Timeline of events that led to this post:

Friday:

me (said to a mate over dinner): “I feel like watching some shitty anime tomorrow!”

Saturday:

I watched all three episodes of Robot Girls Z

There you have it. I’m not sure if anyone else gets in these same moods as me, but every so often I just get this nagging sensation start to brew in the cockles of my heart – a yearning to watch a mindless, plotless and unapologetically trashy anime. It’s illogical and irrational, but it must be done. This time, Robot Girls Z, a 3-part OVA series by Toei, just happened to catch my eye and looked like it would fit the bill to satiate my needs.

The basic gimmick behind Robot Girls Z is that it features personified mecha from Toei’s classic old-school franchise, Mazinger Z. Actually, rather than ‘basic’ premise, maybe I should say the ‘whole premise’, because that’s about all there is to it. The robots-turned-girls are a team of superheroes who are locked in an amicable struggle with an evil organisation who aim for world conquest, which is also wholly staffed by cute girlised-robots. When it’s all said and done, the story is all a thinly veiled pretense for gags, fanservice, and cute, silly fun. Oh, and tickles of nostalgia for the veteran fans of the old super robot series.

The allusions to and in-jokes from Mazinger Z are probably the only drawcard this series has for a lot of people – the one thing that makes it not just another pile of moe nonsense. But for me it was maybe the only deterrent for the show. Because I am a giant, unenlightened pleb when it comes to the realm of mecha, or super robot .. or whatever this is (see what I mean). I see the genre as some Macross Wing Gattai Destiny Z haze, and can barely tell a Gundam from one of those other ones that isn’t Gundam. Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating, but I will say that, although it’s not something that keeps me up at night, I do feel like I’m missing out at times like these. Like the time I had to watch Carnival Phantasm with a well-nasu-versed Type Moon friend so he could explain the jokes to me and tell me when to laugh.

Ditto here; I couldn’t count the amount of times I felt a joke or homage skim over my head. Even without my prior knowledge, I actually started to get curious about how the grabbing, adorable designs came to be. This provides a nice comparison.

So most of the design work is pretty simple, it turns out – a touch of costume colour scheme, whack on a helmet styled after the robot’s face and hey presto you have a robot girl. I do like what they did with Doublas M2 though – converting the twin heads to cute hand puppets is a nice little idea. Actually, Doublas M2 is the character designer’s favourite robot/mecha so it makes sense that she got the extra dash of ingenuity. On the other hand, Poses oII’s unflattering, finned wetsuit is a fitting conversion of the original ugly sea beast. But I think it would be really interesting to see how the personalities of the girls, and their interactions were translated from the original series. I’m sure there’s a lot more nuance to the parody behind that.

I do think a Mazinger fan would get a lot more laughs, smirks and knowing nods of appreciation from this than I did, but I ended up enjoying it for other, more carnal reasons.

You see, Robot Girls Z embraces the otaku nature of its target audience, and doesn’t think twice about piling on the fanservice, cliche, references and moe ingredients. I enjoy a good story or sakuga artwank as much as the next man, but I’m also willing to put aside my pretentiousness sometimes and just get swept up in the rush of pretty colours, cheap laughs, cute girls and panty-shots that anime is often known for. It’s as though Robo Girls Z knew I had my mecha Learner plates up, because it offset my Mazinger ignorance by turning up the dial on all those things.

I really didn’t expect this show to take the fanservice as far as it did, but I can’t say I’m disappointed. Yes, I’m one of those despicable fans who doesn’t see a problem with creators flaunting the good looks of their heroines (or heroes if you’re that way inclined). This show had everything from underwater breast molesting, loli panties, right through to a lesbian trap near-sex scene. The whole show had a pleasant air of eroticism to it that meant it was hard to see a dull moment behind the barrage of eye candy. I guess it makes sense, since the original robots never wore clothes either, right? The fanservice was obvious, but always cute and vibrant, and never went far enough to feel dirty or pornographic. Much like Yozakura Quartet: Hana no Uta recently, it’s fanservice done right – just the right degree of prurience.

And it really helps that the girls themselves have really adorable character designs! I found myself forgetting they were based on an old super robot show, and just appreciating their charming designs at face value. I really love this style of facial design – their colourful, rounded eyes and childish expressions just sing moe!

Initially, it really reminded me of Kanzaki Hiro’s design work (Ore no Imouto, Go! Go! 575), which  I then discovered made a whole lot of sense, because the designer here, Tetsuya Kawakami, was the chief animation director for much of OreImo. That means he was the main person in charge of transferring Kanzaki Hiiro’s designs to anime form. I do think Hiro’s designs rubbed off on him a bit here.

But he is also a very successful character designer and animator in his own right. He seemed to fall into the animation business from his childhood affinity with drawing, and got his foot in the door working at Studio Mu. He built up a strong biography of key animation work for studio BONES and J.C Staff on Full Metal Alchemist, Wolfs Rain, Eureka 7, Kurau Phantom Memory, A Certain Scientific Index, and others. I’m not familiar with his animation specifically, but apparently he was called upon to add fluidity to action scenes quite a lot. But he’s known more for his prolific illustration and character design work, which started out with Shigofumi and has reach its popular pinnacle so far with Sword Art Online’s characters.

