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[Branduil]

Knights of Sidonia - Episode 2-3

Finally caught up with this. Not really sure what to think. I feel the premise is pretty interesting, but I don't really care about the characters at all. It's basically another Attack on Titan style story but with less of the shounen screaming, exchanged for an unhealthy dose of syfy stuff instead. There's also a really serious issue with the framerate in the way certain scenes are done. The actual CG work is fairly good at times, but the attempt to make it look more like "anime" with low framerates seriously hurts some of the faster moving scenes, or the ones where there is meant to be quick but subtle camera pans. I'll probably keep watching for now, but I really wish it were more engaging than it is now. Oh well.

It's one of the hardest problems when it comes to integrating CGI and traditional animation. If you animate the CGI at a high framerate it looks nothing like anime, but low framerate CGI looks really freaking bad. Good traditional animation doesn't have the same problem because you control the depiction of motion and blur in every keyframe, which is why animators like Iso can get away with very low framerates in their animation.

Although I'm not sure why you would need to animate the camera at a lower framerate. Traditional animation has no problem moving the camera at full framerates.

 

[Jex]

[Hunter x Hunter 2011] - 111

 

[Turin Turambar]

[Hunter x Hunter 2011] - 111

And here we go. Time has been reduced to a crawl. I can see where this is going.

Man, 111 is so great. Pitou and Netero meeting, the narrator almost poetry, Netero beautiful flashback...

But yeah, as you are saying, time has been reduced to a crawl. Narratively speaking the author chose to go the "baroquely detailed" route here: every (main and secondary, good and bad) character movement, thought, and action will be accounted for. In a way, it's something epic and beautiful to see it unfold in the sheer complexity. The work of a madman. I would be too much if the entire series would be like this, but it's interesting to have it here.

I love how it's even explained in-series by Gramps.

edit: actually, this was coming from before. As the ant arc progressed, the days were passing slower. At the start, it could be x chapter per day in the work, but at the end just before the battle it was x chapter per minutes, as the number of characters, povs grew, the author rejected the idea of having to trim back part of his grand design and the time went slower and slower.
It's a bit like in Robert Jordan Wheel of Time and George RR Martin Song of Ice and Fire, the earlier books are faster than the later ones, because there are more characters, more threads, and the author actually want to tell everything with more detail as he falls in love with his creation.

 

[Branduil]

I didn't know Hunter x Hunter had background art by Salvadore Dali.

 

[Jex]

I didn't know Hunter x Hunter had background art by Salvadore Dali.

Accurate representation of my experience.

Truly, beyond FMA:B's ending arc. Technically one character threw one punch.

 

[nintendoman58]

Hunter x Hunter 127

Aaaaaand things finally move forward on the Gon front. Excellent. Dis gon' be good. (Er, no pun intended.)

Is the next episode going to involve (manga spoilers)

Spoiler

Gon losing his shit and becoming beserk aged Gon who freaking rips Pitou apart? Cause that's the big scene I've been waiting for in this show.

Gundam 00 S1 - 9

It was pretty interesting seeing these guys on the defensive for once, and the HRL actually came up with a really smart way to track them down and ambush them by using CB's own strengths against them.

Why the hell doesn't their own docking ship in space have any weapons though? I'd understand if it had weak ones, but zero? Seems like a really flawed scheme, relying on the Gundams only.

Though if SRW is any indication, it gets weapons later on. So thankfully that will be addressed later on.

 

[Branduil]

Accurate representation of my experience.

Truly, beyond FMA:B's ending arc. Technically one character threw one punch.

Sounds like it turns into a typical Slownen then.

 

[Jex]

Sounds like it turns into a typical Slownen then.

It's not necessarily bad, I just couldn't imagine watching it week to week. It would drive me insane.

 

[Turin Turambar]

It's not necessarily bad, I just couldn't imagine watching it week to week. It would drive me insane.

Now imagine it with several hiatuses in the manga~
D:

 

[MetroidPrimeRib]

EXPLAIN FURTHER

I don't even get how the MC supposedly sucks at magic if he can know what magic is being used before it's cast and can teleport.

 

[Vito]

Oh god, the DAL pinup is wonderful...

 

[nintendoman58]

It's not necessarily bad, I just couldn't imagine watching it week to week. It would drive me insane.

It's the kind of show that pratically needs to be marathoned. Some time after I got caught up I threw my hands up in the air and just read the rest of the manga.

It's kind of a shame, the other arcs had a relatively good length. Greed Island, Yorknew, Heavens Arena, etc. Those were about 10-20 episodes average. The Chimera Ant arc has so much stuff going on that it needs a hell of a lot of time to get through it all just to be faithful to the manga.

