Why High Guardian Spice Was Doomed To Fail From The Beginning

High Guardian Spice is not something most people would dare to call an anime series. But regardless, the series was intended to be an anime of sorts.

In essence, it was more like an American cartoon imitating an anime.

How it started and how it ended was a disaster, which is why it was doomed to fail from the very beginning.

Let’s talk about the reasons.

1. Overwhelming dislike (no pun intended)

Back in 2019, High Guardian Spice was announced not just by Crunchyroll, but its creators which consisted of women in particular.

When people saw the art style, the designs, and how it looked on the surface, nobody took it seriously. Or at least, they were more tame about it.

But then the behind-the-scenes or whatever aired on YouTube, which was supposed to showcase the writers, designers, and everyone who was playing a role in the making of High Guardian Spice.

It wasn’t just any normal behind the scenes though, it turned out to be what some would call a “cringe fest”.

Why was it a cringe-fest?

They spent their time explaining how “diverse” their team was.
- In spite of this, the team consisted of white women and men.
They went through the video emphasizing things people don’t care about (ideologies, etc) instead of the anime itself.
- This played a role in the overwhelming dislikes on the video.

And of course, the video was full of too much politics for anyone with half a brain to take it seriously.

I say half a brain because it’s insulting to think people would listen to the political drivel in the video and then think to themselves, “Wow, this explains why this will be a good series” or anything of the sort.

All it did was solidify the fact it was all about pushing the nonsensical agenda of buzzwords and keywords to pander to a demographic of people they don’t care about or even understand.

More than that, the average anime fan which Crunchyroll serves is NOT like your average American cartoon fan on Twitter who wants you to tweak everything to appease their feelings.

This reality (and mistake) cost Crunchyroll and their team dearly, leading to mass dislike of their video.

It was so bad it pushed them to REMOVE the dislikes, aka “hide” the dislikes counter to somehow pretend it never happened despite screenshots living on forever.

And of course, conveniently, YouTube started to hide dislikes sometime after which was so-called perfect timing.

2. Awful design work

I’m not suggesting anime has to always strive to look like the typical image of what we expect to see. Many anime diverge from this.

For example, Toilet Bound Hanako isn’t necessarily all the way typical. Or better yet, Land Of The Lustrous had a completely different design and artwork that isn’t usual for anime.

The anime did well in spite of its unique art style and is one of the highest-rated anime of all time (it’s in the 8’s by MAL’s standards).

Look at RWBY. That “American anime” series looked different to normal anime as well, but it caught on with a crowd of anime fans and even the Japanese welcomed it as a quality anime series.

High Guardian Spice by comparison to the many uniquely designed anime, many of which I haven’t mentioned, felt lazy, boring, and didn’t have a shred of creativity attached to it.

It felt rushed and almost as if the designs of the series didn’t even bother to take their time crafting a masterpiece of sorts, and instead left the designs on a back burner.

Not before copying and ripping off the designs of shows like Little Witch Academia and trying to make it “different” that is.

The fact is when it comes to anime, visuals are #1 for a reason. It’s not a book with words, it’s a TV series with motion pictures. If you lead with half-assed visuals, forget it.

You can’t expect anybody to be amazed or engaged if the design quality can’t even pass the bare minimum of average before introducing people to a story that “could” knock people’s socks off.

3. If you start with politics, you end with disaster

Everything in this world ends the way it starts, making it very hard to avoid that fate later. Especially if a major part of the beginning has already been infected with something that isn’t conducive.

High Guardian Spice, as shown by their introduction video, loved politics too much. And by politics, I mean the usual buzzwords and keywords approach to marketing.

It sounds like this:

“Diversity”.
“Inclusive”.
“Trans”.
“People of colour”.
“Gender neutral”.

And basically any variation of these buzzwords companies use to pander to a sickening degree where it just becomes disingenuous and a load of superficial rubbish.

This was baked into the final product of High Guardian Spice, unfortunately, which is why it turned out to be a disaster from episode 1 and ended in disaster in its final episode as well.

Some people couldn’t accept the reality which was clear from 2019 that High Guardian Spice was terrible. This is simply because it started off on the wrong foot and nobody bothered to take the designs seriously.

This was shocking considering Crunchyroll’s own mascot looks better than all of HGS’s characters combined.

And the fact CR wasn’t hurting enough for them to push the designs to be better.

Articles and responses to the backlash like “Anti trans” were a desperate attempt to villainise fans for rightfully criticizing work that never had the intention to be honest in the first place, or to legitimately contribute to the industry.

It was designed only to fill a quota and nothing more, and the results spoke volumes to a pitiful degree.

Relevant: 31+ Feminist Anime Shows Without Politics Or Virtue Signalling

4. The creators ignored feedback and didn’t give a shit

The nail in the coffin began when Crunchyroll decided to turn off the dislikes counter (and eventually comments) on YouTube. From there, aside from the trolling, many gave their opinions and all of them were ignored.

In fact, people were instead gaslit and accused of being things they weren’t, which led to the backstory of the creators being exposed on Twitter.

There is a fine line when it comes to listening to feedback and what your fans or people, in general, have to say, but ignoring people completely as if they don’t exist is a recipe for what HGS ended up being.

This is more true if you gradually release bits and pieces to the public for feedback, only to put your middle finger up when it arrives and disregard everything from that point forward.

In the end, there may be more reasons depending on who you ask as to why High Guardian Spice was doomed to fail.

For me, it comes down to these 4 reasons, with the #3 reason being the most detrimental and relevant.

Putting your beliefs into a work is one thing, but people know when you’re being disingenuous and dishonest, and that is shown from the beginning hence its failure which was predicted from years before it was released.

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