My heart goes out to all those suffering from High Guardian Spice brain rot disease. F in the chat for all the brave souls who watched the show Edit: so I’ve gotten like 30+ comments about madoka magica. For those of you wondering the reason I didn’t mention madoka magica is because I’ve never watched it and I didn’t feel like going through an entirely new show just to prove a point. I’m petty but not that petty
Children acting like sociopaths is completely normal. However the way the teachers are acting is the unforgivable part of dealing with tone. You can even have the jokiness with a character that's about to die who is generally joking, but when you do that it's supposed to be more strained and awkward than what they have. It's really weird that the only time High Guardian Spice manages to not be strain and awkward is the time where that is what is supposed to be the tone.
Reminds me of one of the teenage mutant ninja turtles movies (first live action one I think). Specifically the part where Leonardo was talking to Michelangelo about Splinter’s possible death while they wait for a pizza delivery, only for Mikey to end the conversation with “time’s up.” As if he wasn’t taking Leo seriously. We then later see Splinter’s spirit manifest to the turtles and Mikey’s basically bawling his eyes out. This showed that he was very likely distracting himself with his own humor because he couldn’t stomach even the thought of losing their father figure. This I thought was always an excellent method of using humor in a serious situation. They could have done something similar in HGS, as a character close to death jokes about it only as a front to hide their terror. Then they later show that same character suffering from PTSD, showing that their near death experience seriously traumatized them. This, of course, would have required effort and thought, and the only things the creators of HGS really care about is non-diverse diversity and ripping off anime that are actually good.
@@clydewill2340 Additionally, recovering from trauma is a character arc that requires a lot of tact and consistency; two things the writers just aren't capable of implementing in any acceptable way.
@@clydewill2340 and it fit with the characters, teenagers who are at a phase in their lives they realllllly don't want to confront such a brutal reality, so they fall back into joking and distracting themselves till confronted with the cold hard truth, at which point they DO become serious. The scene with them standing in front of the house before April and Casey and saying "We have to go back." is etched into my mind from watching it growing up.
@@benjaminbierley2074 yep. Main problem with entertainment (not specifically HGS) is that everything has been sanitized. No showing of cigarettes or alcohol, violence is toned down a lot, the younger children's shows are practically nonconfrontational about any serious matters (even Sesame Street dealt with the sensitive topic of death), and speaking of which, death isnt really much of a thing anymore. I remember the secret of NIMH with it's dark and brutal tones, and even The Land Before Time had Littlefoot's mother get injured AND die on screen! I'm not saying we need to go overboard with it, but kids do need to understand that these things exist
Invincible; Blending tone is like being a French chef. Flavours have their place in the sequence of a gastronomic experience, so- HGS; Todays pizza gets barbeque sauce! And pineapple! And chocolate! And dog shit! And Zinnia? Don't you want to stick around to hear what the quest is about? It's to whittle student numbers by about one fifth. Hooray!
You know, looking at the scene where the dragon breaks out of the healing water cave, it would have been SO easy for them to just have the place cave-in. we see the dragon ramming into the walls of the place before spotting the blocked door and going over to dig it out. literally just have that be the cause of the place collapsing. it's that easy. the whole place is made of crystals. I don't think anyone is gonna question whether or not a DRAGON could bring the place down. heck, it would even explain why the characters decided that jumping onto the back of a raging dragon was necessary to escape. all you need to do is add some falling rocks, shake the screen, and have a rock block the door after they narrowly escape on the back of the dragon. done. one of your many plot holes is (literally) sealed.
I don't think it is fair to compare it with Invincible. The series are aimed to a completely different audience group. In terms of manga and anime, Invincible is Seinan, while HGS is somewhere between Shojo and Shonen. You can actually compare it to king of Shonen - One Piece. OP is full of humor, and the main protagonist is kind of stupid "happy-go-lucky" character. But even so, when a serious fight begin, the mode stay consistently mature for as long as needed.
I am honestly surprised how little One Piece was brought up in the comments. Despite it having goody haha character interactions and literally cartoon logic fights, it is incredibly mature and can go incredibly dark without ever showing any deaths on screen. Hell, one of its main themes is the political power and how one can handle it. And this unique balance creates a unique experience, like, I can't really remember any other place where I've seen a completely incompetent villian being genuinely threatening, even terrifying to some degree
My question is, are there people who actually like this show? And what is it that they like about it!? The Tumblr art color palette, it checking woke boxes, or that it's writing appeals to their, "Lol, so random, I'm so quirky!" sense of humor.
Bleach kinda did that but in a good way, the episodes were always excellent and consistent but they were followed by a credits scene featuring "Happy People iz in da house".. Tragic story of betrayal and revenge immediately followed by HAPPY PEOPLE....
There's animated kids shows with mature scenes and themes. Adventure Time, Steven Universe, Gravity Falls, etc. I wish HGS took more inspiration from those types of shows to show different tones and mature (but not adult) scenes.
Other really great examples of correctly used tonal whiplash would be Madoka Magica and Ousama Ranking, which are also fun, cute shows that suddenly hit you with darkness, making them extremely memorable. Not only that, but the happy tone is usually representative of the character's naiveté and the violence is used to show that they've been foolish and are now out of their depth.
If they wanted to be a kid's thing with a dark edge than they really should've looked at classic fairy tales where people get baked into pies or shoved into ovens, among other things. There's an art to having the levity and comfort of childhood suddenly give way to life's realities and darker elements when the veil of protection or ignorance is ripped away. IMO if they really wanted to flip flop in a way that wouldn't constantly annoy then they should've made serious moments actually serious, made scenes dedicated to a singular tone, and colored future moments of levity with those experiences. But hey, just another drop in the bucket of problems in Spice.
Oh no, you've trained me. Rosemary asked what blood is and then started her next sentence "is-" and I kid you not, my brain said "is blood a food" before she could finish.
I actually really like the idea of death being so normalized that the teachers joke about how they send out child soldiers fully expecting them to die. But then there's moments where they actually care about human life despite acting damn-near sociopathic two minutes ago.
Exactly. You can have insanely psychotic world but you need to AT LEAST make them consitently so. Bonus points if it actually makes any degree of sense and doesn't spit in the face of everything required to maintain a functioning society. AKA doing nothing to avoid the death of children thus assuring you have no next generation. Sure it's "dark" but if that goes wrong too often you basically have no school as all the new students are dead.
Yeah. The episode with the dragon is probably the worst example of that. It's the only time in the entire show where Redbun shows anything even remotely resembling empathy.
Everything everyone's already said, and also the fact that something needs to be done with that concept. It can even just be used to support the tone of a different idea, but if it's never addressed and never used, it feels shallow and wasted potential at best, and unintentional at worst, like with HGS. That said, it is a really fun idea. I love when characters are allowed to be hypocritical or wrong because it builds up so much potential drama and there's also a good potential for introspection and development!
Funnily enough, even if you remove the 'kid show angle', the cave of death doesn't make sense. Real world militaries don't send their recruits into dangerous areas to train without more experienced troops paying attention to provide advice, correct mistakes, and intervene if safety is an issue. High Guardian Academy, here, is the same place that has a 'crying room' (implying it's a namby pamby school for delicate flowers), but also sends people who aren't even adults into a cave where even a warrior like Rosemary can get oofed. Despite having new magic, which can do anything, there isn't even a sign that the instructors know that a student is dying (implying either that they don't care OR that they haven't even tried). I can't really imagine military training without medics and/or corpsmen present. Forget tone, school policy ain't even making sense. Tone can't rest on a foundation that doesn't sit flat.
Personally, the more I see of this show the more I am reminded of Blackmist from My Best Friend is an Eldritch Horror. It did a few similar things: borderline abusive teachers, and underground death-lairs being the most of note. Not to mention full-contact fights, which HGS seems to lack. Spoiler, but the death-lair (HGS it's the cave, MBFiaEH it's a weird scaling RPG dungeon) isn't a first-mission type deal, it's part of the annual inter-school --fight club-- _magic tournament._ where you have to have a show of competence to be picked by your school in the first place IIRC (I think it's top-5 from each school makes it to the competition? I can't remember).
Crying room only makes sense if the teachers need the tears then. Probably where that psycho potions lady gets her poison or something. Not that the writers cared about making sense
Legit. These aren't Space Marine Aspirants, where not being physically fit enough may actually kill you upon ascension past the training, they're kids that are just fairly normal beings. Astartes are so brutal for a very good reason, and even some Chapters have a degree of oversight. For a less grimdark example, Jedi from StarWars. Certainly their training can be dangerous and even deadly but their oversight is amazing.
Yeah but most anime in general isn't realistic in that regard. Take Hunter x Hunter or Demon Slayer for example. The students are literally sent to a death zone as part of their training. Makes for good tension, if done right. But I agree for HGS it wouldn't work anyway. It should be more like My Hero Academia where the school actually cares about the students and doesn't want any of them to die.
I think another good show that does the tone right is Teen Titans. It was a show that was mostly light-hearted and about teenage super heroes fighting crime and actually growing as a result. But it wasn't afraid to get serious or dark. Nothing gorey or anything but it wasn't exactly all sunshine and rainbows throughout the entire series.
Writers need to understand that 'mature' doesn't equal bloody, gory, violent or sexual. It means to deal with serious issues and to be willing to have the characters suffer through grave consequences.
Teen Titan is so stupidly genius. They make Robin breath in space just because he is so pissed Starfire is marrying some guy. Then they have badass fight scene. And then they talk about Reven's fear and reslove to defy her destiny as a half-demon.
@@Endersoul-tx1of How Long is Forever? Haunted The Beast Within Only Human Spell Bound Troq Over Drive Apprentice Pt 2 After Shock Pt 2 Things Change Honestly there are probably a lot more but those are just a few that stick out to me that carry the more mature tones.
I was sure you were going to talk about Madoka Magica when you were talking about a light hearted series turning dark. Also now that I think about it, Rosemary kinda looks like bootleg Madoka
The twist hits hard the first time. And then it just gets worse and worse... then rebellion happens... gosh I need the new movie to come out faster. Cause rebellion pulls the twist twice and even knowing it from the series, it still hits.
If this show has any "positive impact", it would be the show case of what Not to do. "Today class, we will go over the importance of Tone, it can help find an audience for your project. This and many other reasons, are why this 'show' crashed and burned." Like studying historical disasters, to help architects remember to put in fire escapes in their plans.
Adventure Time. Steven Universe. Gravity Falls. Owl House. Slayers. Made in Abyss. RE: Zero. Lots and lots of animated series are full of tonal whiplashes, and people love it. I really wonder why it failed in this particular cartoon.
@@somsnosa5576 I think it is partly do to build up/foreshadowing Both Steven Universe and Adventure Time had sprinkles of darkness/mystery before the "big shift". Steven Universe had the mystery of an absence mother/aliens are always mysterious. The mother mystery was always at the core. Adventure Time had the theme song with imagery of atomic bombs. Plus most of the other examples you shared, the shows had an identity, High Guardian Spice never really had a solid frame of reference to what to expect.
@@AuroraPaintBrush4444 Or maybe it just didn't find its audience. For me, its identity was apparent from the start: it's Slayers meets Sailor Moon. A modern take on the old anime we saw back in the day on TV or VHS tapes, a mix of goofiness and sincerity. And I enjoyed it, because I pretty much got what I expected. Some cringy moments, some real tearjerkers. Some goofy puns and jokes, some honestly cool moments. Oh, except it also was super gay - something I really appreciate :) It's like slash fic writers were put into the actual writer positions, and... Well, did a serviceable job. Something that could get better if given a chance. Again, I don't want to over-praise HGS, but I think it doesn't deserve that much hate.
4:03 - Parsley: "Don't fret! Townsfolk always come out to freak out the first years." Wouldn't it make more sense for upperclassmen at High Guardian Academy to do this? Why are the townsfolk doing it instead? Oh, that's right. No upperclassmen actually exist...well, except for Slime Boy.
