dam i can't believe u interviewed the people involved and even they said they hated the teaser, really makes u uh, think

TL;DR Crunchyroll fucked over the team with a low budget, tight schedule, and advertising in ways the creators of the show didn't want it to be advertise. The show was literally meant to be a kids show, but Crunchyroll demanded things be aged up, and meant for adults.

I can only imagine how frustrated everyone was when they were suddenly told that the show needs to aim for a more adult audience. Like what the actual hell? Everyone's already working on it, they have formed an overall idea for everything and what to do with it and suddenly this wrench gets thrown into the mix. It almost sounds like an attempt at sabotage, but I doubt that's the case. I assume the upper management just figured they'd get better profit if they aimed at an older audience on a platform that is mostly used by older people anyway, so they thought that would be a good idea. But.. you don't do that in the middle of production! You figure that out right from the start! Man I can only feel bad for everyone who worked on this.

Crunchyroll is kinda terrible, so I'm surprised more people weren't interested in the production details. Thanks for going over them!! Really interesting video.

Now see this. THIS IS WHAT I WANTED! Even if the workers remained anonymous, all I wanted was to know what happened behind the scenes! Now knowing this information, a lot of stuff makes a lot of sense regarding how Crunchyroll botched the series.

Ah, so that's why the mature rating comes out of nowhere! Corporate meddling really happens more often than I want to believe. Though I'm always interested in what people think about a show itself (and sharing my own opinion), I do find it great to delve behind the scenes and know how things went down during production.

You know, I don't remember the last time they actually marketed the show as an "Anime". Giving your money to Crunchyroll is always a bad idea, what'd you expect they'd do?

I'll be honest even if high guardians spice had a normal trailer this shouldn't be promoted to anime fans. The trailer would of work for something on CN. (Also yes I know it was probably pitch there)

"Oh, btw they didn't call it high guardian herb because spice sounds cooler" that doesn't CHANGE the fact they aren't flip dip SPICES

holy shit...i always tried to be sympathetic towards the crew, considering i felt production hell vibes from the final product, but the fact it's not only true but WORSE than i thought? i feel so sorry for everyone and i really feel sorry for raye. these characters and story were so clearly a passion project for him, considering he's had them for nearly 10 years now. i can't imagine what it'd feel like to work on a tv show starring my ocs and watch all of... *THIS* happen.

Having finished the video I can see where the problems are coming from: poor management, time and money. BUT there’s one problem that Daft and no one has pointed out…did the creator write material before the show was picked up? Was there a plan? Was there a basic outline? A series like HGS should have had at least a few plot points written out and how they were implemented. You say that it started as a slow burn, which is fair, but why was a portion of episode 1 dedicated to Rosemary and Sage traveling, why did characters like Aster and the sexist dude HAVE to exist other then to push toxic masculinity, why was there filler in very inconvenient moments through the series (again episode 1 with the fairy creatures), and why was new magic implemented but not thought out despite it being a MAJOR PLOT POINT? These things matter and should have been somewhat outlined BEFORE the show was pitched. I’m saying this as a newbie who wants and is trying to get into the creative industry that in the end, while production was heavily scrutinized by Crunchyroll, Raye was ultimately unprepared before the show even got to the drawing board. As for your criticisms Daft some of your arguments are very strawman. You shouldn’t use the Cal Arts argument without understanding the argument. I actually don’t mind the art style and still understand the reason why people dislike it cause most of the modern shows use it and it’s spread significantly. You also can’t compare it to Avatar cause it’s not JUST about culture, but about its nuanced writing. The anime element was a bonus, but the story was clearly planned, the inspirations were planned, there was a reason why 90% of the filler existed and many were incorporated into the plot despite Nickelodeon’s strict standards, and even if there wasn’t a plan the writers ADAPTED to fit what they needed such as characters like Toph who was originally a muscular dude but adapted her character into what it was to further the narrative while also cracking the joke of a young blind girl beating up people. Your arguments are valid, but your implementation of those arguments is very haphazard and comes off condescending. Many will point out that you are very unbiased, and you are as I’ve seen enough videos to know that you do a very good job of being unbiased, but your now slipping into biased territory, not in hating a work but overly defending it which could be bad in giving a toxic positivity mindset to future creators, but I digress. In short for anyone who don’t want to read all of what I want to say is that there was no reason plan for this series, not-a-one. Daft failed to mention a plan and from what I’ve seen from Raye they didn’t have a plan past pitching it. Crunchyroll was at fault, but a basic AND flexible plan should have been in place. EDIT: wow I can’t believe you guys liked this comment! But I should say that this isn’t bashing Raye far from it I actually love some of the concept art and character designs of the series, in fact, I wished Raye didn’t got with an anime style and went with a design similar to Amphibia with just dot pupils. I just hope that Raye’s next project doesn’t suffer the same scrutiny as this cause HGS had potential but was stunted because they focus on the idea aspect and not the story. My philosophy with this is that it doesn’t have to be unique it just has to show how much you had fun with it in its basic form, and you might hit a slump, but it helps in the journey 👌

34:00 So your just gonna ignore the fact that there is overlap between the manwha audience and the anime audience which HGS doesn't have. The reason why Korean manwha adaptations aren't as maligned is that there is enough overlap that it's a logical next step while HGS isn't. That being said I do hold more blame to Crunchyroll for even picking this up and then mismanaging it.

15:23 One thing that i noticed about this image is that none of those character designs match with the originals. All of them are edited

Question of the Day: Why was High Guardian Spice a mess of a show? DaftPina: ... so the non-unionized staff... Me: Ah yes. Say no more I completely understand.

Hate or love the show, I always will have a bad opinion because of the misapropriated crunchyroll funds. Crunchyroll is and always has been really shitty at paying their translators, and when they put funds into halfbaked projects like this, and their fucking vtuber instead of properly paying their employees, its frustrating.

I've seen a bunch of reviews of the show. None of the critics enjoyed watching it fully. That should say something about the quality of the show. Yesterday I watched a breakdown of the first episode, and the guy just rewritten the first episode, making it more interesting and meaningful. I think the creators needed more time to plan out the show for it to have a proper structure, and it's unfortunate that they didn't.

