Hey hey incredibly talented Mr Enter! ^^ thank you SO much for your kind words and for including my animatic in your video! I was really happy to hear your thoughts about it! 😊💫
The show's character design has a weird mixture of a traditional fantasy cartoon with some anime influences, but those early 2000s comics and cartoons that tried to imitate manga/anime style only to fail completely at it. I think one of my main issues are the faces and the hair
I think what bothers me the most about the "I am transgender" scene (and later Snapdragon's arc) is that if changing your sex is as easy as drinking a magical potion, then why does the scene even exists in the first place? Why is it treated as a big deal? Gender transition is a huge thing in real life because it's expensive, takes time and can completely change your life, but in the world of HGS it's as a casual as drinking a potion, is the sorta of stuff I can see people doing for fun because it's that easy.
Here’s a better question: can this anime really think it has the right to tackle this large issue even though it’s partially funded by money that should be going into Japanese animation studios and written by a team that appears to um need therapy? Isn’t Crunchyroll suppose to divide their funds to Japanese studios to give back to the industry?
I mean, it kind-of is that easy in the real world? You just need to go through a lot of red tape and restrictions to 'get your potion' and it takes a bit to kick in. Like I'm sure people mess around with it more in HGS, but there'd still be a big difference between basically drinking Polyjuice as a gag and choosing to use it and identify differently for the rest of your life. In a weird way, that might make the barriers for identifying as Trans kind-of higher? Because I could go on HRT for a decade and use that to 'prove' I'm determined to fight through all these barriers. But if it's as easy as just buying a potion every month and getting instant results, then I'm sure there'd be more people saying "What if they're faking and they change their mind?" because it'd be easier to swap genders back and there'd be seemingly no negative physical consequences for detransitioning.
Honestly it would have been decently funny if, after Rosemary calls the sword the one thing that matters to her, you hear Sage from offscreen yelling "RUDE!"
Could have also been a segway to Parsley mentioning the locket, Rosemary remembering that Parsley fixed her stuff last time asks her to do it, but parsley works with metal, not stone, recommends Caraway since she heard from the blacksmithing teacher that he has a pretty wide set of skills.
That actually got me thinking. An entire board of writers, one of them could of pitched exactly what you said, they laugh, put it in there. It took an entire board of writers to be so droll in their humor that they couldnt fit in anything like that.
Here's a way to fix the implication that the secret of immortality is hidden in a first-year student's magic book; just make it the magic equivalent of headlight fluid, i.e. a prank that people use to confuse those inexperienced in magic. It took me all of 5 seconds to think of this; the show has no excuse to have a blunder like this.
Or you just read it as a joke, like I think it was intended to be. Like that in Iron Man 2 where Tony finds Captain America's shield...only to use it as something to prop up his table.
is it? i genuinely can't tell who this show is meant to be for it's too juvenile for adults but too inappropriate for children it is literally a show for nobody
I’ve heard a lot of people claim the “old magic vs new magic” thing was supposed to be some half-baked political allegory, but personally I think it’s a metaphor for the mindset of the show’s creators. Why put time, thought, and effort into creating a fleshed out fantasy world when you can just throw whatever you want on the screen because “it looks cool”?
It can be argued to be both. Especially if you look into the writing staff and what kind of people they are. Kate Leth being one of the most infamous examples.
@@Falcovsleon21 Especially with one of the lesbian aunts straight up saying, "Your mom wasn't always so conservative." Like...what? Who talks like that? It just felt very weird considering this is a medieval fantasy world.
"Political allegory" is said too much. It's literally Old vs New from the mind of a teenager - wishful thinking. And... let's be real, we all want this at points. No amount of tough talking can change that.
@@jmaster4941That specific line always baffles me because it says the exact opposite of what they're trying to say. "You know, your mom used to use new magic when she was younger" Yeah, and now she doesn't anymore and says I shouldn't either. Maybe there is, I don't know, a REASON she changed her mind on it, something she only figured out as she got older?!
That's personally not the gripe I have with it; I think it was supposed to be a kind of fantasy HRT thing. My problem is that the fact that it's a magical thing means nothing! It's practically just an HRT (with some changes I'm likely missing) with nothing unique or even remotely magical about it other than being called a potion & being orange! (kinda like Eda's anti-bird potion.. Huh)
@@ccrstarpanda also he said it was a potion, i thought potion making was old magic, seriously what exactly if the difference between old magic and new magic
Do you know why the Roadtrip concept is so popular? It's because it gives you the ability to tell any type of story you want without having to worry about continuity all the time. Character's, Place's, Everything can be changed episode to episode, moment to moment. (within reason of course) This is why Avatar TLA worked so well. It created a small cast of character's and focused on they're Journey. Meaning that they could freely explore multiple plot lines character's, and experiences to whatever degree they wanted too. This show Desperately feels like it want's that, but screwed up by putting it in a school setting. Which is much more limiting when it comes to an adventure based setting.
Even the school setting would work. ...if they kept the group at least partly together at all times so that there was only at most one instance of "splitting the party" going on at any given time. It is a magic school. It is generally expected that these things have all sorts of secret chambers (not even necessarily containing giant snakes), interesting areas in their vicinity (it doesn't NEED to be a dangerous forest and a town of pure mages with secret passages everywhere in between, but this is just an example), mysterious rooms randomly around that have ancient magics causing them to literally take different forms based on who opens them... you get the point, even if its literally just descriptions of stuff a single, particularly famous magical school has. Seriously, Hogwarts had enough magical wonderness in it and its surroundings that it could have potentially been suitable for 7 interesting years of a more light-hearted "oh, Voldemort actually did fully die to Harry and everything is actually good but Harry just had to live with his cousin because the wizards needed to clean up remaining voldemort sympathizers and needed to keep him safe" romp through just all the cool stuff that makes up the school, and the plot lines that often revolve around them. A magic school is LITERALLY the one type of school you can basically be on a "road trip" the entire time without actually needing to leave the campus and immediate surroundings. Like, even super hero schools or other fantasy/sci-fi school concepts that don't revolve around magic can't do that.
Why are you comparing a show that isn't a road trip plot, and doesn't even attempt to be that (despite what you seem to be saying), to shows with road trip plots? Of all the weird things I've heard people say about this show...
I have heard rumors that it was originally pitched to Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon as a kids show, but was rejected for being under developed. Crunchy Roll accepted it, but insisted it be targeted to an older audience. Very little about the writing was changed accept for a few swear words and a little more blood on the fight scenes.
@@ivorynk752 I'd believe this. especially with how they were "making it before they wrote/storyboarded it" or whatever was actually said. it makes me feel there was no story bible like most people make when pitching a show.
It is incredible that both this show and Velma do not seem to know what their audiences are supposed to be lmao. That should really be something to establish early if you are a writer.
It’s funny how Sage talks about how Rosemary and her have been friends since they were kids, yet we never get at least one flashback of them interacting during their childhood. Where was Sage when Rosemarys mom disappeared? Did that happen before or after they met? When did they become friends? How are they even friends ? There’s barely any good chemistry between the two.
@@MrAuthor3DSoh yeah 😮 , I mean Rosemary does look a lot like Madoka, but I just realized that Sage and Sayaka both have blue hair, though their looks and personalities are very different, but I can imagine Raye having shipped Madoka and Sayaka
High Guardian Spice never realizes how potentially depressing it is to say that even in a fantasy world where magic is literally real, you still have to do Hormone Replacement Therapy every single month and there isn't a way here to just switch your gender/sex and be done with it. By making it realistic they sort of took away the whole wish fulfilment aspect of a fantasy setting.
I've heard some people being unhappy when trans characters "have it easy" and can transition magically, because it's frustrating to irl people who struggle with medics and surgery. So I suppose they wanted to avoid controversy (which is ironic considering the show we're talking about but anyway...). In my opinion, fictional transition should simply be coherent with the worldbuilding. And in HGS, it's certainly odd, to say the least...^^'
@@agnesleuenberger3713 But if trans characters exist in a literally magical setting, wouldn't giving them the same limitations we have in real life in spite of that seem like we are deliberately making this one thing hard to try and make a point, regardless of how it doesn't make sense in-universe ?
@@WeirdWonderful I'm sorry, I'm not a native speaker, I'm not sure I got your message correctly... In case you felt like I was disagreeing with you, I was just reporting what OTHER people said, to offer a potential explaination to why the authors made that weird choice. But that doesn't mean I agree with them. As I said, imo, difficult or not, ways of transitioning should make sense in universe. And in HGS, it does not.
This made me realize that most Anime's I watch don't usually have a subplot structure to their episodes, or if they do they are more closely tied together with the main plot. Having characters split off and do their own thing (without being forced apart and the plot is trying to regroup or work towards a common goal from different areas) and not group back together until the very end is much more western style of story telling.
maybe this show would have worked better if it actually had a main plot. slice of life anime like onimai and K-ON!! are more focused and have more of a main plot then this show
@@aishisufuyu5961funny enough that's the same feeling I get when I read that series. It's art style, storytelling, facial expressions, and sense of humor is a very unconventional anime (even by Shonen Jump standards). And I really like the series for that.
What's really weird about the trigger warning being unnecessary for this show is Crunchyroll did not put any warning when they released the first episode of Goblin Slayer who contains a rape scene. It's only after people complained Crunchyroll decided to finally put a warning at the beginning of each episode. The weirder thing is they basically tricked people, with their announcement on twitter, into believing Goblin Slayer was a typical wholesome fantasy show about young adventurers going on quests. Why did High Guardian Spice was in need of a warning about violence and sexual themes for nothing, but a show having goblins raping and torturing people was judged not only not necessary, but also had to be kept a secret about its tone when announced?
I have a theory that Crunchyroll placed that warning so people would mention it on social media just because how ridiculous it sounded and give the show free publicity. It sounds dumb, but we're talking about CR and HGS
Rosemary not knowing who Karoway is makes ZERO sense he was the PARTNER OF LAVENDER, Rosemary's own mother when she herself is "supposedly" a GUARDIAN NUT how does she NOT know the partner of THE MOST FAMOUS GUARDIAN? The easiest fix would be to just move Karoway's transition to AFTER Lavender goes missing at least offering SOME logical explanation for why Rosemary wouldn't recognize him And what would remotely make this special in a world where transformation magic exists and according to Sage would have no cost literally what is the difference between "transition magic" and regular transformation magic except by being infinitely worse going by what this series shows later that you don't need to keep taking a potion to hold standard transformation magic?
lavender was my best friend she never mentioned you surely you saw me in pictures though nope never seen you before i got to school here. well im trans huh... does that explain why mom never talked about you? ok ok i know bad writing but honestly... i dont think it would be out of place in this show except maybe make the adult self insert wonder about his best friend.
Magic is so op, that makes you wonder why are there warriors and archers when you can literally do anything with a terrasphere? Like if i where to hire a guardian ill just hire mages to fix my problems instantly
As if mages would be hired by lowly warriors when nothing warriors can offer has any value for the all powerful mages. Its a very broken and badly though out world.
Magic is usually overpowered, it makes it hard to justify the existence of pure martial characters, it's hard to justify playing a fighter in dnd because you don't have resources to quickly solve problems, unlike caster classes, to the point that (in my experience) if you ask about playing a fighter you will honestly get recommended to play a paladin or ranger. And that's in a system where magic is limited to slots and if you burn your slots you are out for the day. If you had unlimited magic there would be no real point for anything, all wants and needs are a mere incantation away.
Even My Little Pony Friendship is Magic have a better explanation. There magic is more like a skill, most ponies uses magic that help them with everyday life, just because you know how a spell is done it does not mean you will be able to do it
This episode feels like they had 3 different ideas for this episode and they thought "f*ck it let's do them all, plus a couple of flashbacks from multiple points of view"
When we cover old magic and new magic, it should be obvious that anything old would be labeled as "problematic". I am confident this won't be the only time we hear of this.
If new magic can do anything at no cost, why does Caraway have to keep taking potions to stay male? Why can't he just use new magic to permanently be male? Is this a subtle hint about Sage being wrong, and how new magic actually does have limits? Or is it just that the writers really wanted an allegory for real-life transitioning so they ignored the very rules they just set up? Couldn't be the latter, right? What happened with Snapdragon suddenly liking Sage is known as "having a type" or "having a kink". Long story short, there is a personality type, physical attribute, quirk, etc, that Snapdragon is heavily attracted to. Once Sage displayed she had said trait, Snapdragon basically fell in love (or in lust, it varies) with her regardless of her other traits. Considering Snapdragon is best friends with Amaryllis, an extremely rude and bossy person, it somewhat checks out that he's drawn to these types of people.
Snapdragon legit pissed me off.. "oh being a girl means you love girly stuffs", it's not what it is about. A man and woman are born differently, one could assume the fact that they love things from the other gender (tomboys for example), but the whole "oh i am one too!".. That was really off.
I believe this works as a retrospective. My story is basically that. Was always a tomboy, hated girly stuff. Never really understood what was wrong with me, especially when puberty hit and what I now know as gender dysphoria, took major hold. But at the end of the day, because I didn't know what being trans was, I always said I was girl. Once I started learning about transgenderism, I literally was, "oh, I am definitely trans!" The hatred of girly gender related stuff was just a visible sign of it. There was a LOT more going on underneath that I had no idea how to communicate simply because I didn't know. But, in regards to HGS, it's super shallow. It doesn't look at the deeper stuff underneath. Something that is honestly pretty pervasive in trans characters in media. Some shows definitely rise above, but the stereotype is prominent in that 'if I don't like girl toys, then I must be a boy' (and vice versa).
I really think Sage was exaggerating about New Magic being "limitless". We see stuff like one of Redbud's terraspheres running out of energy while showing off - and actions speak louder than words.
Rosemary breaks her sword while everyone is with her. Imagine if we'd simplified this episode by having Parsley offer to fix Rosemary's sword and they go to the smithy together, where it turns out Parsley's solution was to remove removing the broken gem altogether, which Rosemary refuses for sentimental reasons. Then the smithing teacher tells them to go together to find Professor Caraway. Boom, one subplot eliminated, both the same 'lessons' are learnt, and all characters still have something to do.
One thing that really bothers me about Carroway being trans, is that the show doesn’t account for magic. The way he explains it, it sounds like transitioning process is similar to what we have on earth, you take a potion regularly in order to maintain the transition. First of all, what does this transition entail? Is it literally just like hormone treatment that we have? Does it change a person’s genital or does it change someone’s sex down to their chromosomes? If it can change someone’s biological sex why does Carroway refer to himself as “transgender”, wouldn’t “transsexual” be more accurate? Hell would this world just consider Carroway to be male if his sex is changed? If the potion cannot change one’s sex then…why not? I’m pretty sure they say in the show that new magic can do anything so I highly doubt that changing one’s sex would be out of the realm of possibilities (and if it is then why?) Does that type of magic exist but Carroway doesn’t want to use it? I am perfectly fine with a trans character being in fantasy setting but you have to take into account the world that you build and how that effects a character transitioning. Both in how they would transition and the level of acceptance that fiction society has for it.
