As a hobbyist worldforger, Lelangiric’s post and Eternal’s continuation on how the mechanics/setting of anime tends to fall short of expectations actually ticks me off a little bit. Not quite because of their viewpoints, but because modern Japanese animation, and much of recent scifi/fantasy in general, are a rather poor gauge on measuring the literary values of setting creativity. But then, that’s also partially our fault as the viewers…

Exposition start: activate lecture mode! (and who remembers this old yet remarkable anime?)

By and most in today’s series, we don’t have ‘setting’. More precisely, we have a very much watered down version of ‘setting’ which is far better entitled ‘premise’. The difference between these two? A setting attempts to round out the details behind all the primary concepts and mechanics it introduce. It goes beyond just those two initial lines of conceptual explanations and seeks to reflect the cast’s understanding of their World to the audience, without inhibitions or convenient cutouts. On the other hand, a premise is a set of concepts and mechanics simply handed to the audience with minimum scrutiny, and the viewer is expected to accept it in order to make the story work. ‘Premises’ can be upgraded to ‘setting’ through storytelling, but without intricate detailing and/or in-depth analysis, it will always remain what is it: merely a premise, a set of ideas and foundations, not a World.

How does one tell if it is a ‘setting’ rather than a ‘premise’? Look upon this universe in which the characters reside in, and ask oneself if there are any major concepts that the characters conveniently brush aside and ignore as if it were an accepted norm. See if there are any topics hidden behind that brief explanation akin to “there’s a sleeping Snorlax on the road and you can’t get pass it”.

True, all those supernatural elements and pseudo-magic doesn’t necessarily have to make sense. After all, the explanation for magic is pretty much — magic. But there are things that do stay the same, be it sociology or strategy or the human curiosity for knowledge and exploration. People don’t just accept the existence of a strange element without altering their thinking patterns or investigating it. This, is where the differences between setting and premise broadens: characters question the mechanics within a ‘setting’ like how Newton stares at his apple tree.

This is also one of the foremost reasons for stories placed in creative settings: character development, as the cast retains their human (or pseudo-human) nature within the foreign World, trying to figure out why their gravity works the way it does and how to respond to a society properly ‘weighed down’ by gravity. Obviously, you lose most of this potential within a ‘premise’, as people simply don’t change if they never think about the World that envelops them.

I don’t think I need to discuss the issue of consistency. If we start violating physics, something’s wrong. If a setting violates its own rules, something’s wrong. Simple as that. The exception is when the cast realizes said law being violated and starts a shitstorm — then it’s fine. The exception to the exception is when too many laws are being violated… exception to exception to exception — this is like freaking chemistry.

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Examples, Examples: the Good, the Bad

A few critical points of failure in popular modern scifi/fantasy animes:

• Shakugan no Shana: What’s up with that Crimson Realm anyways? Why is the cast still attending school instead of actively solving problems, by planeswalking or destroying gateways to stop conflicts preemptively?
• Index/Railgun: For a series with remarkable similarities to X-men, all the social implications of having super-humans are just… missing. Seriously, the Accelerator represents military power to threaten 1st world nations.
• Evangelion: The military never properly explored that convenient AT-Field which made them useless. The World never seriously considered or investigated the origin and implications of those angels.
• Anything Sunrise: Too obvious here. How many times did Code Geass make everyone go WTF!? How the fuck does that work? or Why hasn’t anyone noticed this? Same can be said for most of their other series.

I’m actually having trouble thinking of recent series that managed an exceptional job in constructing the ‘setting’. It may simply be that I watched the wrong series but…

Recent science fiction anime never seem to stand up to the scrutiny of a traditional scifi fan. New concepts are given little explanatory exposure (what’s up space aids curing), and new races are always cursed by simplistic psychology. Of course Ranka easily subverts all the Zentradi in Macross Frontier, there’s like zero individualism between them unless they’re at least a notable character.

Recent fantasy shows? It feels like the characters are always stuck in the middle of their own little microcosm, segregated from the rest of the world by either space-time defying bounding boxes (Nanoha, Shana) or some invisible veil of secrecy. Either that or the entire setting is generic as hell (Zero no Tsukaima).