You make a point multiple times in The Release portion of your video that most of the reviews don't make an attempt to look behind the scenes or contact the creators as if this is the norm, but it simply isn't, especially contacting the creators. Expecting these reviewers to not only do research into the origin and production of the show (which wasn't really public knowledge) but to also contact the people who made the show is absurd. Imagine if these reviewers contacted the creators of every show that they didn't like. That would make production on all videos take way longer, as actually getting in contact with the people isn't as simple as just DMing them on twitter. Admittedly, these reviews could have been more informed (especially Scamboli's), but the show's history isn't very well documented, or is just kinda oversimplified. And also, knowing the issues behind the scenes likely wouldn't have changed their overall opinions of the show, just would've gave the viewers a bit more context as to why it is like this. 15:58 You also say here that a lot of the other high view-count reviews are just clips with no context, which is also the same exact thing you did with Scamboli's and Just Stop's reviews, taking random clips out of 15 and, In JS's case, 38 minute reviews. Kinda hypocritical. You were rather unfair to the reviewers in this section, but this is the only issue I have with your video, as the rest of it is very good.

I still have my personal gripes with the show, but it is very eye opening to see that even the crew disagreed with a lot of what was going on and that corporate meddling had a massive hand in so much of the weird tonal whiplash that occurred. I feel bad for the original creator and really hope they're able to make the series they wanted to produce.

I kinda feel really bad for Raye. Like I can’t imagine having all this passion and love for your characters and world only for it to crumble and shatter in such an ugly way-I’d be destroyed for months dude. Maybe even years.

I agree with almost all of your points. But during the mid section of the video your talking about the folly and aftermath of the production explaining it in a way that makes it sound like other reviewers should of just known this? Fully believe that other should ask questions about production, but to assume that someone who just wants to watch a show and says it's not good because they don't like all the shortcomings would go into the production say oh that's why I didn't like the show it had a low budget or had corporate meddling is mind boggling to me.

You should never really be too harsh on the production staff, as we never really know what happened, but crunchyroll even made THAT hard because of the trailer (making the team seem so insufferably smug and hypocritical). That said it doesn't matter what went on behind the scenes, the final product is what we get and critique, no matter how harsh the budget or passionate the staff. I will say I found your stance on Kate leith (lyth.. leth?) and twitter use to be annoying and sort of inconsistent. Kate was blatantly sexist and rude in a way that attracts toxicity on any production she joins, and hasn't actually apologised, only justifying the actions by saying she was "tumblr-pilled"... but you said it was a while ago... so it's okay? You then criticise someone else for airing their frustrations on pitching to twitter saying they're "burning bridges", but are happy with Ray's twitter thread which essentially outs crunchyroll as the bad guys?... You're all over the place in this regard. I get what Kate said was a while ago, but seeing how it was problem that was brought up A LOT, a simple apology would have been appropriate. Her not apologising at the very least is rude to her team (and suggests she stands behind what she said).

The art style is acc really cute though. I like it. The outfits don't really work though, they're kinda boring. It sucks that the writing, voice acting and animation quality sucks, but story wise it's not my cup of tea anyways so i didn't watch it.

Interesting to hear how things went wrong under Crunchyroll and some of the problems along the way. It doesn't make the final product better, 4/10 for me since it still came out with awkward pacing and animation. If a student were graded on this when the project was to create a show by a Japanese studio it would lose a lot of points, but I also think there should be a way to punish the teacher for creating such a short work time relative to other cartoons or anime and messing with the public presentation putting it in the worst light possible. Onyx Equinox at least shows some of the team can work when given some room, and Crunchyroll proper faced a lot of the backlash even after throwing some creators under the bus.

From what I understand of your argument, it's that reviewers didn't research the production and took out of context clips to flay the show and the production team alive which is unfair of them. I can agree with you to a point. Many of the reviews seem to make assumptions about the team behind the show based on the trailer and HGS's very poor delivery of complex real world topics without interviewing even one member of the staff. However! Looking behind the curtain only gives CONTEXT to mistakes. The overall show shouldn't be given slack because at the end of the day, regardless of what happened off stage, we still got a shitty product. Are food critics supposed to be conscious of the kitchen before their reviews are approved? Is every book reviewer supposed to research an author's life before their criticism is accepted? I know it probably wasn't your intention, but rather than arguing your stance, what you actually SOUND like you're doing is invalidating those other reviews on KZfaq by calling them out for not interviewing the production people. You say that "a lot of these critiques are pointing out a scene and pointing out animation mistakes" but the critiques I'VE seen cover a LOT more. Poor worldbuilding, characters, plot, pacing, dialogue, messaging, voice acting, etc., etc. the list is ENDLESS with some reviews going into the LGBTQ elements of the show. For instance, when you pointed out what the word Cal arts actually means, it was as though you aimed the arrow at the target, missing and hitting the wall but still calling it a day. So the reviewer might have misused the term, but you didn't refute what he was SAYING by bringing up the word in the first place which is that character faces were drawn with a simplistic bean template seen on so many other characters in so many other shows, making the design seem lazy and uninspired. Look, poor budget and time constraints might have explained why background characters don't move, but it doesn't change the fact that there were bread jpgs. People are harping on it not because they're pedantic bullies but because it makes the show come off INCREDIBLY unprofessional. And this pattern of unprofessionalism plagues the entire show which culminates into a MOUNTAIN of them too big for many people to ignore. Corporate meddling might explain why there's that weird warning and the indecisive target audience but it isn't why winners like the infamous "I'm trans" scene made it into the show. One last thing regarding Kate Leth's "some of these might be old screenshots". Okay, they might be old and people can change after some time. But when this blew up, she didn't apologize nor did she so much as say anything along the lines of not holding those misandrist views anymore. People being angry about her misandrist views isn't them having a "gotcha" moment for the trailer because they wanted to be mean to the show. They were mean to that trailer and the show by extension because of Leth's views and Leth's views were part of PR and PR is what makes or breaks a product. Disparaging people's justified outrage over her remarks is not a hill you want to die on.

when youre so girlpower you misgender your writers lmao

High Guardian Spice shouldn't have been a Crunchyroll original. Not that it would've been better, but at least it wouldn't have been mistaken as an anime

I feel like if it wasnt because of the performative activism in the teaser, it would've just been called a mediocre show. It would've just been called forgettable and that's it. It probably would've not even gotten that many youtube reviews

God, now knowing for sure how the production was I feel so bad for the crew 😔 it seems like everything that could go wrong did. I hope Raye gets to tell his story how he wants it eventually; I'd love to see it.