Dave: What’s a show that started out lighthearted, but then hit us with tonal whiplash in a way that helps to service the story? Me: Madoka Magica Dave: Invincible. Me: … Yeah, that too. Come to think of it, Madoka Magica literally has teen protagonists who go to school and fight evil monsters. And the protagonist has pink hair in pigtails. Hmmmm Raye do you have something to tell us?
something to tell us? other than making a cheap knock off magical girl show with whiplash tonal shifts so they can self insert themselves and indoctrinate young children into trans-sexuality even though in the context of the shows world changing gender is as easy as changing your pants???
@@Shiirow No-one is being indoctrinated you crybaby. This giant corporation is trying to pander to a minority demographic so that they can profit. Trans people by and large hate this show, so stop your bullshit.
Every magical girl show to ever exist. Suddenly killing off the main character(s) late in the show is a time-honored tradition of the genre, as is bringing them back somehow afterwards.
Another show that does this great is Madoka Magica, the first couple episodes have some moments of being unsettling, sure, but still plausibly for kids. Episode three, with a major character death, is the start of the shift in tone, going from a slightly eerie magical girl show, to a psychological horror.
And for a show that swings wildly between the two tones throughout the whole series, with expert care, you have Rozen Maiden. It's a masterpiece of "mood whiplash" where one second you have drama about clockwork dolls stuck in a fight to the death to become the perfect daughter for their "father" (evil wizard who created them) and the next, the dolls are childishly bickering about who ate the strawberry off of a cheesecake.
(LONG COMMENT INCOMING) Now, look, I wasn't on the production team either. I can't say exactly what went down, we don't know everything that happened, and I'm no professional (FAR from it, trust me), but I need to get this off my chest. No matter where I stand on the artistic scale, I can not excuse how horrible the writing is. Even knowing the production was a literal nightmare, and that Crunchyroll was mostly responsible for giving the team twigs for pillars. I get it. I do feel bad for the team. But I've been keeping one thing in mind since this started: Raye Rodriguez had been working on this since 2013. *2013.* The show got picked up in *2018.* You're telling me that in 5 years, he'd barely written a single script for his own passion project? Nothing? No rules for his world, no concept of what a Guardian is, nothing that's actually important? Sure, he had the basic idea, 4 girls going to a magical school and fighting this mysterious corruption, but, that's all I think he really had for the pitch. The plot. Not even the script, just the general idea. Like you've mentioned before, the team was storyboarding scenes before the scripts were even finished; they had nothing to go off of in the first place. The reason the continuity is so fucked is because there **was** none to begin with. Raye could-- no, *SHOULD* have come ready with a fully thought out story. This would've saved him so much trouble; the writing team would've actually had something to reference, he would have a legitimate reason to blame budget since CR probably would've rushed the team anyway, and if the show never got picked up in the first place, he could've just gone off on his own and made HGS an indie cartoon. He DID make an animated short with Rosemary. Again, I do feel bad for Raye in the sense that his dream project was crushed before it even started proper, but I'm not excusing the fact that he made a deliberate decision to sit around for half a decade doing nothing, hoping that someone would just pick him up out of the blue, and let his world fall into the hands of a company that barely had any competitive standing in the first place. Not to mention an inexperienced and underpaid team, who, now that I think about it, probably hated him, given what we know about a certain somebody who despises the male gender.
Now, I might be wrong here, but High Guardian Spice feels a lot like a back-burner project. From personal experience as a creative type, I have several different ideas and stories constantly floating around in my head. There are a few very big ones that are almost constantly being improved and written and built on. Trying to make the world make sense, the timeline consistent, the characters have proper writing and arcs, etc. The kinds of things that I want to be perfect and all thought through before I even start the actual drafts (RIP getting actually started let alone finished). Then there are ideas based off of fanfictions I was writing 10 years ago that are fun in concept but don't hold up over time and just kind of get filed away until someone digs them up like a time capsule. . .I think High Guardian Spice is the latter sort. Compared to other things Raye is currently working on, I think though this was "started in 2013" it hasn't been a primary focus, and likewise never got the kind of development attention you'd it WOULD from being "worked on for five years." For all I know Raye is just a trash writer, but even giving him the benefit of the doubt, I can't see this as a true "Passion Project." I just feels hollow and I'll bet money that it was just Raye grabbing at a chance to get SOMETHING fully produced and on Crunchyroll, so here's an old idea that can probably become SOMETHING and get my name out there! Just my thoughts.
"I do feel bad for Raye" Nah, you don't have to. He literally brought all of this backlash onto himself by being severely unprepared despite having HALF A DECADE to flesh out his so-called "passion project".
The amount of video essays you have managed to make about this trashfire is freaking impressive, by this point I wouldn't be surprised if you made a video about how the flora and fauna of hgs makes no sense or something
I think stories with colorful settings that harbor some serious tones are pretty interesting, provided that they pattern their moments right. Final Fantasy 9, Wind Waker, Super Paper Mario, Mother 3, Undertale/Deltarune, Bugsnax, pretty much the whole Kingdom Hearts series...just to name a few.
On the exact opposite hand, you have something like Stein's Gate where you have a generally dark show with fitting light-hearted elements, like how the main character calls himself a mad scientist like he's some kid playing pretend. Or if you want drastic and schizophrenic swings into both directions, Made in Abyss exists. Unlike HGS however, it uses it's tone properly, and leans into each swing rather than working against it. Most anime really are a show of "colorful settings that harbor some serious tones." Worldend deals with Death and sacrifice School-Live! (GakkouGurrashi!) deals with... various things (literally anything I say here is a spoiler. Just watch it, don't even look at any official artwork or summaries, just watch it blind) Land of the Lustrous (Houseki no Kuni) has elements of loss and self-harm Girl's Last Tour (Shōjo Shūmatsu Ryokō) has elements of existentialism and one's meaning in the universe. Flip Flappers deals with trust and betrayal. Kino's Journey (Kino no Tabi) is just dark at times, but reasonably so. For in the end, even in times of misery, there is joy to be had; and in times of joy, nothing is perfect.
I would also like to offer Kirby and Splatoon as examples of bright, colorful, happy series that have wild tonal shifts where the stakes ramp up and the world-building gets serious at choice moments. (Seems like Nintendo is pretty good at those, actually...)
Bug Fables is another example, and even Hollow Knight. Granted HK isn't super cheerful with the color pallette but the bugs are cute, yet the story is of a dying/dead Kingdom plagued by a mind consuming sickness which has taken over the majority of the population.
In terms of actual critique of the show; I personally think the show could have done a mix of happy go lucky and much darker tones, but didn’t have the pacing, nor the patience to transition fluidly between the tones. For an example, Steven Universe went from a boy discovering he can summon his mom’s shield by eating cookies to an intergalactic slaver empire attempting to torture said boy and his best friend by putting them in a dark tower with no food or water. However that tonal shift was gradual, and you can understand why the characters on screen feel the way they feel, what they’re feeling, and how you’re supposed to be feeling.
Ehmmm....... "Blue diamond how do you think Pink Quartzmond felt being shut in this tower? You are the big mean - oh my I'm so sorry I will cease my abusive behavior and completely go against the Nazi regime I helped build and enforce in this very picosecond"... Don't use Steven universe for standards of any quality, Please, the writing is garbage but it sure does know how to distract you away from it with the constant singing and art. I don't doubt people would genuinely think HGS is amazing and good if it had a good quality of everything But the writing... Edit: yes it did take time to go from small battles to space battles, but HOW it did take it's time and how it was executed is not entirely by merit. Do I have to mention the long ass Hiatuses with way too many episodes being fillers? Your entire statement is Very objectable, as in, it will fall apart. Just because SU took its sweet time to go from A to B doesnt mean it did so well.
@@uneterostardust8233 Steven Universe did better in the early parts, but once they go to space it's completely fucked. Sugar either didn't have a plan or didn't have someone proofread her first draft for her.
@@uneterostardust8233 You do make a good point. I agree Steven Universe was far from a perfect show, however I used it as an example because, as flawed as it was as I said you still understood how they got from point A to point B, even if it was somewhat...flawed, to put it in a word. And your filler episode point is valid, especially considering they put a wedding episode in the middle of two extraterrestrial giants invading. I suppose in Steven Universe's favor, it was coherent enough that at least as a kid I didn't find it so jarring it put me off the show. However I did watch Steven Universe when I was maybe 13 or 14(I don't remember exactly), so I'm probably giving more credit than is due to a show that doesn't necessarily deserve it. I also felt Steven Universe was a decent companion because it has a lot of similar problems to High Guardian Spice, it just did a better job of sweeping them under the rug so you wouldn't find them unless looking. I still personally think High Guardian Spice could have gradually or suddenly moved between tones, since they have a decent set up for it. And yes, if High Guardian Spice had more pleasing animation, music, or cinematography, I don't doubt people would be less critical of it either, even if it had the same writing and less story-boarders. I apologize for the long and wordiness.
I do agree but I wouldn't use Steven universe as an example. No offense but that show is a joke to me personally so I could never take it seriously I would however offer my own example........... teen titans. While yes irs mostly an action comedy, there are episodes where it gets super serious, dark and dreadful. As you said the show runners in that had the pacing and the patience to go there while still retaining that fun aspect. They also knew when to drop the jokes and when to bring them back. Otherwise great observation my guy
I don't understand why people laugh at Steven universe. Darker tone doesn't mean the show will become fir adults. Steven Universe always win with song and emotions. It's a show about hope, joy, being yourself, team work... So it's normal to not resolving anything by fighting. Steven universe is an excellent show who managed to be fluid in their evolution and staying in the same mindset.
i think a show that has a really good grasp of shifting ( yet consistant ) tones is spyxfamily, you have the sweetness of family bonding and the heaviness that comes with their jobs as spies. although these tones dont match with what i think would work with hgs, im still always impressed with how naturally the anime’s serious and lighthearted moments manage to flow.
Someone mentioned that without all the sweet moments and the comedy of SPY X FAMILY, it would have been a deeply depressing story of three extremely traumatized people being victimized by the horrors of war while having no ability to ever honestly confront their trauma, because they all have to live double lives.
I think (and I'm being pretty generous here) the tone HGS was going for in these scenes was more of a a dark comedy filled with irony and satire. However, that doesn't come across well at all when the rest of the show is *so* earnest. I absolutely think that a whole show, specifically written from Amerylis' perspective about this insane magic school where child endangerment is treated like a joke and no one acknowledges how crazy everything is, could be fun, but as it is, it just feels *wrong.*
Maybe it's just framed wrong. Changing the perspective that a story is told from and recontextualizing it can do a lot. But I seriously doubt that the creators would have nailed that either
I think you make a fair point. They're trying to have their cake and eat it by inserting earnest and serious moments whilst also making light of everything serious. They really needed to focus on one Hell i think this is basically Rick and Mortys tone with Morty in constant danger and confusion thats treated way too casually by their mentor
My issue with the headmistresses is that they are clearly by design inspired by the three fates( Clotho, Lachesis and Atrops) but they are not done right. They are supposed to be the guides for the students yet are wasted as exposition and "comic relief".
One kid show which has a really fucked up plot but still stayed "fun and happy" is Adventure Time. Spoilers ahead: The crazy and wacky world that we know is happend because of nuclear wars, Big bad evil guy (ice king) was struggling with serious mental illnesses, happy candy kingdom has a really dark past, humans traded their freedom in exchange for safety and despite all of these things Adventure time still (somehow) stayed a kids show. The tone can be childish but still have some adult aspects. I am not saying it is an easy thing to create a show like this or anyone was expecting this much quality from high guardian spice but still... The show didn't need to jump from death to jokes to tragedy to more jokes to....
It also deals with death in a way that doesn't traumatize kids but gives it the gravitas it deserves. One of the biggest themes in the show is about how time is cyclical and what once was fades away and turns into something else. It essentially tells children "you will die at some point, and what makes up your being will return to whence it came and turn into something new but beautiful all the same"
I think another great example of a show with violent moments that work is Powerpuff Girls. The original, not the 2016 ‘reboot’ and *CERTAINLY* not the CW reboot. Getting back on topic, one of the reasons why the violence in the original PPG works is because it was usually against villains or monsters, and because it was also due to the fact that the whole point of the show was it was basically little girls beating up monsters. That was one of the main jokes of the show! Oh, and there was also that one episode where an old ‘friend’ of the Professor’s tricked the girls into giving him Chemical X and used it to create knockoffs of the girls. Oh, yeah, and he turns into a giant monster at the end of the episode and NEARLY KILLS THE GIRLS.
