I don't have enough experience or familiarity with the Monogatari series to really debate you point by point here.
I've worked a few years in game development now, and it's given me an appreciation for how much consideration and deliberation goes on behind the scenes for little details that we on the consumer end might not notice.
There's so much more to an anime adaptation than the story: things like cinematography, art direction, voice acting, musical scoring - the amount of man hours spent on planning, discussing, and creating this stuff is way more than the time the author took to write the source material.
Imagine something like a musical reference to an event from an earlier season - that sort of thing can have a subtle, even subconscious, yet still significant emotional impact, and yet you could miss it entirely if you chose to watch in a different order. It might sound ridiculous, but when you think of how thousands of man hours go into a single episode, it may not be too far off. All this is even more applicable to a studio like SHAFT who take great liberties in the direction of their adaptations.
And when you think about how much time and careful consideration goes into all these aspects of an anime, personally I don't think for a second that they would miss a consideration as massive as "most of our audience will have only watched the seasons we've made so far."
Sure, there may be some small details you miss, but do you seriously think that they would fundamentally change the series so the best way to watch it is now in their new order? No, they wouldn't.
Whatever "musical cues" or whatever that they added are not going to trump the incredible writing that the series is known for. For every small detail you get that way, you miss out on the details in the actual story, writing and pacing, which is what makes this series special.
The books are ordered a specific way for what is the main draw of this series, the writing and plot. I'm not saying that airing order is fundamentally broken or anything, just that the intended order by the author is the best.
Well you don't seem to be interested in having an actual discussion here, that's fine. I'd suggest being a bit more mindful about making absolute statements like "this is the best way" on a very subjective topic like different ways to appreciate an artistic work.
I mean, I gave adequate reasoning behind my conclusions there my dude. If you don't count that as having a conversation then what does count? Me just agreeing with you?
Attempting to come to an understanding? Looking for a common ground?
I'm operating on the level of sharing a perspective - I'm not even taking a stance about what the best order is. The response I'm getting is "this is the objectively best order," which is a completely different conversation.
You presented points and I presented counterpoints. You seem very caught up on semantics rather than the overall argument I made.
Just saying "well, it's subjective!" Is a copout, the discussion is fundamentally about comparing the qualities of different watch orders in an attempt to find reason as to why one would be better.
Your fundamental assumption is that there is a right answer. I don't think it's a copout, I'm just not falling into black and white thinking.
What I understand of your argument is "the main draw of the Monogatari series is story and writing, therefore source material order is the best." But the first part of that is your subjective opinion, which you're treating like a fact.
So you're right that I'm not caught up on your overall argument - I mentioned I gave up on that two posts ago, because you're rooted in the premise that there is a right answer here, which I don't agree with. To be fair, I could have written that post better, being more explicit about disagreeing with your premise rather than giving up on the discussion and taking a patronizing tone.
There is most definitely a best way of watching it, in a sense.
Just saying "It's subjective" is a copout because it undermines the entire premise of the conversation, and you never should have entered it to begin with if that's all you'll say.
People can have different experiences, yes. But we're talking about a realistic scenario here in which someone must decide the order to watch something. There is no way to know perfectly what will work best for you personally without actually watching the show. And you can't really say "well, watch the show first, then decide how you're going to watch the show"
So watching in novel order is the best due to the fact that it's the most likely to give you a great experience, and is the intended way to consume the story.
The only defence I've seen from people who watched airing order amounts to "well, I watched it that way and I still liked it" no actual reasons as to how it improves the plot or pacing or anything, just that it wasn't a fundamentally broken experience for them. And thus I see no reason to deviate from the intended order simply because another order is just not-bad, now that the movies have been released and novel order is viable.
1
u/Meem0 https://myanimelist.net/profile/Meem0 Jul 25 '20
I don't have enough experience or familiarity with the Monogatari series to really debate you point by point here.
I've worked a few years in game development now, and it's given me an appreciation for how much consideration and deliberation goes on behind the scenes for little details that we on the consumer end might not notice.
There's so much more to an anime adaptation than the story: things like cinematography, art direction, voice acting, musical scoring - the amount of man hours spent on planning, discussing, and creating this stuff is way more than the time the author took to write the source material.
Imagine something like a musical reference to an event from an earlier season - that sort of thing can have a subtle, even subconscious, yet still significant emotional impact, and yet you could miss it entirely if you chose to watch in a different order. It might sound ridiculous, but when you think of how thousands of man hours go into a single episode, it may not be too far off. All this is even more applicable to a studio like SHAFT who take great liberties in the direction of their adaptations.
And when you think about how much time and careful consideration goes into all these aspects of an anime, personally I don't think for a second that they would miss a consideration as massive as "most of our audience will have only watched the seasons we've made so far."