Re: The Ranting/Debate Thread
well more or less everything you just said there was wrong (although it is generaly episodic). particuarly if you look into the later episodes but some particular ones you might beinterested in are when she gets contact lenses and has an identity crisis because she defined herself by not caring about her appearence and when they need a new fridge box and she starts remembering how her parents almost broke up because she was so antisocial. that sounds mundane but my entire point is that these simple stories are written well enough that they can speak to a much more complex nature of the characters, essentialy making them real.
I can't really be bothered to rewatch the whole thing or even one entire season just to argue about it, so i decided to stick to my memory and to your knowledge of the subject and watch the 2 episodes you mentioned, pretty sure i already saw the first one tho.
First episode. I doubt even shakespear would be able to create a plausible identity crisi in a 20 minutes span without relying heavily on abstract concepts, philosophy and mimicry. Daria relies barely on abstract concepts like narcisism and self-respect, there is a small philosophycal message in what the aunt(?) says(only part of the episode that i liked), but is only used as a mean to convince the main character and is quicly forgotten, as the later behavior shows, and let's leave the mimicry out. Moral of the story she gets momentarily distracted from her beliefs and has a quick out of stereotype moment, but luckily for us she gets back on track just in time for the episodes ending pun. She learns nothing from this aside from the fact that the way she was before was the right way she is supposed to be, absolutely no growth or developement, she just got sidetracked for a moment, effect on the rest of the series none.
This takes us to the second one you mentioned, which seems to be last one. enters the
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. Here's how it works, a box is introduced, the box bring out the origin of a trauma, the trauma is discussed about, the discussion brings to a clearing between daria and her parents and we have an happy ending to the fifth season. It's so damn fast and anti-climatic, the girl has been bitching about her parents for 5 seasons and it all comes down to a 15 minutes revelation, it's like the writers stopped caring about whatever they said the whole time and just wanted to close the season, it's so unrealistic, and guess what this time too she already has the answer to the problem, she just realized, isn't she the awesomest(intended misspelling) person in the world?
If my opinion of Daria wasn't great before, after seeing this it hit the ground...
my statement is that with superiror writing and story telling, a show can overcome poor animation and mundane stories. Also you'll note that i said GitS had more in depth and intruiging stories, that is not necessarily better (it generaly is but that becomes more of an objective statement).
If i want superior writing i read a book if want an animated show i want it to be appealing to the eye too. A good story with stick figures is hard to take seriously. Also the more i look at daria the less the plot seems worth mentioning. If 5 seasons worth of plot can be condensed and solved in the 20 minutes of the last episode by a DEM, it means that it wasn't much to begin with. What makes Daria a good show is the ability to give a teenage role model that the audience can relate to, she's strong, smart and fun, that's why everyone likes the show.
3) That is a lie. Well maybe it has continuos puns, but the entire rest of the world other than you tends to agree that what made daria good was the realism of its characters. and whole many of its characters appear to be steriotypical, they actualy progress beyond the initial preconseptions of who they are. In fact i would even argue that that is the point of the entire series.
Who's this rest of the world?
Who are the characters that grow?
How do they grow?
Does this groth have any effect on the series as a whole?
I haven't seen anything really worth mentioning that managed to survive more than an episode. There are moments where it looks like something is changing, but the same can be said about the simpsons.
I may have a biased preference to daria, but as far as i can tell so does everyone else i've ever met. Hell, on my train journy in canada daria got brought up and everyone went into an imediate nostalgia love trip.
The fact you know many people who like it doesn't make it good, it just shows a lack of similar or better material in the west.
similarly just because you dislike daria doesn't make it bad. of all the things you stated animation is really the only thing daria fails at (and it would be stupid to argue differently).
I don't dislike it, i enjoy that kind of humor, and the characters are interesting(although stereotyped), it just doesn't have a plot, aside form "The everyday life of a smart and funny teenager with bad relationships with her family and anticomformistic attitude.", you can argue all you want, but the plot almost unexistent aside from episodic form, there are no real twists in the main storyline, the biggest event is that she get's a boyfriend.
