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mach-speed-extra · 1 year

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Lost a bet part 2: High Guardian Spice

If you haven’t seen the other post, I lost a bet that involved Mario Kart with leg straps and now I have to review High Guardian Spice. There’s really no way around it. HGS kinda sucked. It’s not the worst thing to ever exist, but it’s an interesting microcosm of various flaws stories can have. I can’t say HGS has a single big issue because it falls flat on all fronts. However, watching it I could tell there as at least some people working on this show who tried. HGS’s issues are the same many amateur writers have when they first start, and I doubt anyone’s first story was any good (cool stories sure, but told by an inexperienced storyteller). Also HGS apparently had a ton of production issues and as a Beyblade/ Walking Dead/ Fast & Furious fan I know how that can affect quality (4d’s sudden half episodes, actors leaving, actors dying mid production)

Before I rip into it, I will say there was clearly a lot of heart put into it. It doesn’t make it good, but it counts for something. Heart is what made Rocky V better than the Emoji Movie. Rocky V is still bad, but I can tell there were people involved who put every ounce of effort they had in them when making it, and that’s more than I can say for some other things

TW: Transphobia (also long post)

Tone

HGS can’t decide what it wants to be. Is it a cute, mostly light hearted slice of life story with some level of an overarching plot? Is it a more serious story aimed at older audiences (“older” in this context meaning 14+)? It’s mostly the former but the out of place swearing seems like an attempt to be the latter. If it was totally a show in the same vein as Steven Universe, it’d be unremarkably mediocre. If it went all out on the “adult” stuff, it’d also be unremarkably mediocre. By trying to do the splits the show slams its figurative balls onto the floor and breaks them (which is remarkably bad)

Now for the infamous trans scene. I have to address the elephant in the room so I might as well do it now (because it’s relevant to the tone). I won’t deny that some of the criticism stems from the mere presence of a trans character, but I will criticize it for not doing more with it. Caraway explaining what being trans is the way he did solidly cements this show as having a target audience somewhere in the 7-12 age group. He introduces the concept like he’s reading a Wikipedia page, and leaves it at that. And if the show was consistently like this, it’d be fine. Not particularly good, but fine. It’s just that this surface level exploration of the topic conflicts with the parts of the show that present itself as more nuanced. And gender is nuanced. It’s very much possible to make a version of this scene that does more than a basic description. Basically, imagine a tv show that was 50% clips from Sesame Street and 50% gory slasher death compilations. There are people who would enjoy it, but it’s not many. HGS couldn’t decide its target audience and ended up with no real audience at all

Concept

Probably the most obvious issue here. What is the premise? The main characters go to a magic school to become guardians. What does that mean? Fuck if I know. The characters’ goals don’t have to be things the audience necessarily cares for, but the audience has to understand what they mean. Yerma is a great play but I do not give a damn about the protagonist’s motives. Despite this, her goal is tangible and even though I don’t care for the goal itself, I understand it and her desire to reach it makes me care for her character

The magic system is fucked. I’m sure everyone’s that has reviewed this show has mentioned this at some point. The very concept of new magic basically gives any half decent spellcaster unlimited power. You could wave your terrasphere and transform your opponent into a stack of printer paper. And yet no one ever does. New magic is primarily used to conjure magic beams, but even then people should be spamming it in combat (specifically the villain who doesn’t care for collateral damage)

It tries to mix slice of life elements with an overarching plot and while that is possible, it needs more than 12 episodes. 12 episodes is too short to move your plot at such a slow pace

Theme

There isn’t a particularly strong one here. Themes don’t have to be in your face like Vin Diesel saying “family” a dozen times in the span of 2 hours, but they need to be there and have something clear to say. What is HGS about thematically? Friendship. That’s a good starting point, but too vague. What does HGS have to say about friendship? Friendship is good(?). It has a general idea of its theme but fails to deliver on the more specific elements. Fast & Furious is about family, but more specifically the lengths that people will go to in order to protect their family. It also makes statements about what family actually means (risking your life for someone makes you family more than a blood connection does). HGS doesn’t really do that. It doesn’t make any definitive statements about what friendship means, or how it affects people. There are times when it comes close, but doesn’t follow up on a setup that may have been accidental

Alternatively, the theme could be family (that F&F comparison was made before I thought of this). It could be about how not being present for your children can cause issues (Rose and Thyme lean into this), but HGS never does much with this theme either