So glad I found the original on Hulu!!! I was so happy! And literally the first episode I watched was the Professor’s old friend one! Yeah that episode is dark
At least for the cave episode, imo the tone would have worked much better if instead of the adults being like "Oh yeah there is definitely gonna be casualties LOL", they just wrote it straight like this was a simple training exercise (as long as you stayed in bounds). Still keep Zinnia's freakout and Amaryllis teasing her but have it be seen as just silly kid stuff (as long as you stayed in bounds) where it was supposed to be scary but not really dangerous (as long as you stayed in bounds). And then when something goes wrong or they go too deep and get trapped, Zinnia's freakout seems more justified.
The ending theme tonal whiplash could’ve EASILY be avoided. In animes that I’ve watched, when theres an extremely tense/scary/sad scene, they change the ending credits to something that fits the theme of the story better. I have not and will never fully watch this show, but I’ve seen enough to know it’s one of the greatest failures in all fantasy. It makes me feel better about my writing too!
Yeah even in a show like Amphibia, when you got that character death episode, the end credits was silent to just let it settle. It didn't go straight to the high energy outro like bang.
Seriously, it's not like it would even take that much effort. Literally just cut the audio out of the ending for that episode so you're just forced to sit in that moment. Also a really good example of the ending tweak is Hunter x Hunter, in Yorknew the episode that ends with the extreme violence of the Requiem for the Dead, instead of shifting to the normally hopeful upbeat ending it just lets the somber orchestral music continue to play throughout (and then has the comical tone-shift after credits with the Hunterpedia short but by that point its fine)
Even "one character has a reaction that makes sense" actually worked in Invader Zim because everyone other than Dib was constantly shown to be clueless.
@@TuesdaysArt No it's lyrical, just super bland and forgettable. The lyrics include: Friends for a lifetime, amazing adventures Finding who I am, you by my side and then Drinking hot cocoa, sharing our secrets Happy 'cause I'm with you
@@TuesdaysArt Yeah, that's what I'm talking about; there should be an instrumental version of the ending theme that plays if the episode ends on a heavy note so the cheesey lyrics don't ruin the energy. But also the opening has lyrics too and in my opinion it's worse then the ending: Fly true, become the light As we honor what's warm and bright Fly high, become the light Together we'll learn to fight
@@amandap7733 Oh yeah! I have auditory processing disorder so the lyrics of the opening theme blur into an audio blob and they're so vague/non-specific to the show that it's easy to forget. Thank you for reminding me!
This show feels like having someone bringing up some seriously dark traumatic shit in a casual joking manner, while everyone laughs it off because it's too awkward to go into seriously
I think Made in Abyss is a great example of using visual childishness to enhance thematic horror. It's so much more fucked up to see cute kids get tortured vs. some gruff 40 year old warrior. This show is like the opposite of that: instead of adding together to improve the experience, they subtract and make you wonder why they couldn't choose one or the other.
its not really whiplash, it does what his example did, take what is on the surface another generic magical girl show and does a 180. theres quite a few of them out there that make violent R-rated Magical girl shows. another one is Magical Girl Raising Project.
I kinda disagree. It comes off more like the writers could not write a more mature show or did not know how to. If they were told to make the show more mature, they should have taken more notes from Avatar or Avatar Korra, both of them being mature kid shows. Or taken notes from Magica Madoka. Another point to consider is were they actually blindsided by the request to make the show more mature. Instead, having no time to rewrite, they just inject cursing, alcohol, and blood.
Partly because most of the time good writing feels very natural and right, so it's more difficult to pinpoint what particularly works. Mistakes, though, do stand out, so there's more to observe and learn from. That said, it's good to have a couple good examples on hand for comparison.
"Let's make a kids show about four magical girls with a trans teacher and lesbian aunts!" "Yeah, but as our target audience isn't little kids here at CR. You want us to air it, throw in some F bombs and gore." "That'll be super easy, barely an inconvenience."
I think another good example is madoka magica. The whole Ed thing got me thinking of it before you went to an example. Madoka magica has 2 eds one you see for like 2 episodes and when the show changes you get hit with the 2nd ed that fits perfectly and wraps up perfectly where you are going now. Doesn't even come off too harsh since there are hints and the op's lines can tip you in.
To be honest? I don't think they wanted to make a children's show. I've noticed a slight trend of shows that are meant for adults but it's infantilized or 'uwu-fied'. Usually when kid's shows are made that are also mature, it's done a lot better than this. The other way around? Not so much.
Listening to how you describe HGS gave me an idea for an alternative story with a similar tone dissonance. (not a fix for HGS, just a different story) Protagonist goes to the magic school to learn how to fight demons. An incredibly important job, as the demons aren't just a threat to humanity at large, but also do so through terrifying means. The school is said to be an elite institution producing the best demon slayers in the world, accepting only few selected individuals. And indeed our protagonist, James, has went through a lot of training to get accepted. The other students are very friendly to him, they joke around a lot and in general don't treat anything seriusly. This attitude is maintained through some really sad conversations about the characters' backstories, which wierds James out a bit. When the class meets their first demon one of the students tries to show off, but gets easily defeated and then gets both his body and soul ra*ed. While our hero shakes uncontrollably, the jokes from the class don't stop. Demon gets defeated through strength in numbers as the class (excluding James) attack with a command from unconcerned teacher. After the lesson James goes to his room to calm down. When he meets other students, they (still in a friendly way) make fun of his fear. All of this culminates at the first exam, when the students are tasked to enter a shallow layer of hell. James enters with the others, but is terrified both of the hell itself and even more so, of the attitude of his fellow classmates. He manages to hold out for around five minutes, the time it took for the first demon to appear. He runs away to the normal world. He is then expeled from the institution for his cowardice. He then finally realises what is the school's method for combating demons, monsters that previously no knight or wizard could fight. Students are carefully selected but not based on their strength, in open combat he was stronger then any other student from the class. But faced with the horrors of hell, he couldn't exercise even half of his real might. So the school gathers psychopaths, people crazy enough to not care about things that happen around them. While at first many die of carelessness, they learn and graduates are fully equipped to destroy the enemies of mankind. Then, the story follow our hero as he doesn't give up on his dream. Using his fear to survive, he grows and learns how to kill first smaller hellspawn, then lesser demons and so on. Learning how to fight even when utterly terrified of the fiends, his bravery inspires other dropouts to join him on his hunt.
There is literally so much wrong with this show that every video I’ve seen of someone critiquing it has brought up a different reason why it’s bad it’s truly amazing
You know, having a joke or two during a serious scene can work...as long as you TREAT THE SCENE SERIOUSLY OTHERWISE. And, if it's a character who explicitly jokes to level the mood. (Like, if the point was to make Rosemary come across as Naive, or she's trying to get people not to worry).
I think a show can have an overall light hearted/silly tone and still handle serious situations, Danny Phantom is a pretty good example of that. It's literally a comedy most of the time but still has tension and action and literally revolves around death as a core concept. The issue it seems with HGS is that they dont allow tension to build and didn't know how to have action without it just being "blood" or death.
When you said that HGS fails where other shows have succeeded 100× over, I felt that so much. There are fanstasy/adventure shows I can think of that seems happy go lucky at first but end up becoming very dark and serious while still maintaining its whimsicality. Made In Abyss is a perfect example. Shit, even Avatar the Last Airbender too. Mind you, ATLA is an ACTUAL KID'S SHOW and they managed to make their TV-Y7 show leagues more mature than HGS with its PG-13 rating ever could. ATLA flawlessly tackled serious topics like colonization, war, genocide, violence, morality, discrimination, and more. Meanwhile HGS does everything so half-assed with tonal whiplash, as you said, and dialogue that seems ripped out of a 12-year-old's fanfic on Wattpad. No consistency whatsoever. What kills me about this show is not necessarily how bad it is, but how much wasted potential there is. I wouldn't consider myself the world's greatest storyteller (even though I do write as a hobby), but even I could do so much better than this. There's so many easy changes that could be made to the plot, the characters, and the dialogue that would make the show 10× better than what it currently is. And the fact that these changes are so easy but the original writers never made them, is what pisses me off. I've been watching all your HGS video essays and I 100% agree with your comments each and every time. So thank you so much for another great video.
Made in abyss is all about a child entering a horrible death cave with a 99% mortality rate, the only reason she gets anywhere is her virtually indestructible robot bodyguard. Even that isn't enough and she still almost dies.
It's also about obsession and the desire to go deeper and you start to feel it too, even when all hell breaks loose. And it combines with absolutely gorgeous visuals to really get you.
It's honestly amazing how different the approach to such quest as with the cave is different in Japanese/Korean/Chinese fantasy stories and HGS I've just read through one where a powerful warrior clan was testing their youngest generation, kids between ages 10 to 15. And they sent them to a labyrinth-like dungeon with traps, monsters and a boss monster inside. And you know what they did to ensure their safety? Gave them amulets that would automatically teleport them back outside when they would face a too dangerous situation, were too injured or even did not feel like continue and screamed for help. Meanwhile a powerful mage and the clan patriarch were watching these kids through magical means because they actually wanted to see how they actually fare Nothing like this is in HGS, there could literally be a team who just waits a little bit in the cave until some poor suckers come back with the healing waters and then they would snatch it from them
You know, the cave situation could have been fixed by adding two things. First with the teachers acting in a way more serious tone. I mean they no only not joking about that test, but even having another teacher who is a clairvoyant that can cast a spell where the teachers can see all that is happening in the cave all the time to watch for the students. Like some sort of camera system. And having Sexy Demon Teacher with her portal magic ready to pick up the students when things get out of hand. And second, later after the test the teachers could say to the students the test wasn't that hard from the beginning. That yeah, everyone was telling them it was dangerous, but that was a test by itself and there was no healing water, they only needed to pick any shiny water they come across and bring it to the teachers. After all, that cave we could say was a level 2 or 3 challenge, so no one was in real danger. We could even have a moment where Thyme breaks in tears because she believed there was real healing water there and do what she could have done from the beginning of her "arc", telling the teachers about the Fairy Wood problem. But hey, instead of that lets put some beginners with a highly dangerous quest for no good reason. Yeah, writting!
High Guardian Spice remains a series that, when it was pitched to executives, probably sounded groundbreaking and interesting yet...once green lighted, they discovered what looked good on paper, they had no real plans on how to do it. So, result is "winging it" with a step by step concept that one would expect if a group of teens got high and just threw out ideas.
Maybe if Zinnia was the main protagonist & the academy is supposed to be fucking bat-shit crazy than it would make sense why she would be the only one who's scared of dying in the cave, but noooooooooooooo she's the unREasonablE onE. Maybe if they knew how to satirize a kid show & turned it into a psychological horror than this show would make fucking sense.
Modoka Magica: Alright let's have a melancholic opening so the audience can be hinted to what's happening, and we'll switch the outro to something more darker when the big shocker happens. HGS: SUPER HAPPY HUGS TIME FEELS!
The scene with Caraway and the kids on the boat annoys me cos they clearly made Snap and Cal be in one boat to force tension and interaction. The configuration of the boats should be one boat with 4 kids and Caraway with the remaining 2, These are HIS students, he should be WITH them and not way in front where he is blankly staring ahead and not keeping an eye on them. No teachers allow their students to be behind them unless there is two teachers so one can take the back of the group. The least they could have done is have one of the girls share the boat with the boys so the numbers are even and you had someone to mitigate the fight or have Snaps back when Cal starts digging at him.
This is for the tone in the cave. I think the jokes could still work if they came from Thyme. Imagine if Thyme was established as a practitioner of medicine (so she can find a cure for the rot). Keep her cold nature toward the party. But when Rosemary starts to show fatigue from her injury, its Thyme who jokes back with a somber expression whilst trying to fix her wound. Sage and Parsley think she is opening up, Sage is starting to recover from a slight panic attack, but talks to them on the side saying how serious her injury is. Thyme could express that the jokes where to help Rosemary have a peaceful end and not have her fall in to despair. This, in my opinion, would work very well if set up right.