I'm really confused why there was an argument stating that this show wasn't aimed at anime fans. Sure the creator stated online that it wasn't an anime. But the original trailer of HGS pitched the show as "Traditional Handrawn 2D Animation" multiple times by both Margreet Dean and Kate Leth. And when your show is being aired on a site predominantly hosting Japanese content. And when Raye's premise of the show told in the original trailer is broken down to "four girls going to a magical city to learn how to become guardians" mirrors popular Shounen such as My Hero Academia, Little Witch Academia and Soul Eater. It's pretty understandable why people would make that assumption of the series. Especially when that premise is absent in western cartoons. That's probably more of a fault of Crunchyroll for structuring the advertisement as that. But that still seems like a weak point to me.

My cursory observation and comparison is such: "High Guardian Spice" is to the anime scene in an unnervingly similar, if not the same way that "I Am Not Starfire" is to the manga/comicbook scene.

At the end of the day I don't hate the creators I hate the final project because crunchyroll made it to fail by framing the marketing poorly and under funding it.

as an artist/animator/story developer, my heart goes out to Raye and what happened to his creation. Production hell is seen everywhere, even within multi-billion dollar companies (my professor used to be a rigger at Sony Animations, and oh boy). BUT Raye has had this concept since 2013 at the latest. i heard the show was based on a webcomic and looked for it. all i found was cover art and a very short storyboard that he did for a college class. it feels like Raye didn't have anything planned out beforehand, which makes me think: how was he pitching this idea to people? maybe that's why he was told to make a webcomic since it would've given him more time to flesh out the characters and the story without all the pressures of going through the animation pipeline. i think, and this goes for everyone if you want to make an animated show, work in the industry first so you know what you're getting into and you know reasonable time frames for yourself and your team. honestly, most of the issues in the show could be looked over if this felt like a developed story and not something made up on the spot. episode one is literally filler and every problem the characters get into are coincidences and every solution is handed to them. there was no sense of danger or risk. we all knew what was going to happen and even the plot twist at the end of episode twelve felt like '...ok?'

With all due respect, they still made a bland, mediocre show with not a wisp of originality to be seen. Usually in bad shows you can see the intent, the passion that just wasn't executed properly. This... I don't even know what a 'good' version would look like.

I always forgive artist who were forced to rush a job. I may never forgive the final product, but due dates can be an artist's worst enemy

The Sonic Mania comparison is a bit off, as Taxman and Stealth had previously worked to port Sonic games to other platforms officially for SEGA, prior to Mania.

I was more annoyed that people these days act like diversity is a bran new thing. Despite you can find diversity in movies and shows made back in the 70's. Heck even in the 1950's their were shows with women main cast. Not only do they act as if diversity is new, but then they expect to be given a pat on the back for it. Which is rather pretentious and insincere. For me that's enough to just not be interested in the show. But KZfaq keeps auto playing stuff about this show.

Something major not mentioned here is still the fact that Raye did not have a concrete plan on the story which should have been the backbone of the entire series. It's like every episode was built from scratch as they went along but you can't do that with a series.

"Anime isn't a good comparison because their animators live in poverty." HGS: *Outsources to Korea*

As much as Crunchyroll may have interfered with the production, it doesn't change the fact that the show was dead on arrival. It could have had the most beautiful art imaginable, but in the end, the show would still be bad thanks to poor writing and characters that are as shallow as a mud puddle. Now that most of the people involved are only coming out after the show was aired, it looks more like they're trying to cover their asses. They've had close to three years to say something to an outside source or blab on social media, if they really thought this was a disaster from the start I doubt they would wait that long to say a single thing about it. Bad productions like this rarely go unnoticed, and at least someone involved with the project would have said something. Let's face it, it was a show made by amateurs. Raye hadn't written anything of substance before the show, most of the animators were new (as far as I know), and the majority of the cast were relatively new to the job with a couple of exceptions. And it really shows in almost every aspect of the show's quality. I've seen better shows on early 2000s newgrounds.

I kinda feel bad now that I've watched the vid... Imagine being in Raye's shoes, having the chance to have your work (that you've planned for so long) to finally be accepted by big group - only to experience the hell of a lifetime. And the final product to not even meet what you've originally planned... If that thing happened to me, I would probably loose it especially if this is my first work in a big group... I guess the valuable lesson here is be careful when and where you pitch your own work. And expect all the unexpected hell trials if a big group accepted your work. Be smart in the workplace and keep morale up at all times...

The show's bad, but it isn't the worst. it's good to know some of the reasons why.