Those who know the header picture probably knows which series I’d present as having a remarkably well-established setting: The Twelve Kingdoms introduced an entire new world and separate social structure, which the story struggled to explain to the viewer. They never quite managed it, as after all, their Mandate of Heaven is quite literally magic. But that didn’t stop its cast from tackling the mechanics from every philosophical perspective, attempting to answer the ‘why’ and probing for possible mechanical loopholes to exploit. Crest/Banner of the Stars is another series which deserves pride in its setting, explained in detail and explored in width, from the tactical implications of planar space combat to the social views on the Abh Empire’s genetic manipulation and unique psychology. (Although, since I don’t enjoy linguistics, that ‘Klingon’ language of theirs annoys me).

Out of the notable recent series, Fullmetal Alchemist deserves quite the praise on its ‘setting’. Yes, their alchemy is pseudo-science that doesn’t hold up to close scrutiny, but at the moment it’s also not holding up so well to the cast. That’s the notable part: Edward and co are actually reacting like real human beings to the mechanics of this strange World they live in. They seek pursue the quest for knowledge, to find out why their World works the way it does. Well, look at how much it changed them along the way, and how many story opportunities it opened.

Good settings tend to be a little on the aging side as far as anime goes, and not always the most popular around…

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Why is poor setting partially our fault?

Because many of us don’t appreciate good settings enough. Because we can be appeased by less. Because by and most, the attention span of today’s viewers suck.

Setting takes time to develop. To use ‘setting’ to mold character development and storyboard progression you have to explain the details of the mechanics, be it through a long exposition or periodic breaks from the main story to tackle the information. Unfortunately, pacing the exposition to a scifi/fantasy setting is quite tricky. Give out too much information and the viewer is bored, give out not enough and they’re confused. Script writers aren’t perfect, and people will mess up (by varying degrees) in one direction or the other. There’s a trend going around and I doubt it took long for producers to notice: less detailing is often forgiven, for otherwise Sunrise would have gone bankrupt by now. On the other hand, more detailing is often responded by people dropping out as modernized attention spans expire. Well, I know which risk I’ll be taking if I wanted to make money from serialized productions, especially when those extra minutes the explanations will take is costing precious air-time.

Ever since I dropped out from Gundam 00 because its ‘politics’ and ‘tactics’ were killing my brain cells, I’ve began adapting a less serious attitude towards most anime: don’t over-analyze how it works, just accept that it works. True, it’s done well in letting me enjoy a lot more anime than I would otherwise. But at the same time, this is the kind of attitude that pushes studios to lean more towards ‘premise’ and move further away from ‘setting’.

So what am I complaining about? That you can’t have both halves of the pie here. Deux Ex will always find their way into high-paced exciting storylines. If you want your mechanics to make sense and applied to full potential, then you’re going to have to risk a few infodumps.

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Setting-Driven

This is more of a post-note, but I think there are some who probably aren’t so aware of the fact: there are setting-driven fans. Actually, a lot of science-fiction and fantasy fans love ‘setting’ as much as they enjoy storylines or characters. Not exactly the most common bunch, but they exist, and they’re the type who can actually enjoy shows like Nanoha Strikers because it opened the doorway to a whole new world of creative thinking. So yeah, some of those in-universe jargon and crazy concepts are also designated for this audience.

Hence why there are soft science fiction and hard science fiction: the soft with only commonly used principles that are easy to understand, and the hardcore which can only be understood and enjoyed by a technophile (I have no clue what those books are talking about sometimes).

At the same time, worldforgers also take a particular pride for their setting design. It’s like how daddy Maes Hughes is proud of his daughter, really, and he just can’t hold back from showing it off. So excuse the authors if some of those infodumps went into something slightly irrelevant: they are just showing off and having fun. Of course, at some point it steps over the line to being unprofessional…

(Author’s rambling: I discovered I needed a separate category for this kind of serious posting, and hence begins the Crossvision category)