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> I think a lot of the more sci-fi / dream / supernatural stuff loses points due to technobabble I think you can mostly ignore the technobabble without issues,

by Zababa 5y ago

> I think a lot of the more sci-fi / dream / supernatural stuff loses points due to technobabble I think you can mostly ignore the technobabble without issues, most of the time it's here for the setting but not necessary. For example, Akagi and Ten (mangas by Nobuyuki Fukumoto) feature a lot of mahjong, but mahjong is secondary to what's really happening, which is a clash of multiple personalities/ways of life. You can usually see this because the important moments don't usually feature the technoblabble part. The gambling house arc in Akagi doesn't feature any mahjong, yet is the point that defines Akagi as a character. The last three volumes of Ten also don't feature any mahjong, and are in my opinion the most beautiful manga chapters ever written. Evangelion is so loved because the characters are flawed humans trying to go through life, the setting is almost secondary. Patlabor 2 features large robots in a sci-fi world but the politics are the same as ever. All of these stories are stories about humans before everything else, which is why they are so good.

dragontamer 5y ago
> I think you can mostly ignore the technobabble without issues, most of the time it's here for the setting but not necessary I agree that its largely ignorable. Actually, the "technobabble" adds a lot of flavor and "coolness" to a lot of situations, so its fine for my reptilian brain. The issue is that every minute of technobabble on the screen is another wasted minute from a storytelling perspective. When you watch a denser film (like Secret of Kells), that's lacking any of that techno-babble... or even something like Fate/Stay (which largely cuts out the techno-magic babble aside from a few key phrases), the storyline is heavier and denser. More things "happen" because there's less "filler technobabble" going on. So when we talk about pleasing my "higher-order" brain (as opposed to my reptile brain which is pleased with the technobabble + explosions), my high-order brain enjoys the character interactions and the deeper analogies to the human condition. ------- So from the "higher-order" perspective, something like Tokyo Godfathers can tell a fuller story in a shorter amount of time, because there's less technobabble eating up the screentime.
- Zababa 5y ago
  I wouldn't call that time wasted, I think it's usually very important to create an atmosphere, and to better understand the world that the people we're watching are living in. I've never watched Secret of Kells so I can't comment on that. But it's funny that you pick something like Fate, in both the original Stay Night (the visual novel) and Zero (the light novel), there is a lot of technobabble. It gets cut in the anime adaptations, along with most of the interesting parts of the characters and the story. The original Stay Night by DEEN was a weird mix of all three routes, not great by any means but at least brought something new, UBW was butchered, and I'm trying to keep things civil so I won't talk about Heaven's Feel. Zero had the same treatment, most of the internal dialogue of characters was cut, leaving a story with half-baked characters and trying to compensate with the visuals. > So from the "higher-order" perspective, something like Tokyo Godfathers can tell a fuller story in a shorter amount of time, because there's less technobabble eating up the screentime. That's true. However, I think time is not always a hard limit. Sometimes the movie being slow is part of the experience. It is something I like a lot, so I probably have a bias here.
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    > But it's funny that you pick something like Fate, in both the original Stay Night (the visual novel) and Zero (the light novel), there is a lot of technobabble. It gets cut in the anime adaptations, along with most of the interesting parts of the characters and the story. Fate/Stay anime is interesting as a series and as a storytelling medium. On the face of it, it feels like Fate/Stay is a soft-magic system where the magic is called out as magic and rarely elaborated on. Here's healing magic here, or noble phantasms over there, or reality marbles, or whatever. But in actuality, Fate/Stay is a hard-magic system, supported by the depth of the original story. All the magic has rules. They just skip over the rules explanation in the anime, because they don't have the time for it (ie: they chose not to have time for it, and focus on other elements of the story). I agree that pointing out to the audience the hard-magic system and its rules probably would be beneficial. On the other hand... maybe not? All of the anime (including the Tsukihime and Garden of Sinners anime/OVAs) consistently skip over these explanations and just leave it up to the audience to figure out the rule system on their own (if they care). "Story told as if it were soft magic", but with a hard-magic reference point thanks to a series of in-depth rules published in that visual novel that a much smaller portion of the fanbase has read is... fine. Its like how Lord of the Rings has all this history in the Silmarillion that 99% of readers don't know about. If the audience cares about the details, the original VNs / wikis / etc. etc. exist. If they don't care about the details, all the better, they didn't want to hear the explanation in the first place. Its a compromise system, but its an interesting compromise. Frankly, a lot of audience members are happy with the soft-magic hand-waved explanations given in the anime. I don't think Fate/Stay is a "deep" anime, not on the levels of the other shows I've discussed. But it still shows how cutting out the techno-babble in the actual anime (and just handwaving the details) increases the density of the show. Especially because the "harder" fans know how in-depth all of those explanations actually go.