Mark: "used to know this guardian, she tried to show off by fighting a manticore all on her own. Manticore chewed her up so bad she ended up at a hospital in Pebble street" Johnny: Ahahahhaha! What a funny story mark
Wait wait you were showing the boats on the first part of the video and WHO IS STEERING THOSE BOATS, THE BOATS ARE MOVING LIKE THEY’RE ON A WATER RIDE WHY TF
I’m not trying to defend this shit show but they did show a clip of the boats being pushed forward by the teraspheres or whatever those things are called, too bad it’s inconsistent and doesn’t show up in some parts of the scene
@@redd3797 talking about the budget that Raye claimed he had lots of problem with, consistency shouldn’t cost that much money XD Although they seem to insinuate consistency can only be done with money lol
"You've heard the legends: All of Red Bud's clothes are from students who _plunged to their deaths!"_ A teenage girl going to a high fantasy military school with a strict uniform policy packed a 1920s-style wrap-robe-dress thing clearly cut for a tall, skinny old lady? And then wore it out on their field trip to a _miles-deep cavern system_ full of deadly monsters and dangerous pitfalls? Amaryllis is probably just trying to scare Zinnia here, I'll grant, but the director or the costume designer probably could've tried a little harder to put Red Bud in something that you could expect a student to wear for this exercise, especially if "the legends" are real rumors that people actually tell each other.
Even making her outfit appear like fragments of uniforms that were stitched together (with the optional washed out bloodstain) would've made it more tense.
O I can fix the cave scene. In the cave girls offen repeat it's some sort of exame, we're not in the danger. If something bad happenes, teachers will safe us. Meaby it's Sage who tells this bc she seems like the most reasonable. It can't be the death mission. But is we cry for help we'll be loosers and get bad grades. Teachers didn't tell about it but Sage's words are pretty logical. And in the end girls were trapped in the cave. They can't go away but they are calm. You know it's not a death mission. So they chat with each other, play games ect. But time passes and nobody came for them. And after it they started to get scared. And finally realised how shity there school is. Maybe after escaping the cave on there own they don't want to believe school teachers. That's why in carnaval episode girls told nobody about catgirl
High guardian spice is a reflection of its creators, one big identity crisis. Though I think if they had one giga Chad working on it, it could've been something great.
I saw a comment on another video about high Guardian spice, and to this day, I still fully agree with it. The characters being so onboard with sending children LITERAL CHILDREN to their sudden deaths could work if it showed how corrupt or how messed up the system or culture surrounding the Guardian occupation is. Show us that this shit is something normalised and that that's THE problem! It would at least make for a more compelling or impactful story.
The reason why the tone constantly changes between adult and childish is because the writers are all adults with the mentality of spoiled whiny children
Something that would of made the dragon episode better: Credits without Credits A lot of shows do this; where they don't want to interrupt the tone so they role the credits while the show is still playing without the outro song. Credits could have started rolling when Rose killed the dragon and there was an 'aftermath' scene. No sudden jump to outro, no happy music, just a slow and sombering credit roll over a depressing backstory. But I don't expect HGS to actually try xD
You can also have a neutral-sounding credits theme; a lot of anime have slow and melancholic themes that are *just* not depressing enough to clash with an upbeat episode either. See the endings of both Dai no Daiboken 91 and 2020, for instance.
They could have just ended it with a black screen with the typical credits you see rolling up in cinemas with no sound. That's literally all they had to do to maintain the sombering tone.
Hear me out: The abridged version of this abomination, should make what is happening on scream a bit more in tone with a more dark story wraped intoa nice looking place. Like what about the "guardians" being forced into these situation against their will? Things like that. Kinda like witchers from the witcher series
8:40-8:48 They could've leaned into dark humor like family guy, robot chicken, other comedy adult shows, grim adventures of Billy and Mandy, Invader Zim, etc. From the teachers telling off the survival rate of students and Red head girls reaction of being trapped. For example, the scene would ended with the neughh, cut here to see how the teachers and others are doing. Teachers being like yeah they're going to die I'd be surprised if they come back and the students are scared and worry about the Main characters and one of em are like they're probably going delirious have to go cannibal for survival, then cut back to the main 4 playing truth or dare. Of course, you still need to treat serious moments as serious when applied but that's one of the other directions they would've went here.
These shows have something in common - They are consistent with dark humor, rather disturbing , but light hearted, content... And none of them ever takes themselves seriously. That's why they work. They are goofy and they know it. Family guy can sometimes make a message about something, but, they make sure to not dwell on it.
one of my favorite shows is "the promised neverland" (season 1, we don't address the problem child) and it is the perfect example of tonal whiplash and an amazing first episode. everything is super cutesy and happy and "twee" but we are given just enough scenes to make us uneasy about the setting and these characters, all for everything to sucker punch you in the last 7 minutes of run time, completely redirecting the entirety of the shows tone from sweet and kawii, to "oh my god I'm watching a horror show"
I love your videos, I binged them a few weeks ago, but I'm going to play devil's advocate here, though one that hasn't watched the show. Black comedy, gallows humor, and mood whiplash are all a thing. You address mood whiplash in this video, but what about the other two? Take the Deadpool movies- they mix comedy and serious scenes very well. The first action scene in 1 is preceded by Deadpool doing a bit of dancing to music, interjected with him showing a shitty drawing of Francis to a henchman and asking if he knows him, and followed by Deadpool comedically breaking his wrists against Colossus and cutting off his own hand with a nail file while it gives Colossus the finger. Then at the end, when Colossus gives his speech about heroism and sparing your enemies, both Deadpool AND Francis, the guy Colossus is trying to save, share a look that clearly says this speech is the stupidest thing they've ever heard, and Deadpool cuts it off by killing Francis. And in Deadpool 2, Juggernaut curb stomps the heroes to a dramatic choir of "Holy shit balls, he's the Juggernaut, you can't stop this motherfucker!" And the fight ends when Colossus literally shoves a power cable up Juggernaut's ass. Black comedy and gallows humor work in Deadpool. Why not in HGS?
Honestly, it seems to me that the creators of this show were fans of Steven universe but wanted it to be more mature in certain places. So they made a show that looks like it's supposed to be for kids but has mature aspects to it but it flopped because they're bad writers
I think I'm starting to like high guardian spice, not because I think it's good, but because I'm learning so much about how not to write a story because of it.
I do also think its worth saying that a character joking in a tense situation can work with the right implementation. In fact I think Rosemary one of the perfect types of characters to do that, being pretty naïve and not super serious. The other type of humor I think works is gallows humor. If the show had decent writing, it probably wouldn't come off as so out of place.
15:37 "Puella Magi Madoka Magica. That's obviously considered the best case of international tonal shift in animated media. Proceeds to talk about an obscure super hero show not even remotely close in scope of both tonal shift and general ambition. Also Madoka success is probably the reason why production pressured an innocent magical girl show to be more "mature"
My brain instantly goes to Madoka Magica for something that's "similar tone twist, but done infinitely better". Madoka always feels just that little bit "off", just a little unsettling even in its triumphant moments, right up until the end of episode 3 where it fully drops the facade and bites deep into the show's actual tone: A doomed tragedy that would take a miracle to earn a happy ending. Bonus points for being about a group of color-coded schoolgirls, magical powers, friendship (+ other close relationship themes), and trying to overcome mistakes. Eat your heart out, Guardian Spice.
Another good example of a show that looks cute but is horrifying is made in abyss. We are explicitly told that the abyss is an extremely dangerous place and everyone thinks Riko is insane for wanting to dive to the bottom at the age of 12. And the show follows up on its promises and riko almost dies at every turn. The only reason she is alive at all is because of her op companion reg
And another thing; tonal whiplash can work very well, when done right. A fantastic example is Madoka Magica, it’s opening is typical magical girl stuff that is in stark contrast to the actual show you see. It gives you the promise of this fun light hearted show and you keep hoping it will deliver, even after some extremely brutal stuff happens. But it doesn’t outstay it’s welcome, once the major twists are revealed the opening stops playing and you are left with the established tone.
Hell, even kids programs go really fucking dark and stick with it better than High Guardian seems to. Bill Cipher in Gravity Falls is terrifying - yes he's the funny dorito man, but every time he shows up his power and vileness is shown to us in new ways and characters are appropriately terrified of and serious about him. He can enter people's minds and sift through their memories, he can rip people's souls from their bodies and forcefully possess them, when he entered the physical world in weirdmageddon he rearranged the functions of every home in Northwest's face and made a throne out of the screaming calcified bodies of Gravity Fall's residents. When he captured Dipper and Mabel he was going to kill one twin in front of the other. There's no point at which Bill is treated as anything other than something to be feared even when he or the protagonists are in more light-hearted moments.
By the way I'm just noticing something about this, the same teacher who talks to a student for punching another student. Goes into a full blown fist fight with someone who he doesn't know, but looks like him.... IN A MAGIC SCHOOL! Just full blown fight mode, without a single thought, especially infront of some students. Wut....
My heart goes out to all those suffering from High Guardian Spice brain rot disease. F in the chat for all the brave souls who watched the show
Edit: so I’ve gotten like 30+ comments about
madoka magica. For those of you wondering the reason I didn’t mention madoka magica is because I’ve never watched it and I didn’t feel like going through an entirely new show just to prove a point. I’m petty but not that petty
F
I wanna watch it, just because I wanna see exactly how bad it is. But to the poor souls who have, F.
@@zanyzantx I watched episode 1 and I didn't want to continue xD
i only watched the clips, and i can say it´s bad.
F
Children acting like sociopaths is completely normal. However the way the teachers are acting is the unforgivable part of dealing with tone. You can even have the jokiness with a character that's about to die who is generally joking, but when you do that it's supposed to be more strained and awkward than what they have. It's really weird that the only time High Guardian Spice manages to not be strain and awkward is the time where that is what is supposed to be the tone.
Reminds me of one of the teenage mutant ninja turtles movies (first live action one I think). Specifically the part where Leonardo was talking to Michelangelo about Splinter’s possible death while they wait for a pizza delivery, only for Mikey to end the conversation with “time’s up.” As if he wasn’t taking Leo seriously. We then later see Splinter’s spirit manifest to the turtles and Mikey’s basically bawling his eyes out. This showed that he was very likely distracting himself with his own humor because he couldn’t stomach even the thought of losing their father figure. This I thought was always an excellent method of using humor in a serious situation.
They could have done something similar in HGS, as a character close to death jokes about it only as a front to hide their terror. Then they later show that same character suffering from PTSD, showing that their near death experience seriously traumatized them. This, of course, would have required effort and thought, and the only things the creators of HGS really care about is non-diverse diversity and ripping off anime that are actually good.
@@clydewill2340 Additionally, recovering from trauma is a character arc that requires a lot of tact and consistency; two things the writers just aren't capable of implementing in any acceptable way.
@@MHurley21
Read Berserk.
@@clydewill2340 and it fit with the characters, teenagers who are at a phase in their lives they realllllly don't want to confront such a brutal reality, so they fall back into joking and distracting themselves till confronted with the cold hard truth, at which point they DO become serious. The scene with them standing in front of the house before April and Casey and saying "We have to go back." is etched into my mind from watching it growing up.
@@benjaminbierley2074 yep. Main problem with entertainment (not specifically HGS) is that everything has been sanitized. No showing of cigarettes or alcohol, violence is toned down a lot, the younger children's shows are practically nonconfrontational about any serious matters (even Sesame Street dealt with the sensitive topic of death), and speaking of which, death isnt really much of a thing anymore. I remember the secret of NIMH with it's dark and brutal tones, and even The Land Before Time had Littlefoot's mother get injured AND die on screen! I'm not saying we need to go overboard with it, but kids do need to understand that these things exist
Invincible; Blending tone is like being a French chef. Flavours have their place in the sequence of a gastronomic experience, so-
HGS; Todays pizza gets barbeque sauce! And pineapple! And chocolate! And dog shit! And Zinnia? Don't you want to stick around to hear what the quest is about? It's to whittle student numbers by about one fifth. Hooray!
