THE GOOD
+ The girls appearing in the fight stages and the fights being shown from a different perspective during the 3rd rounds.
+ The girls showing up to a tournament versus wannabe gangsters and salarymen was fun.
+ Aru doing the commentary for the big tournament finale.
+ Geeking out over all the various arcade sticks and Street Fighter memorabilia in the backgrounds.
+ The last boss of the show being a little girl.
THE BAD
- Taiari deshita is basically a tournament (sports) dorama without the pathos. The girls succeed instantly at their first tournament and frankly, I'd rather watch SF Pro League JP.SUMMARY
As a fan of Street Fighter I got bored of Taiari Deshita because of lack of story. I would rather watch an actual tournament than a fake one. Maybe I am too familiar with the subject matter of fighting games. It is similar to me reading High Score Girl. It is all my fighting game knowledge brought to life in a manga. I wonder how non fighting game players view the show. I love that a jdorama was built around something I enjoy very much but the story was not there to hook me in. Meh.
Wow....is it there is not enough actual "setsumei" to hold it all together?
ReplyDeleteI thought Japan has this "topic" drama format down pat - small amount of story, lots of "setsumei" explantation so you get the stakes, lots of payoff (that comes from the topic). In all of these "topic" dramas, it is the realistic detail embedded into every part of the story that actually holds the show afloat. Seriously, it is almost Asadora storytelling just fleshed out with the detail so it fits the longer time slot.
That was the thing about Yuru Camp (s1)- if you do that sort of camping it is actually fairly close to what it is like and the gear/process was a good approximation...and the payoffs made you want to go and sit by a beautiful lake/mountain/waterfall so bad.
@Anon: It does have setsumei. It teaches the audience stuff like what invincible moves are etc, what is happening. Problem for me is I know the games very well it is a simplification of what is happening and a real match is more exciting.
ReplyDeleteI would be interested to know whether people who know nothing can learn from the setsumei and improve their understand. It is hard for me to judge the show from that point and I do enjoy all the realistic details in shows as opposed to jdoramas where they work in marketing and all they do are presentations with no details and make copies of documents.
@Akiramike
ReplyDeleteMy comment isn't about there being no setsumei - but not enough setsumei. For example, the business team detail you mentioned. In the shows that use this format, it is about how the details reveal in different characters (it gives them a depth and weight).
There is a whole parallel story in how gamers keep is their skills when adult life takes over. Sure this drama didn't need to go all the way down that rabbit hole, but acknowledging it allows these characters to have a realistic world. In addition, these wider details show where the main characters are in they arc. (it is one of the reasons I appreciate the 3rd anime season of Chihayafuru - Season 1 is the power of youthful ambition - Season 2- what happens when you lose that almost naive drive - Season 3 is how hard it is to get it back)