Ew, CG background people. Looking back at the first episode, I see they showed up in one scene briefly, but they were far more prevalent and distracting in this one. I'd rather have 2D people with no movement than the awkward motion and inconsistency with the foreground characters that the CG causes. You only get to pull this off if you're the opening scene of Colorful, in which there's actually a justifiable narrative reason for using CG.
Other than that peeve, the production of this episode was fine, but unremarkable compared to the first. Considering there were 8(!) storyboarders, I'm a little surprised it turned out as coherent as it did. I can understand why dresden didn't like it, as it replaces the light-hearted atmosphere of the first episode with somber drama, but I like this kind of "investigation into the truth" scenario, so I still enjoyed it. Realizing what was going on with
the cat
was a nice moment. There were a couple of potential plot inconsistencies; for instance,
why does The World operate like augmented reality when the girls go to visit the investigator in Tokyo? It's never like that at any other time.
Overall the narrative was constructed competently, however.
The final episode should be fun. I've got to give this credit for choosing good cliffhanger moments to end on.
You want to know what pisses me off the most about Nadia? Nadia herself, she's too damn preachy, about everything.
A strong number two for my biggest gripe in Nadia would be how the damn Nautilus surfaces, it always surfaces at such a ridiculous angle, almost 90 degrees just for dramatic fucking effect. Every fucking time.
I hope this is all for a reveal being that the Nautilus is a space ship and one episode it'll just keep on going.
No, I meant the file size after it was saved -- this was the base gif without any optimizations, and this was after the GIMP operation Filters -> Animation -> Optimize (Difference) and no other modifications. Somehow the file size increased by 200kB.
On a side note, while working on this, I've discovered that there are some amusing looking frames in the first Star Driver OP:
Anyway, this probably isn't the place for all this gif discussion. I'll go and try to find a guide somewhere, because even the old GAF thread doesn't seem to be helping.
You want to know what pisses me off the most about Nadia? Nadia herself, she's too damn preachy, about everything.
A strong number two for my biggest gripe in Nadia would be how the damn Nautilus surfaces, it always surfaces at such a ridiculous angle, almost 90 degrees just for dramatic fucking effect. Every fucking time.
I hope this is all for a reveal being that the Nautilus is a space ship and one episode it'll just keep on going.
Ew, CG background people. Looking back at the first episode, I see they showed up in one scene briefly, but they were far more prevalent and distracting in this one. I'd rather have 2D people with no movement than the awkward motion and inconsistency with the foreground characters that the CG causes. You only get to pull this off if you're the opening scene of Colorful, in which there's actually a justifiable narrative reason for using CG.
I think my favorite cut is when they're standing by a road and there's a background of CG pedestrians walking right by the pedestrians in 2D, the layers sandwiched against each other.
I can understand why dresden didn't like it, as it replaces the light-hearted atmosphere of the first episode with somber drama, but I like this kind of "investigation into the truth" scenario, so I still enjoyed it.
That's about it, yeah. What I found so charming about the first episode was gone here, and what I found in its absence, I didn't like very much. Just felt tedious and I didn't really care about the characters enough to be invested in the search. Glad you enjoyed it though.
I think my favorite cut is when they're standing by a road and there's a background of CG pedestrians walking right by the pedestrians in 2D, the layers sandwiched against each other.
Yeah, that was amusingly perplexing. I'm glad Kinema Citrus seem to have gotten that out of their system.
That's about it, yeah. What I found so charming about the first episode was gone here, and what I found in its absence, I didn't like very much. Just felt tedious and I didn't really care about the characters enough to be invested in the search. Glad you enjoyed it though.
Saying I care about the characters would be a bit of a stretch, since they're not fleshed out much, but I don't dislike them. It's more that the ideas and plot beats strike my fancy enough to be entertaining pulp sci-fi than me having some emotional investment in what's going on.
Oh, it looks like there was actually a longer, voiced PV for Hentai Ouji to Warawanai Neko at AFA that wasn't shown on the Nicovideo stream; here's an offscreen video of it:
I can see what people mean when they say that it's slow, though that doesn't mean it's bad by any means. I've been enjoying it so far and the action scenes, while infrequent, have been a joy to watch. Even the normal animation is consistently great. Torogai also kind of reminds me of the twin witch sisters from Spirited Away.
