tsob posted:As far as I'm aware those words have an in-built reference to women. I'd have used bastard or dick if a man had said it. Apparently you only read those words and not the actual content or why I had a problem with what the person in question said though. Yes because generally anyone who throws out those words about a person/character they don't like doesn't have an opinion worth reading.
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Oct 23, 2013 16:18
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Saying that street performing benefits nobody but the performer doesn't really make sense though...actors, musicians, dancers, etc all perform using their skills to entertain others. While Kouta is showboating and grandstanding, he's doing so to entertain a crowd and to benefit Team Gaim. Yes, he's deriving personal satisfaction from it, but it's not this huge selfish act.
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Oct 23, 2013 16:21
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Let's also realize if this show wasn't aimed at kids the gangs wouldn't be dancing Pokemon fighters, they'd be violent thugs doing bad things. The sister's speech comes from that universe, which is why it seems like an over-reaction.
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Oct 23, 2013 16:24
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Yea, it wasn't his showboating that escalated street dancing through pokemon battles in to a war. That was Ygdrassil deliberately pushing people to fight, even rewarding them for doing so. Kouta is part of it, but his attitude has nothing to do with why it happened.
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Oct 23, 2013 16:24
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You guys are kind of uncomfortably reminding me of dumbasses in 4chan Gargantia threads calling Bellows a bitch for telling Ledo that he shouldn't escalate conflict and taking that to mean "murder is wrong we should just let pirates pillage and rape us". Please stop being awful.
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Oct 23, 2013 16:34
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I don't really know if you can even consider participation in the Inves Game a "job" at all, seeing as they flat out said in the dialogue that they only gave out prize money for it just recently. Like, there's no evidence that this is a sustainable income at all at this point. I honestly don't think Kouta's sister was telling him that real jobs only = jobs with the purpose of making other people happy, just that jobs have that effect regardless of your reasoning for having it. There's also the context of Gaim as being a sort of coming-of-age story for Kouta, as was discussed when the first episode came out, and I feel like a lot of responses to "what makes you an adult"/"what is a real job" are completely ignoring this. melodicwaffle fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Oct 23, 2013 |
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Oct 23, 2013 16:59
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Like I said. I see the point they wanted to raise, but either the writer or the translation did a pretty bad job at realizing it.
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Oct 23, 2013 17:01
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melodicwaffle posted:I honestly don't think Kouta's sister was telling him that real jobs only = jobs with the purpose of making other people happy, just that jobs have that effect regardless of your reasoning for having it. His job is making people happy though, both his team-mates and the people watching it for entertainment. And he gave up his other jobs because of the recent switch to rewarding people for participating. It wasn't just a case of coincidence or anything. Kouta's shown that he would continue working lovely jobs for money to help his sister if need be - he just has another option now thanks to the inves battles. That's why I said that I think her giving out to him about his attitude or saying they should save it would have made more sense in context of what's actually happening within the show. Saying that inves battles are a stand in for violent gangs is all well and good, but they're not actually violent gangs in-universe so having her give out about something that's not actually happening in show isn't really making the writing of the scene look better. melodicwaffle posted:There's also the context of Gaim as being a sort of coming-of-age story for Kouta, as was discussed when the first episode came out, and I feel like a lot of responses to "what makes you an adult"/"what is a real job" are completely ignoring this. Plenty of adults make their living by entertaining people. That doesn't give them a case of arrested development or mean that they'll never grow up. Kouta can still grow as a person while doing something like that and his sister is basically acting like his life should be defined by what job he works rather than the totality of his personality and the things he does, both professional and personal.
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Oct 23, 2013 17:06
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Burkion posted:Like I said. I see the point they wanted to raise, but either the writer or the translation did a pretty bad job at realizing it. Considering Aesir's tranlation efforts are usually top notch and this reeks of cultural differences, so I'd bet on the former rather than the latte. I wholeheartedly disagree with literally every word she spoke and think she's harshing on Kouta for very little reason - again, this is a lot like comparing someone to being a professional sports player or actor/musician. I know this is probably more to reinforce "HEY YOUNG JAPANESE KIDS REMEMBER TO BECOME A SALARYMAN AND NOTHING ELSE" but the scene is really heavy-handed and not really good. Again, like other people here, I see the point she was trying to make, that Kouta shouldn't be depending on the Inves Game, that he's showboating/got a huge ego and needs to learn to calm down and be more responsible, etc etc. But they way it was phrased in the context of the show is continuously baffling.