Robot Girls Z is a great display of his skill – he designed a lot of characters for this, and every single one of them stands out in their own. Here’s a few samples of the designs, taken from the official website:

Their facial definition, and the gamut of expressions they exhibit gives them a natural, almost effortless striking personality. And, aren’t they just so cute!? He’s certainly very in tune with the popular style, and has a real knack for drawing beautiful girls who strike the moe chord but can also look fierce if they need to. Kawakami must have moe flowing through his veins. It wouldn’t surprise me because drawing cute girls and alluring heroines has quickly becoming his speciality (a forte  he acknowledges himself). Not just for his design work, his animation is usually employed for bishoujo scenes. His more recent lineup of work illustrates this quite well.

But he also has a predilection for the slapstick and comical. That might not be apparent from his body of design work, but when you consider that he was the chief animation director for this series, it’s not a stretch to consider that a lot of the comedically exaggerated facial expressions had his input. Whether it was his doing or not, they were much appreciated and really gave this anime a lively boost. He actually got down and dirty and did some genga for episode 3, and I’m actually pretty curious about which cut(s) were his, now that I’ve read about him!

The animation overall was a great boon to the OVA, with the right amount of exaggerated poses and demented motion to help pull off the jokes. The look of the anime is vivid and rich in colour, but not colourful to the point of being obnoxious.

The action scenes were enacted with fast, spurious and spirited limited animation, and dabbed with stylistic throwbacks to the animation of the old original shows, the heyday of Yoshinori Kanada and others of his ilk.

I also noticed these little references. Blink and you’d miss ‘em but the little man in Z’s mouth is actually a caricature of Go-Nagai himself (who created Mazinger Z).

The key animator lineup stayed pretty consistent throughout, and this resulted in an anime with a cursive visual coherency, with every episode delivering the same polish and punch as the last. On the downside, that meant there were few idiosyncratic moments to give it that ‘sauga’ edge – one of the few being this brutal punch in the third episode. The rough, bold lines and jagged movement indicate that it was Kan Ogawa. You can see the similarity for yourself in this MAD. I’d called them a sketchy charisma animator – some things in life can only be expressed by rough pencil lines!

I’ve always said that good designs, and strong animation can turn a anime that sounds bad on paper into something genuinely enjoyable, and Robot Girls Z one of many examples of this. Its appeal is essentially otaku nostalgia and smut, but it’s fashioned with such gleam and energy that it’s hard to resist. Robot Girls Z is cute, fun and easy to swallow, so if you find yourself in one of those moods to watch something less high brow, I’d recommend it.

Birds are singing, flowers are blossoming, and we’re all hibernating indoors watching Japanese cartoons – that’s right, spring season is upon us! My dormant passion for anime has been stirred again, and I’m in the mood to put thoughts into words and words into the unheeded abyss that is my blog! So please enjoy my borderline sarcastic and marginally informative thoughts on the Spring o’ 2014 lineup!

Let’s be clear about what’s going to happen now, before I just go wild and leap into it: I’m going to briefly review and discuss every first episode of the season! But there’s a catch: I’m skipping second seasons that I have not seen and have not been forced to watch regardless by friends. Such exclusions include: Cardfight Vanguard, Date A Live, Dragon Ball Kai, Fairy Tale, etc. Actually, there’s another catch; I’m also going to skip series I can’t be bothered summoning the interest to even think about watching, such as Hero Bank, Kamigami no Asobi, Kiniro no Corda, Marvel Disk Wars, etc. Yep, as you might have guessed, I’m an anime badass with no time for shows for women and children.
Also, please note that these reviews are based on the first episode only! In many cases I have watched on, but I don’t have the time to revise all the reviews in this post or it would never be finished! Honestly, this took me a lot longer than I expected, which is why it’s only just seeing the light of day mid-season. On the upside, I definitely have my finger on the pulse more than usual this season after writing all this!

I would love to hear people’s feedback or differing opinions on any of this stuff, so comment away if you get an inkling!

Captain Earth

Bones is juggling three anime this season, but Captain Earth is probably their flagship! This is their latest entry in their staple line of original mecha anime, which in recent years has been: Eureka 7 > Star Driver > Eureka 7 Ao. Actually, It’s more than just the next one in line, but really feels like an evolved amalgamation of these preceding works; it has the summery, colourful design aura of Eureka 7, the exotic locale of Eureka 7 Ao and its BGM exhibits the vocal harmony sound of Star Driver. More than just the dress code, it also seems to have picked story elements from these forbears – especially Eureka 7. The main character is in a similar place to Renton – disillusioned with school life and not having a whole heap of fun with the not having a dad thing. Combine this with a childhood complicated by mecha anime plotlines ala Eureka 7 Ao, and Captain Earth almost feels like a sequel.

On the upside, Captain Earth’s inheritance is a strong one – I loved Eureka 7, and it’s good that they’re building on their success. But, on the downside, I kind of hoped for something totally fresh from Bones, like Eureka 7 or Star Driver was at the time. Originality issues aside, Captain Earth is impeccably produced and easily entertaining. It’s handled by Studio C, which was founded on FMA:Brotherhood and which created Star Driver.

There is one caveat to the entertaining tag: it needs to get less sloppily confusing in later episodes. I’ve got to admit, I found the first episode a bit muddled and maybe too fast-paced for my liking. It reminded me of Rahxephon in that respect, but without Rahxephon’s atmosphere of mystery. Instead of being really intrigued I’ll nonchalantly just wait until it decides to start making sense.

