Yozakura Quartet - Episode 10
Holy shit, I'm totally floored. While the series has mostly impressed because of excellent animation especially during action sequences, the more low-key scenes generally had less of a focus and some of them often felt worse off as a result. With episode 10, my perspective of what the talent involved here are capable of has really changed for the better.
Shingo Yamashita directed and storyboarded this episode, and he's mostly known for his audacious action sequences like the Kotoha action medley in the second episode of the Hoshi no Umi OAD. Here he shows a totally different side of his talent which I didn't think he really had. Web-generation animators excel at action and expressive scenes where there's a lot of motion, but they rarely showcase more mature and nuanced film techniques, either by preference or simply not having the opportunity to do so. Here Yamashita is given that chance and he really impressed.
The episode itself is split nicely into two halves, each telling a different sort of story and focusing on a different tone. This worked really well because it really hammered home that the material in the show can engage in various different ways even without action. There's a whole range of different techniques on display here - careful use of ambient sound, capturing subtle mood shifts and character atmosphere with camerawork, subtle character animation, balancing emotions and comedy, enhancing scenes with excellent lighting, the list goes on. Even the way dialogue is synced to animation and lip flaps seem more detailed this week, and there were some really nice layouts throughout which made even the most mundane scenes visually interesting.
Soooo good. Fans of Juri will be really happy this week too, since the latter half is a great rendition of her backstory in flashback form. Great use of colors all over the place. I'm really gushing too much at this point, but it's so rare to see this sort of episode in the shows I generally watch outside of KyoAni's stuff, and it's even rarer to see it done by web-gen animators. It feels like a once in a lifetime sort of thing. Lol.
What I've been most surprised by with Yozakura so far is how much I actually buy into the scenario and characters, and I actually find the characterizations, personal stories and motivations, and the overall setting, executed in a way which is relatable and sometimes even emotional. It's so weird. They're really pulling off some voodoo magic here in terms of elevating the manga.
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