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Oct 23, 2013 17:28
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She's telling him that she's not going to take money that he made by being a loving gang member instead of working a real job, this is not hard to understand.
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Oct 23, 2013 17:57
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Dickeye posted:She's telling him that she's not going to take money that he made by being a loving gang member instead of working a real job, this is not hard to understand. The gang in question engages in acts of street dancing and holographic pokemon battling. Not exactly damning activities.
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Oct 23, 2013 18:04
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Please suspend your disbelief.
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Oct 23, 2013 18:09
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jivjov posted:The gang in question engages in acts of street dancing and holographic pokemon battling. Not exactly damning activities. Except that in this world where people wear fruit-based armor and street dance against the man, apparently that poo poo is frowned upon by Adults. If it wasn't a kids' show this would be the scene where she exclaims that she doesn't want his drug money.
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Oct 23, 2013 18:12
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Dickeye posted:Except that in this world where people wear fruit-based armor and street dance against the man, apparently that poo poo is frowned upon by Adults. If it wasn't a kids' show this would be the scene where she exclaims that she doesn't want his drug money. It is a kids show though, and he isn't peddling drugs or doing anything even close to as bad as it. I can understand that sentiment if this was W or Fourze, because the memory and switch users displayed addictive personalities and behavior while attacking strangers and doing other bad things. All Kouta's doing is dancing and enganging in fights against holographic creatures while hanging out in a social club. You can say it's supposed to be a metaphor for gang violence all you want, but it isn't a very good one if it is supposed to be one and seems much more comparable to say: dance groups or any other kind of club you want to name. There's nothing wrong with teens or even adults being part of a club - even competitive ones. In fact, doing so would usually be seen as a good, healthy thing. tsob fucked around with this message at 18:33 on Oct 23, 2013 |
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Oct 23, 2013 18:25
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She basically wants him to grow up from playing games and doing kids stuff like dancing on the street. He is confused about what to do and how to handle it.
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Oct 23, 2013 18:39
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tsob posted:It is a kids show though, and he isn't peddling drugs or doing anything even close to as bad as it. I can understand that sentiment if this was W or Fourze, because the memory and switch users displayed addictive personalities and behavior while attacking strangers and doing other bad things. All Kouta's doing is dancing and enganging in fights against holographic creatures while hanging out in a social club. You can say it's supposed to be a metaphor for gang violence all you want, but it isn't a very good one if it is supposed to be one and seems much more comparable to say: dance groups or any other kind of club you want to name. There's nothing wrong with teens or even adults being part of a club - even competitive ones. In fact, doing so would usually be seen as a good, healthy thing. It would seem more comparable to that if those clubs weren't also vying over territory. It's gangs. It's literally gangs. She's telling him to be a productive member of society and stop running around with a gang. RBX posted:She basically wants him to grow up from playing games and doing kids stuff like dancing on the street. He is confused about what to do and how to handle it. Also this.
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Oct 23, 2013 18:40
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Dickeye posted:It would seem more comparable to that if those clubs weren't also vying over territory. It's gangs. It's literally gangs. She's telling him to be a productive member of society and stop running around with a gang. Being "a gang" isn't necessarily a bad thing. Especially in a universe where gang turf wars are handled with dancing and pocket monsters rather and grafitti and switchblades or something.