Plot

I almost forgot to include this section because of how nonexistent it is. Episodic shows with greater plots that are rarely the focus of an episode are fine (Lab Rats did this masterfully), but 12 episodes isn’t enough for this. I recently started watching Designated Survivor, and each episode seems about 50% focused on the main plot and 50% focused on whichever crisis the new president has to deal with that day. It works because it’s a show with more time than High Guardian Spice

I cannot for the life of me tell you what the plot is. There’s the rot, which they have to stop. And there’s these bad guys from Witch Country, who they have to stop. That’s kinda it. What even is the rot? What does it do? Who are the bad guys? What do they want? None of those questions are ever answered

Rosemary

I was originally going to have a section titled “characters” but realized I had too much to say. Rose is boring at best and grating at worst. Rose is best described, at least most of the time, as incompetent and overconfident. This is just personal preference but I’m not a fan of that combination. What isn’t just personal preference however is the inconsistency. Rose’s skill varies with no real explanation. Unexplained gradual increase is fine (they’re in a school and presumably hone their skills off-screen), but her prowess just goes up and down wildly

Also Rose’s decision making doesn’t make much sense, most notably hiding the fact that she’s bleeding out. Her character was never established as someone who refuses to show weakness, and her choosing to hide a possibly fatal wound happens because? She’s a vaguely defined protagonist who mainly exists to move the plot along as needed

Sage

She’s a character with strong feelings regarding the very premise of the series yet manages to have minimal agency in the story. I always thought giving my characters personal stakes in my stories would cause me to give them agency (even accidentally) but apparently that’s not enough. She has some small moments (like choosing to train with new magic so she can master it), but they’re overshadowed by the rest of the series

Sage’s entire existence is defined by moping around, being a dick, and refusing to do anything meaningful of her own accord. There’s also that one scene with Snapdragon where it felt like someone on the writing staff wanted to talk about toxic masculinity but no one else did and it came off as half assed, but I’ll get to that later. What really bothers me about Sage is how, in a vacuum, she’d be a great antagonist by virtue of being a toxic person who doesn’t realize it and ends up making things worse for her friend. Think Shane from The Walking Dead but without everything surrounding Lori (non-TWD fans: that means unstable guy who eventually tries to murder his friend but backs down only to be killed by the same friend after proving he can’t be trusted)

Parsley and Thyme

Neither one is given much focus so I put them together. Parsley’s alright. Nothing special, and in most shows would be considered slightly underwhelming, but since it’s HGS, she’s the best one in the main cast. That mainly comes down to just being there. She doesn’t get much focus (in time or plot relevance) when compared to Rose and Sage, but that means she doesn’t get involved in many emotional moments other than with the whole group, which helps because HGS doesn’t pull those off very well

Thyme gets little screen time but more plot relevance. That never goes anywhere. She has the most agency out of the main cast, but her character arc doesn’t work the way it was probably intended. Thyme’s arc about opening up to her friends doesn’t work because right after learning she can’t do things alone, she goes ahead and does things alone. Her arc gets undone in the span of one episode. If it weren’t for that, she would probably be a pretty good character. I understand the point of having characters regress, but with Thyme this regression is never addressed

Snapdragon

Probably the best character when it comes to the effort put into their arc. It’s not a bad arc as a whole, but a number of small moments add up to hold back what could’ve been this show’s greatest redeeming quality

The first issue comes from Sage. First, Snap develops a crush on Sage which never goes anywhere. I prefer that it wasn’t followed up because I do not want to bog down Snap’s arc even further with Sage. However, it shouldn’t have been included in the first place

Now let’s get to what I call “the scene where Sage reveals she’s never watched shonen anime.” Sage has this idea that men don’t express their feelings and are thus incapable of having friendships as deep as her and Rose’s. This scene makes me think of three things. First, “Your friendship with Rose is so fucking fragile it almost fell apart because you couldn’t agree on carnival games.” Second, “Bruh” in a “guys can and do have some pretty fucking strong friendships in both fiction and reality” way. Third, “ouch this has some unfortunate implications regarding trans people when you look back on it knowing how Snap’s arc plays out.” I want to say the implications were purely accidental, but knowing that at least one of the writers went “kill all men” on Twitter and that those views on gender are incompatible with being normal about trans people, I’m not so sure. Part of me just feels bad for Raye Rodriguez for being stuck with this shitshow of a production

Snap’s arc, when combined with this show’s attempts at having toxic masculinity be a semi-theme (which I’ll get to later) for Snap, gives the unfortunate statement of “men who aren’t toxically masculine are trans women” (and when you think about what that says about trans men, oof in a “yikes” kind of way). I choose to believe, until proven otherwise, that this was a complete accident that’s best explained by writers not sharing notes and a lack of proofreading, but still ouch