As for the kill all men tweets, well she works with the same people who would dig out tweets from 5 years (those in Stan Twitter) to cancel whoever is on the weekly judge seat. It all came thanks to crunchy being a d about it and more shows like high guardian with sorta same marketing making them have indirectly a bigger target on their back. While I understand Rodriguez, as a director he never took responsibility and blame. Sure there was budgets and corporate meddling but blocking people and talking how proud he was about his show to later only talk down on it one it came and people watched it and pointed out the problems made him look worse. He has now a new project and tbh I don’t know if he will do well. I want to think that now he has more experience to fix his weaknesses as a director and make a better product. Since is gonna be a romance show I hope is easier. As many have pointed out, high guardian was not in any shape or form a show who could’ve been tackled by newbies. Sure some worked in bravest warriors and other shows but what they did in said shows? Is like how Rebecca said “in times all I did was add a fishing pole on a shot in the animatic”. So regardless it needed an actual veteran. A magic show is way too much for a director who hasn’t worked in anything by himself. Heck even my witch academia had many bs moments and it was done by a better more budget high studio and they still had glaring mistakes. Just that unlike witch academia they had no good animation or artstyle to distract it. To compare I would say is like rwby. Made by newbies and had many writing messes. But unlike guardian rwby had animations to avoid the messy writing. Had not anymore. That’s why now is being more highly critiqued. Also all that was found out of crunchy: 1) paying their translators badly 2) wasting the money of subcribers on a fancy office while 1 was happening. 3) their aging and badly optimized page 4) I think the lady of ellations went under fire after some reviews of women in animation were found (?) (not sure since I lost the videos who talked off it) and how she didn’t do bs to help. 5) How many games were censored and had things cut up for “westernization” purposes yet not stating so until release. 6) said cuts making people have a bad view of the company and thinking they are doing all of it to “pander” to non anime users and the labeled “sjw” users who do not see anime and only complain of anime based on images and videos out of context. 7) Anime fans getting defensive gives all the numbers I said before and how the website has always stated they are paying anime overseas to support the industry yet for the looks of it is like they barely give them anything (same as Netflix but Netflix has a better website so is less critiqued) and makes original shows who do not follow the same standard as the anime on said website. 8) They should’ve just put it on vrv. Vrv has cartoons. Would make more sense. In conclusion, I do hope Rodriguez has learned to be more realistic and perhaps learn to make a more compelling story or confront a happy medium for his new show and excecutives. And not to block people. Even Vivzie does this but given Helluva is good animation wise and more people don’t fight her

I genuinely feel bad for all the people who worked on High Guardian Spice. I'm glad to see someone who went into the went into the issues with its production and I'm glad to see reviewers not just chalk it up to "being for SJWs."

I have to partially disagree with some of the points of the video. Overall though, knowing what absolute hell the production was helps put a lot of it in perspective. The fact they worked non-union is soooo suspicious. Honestly, it truly seems like Crunchyroll threw this show under the bus so people would throw the brunt of their hate over not giving the money to Japanese animators at it rather than the company. However, Raye's inexperience as a showrunner really comes through as incompetence and poor planning in HGS. Apparently he had Rosemary as a character for years and it was a webcomic beforehand, but the main elements of the show were never worked out? Just look at the title. Not only are none of the main characters named after spices, but we never find out what a guardian is. How can you build character arcs when the essential premise, "they're going to magic school to become a Guardian", is never finalized? I understand that script itself is rough and cringy because they had no money to do effective rewrites, and Crunchyroll demanding a mature show forced them to add stupid things like randomly saying "bastard", but the confusing world building and lack of story direction really is what shoots the show's plot in the foot.

This show is less like an anime and more like a budget cartoon network show

I may have not liked the show but I do feel for everyone involved. They should've gotten more time and a bigger budget.

The very premise of High Guardian Spice is flawed beyond repair right out the gate. It's about four girls attending a magical academy, but their core motivations don't give them any good reason to do so. Thyme wants to save the Fairy Woods, which are on the brink of destruction. How does attending High Guardian Academy help her? She and the rest of the elves need help from experienced Guardians and they need it _today,_ not three years from now. We may not know exactly what Guardians are or how they operate, but why haven't they already acted on a disaster that threatens to wipe out an entire region? It doesn't make any sense. Parsely wants to escape her home life at her family's smithy. How does attending High Guardian Academy help her? She is already a professional blacksmith who is more than qualified to get a job at a different smithy in a different town. Why would she choose to spend three more years in her hometown, studying a profession that she already knows? It doesn't make any sense. Rosemary wants to find her missing mother. How does attending High Guardian Academy help her? Unless she thinks she will surpass her mother by the time she finishes school, she needs help from experienced Guardians. Speaking of which, why don't the other Guardians care that a famous and powerful Guardian has gone missing? What happened to the mission she was on, did nobody else get sent to complete it in her place? Caraway at least should have cared about his best friend and tried to figure out what happened, yet not only did he apparently not do that but Rosemary didn't even bother to ask him about it! It doesn't make any sense. Sage wants to become a healer using Old Magic. How does attending High Guardian Academy help her? High Guardian Academy only teaches New Magic because it's so much better ... at least, until Mandrake traps the students and it is revealed that half of them are Old Magic users, somehow. So either Sage is attending an academy that only teaches New Magic, or she is attending an academy that teaches Old Magic but she still purposely signed up for only New Magic and combat classes. Either way, it doesn't make any sense. The premise of High Guardian Spice is fundamentally flawed because the characters and the setting contradict each other. Unless you are trying to tell me that Raye's pitch was missing one or both of these core elements of the show, this contradiction cannot be blamed on corporate meddling or budget constraints.

It was just unlucky that normal animation networks didn't pick it up. People have had bad blood with Crunchyroll forever so it was pretty much doomed from the start, that lady's tweets with crappy marketing and a company people keep getting angrier at all make a very easily hateable target.

The advertisement never stated it as a anime... yet its on a anime only site... unless stated otherwise it should be assumed its anime

When Antoons said you go for the low hanging fruit he was not kidding

I'm sorry but Kate Leth's tweets were from 8 years ago - that would've made her 25 years old at the time. Why does 33 year old, then 25 year old get to tweet some insane, vitriolic shit and just handwave it away with "teehee I was tumblrpilled?" 25 years old. Not like an edgy teenager in high school but an actual 25 year old adult. "Leave her alone it was 8 years ago" doesn't really add up when she was a full grown adult at the time.