 

[MetroidPrimeRib]

It's not necessarily bad, I just couldn't imagine watching it week to week. It would drive me insane.

I know exactly how you feel, I loved Kaiji but if I was going to watch the Pachinko Bog arc in S2 week by week I think I'd go nuts

It's the kind of show that pratically needs to be marathoned. Some time after I got caught up I threw my hands up in the air and just read the rest of the manga.

It's kind of a shame, the other arcs had a relatively good length. Greed Island, Yorknew, Heavens Arena, etc. Those were about 10-20 episodes average. The Chimera Ant arc has so much stuff going on that it needs a hell of a lot of time to get through it all just to be faithful to the manga.

In the manga while it was running, the CA arc had constant hiatuses, making it even worse

 

[duckroll]

It's one of the hardest problems when it comes to integrating CGI and traditional animation. If you animate the CGI at a high framerate it looks nothing like anime, but low framerate CGI looks really freaking bad. Good traditional animation doesn't have the same problem because you control the depiction of motion and blur in every keyframe, which is why animators like Iso can get away with very low framerates in their animation.

Although I'm not sure why you would need to animate the camera at a lower framerate. Traditional animation has no problem moving the camera at full framerates.

The technical nature of the problem is interesting. I don't think it's true that traditional animation "gets away" with low framerates so much as traditional animation handles the idea of "framerate" differently.

Traditional animation done with very few frames across the board is going to look jerky and bad too, sometimes people are just used to the look, but that's not ideal. The mastery of the art though, comes when animators are aware of how to use the frame count to create the exact visual look they want. So you can have different elements in a scene animating at different "framerates" essentially, and creating a totally different feel.

I'm lazy so going to grab a recent example which haly mentioned on IRC:

This is what would have been the final scene in Ping Pong ep3 if Bahi's stuff made it into the episode. We can see four different layers of animation here - the guy, the sea, the birds, and the bag. They don't all have the same number of frames per second, and that optimizes how they "feel" visually in terms of momentum.

When it comes to CG though, none of this is really necessary because the foundation and challenges of the animation are different. No one is drawing each frame individually by hand, so that is not a limitation. CG trying to mimic the frame trickery used in traditional animation is a terrible idea. They should just focus on what benefits CG and make it look great and move really smoothly with dynamic camera work. Any extra effort put into trying to artificially make the framerate look awkward is just stupid. In the end, even if it doesn't look like "anime", it can still be really cool animation of a different sort. That's what I think CG studios should be focusing on. It's a different story if we're talking about integrating CG elements into anime, but that's not the case for this show.

 

[Turin Turambar]

This is why York Shin will always be king.

The high points of the Ant Arc are higher... but York Shin is more consistent from start to end, putting slightly above it, yeah.

 

[Hattori]

does the Chimera Ant arc feature Kurapika?

 

[Turin Turambar]

does the Chimera Ant arc feature Kurapika?

Light spoilers:

Spoiler

No.

 

[MetroidPrimeRib]

The high points of the Ant Arc are higher... but York Shin is more consistent from start to end, putting slightly above it, yeah.

I agree with that.

 

[Jex]

[Hunter x Hunter] - 112

Considering that this arc is like, 2 or 3 times longer than any other arc it really should have at least two OP's.

 

[Narag]

70s Toei. Some things never change.

 

[Link Man]

Regarding Black Bullet:

Spoiler

I'm gonna cry like a baby if/when she turns/dies.

 

[Hattori]

Light spoilers:

Spoiler

No.

No Kurapika = Yorkshin Arc > Chimera Arc

 

[Crash Station]

It's not necessarily bad, I just couldn't imagine watching it week to week. It would drive me insane.

You probably should have waited to start it then. There's still like 10+ episodes left in the arc.

 

[Articalys]

So what happens when you let Bryan Lee O'Malley draw your Young Avengers cover? You get Tomoko from Watamote as Miss America.

So has O'Malley been working on a main project since Scott Pilgrim finished or is he just coasting off all the money from it?

I see another ANN review has hit the thread. lol

I still don't know why anyone here expects anything except them getting several key points wrong about whatever they review.

When it comes to CG though, none of this is really necessary because the foundation and challenges of the animation are different. No one is drawing each frame individually by hand, so that is not a limitation. CG trying to mimic the frame trickery used in traditional animation is a terrible idea. They should just focus on what benefits CG and make it look great and move really smoothly with dynamic camera work. Any extra effort put into trying to artificially make the framerate look awkward is just stupid. In the end, even if it doesn't look like "anime", it can still be really cool animation of a different sort. That's what I think CG studios should be focusing on. It's a different story if we're talking about integrating CG elements into anime, but that's not the case for this show.

