#barangay143

Barangay 143. A Stiff and Stereotypical Filipino Teleserye Masked As A “360-Degree Concept”. A Review. (SPOILERS) Part 3

Characters: I dislike most of the characters. I don’t like the character developments in the ones I disliked. They are full of the most stereotypical tropes in Filipino teleseryes. The few characters I liked are Coach B, Tita Baby, Bren’s parents (except Bren’s biological father), and Sophia. Even though they still full of stereotypes, I like how they are executed. I especially dislike the male and female leads (Bren and Vicky), and the viewer is supposed to see them as relatable and likeable. Bren is like many male leads in Filipino teleseryes, a two-timer whose motivations are all over the place. Even with a tragic backstory, I just couldn’t like him at all. It’s not just him; some of the other characters also have confusing motivations.

I also don’t understand Wax’s characterization. He has his own storyline before the anime, which was in the game that was marketed to promote the anime. In there, he supposedly learned basketball skills from the basketball masters. But in the anime, his skill in basketball felt inconsistent in my opinion. I understand that he’s Bren’s rival in all aspects, but how it was presented doesn’t feel organic and engaging.

Story and Themes: The story and its themes are nothing new; the only thing that’s new is the basketball theme. If this is strictly a basketball anime, they only got it 50%, which were only the basketball game scenes. The training scenes felt boring, and they are only controlled by the emotions of Vicky, Bren, and Coach B. The other basketball players don’t seem to have any motivations for playing basketball other than being “props” to suit the different agendas of the main characters. Also, I couldn’t see any development from them; they felt static throughout all of the episodes.

The subplots are all connected to the main plot. My problem is how they are executed, especially in terms of pacing. How they started & ended each episode is confusing for me, because I could not understand the relevance of those scenes. Like the animation, there is little to no improvement. They are so convoluted that I easily forget which one is the main plot. It would be fine on certain genres, but not when they used drama straightforward.

If I were to pick which storyline is the best, I prefer Coach B’s storyline rather than Bren’s. It has the most solid storyline and it’s the most exciting one for me. I don’t like Bren and Vicky’s storylines because they’re so bland, petty, and at other times, irritating to watch. Theirs are linear, which is expected of a typical teleserye drama. I wish they have been more creative in their plot points, instead of those gimmicks like adding a basketball element and having a Korean-Filipino main character. And speaking of gimmicks, while they add something fun like spotting out references, I think they are not executed well, most of the time. For example: Butchoy making a post on the anime’s version of Facebook for the purpose of finding Bren’s biological father. The kid called his post a “meme”, when the post itself looks more like a missing ad, the characters kept insisting that the post is called a meme. It felt so odd, because what I see is not usually what defines a meme.

Miscellaneous: I think I’m going to say things that are very petty. First, I don’t understand the development of Bren speaking in Tagalog. I understand if it’s just him understanding basic Tagalog phrases and I really do appreciate Butchoy & Tita Baby correcting him at certain times. For me, it just feels bizarre, but maybe it’s because my experiences with foreigners is much different from their experiences. I also don’t like how some of the characters are mocking Bren for not speaking in Tagalog like when they say “Dumudugo ang ilong ko sa Ingles” (My nose is bleeding from trying to understand English) and its variations. I don’t know if those really motivate or shame an actual foreigner to speak Filipino. There’s a similar case with Bren’s mother on her backstory in Boracay. She learned few Tagalog words from her tour guide, but what I don’t understand is how she was able to figure out the contents of the love letter she received in an instant when it was all in Tagalog. The tour guide didn’t translate the letter to her.

Second, there are scenes in Episode 1 that I couldn’t understand if they’re figuratively speaking in Korean or English. Those are when Bren is interacting with the Korean characters, including his family. That issue was fixed in the later episodes. Just saying, I wish they have done that from the start.

My last concern is the emotionally charging scene between Bren and Vicky in the basketball court. While I understand Bren’s frustration of Vicky’s petty insults, I felt like his speech is just as condescending as hers. The latter half of his speech looks like he’s just simply degrading Vicky, instead of completing his explanation of his frustrations towards her. I felt that the writers could have written his lines better.

Final Thoughts: If it wasn’t for a fact that it’s the first Filipino original anime and I only looked at the visuals & summary, I would have just ignored it. The reason why I turned to Japanese anime was because I’m utterly tired of teleserye dramas and I want to see different kinds of stories. I have violent reactions to teleseryes (there are exceptions), even if I’m aware that they’re fiction. Yes, I’m proud of being a Filipino and I would like to see more Filipino made animation. But this one just feels irritating to watch, even though this anime had the help of a popular Japanese TV network like TV Asahi and a Singaporean company like August Media Holdings.

Barangay 143 (Japanese: バランガイ 143 Hepburn: Barangai 143) is an upcoming Japanese-Philippine-Singaporean anime television series first scheduled to be aired during Spring 2017 (The series will air in GMA 7 sometime in October 2018 according to their website). It will be produced by ASI Animation Studios (a collaboration between Philippine-based game developer Synergy88 and Singapore-based company August Media Holdings) with assistance from Japanese television network TV Asahi. The series will revolve around a group of high school basketball players in Manila.

Barangay 143 (13 x 44-minute or 26 x 22-minute) is a gritty story where the stakes are high, about never giving up and a game called life.

Bren Park a gifted Korean basketball player, who loves basketball rejects his destiny to become a great player when tragedy strikes his family. He swears never to play basketball again and journeys to the Philippines where he finds his way back to himself, his heart and the game. In Manila, legendary basketball coach, Coach B seeks justice for the death of his son. He begins by using the very game that took his son from him, to find the culprits and bring down a syndicate. But he needs a captain, a leader who will take his ragtag team of misfit players to victory. Tied by their tragic loss and by the game that took everything away from them, Bren and Coach B soon through basketball find peace, justice, forgiveness, redemption and love.