Reminds me of what happened with Korra where they were denied 4 seasons and given 1 and then later changed their minds and it affected the progression of the show. This info makes me appreciate the show a bit more overall. I can see the desperation of the business decitions taken to where even the people involved in the show cringed at the teaser but couldn't do anything about it. Though I think you go on the other extreme of most reviews and lean a bit much in favor of it. Mainly 2 things that come to mind: -Kate Leth could have dealt with it better. Just write a short and formal "yeah sorry about that, but I'm better now" message rather than the equivalent of "you dumb? it was tumblr's fault, leave me alone". I get separating art from author but come on, that had an easy way out that would have gained a lot of people over, now more people are aware of her than ever and I think many will avoid anything with her name in the staff from now on, those twits weren't light stuff. -Second, many reviews might be more on the hate train and even out of context with pointing out crap, but for the videos that are more along the lines of "I did watch it and here's why I didn't like it" that don't go behind the scenes, I think their opinion is still valid. Judging your affinity with a final product on itself I think should be valid. It's neat that you went to the trouble of getting all this additional information that shines a new light onto the project, but it shouldn't be necessary to deem an opinion/critique focused on judging the final product by itself good or valid enough. They are talking about their experience with it as intended, where digging through backstage baggage of "we got screwed over but tried very hard" wouldn't factor in improving said experience. I appreciate it myself but still.... it's a different perspective, and not saying all this backstage info isn't valid either.

I always appreciate that you try to remain unbiased for 95% of your commentaries lengths. I would be lying if I said I don't watch KZfaqrs that purposely shit on things because it's popular to do so (it still entertains me), but giving at least an insight into the artists and production can be a concern. Nice DaftPina :)

Look, I see HGS is a 3/10 (final). But thanks for a better explanation of production. This is the info that fans want to hear, not Raye just tweeting about the budget. Thank you for this video.

Ok, amateur animator in college to become pro one day here. This is the best video about High Guardian Spice I have seen so far, and trust me, I've seen A LOT. While the production issues don't erase the outcome, I have to say that the biggest failures of the show were tonal whiplash, wrong platform and writing. The biggest victims of this were the animators, although several mistakes could have been avoided despite the low budget and tight deadlines, when you want to cut costs on animation, you simplify the backgrounds and make movements stiffer, with less inbetweens. What you DON'T do however is LITERALLY SLAPPING A .JPEG IN THE BACKGROUNDS. The time and effort they spent for this would've been the same as taking the picture, tracing it and coloring it flatly, and the outcome would've looked endlessly better. I feel for them however, animation is cruelly tiresome and repetitive, so they'd use their time to get things done by the book rather than giving feedback to change the storyboards. In fact, what most people don't realize is how the storyboards are what dictate the animation's quality, messy storyboard = weird camera angles, bad composition, poor focus and off-model characters. Steven Universe's constantly off-model, irregular animation is purely because of this, the episode Mindful Education is much better animated not because the animation crew was different, but because the STORYBOARD crew was. And as I said, the animators of HGS were in constant hurry so they couldn't go back to fix a poor and quickly produced storyboard, they were worried about their job, not someone else's (as they should tbh). Anyway, long comment, just wanted to give my 2 cents as an animator myself, and again, great vid!

What I think people overlook is how some of the staff themselves aren’t exactly the best picks for the job. People tend to be their most creative and resourceful when they’re forced to work with so little, so really the onus should truly be on everyone involved.

I kind of feel bad for Raye. Being overtly passionate about your project only for it to be squandered is a massive blow to you. In all fairness of the show, there are some good things about it. Snapdragon is likeable, some of the environments look nice if you avoid the bread and lamppost, and the post credits scene can be an interesting follow-up. If I were one of those writers, I think I can make the second season way better than the first.

It doesn't really matter if it wasn't meant to be an anime, it is an animated show on what is generally a purely anime streaming service. It is going to be compared for better or for worse. The production problems are also no excuse for the shows writing and animation. I understand where you are coming from about cutting the crew slack however.

did nobody see the gamer's other article on the right about a naked tombraider 💀

Never thought you were gonna make a video on this but…I just wanna say I’m glad you made a video on it(despite you being a couple months late).

47:15 Abstract triangle squiggles is exactly the animated content I crave...

is it just me that notices daftpina ending every sentence really strangely on a higher vocal note on usual? It's incredibly offputting and makes his voice hard to listen to, it's not his usual monotone.

Why does every sentence you say sound like youre asking a question

The thing is... the show was never going to be good. The premise, world, and characters are so generic and so underdeveloped in the first place. I don't see how this show could be salvaged without a complete conceptual overhaul.

Hour long daftpina video? This is a video format I can get behind. Love your videos, even if they take time.

Was Crunchyroll really looking to expand their audience beyond anime fans and did they really think that a few western-style cartoons would be all it took to get people who preferred that sort of thing to subscribe to yet another streaming service and stay subscribed (and in such numbers that it would offset the backlash that productions running counter to their own mission was definitely going to create)? That's the part that's hardest to believe.

I just wanna point out. I haven't seen the show and it's absolutely a mess of a disaster, but I think the point is "The show reveals a trans character in such an awkward way, it's like it's talking down to you" I actually had to explain what a trans person was to a friend. I use the exact definition the character uses. I explained what it meant and the reason I did that was to prevent any miscommunication for the person. That way if they were confused they could point to a part of my statment. "What do you mean you were assigned female at birth?" I then could explain that when I was born. I was a girl, I was born as a girl and so on. Another thing I dislike was people reviewing the show suggested the character would lose their transformation magic in some way. I don't know how it worked but it felt wrong. Even if it's a character it's still kind of eh feeling that people want to watch a trans character be turned back into their original appearance for drama? The last thing I disliked about the reviews mentioning the trans character was I think the pink haired one who dressed as a mermaid. When the teacher suggested transformation magic, that is entirely a fair suggestion to make to them. As far as we know it didn't have any side effects, it could be reverted at any time, and if a magical fantasy world wants to make transitiong very easy for trans characters, I say let them. I did this same thing with my fantasy world because as a trans man, I feel heart broken with how difficult transitioning can be in real life. I'm not saying the writing was good, but I also don't think the writers did bad with these concepts, the execution might have been off but the actual concept to be specific explaining what trans is.

Interesting fact. The bass/organ/banjo/singing saw player of the band Neutral Milk Hotel voices one of the characters. His name is Julian Koster and he is an angel.

