Kids on the Slope (Sakamichi no Apollon) |OT| Jazz was always there between us

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Ultimadrago said:
So, what element exactly would bring about such
violent separartion again? A fang-boy bringing a record and asking for Sentaro in a band?

wut.
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The little flashback montage reveals that Kaoru has suffered from abandonment issues before as a child, but it still rang as completely contrived given all that he and Sentaro have gone through... that and he hasn't moved on from some friend abandoning him when he was what? Seven? I mean... seriously? If that's truly a facet of his character, then it's a good thing Ritsuko is staying the hell away from his crazy clingy ass :l
 
Kids on the Slope 6

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You said it, Kaoru.
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I saw the GAF posts about this episode before I got around to watching the episode itself, but I didn't think it would really be that. I was looking forward to this show more than any other coming into this season, mostly because of Watanabe + jazz, but after the first two episodes I've been less interested in it. I think it's because the actual music element is being eclipsed by the sappy teenage melodrama, which just isn't a genre that holds much interest for me. That said, this week's episode was the first one that was actually a chore to finish. If the show doesn't rebound in the next week or two I might drop it entirely, which is not something I ever thought I'd consider after watching the first episode.

I'm not really sure what Watanabe saw in the source material here. I know it's an award-winning manga but the actual story has been really dull and I have zero curiosity about the character's relationships or
what happened to Brother Jun
. I'm sure part of the problem lies with trying to condense the entire manga into 12 episodes - the pacing continues to be all over the place this week - but I think the real issue is that I simply don't find teenage melodrama and love polygons to be engaging. It's a shame since I love the musical performances when they happen, but oh well. On the other hand, the OP has been growing on me and I rather like the song now.
 
This episode certainly was different, but instead of despising the fang boy and a second band forming, I wanted more.

Music. I want them to play more music.
 
Any negative feelings I had after the past couple episodes went right out the window with that jam. I was waiting for that from the beginning, and it was amazing. Transcendental. Justified the whole series for me; absolutely beautiful... one of those sequences that brings everything that transpired prior into sharp focus.

Kaoru, it wasn't just you with the wings on your feet.
 
Last week left me (literally - correct usage) reeling with rage. Witnessing the various stupid events unfold left me fuming mad.

This weeks episode was most assuredly a cure for everything that ailed me and may well be the best episode yet.
 
Jexhius said:
Last week left me (literally - correct usage) reeling with rage. Witnessing the various stupid events unfold left me fuming mad.

This weeks episode was most assuredly a cure for everything that ailed me and may well be the best episode yet.
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Bones. More people need to get up on this.
 
Episode 7

Really a fantastic episode. There were a lot of doubts introduced last week, with the possibility of the show going in a bad direction and focusing on unwanted elements which dragged down the core of the series. But this week all that literally just went away. The focus is back on the characters who matter. The pacing is tight and engaging. The direction is spot on. What elevates the entire episode aside from all those elements is that it serves as a strong mid-series climax of sorts for the entire show. Much like last week's Tsuritama, the marriage of great payoff in the subject matter along with outstanding workmanship is what makes the best episodes.

The animation is also a notch above the average this week (and the average for this show is pretty good as it is). Not only do we have good consistent animation throughout, but the climax scenes were really something. Probably the best performance scene in the series so far.

There also needs to be a special mention of Bahi JD's work in this episode. He is a relatively popular web animator from Austria, and this week's episode is his debut as an animator on an anime TV series. He handled the layout and animation of scenes towards the end of the episode, where the students were coming out of the classrooms to watch the performance. A big congrats to him for a great debut. :)

Mad Pierrot's superb gif making skills captured all 3 cuts he animated (layouts, key animation, and in-betweening):
GQPx0.gif
Q81d3.gif


These screens also show all 9 cuts which he did the layouts for (he animated the first 3 as noted): http://imgur.com/a/pqlTX
 
Episode 7 was AMAZING.

That's all I can say, because holy shit I'm still trying to process those last few minutes!
 
I haven't been disappointed with anything the series has churned out and Episode 7 was no exception. Honestly, I just really loved that musical number at the end. Great stuff.
 
The ending to this episode was too amazing and I loved the animation bump with the students telling others to go to the concert...