But the time I spent not understanding the plot was spent admiring the pretty visuals. There was some nice mecha animation in the gattai scene near the end, but other than that it wasn’t especially animated, especially for a Bones anime. I wonder if Bones aren’t biting off more than they can chew here, or more than they should chew – before Noragami finished they were working on 6 shows (including preproduction for this season). And let’s remember that Space Dandy is a bit of a beast in terms of its production – I doubt we’ll see Yutaka Nakamura’s animation in Captain Earth at all. I DO expect Tanaka Hironori to show up a fair bit (he was already in this first episode, likely doing the end of the Gattai sequence). Bones should just employ this guy! Even if it does have less animation than usual for Bones, it will still be better than most anime out there, and there’s no doubting the fact that it is pretty – with fantastic background art and storyboarding.

Captain Earth is a solid, entertaining mecha anime without being ground-breaking in any way. Its rich render and sharp production values are a pleasure to watch! The story and script will need to improve in future episodes for it to be a worthwhile series all-round though.

• Imamura Ryo’s animation featured this episode. If you don’t recognise the name – he has been one of SHAFT’s few stand-out animators, accounting for most of the well-animated scenes in their anime for some time. What is a SHAFT employee doing working on a Bones anime? It seems he might have gone freelance.
• I have to state again how much I love the storyboard for this episode. It didn’t play out in typical anime fashion and found some new, more cinematic way to present things. It was done between Takuya Igarashi ( the series director) and Yasushi Muraki.

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Seikoku no Dragonar

The story follows the frustrating school life of an adolescent boy in a fantasy world where dragons are a part of everyday life. His frustration comes from the fact that the school is attended almost exclusively by fanatical gossip-mongering bullies who have labelled him ‘the school’s biggest problem-child’ because he gets angry when people insult him to his face (which always seemed like a reasonable reaction to me). Meanwhile he is regularly plagued by sinister nightmares in which a hideously hyper-breasted naked magical lady sneaks into his room and tortuously licks his body. Anyway, the school is devoted to riding and using dragons, and every student has magically summoned their own dragon except for our poor, inept protagonist. In other words, it’s basically a cross between Zero no Tsukaima and How to Train Your Dragon.

The premise could have been pretty interesting if executed right (who doesn’t love dragons right, or disrobed fantasy females for that matter!). But, at the end of the day, it all falls pretty flat and is more annoying than interesting. This anime is in the hands of studio C-Station. If you haven’t heard of them before it’s because this is the first anime they have produced themselves. Originally just a substudio of Bee Train doing outsourced key-animation work, they recently split off to go it alone. If this is anything to go by, they’re not going to be a game-changer in the industry! That said, the animation isn’t terrible, just average, and the other production values aren’t terrible either, just dull and uninspiring. This is a by-the-book light novel adaptation which does not have the kind of production qualities needed to make it stand out.

Within its mediocrity there are still a few things to like about Seikoku no Dragonar, such as the surprisingly sincere characterisation of the protagonist. He quite clearly has principals, empathy and a backbone to him, making him pretty likeable (unlike the foul behaviour of his schoolmates). I also like the fact that it is a fantasy, and there are a few cool designs here and there. I have a soft-spot for the ninja whose costume is a seasonally confused combination of a large scarf and a micro bikini, for example. On the whole though, I don’t think I could call it worth watching.

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Nanana’s Buried Treasure

A-1 Pictures delivers a cute, vibrant treasure-hunting anime with a sense of adventure and an alluring moe vibe for the Noitamina timeslot this season. While this series is unusually otaku-oriented for the noitamina timeslot, it still makes an effort at universal appeal across a wider demographic – avoiding too much fanservice, featuring more earnest characters and leaning on themes of adventure. Where it does dabble in otaku enticement is the ‘awkward sexual tension of living with a beautiful supernatural girl’ situation, and the moe-fied character designs.

Fortunately, I like moe, so don’t look to me if you want complaints about that. As long as it doesn’t step on too many cliches going forward, or get stuck in a rut of going nowhere, I’ll stay happy. And the character designs are moefied in absolutely the best way – they were put in the hands of one of the prodigies in this field: Tetsuya Kawamaki. I talked about him briefly in my Robot Girls Z review, but he’s most famous for his character designs on OreImo and Sword Art Online. His aim with each project is to make his designs stand out from his previous works. He’s somewhat successful – anyone watching this anime can see the similarity to the designs of OreImo, yet these characters definitely have something fresh to their look. The colours in their eyes are so beautiful they really catch your gaze and absorb you! I could stare into Nanana forever.

The animation is also strong. It features some big-name animators, namely Yasunori Miyazawa, Tetsuya Takeuchi, and Tadashi Shida! There are several well-animated scenes throughout, and none that struck me as bad. Yasunori Miyazawa and Tetsuya Takeuchi would have handled the cave-scouring segment in the first part, since their names are seperated in the genga credits and the animation is in their style. I’d guess that this part is Takeuchi and this part is Miyazawa. It’s a really great sequence with a lot of energy. If every episode has a thrillingly animated Indiana Jones style treasure raiding scene this is going to be one fun series!

On the whole, this is a really attractive, inviting and potentially exciting anime. Its moe implementations don’t feel too rehashed and generic and actually injects a nice cute spirit to the series.

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Soul Eater Not!

