High Guardian Spice: Where to begin? It could have had potential, but all hope was lost.
Oh yes, what is High Guardian Spice?
Good question. I honestly cannot tell you, something to do with these people called guardians who have an oath or something. I honestly cannot explain any more to you because that is all that is said in the show. This literally is a slice of nothing. A nothing patty for the nothingburger, if you cannot establish your premise then why am I even watching? Anyway, I decided to continue watching.
Who are the characters?
The main characters are Rosemary, the determined leader; Sage, who has blue hair (the most I can say about her character); Parsley, a dwarf; and Thyme, a skilled archer. Notice that for each one of I really cannot say much about each one of their character because they are just boring. And I guess that is my main problem with the show too, there is next to nothing to talk about and that plays through to the plot. I have gotten more characterization from a garden stone than these characters, other than being named after spices herbs. To make matter worse, there is nothing to care for with these characters. NOT. A. SINGLE. THING. Any conflict, if you could even call it that, is usually resolved within five minutes, similar to a childrens animated sketch comedy... WITHOUT THE COMEDY!
Speaking of childrens show, do you know what else is a childrens show? THIS! I wish I was joking, but the art style is more like a knockoff Steven Universe, the plots are about on par with Care Bears, but it still has a mature content warning at the start. I have absolutely no clue as to why this may be. The language is still at a "TV-Y7" (U.S) rating, with about the same amount of profanity of the 4K!DS dub of Shaman King ("ass" was used at least once in the series). A 4K!DS dub!!! Can anyone explain this to me? Better yet, CAN CRUNCHYROLL EXPLAIN THIS TO ME? It would help if you gave a specific reason for this to start off with, because at this point it is abolutely arbitrary.
Plot (coming soon, I needs to collect my thoughts).
The production values are similarly low. With the animation paralleling Ex-Arm in quality, albeit, in 2D, down to the same effects, which are just beyond amateur. Several shots use stock images, many more uses optical illusiosn to substitute animation (for example using image scaling to simulate movement, while nothing is animated). This is, though, understandable, as Crunchyroll, gave the U.S based studio a Japanese anime budget, which forced the studio to outsource the work to Korea. I do not know which studio did the animation, whether it was one in the South, or a studio like SEK in the North, but it is not entirely their fault either way. The way that most of these types of commission based studios work is that they need a plot synopsis, character designs and GOOD storyboarding. From what I can tell from the animation gaffes, the show had none of these to start off with. In fact, I went so far as to see the trailer that started it all and created the enormous backlash it got in 2018, and lo and behold poor storyboarding was all over the place, jerky motions, a lot of space for "in-between" animation, a lack of *any* detail. Sure, it is a storyboard, there is not going to be extreme detail, but this is what I believe led to the usage of stock images in the background.
Under Construction.