I'm gonna watch that part again
 
Kids on the Slope 7

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Well, I'll be.
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The tension...

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Well, I'll be.
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The emotion...

The musical team back at it again, this time for their school as an audience. The sense of brotherhood between the two is now known to all of them through the art of music (jazz specifically, because screw electric guitars).

A lovely return from those two Kids on the Slope.
 
Episode 7

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If only I'd known how easy it was to acquire harem powers.
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I'm sorry for ever doubting you, show.

That final scene was basically the definition of "showstopper." Not only did it encapsulate the themes and feelings of the show, but it also was a great demonstration of what jazz was all about, blending and changing old songs into a thing new, different, and with a presence unique to that particular moment. Ritsuko explicitly articulated that when she commented on how
this was different from when Kaoru played for her, even though it was the "same" song.
And the much-hyped Bahi JD delivered as promised.

It's pretty remarkable how well this arc ended considering how it began.
 
Several hours ago I clicked on this thread randomly, and now here I am, waiting for episode 8!

Love the show. Great characters, settings (though it does feel a bit too modern to be the '60s), and above all the music. I really like the attention that they pay towards the piano and drum animations. I'm assuming that they're tracing over live performers because there's no way they would be able to animate something with this much accuracy.

The ending of episode 7, like metsallica said, was transcendental. I'm really impressed with the way they're using jazz as a means of the characters expressing themselves. It gives the work a sense of maturity that's really atypical for a highschool anime.

I'm feeling inspired. Gonna go play my piano a bit.
 
Ending with
"My Favorite Things"
really brought a smile to my face with just how cathartic it was. Reminded me of God Knows from Haruhi's school festival. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna watch that again
 
duckroll said:
There also needs to be a special mention of Bahi JD's work in this episode. He is a relatively popular web animator from Austria, and this week's episode is his debut as an animator on an anime TV series. He handled the layout and animation of scenes towards the end of the episode, where the students were coming out of the classrooms to watch the performance. A big congrats to him for a great debut. :)

Mad Pierrot's superb gif making skills captured all 3 cuts he animated (layouts, key animation, and in-betweening):
GQPx0.gif
Q81d3.gif


These screens also show all 9 cuts which he did the layouts for (he animated the first 3 as noted): http://imgur.com/a/pqlTX
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info, it's really interesting to learn things like that. It was easy enough to notice these cuts were a little different, but it's nice to learn the reasons behind it.

Great episode and beautiful ending. Like others, I was really disappointed last week but this totally redeemed the whole thing é_è
 
duckroll said:
There also needs to be a special mention of Bahi JD's work in this episode. He is a relatively popular web animator from Austria, and this week's episode is his debut as an animator on an anime TV series. He handled the layout and animation of scenes towards the end of the episode, where the students were coming out of the classrooms to watch the performance. A big congrats to him for a great debut. :)
Click to expand...

Thank you for mentioning this, hadn't previously heard of him but his work is beautiful.
 
metsallica said:
Any negative feelings I had after the past couple episodes went right out the window with that jam. I was waiting for that from the beginning, and it was amazing. Transcendental. Justified the whole series for me; absolutely beautiful... one of those sequences that brings everything that transpired prior into sharp focus.

Kaoru, it wasn't just you with the wings on your feet.
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Was going to gush about the latest episode but this post does a better job than I ever could.

Combination of two songs they've played briefly before, into one cohesive, satisfyingly long impromptu musical performance was just incredible.

"Like two princes arguing good-naturedly on their way home."

So good.

Did anyone else laugh out loud when the episode title "Now's the time" came up just after he'd gained the attention of a group of girls?
 
Beautiful. I felt a bit emotional towards the end. I need an mp3 of that last medley! Is this on the soundtrack? EDIT: Never mind, it is!
 
Fantastic episode, best so far! Right amount of love and friendship drama, right amount of fucking awesome music and amazing art and animation!
 
Episode 7 was fantastic the last bit was well worth the awkward build up to the event. Thank you for the info Duckroll, Bahi JD's work stood out right away from the rest of the episode.
 
Glad to see so many people enjoying Bahi's work. I'm just doing my part to spread the word so he gets the recognition he deserves. Really talented guy. :D
 
HUGE step up from episode 6, which I liked but that new character was kind of obnoxious and it was sorely lacking in musical scenes which this made up for big time.
 