Before I go any further, let’s reach into my dark trove of shameful secrets and pull out the fact that I never watched the original Soul Eater! I’m sorry, please don’t leave! I did watch the first few episodes, and saw all the animation highlights in various sakuga MADs, but something about the series rubbed me the wrong way and I never got into it. But even the title of this anime has gone out of its way to convince me that this isn’t Soul Eater, so I’ll clean the slate and go into this as though it was a brand new anime.

That approach worked pretty well for me – while others were lamenting how Maka’s eyes have changed colour or how there never used to be an airport in Death City, I was sitting back and enjoying the comedy cum psuedo-slife-of-life ride! Soul Eater Not! is probably something that doesn’t need to exist – there are plenty of other anime out there that aren’t Soul Eater and are already doing a decent job at putting unrealistically cute 2D schoolgirls on TV and making us laugh. But BONES bit the bullet and went with it anyway, using their clout and production assets to barge past the competition into center stage. What I’m trying to say here is that while it’s not unique series, this anime still delivers on the entertainment value through well-timed jokes and competent production. I did laugh at the gags, and I did swoon over the girls, and I never felt the contrivances stack up to the point where I felt the compulsion to roll my eyes, or shake my head.

The production is handled by BONES Studio A, basically the Noragami crew from last season. That means we should get a few pricks of good animation scattered throughout the series but overall just a decent standard of quality. I also find the colours to be a bit muted and there’s something slightly off about the designs, but I can’t exactly put my finger on it. Still, the presentation is fine and Soul Eater Not! is simple, fun entertainment. It’s been good to watch with a group of friends so far.

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No Game No Life

The anime No Game No Life was born into a sad, seemingly inescapable fate as a trite light novel adaptation. Yuu kamiya is the man behind the original light novel of the same name. He was responsible for the quickly-forgotten Itsuka Tenma no Kuro Usagi novel series, and he was sure to instill the same fluoro colour scheme and banal, gimmicky storytelling into No Game No Life. The premise of No Game No Life is that a pair of utterly home-bound siblings – a high-school aged boy and his cute, adoring, flat-chested little sister – are geniuses at any computer game they get their hands on and totally bored with the real world. They are unwittingly given the chance to escape their dull existence when they are dragged into another, more fantasy-styled world where, by some miracle of suspended disbelief, everything is decided by games. Of course, they thrive in this new setting and, of course, the world is teeming with moe, voluptuous life forms just waiting for a genius Earth-boy to impress them at games. It’s premise is such an obvious play for the attention (and wallets) of escapist hikki-types, and its sprinkled with panty-shots and other sexual tones to reel in the otaku.

So, its obviously cliche but, if pushed, I can happily put that aside and enjoy the show for base entertainment value. As for fanservice: absolutely no problems with it and, if I’m being honest, I kind of enjoy it. But the show could have fallen flat on its face if it weren’t for Madhouse’s deftly handled production. Despite its humble status of ‘light novel adaptation’, No Game no Life does have some significance to Madhouse. For those not aware, Madhouse has been endangered for the last while – since the leak of talent to the defect upstart studio MAPPA and the adjustment to Nippon Television buying it in 2011. There has been outsourcing of animation to other studios in the first episode, and I expect this to continue (and it’s not necessarily a bad thing – it’ll probably keep it on schedule at least).

This anime is headed by director Atsuko Ishizuka – a relatively young female animator who has quickly become one of the major players at the studio. She has a background in graphic arts and music, and did some impressive music videos earlier in her career. On one hand, it’s a little sad to see someone who originally worked on quite interesting and unique projects now working on such a thoroughly commercial affair as No Game No Life. On the other hand, she has clearly struck a good career in anime – an impressive feat for a young female animator of her background, and filled a void since the departures from the company. The old Madhouse gave her that chance, but I fear the new Madhouse won’t be giving any others the same opportunity. She is clearly a competent director, because No Game No Life looks more polished than a lot of anime this season.

• The character designer and chief animation director is Kouji Ooya, who also contributed genga in the first episode, suggesting he has a kind of ‘main animator’ role. This is his first stint in this kind of series role, following a trend this season of new faces in big credits. So far it looks like he’s doing an exceptional job.

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Selector Infector Wixoss

Some months ago in Japan a group of maverick, cutting edge producers sat around and agreed that the thing Japanese nerds really need right now is yet another trading card game. And so, Selected Infector Wixoss was born! They were wrong of course – even if the soon-to-be-released game turns out to be good, it feels like there’s already plenty happening in the TCG space. On the upside, the people behind WIXOSS seemed to know that they had to really nail the anime and make it more than just about selling cards. Although I saw warning flags above this anime’s head at first, especially when I heard that J.C Staff were involved, this turned out to be one of the anime I enjoyed the most so far this season. It’s crisply produced, but still allows for enough expression and individuality in the animation and storyboard to avoid that bland and shallow feeling I get from most of JC’s by-the-books commercial ventures.

For example, the animation in Ruuko’s mysterious nightmare world has a raw, violent feel to it that creates and eerie contrast to the softer and more moeblob art in the real world. Adding to this, the sound design in that nightmare world, and in the virtual card game arena is really excellent (although I didn’t really notice until I rewatched those scenes with headphones in). It’s this visceral, eschewed digital noise that creates an engrossing mood in these scenes. I’m a bit surprised by this given the sound director (http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/people.php?id=979) and series musician (http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/people.php?id=57014). Perhaps the director pushed for an attention to atmospheric sound, since it seems music is his main hobby and passion (and music like Sigur Ros, no less).