In this episode we learn that Ogami isn't simply a cold hearted pyschopath who would easily muder a street full of people and not think twice about it. In reality he's just a big tsundere as Sakura discovers:
I think this makes things even more hilarious than ever. All Ogami needed was for someone to give him a party hat and that's enough to mend his broken soul.
GU just wasn't very good in general, haha. Strictly speaking of the tone, I feel like it oscillated back in forth in weird ways. I guess my main problem with it was that it wasn't very fun. The original stuff was loveably flawed. GU was just flawed. I may just have to give Quantum a chance. Who knows, it may just be what I need to wash SAO out of my brain.
This was pretty good. The art was alright, I guess, I think it's somewhere between the first four episodes and episode 5 in style. There was a CG rock in the episode, which made me pretty sad. The use of music was great throughout the episode.
The ending of the arc was done great IMO, and while seemingly nothing of great importance occurred, it does foreshadow a lot of things that might await us. I'm actually happy that nothing extremely grand happened
while the characters are kids
and I'm glad that next episode we get a
time skip, so hopefully the story raises the stakes as the characters grow older.
Amused by the writers shoehorning in the lesbian merchants. At this point episodes one through three really are fluff. Not only in light of the merchant introductions, but due to Mor's story arc coming to fruition in a big way. Making her a damsel in distress was always a bad idea for episode one, not to mention making no sense whatsoever.
Elaborate setups for killing people always amuses me. Where are the laser sharks at?
Most enjoyable of the ona's released so far. Intriguing scenario, and coming off Magi having competent sound direction felt really nice. We're seeing more of the world's setup and the incoherence of the initial ONA is being cleared up in light of these recent releases. Good stuff.
who'd have thought that an episode about a computer defragging could be so good?
This was actually p. good sans the awful music. It kinda sucks that they cut down on the talks between Hakuei and Baba as they certainly helped flesh things out but it's certainly nothing compared to just how butchered the first three episodes were.
I usually just post random thoughts I had about the episode, but this is going to be randomer. In short, Girls und Panzer 2 is really good.
-some of the visual gags really crack me up, even ones that aren't in-your-face. My favorite is probably the promise of fanservice being teased through a slow pan before it's confirmed at last, when they're washing the tanks.
-the Tank Club store is totally the guitah~ scene in K-ON.
-I enjoy how quirky some of the teams are, especially the history-nerds in Team C. On the other hand I feel bad for Team D, which is basically all the background girls with no real distinguishing features shoved together into one tank.
-the cg was bad in episode one, but here the detailing on the tanks and the way the scenes are composed help a lot. What also helps is not seeing the terrible scrolling ground.
-I was in love when the instructor air-dropped in with a fucking tank. Such lovely silliness.
-I find the relationships between Miho and friends more believable than most anime featuring such a composition of girls. It's in the expressive way they're animated, and the writing, the way in which each other can needle one another without resorting to theatrics, and how they're able to cover for each other. Probably most noticeable whenever the other girls notice Miho being down.
-I enjoy how quirky some of the teams are, especially the history-nerds in Team C. On the other hand I feel bad for Team D, which is basically all the background girls with no real distinguishing features shoved together into one tank.
Unfortunately, I think you dropped the wrong show and could have fared better dropping the less than stellar JoJo or Tonari or even Btooom! while still watching K. K has one of the better story, magicks, and tones of the shows this season, rivaling that of Blast of Tempest for best anime. Please reconsider.
Okay, yeah, Yasuhisa Kubo was definitely doing some sort of "la la la I can't hear you" thing when he tried denying the early leaks of Azazel S2. Don't know why, though, unless he has a really really good relationship with the Evening magazine staff or something. Actually, his denial came before the first picture even leaked, so never mind. Got caught up in the sensationalism of otaku blogs; will more carefully fact-check next time. Apologies. At any rate, Azazel S2 is on the way.
Okay, yeah, Yasuhisa Kubo was definitely doing some sort of "la la la I can't hear you" thing when he tried denying the early leaks of Azazel S2. Don't know why, though, unless he has a really really good relationship with the Evening magazine staff or something.
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In other news:
FINALLY
Newtype November Guys Character Rankings
1) Kirito
2) Houtarou Oreki
3) Rider 4) Kira Yamato
5) Lelouch Lamperouge
6) Kyon
7) Alibaba
8) Kotetsu T. Kaburagi
9) Aladdin
10) Gintoki Sakata
Incredibly, the top six all stayed exactly the same from last month.