Did you ever watch at least even one episode of Arpeggio? I know it's a different production company but I was wondering what you might think/thought about its CG.

-----------------------------------------

That's a lot of HxH talk. Not sure which crowd is winning the debate, the people fed up with the pacing or those who don't mind it.
There's also some discussion about inconsistent technique powers or something but I wasn't reading it carefully enough since I don't watch the show.

 

[MetroidPrimeRib]

[Hunter x Hunter] - 112

Considering that this arc is like, 2 or 3 times longer than any other arc it really should have at least two OP's.

Needs more Departure.

 

[duckroll]

You probably should have waited to start it then. There's still like 10+ episodes left.

RIP Jexhius.

Did you ever watch at least even one episode of Arpeggio? I know it's a different production company but I was wondering what you might think/thought about its CG.

Nope. I have no interest in battleship moe.

 

[Syrinx]

You probably should have waited to start it then. There's still like 10+ episodes left.

Well a recent episode (126 I think?) had everyone orgasming, so maybe he'll be okay if he reacts similarly.

 

[Branduil]

The technical nature of the problem is interesting. I don't think it's true that traditional animation "gets away" with low framerates so much as traditional animation handles the idea of "framerate" differently.

Traditional animation done with very few frames across the board is going to look jerky and bad too, sometimes people are just used to the look, but that's not ideal. The mastery of the art though, comes when animators are aware of how to use the frame count to create the exact visual look they want. So you can have different elements in a scene animating at different "framerates" essentially, and creating a totally different feel.

Well, the big thing with the "full-limited" animation method used by animators like Iso and Bahi JD is the ability to have full control over how every frame appears. It doesn't look "realistic" per se, but what you can do with a low framerate is create very powerful impressions of weight and movement, such as in the Asuka fight in EoE. If you animated that same scene at a higher framerate, it wouldn't necessarily be bad, but it would definitely feel different.

I'm lazy so going to grab a recent example which haly mentioned on IRC:

This is what would have been the final scene in Ping Pong ep3 if Bahi's stuff made it into the episode. We can see four different layers of animation here - the guy, the sea, the birds, and the bag. They don't all have the same number of frames per second, and that optimizes how they "feel" visually in terms of momentum.

Yeah, layering and variable framerates is another way to make traditional animation look really interesting.

And there's obviously other techniques like smearing, which used to really great effect in the climax of Sword of the Stranger. Or the "ghosting" effect, I can't recall the proper technical term right now, but where you draw multiple, floating instances of a limb or body part to depict rapid motion. Those kinds of things are difficult to emulate in CGI because they rely on the idiosyncrasies of the animator rather than any mathematical formula.

When it comes to CG though, none of this is really necessary because the foundation and challenges of the animation are different. No one is drawing each frame individually by hand, so that is not a limitation. CG trying to mimic the frame trickery used in traditional animation is a terrible idea. They should just focus on what benefits CG and make it look great and move really smoothly with dynamic camera work. Any extra effort put into trying to artificially make the framerate look awkward is just stupid. In the end, even if it doesn't look like "anime", it can still be really cool animation of a different sort. That's what I think CG studios should be focusing on. It's a different story if we're talking about integrating CG elements into anime, but that's not the case for this show.

I don't really see the point of trying to make a show look traditionally animated if it's all CGI. Even cel-shaded video games don't usually limit the framerate like that.

If it's a show that integrates CGI and traditional animation, then it makes sense, otherwise you end up with jarring scenes like this, but even that's just a kind of kludge. It's very hard to integrate the two because they are so completely different in method.

 

[MetroidPrimeRib]

Well a recent episode (126 I think?) had everyone orgasming, so maybe he'll be okay if he reacts similarly.

The latest episode.

 

[Jex]

You probably should have waited to start it then. There's still like 10+ episodes left in the arc.

The fuck is this. Well, given the pace, I'm surprised there aren't 40 episodes left.

 

[Kurita]

So has O'Malley been working on a main project since Scott Pilgrim finished or is he just coasting off all the money from it?

His new comic book Seconds will be out in July.

 

[jgminto]

You probably should have waited to start it then. There's still like 10+ episodes left in the arc.

At least it's nearing the climax now.

 

[Jex]

At least it's nearing the climax now.

Oh, that's okay. I mean, this arc only started on episode 76 so I should be grateful that around episode 127 it's "nearing the climax".

 

[Articalys]

Nope. I have no interest in battleship moe.

His new comic book Seconds will be out in July.

I had not heard of this at all until just now. Probably because it's not a super nerdy story like SP was.

 

[Turin Turambar]

Hunter x Hunter 127

Time again move slowly... but the episode had a pair of highlight scenes that again makes you forget about it:

Spoiler

in this case Gon being badass and using the girl as hostage, and the Royals Guards finding the king charred body. I love the shout of Youpi, the face disfigured by the pain and anger...