I never watched the show, but have seen summaries, clips and reactions of every episode and to me the show is a 4-5, 6 is pushing it a bit. If the show had a proper introduction to the masses and not that god-awful teaser, it would have recieved a lot less hate. Do feel bad for the production team for all the hate that they got.

Honestly it shouldn't be all that surprising that CR didn't give their showrunners a proper budget when you remember how they underpay their translators.

Daft is acting like he doesn't know the point of youtube critque, the point is not to effectively communicate to the creators of the work, the point is too dunk on the work in a way that is entertaining to the KZfaq audience,

This is genuinely disappointing, I feel like this show could have been something great if it got proper treatment I hope that the creators get to make that comic some day, I’d like to read it

Can't spell Crunchy Roll without Crunch

Damn, Crunchyroll really was the villain all along. The easiest answer is sometimes the most correct. Thank you for the fantastic

Crunchyroll doing shady stuff behind the scenes yet again. I knew the show was bad, but damn this is crazy. I’ll never support Crunchyroll and I’ll buy directly from the companies themselves in Japan. Or pirate. Also its still a 5/10 even with all of this exposed, hopefully the animators are working in better environments

OK, but a bad show is still a bad show.

While I understand your goal and trying to look at both sides that you boil down the opposition into whataboutisms and they never said that soliloquys is being very dismissive of the legitimate criticisms of cutting out promised programs and fundraising and instead appropriating that money for the expansion of their own business assets basically performing a bait and switch on their audience.

As a complete outsider who is only here because I enjoy listening to people critically breakdown something they are passionate about, I think this episode has a very defensive feel. I can 100% believe all the terrible things that happened to the studio but there seems to be a complete lack of accountability from everyone involved in what's being framed as the 'good' part of the process. I'd have loved to have at least seen a small glimpse of ways internally they could have improved because from just a human standpoint I have a hard time buying the "It is literally every single person involved except me" mentality. Even the Kate Leth tweet you presented as an apology(?) or justification for the things she said on twitter is really just a "Its not my fault, get over it" which just leads me to believe this studio likely learned nothing of how to improve or grow themselves. It's really sad that this is the way industry is, I think people forget that just about every labor based job RUNS 24/7/365 on crunch time and we just publicize it when it comes to entertainment industries but this is a worldwide work culture issue

I think something that's okay is to agree with two "conflicting" ideas. I agree with Scamboli's and Daftpina's ideas which acknowledging the faults in both if their videos. It's okay to make your own opinion by combining different ideas together.

They probably would have gotten more money had the trailer actually intrigued viewers. (if they treated it like a Kickstarter and received positive feedback where ppl would promote it and the creators could have received more funding) But that’s where they fail on multiple layers, The first ‘trailer’ was very insulting and had nothing for the actual show, we still have no idea who the target audience is & if anything the show should’ve just been an indie show instead of being on a platform meant for anime. Crunchyroll for years has publicly stated that all their profit would go to translators or directly to the studios in Japan - but then we got this and people were pissed rightfully so. I can’t feel bad either Crunchyroll or the staff for HGS because they care very little about the actual criticism about the show itself or the fact that it was promoted on a platform that it shouldn’t have been on in the first place. Crunchyroll just sucks with its bad business practices.

3:05 hey look it’s me But for real: support anime dormitory

16:00 Anime America's video on High Guardian Spice was an actual review though. Sure, she went on a tangent about how bad it was and how frustrating it is, but over all her biggest problem with it was that it was really bland.

Completely off topic but I'm just now noticing the chipflake plush in the back 😭

One thing I don't get is why nobody brought up the idea to simplify the characters and or the backgrounds? If your complicated backgrounds and characters are draining your budget, then by simplifying them, you can save money that can be used for other things. Keep in mind, having a small budget is not an excuse, some of the most popular properties of all time started off as low-budget feature films and while I get animation has a whole different bag of problems. You still have a variety of tools at your disposal, one thing that strikes me is legend of korra, and how the first few seasons had so much detail, but because they got their budget cut, they simplified the character models and the background. Sometimes, creative accounting is a gift. But then again, I am not sure what she means by saying the budget was similar to a cartoon network show. If the Onyx Equinox creator said it was less than 1/3rd, I feel more insight would be nice but this is what we have to work with.

The wrap up at the end explains the history of show and helps the review make sense, I would recommend skipping to the "What Now" section first before watching the rest. It makes sense that poisoning the waters would help to cause a self fulfilling prophesy. Comments complaining and expressing a desire to see anime isn't ridiculous unless you hyper focus on the fact that they didn't market that show as anime. If you consider that the folks originally subscribing to Crunchy Roll were there for anime style specifically, the comments make more sense as a complaint against the company practice rather than a specific criticism of the show in particular. The rest of the show review seems ok, and I'm about half way through. While I'm watching, the DaftPina seems to differentiate anime fans from anime creator fans. Did I understand that to mean its bad to be an anime fan as opposed to a creator fan correctly? Why is it wrong to like the content without caring about the creator? Some creators and actors have such terrible characters that those people need to be ignored in order to enjoy the work. I don't know Rodriguez so this might not even be the case for this creator, but is it still wrong to just like an anime work without liking the creator? Do you need to love Steven Spielburg in order to like Indiana Jones? Do you need to like Joss Whedon to like any of the Avengers movies? I'm confused as I listen to the video. Is it explaining why the video did poorly? Is this shame on people for being disappointed with their possible misunderstanding of the show? (Generally that would make sense but in this case the initial teaser didn't really help and Cruchy Roll messed up a lot along the way). Is it a display of how not to handle publication? I can see how anime reviewers are in the wrong for jumping on the band wagon without doing homework. The last 10 min of "What now" really make sense. I didn't watch HGS, but had interest despite the poor pandering of Crunchy Roll... I think I will look at the written work instead and maybe I'll look at the show on their site. Thanks for the review. It helped me see some things and turn me back to the show after such a long time.

