Jex
Member
Hellsing Ultimate OVA IX]
The Hellsing Ultimate OVA series is, by and large, enjoyable hokum. Hokum, because the storyline and characters and extremely over the top and silly but it was still enjoyable, because it was well made and therefore fun to watch. This instalment, however, was just ugly, messy, hokum.
What do I mean by that? Well, I'm calling it ugly because of the slap-dash combination of animation choices. We've got 'regular' animation, hella CG looking CG animation and stylized CG animation. None of these types of animation are pulled of well at any point, and sometimes they're mixed together in a rather unseemly fashion. Oh, and the background art is pretty bad as well. All of this adds together to a collection of moving images that isn't that nice to look at, apart from a few nice shots of the characters from time to time. Yet, even here, it's like there's no director of photography, or anyone with any skill at composition, to craft an image that's actually pleasant to look at or that takes advantage of the medium of animation.
It says there's quite a bit of a problem with a Hellsing Ultimate episode when even the action sequences aren't that well animated. Not that being poorly animated is the only problem with these fight scenes - they're kind of a mess thanks to some really terrible editing that doesn't link shots together in any kind of logical fashion. There is practically no 'flow' to these fights, often it's just an incoherent jumble of shapes and images moving around. Even the effects animation is really flat and boring.
This bad editing extends to the episode as whole, I'm afraid. As you might imagine, the overall 'flow' of the episode isn't that tangible (in other words, there's no rhythm setting the pace of the story) but more importantly individual sequences, not just fight sequences, are hard to decipher because of the incoherent editing. What was that selection of images all about, and why did it go past so fast? Sometimes the camera will linger on an establishing too long, or not at all, or a conversation will apparently go on forever. There's no consistency here. It kind of reminds of Steins;Gate episode 1, which is about the worst insult that I could dish out.
The Hellsing Ultimate OVA series is, by and large, enjoyable hokum. Hokum, because the storyline and characters and extremely over the top and silly but it was still enjoyable, because it was well made and therefore fun to watch. This instalment, however, was just ugly, messy, hokum.
What do I mean by that? Well, I'm calling it ugly because of the slap-dash combination of animation choices. We've got 'regular' animation, hella CG looking CG animation and stylized CG animation. None of these types of animation are pulled of well at any point, and sometimes they're mixed together in a rather unseemly fashion. Oh, and the background art is pretty bad as well. All of this adds together to a collection of moving images that isn't that nice to look at, apart from a few nice shots of the characters from time to time. Yet, even here, it's like there's no director of photography, or anyone with any skill at composition, to craft an image that's actually pleasant to look at or that takes advantage of the medium of animation.
It says there's quite a bit of a problem with a Hellsing Ultimate episode when even the action sequences aren't that well animated. Not that being poorly animated is the only problem with these fight scenes - they're kind of a mess thanks to some really terrible editing that doesn't link shots together in any kind of logical fashion. There is practically no 'flow' to these fights, often it's just an incoherent jumble of shapes and images moving around. Even the effects animation is really flat and boring.
This bad editing extends to the episode as whole, I'm afraid. As you might imagine, the overall 'flow' of the episode isn't that tangible (in other words, there's no rhythm setting the pace of the story) but more importantly individual sequences, not just fight sequences, are hard to decipher because of the incoherent editing. What was that selection of images all about, and why did it go past so fast? Sometimes the camera will linger on an establishing too long, or not at all, or a conversation will apparently go on forever. There's no consistency here. It kind of reminds of Steins;Gate episode 1, which is about the worst insult that I could dish out.