Yeah, needing to continuously use a potion to not change back is silly from a magic perspective. It means that once the magic of the potion runs out it still somehow has a enough magic to completely alter your body structure. Only way it could actually work is if it was an illusion spell layered over top of your body and running out of magic just lets the illusion drop.
I remember that as a kid, like 20 years ago, I watched an anime called Sorcerous Stabber Orphen, which was a fantasy show and in a couple of episodes the main character Orphen finds a friend from his wizardry student years, Stephanie, who was born as a male but asked some wizards to turn her into a woman because that's the way she always felt. I think it was one of the first times I saw transgender representation in a show, and Stephanie was presented in a respectful manner, helped Orphen and his friends and in the end of the first season she got married to her boyfriend. That was a show from 1998 and it was much better done that what HGS did
Yeah, and it also feels like they could've adjusted the whole perception of it to fit the world. "I'm transgender" feels so modern, it kind of takes you out of the fantasy setting. Why wouldn't he say something more like, "I'm a shapeshifter" or "changeling" or "therianthrope". With that last one, it would at least make sense that Rosemary would have no idea what that is. Because in a world were you can easily just transform/ change your body into ANYTHING with NO DRAWBACKS, you'd be hard pressed to try and make me believe that people aren't using that sh!t like all the time. For men to give themselves six-packs, for women fantasy influencers to remove any percieved flaw on their face, or for people to impersonate celebrities. You're telling me that almost nobody in HGS's world would want to transform themselves into like an orc, or a giant, or a dragon, or a hot anime catgirl? You're telling me that no furries would make their fursona real? That is one of the most unbelievable things to me. So changing your gender using transform magic would be super normalized, because you KNOW there are people out there using it for 1000x weirder things. So having transitioning being a big deal and having Rosemary all surprised and stuff just doesn't fit the world. Sorry if I didn't explain myself well.
Agreed, but also this unexplained HRT stand-in potion doesn't affect the pitch of Caraway's voice. His VA is also a trans man which is nice, but unfortunately he retains a somewhat female voice pitch (I'm not quite sure how to word it). So why doesn't this potion affect that too? If magic can do anything, why wouldn't it affect the vocal cords? Is there a way to cherry pick your preferred features and Caraway just prefers not to alter his voice or have it be affected by the potion/hormones in any way? Something this significant needs a proper explanation.
Yeah I never liked the message that they were pushing. It basically feels like since he doesn't act like a stereotypical guy, he has to be a trans woman. And same for me and with UA-cam apparently. I don't like to wear makeup that much and mascara has always been a no go (I don't like things near my eyes) so now UA-cam has been showing me old spice and other men products because I guess it assumes I'm a trans man now and I'm not. It's very ironic how some people claim they are progressive but then, they'll automatically say someone is trans because they didn't follow a stereotype of the gender they were born as. I find it more close minded tbh.
That point about a photo giving a mystery to a teacher's identity. Where have i heard that before..... Oh right! Little witch academia did that exact thing in episode 3! Surprised they didn't use their "inspiration" to do something like that.
I would've accepted "advanced technology", especially given the techno details on Olive's spark spell. But they just HAD to describe Old Magic with a term as distracting as "conservative"...
i can't get over Parsley's voice acting, sometimes it doesn't sound like a young character and sometimes it doesn't sound like a good performance, like the actress phoned it.
I'm not an English-speaker, but I'm aware of certain English language VAs due to videogames and cartoons, it seems some of the secondary characters are voiced by veteran VAs, but the main protagonists are voiced by newcomers, which isn't bad in theory, though some of their performances kind of sound like they didn't have too much experience
HGS's creator (who also voices Caraway) said that part of why the show failed was that they couldn't afford better writers (ya know, that "all female writing staff" that Crunchyroll wanted to prop up?) And considering that his character is nothing more than "self-insert trans character", I don't blame him for throwing the writers under the bus.
But isn't it still the creator's fault, considering they agreed to these scripts before the episodes were made? I've commissioned artists for my book, and I always look at the final product before saying whether they should finish it or change a problem I have with it. Also, I've never yelled at them about any changes I wanted, so it's not like the creator of HGS had to be a jerk if they were unhappy with these scripts. I also know that it's rare for the final product to be exactly like what was pitched. SVTFOE, Gravity Falls, and Steven Universe, all had significant changes after the pilot was aired for numerous reasons. My point is how come all these issues went through the creator, yet they're excuse is, "the budget wasn't big enough?"
It's Raye's fault to be honest. Who, in their rights minds, want to hire a writer that started countless of controversies, but the most famous is the "Kill All Men"?? Who want to blame the budget after that?
@@MarcoStrange I don't know how much power Raye actually had over the production. Even the shows you mentioned had a bunch of executive meddling. And yes, I do agree that his excuse of "we didn't have enough money" is flimsy, but I've already had people accuse me of being a transphobe for hating this piece of crap, so I'm trying to play devil's advocate so that I'll at least look better in arguments.
I always liked the way Final Fantasy VI handled the concept of industrialization and magic. Industrialization was a force that could be controlled but magic was an infinitely more potent yet chaotic. Attempting to merge the two resulted in chaos incarnate-Kefka Palazzo-when they experimented without understanding the nature of magic in that universe. Later experiments dialed back the potency of the magic, but by then the quest for power had corrupted the Empire's ambitions such that any and all moral limitations were ignored-excluding one which Kefka eventually ignored himself, which lead to the World of Ruin.
Mr Enter, can I call you John? (Anyway) The fact that your "new magic is a metaphor for industrialization" theory makes sense and would actually be kinda interesting means it was probably never intended. HAVE YOU SEEN THESE WRITERS!!! THEY ARE NOT THAT CLEVER!!!
The series feels like the writers thought "wouldn't this be cool?" and "wouldn't this be interesting?" but it's all scrambled together without giving it any thought beyond that. All ideas seem short sighted
I remember being in a team of admins and moderators, we discussed what could work or wouldn't. We got ideas that were kept or ditched. I swear, the writers of HGS never worked with each other, and it shows..
8:38 I’m so glad I’m not the only one who instantly noticed this issue. Because I love magic systems, and I say a line from Once upon a Time from Rumpelstiltskin all the time: “All Magic has a price.” In fact, I would go so far to say that there’s two things about magic that there is a Price and there’s also a Cost. What it takes to cast a spell, and what happens because you cast the spell. The funny thing is in a competent writers hands, this whole concept of “new magic” not having a cost would lead to a terrifying or dark revelation about what the cost actually is for this new magic, and that it’s actually more dangerous because nobody realizes what it’s doing.
I am getting all these ideas of what and how to write the magic system and the show in its entirety based on that idea alone...imagine: Old Magic is very powerful but requires great skill, concentration and lots of knowledge to perform safely and properly. New Magic was invented as a shortcut, removing some of the potency of the effect to make the spells easier to bear and perform. However what no one notices is that every time its performed, the magic, as it is "improperly" performed, damages the astral body of the caster, the part thats responsible for magic. The more you use it the more it eats away at it, damaging your potential for magic, eventually, after years and years and years of use and abuse one becomes unable to cast more powerful spells, eventually you become completely unable to perform any kind of magic. A plot could revolve arround the main cast learning about this fact, and also learning that the ruling caste knows, however they dont intend to do anything about it, as this prevents new powerful mages to emerge who could threaten their rule. Essentially they crush anyones ability to become powerful, which results in conflict with the main cast, potentially rebellion from the New Mages against the Old Mages of the ruling caste, for putting everyone down over their fears of rebellion...
iirc, new magic;s cost was polution. The rotting tree was caused by new magic. Which kind of makes sense when you look at the teaches just dumping wands after they are done.
Heck, there was very famous show where the big reveal was what the cost of their magic was. What's more, it was very heavily foreshadowed, but a lot of the audience wouldn't even notice it.
Honestly, having a magic system with no cost is a problem in general because it's like a genie lamp with infinite wishes that also allows you to wish for more wishes, too. From the standpoint of having stakes in the show, High Guardian Spice has shot itself in the foot. Of course, the system clearly DOES have a cost, but why would you even go through with something like that? That's the kind of thing that would maybe, MAYBE be in the roughest of rough drafts. Then you'd be like "Wait, this takes away all the stakes and subsequent intrigue from our show. Maybe we shouldn't do that."
Magic systems or otherwise superhuman abilities need built in limitations for that reason, what stops characters from solving the plot before it gets too far? Bigger cost for bigger spells, immunity factors, cool downs, side effects, drawbacks, method of channeling, source of magic etc all contribute to problems to overcome when engaging the magic system. Some spells in Harry Potter require a specific kind of thought as well as the incantation like the Patronus needing a happy memory.
@@jbcatz5the sad fact about the patronus, is that one of the Weasley twins died during the war, while the other lose an ear. It is said that due to the loss, he couldn't be happy like he used to, so he wouldn't be able to cast the spell anymore.
@@YourFeelingsSucks It’s also not exclusively cast by the good guys, Umbridge is shown to have cast it in Deathly Hallows and I dread to think of what happy memories the sadists has used.
Probably the closest thing to a “no-cost” magic system that I can think of that works is the one from Mage: The Ascension. To (drastically) summarize, MtA’s system boils down to the mage declaring “I reject your reality and substitute my own” through whatever methods fit their particular magical paradigm (martial arts, retro pulp sci-fi tech, shamanism, etc). The catch is that reality isn’t nearly as tolerant of blatant wizardry as in centuries past, so mages have to make some sort of plausible excuse to avoid incurring its wrath.
By the way, that’s Cam Clarke (Kratos Aurion, Revolver Ocelot/Liquid Ocelot, and Leonardo) as Neppy Cat. The show also has Wendee Lee (Konata, Haruhi, and Akane) as Parsley’s mom, Barbara Goodson (Granny Chiho, the Sector 7 slums landlady, and Rita Repulsa) as the potions teacher, Cindy Robinson (Kushina, Amy Rose, and Lady Butterfly from Sekiro) as Thyme’s mom, SunWonCho/ProZD as Parmel’s cousin and the demon, and Stephanie Sheh (Hinata, Orihime, and Sailor Moon) as Olive. Gee, I wonder where the budget went.
I'm not an English-speaker but I recognize plenty of those VAs. Honestly, the voice acting is one of the few acceptable things about the show, sans a couple of exceptions like Slime Boy (though there's a certain charm to his performance). Speaking about voice acting, that reminds me unlike other Crunchyroll Originals' like Tonikawa, I'm a Spider or Onyx Equinox, HGS didn't get dubbed into other languages. I believe it was due to a lack of interest, there were some people that said it was because of its LGBT+ themes, but I don't buy it, I'm from Latin America and even on Disney+ all of the shows and movies that feature LGBT themes are available without any cuts or censorship, the Pixar short Out arrived at the same time HGS was released and it got dubbed and it was rated suitable for al ages
@@pablocasas5906 more than "lack of interest" I think it had more to do with the issues Raye Rodriguez had with crunchyroll during and after production of said show, which leads me to think that he chose to not allow hgs to be dubbed in other languages
@@josevelasquez1998 don't know if Raye had a lot to say in regards his show's distribution, considering how much CR meddle with other aspects of the show. Not to mention that other CR Originals like the also panned EX-Arm and Freak Angels did receive dubs as well I don't know how CR manages their non-English dubs, especially since their merger with Funimation, but there's some shows like the Rurouni Kenshin reboot that got dubbed into Spanish and Portuguese months before it got released in English, and others like Tomo-chan is a Girl and Odd Taxi that had the opposite situation
Yeah, you can tell from Sage’s opening, instead of showing off badass spells she just rambles about magic, it’s so lame and doesn’t spark the imagination
What I wanna know is how long the rot has been going on? Cuz like, either the teachers haven't noticed it yet, or they don't think the use of "new magic" is related at all. If the latter is the case, what do they think is causing the rot? Have they looked into it at all?? Because they're promoting the daylights out of new magic at their school!
The term "transgender" feels all wrong for a fantasy setting. It's clinical, it's modern, when Rosemary says "I don't know that word" the only real response would have been "it's OK, the audience does." Because that's what that conversation was, a scene that's there to say "look at our progressive values! Our all female writers room is sooooooo moral and good!" I'm not saying that a trans character in a fantasy setting is a bad thing, far from it. But you need to A, use the fantasy setting to inform that detail and B, do something interesting with the setting that couldn't be done in a non-fantasy setting. Going off the idea of a curse that Caraway and Lavender would need to quest to find a cure for: the way I'd write it would involve a curse that swapped Caraway's sex and altered Lavender or her sword in some way. As they quest Caraway comes to realize that he prefers the male form and sees lavender struggling with whatever the curse did to her, then when they get to the macguffin he uses it to fix Lavender's issue instead of himself and admits that he likes his new form, cut back to him and Rosemary and only the does he fix the sword a second time. Would you look at that we've gotten three character arcs for the price of one. The problem of course is that writing this would require subtlety and talent, something of which the writers room of HGS was clearly bereft. Better we just say a word that the audience already knows and just hammer a point into their skulls without doing anything interesting with it.
of course the trans creator of the show isn't trying to do anything wrong, the simple truth is that the poor writers needed a reason to justify the self-insert, but no one on this project was equipped to handle something like this with tact or professionalism, and god forbid a single drop of artistry make its way into a single word of the script. but i better shut up, i bet i already sound like an invertebrate
Dwarves are stereotyped to be stronger than humans. So a threat to humans wouldn't always be an equal threat to Dwarfs. Cats can learn words without magic.
Did the writers for the same episode even talk to each other? A first year guardian’s textbook has how to grant eternal life while gender swapping requires a potion every month to keep it working, even if eternal life requires a potion for every life threatening situation, a gender swap spell should be easier as a concept
My concern about Parsley's subplot is that I don't recall her needing to learn that particular lesson. Is it shown anywhere in the show that she has contempt for smaller tools? I mean yes, she looks kinda surprised when given the small hammer, but that's not enough! Why the teacher wanted to teach her and only her about something he couldn't suspect she needed? Did I miss something? =(
Again, haven't seen the show actually, but given the comedic bent of Parsley's little interlude I think it could have easily been more effective as a punchline if her entire adventure was offscreen. Kind of like the Ricklantis episode, just open with her falling down the adventure hole and returning at the end of the episode to regale all of the cool stuff she did when no one was looking.
Sharp blade of sword can actually be touched, like for extra accuracy hitting at armour gaps, but you should not slide your hand against the blade, then it cuts easily.
Honestly, throughout all the reviews that I've seen on this show I'm surprised that no one's brought up the missed opportunity that is this show's magic system and how it isn't based around cooking and baking. Then again, that requires something this show barely has being common sense.
Its interesting to watch you break down this episode; the ones I've watched never went into how poorly paced and cut this episode was with the multiple subplots. Every other breakdown has always been on the animation errors, dialogue and Caraway's interaction with Rosemary.
