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Almost all anime has that exposition garbage. Its a cultural thing. Japan doesnt understand show dont tell. This latest installment is particularly bad with it. But full metal alchemist also has it. They all do.

I'm not sure that it's going to come as a shock to those who watch a lot of anime if that's the style.

If the degree of exposition is too egregious for somebody who's a fan of the genre and understands the foibles, then it's got to be exceptionally bad.

 Azreal13 wrote:

If the degree of exposition is too egregious for somebody who's a fan of the genre and understands the foibles, then it's got to be exceptionally bad.

It is.

I hated that whole fething neo luddite BS message. After several good years that sort of gak killed battlestar galactica in the last half hour of the series and i'm tired of the whole "technology is bad! "meme. Feth that gak....

 Azreal13 wrote:
I'm not sure that it's going to come as a shock to those who watch a lot of anime if that's the style.

If the degree of exposition is too egregious for somebody who's a fan of the genre and understands the foibles, then it's got to be exceptionally bad.

Exposition is important in any science-fiction or fantasy univers. You need a certain degree of it for the world to make sense (most very popular Anime falls in either category as far as I know). I think the biggest issue of these movies is the fact they combine the tradition of many Godzilla movies of having human characters narrate everything that's going on and comment on all of Godzilla action, plus the lengthy exposition of all science-fiction setting, plus all the exposition of all stories with an extensive "it happened a long time ago" and finally another dose of pseudo-philosophy hammered on top of it.

epronovost wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
I'm not sure that it's going to come as a shock to those who watch a lot of anime if that's the style.

If the degree of exposition is too egregious for somebody who's a fan of the genre and understands the foibles, then it's got to be exceptionally bad.

Exposition is important in any science-fiction or fantasy univers. You need a certain degree of it for the world to make sense (most very popular Anime falls in either category as far as I know).

Disagree. Alien is a sci fi movie with no exposition speeches. Its just regular conversation the characters would have. Show dont tell.

There is also no exposition in Warlock. Any "exposition" is done in regular conversation when one character is answering questions the other character would legitimately have under the circumstances. Why would he want fat from an unbaptised child? Flight potion.

Besides the opening crawls, the sw original trilogy (science fantasy) doesn't stop the movie dead in its tracks to exposition at you. You know what the force can do because they show us what the force can do. Any further information we get is a natural aspect of following a character who is also learning it.

I watched the first two and thought they were terrible (only reason I kept watching was it was basically background noise while doing other stuff).

I'm not a fan of the genre though. Never understood what people love about anime so much. I just watched it because I wanted to see monsters smash smash.

Oh, Another thing, This series I think somehow beats all of Star trek for the amount of Techno-babble in it.
Like, my God, when Ghidorah was "attacking" the ship and that lady was spouting all that it was too hard to follow.
Jesus was that annoying.
Not only that, Godzila has no sense of scale in this movie.

Oh yeah, the technobabble I found distracting when they just smooshed words together as if it'd sound like something meaningful (maybe that was just the dubbing though, sometimes stuff gets lost in translation).

I think Lance makes a great point that Japanese productions very often tell rather than show, something considered clunky at best by anglophonic audiences. One wonders if it is a matter of budgetary constraints. Or maybe the Japanese enjoy being lectured in their entertainment. Or perhaps the excessive wordiness imparts a sense of gravity to the action (such that it is) for them?

That said, this trilogy is particularly egregious even by the standards of anime. It’s so dull. And the boring, somestimes downright stupid, visual design of the series just reinforces how dull all the constant talking is.

 Manchu wrote:
I think Lance makes a great point that Japanese productions very often tell rather than show, something considered clunky at best by anglophonic audiences. One wonders if it is a matter of budgetary constraints. Or maybe the Japanese enjoy being lectured in their entertainment. Or perhaps the excessive wordiness imparts a sense of gravity to the action (such that it is) for them?

That said, this trilogy is particularly egregious even by the standards of anime. It’s so dull. And the boring, somestimes downright stupid, visual design of the series just reinforces how dull all the constant talking is.

Is it Japanese films in general or more anime specifically? I imagine the cost of making an anime increases the more is visually happening, whereas a scene of a couple of people talking for 5 minutes making minor gestures while otherwise standing/sitting still doesn’t require much artwork to be generated.