Caraway

Caraway is just kinda boring, even though he had some great potential. Looking at all the moments where we get some insight into his character, we know the following: He was a friend of Rose’s mom who transitioned while he studied at High Guardian Academy and he can combine new and old magic. That’s a premise for a character, not a developed character. We could dive into any of those three things (Rose’s mom, transitioning, magic) and develop him into a much better character

Many characters stand out due to their relationships with another one (the Karate Kid is a great example with both Daniel and Mr. Miyagi). What was Caraway’s friendship with Lavender like? Developing that relationship (probably through flashbacks) would lead to both Caraway and Lavender being much more interesting

Caraway’s views on gender could make him more developed. When characters have specific outlooks on certain subjects, it tends to make them more developed. Don Manuel Bueno has an interesting outlook on religion (he’s a priest who doesn’t believe in heaven but still preaches it to put others’ minds at ease), which makes him interesting

Finally, Caraway could be more interesting if the magic system didn’t suck, but that goes for everyone

Amaryllis

By far the best character when it comes to small moments. She doesn’t have any real arc or truly impactful moments, but works really well as comic relief due to every small moment adding up. It’s the opposite of Snapdragon in this sense since Snap has a great emotional arc but is held back by individual moments

She has great one-liners which is the sole source of entertainment from her character. It just works

The villains

I’m putting them all together because none of them warrant their own section. Olive is a cool idea (recon-based villain who refuses to actually kill), but it just makes her superiors look incompetent when they give her an assignment that involves killing. You don’t send the IT guy to the trenches

Smokeface is a stupid name for a villain that doesn’t do anything of significance. He gives Olive the stone spell and threatens her (but doesn’t do anything himself). Also, the Overlord from Ninjago is a much better floating sentient purple ball of evil. The Triumvirate are incompetent (as shown with Olive and later Mandrake), and don’t have any real presence in the story

Mandrake should by all means by an OP villain who can only be defeated through the combines powers of our main characters, but never shows it. You’re telling me the Triumvirate trusted this guy to kill 4 students in a space that is filled to the brim with fighters and magic users? And then they execute him, which doesn’t exactly inspire loyalty. Executing your minions for failing won’t make them succeed. It will make them either hide their failures or turn on you once they fail

Cal and Aster

Putting Cal and Aster in together as they’re just asshole antagonists (not full on villains) but get too much focus to be lumped with the other minor characters. Every scene with Aster gives me second-hand embarrassment which I guess was the point so I’ll give the show that. My problem with how he was handled is at the end of his only episode. So he compliments Rose after underestimating her. Rose isn’t taking it. My reaction was along the lines of “Rose’s reaction is a bit far, but understandable.” Then Aster calls her stuck up and my reaction is “fuck this guy” and then Parsley drops a hammer on his foot. My final reaction was “what the fuck? Him being a dick justifies having his foot crushed? I’d get it if you told him to fuck off but you just broke multiple bones. Fuck all of this.” An easy way to make the audience sympathize with a bad person is to pit them against an even worse person. A hitman with no qualms about killing seems bad, but compared to a sadistic serial killer who eats babies for fun, he’s the good guy. HGS unintentionally made Aster slightly sympathetic by making him the target of disproportionate retribution. He’s an asshole, but when watching the scene it’s easy to forget considering far worse things happen on screen

Cal doesn’t really work as an antagonist on the basis that he doesn’t take it far enough. All of his comments range from “pathetic” to “irritating,” with nothing ever getting anywhere near “vile.” He’s a run of the mill asshole. I get that Snap snapping at him (pun intended) is due to his internal frustrations and not so much Cal’s comments alone, but Cal just comes off as annoying to the audience. Hell, I’ve had to deal with people like Cal irl and if realism is what they were going for great, but there are also many real people who take it further than Cal ever did. The early seasons of Cobra Kai do a great job showing what bullying really looks like, with many moments much more extreme than anything Cal ever did, and Hawk beating the shit out of Brucks so hard he leaves the show is not only a more brutal scene, but also far more cathartic because of how much we as the audience despise Brucks

Other minor characters

The teachers are mostly alright. The old lady from the Triad and the potions teacher want to kill their students and get this show over with (based). The ethics teachers is a demon (which is an interesting concept that could’ve been explored) but does nothing of note. The PE teacher has a nice moment where he swaps Snapdragon’s and Amaryllis’s weapons, but again does nothing notable. The blacksmithing teacher sends Parsley on a quest that one time (which felt like filler and the lesson learned never had any relevance again), but other than that the most notable thing was that Parsley dressed up as him for Halloween

