Well that was a surprise, but it shouldn’t have been. I lasted one and a half episodes — I just can’t watch any more of it.
With the exception of a couple of the worst moments, I have enjoyed this series for the most part. It’s had a mix of comedy and drama, though the comedy is usually based on Sagara doing something stupid. Well, I just realized that the comedy doesn’t work by itself. The problem is me. I have NEVER been comfortable with humor based on someone making a fool out of themselves; in fact, I’m acutely uncomfortable with it. And what do we have here, but nonstop Screwup Sagara blowing things up, shooting innocent objects, firing guns into the air, blowing up shoe lockers, threatening teachers and food vendors at gunpoint… I can only take so much of that. In the first and third series, I could be guaranteed that something dramatic would happen quickly, changing the focus of the tension.
Not in Fumoffu, since it’s a compilation of all the “humor” stories. Maybe if they’d brought in Kurtz, Mao, and Tessa a little quicker for some other hijinks. I know they show up later, but I just can’t handle any more pain waiting. Bah. Too bad, I was looking forward to some laughs, but these were too painful.
I’m with you. Comedy based on someone making a complete ass of themself makes me uncomfortable, too. Perhaps our problem is that we identify with the ass, rather than laughing at him.
Huh. See, I never saw Sagara making a fool out of himself (except in the dating/trapping episode) in the series, not once. He was applying his experiences to the world around him… they just don’t apply to said world.
If anything, he was the sane one in the show. And yes, it made me laugh… a lot.
Maybe that says something about me, but…
Steven: Exactly, and acutely. I’ve said before, you have to empathize with the main characters in a story. (If you don’t, the writer, actor, or director has blown it.) So when they’re making damn fools of themselves, it is I, the viewer, who feels like the fool.
Wonderduck: When his commanding officer is trying to explain that he’s misunderstood his orders and he cuts her off so he can go to class and kill anything that threatens Miss Chidori, it’s a bit hard to believe he’s not being an idiot. I mean, sure, he’s over-focused, but that’s a bit much.
I also doubt he would pull a pistol to get food from the commissary in the Tuatha de Dannan.
I kind of liked it, but it was pretty fluffy. I thought it had one of the best FMP moments ever at the end of the “Haunted Hospital” episode, a scene I think a lot of folks had been waiting for. Of course, I’m a romantic at heart anyway.
I also doubt he would pull a pistol to get food from the commissary in the Tuatha de Dannan.
I also doubt there’d be such a scrum in front of the baker’s cart on board the TDD. I’d say that, in his mind, the ‘normal’ world is horribly chaotic. Never mind that, to us, it’s HIS world that’s out of the ordinary.
As far as the ‘over-focussed’ bit goes, I’ve not seen more than a handful of episodes from the first series, but isn’t protecting Chidori his mission? She’s one of the Whispered, of strategic value to the Good Guys, right?
She’d be a lot more valuable if she’d get around to fixing the Lamda Driver. As it stands, Souské can’t use it reliably, no one else can use it at all, and even Al, the A.I. says it’s defective. So she’d potentially valuable, but I don’t see that she’s anything like the other Whispered we’ve met. The only one more useless so far has been the orange-haired girl seen in the opening sequence of the first series — and never again.
As of TSR, the last six months of her life have been turned totally topsy-turvey, yet we see no sign of her evaluating what it means to be a Whispered, and what it will do to her life. It’s sheer chance that her friends haven’t been caught in the crossfire yet. Or her non-existent parents, about whom we’ve never heard a word. All this leads back to my main complaint with the series — it’s inconsistency. It carries the ruleset of the farcical, unrealistic side over into the grimmer realistic side. Even in animé, a 16-year old girl with no visible means of support living in a nice apartment bears some scrutiny.
I really enjoyed Fumoffu. I generally agree with Ubu in that I don’t find it funny watching people make fools of themselves. I have been trying to reconcile the two. Wonderduck, however, nailed it for me. As far as Souske is concerned, he isn’t doing so, and has nothing to be embarassed about. It’s a clash-of-two-worlds situation (which granted, after six months, ought to be going away, but it continues for humor purposes).
I don’t know why I expect Souské to learn. I never do….