The production as a whole stands up well, with strong animation and art. Interestingly, the character designer Kyuuta Sakai only did the character designs for this series. Normally the character designer is also the chief animation director (the person responsible to oversee the animation across all episodes to improve overall consistency with his/her designs). However, this anime has a different chief animation director each episode. This isn’t unheard of, but the first anime that springs to mind with a similar set-up is Noein, which had an intentionally free production and varying character designs per episode. I doubt that’s what they’re aiming for here, especially since they even have assistant chief animators for the episodes as well. I note also that episode 3 has 6 animation directors. Perhaps this anime just has the money to splash out on animation directors to keep this a high-quality, on-schedule production, but I do wonder about why they didn’t go for having a series chief animation director role!

But we have to trust the director, Takuya Satou, who is probably best known for Steins;Gate (for which Kyuuta Sakai was also character designer). I expect this anime to stay entertaining and well-made to the very end! The story also grabbed me pretty well, it didn’t have Captain Earth’s problem of being overly convoluted, but it’s not overly simple either. It features genuine, likeable characters and just enough of a sinister, foreboding vein through it to make sure we know it’s not just about cute girls playing cards.

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Black Bullet

Here we have yet another seinen Light Novel series adaptation. Black Bullet retreads the fighting supernatural detective path with the usual LN-sourced layer of otaku appeal, this time in the form of utterly adorable battle lolis. Like countless anime before it, Black Bullet’s story is basically an elaborate excuse for having an expansive cast of underage girls fighting monsters.  If you are allergic to unnaturally cute little girls being moe and kicking ass, then this this might not be the show for you. Otherwise prepare to be tickled by the sweet and awkwardly fanservicey Enju. Enju is super cute … and the action was actually pretty cool when she and her male MC accomplice leapt into battle. But I can’t think of much else positive to say about this one. It’s really quite generic; with the exception of Enju, the aesthetics are rather bland, and I feel that it lacks heart at the centre of its story. It doesn’t have a creatively interesting story or much emotional gravitas, so I guess what I mean to say is – why should we care? And since it takes itself seriously, it doesn’t fit nicely in the brainless entertainment bin either.

The studio behind this is Kinema Citrus, another fledgling studio, founded in 2008 by Ogasawara Muneki, an ex-BONES producer, in cohort with some people from Production I.G and Bee Train. Initially, they were affiliated with BONES, but quickly became a studio standing on its own feet. The one work that Kinema Citrus has done that makes me respect them a lot is .Hack//Quantum. Unfortunately, due to its mostly flaccid design and production, Black Bullet diminishes the promise of this new studio. But don’t get me wrong – it doesn’t look horrible, just pretty average. I guess that really sums up the show.

• The character designer, and one of the main animators (AD episode 2, Prop Design ep 2) , is 海島千本. This is an odd one because I can find very little information on him. I feel like its a new psuedonym (or just starting to use his actual name), but I can’t find what he would have used previously. But I did manage to find his pixiv, http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=18362, twitter https://twitter.com/Kaisen_Tobiuo  , and blog http://kaisendon.exblog.jp/ .
• This series has 5 ‘main animator’ credits, so these guys will be doing a large portion of the work on the series: Kuroda Yuka (黒田結花), Nonoka Masayuki (野中正幸), Moromeki Tetsuro (諸貫哲朗), Toda Mai (戸田麻衣), and (竹内由香里) whose reading I can’t be sure of.
• Yoshinari Kou was easily the most famous animator involved in this first episode, but didn’t really do anything remarkable by the looks of it.

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Mushishi

Director Nagahami Hiroshi continues his hallowed reign over the franchise, returning as series director, and bringing in tow the same core staff as the first season: Toshio Masuda (music), Yoshihiko Umakoshi (Character designer/chief AD), Takeshi Waki (Art Director), et cetera. As anyone who’s already a fan of the first season will tell you, this is very good news, because it means more of the same lusciously realised, and creatively charged storytelling as before. Yoshihiko Umakoshi is celebrated as a designer and animator, and it’s always nice to see his skills being put to use on something that isn’t Precure. Hiroshi Nagahami meanwhile, has recently pushed himself to the head of the pack as being one of the best directors working in anime right now since his eye-opening adaptation of Aku no Hana last year. He challenged conventions with that work, giving everyone a rare reminder that there’s more than one way to make an anime, and avoiding the trap of being arty-weird to make that point. Mushishi is more familiar ground, but it is still unique as an anime, with a pace, atmosphere and style that is tailored to the manga it is based on, breathing life into it in the best way possible.

I guess I don’t have a lot to convey about this second season, other than to say it has not faltered at all since its first entry – it’s the same Mushishi I remember, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. For those of you who haven’t experienced Mushishi yet, – it’s a wandering, pondering exploration of a culture and its people living in a world veined with unseen mysticism, seen through the eyes of a nomadic, solitary doctor who treats people who unwittingly come into contact with this supernatural force. The thing I love about the series, and it’s something that the author is clearly passionate about, is that the supernatural elements seem both entirely fictional yet also have a worldly, natural realism to them. And these life forms also have a spiritualism to them in their connection with human beings, and the story really uses them to ultimately engage in very human stories.

Mushishi is one of those A-grade anime with universal appeal, an uncompromised creative vision and a superb production behind it. Check it out!