Parnell is mostly uninteresting except for his admittedly great one liners (which are on par with Amaryllis). Slimeboy is just there but his mic quality makes his voice sound like low quality asmr all the time which is distracting. Aloe and Anise are also just there and the only way they affect my enjoyment of the show is by raising more questions about the magic system (elves can combine old and new magic? How does that work? Explain). Rose’s and Sage’s families (the members that aren’t missing) appear for like 5 minutes and do nothing (Sage’s parents have some influence over Sage’s arc, but when we never see first-hand what they do it falls flat). Lavender is barely a character to begin with

The part where I talk about gender

I bring this up because “gender,” as an extremely broad term encompassing everything from gender roles to gender identity and presentation, is the one thing that if handled well could’ve made me truly enjoy this show. They bring it up occasionally but fail to deliver. The few emotional moments that truly work for me are all tied to Snapdragon’s character arc

This show’s attempts at tackling toxic masculinity are notable for how badly they mess up. The two notable characters involved are Aster and Snap. Aster is a casually misogynistic egotistical dick who wants to be the hero who saves the damsel, even when said damsel is a better warrior than he is. However, they portray Aster not as intentionally malicious so much as just a dumbass. Could this be a statement on how people that enforce toxic ideas on gender aren’t always malicious but sometimes just ignorant (and the follow up that those that are malicious take advantage of the ignorant to further their own interests)? Yes. Is it? Probably not

Snap (or more accurately, his dad) is used at one point to bring up toxic masculinity. It tries to portray Snap’s dad as someone who encourages violence and wants his kids to be very masculine (in order to tie in to Snap’s arc). The problem is that what Snap’s dad was doing was telling Snap he needs to be assertive and stand up for himself. Poorly communicated yes, but a good lesson nonetheless. If instead of Snap, the dad said the same thing to a cis woman, it’d be generally considered a good thing (though again, poorly communicated). Now, well-meaning but miscommunicated advice can and does often have negative consequences, but HGS doesn’t devote nearly enough time to make it work. Generally, characters like Snap’s dad who only appear in one scene cannot be given much depth due to time constraints, leading to them either being forgettable or being given a single memorable trait/ moment to make the scene stand out. What HGS tried to do was give a one-scene character a level of depth that ends up just being unexplored and the audience has to assume the rest

The only way to make any character arc regarding gender identity work is for the character to answer the question “what the fuck does gender even mean?” The answers will vary, but that variation is the reason why it’s important to answer the question. A character whose arc revolves around gender needs the audience to know what gender means to the character. My experience and ideas regarding my gender and what gender means to me are fundamentally different from other people’s, because each person has a fundamentally unique relationship with the concept of gender. That means 2 things. First, a work of fiction must define what gender means to the characters, because the audience’s definition of gender is very unlikely to match. Second, each character has a different take on gender, and the beliefs of one character do not carry over to another unless explicitly stated that characters share the same beliefs (and even then it’s likely there are some small differences)

Why did I write the above paragraph? Because HGS never truly explores what gender means to Snapdragon. It may seem tempting to have Caraway (a mentor figure) exposit about gender, but that only gives us insight into Caraway’s own experience (which is also never truly explored). The level of focus required to make an arc like this work is far greater than what HGS gave it. I understand that Snap is a side character and that there are 4 main characters that get more screentime, but I guess making a side character’s arc the most emotionally impacting part of the story was never a good idea. Maybe Snapdragon should’ve been the main character, but I assume this arc came about too late in production to change the protagonist

Conclusion

It’s a bad show, but it could be worse. At least it’s clear that there were people involved who did their best, and the show doesn’t seem to exist solely to spite people (I refuse to give Velma money so I pirated it and still want my money back). The best way I can describe it is “amateur.” People with little experience and a low budget will fail to deliver a good final product 99% of the time, but it’s not irredeemable. It’s just a new creator’s first project but given more publicity than most people get on their first projects (unless they’re famous for something else beforehand or nepotism is involved, neither of which seems to be the case here)

It does suck that HGS got caught in the middle of Crunchyroll’s shitty business, and “all publicity is good publicity” doesn’t necessarily apply to the creators’ mental health (apparently Twitter was a shitshow when this was first released). On the bright side, hate watching still gives money and Raye Rodriguez has a significant number of people ready to hate watch whatever his next project is. Either it sucks and he can keep making money from hate views until the well runs dry, or it doesn’t suck and he proves he can make good shows (which still gets views from people expecting garbage)

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