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Oct 23, 2013 18:45
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Their "territory" is a few stages that no-one else uses or cares about. All it decides is how easy it is for people to view their dancing. They're not extorting or any in way hurting other people. If it's supposed to be an analogy to gangs then where is the harm they're causing a la the addiction in W/Fourze? Every interview with the production team has just reinforced that it's supposed to be viewed more as a harmless club activity and something adults view as a waste of time and the cast will grow out of. And Kouta has displayed a desire to grow up himself. He's worked dead end lovely jobs for weeks or months to help support himself and his sister apparently. Now he's found a way to both make more money and to have fun while doing so. It might be an unsound activity that could fall through and require saving just in case, but there is nothing wrong with what he's doing in and of itself. Only his attitude. We all know that the sister is trying to get him to grow up and act more adult like - it's just a really badly written scene if the translation is accurate because none of the words she's saying really fit in context. At least, they don't from our foreign point of view. And while I can understand that Japan has different cultural norms, everything I've read seems to indicate that the norms in question are not only a fairly awful thing to live with but that they're slowly killing Japanese society given declining birth rates, salarymen attitudes, "christmas cake" women and so on so I'm not really disposed to look favorably on or anyone espousing them regardless. tsob fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Oct 23, 2013 |
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Oct 23, 2013 18:47
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Also, Kouta didn't abandon a salaryman career to be a Armored Dancing Fruit Samurai. He was a fast food delivery boy and a painter. If Team Gaim activity stops paying the bills, he can go right back to doing various part-time oddjobs. He lost absolutely nothing of consequence.
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Oct 23, 2013 18:49
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jivjov posted:Also, Kouta didn't abandon a salaryman career to be a Armored Dancing Fruit Samurai. He was a fast food delivery boy and a painter. If Team Gaim activity stops paying the bills, he can go right back to doing various part-time oddjobs. He lost absolutely nothing of consequence. Believe it or not some part time jobs (or possible full time jobs) may actually ask for references. How do you think that will play out if Kouta gives a potential employer his previous employers' contact info and they come back saying "oh yeah, that's the guy who quit working to play at being an orange"?
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Oct 23, 2013 18:55
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jonjonaug posted:Believe it or not some part time jobs (or possible full time jobs) may actually ask for references. How do you think that will play out if Kouta gives a potential employer his previous employers' contact info and they come back saying "oh yeah, that's the guy who quit working to play at being an orange"? Not sure how it is in Japan, but in the US, you're not obligated to list everything you've ever done under work experience. Kouta could again get in at the ground floor of some part time job and be no worse off than he was before he became an Orangeman.
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Oct 23, 2013 19:01
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jivjov posted:grafitti and switchblades To be honest, I'd be all over a graffiti themed Rider.
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Oct 23, 2013 19:04
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If Team Gaim are making money, then they're a business/job as much as anything is and Ygdrassil are his employers. Pretty sure having a major company like that on your resume will look good, even if it's just being part of them as basically a sports player.Waffleman_ posted:To be honest, I'd be all over a graffiti themed Rider. Jet Set Rider would be cool by me too. I just want more Jet Set anything though - they were great games and had a fairly funky aesthetic as well.
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Oct 23, 2013 19:05
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Kinda off topic from the current argument, hope no one minds: I didn't catch this the first time I watched episode 3, but when I went back to watch the scene with Team Gaim vs. Team Raid Wild, I noticed that Kouta wasn't participating at all in the actual dancing—he was just sort of chilling on the sidelines watching. In a sense, you can say he joined back up with Team Gaim, but...not really. It doesn't really sit right with me that he's basically only making himself important during actual Inves fights, and was kinda irked when Mai basically pointed this out and everyone ignored her and told her to just chill. That being said though, I did enjoy "What's up, my men?!" Kouta's pretty adorable.
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Oct 23, 2013 19:19
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Well Mai's right, like, people are showing up to watch Bugman Cockfights and not the dancing. Kouta's enjoying his time in the limelight, look at the expression on his face when Baron transforms, he looks just utterly undone. Kaito's got a point, if he's going to show up and turn the Beat Rider scene from the Inves Game into whatever the hell it is he's doing now, he better either use it for something more than just entertaining people. Kaito, Mai, and his sister are all making the same point; he's a kid playing with toys for attention and easy cash, when he should be doing bigger and better things, whether that's helping people/being part of the team/gaining power. Kouta equates adulthood with financial independence and popularity, no matter how you earn it. Everyone around him is arguing that this is a hollow endeavour because it doesn't GO anywhere. It doesn't ultimately help the team, because he's making it all about him, he's not directly advancing his teams position, and he's not securing himself any kind of lasting independence.
