UlasanAnime.com – The public service announcement regarding Wake Up, Girls! is that the pilot is a movie, and Episode 1 of the TV series should not be watched before viewing the movie. While it’s possible to watch the TV series independently, it’s akin to eating only the buns of a burger – a meal of sorts, but not a proper way to experience the burger.
That being said, there’s no inherent issue with consuming just the buns or watching only the TV series. However, doing so places one in a less than ideal position for criticism. Naturally, one can still voice complaints about the burger being too large or express an unwillingness to dedicate an additional ~26 minutes to watch the full movie (which is approximately 52 minutes, slightly more than two episodes). This sentiment is understandable, especially when faced with a season brimming with shows to sample, and we are already in the second week. [For those who recall, I am among the individuals who would skip the middle portion of Xenoglossia entirely.]
The core issue can be summarized as follows:
1. Is it necessary to watch the movie? YES.
2. Who is responsible for this confusion? Yamakan. While blaming everything on Yamakan is a common practice, the marketing for this show could certainly be clearer. My assumption is that he intended to include the entire pilot but was unable to fit it within the allotted time, hence the movie.
The primary focus of this blog post is to examine how many blogs reviewed WUG based on a “first impression” or a superficial “judging by the book cover” approach, without having watched the movie. This is comparable to judging a book by Chapter 3, or even before looking at the cover. LOL.
Methodology: I conducted a search across Google Blog Search and Anime Nano, and also included a few from my RSS feed collection. If a blog did not appear in any of these three sources, it was not included in the count. Furthermore, I only considered blogs written in English. I then quickly read through the posts to ascertain whether the movie had been watched. In one instance, it was not explicitly clear, but I inferred that the blogger had not watched the movie as the post lacked information unique to it. My apologies in advance for any potential errors. The search was conducted around 17:45 Eastern time on January 13th, so any reviews published after that time (such as this one) were excluded.
Each impression was then rated in a “rotten/not rotten” style, similar to Rotten Tomatoes. Those that I could not definitively categorize were left as neutral and disregarded. Given the rarity of numerical or letter grades in this context, I relied on my judgment and erred on the “negative” side. If a blogger dropped or planned to drop the series, it was considered a negative. Conversely, if they intended to continue watching, it was more inclined to be rated positively.
Prediction: I anticipate finding a significant number (perhaps 50%?) of reviews and impression pieces that do not include the movie. This is likely due to a rote, factory-like approach to seasonal review exercises where everything is treated uniformly. If they handle fansubs, it’s just another download, and so on. While it’s slightly more challenging on legitimate channels where the UI often provides more clues about a series’ offerings, the same underlying principle probably applies.
Regarding the RT metric, I will let the results speak for themselves. I suspect that individuals who watched the movie would have a more favorable opinion of it compared to those who did not, as the movie is quite good, and the first episode is not visually impressive, not to mention the potential for disorientation due to the lack of backstory.
Results: Those who watched the movie: 13
- Beta-Waffle –
- Lost in America + *
- Metanorn +
- Caraniel –
- Mahou Tofu N
- Hanner’s (split into 2 posts) +
- Anime Rambler +
- Sea Slugs +
- Glorio Blog –
- Karmaburn +
- Zakuabumi +
- ConFlagRate +
- And last but not least, what I wrote +
Those who did not watch the movie: 7
- Re-Jinx +
- Lower-mid Table –
- Tenka Seiha –
- Population GO –
- Angry Anime Bitches +
- Draggle +
- ASG +
Analysis: It appears that for those who took the time to blog about it, most were at least aware of the movie and had watched it before offering their opinions. A few blogs acknowledged the movie without reviewing it, while the rest, I assume, were simply unaware of its existence.
Some identified the movie as an OVA, which I marked with an asterisk (). I’m curious about the significance of this distinction.
I am hesitant to categorize Tenka Seiha as a minus, as definitive judgments can sometimes be elusive. However, given that they seem to have dropped the series, it’s counted as such. Mahou Tofu is a true neutral; a rating of 6 out of 10 or higher would have earned a plus, and I believe the series likely achieves that. For the sake of maintaining a negative bias, it was counted as neutral. I suspect DiGi Kerot actually enjoys WUG, but their blog post is too negative to be counted as a plus.
While only about one-third of the sites reviewed here skipped the movie, which is fewer than I anticipated, the more significant finding is that a much smaller percentage of bloggers skipped it out of ignorance. The remainder ostensibly skipped it because they did not wish to invest the time, likely due to its marketing as “extra” content to the main story.
What is even more surprising is that this Yamakan anime seems to be more liked than disliked, across the board. If this were Rotten Tomatoes, it would likely have received around 65%, with ANN’s reviewers leading the pack with prominent quotes, LOL.
Conclusion: In an ideal scenario, WUG should have simply labeled TV episode 1 as episode 2 and the movie as episode 1. Problem solved!
However, the more critical metric is the breakdown of how “rotten” each category appears. This results in 4 out of 7 positive reviews for those who did not watch the movie, versus 9 out of 13 positive reviews for those who did. While WUG may be statistically ranked higher among viewers who watched the movie, which is a logical outcome when comparing a better version against a worse one, the difference is marginal. It could genuinely go either way.
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To improve this analysis, we would need to sample other anime and obtain a mean and a larger sample size to calculate a standard deviation. At any rate, this does not disprove the adage of judging by the cover, nor does it negate the possibility that anime blogging has declined in quality these days.