You know, looking at the scene where the dragon breaks out of the healing water cave, it would have been SO easy for them to just have the place cave-in.
we see the dragon ramming into the walls of the place before spotting the blocked door and going over to dig it out. literally just have that be the cause of the place collapsing. it's that easy. the whole place is made of crystals. I don't think anyone is gonna question whether or not a DRAGON could bring the place down. heck, it would even explain why the characters decided that jumping onto the back of a raging dragon was necessary to escape. all you need to do is add some falling rocks, shake the screen, and have a rock block the door after they narrowly escape on the back of the dragon. done. one of your many plot holes is (literally) sealed.
I don't think it is fair to compare it with Invincible. The series are aimed to a completely different audience group.
In terms of manga and anime, Invincible is Seinan, while HGS is somewhere between Shojo and Shonen.
You can actually compare it to king of Shonen - One Piece. OP is full of humor, and the main protagonist is kind of stupid "happy-go-lucky" character. But even so, when a serious fight begin, the mode stay consistently mature for as long as needed.
I am honestly surprised how little One Piece was brought up in the comments. Despite it having goody haha character interactions and literally cartoon logic fights, it is incredibly mature and can go incredibly dark without ever showing any deaths on screen. Hell, one of its main themes is the political power and how one can handle it.
And this unique balance creates a unique experience, like, I can't really remember any other place where I've seen a completely incompetent villian being genuinely threatening, even terrifying to some degree
School live and adventure time seems to do the whole happy, light fun in the beginning to dark and intense later on.
My question is, are there people who actually like this show? And what is it that they like about it!? The Tumblr art color palette, it checking woke boxes, or that it's writing appeals to their, "Lol, so random, I'm so quirky!" sense of humor.
Bleach kinda did that but in a good way, the episodes were always excellent and consistent but they were followed by a credits scene featuring "Happy People iz in da house".. Tragic story of betrayal and revenge immediately followed by HAPPY PEOPLE....
There's animated kids shows with mature scenes and themes. Adventure Time, Steven Universe, Gravity Falls, etc. I wish HGS took more inspiration from those types of shows to show different tones and mature (but not adult) scenes.
Other really great examples of correctly used tonal whiplash would be Madoka Magica and Ousama Ranking, which are also fun, cute shows that suddenly hit you with darkness, making them extremely memorable. Not only that, but the happy tone is usually representative of the character's naiveté and the violence is used to show that they've been foolish and are now out of their depth.
"healing water" is a nice family friendly way to refer to vodka
and if the say lifewater the means whiskey!!!!!!
bUt ThE sHoW iS fOr MaTuRe AuDiEnCe
🍾
If they wanted to be a kid's thing with a dark edge than they really should've looked at classic fairy tales where people get baked into pies or shoved into ovens, among other things. There's an art to having the levity and comfort of childhood suddenly give way to life's realities and darker elements when the veil of protection or ignorance is ripped away. IMO if they really wanted to flip flop in a way that wouldn't constantly annoy then they should've made serious moments actually serious, made scenes dedicated to a singular tone, and colored future moments of levity with those experiences. But hey, just another drop in the bucket of problems in Spice.
I would be amazing if they used the art style to match that. Make it seem all child-friendly, but rip that away.
@@titch6618 Yeah, the tone change didn't have to be a bad thing, but the writers let the opportunity slip through their fingers. Sad.
Or stories where where women's foot parts get chopped off and their eyes get gouged out.
Madoka Magica.
The creators said they wanted to make a knock off Card Captor Sakura
Oh no, you've trained me. Rosemary asked what blood is and then started her next sentence "is-" and I kid you not, my brain said "is blood a food" before she could finish.
"It is a food, Rosemary. For vampires."
Hey, blood tastes pretty good depending on the person.
@@elfireii328 You're a vamp? ;)
@@elfireii328 Blood tastes like metal
@@Loaf873 in small amounts its salty
I actually really like the idea of death being so normalized that the teachers joke about how they send out child soldiers fully expecting them to die. But then there's moments where they actually care about human life despite acting damn-near sociopathic two minutes ago.
Exactly. You can have insanely psychotic world but you need to AT LEAST make them consitently so.
Bonus points if it actually makes any degree of sense and doesn't spit in the face of everything required to maintain a functioning society.
AKA doing nothing to avoid the death of children thus assuring you have no next generation. Sure it's "dark" but if that goes wrong too often you basically have no school as all the new students are dead.
Yeah. The episode with the dragon is probably the worst example of that. It's the only time in the entire show where Redbun shows anything even remotely resembling empathy.
Consistency is key. Lots of shows make jokes like this episode but at least they are consistent which makes it funny
Everything everyone's already said, and also the fact that something needs to be done with that concept. It can even just be used to support the tone of a different idea, but if it's never addressed and never used, it feels shallow and wasted potential at best, and unintentional at worst, like with HGS. That said, it is a really fun idea. I love when characters are allowed to be hypocritical or wrong because it builds up so much potential drama and there's also a good potential for introspection and development!
Funnily enough, even if you remove the 'kid show angle', the cave of death doesn't make sense.
Real world militaries don't send their recruits into dangerous areas to train without more experienced troops paying attention to provide advice, correct mistakes, and intervene if safety is an issue.
High Guardian Academy, here, is the same place that has a 'crying room' (implying it's a namby pamby school for delicate flowers), but also sends people who aren't even adults into a cave where even a warrior like Rosemary can get oofed. Despite having new magic, which can do anything, there isn't even a sign that the instructors know that a student is dying (implying either that they don't care OR that they haven't even tried). I can't really imagine military training without medics and/or corpsmen present.
Forget tone, school policy ain't even making sense. Tone can't rest on a foundation that doesn't sit flat.
Personally, the more I see of this show the more I am reminded of Blackmist from My Best Friend is an Eldritch Horror. It did a few similar things: borderline abusive teachers, and underground death-lairs being the most of note. Not to mention full-contact fights, which HGS seems to lack. Spoiler, but the death-lair (HGS it's the cave, MBFiaEH it's a weird scaling RPG dungeon) isn't a first-mission type deal, it's part of the annual inter-school --fight club-- _magic tournament._ where you have to have a show of competence to be picked by your school in the first place IIRC (I think it's top-5 from each school makes it to the competition? I can't remember).
"Tone can't rest on a foundation that doesn't sit flat."
Well said.
Crying room only makes sense if the teachers need the tears then. Probably where that psycho potions lady gets her poison or something. Not that the writers cared about making sense
Legit. These aren't Space Marine Aspirants, where not being physically fit enough may actually kill you upon ascension past the training, they're kids that are just fairly normal beings. Astartes are so brutal for a very good reason, and even some Chapters have a degree of oversight.
For a less grimdark example, Jedi from StarWars. Certainly their training can be dangerous and even deadly but their oversight is amazing.
Yeah but most anime in general isn't realistic in that regard. Take Hunter x Hunter or Demon Slayer for example. The students are literally sent to a death zone as part of their training. Makes for good tension, if done right.
But I agree for HGS it wouldn't work anyway. It should be more like My Hero Academia where the school actually cares about the students and doesn't want any of them to die.
I think another good show that does the tone right is Teen Titans. It was a show that was mostly light-hearted and about teenage super heroes fighting crime and actually growing as a result. But it wasn't afraid to get serious or dark. Nothing gorey or anything but it wasn't exactly all sunshine and rainbows throughout the entire series.
Totally
Writers need to understand that 'mature' doesn't equal bloody, gory, violent or sexual. It means to deal with serious issues and to be willing to have the characters suffer through grave consequences.
Teen Titan is so stupidly genius. They make Robin breath in space just because he is so pissed Starfire is marrying some guy. Then they have badass fight scene. And then they talk about Reven's fear and reslove to defy her destiny as a half-demon.
Robin's entire PTSD episode with Slade is a highlight to this.
@@Endersoul-tx1of
How Long is Forever?
Haunted
The Beast Within
Only Human
Spell Bound
Troq
Over Drive
Apprentice Pt 2
After Shock Pt 2
Things Change
Honestly there are probably a lot more but those are just a few that stick out to me that carry the more mature tones.
I was sure you were going to talk about Madoka Magica when you were talking about a light hearted series turning dark.
Also now that I think about it, Rosemary kinda looks like bootleg Madoka
Same, it was the first show to come in mind when he said that.
With that hairstyle she more looks like Chibiusa/Chibi Moon on crack......
Exactly, I was a about to comment the same
The twist hits hard the first time. And then it just gets worse and worse... then rebellion happens... gosh I need the new movie to come out faster. Cause rebellion pulls the twist twice and even knowing it from the series, it still hits.
Same here
If this show has any "positive impact", it would be the show case of what Not to do.
"Today class, we will go over the importance of Tone, it can help find an audience for your project. This and many other reasons, are why this 'show' crashed and burned."
Like studying historical disasters, to help architects remember to put in fire escapes in their plans.
Or aircraft crashes, for engineers to work to improve on flight safety
Adventure Time. Steven Universe. Gravity Falls. Owl House. Slayers. Made in Abyss. RE: Zero. Lots and lots of animated series are full of tonal whiplashes, and people love it. I really wonder why it failed in this particular cartoon.
@@somsnosa5576 I think it is partly do to build up/foreshadowing
Both Steven Universe and Adventure Time had sprinkles of darkness/mystery before the "big shift". Steven Universe had the mystery of an absence mother/aliens are always mysterious. The mother mystery was always at the core. Adventure Time had the theme song with imagery of atomic bombs.
Plus most of the other examples you shared, the shows had an identity, High Guardian Spice never really had a solid frame of reference to what to expect.
Or like that one case where a guy throw a lemon juice on his face and expect people to not see his face
@@AuroraPaintBrush4444 Or maybe it just didn't find its audience. For me, its identity was apparent from the start: it's Slayers meets Sailor Moon. A modern take on the old anime we saw back in the day on TV or VHS tapes, a mix of goofiness and sincerity. And I enjoyed it, because I pretty much got what I expected. Some cringy moments, some real tearjerkers. Some goofy puns and jokes, some honestly cool moments.
Oh, except it also was super gay - something I really appreciate :) It's like slash fic writers were put into the actual writer positions, and... Well, did a serviceable job. Something that could get better if given a chance.
Again, I don't want to over-praise HGS, but I think it doesn't deserve that much hate.
4:03 - Parsley: "Don't fret! Townsfolk always come out to freak out the first years."
Wouldn't it make more sense for upperclassmen at High Guardian Academy to do this? Why are the townsfolk doing it instead?
Oh, that's right. No upperclassmen actually exist...well, except for Slime Boy.
They're all dead Slime Boy just had great luck
@@thezackast2752 Slime Boy slimed them
Dave: What’s a show that started out lighthearted, but then hit us with tonal whiplash in a way that helps to service the story?
Me: Madoka Magica
Dave: Invincible.
Me: … Yeah, that too.
Come to think of it, Madoka Magica literally has teen protagonists who go to school and fight evil monsters. And the protagonist has pink hair in pigtails. Hmmmm Raye do you have something to tell us?
I thought about Happy Tree Friends
something to tell us? other than making a cheap knock off magical girl show with whiplash tonal shifts so they can self insert themselves and indoctrinate young children into trans-sexuality even though in the context of the shows world changing gender is as easy as changing your pants???
@@Shiirow … the last part was a joke, but I mean, when you put it that way…
@@Shiirow No-one is being indoctrinated you crybaby. This giant corporation is trying to pander to a minority demographic so that they can profit. Trans people by and large hate this show, so stop your bullshit.
Every magical girl show to ever exist. Suddenly killing off the main character(s) late in the show is a time-honored tradition of the genre, as is bringing them back somehow afterwards.
Another show that does this great is Madoka Magica, the first couple episodes have some moments of being unsettling, sure, but still plausibly for kids. Episode three, with a major character death, is the start of the shift in tone, going from a slightly eerie magical girl show, to a psychological horror.
And for a show that swings wildly between the two tones throughout the whole series, with expert care, you have Rozen Maiden. It's a masterpiece of "mood whiplash" where one second you have drama about clockwork dolls stuck in a fight to the death to become the perfect daughter for their "father" (evil wizard who created them) and the next, the dolls are childishly bickering about who ate the strawberry off of a cheesecake.