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Hitsugi no Chaika

A fantasy anime adapted from a light novel from the same author as Scrapped Princess. Who else remembers Scrapped Princess? Funnily enough that was one of the few anime I have every marathoned in a single sitting (I was sick at the time). It was a simple but pretty effective fantasy series, and an awkward mix of equal parts cliche and interesting story ideas. I can see Hitsugi no Chaika falling into the same boat, with the wow-factor of an aggressive, carnal unicorn being shot into two gory slabs of intestines by a magical sniper bullet being immediately followed by a comical smash-up-the-eating-establishment stoush between bickering siblings. There’s a lot of contrivance and cliche, but it does somehow entertain without being too annoying.

The production is handled by Bones, Studio D – to my mind, the least interesting department of Bones. The producers’ saw fit to resuscitate the Director and Chief AD of Scrapped Princess for this anime as well; Soichi  Masui is back in the director’s seat, while Takahiro Komori is now working as his his assistant Director. The character designer/ chief AD here is Nobuhiro Arai and, as far as I can see, it’s his first time with his name to this credit (another this season!). I do have to question his design wisdom when it comes to the decision to grace the lead heroine with oversized, thick black eyebrows. While it’s nice that designers don’t have to stick to conventional moe style, I don’t think eye-brow size inflation is the best avenue for that. She looks like the unfortunate result of someone messing around with the character customisation in their second play through of an RPG.

The animation itself can only be described as passable, with no stand-out moments to speak of. I can’t see Bones putting the talent into this to make it memorable from an animation stand-point, so let’s not get our hopes up for mind-blowing fantasy action. Basically, everything points to mediocre right now, and even if it does have a faint entertainment buzz,

The anime’s only hope to get ahead is if the story evolves into something interesting. Of course, that is actually possible with the author of Scrapped Princess… but can I sacrifice another 20 minutes of my week on that chance?

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Akuma no Riddle

It seems like yuri might be coming back in fashion in the otaku world, with the success of the Sakura Trick adaptation, and now this action thriller which is clearly marketed as a yuri show. I have a feeling that Akuma no Riddle might do comfortably well out of this, as it’s still all too rare to see a yuri series with more to its premise than two girls being intimate. In the sense that it does feature girl love (albeit more blatantly) and also action/thriller set up, this series harkens back to Bee Train’s old works such as Noir. And from what I’ve seen of the first episode, it will do the yuri aspect rather the well: they’ve struck an appealing dynamic between the cold, cool and badass Tokaku and the honest, cute and caring Haru. But even if they tick this box, Akuma no Riddle is weighed down by a teenage-fancfiction style of presentation and storytelling.

The dialogue lacks any nuance and is always very obvious in the way it is advancing the plot or characterisation. The same goes for the characters themselves, whose complete personalities are almost instantly established in the first episode. I say it feels like fanfiction because it plays out in this dot-point manner, leaving no room for the story to breathe. Some may prefer this direct approach to writing, but it feels amateurish and simple to me. The look of the show follows the same principle – every scene is framed and lit in a very overt way to tell us whether its supposed to be menacing, happy or whatever else. But even if this approach stops me from feeling involved in the story, I can admit that the show does have a personality with its visuals and blunt script. It’s not bland, nor is it annoyingly derivative like I find SHAFT anime. And the animation was largely faultless, even if it didn’t exactly impress.

The CD/Chief AD is Ide Naomi, who was the same for Mondaiji-tachi ga Isekai kara Kuru Sou Desu yo, which I really enjoyed the animation and designs on. I think he has also done a good job here making the designs look fresh and attractive. The director has a long history of working on successful anime, so I’m sure he knows what he’s doing with Akuma no Riddle. Perhaps it’s just the source material, but I didn’t find myself getting into this one at all.

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Ping Pong

My friends have almost unilaterally whacked the ‘boring’ stamp on Ping Pong, but I’m happy to stand alone in saying that I really enjoyed the first episode.  I can see where they are coming from though; Ping Pong isn’t exactly the most thrilling sport on the planet – it lacks the heat, thuggish competitiveness, the passionate drama and the raw physical athleticism of other games. And this anime makes no attempt to glorify it. It trades in having a booming narrator, over-the-top special effects or wedged-in sex appeal for a dose of everyday human drama and a realistic treatment of the sport. Still sounding boring to you? Well, Ping Pong may not deliver in thrills, but it does deliver in style.

In the adroit hands of Masaaki Yuasa, even mundane scenes like riding the train and talking about brands of bubble gum seem somehow purposeful and captivating. He also brings his usual disciples to the table for Ping Pong – most notably Nobutake Ito as chief AD/CD. This closely-tied duo have bought us Kaiba, Kemonozume and Tatami Galaxy in the past. Other notable staff he’ll bring on board are: Yasunori Miyazawa and Eunyoung Choi. Normally we’d expect to see Michio Mihara involved as well, but there’s a theory that he had a falling out with them (or just Choi) at some point, but hopefully that’s overblown. The studio behind this one is Tatsunoko, which has a long and industrious history behind it going back to the 60s. Modern Tatsunoko has proven to be a residence of strong talent.  But at the end of the day, Yuasa himself has the biggest influence over the show’s look and went to the unusual length of storyboarding and writing every episode himself (apparently pumping out an episode storyboard an impressive once every ten days!).