I keep picturing Doug from Forged in Fire if he saw the sword's pommel broken. He'd say something along the lines of, "Because the pommel is broken, you've lost the counterweight to your blade. Because it has drastically changed it, it's a catastrophic failure." Again, that comes from a show on History about blacksmiths making weapons, and was on years before HGS was even announced. Even then, we've seen the importance of a weapon to character's, like Zoro from One Piece whose saw taking care of his blades throughout the series. At one point, it was even in an intro. I'm honestly confused with how this series seems to take "inspiration" from so many things, just to ignore other things that have been established in other series. Speaking of, if you're correct about the magic thing, then it sounds like how Mako and Materia works in Final Fantasy VII. Yes, Materia gives you powers, but burning Mako damages the planet the more you use it. Then again, that's assuming you're right aboutwhat they were going for.
Solution: remove pommel, add new pommel. Swords are not a continous object, you can disassemble and reassemble them. In fact, this is often a part of what you want to do to properly maintain a sword.
@@SephirothRyu oh i agree you can repair weapons, it just feels like this series doesn't treat weapons as important as you expect. On top of that, why not take your idea and make it a lesson that the pommel being replaced wasn't the first time it happened, and it won't be the last time so Rosemary should learn not to be upset because it is something fixable? Then again, a few episodes later they say the sword is unbreakable, so that still would have made this a problem. Did no one do a readover of these scripts before making the episodes?
I'll imagine the blacksmith speaking in rhymes for some reasons. "You and your swords are connected, Keep it strong and fierce, so the enemies you would have sliced".
The Pommel holds on the handle, in real swords. so yes a broken would be a catastrophic failure of handle. It even happened once that a contestant got cut for that.
8:35 No; Sandersons first law is “An author's ability to solve conflict with magic is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to how well the reader understands said magic."
The one thing that has always baffled me is that they have Caraway use a potion to temporarily stay as a male each month. Rather than fulfilling (what I assume to be) the creator's wish of being an actual male by just oh I dunno Using the New Magic to permanently transform Caraway into a dude forever. What, is Caraway really bad at magic? Is it that hard to create a spell to permanently change gender? Yet somehow a spell for eternal life casually exists. It's the tired that sleep can't fix. These people just can't help but turn everything into a lecture.
I think that the whole "old vs new magic" was never expanded further than Sage wanting to use old magic. In common tales, you got "white vs black magic", white is usually associated with good and useful magic, and black is associated to evil spells and methods. In Harry Potter, you got three forbidden curses,one tortured the target, Neville's parents went throught it, The death spell, Harry's parents were ended by an unbreakable curse.. well, until Lily (Harry's mom), poured all of her love to protect Harry, so the spell was dodged, but it left a mark, and that it burned whenever Voldemort was close or around. The magic in High Guardian Spice.. nothing was properly established, it "happened".
I would also like to say that Guardian HQ's take on the trangender scene is good too. It doesn't really focus on the trans part but it takes into account the reason for their meeting while giving cool characterization to Rose and Caraway
It baffles me that the easiest solution for this episode was just focusing on Lavender and Carroway and drop everything else. Start with the whole sword pummel being broken, have Carroway notice or be asked to help by Lavender, they go to his office, Lavender comments about the girl next to her mom, have Carroway mention that he was a girl in the past, flashback to school days or something while also fleshing out Lavender's mom in her youth, show Carroway have some sort of doubt or odd feeling about herself while also having interactions with Lavender's mom to build some relationship, move to the fight while Carroway was still a woman, get cursed or something, and them go back to the present with him mentioning that at first he was distraught with the curse effect at first, trying to find ways to revert it, but noticed that the strange feeling he felt when he was a girl seens to had gone away, so he accepted that he was trans without name dropping it the term while repairing the broken pummel as Lavender is rather awe struck or something about his life story while also being interested in him for his connecting with her mother. Like, I'm not a writter or have anything, but that type of stuff is just the most common type of deal you could pull off while being tasteful about transgenderism and they decided to botch the whole thing with three other subplots that amount to nothing in the episode.
I legit bursted in laughter when the sword was "broken".. 😂 If it was supposed to be an emotional scene, it failed. Even Zoro's swords have more impact than this.
I think the two words "talking at" explains so many things here. The correct way do it is "talking with", or at least "talking to", but this is described as "talking at". This is not a writer who is able to handle a sensitive issue like this.
14:05 most video games have a weapon sharpening/repairing function for a reason. And watching Rosemary's plotline (If you can call it a plotline) I'm only just now realizing how much this show was deliberately trying to be like Steven Universe but you know? Being everything people feared it would be instead of actually a good show. Again I swear this show was written by AI it makes about as much sense.
The transgender point reminds me of a similar thing done in Hogwarts Legacy. The owner of The Three Broomsticks in that game is a transgender witch named Sirona Ryan. There's no explicit mention of how she was able to achieve this or whether her transformation is permanent or not, but there's a disturbing lack of taste in reducing gender transitioning down a spell or potion, especially since Sirona doesn't bother to change her voice.
But wasn’t she included because the developers of the game wanted to completely ignore how transphobic JK Rowling is as a person? Tbh, I feel as I can’t really enjoy Harry Potter knowing how horrible the series’ creator is.
The thing is about is the show the writers treat the audience like stupid little kids who need to be told what to do if you want to put in social issues in a fantasy show you have to be subtle not shove it in people's faces rosemary missing her could've been good but did not explore the subject itself
Considering the show actually was pitched at first for networks like Disney and Nickelodeon, I can imagine the scripts were made for little kids in mind, but were barely changed when the show was acquired by CR. To be honest, if HGS actually aired in kids networks without the violence and swearing but with the LGBT content intact it'd still be much more inferior to others shows like Steven Universe and The Owl House in the way they handle the subject matter
10:10 - The "New Magic" vs "Old Magic" thing was done better nearly 20 years earlier by anime _Mahou Shojo Tai Arusu_ (known in English as _Tweeny Witches,_ a very underrated show in my opinion which ALSO delves into sexism and slavery)
here's a 2 minute brainstorm fix on "old magic vs new magic" that could even connect with the overarching plot old magic when used releases back the particles or energy it uses. esentially making it create an equalibirum of energy use. the enrgy used is restored. new magic doesn't release back the energy it uses and is both easier and more powerful. the cost is very miniscule but there is a loss. the problem is that the more you rely on new magic the less enrgy is restored. so we have the rot starting to appear. because everyone is constantly relying on new magic for being easier and more powerful. pick 1 apple from a full apple tree and you won't notice a thing. but if you keep picking apples then that tree will have no more apples left. like i said it was a 2 minute brainstorm but it's better then what we have
What disappoints me so much is that Carroway is probably the only instance of representation for trans-men in current day media. Hell, any well known media, even. Because as much as modern pop culture has strived to create more transgender characters (regardless of whether or not they succeed) I’ve noticed that the overwhelming majority of them are transgender women (i.e. male to female), which isn’t a bad thing, don’t get me wrong, it just seems like trans men aren’t getting the representation they deserve when there’s already slim pickings. So to have what basically amounts to the only character representation for trans men in popular media come from this feels incredibly disappointing.
You need to watch Good Doctor. There's an episode where a trans man (as in got transition surgery) is in labor and goes to the hospital to give birth. Personally, I think the trans identity falls apart once someone's pregnant (I'd call them hermaphrodites), but the writing's still pretty respectful.
@@jlev1028 "Personally, I think the trans identity falls apart once someone's pregnant (I'd call them hermaphrodites)" Congratulations, you're entirely wrong! First off, that latter term is outdated and considered insulting. Second, gender is NOT equal to sex, a transgender man is still a man, their physical body parts aren't the deterministic aspect of their inner identity. Third, what you think doesnt matter, the scientific and medical facts and consensus, as well as the individual trans person and their identity, are what matter.
@@ramenbomberdeluxe4958 huh no? Gender is linked to sex, otherwise, how would you explain: That a man is only attracted to men, if a woman is only attracted to women? You need to have a gender in order to have a sexuality: straight, lesbian, gay or bi. If a gender ceased to matter, then it wouldn't fit in either of those categories, it would be "none".
@ramenbomberdeluxe4958 Wow, triggered much? I made a passing comment of what I think about gender and you had to write two paragraphs whining that I'm wrong? Sorry that people believing that physical appearance and biology determines gender offends you. If looks don't matter in transitioning, then what's the point of gender transition surgery and hormone blockers? BTW, I admit, I shouldn't have used the term "hermaphodite" for human beings, but intersex individuals, including self-proclaimed ones, do exist, and they're probably more offended by how much the LGBT community ignores them in favor of those "nonbinary" and "genderfluid" lunatics.
My God, trying to keep up with all the plot is exhausting just hearing about it. And, yes, the way they handled the trans character, just... yikes. Calling it bad doesn't feel strong enough. You also make a really damn good point about how they should've handled the explanation of HOW he became trans and the fake that the NEW Magic potion being limited to needing to be taken once a month from a lore standpoint makes no sense
I dont have any issue with a trans character I have it with the world building they make with this "potion" the character takes once a month related to "new magic has no consecuences" they have stablished that a person, any person, has a 30 or 28 days on a face and body no one will recognice with no drawbacks if the person returns to their original body, beyond the fact that this particular character doesnt want that in Harry Potter they set the potion to change form as a type of potion that is hard to make, has grave cons if done wrong, doesnt last long, and is under heavy scruteny here, it looks like any assasin or just a thive can change their body, cause misschiff and get away when the potion wears off
@@elemomnialpha I think that my point remains Transforming into your own rule 63 is too much of an advantage for bad characters that they should have balance it with some sort of drawback The assassin kills some, is apprehend and recognised as a female of X stature Assassin scapes Many days have passed and they only find a male, kinda similar, but the culprit was a female so they move on
Using this was my idea of how to tie in the meaningless reveal to the plot. Use Carroway being trans as a way to introduce shape-shifting potions being a thing in this setting, so that when some bad guy uses one as part of his scheme, it doesn't feel like it came out of nowhere, but was previously established. It's something a good fantasy system does, establish what magic can do in innocuous ways, so that it can be revealed it was being used in more nefarious ways later. Or the hero can use it cleverly to get out of a situation. Even Harry Potter does this, and HPs world-building is crap.
@@Sines314 that would be interesting The consequences of that development extending to the people like the professor who use the potion for reasons harmless to others but impactful for themselves, as the potion is now under heavy scrutiny would have a more developed world and character
Hopefully you'd have the same complaint about IDW Sonic Issue 50. " Either heights are a threat, or they're not. " Sabrina the Teenage Witch was beloved since the 60s and it has its magic able to do almost anything, the only limits are we assume witches can't cast a spell to change the entire world, at least not without the head witch getting involved, and witches can run out of magic for weeks.
So far, the biggest problem with your reviews of this show are that you don't feature the Mentos theme song in them. Or Reese's Puffs. Not enough of that, either
Like they say in Once Upon a Time, "all magic comes with a price". It should be a standard thing in fantasy because, like you said, otherwise it removes all sense of stakes.
The manga xxxholic, a sister series to the Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles manga, has it that magic has a price and transactions must be precise to avoid adverse consequences. The more powerful the something you want is the higher the price you pay Yuko do provide it to you. This also holds true on TRC, where the series starts with the protagonists having to give up something each to Yuko to collectively afford to be able to proceed with their mission. It’s like Newton’s Law, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. If you want to achieve something then something else has to give way for it.
I’m honestly getting tired of characters that only exist to be self inserts of their creators. Not like you can’t make it work, but more often than not, they suck. Caraway isn’t as bad as say, Mindy Kaling Velma or Jessica Gao She-Hulk, or Mariko Tamaki Bitch, I mean Mandy, but he is boring and the lecture about being trans was intolerable (and this is coming from someone who has never actually watched the show except in reviews like this)
Caraway was legit doomed to fail as Raye was over-confident with that show.. It got stereotypes, and reinforced gender roles, like Snapdragon believe that being a girl means you like "girly stuffs". When in reality.. being a girl means you were born as one. Rosemary was supposed to be the "quriky adventurous girl", but the creator thought, perhaps, that she should be dumb like Luffy.. The thing is, Luffy, could be really smart and showed developpment, like he was terrified by the death by his adoptive brother, but in the Wano arc, he grew throught that and accepted it. Rosemary was just the same "quirky girl", but the character fell flat, and her design with that puffy pink hair, dress are kind of off.. The dress could be replaced with pants and her hair would be shorter, in case she would be grabbed by it. Also her personality, could have her growing and accepting what she can't change, that she could be an ass for no reasons (like with Aster and the 'Rhubarb" debate). But if Luffy worked as a main protagonist it's because the character was worked on, by the author and owner of One Oiece. Rosemary was doomed to fail as there is nothing to dig, outside of her mom disappearing, but that's it..
It is very worth noting how this show even exists. I'll try to make this breif. But basicaly, this show got on crunchyroll for a very strange reason. If you receall a few years back, Little witch Academia? That show was THE reason to have Crunchyroll and was super popular and beloved. However the creators only did 1 season beacuse they only wanted/planned for one season. While CR wanted more. Around the same time, the creator of HGS was pitching their show around to various networks but none of them would take it, mainly beacuse they refused to make ANY changes and wanted it to be exactly their own vision and nothing else. Nobody would accept that. Execpt for Crunchyroll. Beacuse they were desperate and wanted a show that would keep the Little witch fandom around and HGS is very similar in concept to that. You can tell this is what happend at LIttle witch ended in 2017, but HGS was first announced in 2018. Barley months apart. Given how Little witch turned out so great beacse CR let the creators do everythng their own way, they were the only ones willing to accept these terms of not changing anything and only requesting things to be added in? We got HGS. The funny thing is CR actually knew how bad it was. As this show was complelted years before it was even released to us, but they shelved it for good reason as they realized it was going to bomb badly and was a mess with the creator not knowing what they were doing.
- Wait, Rosemary really thought Snapdragon was "the rudest" after one interaction? All he did was react to her bothering him with her random doodle. Ugh, what a childish twerp! Well, no, I already thought she was childish. This is merely another proving point. - I know Sage has said, on two occasions, that New Magic's casting power feels "unlimited" and has "no cost". But besides the speculation that it's connected to the Rot...in Ep5, Redbud's terrasphere explicity runs out of energy - THAT sounds like a cost, a limit. So I can only take this as Sage exaggerating (just like Parsley saying she was in the catacombs "for hours"). - I should point out that Snapdragon does join Sage in calling out Amaryllis for making the potion go volatile. It's just a bit hard to hear him over Neppy's mutated groaning. I'm just bringing this up for a later point in Snap's story, but I guess it does help somewhat justify his developing crush on Sage. - It's hilarious how this show tries to make Rosemary seem similar to Lavender just because they both broke Flowering Thorn's pommel...even though in Lavender's case, it happened because the manticore flung her into the ground, and Rosemary merely lost her grip on it while trying to slash a fly. (By the by, if she was trying to kill it for "ruining" her sandwich, I'd say she ruined it more by throwing it away.) - Surprised you omitted Sage's "comeback" to Thyme. Seriously, haunting an old clock tower? Sage, are you referring to Thyme as a...something that rhymes with "kook"? - I wonder which aspect of Caraway's transgenderism is more insulting - the fact that it's as easy as taking a potion (and all magic can be reversed, as stated later), or that he isn't even trans for HIMSELF in this story. What first made him realize that he didn't feel like his true self? How has changing genders affected his life? How did Lavender support him through the choice? Oh, I know the real reason he's trans - because he's blatantly Raye's current self-insert, and he's explaining it to Raye's previous self-insert. (Oh, and keep in mind that Caraway's comfy enough to allow a picture featuring his past self in a public hallway. There's very little discrimination toward someone like him. Keep this in mind for another character later.)