The early part showing the horror of the Rose Bomb also was good for set a tone of horror, and additionally shows how serious was Netero. It isn't just "a bomb", but something that has killed millions of humans in the world. The shadow of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is long...

 

[Branduil]

All the talk of Ping Pong's production issues makes me feel like I should wait for the BDs to watch it.

 

[MetroidPrimeRib]

Oh, that's okay. I mean, this arc only started on episode 76 so I should be grateful that around episode 127 it's "nearing the climax".

It's like, longer then Yorknew and Greed Island combined. It takes up more then 1/3rd of the current manga.

 

[Narag]

All the talk of Ping Pong's production issues makes me feel like I should wait for the BDs to watch it.

To be fair, I didn't even know there were production issues until yesterday. Assumed every last bit was stylistic choice.

 

[Branduil]

To be fair, I didn't even know there were production issues until yesterday. Assumed every last bit was stylistic choice.

Ignorance is bliss.

 

[Soma]

To be fair, I didn't even know there were production issues until yesterday. Assumed every last bit was stylistic choice.

Yeah same. If I hadn't seen Bahi's rejected animation cuts then I wouldn't have noticed anything besides a few weird sequences and the out of place CG in the third episode.

 

[Dedication Through Light]

Black Bullet Episode 4

It almost seemed as if the second major event was rushed through too fast. Greatly preferred first half to second half though

Spoiler

just felt like a ripoff of other stuff weve seen before, perhaps eva could be a comparison. In any event mechanized rentaro was a great highlight. And if Enju can proceed to becoming corrupted too, would be compelling to see Rentaro get paired up with someone else

 

[duckroll]

I don't really see the point of trying to make a show look traditionally animated if it's all CGI. Even cel-shaded video games don't usually limit the framerate like that.

If it's a show that integrates CGI and traditional animation, then it makes sense, otherwise you end up with jarring scenes like this, but even that's just a kind of kludge. It's very hard to integrate the two because they are so completely different in method.

What I've consistently heard every time this issue is brought up, is that there is a very real belief on the production side that Japanese anime fans will "relate" better to a CG show if it looks jerky like "anime" does. It's really baffling, but since I've seen that comment in actual interviews with the staff on BRS TV and so on, it's clearly a real mindset. Really unfortunate.

If you're curious enough, you should check out Sidonia ep2. The fight at the start of the episode has really weird animation because of the framerate. It almost looks like you're playing a game on a PC with a graphics card too weak to support the settings.

 

[Narag]

Yeah same. If I hadn't seen Bahi's rejected animation cuts then I wouldn't have noticed anything besides a few weird sequences and the out of place CG in the third episode.

Yeah, replacement stuff was serviceable.

 

[Branduil]

What I've consistently heard every time this issue is brought up, is that there is a very real belief on the production side that Japanese anime fans will "relate" better to a CG show if it looks jerky like "anime" does. It's really baffling, but since I've seen that comment in actual interviews with the staff on BRS TV and so on, it's clearly a real mindset. Really unfortunate.

If that's the issue, wouldn't they relate even better if you just animated it traditionally in the first place? LOL

If you're curious enough, you should check out Sidonia ep2. The fight at the start of the episode has really weird animation because of the framerate. It almost looks like you're playing a game on a PC with a graphics card too weak to support the settings.

What anime can learn from Xbone.

 

[AquaWateria]

Damn when does the Gon and Neferpitou fight start in Hunter X Hunter.

 

[Turin Turambar]

Damn when does the Gon and Neferpitou fight start in Hunter X Hunter.

If you really want to know

episode number:

Spoiler

My guess is, episode 129. So don't hype yourself for next week.

 

[PaulExcellent]

Devil Survivor 2 - The Animation:

The series went from a decent representation of the game to some really strange shit.
Like, what the hell? Also, the ending was stupid.
Ugh. :/

 

[AquaWateria]

If you really want to know

episode number:

Spoiler

My guess is, episode 129. So don't hype yourself for next week.

Gotcha.

 

[cnet128]

Heartcatch Precure! 41

gais

gais halp

i can't handle all this cute

 

[Narag]

Mazinger Z 1

Saw this line in Shin but never realized it was here too. Given Spider-Man is fresh in my mind, I suppose it's the equivalent of Uncle Ben's "With great power comes great responsibility."

Wasn't quite prepared for how goofy it got after Kouji's grandfather fucking died though. Episode was actually pretty dark initially until then. :lol

Good opening ep. I feel right at home with Kouji's jerkass and I hope he gets roughed up before wrecking shit next ep.