Talk:The Big Blow-Out!/@comment-27929748-20171217034206/@comment-995426-20171226041458

Easol1:

Yeah, that does sound kind of bad. It's always harder to feel engaged in a story that doesn't actually try to show you compelling reasons you should care. I mean, Dark Shadows and Swan Song are also depressing stories in post-apocalyptic futures, but they also genuinely tug at the heartstrings. They're not just bleak for the sake of bleak, but instead feel full of consequence and the weight of a lifetime's decisions.

The 2012 TV series could handle this kind of effective emotional impact really well in the earlier seasons, and especially in episodes like Slash and Destroy which I thought was just about perfect. But in later seasons, the writers seem completely checked out, like they're just going through the motions without caring. Tale of the Yokai was a good example of this kind of malaise that was setting in, as what could have been a deeply impactful story instead felt painfully staid and stale. It sounds like by season 5 the production had only doubled down on this trend.