I was watching another (not anime) Japanese film the other day and was pondering why they were bothering to say things that were obvious from context, but at the same time it didn’t really interrupt anything compared to anime where it does seem to really slow things down.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
I think Lance makes a great point that Japanese productions very often tell rather than show, something considered clunky at best by anglophonic audiences. One wonders if it is a matter of budgetary constraints. Or maybe the Japanese enjoy being lectured in their entertainment. Or perhaps the excessive wordiness imparts a sense of gravity to the action (such that it is) for them?

That said, this trilogy is particularly egregious even by the standards of anime. It’s so dull. And the boring, somestimes downright stupid, visual design of the series just reinforces how dull all the constant talking is.

Is it Japanese films in general or more anime specifically? I imagine the cost of making an anime increases the more is visually happening, whereas a scene of a couple of people talking for 5 minutes making minor gestures while otherwise standing/sitting still doesn’t require much artwork to be generated.

I was watching another (not anime) Japanese film the other day and was pondering why they were bothering to say things that were obvious from context, but at the same time it didn’t really interrupt anything compared to anime where it does seem to really slow things down.

You'll find it in live action films as well, though to a lesser degree. It is super common in anime, manga, and light novels as well though. Works generated over there tend to be very expositional, especially when they delve deep into trying to explaining magic, technology, and other such things.

The original Fate/Stay Night visual novel is something like 5,000,000 words long, and fans often jokes that 1/2 of it is long info dumps explaining in-universe physics.

I have seen it in live action as well. It IS worse in anime but I can't think of any live action Japanese cinema that doesn't have it. Thats why I think it's cultural.

The only examples I can think of that don't have it in anime are generally considered to be the best of the best of anime and stand head and shoulders above the rest.

1) Studio Ghibli. They have the best track record for both story telling and animation. They have a higher frame rate with their images resulting in smoother animations and no exposition. Nobody stops in the middle of a car ride to start asking questions that are just the theme of the movie disguised as what is supposed to be deep intellectual introspectives but is actually just exposition because the audience must be too dumb to understand what the feth is happening. (I'm looking at you Ghost in the Shell)

2) Akira. Basically the first anime to ditch the low frame rate and do some actual animation. Also has little to no exposition. Any exposition that does happen is generally the psychic kids asking each other questions. Important not just because it mostly holds up today, but because it was ground breaking when it was done.

3) Cowboy Bebop. It's been a long while so I could be wrong. This one has the generally bad animation of the vast majority of anime, but it has generally great story telling with none of animes exposition nonsense.

Anime is absolutely notorious for over-talkiness. A lot of the ones I’ve recently seen, it’s practically non-stop. And there is an associated problem, which I also noticed in this latest Godzilla anime: it is often pretty ambiguous whether the chatterbox charcters constantly spewing their stream of consciousness lines are speaking aloud or just endlessly monologing interiorially. This is further exacerbated by having characters, usually pseudo-magical girls, that speak little or never. In the present case, the Mothra twins occupy that role.

I think anime has a tendency to try and beat the audience over the head with it's point, just to be sure they get it. The entire ending arcs of Naruto were so dragged out in themselves, constantly pulling out some new twist to continue the action. Throw in the mountains of flashbacks, exposition explaining motives and mechanics, and "this is what I think" stuff and the whole show just dragged so damn much.

Some series are worse than others. Naruto got pretty bad at times. Bleach suffered from it exceptionally imo, especially when someone would spend upwards of 3 episodes to explain how their super power worked. Samurai Champloo at times could have used more exposition to explain exactly what was going on imo. I knock the final episode of Fate/Apocrypha a bit for failing to explain anything necessary to actually understand the ending of the series. It's utterly baffling if you haven't read the novels.

Literally, the best parts of a Godzilla movie fit into "show, don't tell".

To me, a Godzilla movie is not watching Godzilla slowly and glacially move into threat range of babbling heroes. It's about them scrambling as he is wrecking stuff.

But there's not a lot of building-wrecking to be had in a barren wasteland in the future, I guess. Regardless of the original, a Godzilla movie is about him fighting other giant monsters, which is a giant failure of two of the three anime movies so far. (I'm not counting him "fighting" a city.)

After enjoying the first two "enough"...this third one was absolutely fething garbage to watch.

Finally tried watching it despite the comments above, as I soldiered through Parts 1 and 2.

I made it ten minutes in and immediately fell asleep, and when I woke up I just turned it off and gave up.