People compare it to anime because crunchyroll is an anime platform and people subscribe to support the artists that create the anime they like. If they wanted whatever high guardian spice is they’d subscribe to Cartoon Network or something not built entirely around anime.

I actually didn't know the show wasn't supposed to be promoted to anime fans. However the only reason why I thought it was meant for weaboos like me is because the show is posted on the Crunchyroll, which is synonymous for being a website that posts anime and manga. Furthermore, I do not read any articles about High Guardian Spice and only read the summary of the anime shows which is posted on Crunchyroll, that does not say anything about it being a western animation or not promoted towards anime watcher, so it is no wonder that people mistake it for being an anime. Furthermore, another reason why I thought it was an anime is because the animation is basically a magical girl trope, with the power of friendship and love which is prevalent in the anime community , especially any shoujo anime. On the other hand, even if the animation is not meant for the usual anime watchers, I feel that the story and script of the animation is confused with the people that they are trying hook in. It is said that it is meant for teens but it has the feeling of the animation being meant for kids. I just feel like if they try to entertain towards children, than it might be a decent kids animation and maybe less hate.

Honestly didnt even know this existed, but this was such a journey to watch! thanks!

Time to bring popcorn

Your knife set advertisement actually made me laugh. Because I know of these knives and they are very good, but hearing “Japanese Steel” and “quality” in the same sentence gave me a chuckle, since because of my history studies the topic of Japanese steel being dogshit comes up a lot. At least not anymore, but man historically they had a bad time when it came to steel

I think even with a higher budget and better scheduling this show would’ve been mediocre at best. The concept is just unoriginal and extremely derivative from several anime eg. the ending is a blatant copy of azumanga daioh. Better animation and writing wouldn’t have fixed the lack of artistic integrity on this show.

I don’t want this to discourage anyone non-Japanese to make their own anime/manga/manhwa/etc… just DON’T repeat HGS’s mistakes.

I have to say this for people keep thinking that a Unionized employee is better skilled than a non Unionized employee. Been part of a Union is not about skill level, it is guaranteeing a rate of pay with the rest of your fellow Union employees and protecting you from unfair dismissal/firings from your employer, that said you can be the best skilled employee with the best work ethic and get paid the same as the worst skilled employee with the worst work ethic and vice versa. This isn't me Union busting even though I am staunch Unionist, that said you cannot blame non Union employees for budget problems when no one is willing to show a expense report. While I understand your stance on all the "negative criticism" been the thing to stop creators from speaking out about the production woes, that is simply not true for when Jason Schreirer wrote his articles about game crunch been a bad thing for the gaming industry that "negative criticism" was used to reinforce how gaming companies were organizing their staff to produce a broken product. In this case people are not willing to use said "negative criticism" for the person who was in charge of this production, the show runner Ray Rodriguez is openly LGBTQ+ and trans, the team don't want to be seen bigots so instead of blaming the production's management (which includes Raye) for under funding and not getting time extensions they blame the millions of consumers who notice all the animation errors and all the problems with story and lore. That said, all this "negative criticism" you are demonizing has been the most constructive I have ever seen, writers are talking about how to avoid plot holes and keeping a consistent lore, animators are talking about the importance of lead animations, why they are important in conveying speed, force and intent, I've even seen a person talk about using rotoscope and how a 30fps camera would have fixed many of the laggy animation and perspective issues, lastly the most important is that people are talking about the importance of taking the time to show not tell of issues like gender dysphoria and transitioning, things many would say the show was lacking. I don't see this "negative criticism" as the worst thing to come out of HGS production, it is in fact the most positive feature of the show for it challenges people to do better. I know you won't look at what I have said and write it off as harassment.

Damn, this made me sad. I can't believe this show went to shit ONLY because of Crunchy Like, They really should have went to Netflix. -They probably would have given full freedom in the writting -The Teaser wouldn't been shit -The show would had a Slow start introducing characthers in a good matter -The Main characthers would be written as friends. -The tone would have stayed consistent. -Maybe they would ending up with better backgrounds since they would have getting more time. The fact that all of this was Crunchy, IT'S DEPRESSING. And it doesn't help that the team was getting paid Pennies for hours, YIKES.

Not far ahead into this, but what I will say is that in hindsight, the HGS teaser came across more like a press kit than anything else.