Them talking about transgenderism also didn't feel earned nor did it really make sense for him to explain it to Rosemary. This should have been saved for a few episodes later, when there is actually a character that would need to hear about it. When Rosemary asks who was the girl in the picture, Caraway should have hand waved it by saying "that was a lifetime ago" or something because Rosemary wouldn't really push the issue.
I'm not trans, but I generally want to advise against saying "transgenderISM", that phrasing is often used by bigots, and implies that being trans is an ideology (hence "ism") instead of what it actually is, an aspect of one's general existence.
After I saw this scene, I could easily imagine it playing out with the MC losing interest in the teacher's speech and saying her line about wanting to see her mom again while the teacher continues to ramble about the potion and "being the real me" in the background, and it wouldn't skip a beat. That's how big of a disconnect this moment had from the rest of the scene.
I think the meddling does make some sense in this case, because while Crunchyroll does have children's anime on the service, anime as a whole is usually seen as a "Older kid to young adult" type thing, so it isn't inconceivable for Crunchyroll to want their first original production to want to line up with that target audience. I say inconceivable because while I can imagine that being the case it is still very stupid, for multiple reasons.
for me, it was because they wanted this to be a children´s show, but crunchiroll saw the first script and demanded then to rewrite because lgbt caracthers don´t sell on china.
The thing is that most of the children's anime available on CR, things like Pretty Cure, are sub only, and while I now that there's plenty of young girls and boys that are capable of reading subtitles, I think in order to reach a younger audience those type of shows should get dubbed, the only other modern kids anime dubbed into various languages are usually those based on toys and are available on other services Besides, I've seen plenty of kids that enjoy shows like Demon Slayer and Chainsaw Man
@@pablocasas5906 Really? Sub only? Wow, that's kind of a boneheaded move really. And yeah, there's always gonna be kids that like watching shows that are definitely not meant for them, I was a kid when I was watching shows like South Park, Family Guy and Robot Chicken, so while that doesn't change my argument, it does give more credence to why CR may have meddled in production the way they did.
Thanks for directing us to the re-do animatics. I'm not trans, but even I felt something was…off…in Caraway's explanation. It's not what transfolk I know have told me -- they mostly just said "I'm trans" and left it at that, no further discussion; I do wonder how they would explain it to a child as rock-dumb as Rosemary… I _hope_ they'd do a better job than Caraway and the show's writers, one of whom, though I hate to use this word, embodies what neo-fascists consider "Woke".
It's kind of the problem with putting trans stuff in a show that isn't explicitly about that. Especially since there are no side-effects or draw-backs for changing your sex in this world. It's just plain not relevant the vast majority of the time. So either you have a "Oh, I'm trans. But back to what we were discussing..." and it's a token insert that means nothing, or you have to divert upon a character arc that has nothing to do with the actual plot of the show. You can do it well, integrate it with the rest of the plot in some way, but it's not easy. And this show has a hard time doing easy things well.
@@Sines314 I saw a video a few weeks ago about a girl who, as a teen, _thought_ she was trans but later realized *_after_* starting HRT that she was just a butch lesbian -- she doesn't have much good to say about tumblr trans-activists, but she's justifiably concerned that her story will be used by anti-trans activists to ignore those who genuinely have dysphoria. And yes, her voice is _permanently_ f*cked due to the testosterone. It's not simple.
Fun fact: Neppy Cat is voiced by Cam Clarke; the OG voice for Leonardo in TMNT, Chase from Monsuno, and Ronaldo Kuriki in Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2.
The crazy arbitrary editing reminds me of that scene in The Christmas Tree where they keep cutting between a poker game and orphans being told about Christmas. Except that movie at least had a Windows Movie Maker-tier wipe to indicate a transition between the two scenes.
Plus that showcased a "dramatic irony" with the kids getting excited over Christmas vs the inevitable soul crushing they'll experience. It had something of a purpose that tried to push the narrative forward.
Oh, dear... How the subplots are handled seems confusing. I can't imagine how much worse this show can get. I also see the resemblance between the Trappers and Parasect, how Snapdragon gets a crush on Sage seems weird to me, and I don't see why Caraway being a trans male couldn't be permanent. On a side note, I have some issues with the R-rating myself, but that's another story that I don't really have time to explain here, so I recommend "Is The R-Rating Overrated?" by Center Row.
so at one point i took a crack at rewriting old and new magic to have decent mechanics, that fit into what little we learn about them in the show. first off everyone has mana, no more no cost, you have mana and if you drain all of yours you could fall unconscious, or even die if severe enough. old magic is considered safe, but difficult and slow to use. new magic is the opposite, risky but quick and easy to use. as a basis, the way to cast spells is through some form of runes, the more runes, the more complicated the effect of the spell, but the more mana it costs. example: to make the wind blow, use a wind rune, but it blows in it's natural direction at a normal speed. to choose the direction, add a direction rune, and to change the wind speed, add a speed rune. old magic: runes are inscribed using mana infused ink onto mana infused paper. the quality of the ink and paper are proportional to the strength of the one who made them. in order to cast the spell, you channel mana into the inscribed runes, and once said runes are full the spell goes off. pros: you can prepare even very difficult and powerful spells far in advance the paper is stable enough to partially fill a rune, then save it for later cons: you are limited by the spells you physically have prepared, and it can take a while to suddenly prepare a new one applying mana to an inscribed rune can take longer than a spell focus not just knowing the runes is enough, you must also create your ink, paper, and actually physically draw the runes new magic: runes are 'hand drawn' in free space by mages within spell foci. wands, staffs, orbs, even enchanted weapons. concentrate on the shape of the runes, channel mana into your focus, and it will draw the rune automatically inside it, casting once complete. pros: you can do anything! provided you know the spell runes and have mana, you can cast any spell you want at any time. applying mana to a focus is quick, requiring no prep time and filling up fairly quickly cons: no way to 'pre fill' a spell focus with mana, the spell must be filled 0 to 100 when cast if you lack the mana to cast a spell, it will either keep draining til it kills you, or you must cancel the channeling cancelling a spell early causes the mana to fire randomly back out of your focus into the world around you, with highly unpredictable and possibly dangerous magic effects and the last point of spell failures would the a source of conflict, and possibly the source of the rot. too much wild mana accumulating in more magic but rural areas like the fairy woods from inexperienced new magic users. and since the guardians tend to be quite skilled, and the guardian academy has many skilled guardians in it, these effects arent really known as a skilled mage can more easily 'clean up' wild mana spills without having them cause the long term problems. also there's something called sparks, if i remember right, which are basically spell grenades in the show. and my explanation for those was they are a combination of both types of magic, a spell focus permanently engraved with spell runes and filled with enough mana to trigger the spell, then sealed shut. breaking the seal, either by using magic to undo it, or just smashing the focus physically, releases the spell instantly. these are much harder to produce, and often have to be one use if you dont have time to carefully undo the seal, therefore these tend to only be used for incredibly complicated and incredibly powerful spells.
The safest option is to completely ignore it. You let the audience know he's trans and make him being trans irrelevant the rest of the time. It's better being a token than being handled poorly.
@@0deadx21exactly! The show is supposed to take place in the middle-age; but none of those designs feels consistant.. It abused the colored hair, it also abused the complete lack of character developpment, it went with clichés and pure stéréotypes and bullshit: "Transitioning is wonderful and easy" "A girl means i would be girly" And so on. Due to how much garbage it is, i started to watch any good stuffs from the 80's-90's and 2000's.
Honestly, when I sat down and watched it myself, I was expecting worse. But I still wouldn't say it was good, just salvageable if they had some tinkering.
The Star Wars subreddit (not talking about Saltier than Crait) is built the same way, blindly loving everything about the franchise, even the soulless crap like Ahsoka and Book of Boba.
also yeah, the Carroway segment feels really a forced self-insert lecture about how transgender works in our real life. They don't even make an effort to think "how can transgender work in a fantasy world, without saying that explicitly?". Probably I can understand what was the true objective in the series.
Problem is "transgenderism" doesn't work in a Fantasy setting, mainly cause Magic effectively removes the issue. Let me put it another way, in One Piece there's a character named Ivankov who has the power to mainpulate hormones, and we see that he can inject people with hormones that completely change their sex as in completely. In effect they aren't trans as they've literally changed their gender, sex, whatever. Same thing here, a trans person is someone who identifies as the other sex, but magic just changes you completely into the other sex with none of the drawbacks transitioning comes with. Put another way trans anything never works in a fantasy setting.
@@thefanwithoutaface8105 fair point. With this, the issue becomes more "the authors want to force their ideology/propaganda" without understanding if and how would that work in the fantasy world of HGS. In another way, they thought it was like real life, forgetting HGS **isn't real life** - doubling down my final point in my original comment.
As well done as this review goes, I have to fight back a bit on the idea pitched of the monster being the reason the character changed sexes for like a better reason per se.. ..Like the main reason being that it's supposed to be their choice, not something they were forced into. ..Otherwise that would ironically be the opposite metaphor where you feel like you're in the wrong body, and you come to accept what you are in this body per se. ..And granted, there are people out there that could benefit from a story like that because we all go through different walks, but the show wasn't going for that approach. The show was simply conveying that they weren't connecting to the body they were made in, so they decided to change themselves to fit how their they feel about themselves. Hopefully I got my message across properly here, but nonetheless, hope it helps. 👋
The idea was that Carroway was trans all along, but didn't really understand what he felt was. The curse just so happened to finally give him a chance for it to click. That's why Mr. Enter still had Carroway choosing to not take the cure (or to stop looking for it) after a while. It's still a choice. It's just that he made the choice because of information he happened to stumble across. A blessing in disguise.
"Onto rocks and stone, Her body is made of stone, She didn't reached immortality, But she didn't became a liability!" Took me few minutes, unlike the writting of that "show"..
Hey hey incredibly talented Mr Enter! ^^ thank you SO much for your kind words and for including my animatic in your video! I was really happy to hear your thoughts about it! 😊💫
Your also a talented person
I loved your Animatic, Caraway has so much more Personality in them
Hey again
@MarcoStrange Hey Marco! Thanks for the heads up man! ^^
@@Aack-gw1bt opinions exist bruh
“I botched my mother’s legacy...”
Her voice went from a bad Ash Ketchum impression to a stereotypical valley girl. lol
"Like, can you imagine it?"
Isn't it more of a Rainbow Dash-impression?
Ash Ketchum isn't even his real name and that voice is a dub
@@pheunithpsychic-watertype9881 thanks captain obvious, everyone know that already.
@pheunithpsychic-watertype9881 "Ash Ketchum isn't his real name" ☝️🤓 Bro no one would know what they're talking about if they said "Satoshi Tajiri"
It needs to be said cuz it's been bothering me all week: This's show's artstyle looks like Owl House if it fell down the stairs.
No because that's exactly how it looks lmfao
That's what it told the police, anyway.
This show itself is basically Owl House if it fell down a flight of stairs
The same can be said about the way they write LGBT+ characters.
The show's character design has a weird mixture of a traditional fantasy cartoon with some anime influences, but those early 2000s comics and cartoons that tried to imitate manga/anime style only to fail completely at it. I think one of my main issues are the faces and the hair
I think what bothers me the most about the "I am transgender" scene (and later Snapdragon's arc) is that if changing your sex is as easy as drinking a magical potion, then why does the scene even exists in the first place? Why is it treated as a big deal?
Gender transition is a huge thing in real life because it's expensive, takes time and can completely change your life, but in the world of HGS it's as a casual as drinking a potion, is the sorta of stuff I can see people doing for fun because it's that easy.
If i became a guy just by drinking mint.. 😂
God damn it I wish it was that easy
Here’s a better question: can this anime really think it has the right to tackle this large issue even though it’s partially funded by money that should be going into Japanese animation studios and written by a team that appears to um need therapy?
Isn’t Crunchyroll suppose to divide their funds to Japanese studios to give back to the industry?
I mean, it kind-of is that easy in the real world? You just need to go through a lot of red tape and restrictions to 'get your potion' and it takes a bit to kick in. Like I'm sure people mess around with it more in HGS, but there'd still be a big difference between basically drinking Polyjuice as a gag and choosing to use it and identify differently for the rest of your life.
In a weird way, that might make the barriers for identifying as Trans kind-of higher? Because I could go on HRT for a decade and use that to 'prove' I'm determined to fight through all these barriers. But if it's as easy as just buying a potion every month and getting instant results, then I'm sure there'd be more people saying "What if they're faking and they change their mind?" because it'd be easier to swap genders back and there'd be seemingly no negative physical consequences for detransitioning.
Interspecies reviewer even had an episode dedicated to that very thing. ... I know leave me alone.
Honestly it would have been decently funny if, after Rosemary calls the sword the one thing that matters to her, you hear Sage from offscreen yelling "RUDE!"
Could have also been a segway to Parsley mentioning the locket, Rosemary remembering that Parsley fixed her stuff last time asks her to do it, but parsley works with metal, not stone, recommends Caraway since she heard from the blacksmithing teacher that he has a pretty wide set of skills.
That actually got me thinking. An entire board of writers, one of them could of pitched exactly what you said, they laugh, put it in there.
It took an entire board of writers to be so droll in their humor that they couldnt fit in anything like that.
"Drugs"
"RUDE!"
Yeah! many chances for funnier jokes. 😂
Or just a “the audacity of this bitch” face Sage is making in the background
Here's a way to fix the implication that the secret of immortality is hidden in a first-year student's magic book; just make it the magic equivalent of headlight fluid, i.e. a prank that people use to confuse those inexperienced in magic. It took me all of 5 seconds to think of this; the show has no excuse to have a blunder like this.
maybe immoortality was the friends we made along the way :P
Or you just read it as a joke, like I think it was intended to be. Like that in Iron Man 2 where Tony finds Captain America's shield...only to use it as something to prop up his table.
"Sage yelling is what makes the crush click."
That's called a kink, Mr. Enter.
This is a kid's show, after all.
is it?
i genuinely can't tell who this show is meant to be for
it's too juvenile for adults but too inappropriate for children
it is literally a show for nobody
There's at least one per series.
Then it really should have been portrayed better
That was supposed to be an adult show.. 😂
I’ve heard a lot of people claim the “old magic vs new magic” thing was supposed to be some half-baked political allegory, but personally I think it’s a metaphor for the mindset of the show’s creators.
Why put time, thought, and effort into creating a fleshed out fantasy world when you can just throw whatever you want on the screen because “it looks cool”?
If only it looked cool in the end, but it doesnt.
