Forum - View topicREVIEW: A Girl & Her Guard Dog Anime Series Review
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musouka
Posts: 707 |
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I feel absolutely terrible for the mangaka of this series. Not only does the anime of her manga look like that, but every time people are reminded it exists, they go and hound her directly for the crime of, uh, having written a not-terribly-good series.
A lot of the problems outlined in the review exist in the source material, too. The yakuza stuff has no through line. Plot points come and go--including the truly bizarre handling of a rival love interest arc that peters out with all the excitement of a wet fart--but I do give it credit for modeling that if you're going to date a guy almost twice your age, he should be backing off when you tell him you're not ready for sex-sex yet. As for the jealousy stuff, that's just part of the appeal for the target audience. Like him doing embarrassing, goofy teenage date stuff with you--which is probably even more of a fantasy than the over-the-top jealousy, honestly. And, lastly, it's pathetic to see that this is a treatment a bonafide best seller gets when it's aimed at girls. Look, let's be real. Even romance series aimed at men can look pretty jank, but those A) don't sell as well as this series does, and B) they still look better than this series does! When you're below the already terrible-looking pervert pig anime in priority for the studio that's animating you, that's really sad. |
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MrPuzzles
Posts: 152 |
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No one should be abused or harassed over creative choices, but the fact remains that she wrote a crap, and creepy, series, and it should be judged accordingly. If standards evaporate because of hurt feelings, then there's just no point in having standards to begin with. |
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musouka
Posts: 707 |
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She literally has to go private because people will not stop telling her to kill herself. To pretend this is just a matter of hurt feelings over a bad series is ridiculous to the point of being offensive. I'm not saying people have to like the series or even avoid criticizing it, but too many people see a language barrier as a brick wall and do not understand that twitter is a public place where the people you are talking about can actually see the things you are saying. That's not even counting the people that go up to her face and quote tweet the messages I mentioned above. |
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yeehaw
 Posts: 423 |
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That was a sex scene?? I thought Keiya just drooled all over her and then they stopped, they actually banged?? It's funny they keep comparing Keiya to an actual dog because if he was an actual dog he would have been put down.
Remember the episode were Isaku goes out elated that she's finally doing something a teenager does, go to karaoke with friends, only to be horrified that these teens are doing *gasp* underage drinking and smoking cigarettes!! The horror!!! This girls grandpa has presumably killed people but drinking a beer!?? At 16?? That's scary!!Then adult Keiya comes in and repeatedly smashes a teenagers face against a table Bonkers! Then Keiya smokes a cigarette in the car with Isaku but he's an adult so that makes the passive smoking ok I guess. Giving most male characters no highlights in their eyes was certainly a decision, huh? Everytime there was a close-up of Keiyas face as he was having romantic feelings or whatever, in my head I keept hearing the audio from that video with a cat in a sink having water pour down his face, "You don't have a single thought behind those eyes do you?" This is just my speculating judging from the comments on crunchyroll, but it seems to me that the people who liked this show were young and probably haven't seen much (good) shoujo yet, but even as a child I would have found Keiya annoying. An overprotective character can be a good romantic interest but not when they're like Keiya, the adult man threatening any child who dares speak to his child bride. That's not sexy, that's just pathetic and emberassing, like what's the point of Keiya being an adult when he can't act like one? |
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Glordit
 Posts: 469 |
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No, it's mentioned after that he pushed himself onto her but he stopped. I watched and didn't really enjoy it. The story was not the worst of it, surprisingly. It was Project no.9 who could not keep anything consistent throughout the series and there was a lot of weird art, animation and awkwardly directed scenes. |
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yeehaw
Posts: 423 |
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That's what I thought but the review said sex scene and to be fair I wasn't really paying attention at the end lol |
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ThrowMeOut
Posts: 260 |
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I hate that people (but let's be honest, mainly women) are shamed for enjoying and writing about taboo topics. We couldn't even get two comments into this discussion before someone started up with the shaming. Like they expect women to launch themselves into a dangerous relationship just because they enjoy some badboy romance novels. My friends and I grew up reading some weird-a$$ sh*t and guess what? We're fine. We're healthy, normal adults in healthy, normal relationships with healthy, normal men. Women do not get into bad relationships just because we read some spicy books. We're not that stupid.
That said, good golly was this series bad. I kept watching with the same gawking, shocked curiosity of one gawking at a car crash. The animation got worse by the episode, the plot was was often non-sensical and bizarre, and even though I have no ear for Japanese acting, even I could tell most the voice cast was completely checked out. There's a scene that will forever live in my brain, where they're doing a montage of Isaku trying on clothes, and they show her wearing sunglasses. Then her friend shouts "here, try on these sunglasses!" And it cuts to the exact same image, with the exact same sunglasses, but acts like it's somehow different. Hilarious. 10/10 accidental brilliant comedy. 0/10 for basically everything else. |
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jdnation
Posts: 1998 |
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All that needs to be said. An interesting premise that turns out to be a dull story with dull characters and plots as cliche as cliche can be. The animation is not great either, but that's for the best as even I wouldn't waste a good budget or animators on this sort of thing. That said, there are those who do dig it, which is how I ended up watching the whole thing because of somebody else who wanted to see it, well technically they just wanted to watch anything, but didn't want anything violent like Jujutsu Kaisen, so that's how we ended up passing the time. |
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MFrontier
Posts: 11269 |
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Even if you're willing to accept the premise, the lackluster production values did this show no favor.
I feel like Koikimo handled an age-gap romance premise much better by comparison.
I will disagree on this one, I feel like the cast gave it 110%, especially Akari Kito as Isaku. Although Junya Enoki's performance was...surreal. |
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Takkun4343
 Posts: 1502 Location: Englewood, Ohio |
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Truly the greatest production meltdown for a problematic shoujo (or shoujo-adjacent) anime since Togainu no Chi.
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yeehaw
Posts: 423 |
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Oh god I forgot about that. This show was bad but man oh man sometimes it'd hit you with the funniest shit you've seen all week |
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scanlines
 Posts: 59 Location: in time out for bad behavior |
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I will say that this series review is far better than the first episode review done by the same author on AniFem. At least it doesn't go on a tangent regarding "problematic age-gap pseudo-incest romance" or how fiction is a safe space yet fiction also normalizes harmful cultural norms.
My previous comment regarding this show ending up on the worst anime of the year list was used by the author on twitter. Someone pointed this out to me and I made a playful joke saying "thanks for the shout out" and that got me in trouble. Now a mod has to manually approve my posts. Did I consent to having my comment shared online where my username was visible? Not at all, but I'm sure that the "my views are my own" disclaimer in the writer's bio and some small print forum rule allows that sort of thing. |
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all-tsun-and-no-dere
ANN Reviewer
Posts: 605 |
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I approach my AniFem premiere reviews differently than I do my ANN full series reviews. They're for different audiences with different expectations, with a different purpose. I stand by everything I've said about the series, except the part in my premiere review where I said Keiya wasn't grooming her. |
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