aye ive been waiting for daft to make a vid on this

A few things I feel like should be said, since they were left out of the overall discussion. Don't take this as me bashing you, but rather me sharing my own opinions on the topics presented here: - A big part of the reason for the hatred towards Kate Leth wasn't just because of her posts, as the age of the posts does matter, but her ultimately, utterly unapologetic stance on the whole ordeal. Saying she was "Tumblerpilled" - a word that, as far as I can tell, she basically made up on the spot - is just a way to justify her call for the mass murder of many males. It is not an apology. If she had shown signs of moving beyond her bias, I imagine the vitriol wouldn't have been *as* severe. However, no such move was made, and she chose to blame other people - pointedly the people who were pointing out her toxic views - rather than admit that her mindset was flawed at one time or another. As humans, we all make mistakes, and grow from those mistakes. Ignorance is a lack of information or understanding, but that's ultimately fixable as we move on and grow. Stupidity is a willful lack of forward momentum and blaming others for your own mistakes, rather than owning them. Unlike ignorance, you can't really fix stupid. As the old adage says: "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink." But it goes a bit further than that. The male portrayal in the show can be downright insulting to traditionally masculine men. I can respect diversity and shout the praises of those who fight for equality, but that's the key word: equality. It's painful to notice, but a lot of people fighting for their equality seem entirely comfortable dragging someone else down and climbing onto their backs. Consider the male allies of the girls; none of them have much - if any - traditional masculinity. Now, I want to clarify that I don't think the staff was doing this intentionally. With an all-women staff, maybe just writing men who fell into the category of traditionally masculine was more difficult for them, or maybe they just simply made a small mistake, but one can very easily see how this can be turned into an argument for HGS being sexist. I will reiterate; I don't think that's the case. But people have started flame wars over less. - As mentioned at 8:00, Crunchyroll was a site with a reputation for their anime distribution. It was what made them even notable in the past, and so many people, myself included, weren't even aware they had any desire to branch off from that direction. However, this point disrupts a previous point you made; comparing HGS to Avatar. Avatar was released on Nick, which was for western style shows and animation primarily. Avatar was the exception - not the norm - with it's anime-inspired art style, and as such was much easier to label as "anime inspired" as there was no major precident I can remember on the channel. Nothing that was popular enough to get traction, at least. But in the case of Crunchyroll, they were a site primarily themed towards anime. By making an animated show, heavily inspired by anime in it's art style, and putting it on a service with a reputation for primarily being used to distribute anime... Well, I think you can see the difference. If Crunchyroll was genuinely serious about distancing themselves from anime, then they should have genuinely distanced themselves from anime. By taking a half-measure such as this, they laid a landmine at their back door, then forgot it was there, and that is nobody's fault but their own. You circled back to this at 21:50 in saying that one pitches to everybody and hopes to find *some* success, and I can agree with that sentiment wholeheartedly. That doesn't change the fact that Crunchyroll should have been less contradictory in what they were trying to achieve. - As someone who writes not just for fun, but for a living, I can't stress enough how *bad* the worldbuilding in HGS is; it's boring at best and contradictory at worst. A very good example I saw put fourth is a very simple one: naming conventions. Why are there so many people named after herbs, spices, and other plants? In Steven Universe, the gems are named after the stones that made them - or are at least the most like them, I suppose, - except for rare exceptions like Volleyball. In RWBY, children are named based off colors as a means of celebrating art and self-expression after a war 80 years prior tried to stifle individualism. Even in something as simple as the names, HGS drops the ball. The solution presented could have been as simple as "naming conventions skewed heavily towards herbs and spices, as many are seen to blend well together in cooking, giving people the motivations to interact with others of the same naming style." It's kinda silly and I literally just thought it up on the spot, but it would have been better than nothing at all. And hey, I'll even make a deal: if anyone can tell me what a Guardian is, as presented in the lore of the show, and why there's a need to train *literal children* to become them rather than properly developed adults, like any competent organization in a similar vein to this one, I'll drop the whole argument. The pacing of the writing is uncomfortable and unpleasant, but that can be excused by the deadlines and budget limitations; Crunchyroll messing it up again. I will clarify that I'm a novelist though, and writing for an animated show is a different take on the same art style. - The more egregious issue here was the hype behind it: HGS flew to close to the sun and melted those wings of wax they'd made. From 14:25, you started making light jabs at the reviews of others, but brushed over the points they made yourself, not acknowledging or denying the validity of their points. You just spent the time riffing on reviewers, rather than reviewing. By that standard, you make it seem like PNG bread and horribly compressed backgrounds are acceptable quality for a show as heavily marketed as this. Knowing that it was produced in Korea is a big eye-opener on why these shortcuts were used in the first place, but Crunchyroll *had* to know what they were getting into when they outsourced to a Korean animation studio. In a show that marketed itself so strongly, it crafted shoes far too big for it to fill. This is, as before, very much Crunchyroll's fault, but that doesn't mean these aren't legitimate problems. Just because the blame for HGS being an artistic mess is shifted, doesn't make the show any less of an artistic mess. Let's take a wild side-step here and compare this to a different genre of media entirely, just for fun. Don't take this comparison too seriously; it's a left field one. But consider Cyberpunk 2077: a game that marketed itself up and down as a game to reinvent games. Celebrities were used to hype the game, release after release sold it on a world-changing experience. And upon it's final release, it was riddled with bugs to the point of unplayability, left players absolutely stunned at the gall of the studio, and suffered from one of gaming's biggest red flags: it was kinda boring to a lot of people. Had the game not been marketed so wildly, and the reigns pulled on it just a tad, I doubt the outrage would have been so severe. To swerve the discussion back into reasonable territory; when you hype your product up to be a 8/10, you'd better be able to at least deliver a 7 or 8, if not a 9 or 10. And I will point out here, *Crunchyroll* marketed this show as amazing; the creators, artists, and writers were trapped in purgatory, uncertain of their place. Most of the blame is not on their shoulders for this show's failure to deliver. - This was just a minor point of personal frustration, so it might be a bit biased; you kept bring up lines like "an actual animator" and bringing up how people critiquing a series don't have experience in the things they're critiquing. I believe the words you used at 43:30 were "guessing and assuming." I'm sorry, but in my opinion, that's very much the wrong way to look at things. A food critic doesn't need to know how to make an authentic Italian neapolitan pizza to recognize it's amazing. Just because someone doesn't have personal experience in something doesn't mean they can't compare one work to another and see which is better. That's the very core of critiquing. If we all *needed* experience in something to critique it, we wouldn't have concepts like audience reviews for movies, because the audience doesn't understand the nuance of film production or finite camerawork. But, to get back on a track we left behind earlier, in this case we *can* compare Avatar and HGS, since they were both following a similar art style of taking inspiration from anime. And putting them side by side, there's no comparison. While HGS has it's flashy moments, it seems stilted in comparison to the bombastic animation of Avatar. It's been years since I've seen the show, yet both the first and second assaults on Ba Sing Se still stands out in my head as amazing shows of artistic talent. I can vividly remember the scenes after only seeing them twice in total. And the dragon dance performed by Zuko and Aang is a wonderful moment that needs no words or shock value to carry it's beauty and message of harmony with the world. HGS never really achieved anything even close to that. Avatar is the Neapolitan Pizza, ordered and enjoyed in Italy, while HGS is a Large Cheese from Joe's Pizza off 4th Street, LA. It's okay, but it's not great either. But it is worth noting that HGS was also much, *much* shorter, meaning less time to get it's momentum, so it must be viewed with a grain of salt on that front. And hey, I bet you that neapolitan pizza is like, triple the price of Joe's.

Thank you for every time you post it really brightens my day / night right up, and helps with stress. ^~^

It sounds like this was the perfect storm of development hell for any animated show

0:26 why would they go into the full behind the scenes? its a review, not a video on the production daft.