Me, as a Filipino, I'm so excited and very proud of this!!!! ♡(∩o∩)♡

Barangay 143. A Stiff and Stereotypical Filipino Teleserye Masked As A “360-Degree Concept”. A Review. (SPOILERS) Part 1

It was around 2017 or 2018 when the anime was announced through anime news sites like SGCafe. I was excited by the thought of Philippine animation airing on TV, one that’s like Japanese anime but Filipino at heart. As much as I know the existence of the Super Inggo cartoon adaptation, I simply want to watch something like Japanese anime that amazes me even today. And I was not alone in this, as other Filipino anime otakus felt that way too. It was a treat to stay updated on that project because of the hope that it will push local networks to make more animation. That was always the goal for us otakus.

When it was announced that GMA Network is handling it and also the all-star cast to voice the characters, the reactions are very mixed. At that time, I was still optimistic because they have veteran actors and Julie Anne San Jose is there. My thinking was that they are professional enough to put effort in their voice acting. As for Julie Anne San Jose, because she is an amazing singer, I personally believed that she had enough voice training to pull off voice acting. However for the others, they became more wary of the all-star cast, especially that GMA is handling the anime. The reason for it is that they have watched some Filipino-dubbed anime handled by GMA, in which the dubbers are an all-star cast. And by all-star cast, they don’t mean an all-star cast of professional voice actors/dubbers, instead they casted famous artistas or new artistas from their exclusive talent agency to dub the anime. The general consensus was that their dubs are terrible because a huge majority of those artistas have absolutely no voice training that is suited for voiceovers & dubbing.

Fast forward to 2020, when Barangay 143 became available on Netflix, this means I can watch it legally and I can pause & rewind to spot out flaws and good assets that I could talk about in this review. I never got to watch it when it aired on TV last 2018-2019. Currently, the anime is in hiatus, cutting off at 14 episodes. And in that time, I’ve been hearing it from some friends that they don’t like it and I’ve also watched GLOCO’s videos of his reaction to the first 3 episodes. It made me wonder if their standards are just too high or if they truly meant what they said. Either way, I have to figure this out by myself.

Barangay 143. A Stiff and Stereotypical Filipino Teleserye Masked As A “360-Degree Concept”. A Review. (SPOILERS) Part 2

Animation: The only things I can give praise are the character designs and the background art; these are the anime’s strongest points. They are well-made, and I have no complaints. Everything else ranges from decent to substandard. The opening credits, still images, and the scenes that involves sports (mostly basketball, but also has a dodgeball scene on Episode 13) are watchable, at the very least. The rest are very stiff at the first 3 episodes. But while the stiffness has lessened (but still exists) throughout the show, there is a recurring issue that plagues all episodes: The lack of timing of the mouth flaps. The sounds and the mouth flaps do not match most of the time. And then, there are some scenes in which there are either late or no sound effects. Those kinds of scenes are rare, but they happen. Finally, I feel like there are scenes that feel “incomplete”, like I wish they reduce or add scenes that would present the story better.

I understand that many of those are either due to being given less time to work at or that there’s some miscommunication happening behind the scenes. I wish they would resolve these issues on future projects.

Voice Acting: One word to describe it: lifeless. If I compare it to other bad dubbing, it’s not as bad as others would say. But even if I say that, their voice acting still doesn’t hold up as anything decent. A lot of the times, the execution just come across as obvious that they’re reading off the script. They come across as not putting any sort of effort or passion, even if they say that it’s difficult, it’s doesn’t reflect in their work. The only part that makes their voice acting for some of them a little more decent is the addition of vocal tics & some onomatopoeia. At least in Hayop Ka!, I can definitely feel all the landi and other emotions through their voices, even though it isn’t perfect. This anime barely has that.

Even then, it couldn’t fix the timing of their voices and mouth flap animations. It was so disappointing. There’s little to no improvement of those issues. I felt immense rage whenever I hear bad dubbing in the show.

I used Alice Dixson’s dubbing vlog (https://youtu.be/XJjWj0ThuL8) and the official Barangay 143 Dubbing Diaries as reference to get a sense on how they did the dubbing and the animation for it. So they recorded the cast’s voices first before animation. Dixson’s voice acting is a bit decent, calming to listen; at least hopefully she really had fun with it even off-camera. However, the animation of it is just not great. I could not understand at all how the heck they failed to correct the timing of the voices and the mouth flap animation.

The worst offenders are the male and female leads, played by Migo Adecer and Julie Anne San Jose. For the male lead, most of his voice acting is underwhelming and his singing in the harana scene is the most irritating to hear. I won’t comment on his Korean lines since I’m not familiar with the language and same goes for the other Korean lines that came out very late in the show. (Not counting the Korean-language flight announcement, that one is amazing.) As for Julie Anne San Jose, as much as she has amazing singing ability, her voice acting falls flat. That becomes proof to me that just because she’s a singer who has the opportunity to get voice training, would automatically mean that she has voice acting skills. I don’t like her shouting scenes; they are most lifeless I have heard so far. I understood the context of her being angry or happy, but I could not hear it in her lines.

I think the majority of the cast would have improved their skills had they put in the effort or do more takes until they get it right. If only they made it less obvious that they’re reading off the script. It’s not like the reading plays and live dubbings of Japanese voice actors I’ve briefly watched, where they are reading off the script but the way they sound makes it less obvious.