Totakeke said:
...and they lived happily ever after.

Seriously, how do you even top that? The bromance has reached its peak.
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Yeah for some reason. I'm not as excited about the remaining episode as much as I feel I should. Simply because the latest episode felt like the "peak" of the series as far as plot momentum is concerned. I mean what exactly are they going tie up at the end of the series? the romance shit? :p
 
Another good episode this week, though it was a big challenge coming off the end of the last one
it seems like they blew their animation budget on the last one too :lol the random flashback stills were probably the weakest visual aspect of the show so far

it's going back to the love triangle thing after the relationship issues were patched up in the last episode, which was expected by me, but I imagine not everyone is a fan

It does feel like the passage of time goes very quickly though, a result of condensing the manga into such few episodes i'm sure, which makes characters like Jun seem pretty underdeveloped (a brief exposition dump with the flashback and then not much else)

But I don't particularly care for Jun at all, or Yurika much either, it's all about Sen, Kao and Riko!
 
Kids on the Slope 8

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Smoking is bad, kids.
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More
student movements
! This time done in a boring, grainy powerpoint format that lasts some minutes. I confused as to whether
Yurika's
"development" is suppose to mean anything to the viewer besides a chance at some
sodium from Sentarou
? It felt meaningless to me.

Also, people need to stop falling in love around here!
 
Ultimadrago said:
. I confused as to whether
Yurika's
"development" is suppose to mean anything to the viewer besides a chance at some
sodium from Sentarou
? It felt meaningless to me.
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Pretty much. Both her, Jun and what's his face (fang guy in the rock band) are just plot devices to cause conflict between the 3 main characters, as there's only so much drama you can create using so few, that's why these new situations and problems are introduced.
I expect Yurika and Jun especially would have been more fleshed out in the Manga but with it being condensed into 12 episodes I don't think there's any intention for us to relate to them much at all
 
Chairhome said:
Beautiful. I felt a bit emotional towards the end. I need an mp3 of that last medley! Is this on the soundtrack? EDIT: Never mind, it is!
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Pardon my ignorance, but which track is it? I've only listened to a few samples so far and it wasn't the one I expected ("My Favorite Things") as that featured vocals by Ritsuko (least, I think it was her). Was wondering because I'm heavily considering an import.
 
just saw episode 8, it was okay i guess. i just hope they had developed junichi's character early on rather than pushing through it in one episode. but i really love sentaro and kaoru's screwed up love triangle. :)
 
Episode 8

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That's a good excuse.
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Oh, so now that
Kaoru
has a harem, you finally start getting interested,
Ritsuko
? How typical. Oh and I see they finally decided to focus on the the other characters. Jun is substantially more interesting than Yurika, who, as I suspected, is a shallow little girl. Not that that is necessarily unrealistic, unfortunately.

This is the first time I've felt like the directing did not live up to the material. The episode was obviously low-budget, but that's not necessarily a problem. What is a problem was the lazy overuse of flashbacks, most confusingly the
flashback to Jun kissing Yurika, since that presumably happened during a previous episode but we're only seeing it now.
I didn't dislike the episode because I still found the material interesting, but it could have been executed much better. If you don't have the money to animate something properly it becomes paramount to make the frames you do have very interesting and rich visually. They didn't really do that enough, unfortunately. The one exception was the musical session, as usual, where there was some nice expressive animation and direction. Oh, and the music was particularly good in this episode. The cue at the end of the episode sounded a lot like one of the tracks from Arjuna.

I think what we learned here is that communism ruins everything.
 
apollon - 05

I really liked this episode. Deftly handled with the characters pushing forward, it was one of the better episodes so far in this show. The telephone scene in particular was quite enjoyable to watch, even as it, and everything that led up to it, served to highlight the contrived, linear romantic entanglements in the show. It reminded me of Ano Natsu from last season, of all things. Still, Kaoru remains a very likable lead and it's a pleasure just watching him . . . do things, and grow.

Still think that the way they handle the passage of time--as swiftly as the show moves through the manga--can feel off at times. Brother Jun's existence (or lack thereof) served almost as a calendar in this episode and sometimes the reminder that a month passed here or there was rather jarring.
 
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