It can be argued to be both. Especially if you look into the writing staff and what kind of people they are. Kate Leth being one of the most infamous examples.
@@Falcovsleon21 Especially with one of the lesbian aunts straight up saying, "Your mom wasn't always so conservative." Like...what? Who talks like that? It just felt very weird considering this is a medieval fantasy world.
"Political allegory" is said too much. It's literally Old vs New from the mind of a teenager - wishful thinking.
And... let's be real, we all want this at points. No amount of tough talking can change that.
@@jmaster4941That specific line always baffles me because it says the exact opposite of what they're trying to say.
"You know, your mom used to use new magic when she was younger"
Yeah, and now she doesn't anymore and says I shouldn't either. Maybe there is, I don't know, a REASON she changed her mind on it, something she only figured out as she got older?!
You cannot grasp the true form of High Guardian Spice’s attack
W Mother 2 reference
Quick! Pray the cringe away, Paula!
@@ramenbomberdeluxe4958 Heh
That's because the show IS an attack.
Hey hey hey no no no, hold onto those lovecraftian themes for something more fitting. Like Velma.
Oh yeah transitional surgery is just like taking a temporary potion, they really nailed it
AND the teacher uses 'new magic' to achieve this change, BUT, later on new magic is bad?! What the hell are you saying show?!
That's personally not the gripe I have with it; I think it was supposed to be a kind of fantasy HRT thing. My problem is that the fact that it's a magical thing means nothing! It's practically just an HRT (with some changes I'm likely missing) with nothing unique or even remotely magical about it other than being called a potion & being orange! (kinda like Eda's anti-bird potion.. Huh)
@@ccrstarpanda also he said it was a potion, i thought potion making was old magic, seriously what exactly if the difference between old magic and new magic
I find that hilariously offensive. It's like the writers missed the point of escapism.
It’s supposed to be a stand-in for HRT, not surgery.
Remember how 'Phineas and Ferb' perfectly juggled three different (but still connected!) subplots in *every episode?* Good times.
Even the Simpsons did it better
Do you know why the Roadtrip concept is so popular? It's because it gives you the ability to tell any type of story you want without having to worry about continuity all the time. Character's, Place's, Everything can be changed episode to episode, moment to moment. (within reason of course)
This is why Avatar TLA worked so well. It created a small cast of character's and focused on they're Journey. Meaning that they could freely explore multiple plot lines character's, and experiences to whatever degree they wanted too.
This show Desperately feels like it want's that, but screwed up by putting it in a school setting. Which is much more limiting when it comes to an adventure based setting.
Even the school setting would work. ...if they kept the group at least partly together at all times so that there was only at most one instance of "splitting the party" going on at any given time.
It is a magic school. It is generally expected that these things have all sorts of secret chambers (not even necessarily containing giant snakes), interesting areas in their vicinity (it doesn't NEED to be a dangerous forest and a town of pure mages with secret passages everywhere in between, but this is just an example), mysterious rooms randomly around that have ancient magics causing them to literally take different forms based on who opens them... you get the point, even if its literally just descriptions of stuff a single, particularly famous magical school has.
Seriously, Hogwarts had enough magical wonderness in it and its surroundings that it could have potentially been suitable for 7 interesting years of a more light-hearted "oh, Voldemort actually did fully die to Harry and everything is actually good but Harry just had to live with his cousin because the wizards needed to clean up remaining voldemort sympathizers and needed to keep him safe" romp through just all the cool stuff that makes up the school, and the plot lines that often revolve around them.
A magic school is LITERALLY the one type of school you can basically be on a "road trip" the entire time without actually needing to leave the campus and immediate surroundings. Like, even super hero schools or other fantasy/sci-fi school concepts that don't revolve around magic can't do that.
@@SephirothRyuwatching this show, i felt like i was on a drug trip..
Why are you comparing a show that isn't a road trip plot, and doesn't even attempt to be that (despite what you seem to be saying), to shows with road trip plots? Of all the weird things I've heard people say about this show...
Yeah a road trip is perfect for showing off worldbuilding.
@@pigeonmama Read the last paragraph. It brings everything full circle.
"This is a kid's show, after all."
Not according to the show's creators. They apparently don't know what they're doing.
I have heard rumors that it was originally pitched to Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon as a kids show, but was rejected for being under developed. Crunchy Roll accepted it, but insisted it be targeted to an older audience. Very little about the writing was changed accept for a few swear words and a little more blood on the fight scenes.
@@ivorynk752 I could believe it. If I had been a professional TV station, I would have rejected this, too.
It is a woke diversity s hole show with no story.
@@ivorynk752 I'd believe this. especially with how they were "making it before they wrote/storyboarded it" or whatever was actually said. it makes me feel there was no story bible like most people make when pitching a show.
It is incredible that both this show and Velma do not seem to know what their audiences are supposed to be lmao. That should really be something to establish early if you are a writer.
It’s funny how Sage talks about how Rosemary and her have been friends since they were kids, yet we never get at least one flashback of them interacting during their childhood. Where was Sage when Rosemarys mom disappeared? Did that happen before or after they met? When did they become friends? How are they even friends ? There’s barely any good chemistry between the two.
Raye created the pair as a "shipping material".. 😂
I'm not even joking, that was the intention.
@@YourFeelingsSucks And as expies of Madoka Kaname and Sayaka Miki, characters that he really loved to ship back then.
@@MrAuthor3DSoh yeah 😮 , I mean Rosemary does look a lot like Madoka, but I just realized that Sage and Sayaka both have blue hair, though their looks and personalities are very different, but I can imagine Raye having shipped Madoka and Sayaka
@@pablocasas5906 the big difference is that Madoka and Sayaka are well written characters. Then you have Sage and Rosemary.
High Guardian Spice never realizes how potentially depressing it is to say that even in a fantasy world where magic is literally real, you still have to do Hormone Replacement Therapy every single month and there isn't a way here to just switch your gender/sex and be done with it.
By making it realistic they sort of took away the whole wish fulfilment aspect of a fantasy setting.
And they didn’t even explain why the gender transformation isn't permanent
Like "the body tries to revert back after a month"?
@@Hanmacxif it's not a reference to HRT that, or according to some, it's a parody of that..
I've heard some people being unhappy when trans characters "have it easy" and can transition magically, because it's frustrating to irl people who struggle with medics and surgery. So I suppose they wanted to avoid controversy (which is ironic considering the show we're talking about but anyway...).
In my opinion, fictional transition should simply be coherent with the worldbuilding. And in HGS, it's certainly odd, to say the least...^^'
@@agnesleuenberger3713 But if trans characters exist in a literally magical setting, wouldn't giving them the same limitations we have in real life in spite of that seem like we are deliberately making this one thing hard to try and make a point, regardless of how it doesn't make sense in-universe ?
@@WeirdWonderful I'm sorry, I'm not a native speaker, I'm not sure I got your message correctly...
In case you felt like I was disagreeing with you, I was just reporting what OTHER people said, to offer a potential explaination to why the authors made that weird choice. But that doesn't mean I agree with them. As I said, imo, difficult or not, ways of transitioning should make sense in universe. And in HGS, it does not.
This made me realize that most Anime's I watch don't usually have a subplot structure to their episodes, or if they do they are more closely tied together with the main plot. Having characters split off and do their own thing (without being forced apart and the plot is trying to regroup or work towards a common goal from different areas) and not group back together until the very end is much more western style of story telling.
One Piece always felt kind of Western to me.
@@aishisufuyu5961One Piece granted my weird dreams.
A world where dinosaurs, giants, cyborgs exists in, along with pirates.
@@theky7713they always have a reason to at least and usually no time is wasted
maybe this show would have worked better if it actually had a main plot. slice of life anime like onimai and K-ON!! are more focused and have more of a main plot then this show
@@aishisufuyu5961funny enough that's the same feeling I get when I read that series. It's art style, storytelling, facial expressions, and sense of humor is a very unconventional anime (even by Shonen Jump standards). And I really like the series for that.
What's really weird about the trigger warning being unnecessary for this show is Crunchyroll did not put any warning when they released the first episode of Goblin Slayer who contains a rape scene. It's only after people complained Crunchyroll decided to finally put a warning at the beginning of each episode. The weirder thing is they basically tricked people, with their announcement on twitter, into believing Goblin Slayer was a typical wholesome fantasy show about young adventurers going on quests.
Why did High Guardian Spice was in need of a warning about violence and sexual themes for nothing, but a show having goblins raping and torturing people was judged not only not necessary, but also had to be kept a secret about its tone when announced?
I have a theory that Crunchyroll placed that warning so people would mention it on social media just because how ridiculous it sounded and give the show free publicity. It sounds dumb, but we're talking about CR and HGS
The irony was that Goblin Slayer was more mature than HGS..
GS is pretty mellow if you take out the first episode of every season. That, or I have been desensitized to violence...
@@YourFeelingsSucksWell, I'm pretty sure it's aimed at a different audience, I haven't seen it but I would presume it's PG-13 or R.
@@mattwolf7698 Goblin is aimed for a mature audience.
How is the transition magic not permanent? *_Why_* isn't it permanent?
I think it is supposed to be reminiscent to hormone replacement.
Yep, instead of making MAGIC.
Idk I’ll just leave you with this:
have to take a pill every month to stay trans, then new magic is extremely bullshit
@@ivorynk752*_Why?_* You introduced powerful magic that can transmute matter, why can't the same thing happen with genders?
It’s the same magic system that have a Immortality spell btw
Rosemary not knowing who Karoway is makes ZERO sense he was the PARTNER OF LAVENDER, Rosemary's own mother when she herself is "supposedly" a GUARDIAN NUT how does she NOT know the partner of THE MOST FAMOUS GUARDIAN?
The easiest fix would be to just move Karoway's transition to AFTER Lavender goes missing at least offering SOME logical explanation for why Rosemary wouldn't recognize him
And what would remotely make this special in a world where transformation magic exists and according to Sage would have no cost literally what is the difference between "transition magic" and regular transformation magic except by being infinitely worse going by what this series shows later that you don't need to keep taking a potion to hold standard transformation magic?
"Also, Lavender was my old friend.."
"But who are you?"
*end credits*
lavender was my best friend
she never mentioned you
surely you saw me in pictures though
nope never seen you before i got to school here.
well im trans
huh... does that explain why mom never talked about you?
ok ok i know bad writing but honestly... i dont think it would be out of place in this show except maybe make the adult self insert wonder about his best friend.
"funny, you have the same name as a girl who adventured with my mum"
"oh, I...WAS that girl."
"wait what."
Magic is so op, that makes you wonder why are there warriors and archers when you can literally do anything with a terrasphere? Like if i where to hire a guardian ill just hire mages to fix my problems instantly
As if mages would be hired by lowly warriors when nothing warriors can offer has any value for the all powerful mages. Its a very broken and badly though out world.
Turn into a dinosaur or anything you want..
It's a fantasy setting after all.
Magic is usually overpowered, it makes it hard to justify the existence of pure martial characters, it's hard to justify playing a fighter in dnd because you don't have resources to quickly solve problems, unlike caster classes, to the point that (in my experience) if you ask about playing a fighter you will honestly get recommended to play a paladin or ranger. And that's in a system where magic is limited to slots and if you burn your slots you are out for the day.
If you had unlimited magic there would be no real point for anything, all wants and needs are a mere incantation away.
because
Even My Little Pony Friendship is Magic have a better explanation.
There magic is more like a skill, most ponies uses magic that help them with everyday life, just because you know how a spell is done it does not mean you will be able to do it
This episode feels like they had 3 different ideas for this episode and they thought "f*ck it let's do them all, plus a couple of flashbacks from multiple points of view"
When we cover old magic and new magic, it should be obvious that anything old would be labeled as "problematic". I am confident this won't be the only time we hear of this.
I unironically love problematic stuffs, episodes being banned are an example.
If new magic can do anything at no cost, why does Caraway have to keep taking potions to stay male? Why can't he just use new magic to permanently be male? Is this a subtle hint about Sage being wrong, and how new magic actually does have limits? Or is it just that the writers really wanted an allegory for real-life transitioning so they ignored the very rules they just set up? Couldn't be the latter, right?
What happened with Snapdragon suddenly liking Sage is known as "having a type" or "having a kink". Long story short, there is a personality type, physical attribute, quirk, etc, that Snapdragon is heavily attracted to. Once Sage displayed she had said trait, Snapdragon basically fell in love (or in lust, it varies) with her regardless of her other traits. Considering Snapdragon is best friends with Amaryllis, an extremely rude and bossy person, it somewhat checks out that he's drawn to these types of people.
Snapdragon legit pissed me off.. "oh being a girl means you love girly stuffs", it's not what it is about.
A man and woman are born differently, one could assume the fact that they love things from the other gender (tomboys for example), but the whole "oh i am one too!"..
That was really off.
I believe this works as a retrospective. My story is basically that. Was always a tomboy, hated girly stuff. Never really understood what was wrong with me, especially when puberty hit and what I now know as gender dysphoria, took major hold. But at the end of the day, because I didn't know what being trans was, I always said I was girl.
Once I started learning about transgenderism, I literally was, "oh, I am definitely trans!" The hatred of girly gender related stuff was just a visible sign of it. There was a LOT more going on underneath that I had no idea how to communicate simply because I didn't know.
But, in regards to HGS, it's super shallow. It doesn't look at the deeper stuff underneath. Something that is honestly pretty pervasive in trans characters in media. Some shows definitely rise above, but the stereotype is prominent in that 'if I don't like girl toys, then I must be a boy' (and vice versa).
Social justice types don't know how to think
I really think Sage was exaggerating about New Magic being "limitless". We see stuff like one of Redbud's terraspheres running out of energy while showing off - and actions speak louder than words.
Rosemary breaks her sword while everyone is with her. Imagine if we'd simplified this episode by having Parsley offer to fix Rosemary's sword and they go to the smithy together, where it turns out Parsley's solution was to remove removing the broken gem altogether, which Rosemary refuses for sentimental reasons. Then the smithing teacher tells them to go together to find Professor Caraway. Boom, one subplot eliminated, both the same 'lessons' are learnt, and all characters still have something to do.
In a world where magic can literally do anything, couldn't they just use magic to get the body they want?
One thing that really bothers me about Carroway being trans, is that the show doesn’t account for magic. The way he explains it, it sounds like transitioning process is similar to what we have on earth, you take a potion regularly in order to maintain the transition. First of all, what does this transition entail? Is it literally just like hormone treatment that we have? Does it change a person’s genital or does it change someone’s sex down to their chromosomes? If it can change someone’s biological sex why does Carroway refer to himself as “transgender”, wouldn’t “transsexual” be more accurate? Hell would this world just consider Carroway to be male if his sex is changed? If the potion cannot change one’s sex then…why not? I’m pretty sure they say in the show that new magic can do anything so I highly doubt that changing one’s sex would be out of the realm of possibilities (and if it is then why?) Does that type of magic exist but Carroway doesn’t want to use it?
I am perfectly fine with a trans character being in fantasy setting but you have to take into account the world that you build and how that effects a character transitioning. Both in how they would transition and the level of acceptance that fiction society has for it.
