Analyzing and critiquing a show can be challenging. It can be especially difficult when it comes to shows that we have already established preconceptions of. With that in mind, choose a show that you generally dislike and write about some of its positive aspects. Then, select one of your favorite shows and write about some of its negative aspects. Try to explain WHY they are positives or negatives for you. Once again, this isn't about what you like or dislike, it's about how well you're able to express and rationalize your reasoning.


One of the most popular shows I have never been a fan of since it came out in 2015 is One Punch Man. Despite my plethora of complaints about the show’s narrative, the repetitive comedy simply not being what I find funny, and the flat cardboard cut-outs of characters the show has to offer, One Punch Man is in my opinion one of the best animated and produced TV series to come out this decade.
	Generally, I tend to value the production aspects of the anime I watch much more highly than the other aspects. Granted I do very much care about the other aspects that go into a show, such as the characters, the thematic reach and depth, as well as the story itself. But in the case of One Punch Man, a show that I feel has no other redeeming traits about it, the production values single-handedly save the show and earn it the score of a 4/10 in my opinion.
	Perhaps the most endearing thing to me about the production aspect of the show and the reason as to why I value the production of shows so highly is the way that the industry was able to pull together so much talent onto one project. One Punch Man has an insane number of both veteran animators and young talent working on it to create an immensely polished final product. Following these animators’ work and style across the years to see how they evolve, how their collaboration with others changes their own style, and watching them work on different projects with different artstyles and parameters is honestly one of my favorite things about anime. And in my opinion, one of the best, if not THE best example of the beauty of this industry at work is One Punch Man.
	For example, where else would you be able to see yutapon cubes combined with Gosei Oda’s insane sense of dynamic cinematography and angle-work? The answer is nowhere. It only exists in One Punch Man. This is a singular (incredibly popular example) of two animators working together on a scene, but I think it illustrates the point quite well. One Punch Man is teeming with these sorts of collaborations. This is how animator talent is cultivated and refined, through the joint-efforts of the greats teaching the younger generation. And THIS is how One Punch Man justifies its existence in my opinion. Not as a great piece of storytelling or an intricate character study, but as a collaborative piece of art. Simply put, One Punch Man gains so much from being animated that it justifies being animated in the first place, a piece of praise that I would not give to many shows in an industry that creates sub-par products based off of existing IPs in order to sell some Blu-Rays. Most shows have no reason to be animated other than for slight financial gain, but One Punch Man exists in a different league. Shows that I couldn’t imagine being consumed any other way than through animation (yes, I know the manga exists, fight me).
	And that is the part of One Punch Man I find to be praiseworthy. As a holistic package I can’t say that it is to my tastes, but as a piece of collaborative art I would have to say that it is one of my absolute favorites.
On the other side of the spectrum, a show I’ve held very close to my heart since it was released is Flip Flappers. As is expected of my tastes, I have nothing but praise for the show’s visual craftsmanship and production in essentially every aspect. However, even though I personally gave the show a 10/10 score, I’m certainly able to see the weaker aspects of the show, namely the outward plot threads and backseat approach to the story itself in the latter half of the show.
As you might be able to expect from the first half of this question, my taste emphasizes the actual plot of a show the least, and the plot itself is where Flip Flappers struggles the most. Starting as a seemingly episodic fantasy adventure through worlds called “Pure Illusion”, Flip Flappers is content to use its story in order to allow its animators and storyboarders to create whatever their mind desires. Unrivaled creative freedom. The problem arises when Flip Flappers tries to tie itself together in a meaningful way, and can be attributed to a few different sources. Namely the writer change and the unresolved threads left hanging in reference to the plot.
The first reason this problem came about is that Flip Flappers actually underwent a writer change mid-production. This assertion can be a little misleading, but the person originally credited with series composition as well as the script for episode 1-3, 5, and 6 (Yuniko Ayana) left the project, and episodes 8-13 were written by Naoki Hayashi (responsible for Citrus this year but that’s a whole different can of worms) (related note: Series director Kiyotaka Oshiyama wrote episode 7). This writer change has been a bit overblown in the community at large, but does provide some insight into the problem as to where Flip Flappers started to shift from a mostly episodic story with some semblance of a plot floating in the background, to a very clearly plot based story in the last few episodes. Granted, a lot of shows DO follow this sort of story structure, but with Flip Flappers it turned out a bit different.
The general problem cited with Flip Flappers final episodes is that it was all very ‘underwhelming’. The plot reveals of Mimi being the antagonist, Salt’s mysterious position and character motivations, Papika’s relation to Cocona prior to the series, and Cocona’s grandmother being a cyborg was all out of left field in a show that had generally focused on more nuanced storytelling in the vein of “show, don’t tell” prior to that point. Of course, not everyone agrees with these assertions that the plot of Flip Flappers fell off in the last few episodes. Some people would argue the symbolic importance of all of these plot points in relation to the early episodes of the show, and some people have (see LukeAtLook’s Flip Flappers essay). Perhaps the most infamous of these hanging plot threads is the existence of the character Nyunyu. For some people she is the forefront example for Flip Flappers not tying itself up, a character that seemingly does nothing despite being introduced as though she had some relevance as the ‘third child’. Others argue that this is just more symbolism work by Oshiyama, serving as an ‘unfired Chekhov's gun’. Personally, I agree with the former that she was a forgotten about character.
So, as the next necessary step in logic, if I do agree that Flip Flappers plot did undergo a rapid and rather disappointing change, why do I have it rated as a 10/10? This can be attributed to a few different things that are all sort of intertwined. The most obvious being that I just don’t put as much focus on the actual plot of a show when critiquing or assessing it. Did Flip Flappers plot take a very weird and strangely literal turn in the back-half of the show? It sure did. But did it also serve to tie up the respective arcs of the characters I had been watching since the beginning? It did. And therein lies why Flip Flappers declining plot is not a problem for me. Despite the weird logic it puts into the show, it was able to tie up Cocona’s and Papika’s character arcs in a meaningful way with Cocona going through the sort of ‘emancipation from her mother’ arc and becoming her own person and Papika self-justifying her actions from the past. None of the characters become weirdly different or self-contradicting, nor does it soil what was good about the concept of Pure Illusion itself or the still relatively nuanced symbolistic ideas in the background whilst the foreground plot was happening. Everything good about Flip Flappers was kept intact. Even if more was added onto it unnecessarily, that doesn’t affect my personal enjoyment of the show in the slightest.
Flip Flappers is a flawed show, it is worthy of critique for what it does wrong. It just so happens that what Flip Flappers does wrong doesn’t bother me in the slightest because the original intent of the character arcs and what I enjoyed about the show in the first place was preserved. But I can absolutely see how this show wouldn’t work or even be praiseworthy for other people who are watching it because it DOES have a weak foreground plot.

Sources Used:
Yutaka Nakamura/Gosei Oda’s cut: https://www.sakugabooru.com/post/show/23510
Gosei Oda’s other work: https://www.sakugabooru.com/post?tags=gosei_oda
Yutapon cubes (Yutaka Nakamura): https://www.sakugabooru.com/post?tags=yutapon_cubes
Flip Flappers writer changes: https://twitter.com/unicococ/status/797071053650468864
 https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=18177
Luke’s Flip Flappers Essay: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1op4t5YrC1QoCRy7pW3z0n5clS9Vi694vZbS7wByisU4/edit#heading=h.2aamwo47eeki
Chekhov’s gun: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekhov%27s_gun