Also Omori, but that's a video game xD
(LONG COMMENT INCOMING)
Now, look, I wasn't on the production team either. I can't say exactly what went down, we don't know everything that happened, and I'm no professional (FAR from it, trust me), but I need to get this off my chest. No matter where I stand on the artistic scale, I can not excuse how horrible the writing is. Even knowing the production was a literal nightmare, and that Crunchyroll was mostly responsible for giving the team twigs for pillars. I get it. I do feel bad for the team. But I've been keeping one thing in mind since this started:
Raye Rodriguez had been working on this since 2013. *2013.* The show got picked up in *2018.*
You're telling me that in 5 years, he'd barely written a single script for his own passion project? Nothing? No rules for his world, no concept of what a Guardian is, nothing that's actually important? Sure, he had the basic idea, 4 girls going to a magical school and fighting this mysterious corruption, but, that's all I think he really had for the pitch. The plot. Not even the script, just the general idea. Like you've mentioned before, the team was storyboarding scenes before the scripts were even finished; they had nothing to go off of in the first place. The reason the continuity is so fucked is because there **was** none to begin with.
Raye could-- no, *SHOULD* have come ready with a fully thought out story. This would've saved him so much trouble; the writing team would've actually had something to reference, he would have a legitimate reason to blame budget since CR probably would've rushed the team anyway, and if the show never got picked up in the first place, he could've just gone off on his own and made HGS an indie cartoon. He DID make an animated short with Rosemary.
Again, I do feel bad for Raye in the sense that his dream project was crushed before it even started proper, but I'm not excusing the fact that he made a deliberate decision to sit around for half a decade doing nothing, hoping that someone would just pick him up out of the blue, and let his world fall into the hands of a company that barely had any competitive standing in the first place. Not to mention an inexperienced and underpaid team, who, now that I think about it, probably hated him, given what we know about a certain somebody who despises the male gender.
Now, I might be wrong here, but High Guardian Spice feels a lot like a back-burner project. From personal experience as a creative type, I have several different ideas and stories constantly floating around in my head. There are a few very big ones that are almost constantly being improved and written and built on. Trying to make the world make sense, the timeline consistent, the characters have proper writing and arcs, etc. The kinds of things that I want to be perfect and all thought through before I even start the actual drafts (RIP getting actually started let alone finished). Then there are ideas based off of fanfictions I was writing 10 years ago that are fun in concept but don't hold up over time and just kind of get filed away until someone digs them up like a time capsule. . .I think High Guardian Spice is the latter sort. Compared to other things Raye is currently working on, I think though this was "started in 2013" it hasn't been a primary focus, and likewise never got the kind of development attention you'd it WOULD from being "worked on for five years."
For all I know Raye is just a trash writer, but even giving him the benefit of the doubt, I can't see this as a true "Passion Project." I just feels hollow and I'll bet money that it was just Raye grabbing at a chance to get SOMETHING fully produced and on Crunchyroll, so here's an old idea that can probably become SOMETHING and get my name out there! Just my thoughts.
"I do feel bad for Raye"
Nah, you don't have to. He literally brought all of this backlash onto himself by being severely unprepared despite having HALF A DECADE to flesh out his so-called "passion project".
The amount of video essays you have managed to make about this trashfire is freaking impressive, by this point I wouldn't be surprised if you made a video about how the flora and fauna of hgs makes no sense or something
I think stories with colorful settings that harbor some serious tones are pretty interesting, provided that they pattern their moments right. Final Fantasy 9, Wind Waker, Super Paper Mario, Mother 3, Undertale/Deltarune, Bugsnax, pretty much the whole Kingdom Hearts series...just to name a few.
Don't forget DDLC......
On the exact opposite hand, you have something like Stein's Gate where you have a generally dark show with fitting light-hearted elements, like how the main character calls himself a mad scientist like he's some kid playing pretend.
Or if you want drastic and schizophrenic swings into both directions, Made in Abyss exists. Unlike HGS however, it uses it's tone properly, and leans into each swing rather than working against it.
Most anime really are a show of "colorful settings that harbor some serious tones."
Worldend deals with Death and sacrifice
School-Live! (GakkouGurrashi!) deals with... various things (literally anything I say here is a spoiler. Just watch it, don't even look at any official artwork or summaries, just watch it blind)
Land of the Lustrous (Houseki no Kuni) has elements of loss and self-harm
Girl's Last Tour (Shōjo Shūmatsu Ryokō) has elements of existentialism and one's meaning in the universe.
Flip Flappers deals with trust and betrayal.
Kino's Journey (Kino no Tabi) is just dark at times, but reasonably so. For in the end, even in times of misery, there is joy to be had; and in times of joy, nothing is perfect.
I would also like to offer Kirby and Splatoon as examples of bright, colorful, happy series that have wild tonal shifts where the stakes ramp up and the world-building gets serious at choice moments. (Seems like Nintendo is pretty good at those, actually...)
Bug Fables is another example, and even Hollow Knight. Granted HK isn't super cheerful with the color pallette but the bugs are cute, yet the story is of a dying/dead Kingdom plagued by a mind consuming sickness which has taken over the majority of the population.
I was about to say Danganronpa, but then I realized that it pretty much starts out crazy, considering how they were all trapped inside a school.
In terms of actual critique of the show; I personally think the show could have done a mix of happy go lucky and much darker tones, but didn’t have the pacing, nor the patience to transition fluidly between the tones. For an example, Steven Universe went from a boy discovering he can summon his mom’s shield by eating cookies to an intergalactic slaver empire attempting to torture said boy and his best friend by putting them in a dark tower with no food or water. However that tonal shift was gradual, and you can understand why the characters on screen feel the way they feel, what they’re feeling, and how you’re supposed to be feeling.
Ehmmm.......
"Blue diamond how do you think Pink Quartzmond felt being shut in this tower? You are the big mean - oh my I'm so sorry I will cease my abusive behavior and completely go against the Nazi regime I helped build and enforce in this very picosecond"...
Don't use Steven universe for standards of any quality, Please, the writing is garbage but it sure does know how to distract you away from it with the constant singing and art.
I don't doubt people would genuinely think HGS is amazing and good if it had a good quality of everything But the writing...
Edit: yes it did take time to go from small battles to space battles, but HOW it did take it's time and how it was executed is not entirely by merit. Do I have to mention the long ass Hiatuses with way too many episodes being fillers? Your entire statement is Very objectable, as in, it will fall apart. Just because SU took its sweet time to go from A to B doesnt mean it did so well.
@@uneterostardust8233 Steven Universe did better in the early parts, but once they go to space it's completely fucked.
Sugar either didn't have a plan or didn't have someone proofread her first draft for her.
@@uneterostardust8233 You do make a good point. I agree Steven Universe was far from a perfect show, however I used it as an example because, as flawed as it was as I said you still understood how they got from point A to point B, even if it was somewhat...flawed, to put it in a word. And your filler episode point is valid, especially considering they put a wedding episode in the middle of two extraterrestrial giants invading. I suppose in Steven Universe's favor, it was coherent enough that at least as a kid I didn't find it so jarring it put me off the show. However I did watch Steven Universe when I was maybe 13 or 14(I don't remember exactly), so I'm probably giving more credit than is due to a show that doesn't necessarily deserve it. I also felt Steven Universe was a decent companion because it has a lot of similar problems to High Guardian Spice, it just did a better job of sweeping them under the rug so you wouldn't find them unless looking. I still personally think High Guardian Spice could have gradually or suddenly moved between tones, since they have a decent set up for it. And yes, if High Guardian Spice had more pleasing animation, music, or cinematography, I don't doubt people would be less critical of it either, even if it had the same writing and less story-boarders. I apologize for the long and wordiness.
I do agree but I wouldn't use Steven universe as an example. No offense but that show is a joke to me personally so I could never take it seriously
I would however offer my own example........... teen titans. While yes irs mostly an action comedy, there are episodes where it gets super serious, dark and dreadful. As you said the show runners in that had the pacing and the patience to go there while still retaining that fun aspect. They also knew when to drop the jokes and when to bring them back.
Otherwise great observation my guy
I don't understand why people laugh at Steven universe. Darker tone doesn't mean the show will become fir adults. Steven Universe always win with song and emotions. It's a show about hope, joy, being yourself, team work... So it's normal to not resolving anything by fighting.
Steven universe is an excellent show who managed to be fluid in their evolution and staying in the same mindset.
i think a show that has a really good grasp of shifting ( yet consistant ) tones is spyxfamily, you have the sweetness of family bonding and the heaviness that comes with their jobs as spies. although these tones dont match with what i think would work with hgs, im still always impressed with how naturally the anime’s serious and lighthearted moments manage to flow.
Someone mentioned that without all the sweet moments and the comedy of SPY X FAMILY, it would have been a deeply depressing story of three extremely traumatized people being victimized by the horrors of war while having no ability to ever honestly confront their trauma, because they all have to live double lives.
I think (and I'm being pretty generous here) the tone HGS was going for in these scenes was more of a a dark comedy filled with irony and satire. However, that doesn't come across well at all when the rest of the show is *so* earnest. I absolutely think that a whole show, specifically written from Amerylis' perspective about this insane magic school where child endangerment is treated like a joke and no one acknowledges how crazy everything is, could be fun, but as it is, it just feels *wrong.*
Maybe it's just framed wrong. Changing the perspective that a story is told from and recontextualizing it can do a lot. But I seriously doubt that the creators would have nailed that either
Imagine that show being a deconstruction of the magical school and and training from Hell genres/tropes. I would give it a shot.
I think you make a fair point. They're trying to have their cake and eat it by inserting earnest and serious moments whilst also making light of everything serious. They really needed to focus on one
Hell i think this is basically Rick and Mortys tone with Morty in constant danger and confusion thats treated way too casually by their mentor
My issue with the headmistresses is that they are clearly by design inspired by the three fates( Clotho, Lachesis and Atrops) but they are not done right. They are supposed to be the guides for the students yet are wasted as exposition and "comic relief".
One kid show which has a really fucked up plot but still stayed "fun and happy" is Adventure Time. Spoilers ahead:
The crazy and wacky world that we know is happend because of nuclear wars, Big bad evil guy (ice king) was struggling with serious mental illnesses, happy candy kingdom has a really dark past, humans traded their freedom in exchange for safety and despite all of these things Adventure time still (somehow) stayed a kids show. The tone can be childish but still have some adult aspects. I am not saying it is an easy thing to create a show like this or anyone was expecting this much quality from high guardian spice but still... The show didn't need to jump from death to jokes to tragedy to more jokes to....
Wait what? I never really watched Adventure time but...WHAT????? So apparently, it wouldn't be that bad if WWIII happens? 👀👀👀 Ok I'm relieved lol xD
@@hackidreemurr I hope you're joking about the WWIII bit
@@jp73987 Yes I am
It also deals with death in a way that doesn't traumatize kids but gives it the gravitas it deserves. One of the biggest themes in the show is about how time is cyclical and what once was fades away and turns into something else. It essentially tells children "you will die at some point, and what makes up your being will return to whence it came and turn into something new but beautiful all the same"
I think another great example of a show with violent moments that work is Powerpuff Girls.
The original, not the 2016 ‘reboot’ and *CERTAINLY* not the CW reboot.
Getting back on topic, one of the reasons why the violence in the original PPG works is because it was usually against villains or monsters, and because it was also due to the fact that the whole point of the show was it was basically little girls beating up monsters. That was one of the main jokes of the show!
Oh, and there was also that one episode where an old ‘friend’ of the Professor’s tricked the girls into giving him Chemical X and used it to create knockoffs of the girls. Oh, yeah, and he turns into a giant monster at the end of the episode and NEARLY KILLS THE GIRLS.
So glad I found the original on Hulu!!! I was so happy! And literally the first episode I watched was the Professor’s old friend one! Yeah that episode is dark
Oh yeah, Professor Dick!