Yeah, needing to continuously use a potion to not change back is silly from a magic perspective. It means that once the magic of the potion runs out it still somehow has a enough magic to completely alter your body structure. Only way it could actually work is if it was an illusion spell layered over top of your body and running out of magic just lets the illusion drop.
I remember that as a kid, like 20 years ago, I watched an anime called Sorcerous Stabber Orphen, which was a fantasy show and in a couple of episodes the main character Orphen finds a friend from his wizardry student years, Stephanie, who was born as a male but asked some wizards to turn her into a woman because that's the way she always felt. I think it was one of the first times I saw transgender representation in a show, and Stephanie was presented in a respectful manner, helped Orphen and his friends and in the end of the first season she got married to her boyfriend. That was a show from 1998 and it was much better done that what HGS did
Yeah, and it also feels like they could've adjusted the whole perception of it to fit the world. "I'm transgender" feels so modern, it kind of takes you out of the fantasy setting. Why wouldn't he say something more like, "I'm a shapeshifter" or "changeling" or "therianthrope". With that last one, it would at least make sense that Rosemary would have no idea what that is.
Because in a world were you can easily just transform/ change your body into ANYTHING with NO DRAWBACKS, you'd be hard pressed to try and make me believe that people aren't using that sh!t like all the time. For men to give themselves six-packs, for women fantasy influencers to remove any percieved flaw on their face, or for people to impersonate celebrities. You're telling me that almost nobody in HGS's world would want to transform themselves into like an orc, or a giant, or a dragon, or a hot anime catgirl? You're telling me that no furries would make their fursona real? That is one of the most unbelievable things to me. So changing your gender using transform magic would be super normalized, because you KNOW there are people out there using it for 1000x weirder things. So having transitioning being a big deal and having Rosemary all surprised and stuff just doesn't fit the world.
Sorry if I didn't explain myself well.
They really just slap a metaphor about hrt and not think about the implications
Agreed, but also this unexplained HRT stand-in potion doesn't affect the pitch of Caraway's voice. His VA is also a trans man which is nice, but unfortunately he retains a somewhat female voice pitch (I'm not quite sure how to word it).
So why doesn't this potion affect that too? If magic can do anything, why wouldn't it affect the vocal cords? Is there a way to cherry pick your preferred features and Caraway just prefers not to alter his voice or have it be affected by the potion/hormones in any way? Something this significant needs a proper explanation.
Wait until Snapdragon's arc comes around in the next episode; it's so much worse -mostly because of Sage. 💀
Yeah I never liked the message that they were pushing. It basically feels like since he doesn't act like a stereotypical guy, he has to be a trans woman. And same for me and with UA-cam apparently. I don't like to wear makeup that much and mascara has always been a no go (I don't like things near my eyes) so now UA-cam has been showing me old spice and other men products because I guess it assumes I'm a trans man now and I'm not. It's very ironic how some people claim they are progressive but then, they'll automatically say someone is trans because they didn't follow a stereotype of the gender they were born as. I find it more close minded tbh.
That point about a photo giving a mystery to a teacher's identity. Where have i heard that before..... Oh right! Little witch academia did that exact thing in episode 3! Surprised they didn't use their "inspiration" to do something like that.
New magic feels like it was a "half baked metaphor" for multiple things and the writers were to blind to see how that did not work to be honest.
I would've accepted "advanced technology", especially given the techno details on Olive's spark spell. But they just HAD to describe Old Magic with a term as distracting as "conservative"...
i can't get over Parsley's voice acting, sometimes it doesn't sound like a young character and sometimes it doesn't sound like a good performance, like the actress phoned it.
I'm not an English-speaker, but I'm aware of certain English language VAs due to videogames and cartoons, it seems some of the secondary characters are voiced by veteran VAs, but the main protagonists are voiced by newcomers, which isn't bad in theory, though some of their performances kind of sound like they didn't have too much experience
HGS's creator (who also voices Caraway) said that part of why the show failed was that they couldn't afford better writers (ya know, that "all female writing staff" that Crunchyroll wanted to prop up?) And considering that his character is nothing more than "self-insert trans character", I don't blame him for throwing the writers under the bus.
But isn't it still the creator's fault, considering they agreed to these scripts before the episodes were made?
I've commissioned artists for my book, and I always look at the final product before saying whether they should finish it or change a problem I have with it. Also, I've never yelled at them about any changes I wanted, so it's not like the creator of HGS had to be a jerk if they were unhappy with these scripts.
I also know that it's rare for the final product to be exactly like what was pitched. SVTFOE, Gravity Falls, and Steven Universe, all had significant changes after the pilot was aired for numerous reasons. My point is how come all these issues went through the creator, yet they're excuse is, "the budget wasn't big enough?"
bullschtick-
It's Raye's fault to be honest.
Who, in their rights minds, want to hire a writer that started countless of controversies, but the most famous is the "Kill All Men"??
Who want to blame the budget after that?
@@MarcoStrange yeah! even if a creator has a hard time, we need to be honest and own up to things, or it'll feel worse for them :(
@@MarcoStrange I don't know how much power Raye actually had over the production. Even the shows you mentioned had a bunch of executive meddling. And yes, I do agree that his excuse of "we didn't have enough money" is flimsy, but I've already had people accuse me of being a transphobe for hating this piece of crap, so I'm trying to play devil's advocate so that I'll at least look better in arguments.
I always liked the way Final Fantasy VI handled the concept of industrialization and magic. Industrialization was a force that could be controlled but magic was an infinitely more potent yet chaotic. Attempting to merge the two resulted in chaos incarnate-Kefka Palazzo-when they experimented without understanding the nature of magic in that universe. Later experiments dialed back the potency of the magic, but by then the quest for power had corrupted the Empire's ambitions such that any and all moral limitations were ignored-excluding one which Kefka eventually ignored himself, which lead to the World of Ruin.
Mr Enter, can I call you John? (Anyway) The fact that your "new magic is a metaphor for industrialization" theory makes sense and would actually be kinda interesting means it was probably never intended.
HAVE YOU SEEN THESE WRITERS!!! THEY ARE NOT THAT CLEVER!!!
I think one of them is gendercidal.
The series feels like the writers thought "wouldn't this be cool?" and "wouldn't this be interesting?" but it's all scrambled together without giving it any thought beyond that.
All ideas seem short sighted
I remember being in a team of admins and moderators, we discussed what could work or wouldn't.
We got ideas that were kept or ditched.
I swear, the writers of HGS never worked with each other, and it shows..
8:38 I’m so glad I’m not the only one who instantly noticed this issue.
Because I love magic systems, and I say a line from Once upon a Time from Rumpelstiltskin all the time:
“All Magic has a price.”
In fact, I would go so far to say that there’s two things about magic that there is a Price and there’s also a Cost.
What it takes to cast a spell, and what happens because you cast the spell.
The funny thing is in a competent writers hands, this whole concept of “new magic” not having a cost would lead to a terrifying or dark revelation about what the cost actually is for this new magic, and that it’s actually more dangerous because nobody realizes what it’s doing.
I am getting all these ideas of what and how to write the magic system and the show in its entirety based on that idea alone...imagine:
Old Magic is very powerful but requires great skill, concentration and lots of knowledge to perform safely and properly.
New Magic was invented as a shortcut, removing some of the potency of the effect to make the spells easier to bear and perform. However what no one notices is that every time its performed, the magic, as it is "improperly" performed, damages the astral body of the caster, the part thats responsible for magic. The more you use it the more it eats away at it, damaging your potential for magic, eventually, after years and years and years of use and abuse one becomes unable to cast more powerful spells, eventually you become completely unable to perform any kind of magic.
A plot could revolve arround the main cast learning about this fact, and also learning that the ruling caste knows, however they dont intend to do anything about it, as this prevents new powerful mages to emerge who could threaten their rule. Essentially they crush anyones ability to become powerful, which results in conflict with the main cast, potentially rebellion from the New Mages against the Old Mages of the ruling caste, for putting everyone down over their fears of rebellion...
iirc, new magic;s cost was polution. The rotting tree was caused by new magic. Which kind of makes sense when you look at the teaches just dumping wands after they are done.
Heck, there was very famous show where the big reveal was what the cost of their magic was. What's more, it was very heavily foreshadowed, but a lot of the audience wouldn't even notice it.
So glad Enter brought up the alternative animatic version of the Caraway scene.
Honestly, having a magic system with no cost is a problem in general because it's like a genie lamp with infinite wishes that also allows you to wish for more wishes, too. From the standpoint of having stakes in the show, High Guardian Spice has shot itself in the foot. Of course, the system clearly DOES have a cost, but why would you even go through with something like that? That's the kind of thing that would maybe, MAYBE be in the roughest of rough drafts. Then you'd be like "Wait, this takes away all the stakes and subsequent intrigue from our show. Maybe we shouldn't do that."
Magic systems or otherwise superhuman abilities need built in limitations for that reason, what stops characters from solving the plot before it gets too far? Bigger cost for bigger spells, immunity factors, cool downs, side effects, drawbacks, method of channeling, source of magic etc all contribute to problems to overcome when engaging the magic system. Some spells in Harry Potter require a specific kind of thought as well as the incantation like the Patronus needing a happy memory.
@@jbcatz5the sad fact about the patronus, is that one of the Weasley twins died during the war, while the other lose an ear.
It is said that due to the loss, he couldn't be happy like he used to, so he wouldn't be able to cast the spell anymore.
@@YourFeelingsSucks It’s also not exclusively cast by the good guys, Umbridge is shown to have cast it in Deathly Hallows and I dread to think of what happy memories the sadists has used.
Probably the closest thing to a “no-cost” magic system that I can think of that works is the one from Mage: The Ascension. To (drastically) summarize, MtA’s system boils down to the mage declaring “I reject your reality and substitute my own” through whatever methods fit their particular magical paradigm (martial arts, retro pulp sci-fi tech, shamanism, etc). The catch is that reality isn’t nearly as tolerant of blatant wizardry as in centuries past, so mages have to make some sort of plausible excuse to avoid incurring its wrath.
By the way, that’s Cam Clarke (Kratos Aurion, Revolver Ocelot/Liquid Ocelot, and Leonardo) as Neppy Cat. The show also has Wendee Lee (Konata, Haruhi, and Akane) as Parsley’s mom, Barbara Goodson (Granny Chiho, the Sector 7 slums landlady, and Rita Repulsa) as the potions teacher, Cindy Robinson (Kushina, Amy Rose, and Lady Butterfly from Sekiro) as Thyme’s mom, SunWonCho/ProZD as Parmel’s cousin and the demon, and Stephanie Sheh (Hinata, Orihime, and Sailor Moon) as Olive. Gee, I wonder where the budget went.
I'm not an English-speaker but I recognize plenty of those VAs. Honestly, the voice acting is one of the few acceptable things about the show, sans a couple of exceptions like Slime Boy (though there's a certain charm to his performance).
Speaking about voice acting, that reminds me unlike other Crunchyroll Originals' like Tonikawa, I'm a Spider or Onyx Equinox, HGS didn't get dubbed into other languages. I believe it was due to a lack of interest, there were some people that said it was because of its LGBT+ themes, but I don't buy it, I'm from Latin America and even on Disney+ all of the shows and movies that feature LGBT themes are available without any cuts or censorship, the Pixar short Out arrived at the same time HGS was released and it got dubbed and it was rated suitable for al ages
@@pablocasas5906 more than "lack of interest" I think it had more to do with the issues Raye Rodriguez had with crunchyroll during and after production of said show, which leads me to think that he chose to not allow hgs to be dubbed in other languages
@@josevelasquez1998 don't know if Raye had a lot to say in regards his show's distribution, considering how much CR meddle with other aspects of the show. Not to mention that other CR Originals like the also panned EX-Arm and Freak Angels did receive dubs as well
I don't know how CR manages their non-English dubs, especially since their merger with Funimation, but there's some shows like the Rurouni Kenshin reboot that got dubbed into Spanish and Portuguese months before it got released in English, and others like Tomo-chan is a Girl and Odd Taxi that had the opposite situation
One Thing about these types of stories that make them more fleshed out: SHOW, DON’T TELL.
Yeah, you can tell from Sage’s opening, instead of showing off badass spells she just rambles about magic, it’s so lame and doesn’t spark the imagination
What I wanna know is how long the rot has been going on? Cuz like, either the teachers haven't noticed it yet, or they don't think the use of "new magic" is related at all.
If the latter is the case, what do they think is causing the rot? Have they looked into it at all??
Because they're promoting the daylights out of new magic at their school!
The term "transgender" feels all wrong for a fantasy setting. It's clinical, it's modern, when Rosemary says "I don't know that word" the only real response would have been "it's OK, the audience does." Because that's what that conversation was, a scene that's there to say "look at our progressive values! Our all female writers room is sooooooo moral and good!"
I'm not saying that a trans character in a fantasy setting is a bad thing, far from it. But you need to A, use the fantasy setting to inform that detail and B, do something interesting with the setting that couldn't be done in a non-fantasy setting. Going off the idea of a curse that Caraway and Lavender would need to quest to find a cure for: the way I'd write it would involve a curse that swapped Caraway's sex and altered Lavender or her sword in some way. As they quest Caraway comes to realize that he prefers the male form and sees lavender struggling with whatever the curse did to her, then when they get to the macguffin he uses it to fix Lavender's issue instead of himself and admits that he likes his new form, cut back to him and Rosemary and only the does he fix the sword a second time. Would you look at that we've gotten three character arcs for the price of one. The problem of course is that writing this would require subtlety and talent, something of which the writers room of HGS was clearly bereft. Better we just say a word that the audience already knows and just hammer a point into their skulls without doing anything interesting with it.
You got a character named Anise who looked like a modern biker.. 😂
of course the trans creator of the show isn't trying to do anything wrong, the simple truth is that the poor writers needed a reason to justify the self-insert, but no one on this project was equipped to handle something like this with tact or professionalism, and god forbid a single drop of artistry make its way into a single word of the script. but i better shut up, i bet i already sound like an invertebrate
Damn, imagine if this show had the same love and care The Last Air Bender had?
Dwarves are stereotyped to be stronger than humans. So a threat to humans wouldn't always be an equal threat to Dwarfs.
Cats can learn words without magic.
Did the writers for the same episode even talk to each other?
A first year guardian’s textbook has how to grant eternal life while gender swapping requires a potion every month to keep it working, even if eternal life requires a potion for every life threatening situation, a gender swap spell should be easier as a concept
My concern about Parsley's subplot is that I don't recall her needing to learn that particular lesson. Is it shown anywhere in the show that she has contempt for smaller tools? I mean yes, she looks kinda surprised when given the small hammer, but that's not enough!
Why the teacher wanted to teach her and only her about something he couldn't suspect she needed? Did I miss something? =(
Again, haven't seen the show actually, but given the comedic bent of Parsley's little interlude I think it could have easily been more effective as a punchline if her entire adventure was offscreen. Kind of like the Ricklantis episode, just open with her falling down the adventure hole and returning at the end of the episode to regale all of the cool stuff she did when no one was looking.
