I promise this will be the last time I talk about this show.
Needless to say, the hype this show generated from how utterly terrible it was going to be was reaching fever pitch, from the hypocrisy of Crunchyroll saying they'll help fund the anime industry and immediately make their own series, the trailer that really told us nothing about the actual show but instead tick the diversity and LGBT markers in the marketing with it's inclusive team of animators, which is poor and quite suicidal to do so, looking at you Disney, and finally the images we were getting was from a Cal Arts style popular when the trailer came out but not so much now as most of the good shows that did use that style have since ended and most people agree that the Cal Arts style needs to go from Western Animation to evolve and the fact that the shows it was clearly taking ideas from have long since left the public eye in favour of My Hero Academia, Jujutsu Kaisen and most recently Komi Can't Communicate, it had all the setup for an epic train wreck.
Only when it did finally get released, it barely passed for a fender bender.
While everyone on YouTube believes High Guardian Spice to be a total disaster, I'm sat here thinking, "it's actually okay" mediocre and very amateurish in design but hardly a disaster.
Let's break it down.
The Good
1. Not that complicated to follow.
2. Parsley should've been the main character and is easily the most unique female character I've seen in ages.
3. Sage has potential to be as good as Parsley.
4. The side characters are also really good, the teachers and the lesbian couple are solid characters.
5. The LGBT content is natural and never comes across as preachy or written to tick a corporate box.
6. The lore was carefully written not to give too much away.
The Bad
1. Rosemary suffers with Shonen Protagonist syndrome, I find her really intolerable.
2. Thyme has no personality and always look bored.
3. Script needs several edits and revisions.
4. Animation is awkward, the Cal Arts style makes them seem like they never blink.
5. The 1st episode was actually badly written filler.
6. Student side characters are terrible.
7. I'm convinced the creators have never watched the shows this series was inspired by.
8. Some voice actors need extra lessons, looking at you Rosemary.
Improvements
1. Lose the Cal Arts style in favour for your own more contemporary anime art style.
2. Make Parsley the lead and have Thyme play off her more.
3. Scrap most of the student characters bar the redeemable bully characters.
4. Rewrite the 1st episode.
5. Hire a goddamn script writer who knows how to write a good script.
I think overall, don't believe what YouTube says, many reviewers would deliberately say it's bad for a good algorithm, bad publicity is still paying attention to your product and will only aid in giving it more money.
It's basically boycotting 3D Sonic games and buying classic Sonic games in protest, yet it still gives money to Sega to make more Sonic.
As for Crunchyroll, the hypocrisy is an issue and so are allegations of them banning people for daring to bad mouth their show on Twitter, it only really adds gasoline to the burning torches out to get them.
In my review I did mention that there are shows that do all these themes better.
Precure, Little Witch Academia, RWBY, Steven Universe, She-Ra, Slayers, Konosuba, Log Horizon, Sailor Moon and even something I hate, Sword Art Online is a better option.
If anyone from Crunchyroll is reading this, make sure your next original is drama free, this is too exhausting to deal with.