At least for the cave episode, imo the tone would have worked much better if instead of the adults being like "Oh yeah there is definitely gonna be casualties LOL", they just wrote it straight like this was a simple training exercise (as long as you stayed in bounds). Still keep Zinnia's freakout and Amaryllis teasing her but have it be seen as just silly kid stuff (as long as you stayed in bounds) where it was supposed to be scary but not really dangerous (as long as you stayed in bounds). And then when something goes wrong or they go too deep and get trapped, Zinnia's freakout seems more justified.
The ending theme tonal whiplash could’ve EASILY be avoided. In animes that I’ve watched, when theres an extremely tense/scary/sad scene, they change the ending credits to something that fits the theme of the story better. I have not and will never fully watch this show, but I’ve seen enough to know it’s one of the greatest failures in all fantasy. It makes me feel better about my writing too!
Also The promised Neverland is a good example of proper tonal whiplash just like invincible! 👍
@@Ajay-tu3hk and so is Rozen Maiden! Great juxtaposition of funny, sad, epic and creepy.
Imagine if they had killed the dragon, and the end credits roll, but deathly silent.
Yeah even in a show like Amphibia, when you got that character death episode, the end credits was silent to just let it settle. It didn't go straight to the high energy outro like bang.
Seriously, it's not like it would even take that much effort. Literally just cut the audio out of the ending for that episode so you're just forced to sit in that moment.
Also a really good example of the ending tweak is Hunter x Hunter, in Yorknew the episode that ends with the extreme violence of the Requiem for the Dead, instead of shifting to the normally hopeful upbeat ending it just lets the somber orchestral music continue to play throughout (and then has the comical tone-shift after credits with the Hunterpedia short but by that point its fine)
Even "one character has a reaction that makes sense" actually worked in Invader Zim because everyone other than Dib was constantly shown to be clueless.
This is why shows always need an instrumental version of their theme for episodes that end on a heavy note.
Isn't the theme already instrumental?
@@TuesdaysArt No it's lyrical, just super bland and forgettable. The lyrics include:
Friends for a lifetime, amazing adventures
Finding who I am, you by my side and then
Drinking hot cocoa, sharing our secrets
Happy 'cause I'm with you
@@amandap7733Isn't that the ending theme? I distinctly remember that being the ending theme.
@@TuesdaysArt Yeah, that's what I'm talking about; there should be an instrumental version of the ending theme that plays if the episode ends on a heavy note so the cheesey lyrics don't ruin the energy.
But also the opening has lyrics too and in my opinion it's worse then the ending:
Fly true, become the light
As we honor what's warm and bright
Fly high, become the light
Together we'll learn to fight
@@amandap7733 Oh yeah! I have auditory processing disorder so the lyrics of the opening theme blur into an audio blob and they're so vague/non-specific to the show that it's easy to forget. Thank you for reminding me!
What if the rot is actually the show's brain rot disease?
This is now my new headcanon
It would explain why everyone is so stupid.
Oh.........oh no.......
This show feels like having someone bringing up some seriously dark traumatic shit in a casual joking manner, while everyone laughs it off because it's too awkward to go into seriously
Would be Omori if the fandom wrote the story
The only purpose HGS serves is showing other writers how not to make a fantasy series.
I think Made in Abyss is a great example of using visual childishness to enhance thematic horror. It's so much more fucked up to see cute kids get tortured vs. some gruff 40 year old warrior. This show is like the opposite of that: instead of adding together to improve the experience, they subtract and make you wonder why they couldn't choose one or the other.
Babe, wake up, its time to watch a video about a dead show that no one talk anymore!
Babe, you aways know what i want!!!
Honey, I’m reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban! What do you want??!?!?
@@TF2Fan101 you to stop reading harry potter
Rosemary's reasoning of being a guardian means have to do dangerous jobs despite being a newbie is alarming
Yeah...
Rosemary's not very bright. You probably knew that already.
@@galacticknight55544 fair point
When he talked about tonal whiplash in a seemingly childish show I really thought he was going to talk about madoka magica.
its not really whiplash, it does what his example did, take what is on the surface another generic magical girl show and does a 180. theres quite a few of them out there that make violent R-rated Magical girl shows. another one is Magical Girl Raising Project.
Stuff looks like an MLP fan fic, where the author feels insecure about about liking something that is targeted at 7 y/o girls.
This show had a tone? I thought shit just happened and you just accepted it
I kinda disagree. It comes off more like the writers could not write a more mature show or did not know how to. If they were told to make the show more mature, they should have taken more notes from Avatar or Avatar Korra, both of them being mature kid shows. Or taken notes from Magica Madoka.
Another point to consider is were they actually blindsided by the request to make the show more mature. Instead, having no time to rewrite, they just inject cursing, alcohol, and blood.
Oh God a High guardian spice, with a Madoka Magica would be brilliant
Avatar is peak mature kids writing
It seems that you can learn more from bad writing than you can from good writing.
Partly because most of the time good writing feels very natural and right, so it's more difficult to pinpoint what particularly works. Mistakes, though, do stand out, so there's more to observe and learn from.
That said, it's good to have a couple good examples on hand for comparison.
"Let's make a kids show about four magical girls with a trans teacher and lesbian aunts!"
"Yeah, but as our target audience isn't little kids here at CR. You want us to air it, throw in some F bombs and gore."
"That'll be super easy, barely an inconvenience."
This is a really niech topic that I am oddly invested in even though I have never seen the show and do nit plan on it.
I gave it 4 episodes... yeah i wont suggest it.
I gave it 0 episodes… yeah i wont suggest it
I think another good example is madoka magica. The whole Ed thing got me thinking of it before you went to an example. Madoka magica has 2 eds one you see for like 2 episodes and when the show changes you get hit with the 2nd ed that fits perfectly and wraps up perfectly where you are going now. Doesn't even come off too harsh since there are hints and the op's lines can tip you in.
thought that meant eating disorder LOL
To be honest? I don't think they wanted to make a children's show. I've noticed a slight trend of shows that are meant for adults but it's infantilized or 'uwu-fied'. Usually when kid's shows are made that are also mature, it's done a lot better than this. The other way around? Not so much.
Listening to how you describe HGS gave me an idea for an alternative story with a similar tone dissonance. (not a fix for HGS, just a different story)
Protagonist goes to the magic school to learn how to fight demons. An incredibly important job, as the demons aren't just a threat to humanity at large, but also do so through terrifying means. The school is said to be an elite institution producing the best demon slayers in the world, accepting only few selected individuals. And indeed our protagonist, James, has went through a lot of training to get accepted. The other students are very friendly to him, they joke around a lot and in general don't treat anything seriusly. This attitude is maintained through some really sad conversations about the characters' backstories, which wierds James out a bit.
When the class meets their first demon one of the students tries to show off, but gets easily defeated and then gets both his body and soul ra*ed. While our hero shakes uncontrollably, the jokes from the class don't stop. Demon gets defeated through strength in numbers as the class (excluding James) attack with a command from unconcerned teacher. After the lesson James goes to his room to calm down. When he meets other students, they (still in a friendly way) make fun of his fear.
All of this culminates at the first exam, when the students are tasked to enter a shallow layer of hell. James enters with the others, but is terrified both of the hell itself and even more so, of the attitude of his fellow classmates. He manages to hold out for around five minutes, the time it took for the first demon to appear. He runs away to the normal world. He is then expeled from the institution for his cowardice.
He then finally realises what is the school's method for combating demons, monsters that previously no knight or wizard could fight. Students are carefully selected but not based on their strength, in open combat he was stronger then any other student from the class. But faced with the horrors of hell, he couldn't exercise even half of his real might. So the school gathers psychopaths, people crazy enough to not care about things that happen around them. While at first many die of carelessness, they learn and graduates are fully equipped to destroy the enemies of mankind.
Then, the story follow our hero as he doesn't give up on his dream. Using his fear to survive, he grows and learns how to kill first smaller hellspawn, then lesser demons and so on. Learning how to fight even when utterly terrified of the fiends, his bravery inspires other dropouts to join him on his hunt.
That's super cool and I love it
Wait... this is actually a really cool concept
This is cool
I'd love for a series like this to exist
New torture method: subject your victim to watching high guardian spice. They’ll talk eventually
15:09 You mean Madoka Magica?
(Invincible)
Oh. Touché.
There is literally so much wrong with this show that every video I’ve seen of someone critiquing it has brought up a different reason why it’s bad it’s truly amazing
You know, having a joke or two during a serious scene can work...as long as you TREAT THE SCENE SERIOUSLY OTHERWISE.
And, if it's a character who explicitly jokes to level the mood. (Like, if the point was to make Rosemary come across as Naive, or she's trying to get people not to worry).
"Have you heard of transition magic" ended my sides in seconds
I think a show can have an overall light hearted/silly tone and still handle serious situations, Danny Phantom is a pretty good example of that. It's literally a comedy most of the time but still has tension and action and literally revolves around death as a core concept. The issue it seems with HGS is that they dont allow tension to build and didn't know how to have action without it just being "blood" or death.
When you said that HGS fails where other shows have succeeded 100× over, I felt that so much. There are fanstasy/adventure shows I can think of that seems happy go lucky at first but end up becoming very dark and serious while still maintaining its whimsicality. Made In Abyss is a perfect example. Shit, even Avatar the Last Airbender too.
Mind you, ATLA is an ACTUAL KID'S SHOW and they managed to make their TV-Y7 show leagues more mature than HGS with its PG-13 rating ever could. ATLA flawlessly tackled serious topics like colonization, war, genocide, violence, morality, discrimination, and more. Meanwhile HGS does everything so half-assed with tonal whiplash, as you said, and dialogue that seems ripped out of a 12-year-old's fanfic on Wattpad. No consistency whatsoever.
What kills me about this show is not necessarily how bad it is, but how much wasted potential there is. I wouldn't consider myself the world's greatest storyteller (even though I do write as a hobby), but even I could do so much better than this. There's so many easy changes that could be made to the plot, the characters, and the dialogue that would make the show 10× better than what it currently is. And the fact that these changes are so easy but the original writers never made them, is what pisses me off.
I've been watching all your HGS video essays and I 100% agree with your comments each and every time. So thank you so much for another great video.
Made in abyss is all about a child entering a horrible death cave with a 99% mortality rate, the only reason she gets anywhere is her virtually indestructible robot bodyguard. Even that isn't enough and she still almost dies.
It's also about obsession and the desire to go deeper and you start to feel it too, even when all hell breaks loose. And it combines with absolutely gorgeous visuals to really get you.
It's honestly amazing how different the approach to such quest as with the cave is different in Japanese/Korean/Chinese fantasy stories and HGS
I've just read through one where a powerful warrior clan was testing their youngest generation, kids between ages 10 to 15. And they sent them to a labyrinth-like dungeon with traps, monsters and a boss monster inside. And you know what they did to ensure their safety? Gave them amulets that would automatically teleport them back outside when they would face a too dangerous situation, were too injured or even did not feel like continue and screamed for help. Meanwhile a powerful mage and the clan patriarch were watching these kids through magical means because they actually wanted to see how they actually fare
Nothing like this is in HGS, there could literally be a team who just waits a little bit in the cave until some poor suckers come back with the healing waters and then they would snatch it from them
You know, the cave situation could have been fixed by adding two things.
First with the teachers acting in a way more serious tone. I mean they no only not joking about that test, but even having another teacher who is a clairvoyant that can cast a spell where the teachers can see all that is happening in the cave all the time to watch for the students. Like some sort of camera system. And having Sexy Demon Teacher with her portal magic ready to pick up the students when things get out of hand.
And second, later after the test the teachers could say to the students the test wasn't that hard from the beginning. That yeah, everyone was telling them it was dangerous, but that was a test by itself and there was no healing water, they only needed to pick any shiny water they come across and bring it to the teachers. After all, that cave we could say was a level 2 or 3 challenge, so no one was in real danger.
We could even have a moment where Thyme breaks in tears because she believed there was real healing water there and do what she could have done from the beginning of her "arc", telling the teachers about the Fairy Wood problem.
But hey, instead of that lets put some beginners with a highly dangerous quest for no good reason. Yeah, writting!
High Guardian Spice remains a series that, when it was pitched to executives, probably sounded groundbreaking and interesting yet...once green lighted, they discovered what looked good on paper, they had no real plans on how to do it. So, result is "winging it" with a step by step concept that one would expect if a group of teens got high and just threw out ideas.