Sharp blade of sword can actually be touched, like for extra accuracy hitting at armour gaps, but you should not slide your hand against the blade, then it cuts easily.
Honestly, throughout all the reviews that I've seen on this show I'm surprised that no one's brought up the missed opportunity that is this show's magic system and how it isn't based around cooking and baking. Then again, that requires something this show barely has being common sense.
Its interesting to watch you break down this episode; the ones I've watched never went into how poorly paced and cut this episode was with the multiple subplots. Every other breakdown has always been on the animation errors, dialogue and Caraway's interaction with Rosemary.
it felt as if the writers are shoving the information down the viewer's throat instead of showing hint or clue.
I keep picturing Doug from Forged in Fire if he saw the sword's pommel broken. He'd say something along the lines of,
"Because the pommel is broken, you've lost the counterweight to your blade. Because it has drastically changed it, it's a catastrophic failure."
Again, that comes from a show on History about blacksmiths making weapons, and was on years before HGS was even announced. Even then, we've seen the importance of a weapon to character's, like Zoro from One Piece whose saw taking care of his blades throughout the series. At one point, it was even in an intro. I'm honestly confused with how this series seems to take "inspiration" from so many things, just to ignore other things that have been established in other series.
Speaking of, if you're correct about the magic thing, then it sounds like how Mako and Materia works in Final Fantasy VII. Yes, Materia gives you powers, but burning Mako damages the planet the more you use it. Then again, that's assuming you're right aboutwhat they were going for.
Solution: remove pommel, add new pommel. Swords are not a continous object, you can disassemble and reassemble them. In fact, this is often a part of what you want to do to properly maintain a sword.
@@SephirothRyu oh i agree you can repair weapons, it just feels like this series doesn't treat weapons as important as you expect. On top of that, why not take your idea and make it a lesson that the pommel being replaced wasn't the first time it happened, and it won't be the last time so Rosemary should learn not to be upset because it is something fixable?
Then again, a few episodes later they say the sword is unbreakable, so that still would have made this a problem. Did no one do a readover of these scripts before making the episodes?
I'll imagine the blacksmith speaking in rhymes for some reasons.
"You and your swords are connected,
Keep it strong and fierce, so the enemies you would have sliced".
The Pommel holds on the handle, in real swords. so yes a broken would be a catastrophic failure of handle. It even happened once that a contestant got cut for that.
8:35 No; Sandersons first law is “An author's ability to solve conflict with magic is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to how well the reader understands said magic."
I hope there's a " Technocracy" style compilation after it's finished
you know you're a bad show when family guy is better than you at tackling a serious issue
“Hey Louis, I’m better than that show who tried to be like an anime”
I dunno if I'd go that far.
The one thing that has always baffled me is that they have Caraway use a potion to temporarily stay as a male each month.
Rather than fulfilling (what I assume to be) the creator's wish of being an actual male by just oh I dunno
Using the New Magic to permanently transform Caraway into a dude forever.
What, is Caraway really bad at magic? Is it that hard to create a spell to permanently change gender? Yet somehow a spell for eternal life casually exists.
It's the tired that sleep can't fix. These people just can't help but turn everything into a lecture.
I think that the whole "old vs new magic" was never expanded further than Sage wanting to use old magic.
In common tales, you got "white vs black magic", white is usually associated with good and useful magic, and black is associated to evil spells and methods.
In Harry Potter, you got three forbidden curses,one tortured the target, Neville's parents went throught it,
The death spell, Harry's parents were ended by an unbreakable curse.. well, until Lily (Harry's mom), poured all of her love to protect Harry, so the spell was dodged, but it left a mark, and that it burned whenever Voldemort was close or around.
The magic in High Guardian Spice.. nothing was properly established, it "happened".
I think the "Eternal life" should be labeled as Curse, and the book explaining why it's a bad idea 😅
Thats why the alchemy In fma is so interesting because of the equivalent exchange because unlike the new magic in this show it has limits and rules
I would also like to say that Guardian HQ's take on the trangender scene is good too. It doesn't really focus on the trans part but it takes into account the reason for their meeting while giving cool characterization to Rose and Caraway
It baffles me that the easiest solution for this episode was just focusing on Lavender and Carroway and drop everything else.
Start with the whole sword pummel being broken, have Carroway notice or be asked to help by Lavender, they go to his office, Lavender comments about the girl next to her mom, have Carroway mention that he was a girl in the past, flashback to school days or something while also fleshing out Lavender's mom in her youth, show Carroway have some sort of doubt or odd feeling about herself while also having interactions with Lavender's mom to build some relationship, move to the fight while Carroway was still a woman, get cursed or something, and them go back to the present with him mentioning that at first he was distraught with the curse effect at first, trying to find ways to revert it, but noticed that the strange feeling he felt when he was a girl seens to had gone away, so he accepted that he was trans without name dropping it the term while repairing the broken pummel as Lavender is rather awe struck or something about his life story while also being interested in him for his connecting with her mother.
Like, I'm not a writter or have anything, but that type of stuff is just the most common type of deal you could pull off while being tasteful about transgenderism and they decided to botch the whole thing with three other subplots that amount to nothing in the episode.
I legit bursted in laughter when the sword was "broken".. 😂
If it was supposed to be an emotional scene, it failed.
Even Zoro's swords have more impact than this.
I think the two words "talking at" explains so many things here. The correct way do it is "talking with", or at least "talking to", but this is described as "talking at". This is not a writer who is able to handle a sensitive issue like this.
14:05 most video games have a weapon sharpening/repairing function for a reason. And watching Rosemary's plotline (If you can call it a plotline) I'm only just now realizing how much this show was deliberately trying to be like Steven Universe but you know? Being everything people feared it would be instead of actually a good show. Again I swear this show was written by AI it makes about as much sense.
Sadly, Breath of the wild never got any blacksmith, but the weapons were completely pristine, till they poofed away due to being broken..
The transgender point reminds me of a similar thing done in Hogwarts Legacy. The owner of The Three Broomsticks in that game is a transgender witch named Sirona Ryan. There's no explicit mention of how she was able to achieve this or whether her transformation is permanent or not, but there's a disturbing lack of taste in reducing gender transitioning down a spell or potion, especially since Sirona doesn't bother to change her voice.
But wasn’t she included because the developers of the game wanted to completely ignore how transphobic JK Rowling is as a person? Tbh, I feel as I can’t really enjoy Harry Potter knowing how horrible the series’ creator is.
@@elliotrobinson6739She's not transphobic. She supports trans rights; just not at the cost of women's rights and safety.
The thing is about is the show the writers treat the audience like stupid little kids who need to be told what to do if you want to put in social issues in a fantasy show you have to be subtle not shove it in people's faces rosemary missing her could've been good but did not explore the subject itself
Considering the show actually was pitched at first for networks like Disney and Nickelodeon, I can imagine the scripts were made for little kids in mind, but were barely changed when the show was acquired by CR. To be honest, if HGS actually aired in kids networks without the violence and swearing but with the LGBT content intact it'd still be much more inferior to others shows like Steven Universe and The Owl House in the way they handle the subject matter
10:10 - The "New Magic" vs "Old Magic" thing was done better nearly 20 years earlier by anime _Mahou Shojo Tai Arusu_ (known in English as _Tweeny Witches,_ a very underrated show in my opinion which ALSO delves into sexism and slavery)
here's a 2 minute brainstorm fix on "old magic vs new magic" that could even connect with the overarching plot
old magic when used releases back the particles or energy it uses. esentially making it create an equalibirum of energy use. the enrgy used is restored. new magic doesn't release back the energy it uses and is both easier and more powerful. the cost is very miniscule but there is a loss. the problem is that the more you rely on new magic the less enrgy is restored. so we have the rot starting to appear. because everyone is constantly relying on new magic for being easier and more powerful. pick 1 apple from a full apple tree and you won't notice a thing. but if you keep picking apples then that tree will have no more apples left.
like i said it was a 2 minute brainstorm but it's better then what we have
What disappoints me so much is that Carroway is probably the only instance of representation for trans-men in current day media. Hell, any well known media, even. Because as much as modern pop culture has strived to create more transgender characters (regardless of whether or not they succeed) I’ve noticed that the overwhelming majority of them are transgender women (i.e. male to female), which isn’t a bad thing, don’t get me wrong, it just seems like trans men aren’t getting the representation they deserve when there’s already slim pickings. So to have what basically amounts to the only character representation for trans men in popular media come from this feels incredibly disappointing.
Even the transman couldn't save this show..
You need to watch Good Doctor. There's an episode where a trans man (as in got transition surgery) is in labor and goes to the hospital to give birth. Personally, I think the trans identity falls apart once someone's pregnant (I'd call them hermaphrodites), but the writing's still pretty respectful.
@@jlev1028
"Personally, I think the trans identity falls apart once someone's pregnant (I'd call them hermaphrodites)"
Congratulations, you're entirely wrong! First off, that latter term is outdated and considered insulting. Second, gender is NOT equal to sex, a transgender man is still a man, their physical body parts aren't the deterministic aspect of their inner identity. Third, what you think doesnt matter, the scientific and medical facts and consensus, as well as the individual trans person and their identity, are what matter.
@@ramenbomberdeluxe4958 huh no? Gender is linked to sex, otherwise, how would you explain:
That a man is only attracted to men, if a woman is only attracted to women?
You need to have a gender in order to have a sexuality: straight, lesbian, gay or bi.
If a gender ceased to matter, then it wouldn't fit in either of those categories, it would be "none".
@ramenbomberdeluxe4958 Wow, triggered much? I made a passing comment of what I think about gender and you had to write two paragraphs whining that I'm wrong? Sorry that people believing that physical appearance and biology determines gender offends you. If looks don't matter in transitioning, then what's the point of gender transition surgery and hormone blockers? BTW, I admit, I shouldn't have used the term "hermaphodite" for human beings, but intersex individuals, including self-proclaimed ones, do exist, and they're probably more offended by how much the LGBT community ignores them in favor of those "nonbinary" and "genderfluid" lunatics.
My God, trying to keep up with all the plot is exhausting just hearing about it.
And, yes, the way they handled the trans character, just... yikes.
Calling it bad doesn't feel strong enough.
You also make a really damn good point about how they should've handled the explanation of HOW he became trans and the fake that the NEW Magic potion being limited to needing to be taken once a month from a lore standpoint makes no sense
Crunchyroll slapping that content warning onto High Guardian Spice was a dick move.
I dont have any issue with a trans character
I have it with the world building they make with this "potion" the character takes once a month
related to "new magic has no consecuences"
they have stablished that a person, any person, has a 30 or 28 days on a face and body no one will recognice
with no drawbacks if the person returns to their original body, beyond the fact that this particular character doesnt want that
in Harry Potter they set the potion to change form as a type of potion that is hard to make, has grave cons if done wrong, doesnt last long, and is under heavy scruteny
here, it looks like any assasin or just a thive can change their body, cause misschiff and get away when the potion wears off
Nah cuz transformation magic is a separate thing from transition magic according to the show, and the former is objectively better
@@elemomnialpha I think that my point remains
Transforming into your own rule 63 is too much of an advantage for bad characters that they should have balance it with some sort of drawback
The assassin kills some, is apprehend and recognised as a female of X stature
Assassin scapes
Many days have passed and they only find a male, kinda similar, but the culprit was a female so they move on
In a fantasy setting, being human is the weaker form compared to a dragon.. 😂
Using this was my idea of how to tie in the meaningless reveal to the plot. Use Carroway being trans as a way to introduce shape-shifting potions being a thing in this setting, so that when some bad guy uses one as part of his scheme, it doesn't feel like it came out of nowhere, but was previously established. It's something a good fantasy system does, establish what magic can do in innocuous ways, so that it can be revealed it was being used in more nefarious ways later. Or the hero can use it cleverly to get out of a situation.
Even Harry Potter does this, and HPs world-building is crap.
@@Sines314 that would be interesting
The consequences of that development extending to the people like the professor who use the potion for reasons harmless to others but impactful for themselves, as the potion is now under heavy scrutiny would have a more developed world and character
About the episode warning:
When you are promised sexual content, but there isn't any 😅
Hopefully you'd have the same complaint about IDW Sonic Issue 50. " Either heights are a threat, or they're not. " Sabrina the Teenage Witch was beloved since the 60s and it has its magic able to do almost anything, the only limits are we assume witches can't cast a spell to change the entire world, at least not without the head witch getting involved, and witches can run out of magic for weeks.
... Honestly, at this point I'm just glad to see my boy Parasect getting some love.
So far, the biggest problem with your reviews of this show are that you don't feature the Mentos theme song in them.
Or Reese's Puffs. Not enough of that, either
I get that reference
And this episodes other problem is Neppy cat doesn’t reference Metal Gear. Rose: Are transgender’s a food?
Vincent from the webcomic _Rain_ is honestly how Caraway should have been written. Add in elements of Remus Lupin from Harry Potter, and you're good.
Lupin took the wolfsbane potion, but that was only for keeping his werewolf side at bay.
That wasn't a bloody reference to HRT..
Like they say in Once Upon a Time, "all magic comes with a price". It should be a standard thing in fantasy because, like you said, otherwise it removes all sense of stakes.
It looks like the Rot is being caused by the use of new magic, but everyone in the setting is forced to be too stupid to notice it.
The manga xxxholic, a sister series to the Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles manga, has it that magic has a price and transactions must be precise to avoid adverse consequences. The more powerful the something you want is the higher the price you pay Yuko do provide it to you. This also holds true on TRC, where the series starts with the protagonists having to give up something each to Yuko to collectively afford to be able to proceed with their mission.
It’s like Newton’s Law, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. If you want to achieve something then something else has to give way for it.
The last 4 words of the title. quite a tongue twister, lol :)
I’m honestly getting tired of characters that only exist to be self inserts of their creators. Not like you can’t make it work, but more often than not, they suck.
Caraway isn’t as bad as say, Mindy Kaling Velma or Jessica Gao She-Hulk, or Mariko Tamaki Bitch, I mean Mandy, but he is boring and the lecture about being trans was intolerable (and this is coming from someone who has never actually watched the show except in reviews like this)
Caraway was legit doomed to fail as Raye was over-confident with that show..
It got stereotypes, and reinforced gender roles, like Snapdragon believe that being a girl means you like "girly stuffs".
When in reality.. being a girl means you were born as one.
Rosemary was supposed to be the "quriky adventurous girl", but the creator thought, perhaps, that she should be dumb like Luffy..
The thing is, Luffy, could be really smart and showed developpment, like he was terrified by the death by his adoptive brother, but in the Wano arc, he grew throught that and accepted it.
Rosemary was just the same "quirky girl", but the character fell flat, and her design with that puffy pink hair, dress are kind of off..
The dress could be replaced with pants and her hair would be shorter, in case she would be grabbed by it.
Also her personality, could have her growing and accepting what she can't change, that she could be an ass for no reasons (like with Aster and the 'Rhubarb" debate).