The end result is that Ping Pong has a dishevelled look about it, with rough, sketchy lines and at times an almost warped, angular presentation. Movement is either minimal or unexpectedly dramatic, and the storyboard includes some shots that are not usually seen anime – such as the multiple triangular cutaway shots. Ping Pong’s whole production has this refreshing spontaneous energy to it, but in a laidback way that doesn’t detract from the story or feel attention-seeking. There’s no doubt in my mind that if this anime had been storyboarded in the conventional manner, the show wouldn’t hold my interest at all. Another contributor to the visual flare of the show is the excellent background art, which is seamlessly fashioned with the same rough wobbliness as the animation.

Ping Pong looks good, but if you give it the chance, it also does have a story and interesting characters. The Chinese player, Wenga is fascinatingly competitive and demotivated at the same time, while the passiveness of the apparent protagonist hints at his own masked skill. The absence of unnecessary drama, and the stoic, even dry portrayal of some characters may deter a lot of viewers, but I admire the aesthetic expression and the lack of cheap thrills. Perhaps it’s comparable to Mushishi in that respect.

• The ED is solo animated by Yuasa regular,  Eunyoung Choi, and it’s quite pretty! Of course, it’s all rotoscoped though.

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Kanojo wa Flag wo Oraretara

If you were feeling as lazy as I am right now, this anime could be summed up as a comedy with an interesting gimmick at its premise and featuring a horde of moe characters who will rapidly fall into a harem around the main character. Any self-respecting season of anime these days should have something in this format! So we know this show isn’t going to be a ground-breaking emotional journey, or a thinking man’s exploration into the human psyche – this anime has signed itself up for the role of mediocre entertainer. The question then becomes, is it good in that role? It’s essential for an anime with moe appeal to have cute characters, and it’s a fundamental law that a comedy anime should be funny. I’ve seen better attempts, but Kanojo has a good crack at both of these basic criterion.

The girls, only a couple of which I’ve had the pleasure of being introduced to so far, are appealing in that comforting otaku-targeted kind of way. They’re sweet, lovingly abrasive, permanently blushing, and physically attractive with big, sparkling eyes and cute, childish school uniforms. I actually adore their skirts so much, with their impractical tangent from the thighs and the pastel pink decorations. The original character design is by CUTEG who also designed the very fetching girls of Kono Naka ni Hitori, Imōto ga Iru!. The comedy is based around the MC being able to see prophetic flags above peoples heads, such as friendship flags, love, flags, and even death flags. Think visual novels. The show makes reasonable use of this for gags, but mostly reverts to the standard repertoire of awkward youthful love jokes and such. It’s not without laughs, but you’d have to take my best friend hostage if you wanted me to say that it was a good comedy.

The animation isn’t really an important factor in this series, beyond the fact that it gets the job done. Hoods Entertainment are the studio behind it, and they’re basically known for doing anime like this, so they can probably be trusted to pull it off fine.

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Blade & Soul

Blade & Soul is the kind of over-the-top ninja fantasy that a sexually frustrated DnD playing teenager might think up. Now, there’s nothing wrong with playing DnD, or being sexually frustrated, but the result of this fantasy is not something I have any interest in seeing. As it turns out, this is an adaptation of a Korean MMORPG. I don’t know if the original game is any better, but I can tell that the staff behind this anime have taken the simplest and least inventive route to converting it to an anime. Every beat of the story plays out in the most predictable, droll way possible. I don’t think you could make it more cliche if you tried. But the issue doesn’t end with there- after years of controlled dosages via anime, I can stomach quite the hit of cliche. Blade & Soul takes it further by also being consistently stupid and poorly written. Interactions between characters seem forced and no one in the show is believable as a person to any degree. Their motivations are all trite I’ve heard a hundred times before, and their dialogue is very clunky. Blade & Soul is witless and comprehensively unoriginal. Its writer, Tomioka Atsuhiro has offended yet again.

But what about its production values? GONZO is in charge of the animation production. Or should I say neo-Gonzo? Gonzo’s revival continues to disappoint, having only gone downhill since the new Last Exile. Apparently Range Murata recently said that the company seems to be going broke (again). Blade & Soul has a couple of moments of good animation in it (mainly just this bit), and these stand out all the more against the overall cheap feel of the series. Flat, lifeless layouts, jittery framerates, even some poor drawings marred the episode throughout. But this might have been palatable if the designs were pretty. They weren’t; while the main characters verge on okay, some of the minor characters are downright ugly and ridiculous-looking. Following the trend this season, this is Eri Nagata’s first shot at being CD/chief AD. It’s sad that it didn’t work out so well in this case, although I will say that at least the way they draw female eyes is pretty appealing.  The storyboard was also boring, so I’m really struggling to find a redeeming factor here. Actually I give up: In my view, Blade & Soul is worthless trash!

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Gochuumon wa Usagi desu ka?

The best description of this anime that I’ve heard is ‘comfy’. It’s almost completely innocent and devoid of all tension or melodrama. Instead, Goshuumon wa Usagi desu ka invites you to watch the pleasant and friendly goings on at a tucked-away, quaint little cafe staffed by little moe anime girls. It just wants you to sink into its warm and fluffy atmosphere. There is some light fanservice, but only enough to enjoy it if you’re looking for it but not distract you if you’re not. For example, the bath scene with the two girls this episode was cute and drawn superbly by Masafumi Tamura, but wasn’t really played up for the sexyness factor. The girls are very cute, which is the essential ingredient for a moe anime like this to work – they have to be cute enough themselves to carry the entire show. Essentially, without them you would have a plotless, uneventful, and only vaguely funny slice of life series.