Maybe if Zinnia was the main protagonist & the academy is supposed to be fucking bat-shit crazy than it would make sense why she would be the only one who's scared of dying in the cave, but noooooooooooooo she's the unREasonablE onE.
Maybe if they knew how to satirize a kid show & turned it into a psychological horror than this show would make fucking sense.
Modoka Magica: Alright let's have a melancholic opening so the audience can be hinted to what's happening, and we'll switch the outro to something more darker when the big shocker happens.
HGS: SUPER HAPPY HUGS TIME FEELS!
The scene with Caraway and the kids on the boat annoys me cos they clearly made Snap and Cal be in one boat to force tension and interaction. The configuration of the boats should be one boat with 4 kids and Caraway with the remaining 2, These are HIS students, he should be WITH them and not way in front where he is blankly staring ahead and not keeping an eye on them. No teachers allow their students to be behind them unless there is two teachers so one can take the back of the group.
The least they could have done is have one of the girls share the boat with the boys so the numbers are even and you had someone to mitigate the fight or have Snaps back when Cal starts digging at him.
This is for the tone in the cave.
I think the jokes could still work if they came from Thyme. Imagine if Thyme was established as a practitioner of medicine (so she can find a cure for the rot). Keep her cold nature toward the party. But when Rosemary starts to show fatigue from her injury, its Thyme who jokes back with a somber expression whilst trying to fix her wound. Sage and Parsley think she is opening up, Sage is starting to recover from a slight panic attack, but talks to them on the side saying how serious her injury is. Thyme could express that the jokes where to help Rosemary have a peaceful end and not have her fall in to despair. This, in my opinion, would work very well if set up right.
The emotions are literally gyrodrop, on par with The Room where Wiseau goes “I did not hit her I did naat!… oh hi Marc”
Mark: "used to know this guardian, she tried to show off by fighting a manticore all on her own. Manticore chewed her up so bad she ended up at a hospital in Pebble street"
Johnny: Ahahahhaha! What a funny story mark
Wait wait you were showing the boats on the first part of the video and WHO IS STEERING THOSE BOATS,
THE BOATS ARE MOVING LIKE THEY’RE ON A WATER RIDE WHY TF
I’m not trying to defend this shit show but they did show a clip of the boats being pushed forward by the teraspheres or whatever those things are called, too bad it’s inconsistent and doesn’t show up in some parts of the scene
@@redd3797 talking about the budget that Raye claimed he had lots of problem with, consistency shouldn’t cost that much money XD
Although they seem to insinuate consistency can only be done with money lol
Funnily, I didn't learn what Tone means until I started advancing in writing Dumb stories, and I graduated school by then.
is consistent tone a food
Yes.
"You've heard the legends: All of Red Bud's clothes are from students who _plunged to their deaths!"_
A teenage girl going to a high fantasy military school with a strict uniform policy packed a 1920s-style wrap-robe-dress thing clearly cut for a tall, skinny old lady? And then wore it out on their field trip to a _miles-deep cavern system_ full of deadly monsters and dangerous pitfalls?
Amaryllis is probably just trying to scare Zinnia here, I'll grant, but the director or the costume designer probably could've tried a little harder to put Red Bud in something that you could expect a student to wear for this exercise, especially if "the legends" are real rumors that people actually tell each other.
Even making her outfit appear like fragments of uniforms that were stitched together (with the optional washed out bloodstain) would've made it more tense.
O I can fix the cave scene. In the cave girls offen repeat it's some sort of exame, we're not in the danger. If something bad happenes, teachers will safe us. Meaby it's Sage who tells this bc she seems like the most reasonable. It can't be the death mission. But is we cry for help we'll be loosers and get bad grades. Teachers didn't tell about it but Sage's words are pretty logical. And in the end girls were trapped in the cave. They can't go away but they are calm. You know it's not a death mission. So they chat with each other, play games ect. But time passes and nobody came for them. And after it they started to get scared. And finally realised how shity there school is. Maybe after escaping the cave on there own they don't want to believe school teachers. That's why in carnaval episode girls told nobody about catgirl
High guardian spice is a reflection of its creators, one big identity crisis.
Though I think if they had one giga Chad working on it, it could've been something great.
I saw a comment on another video about high Guardian spice, and to this day, I still fully agree with it. The characters being so onboard with sending children LITERAL CHILDREN to their sudden deaths could work if it showed how corrupt or how messed up the system or culture surrounding the Guardian occupation is. Show us that this shit is something normalised and that that's THE problem! It would at least make for a more compelling or impactful story.
Yes, "Tonal Whiplash" is a thing. It's usually referred to as "Mood Whiplash" but it means the same thing.
Views and comments can alleviate the symptoms of brain rot, so I shall contribute to the treatment.
I can't wait for more High Guardian Spice Abridged! 😁
The reason why the tone constantly changes between adult and childish is because the writers are all adults with the mentality of spoiled whiny children
Was anyone else kinda sad when Dave didn't use Madoka Magica as his example? Still an amazing video
Something that would of made the dragon episode better: Credits without Credits
A lot of shows do this; where they don't want to interrupt the tone so they role the credits while the show is still playing without the outro song. Credits could have started rolling when Rose killed the dragon and there was an 'aftermath' scene. No sudden jump to outro, no happy music, just a slow and sombering credit roll over a depressing backstory.
But I don't expect HGS to actually try xD
You can also have a neutral-sounding credits theme; a lot of anime have slow and melancholic themes that are *just* not depressing enough to clash with an upbeat episode either. See the endings of both Dai no Daiboken 91 and 2020, for instance.
They could have just ended it with a black screen with the typical credits you see rolling up in cinemas with no sound.
That's literally all they had to do to maintain the sombering tone.
Hear me out:
The abridged version of this abomination, should make what is happening on scream a bit more in tone with a more dark story wraped intoa nice looking place.
Like what about the "guardians" being forced into these situation against their will? Things like that.
Kinda like witchers from the witcher series
Zinnia is the smartest one in the show, she never comes back
8:40-8:48
They could've leaned into dark humor like family guy, robot chicken, other comedy adult shows, grim adventures of Billy and Mandy, Invader Zim, etc. From the teachers telling off the survival rate of students and Red head girls reaction of being trapped.
For example, the scene would ended with the neughh, cut here to see how the teachers and others are doing. Teachers being like yeah they're going to die I'd be surprised if they come back and the students are scared and worry about the Main characters and one of em are like they're probably going delirious have to go cannibal for survival, then cut back to the main 4 playing truth or dare.
Of course, you still need to treat serious moments as serious when applied but that's one of the other directions they would've went here.
These shows have something in common - They are consistent with dark humor, rather disturbing , but light hearted, content... And none of them ever takes themselves seriously.
That's why they work.
They are goofy and they know it.
Family guy can sometimes make a message about something, but, they make sure to not dwell on it.
one of my favorite shows is "the promised neverland" (season 1, we don't address the problem child) and it is the perfect example of tonal whiplash and an amazing first episode. everything is super cutesy and happy and "twee" but we are given just enough scenes to make us uneasy about the setting and these characters, all for everything to sucker punch you in the last 7 minutes of run time, completely redirecting the entirety of the shows tone from sweet and kawii, to "oh my god I'm watching a horror show"
I love your videos, I binged them a few weeks ago, but I'm going to play devil's advocate here, though one that hasn't watched the show. Black comedy, gallows humor, and mood whiplash are all a thing. You address mood whiplash in this video, but what about the other two?
Take the Deadpool movies- they mix comedy and serious scenes very well. The first action scene in 1 is preceded by Deadpool doing a bit of dancing to music, interjected with him showing a shitty drawing of Francis to a henchman and asking if he knows him, and followed by Deadpool comedically breaking his wrists against Colossus and cutting off his own hand with a nail file while it gives Colossus the finger. Then at the end, when Colossus gives his speech about heroism and sparing your enemies, both Deadpool AND Francis, the guy Colossus is trying to save, share a look that clearly says this speech is the stupidest thing they've ever heard, and Deadpool cuts it off by killing Francis. And in Deadpool 2, Juggernaut curb stomps the heroes to a dramatic choir of "Holy shit balls, he's the Juggernaut, you can't stop this motherfucker!" And the fight ends when Colossus literally shoves a power cable up Juggernaut's ass.
Black comedy and gallows humor work in Deadpool. Why not in HGS?
It’s likely due to the fact that the jokes in high guardian spice don’t land
Honestly, it seems to me that the creators of this show were fans of Steven universe but wanted it to be more mature in certain places. So they made a show that looks like it's supposed to be for kids but has mature aspects to it but it flopped because they're bad writers
It has an identity crisis it doesn't know what to be, so it's a huge mess
I guess they were trying the light-banter-while-fighting a la spiderman, but spiderman actually knows how to tip toe around the tone.
I think I'm starting to like high guardian spice, not because I think it's good, but because I'm learning so much about how not to write a story because of it.
High guardian spice TRANSCENDS tone.
It doesn't sing a beautiful harmonic melody.
It fucking screams in your ear and make your ears bleed.
I do also think its worth saying that a character joking in a tense situation can work with the right implementation. In fact I think Rosemary one of the perfect types of characters to do that, being pretty naïve and not super serious. The other type of humor I think works is gallows humor. If the show had decent writing, it probably wouldn't come off as so out of place.
Another example of a kiddy-like show that gets kinda morbid is Adventure Time. It's not violent like Invincible, but its psychologically taxing.
"Who is this for?"
"I don't know the kids from Lord of the Flies"
Is still the best quote.
15:37 "Puella Magi Madoka Magica. That's obviously considered the best case of international tonal shift in animated media. Proceeds to talk about an obscure super hero show not even remotely close in scope of both tonal shift and general ambition. Also Madoka success is probably the reason why production pressured an innocent magical girl show to be more "mature"
Magical Girl Project and the Promissed Neverland are two good animes that have a great tone shift. I recommend watching them.
My brain instantly goes to Madoka Magica for something that's "similar tone twist, but done infinitely better". Madoka always feels just that little bit "off", just a little unsettling even in its triumphant moments, right up until the end of episode 3 where it fully drops the facade and bites deep into the show's actual tone: A doomed tragedy that would take a miracle to earn a happy ending.
Bonus points for being about a group of color-coded schoolgirls, magical powers, friendship (+ other close relationship themes), and trying to overcome mistakes. Eat your heart out, Guardian Spice.
Another good example of a show that looks cute but is horrifying is made in abyss. We are explicitly told that the abyss is an extremely dangerous place and everyone thinks Riko is insane for wanting to dive to the bottom at the age of 12. And the show follows up on its promises and riko almost dies at every turn. The only reason she is alive at all is because of her op companion reg
I think that a better example of what they should have been trying for was Puella Magi Madoka Magica.
And another thing; tonal whiplash can work very well, when done right. A fantastic example is Madoka Magica, it’s opening is typical magical girl stuff that is in stark contrast to the actual show you see. It gives you the promise of this fun light hearted show and you keep hoping it will deliver, even after some extremely brutal stuff happens. But it doesn’t outstay it’s welcome, once the major twists are revealed the opening stops playing and you are left with the established tone.
Hell, even kids programs go really fucking dark and stick with it better than High Guardian seems to. Bill Cipher in Gravity Falls is terrifying - yes he's the funny dorito man, but every time he shows up his power and vileness is shown to us in new ways and characters are appropriately terrified of and serious about him. He can enter people's minds and sift through their memories, he can rip people's souls from their bodies and forcefully possess them, when he entered the physical world in weirdmageddon he rearranged the functions of every home in Northwest's face and made a throne out of the screaming calcified bodies of Gravity Fall's residents. When he captured Dipper and Mabel he was going to kill one twin in front of the other. There's no point at which Bill is treated as anything other than something to be feared even when he or the protagonists are in more light-hearted moments.
By the way I'm just noticing something about this, the same teacher who talks to a student for punching another student. Goes into a full blown fist fight with someone who he doesn't know, but looks like him.... IN A MAGIC SCHOOL! Just full blown fight mode, without a single thought, especially infront of some students. Wut....