But if Luffy worked as a main protagonist it's because the character was worked on, by the author and owner of One Oiece.
Rosemary was doomed to fail as there is nothing to dig, outside of her mom disappearing, but that's it..
It is very worth noting how this show even exists. I'll try to make this breif. But basicaly, this show got on crunchyroll for a very strange reason. If you receall a few years back, Little witch Academia? That show was THE reason to have Crunchyroll and was super popular and beloved. However the creators only did 1 season beacuse they only wanted/planned for one season. While CR wanted more.
Around the same time, the creator of HGS was pitching their show around to various networks but none of them would take it, mainly beacuse they refused to make ANY changes and wanted it to be exactly their own vision and nothing else. Nobody would accept that. Execpt for Crunchyroll. Beacuse they were desperate and wanted a show that would keep the Little witch fandom around and HGS is very similar in concept to that.
You can tell this is what happend at LIttle witch ended in 2017, but HGS was first announced in 2018. Barley months apart.
Given how Little witch turned out so great beacse CR let the creators do everythng their own way, they were the only ones willing to accept these terms of not changing anything and only requesting things to be added in? We got HGS.
The funny thing is CR actually knew how bad it was. As this show was complelted years before it was even released to us, but they shelved it for good reason as they realized it was going to bomb badly and was a mess with the creator not knowing what they were doing.
- Wait, Rosemary really thought Snapdragon was "the rudest" after one interaction? All he did was react to her bothering him with her random doodle. Ugh, what a childish twerp! Well, no, I already thought she was childish. This is merely another proving point.
- I know Sage has said, on two occasions, that New Magic's casting power feels "unlimited" and has "no cost". But besides the speculation that it's connected to the Rot...in Ep5, Redbud's terrasphere explicity runs out of energy - THAT sounds like a cost, a limit. So I can only take this as Sage exaggerating (just like Parsley saying she was in the catacombs "for hours").
- I should point out that Snapdragon does join Sage in calling out Amaryllis for making the potion go volatile. It's just a bit hard to hear him over Neppy's mutated groaning. I'm just bringing this up for a later point in Snap's story, but I guess it does help somewhat justify his developing crush on Sage.
- It's hilarious how this show tries to make Rosemary seem similar to Lavender just because they both broke Flowering Thorn's pommel...even though in Lavender's case, it happened because the manticore flung her into the ground, and Rosemary merely lost her grip on it while trying to slash a fly.
(By the by, if she was trying to kill it for "ruining" her sandwich, I'd say she ruined it more by throwing it away.)
- Surprised you omitted Sage's "comeback" to Thyme. Seriously, haunting an old clock tower? Sage, are you referring to Thyme as a...something that rhymes with "kook"?
- I wonder which aspect of Caraway's transgenderism is more insulting - the fact that it's as easy as taking a potion (and all magic can be reversed, as stated later), or that he isn't even trans for HIMSELF in this story. What first made him realize that he didn't feel like his true self? How has changing genders affected his life? How did Lavender support him through the choice? Oh, I know the real reason he's trans - because he's blatantly Raye's current self-insert, and he's explaining it to Raye's previous self-insert.
(Oh, and keep in mind that Caraway's comfy enough to allow a picture featuring his past self in a public hallway. There's very little discrimination toward someone like him. Keep this in mind for another character later.)
Them talking about transgenderism also didn't feel earned nor did it really make sense for him to explain it to Rosemary. This should have been saved for a few episodes later, when there is actually a character that would need to hear about it. When Rosemary asks who was the girl in the picture, Caraway should have hand waved it by saying "that was a lifetime ago" or something because Rosemary wouldn't really push the issue.
Or if Rosemary only know about her mother's friend from stories, and didn't know that they were trans could have worked too
I'm not trans, but I generally want to advise against saying "transgenderISM", that phrasing is often used by bigots, and implies that being trans is an ideology (hence "ism") instead of what it actually is, an aspect of one's general existence.
@@ramenbomberdeluxe4958 Fair enough.
@@travisb.honest2438
Yeah, thanks for understanding! Sorry to bother you :)
@@ramenbomberdeluxe4958 you're good
After I saw this scene, I could easily imagine it playing out with the MC losing interest in the teacher's speech and saying her line about wanting to see her mom again while the teacher continues to ramble about the potion and "being the real me" in the background, and it wouldn't skip a beat. That's how big of a disconnect this moment had from the rest of the scene.
I think the meddling does make some sense in this case, because while Crunchyroll does have children's anime on the service, anime as a whole is usually seen as a "Older kid to young adult" type thing, so it isn't inconceivable for Crunchyroll to want their first original production to want to line up with that target audience.
I say inconceivable because while I can imagine that being the case it is still very stupid, for multiple reasons.
for me, it was because they wanted this to be a children´s show, but crunchiroll saw the first script and demanded then to rewrite because lgbt caracthers don´t sell on china.
@@rafaelbrites3607 That could also be it, occam's razor.
The thing is that most of the children's anime available on CR, things like Pretty Cure, are sub only, and while I now that there's plenty of young girls and boys that are capable of reading subtitles, I think in order to reach a younger audience those type of shows should get dubbed, the only other modern kids anime dubbed into various languages are usually those based on toys and are available on other services
Besides, I've seen plenty of kids that enjoy shows like Demon Slayer and Chainsaw Man
@@pablocasas5906 Really? Sub only? Wow, that's kind of a boneheaded move really.
And yeah, there's always gonna be kids that like watching shows that are definitely not meant for them, I was a kid when I was watching shows like South Park, Family Guy and Robot Chicken, so while that doesn't change my argument, it does give more credence to why CR may have meddled in production the way they did.
Thanks for directing us to the re-do animatics. I'm not trans, but even I felt something was…off…in Caraway's explanation. It's not what transfolk I know have told me -- they mostly just said "I'm trans" and left it at that, no further discussion; I do wonder how they would explain it to a child as rock-dumb as Rosemary… I _hope_ they'd do a better job than Caraway and the show's writers, one of whom, though I hate to use this word, embodies what neo-fascists consider "Woke".
It's kind of the problem with putting trans stuff in a show that isn't explicitly about that. Especially since there are no side-effects or draw-backs for changing your sex in this world. It's just plain not relevant the vast majority of the time. So either you have a "Oh, I'm trans. But back to what we were discussing..." and it's a token insert that means nothing, or you have to divert upon a character arc that has nothing to do with the actual plot of the show.
You can do it well, integrate it with the rest of the plot in some way, but it's not easy. And this show has a hard time doing easy things well.
@@Sines314 I saw a video a few weeks ago about a girl who, as a teen, _thought_ she was trans but later realized *_after_* starting HRT that she was just a butch lesbian -- she doesn't have much good to say about tumblr trans-activists, but she's justifiably concerned that her story will be used by anti-trans activists to ignore those who genuinely have dysphoria. And yes, her voice is _permanently_ f*cked due to the testosterone. It's not simple.
Fun fact: Neppy Cat is voiced by Cam Clarke; the OG voice for Leonardo in TMNT, Chase from Monsuno, and Ronaldo Kuriki in Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2.
He also voiced 2002 He-Man which is fitting since 7:57 the 80s He-Man theme was playing
And Male Corrin from Fire Emblem Fates
He deserves better
He was also Simba's most frequent VA.
The crazy arbitrary editing reminds me of that scene in The Christmas Tree where they keep cutting between a poker game and orphans being told about Christmas. Except that movie at least had a Windows Movie Maker-tier wipe to indicate a transition between the two scenes.
Plus that showcased a "dramatic irony" with the kids getting excited over Christmas vs the inevitable soul crushing they'll experience. It had something of a purpose that tried to push the narrative forward.
It's like this show high guardian spice it's like an abridged anime series then an actual anime series
except abridged series tend to have condensed pacing.
@@ivorynk752 yeah I guess that makes sense
@@danielybarra8664you should watch the abriged of HGS, it's way better than watching this shitty show.
18:34 so many series do that. Like following a fad
HGS is truly a show of all time.
14:27 that would of been a really funny joke if it intentional. Cutting to sage after saying that. But its dramtic scene so...
The magic system is completely broken. Any fantasy story/magic system should have limits on what it can do.
Oh, dear...
How the subplots are handled seems confusing. I can't imagine how much worse this show can get. I also see the resemblance between the Trappers and Parasect, how Snapdragon gets a crush on Sage seems weird to me, and I don't see why Caraway being a trans male couldn't be permanent.
On a side note, I have some issues with the R-rating myself, but that's another story that I don't really have time to explain here, so I recommend "Is The R-Rating Overrated?" by Center Row.
so at one point i took a crack at rewriting old and new magic to have decent mechanics, that fit into what little we learn about them in the show.
first off everyone has mana, no more no cost, you have mana and if you drain all of yours you could fall unconscious, or even die if severe enough.
old magic is considered safe, but difficult and slow to use.
new magic is the opposite, risky but quick and easy to use.
as a basis, the way to cast spells is through some form of runes, the more runes, the more complicated the effect of the spell, but the more mana it costs.
example: to make the wind blow, use a wind rune, but it blows in it's natural direction at a normal speed. to choose the direction, add a direction rune, and to change the wind speed, add a speed rune.
old magic:
runes are inscribed using mana infused ink onto mana infused paper. the quality of the ink and paper are proportional to the strength of the one who made them. in order to cast the spell, you channel mana into the inscribed runes, and once said runes are full the spell goes off.
pros:
you can prepare even very difficult and powerful spells far in advance
the paper is stable enough to partially fill a rune, then save it for later
cons:
you are limited by the spells you physically have prepared, and it can take a while to suddenly prepare a new one
applying mana to an inscribed rune can take longer than a spell focus
not just knowing the runes is enough, you must also create your ink, paper, and actually physically draw the runes
new magic:
runes are 'hand drawn' in free space by mages within spell foci. wands, staffs, orbs, even enchanted weapons. concentrate on the shape of the runes, channel mana into your focus, and it will draw the rune automatically inside it, casting once complete.
pros:
you can do anything! provided you know the spell runes and have mana, you can cast any spell you want at any time.
applying mana to a focus is quick, requiring no prep time and filling up fairly quickly
cons:
no way to 'pre fill' a spell focus with mana, the spell must be filled 0 to 100 when cast
if you lack the mana to cast a spell, it will either keep draining til it kills you, or you must cancel the channeling
cancelling a spell early causes the mana to fire randomly back out of your focus into the world around you, with highly unpredictable and possibly dangerous magic effects
and the last point of spell failures would the a source of conflict, and possibly the source of the rot. too much wild mana accumulating in more magic but rural areas like the fairy woods from inexperienced new magic users. and since the guardians tend to be quite skilled, and the guardian academy has many skilled guardians in it, these effects arent really known as a skilled mage can more easily 'clean up' wild mana spills without having them cause the long term problems.
also there's something called sparks, if i remember right, which are basically spell grenades in the show.
and my explanation for those was they are a combination of both types of magic, a spell focus permanently engraved with spell runes and filled with enough mana to trigger the spell, then sealed shut. breaking the seal, either by using magic to undo it, or just smashing the focus physically, releases the spell instantly.
these are much harder to produce, and often have to be one use if you dont have time to carefully undo the seal, therefore these tend to only be used for incredibly complicated and incredibly powerful spells.
How does Mr.Enter get to the computer for video uploads while carrying around the weight of his gigantic balls?
Years of practice.
What?
im gonna get made fun of for this but i thought the invertebrate joke was pretty clever
me too it made me giggle. disclaimer that i unironically enjoyed this show and want a season 2. there, now everyone can make fun of me instead
@@astromoonie I just wanna see if they would have fixed stuff or just made a Velma season 2 (why did it get a season 2)
Honestly yeah. From what I’ve seen from the show Amaryllis seems like the least bad character imo
i didn't mind carroway being trans' but it could've been done better.
The safest option is to completely ignore it. You let the audience know he's trans and make him being trans irrelevant the rest of the time. It's better being a token than being handled poorly.
@@0deadx21exactly!
The show is supposed to take place in the middle-age; but none of those designs feels consistant..
It abused the colored hair, it also abused the complete lack of character developpment, it went with clichés and pure stéréotypes and bullshit:
"Transitioning is wonderful and easy"
"A girl means i would be girly"
And so on.
Due to how much garbage it is, i started to watch any good stuffs from the 80's-90's and 2000's.
There's a subreddit for this show, and they unironically seem to believe the show was unfairly maligned by the masses.
Honestly, when I sat down and watched it myself, I was expecting worse. But I still wouldn't say it was good, just salvageable if they had some tinkering.
Smooth brained sneople, the whole lot of them.
Do they own a copium factory?
The Star Wars subreddit (not talking about Saltier than Crait) is built the same way, blindly loving everything about the franchise, even the soulless crap like Ahsoka and Book of Boba.
It's Reddit. What do you expect?
also yeah, the Carroway segment feels really a forced self-insert lecture about how transgender works in our real life. They don't even make an effort to think "how can transgender work in a fantasy world, without saying that explicitly?".
Probably I can understand what was the true objective in the series.
Problem is "transgenderism" doesn't work in a Fantasy setting, mainly cause Magic effectively removes the issue. Let me put it another way, in One Piece there's a character named Ivankov who has the power to mainpulate hormones, and we see that he can inject people with hormones that completely change their sex as in completely. In effect they aren't trans as they've literally changed their gender, sex, whatever.
Same thing here, a trans person is someone who identifies as the other sex, but magic just changes you completely into the other sex with none of the drawbacks transitioning comes with.
Put another way trans anything never works in a fantasy setting.
@@thefanwithoutaface8105 fair point. With this, the issue becomes more "the authors want to force their ideology/propaganda" without understanding if and how would that work in the fantasy world of HGS.
In another way, they thought it was like real life, forgetting HGS **isn't real life** - doubling down my final point in my original comment.
"in order to gain something of value, something of the same value must be lost, thats equivalent exchange" fullmetal alchemist
As well done as this review goes, I have to fight back a bit on the idea pitched of the monster being the reason the character changed sexes for like a better reason per se..
..Like the main reason being that it's supposed to be their choice, not something they were forced into. ..Otherwise that would ironically be the opposite metaphor where you feel like you're in the wrong body, and you come to accept what you are in this body per se.
..And granted, there are people out there that could benefit from a story like that because we all go through different walks, but the show wasn't going for that approach. The show was simply conveying that they weren't connecting to the body they were made in, so they decided to change themselves to fit how their they feel about themselves.
Hopefully I got my message across properly here, but nonetheless, hope it helps. 👋
The idea was that Carroway was trans all along, but didn't really understand what he felt was. The curse just so happened to finally give him a chance for it to click. That's why Mr. Enter still had Carroway choosing to not take the cure (or to stop looking for it) after a while. It's still a choice. It's just that he made the choice because of information he happened to stumble across. A blessing in disguise.
“Onto Rocks and Stone” 6:15
Me: “Rock and stone! To the bone!”
"Onto rocks and stone,
Her body is made of stone,
She didn't reached immortality,
But she didn't became a liability!"
Took me few minutes, unlike the writting of that "show"..