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Oct 23, 2013 19:27
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Being able to come up with two months worth of rent off of a single prize reward seems like it'd be a good way to build a nest egg. It's implied that Kouta is wining fight after fight after fight. Until another Rider showed up, nothing was giving him any kind of challenge. As long as he's not squandering that money away as soon as he gets it, I think it's perfectly reasonable for Kouta to look at Invess prize money as a short term source of income.
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Oct 23, 2013 19:56
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I'm not going to say what I think should or shouldn't have been done on the plot side of things here, just note that I do understand what the intent was, just not the best way at all to go about it. I am curious what the purpose of staging the bike race is, what the purpose of forcing the two into the Inves dimension will be, because that was clearly the intention.
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Oct 23, 2013 19:58
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I'm pretty sure the speech by the sister is meant to be a catapult into him becoming a traditional hero eventually. Which he probably would have done regardless based on his personality. Nothing more, nothing less.
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Oct 23, 2013 20:35
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Is Kouta's sister gonna get Uncle Ben'd now? Because that was a "great power, great responsibility" moment.
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Oct 23, 2013 20:45
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Liar Lyre posted:Is Kouta's sister gonna get Uncle Ben'd now? Because that was a "great power, great responsibility" moment. Urobuchi is a known Spider-Man fan, I wouldn't be surprised.
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Oct 23, 2013 20:57
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jivjov posted:As long as he's not squandering that money away as soon as he gets it, I think it's perfectly reasonable for Kouta to look at Invess prize money as a short term source of income. You mean like immediately suggesting that they move into a larger apartment and chowing down on expensive foods?
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Oct 23, 2013 22:18
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AzraelNewtype posted:You mean like immediately suggesting that they move into a larger apartment and chowing down on expensive foods? Fair enough, but his first thought was just for the basic rent payment. He walked in with an envelope of cash, not a basket of fancy steaks and a lease on a new place.
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Oct 23, 2013 22:21
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Right, but if that was what she had complained about instead of saying "entertainment isn't a real job" I think her point would have been much more sympathetic. Also that whole speech is rich coming from a television show and bring given by an actress.
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Oct 23, 2013 22:22
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I'm not sure where the show is going. So, in one episode protagonist is all about "being responsible adult" and in the next he's like "screw that, I have a new cool toy now". Then there's that lecture from the sister and douchey "no fun allowed" students. Also I have no idea whether advertisements was part of the show or an actual commercial break which is pretty interesting. There's also that scene when the belt doesn't work on a girl which was sort of weird. Yeah, there's an explanation for it that has nothing to do with gender, but it was a bit cringey. It might be deliberate, though, but that's probably just me over-analyzing toy commercial for 4-12 year old boys.
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Oct 23, 2013 23:10
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rvm posted:Also I have no idea whether advertisements was part of the show or an actual commercial break which is pretty interesting. Those were just commercials. Sometimes if a commercial is funny or cool enough they leave it in and sub it.
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Oct 23, 2013 23:19
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Waffleman_ posted:Those were just commercials. Sometimes if a commercial is funny or cool enough they leave it in and sub it. Especially if the show goes out of its way to say something like "watch the climax after the commercials", as was the case here. The meta file for 1 introduced a commercial between the Gaim parts for similar reasons: that A-Part end practically begged to have a pause.
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Oct 23, 2013 23:26
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I just read it as him quitting his jobs so he can be a pro-gamer earning money from video game tournaments, which I feel is a better analogy than becoming an entertainer. Technically both professions have spectators, but one is obviously more respected than the other. It would be one thing if the dance crews were all backed by sponsors and was actually a professional business, but they're already established as anti-establishment gangs that a culture has built around rather than anything financially stable unlike any professional sports organizations or the entertainment industry. But yeah, obviously her lecture could have been better phrased.
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