by Zababa 5y ago

dragontamer 5y ago

> I think you can mostly ignore the technobabble without issues, most of the time it's here for the setting but not necessary I agree that its largely ignorable. Actually, the "technobabble" adds a lot of flavor and "coolness" to a lot of situations, so its fine for my reptilian brain. The issue is that every minute of technobabble on the screen is another wasted minute from a storytelling perspective. When you watch a denser film (like Secret of Kells), that's lacking any of that techno-babble... or even something like Fate/Stay (which largely cuts out the techno-magic babble aside from a few key phrases), the storyline is heavier and denser. More things "happen" because there's less "filler technobabble" going on. So when we talk about pleasing my "higher-order" brain (as opposed to my reptile brain which is pleased with the technobabble + explosions), my high-order brain enjoys the character interactions and the deeper analogies to the human condition. ------- So from the "higher-order" perspective, something like Tokyo Godfathers can tell a fuller story in a shorter amount of time, because there's less technobabble eating up the screentime.

Zababa 5y ago
I wouldn't call that time wasted, I think it's usually very important to create an atmosphere, and to better understand the world that the people we're watching are living in. I've never watched Secret of Kells so I can't comment on that. But it's funny that you pick something like Fate, in both the original Stay Night (the visual novel) and Zero (the light novel), there is a lot of technobabble. It gets cut in the anime adaptations, along with most of the interesting parts of the characters and the story. The original Stay Night by DEEN was a weird mix of all three routes, not great by any means but at least brought something new, UBW was butchered, and I'm trying to keep things civil so I won't talk about Heaven's Feel. Zero had the same treatment, most of the internal dialogue of characters was cut, leaving a story with half-baked characters and trying to compensate with the visuals. > So from the "higher-order" perspective, something like Tokyo Godfathers can tell a fuller story in a shorter amount of time, because there's less technobabble eating up the screentime. That's true. However, I think time is not always a hard limit. Sometimes the movie being slow is part of the experience. It is something I like a lot, so I probably have a bias here.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  > But it's funny that you pick something like Fate, in both the original Stay Night (the visual novel) and Zero (the light novel), there is a lot of technobabble. It gets cut in the anime adaptations, along with most of the interesting parts of the characters and the story. Fate/Stay anime is interesting as a series and as a storytelling medium. On the face of it, it feels like Fate/Stay is a soft-magic system where the magic is called out as magic and rarely elaborated on. Here's healing magic here, or noble phantasms over there, or reality marbles, or whatever. But in actuality, Fate/Stay is a hard-magic system, supported by the depth of the original story. All the magic has rules. They just skip over the rules explanation in the anime, because they don't have the time for it (ie: they chose not to have time for it, and focus on other elements of the story). I agree that pointing out to the audience the hard-magic system and its rules probably would be beneficial. On the other hand... maybe not? All of the anime (including the Tsukihime and Garden of Sinners anime/OVAs) consistently skip over these explanations and just leave it up to the audience to figure out the rule system on their own (if they care). "Story told as if it were soft magic", but with a hard-magic reference point thanks to a series of in-depth rules published in that visual novel that a much smaller portion of the fanbase has read is... fine. Its like how Lord of the Rings has all this history in the Silmarillion that 99% of readers don't know about. If the audience cares about the details, the original VNs / wikis / etc. etc. exist. If they don't care about the details, all the better, they didn't want to hear the explanation in the first place. Its a compromise system, but its an interesting compromise. Frankly, a lot of audience members are happy with the soft-magic hand-waved explanations given in the anime. I don't think Fate/Stay is a "deep" anime, not on the levels of the other shows I've discussed. But it still shows how cutting out the techno-babble in the actual anime (and just handwaving the details) increases the density of the show. Especially because the "harder" fans know how in-depth all of those explanations actually go.