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[TamerVirus]

The Crunchyroll """""""Anime""""""""? Looks more like some uninspired CalArts style schlock that would be dumped in between reruns of TeenTitans Go  on Cartoon Network.

Made in San Francisco by white people with an art style more evocative of Steven Universe than anything recently produced by Japan. Why even bother calling it anime?

[Zangi]

When you want the animoo market, but are only willing to shell out for cheaper murrican toon style art.
And I actually googled it just now.  It can actually be categorized in the cheaper animoo style art category. 

I actually thought steven universe was some other show with lower production value... and I don't know what that one is called.

[Parsely]

I think "anime-inspired" is a fair description, which seems to be the language that Crunchyroll is using to describe their own show. The characters are very Stephen Universe/Adventure Time but no one seems to have noticed that the background in the promo art is some proper hand-painted-looking (probably digital and just painted to look traditional) anime BG.

Spoiler: High Guardian Spice (click to show/hide)

Not the best comparison but it's the best I could find. They both have that desaturated, painterly look with detailed shading, as opposed to the extremely flat and high saturation coloring style of Stephen Universe or Adventure Time.

Spoiler: Gunbuster BG comparison (click to show/hide)

So hopefully this subtlety is reflected in the show in that there will be some interesting anime inspirations, a middle ground between Western Anime and Japanime.

Korra/Last Airbender is Western Anime, this isn't Western Anime, but I don't think that's their intent just based on the articles I've seen so far, just a convenient interpretation that allows people who despise Crunchyroll's business practices (for good reason) to dunk on them. So, I'm not defending Crunchyroll or the obviously pandering marketing, more just trying to say that the attackers of this new show are being a little overly enthusiastic in their rush to hate this, anger for the sake of anger, and that maybe the studio workers themselves ought to be given the benefit of the doubt until we see what their show is actually like.

E: If it is terrible though, I would retract this defense.

[TamerVirus]

Focusing most of the reveal trailer to how 'woke' the studio is doesn't help to inspire confidence in the strength of the plot. 

[JoshuaFH]

"Well, looks like Netflix has Little Witch Academia on lock, so I guess we'll just have to make our own."

Though yeah, we get like one sentence: "Girls in magical city that want to become guardians." with none of these things being elaborated on at all and the entire rest of the trailer focusing on the designers and artists, as if that's what the weeb audience cares about at all. I'll ignore who they are, because they all seem to be unproven and they deserve the chance to prove themselves through their work without people being biased one way or the other for whatever reason.

[Reelya]

The problem is that you can often tell problems in a project by how it's launched.

With the emphasis on the PC-ness of the crew and lack of story details you can - definitely - glean one core fact. There was no "story they were itching to tell" here. It's not about the story, it's that they got the shot to make an "original" series, and the person in charge (who is chief of Women in Animation) went and recruited all those Tumblr-looking people and has hobbled a project pitch together. So it's almost certainly going to be a "made by committee" type of work. Those ones only work in Japan when there's a strong core concept to the show, because that stops it meandering around.

While plenty of people on that team look like they have strong political views as well, a good team leader helps people rein those in for the good of the project. However since the team leader was the one who actively went out and recruited all those exact people, then you'd have to question whether they'd have the restraint to not let them inject all the politics that's seen in the video into the show itself.

[Cruxador]

I don't think political leanings are necessarily bad, personally. Everything from Steins;Gate to Shimoneta can be seen as strongly political; a work can have a message and still be good. It's more the fact that that's the only thing they've got which they consider good enough to showcase which seems a bit worrisome. I mean, it still could be good, but between the lackluster artstyle, the lack of anything interesting revealed in terms of story or setting, and the fact that it's CrunchyRoll, any notable quality would be a hell of a surprise.

[IronyOwl]

By way of analogy, if somebody was launching a new anime-inspired thing and all we got for the trailer was a bunch of greasy-looking dudes talking about how hot the bitches were, it'd probably be safe to predict the course of the thing in a general arc. There'd be room for cautious optimism regarding some of it, smaller details especially, but it'd be pretty surprising if the boobs were that great, and mind-boggling if we got a genuinely good work out of it from any other perspective.

Similarly, I don't think it's unreasonable to assume this'll be poor-to-mediocre pandering, possibly with a handful of cool details in there somewhere.

[Reelya]

It's encouraging diversity in anime, because instead of a room full of asian males it's a room full of white women.

And don't get that wrong: if it wasn't dudes they were ripping off it, or if it was white men doing the ripping off, that would clearly be cultural appropriation.

[JoshuaFH]

Well, if Crunchyroll doesn't get it's own Steven Universe out of this, perhaps it'll atleast get it's own Neo Yokio.

[Cruxador]

It's encouraging diversity in anime, because instead of a room full of asian males it's a room full of white women.

And don't get that wrong: if it wasn't dudes they were ripping off it, or if it was white men doing the ripping off, that would clearly be cultural appropriation.

I mean, it's not like the Japanese have a cultural monopoly on cartoons. Calling it anime is really just a matter of branding; at most a statement of intent.

[Reelya]

CrunchyRoll people are apparently on Twitter going "Everyone is super positive about High Guardian Spice, except for those boys who are hopping mad", so they're already trying to make out that any criticism is some culture wars thing.

Yes ... us male anime fans cannot tolerate the concept of a show that has 4 girls in it. /sarcasm

BTW someone on another site linked some of the original concept art that inspired this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The pink-hair character looks like she's clearly a Madoka knock-off in the early art, for a start, which you can also see by looking through the creator's newgrounds gallery. And the character assortment is nothing more than archetypal D&D classes with sword, staff, mace and bow. So ... that's where the concept started. A typical RPG party but it's girls, lead by a Madoka knock-off. Also you can read her comics here:
https://www.rayetoons.com/#/comics/

Also note that the art-creator who made these, Raye Rodriguez is the "token colored person" on the project, since she's hispanic. In other words, the "diverse" part of the crew is the one person who they had to include because they based everything on that person's (very derivative) work. Other than that, it's whiteys all the way through in the "diverse" staff.

[USEC_OFFICER]

-snip-

I'm not going to lie. I saw pink-haired, frilly-dressed girl paired with blue/purple mage and immediately thought that someone decided to make a Madoka parody in the same artstyle. I... Just didn't know expect it to be the actual concept art or whatever for the show. _{That archer lady looks familiar too but I can't put a name to her.}

[TamerVirus]

Plot twist: High Guardian Spice is actually about the delusions of a bunch of high school dropouts after they smoke some tainted synthetic marijuana

[Max™]

I can not support this because that looks like she's supposed to be a dwarf girl but someone has mangled her face. Shaven female dwarf=garbage.