One other thing I do appreciate about this series is that the production seems pretty close knit and spirited feel to it. Hashimoto Hiroyuki is directing here and its his first foray into series direction that I can see. It looks like quite a career step for him given his few episode direction credits. Here’s his twitter (https://twitter.com/lainnet01/) . He also storyboarded and directed this first episode. There is one ‘main animator’ credit, which goes to 武藤信宏, who was a major animator/AD for Maou-sama. Sure enough, he’s been at the top of the genga list for the first two episodes. Interestingly, there is no CAD role, instead the character designer has taken a very hands-on role by working as the AD for each episode (so far at least, and probably for every ep to come). To help him with this monumental charge there are multiple assistant AD roles. White Fox is the studio and they do competent job here by and large, but you can tell it’s not a big budget outing. Even though the animation is quiet and understated, it has its moments of awkwardness. But given how heavily involved some of the main animators are, I think that some of the staff are pretty passionate about adapting this one.

I’m going to call this kind of anime ‘snug anime’. It doesn’t really motivate me to tune in every week, but it’s the kind of thing I’d watch over a winters day if I was home sick. I think the the staff should be commended for capturing the radiant cuteness of the manga and doing it with a touch of class.

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Isshuukan Friends

Isshuukan friends was a delight to watch. Probably the biggest thing for me was the visual work on the show. The backgrounds are faded with an almost dream-like pastel palette, which brings attention to the characters and their interactions. The characters themselves are also softly envisioned, with a lot of detail in their uniform, and precise strands in their hair, but avoiding any bold lines or striking features. But that doesn’t mean they don’t feel unique and grabbing – character designer, chief AD and regular episode AD Eri Yamazaki has breathed life, individuality and mundane beauty into these characters. Her hands-on approach through episodic AD work shows how much this show is the realisation of her vision. It’s impressive work given that this is her first major CD role that I can see. With the drawing power of Brains Base behind her, Ishuukan Friends is a pleasure to lay eyes on, elegant to the nth degree. But this is even more of an impressive feat given that this is only the second series director credit Tarou Iwasaki has had (the first being the little known Ryuko’s Case File). Fingers crossed that the quality of the first episode can be maintained.

The gentle aesthetics match the delicate unfolding of the story, which is about a girl who loses her memory every week, making it impossible to form friendships, let alone friendship. But our MC is up for the challenge, even after learning of her ailment he cannot be deterred, reforming their friendship every week with the hope that one day she won’t forget. I like the fact that this seems primarily about friendship rather than a standard highschool crush, and the main character has a unique determined bent to him, a dichotomy of apathy and passion that makes him a much more interesting and nuanced male MC than anime usually delivers.

I think the washed, understated style of Ishhuukan Friends is a barrier to being really taken in by it from the first episode, so, while it was sweet and lovely to watch, I’m not really excited to see the next episode. I guess I like my anime with a bit more punch, but I’m aware that that’s just a personal thing, and I can see that this is objectively a good show. I also think this show could have problems staying interesting after the interesting idea of weekly amnesia has been fully introduced? Where can it go?

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Mahouka

Mahouka is a frustrating anime to watch. Why? Because its bad but I really want to enjoy it. I’m motivated to like it because it has some really interesting elements to it that aren’t straight out of the ‘how to make a mediocre anime’ handbook, and its bad because the rest of it is exactly the boring, well-trodden crap you’d find in that handbook. The opening few minutes is a perfect example of this – right off the bat, the anime quickly establishes an intriguing, post-WWII world for its society and magic users but then instantly dives into a typical high-school setting and surrounds its make MC with beautiful moe girls who are so sweet someone’s gotta be paying them. Oh, and we can’t forget the MC’s pure-maiden younger sister, who is blushingly obsessed with him in a confusingly romantic way.

But then I began to realise there was something more to this still – the main character is actually so brokenly perfect as man and a hero that it’s kind of impressive seeing how he deals with the banal highschool bullshit thrown at him. He’s a strong warrior, keenly intelligent and analytical, diligent to the point where he doesn’t even need leisure time, humble, honourable, fearless, pragmatic, and unwaveringly principled. His flawlessness probably comes from the authors wish-fulfillment, but even still it’s oddly interesting to see a male character with this brand of mature heroism. Most anime heroes are portrayed with an adolescent’s view of manliness – muscled, and comically bad-ass, but Tatsuya’s strength comes from more genuine, mature traits such as patience, hard work and a cynical kind of smarts. It’s just so sad that he’s misplaced in this pointless magic-high school situation!

With Saki and Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere Director at the helm, this is Madhouse’s other show this season. As with No Game No Life, the animation quality holds up well. There was a pretty cool hand-to-hand fight sequence at the temple, which was handled by experienced and accomplished action animator Takashi Tomioka. He has done some very memorable action scenes for BONES (just check out this MAD). Since he was also credited with Action AD, he would have had total control on that sequence’s animation. It was a fast, frenetic and entertainingly choreographed fight! Unfortunately, the design work doesn’t work quite so well. The school uniforms look ridiculous, and the pervading turquoise colour scheme of the anime makes it feel dull. I  don’t find any of the character designs to be particularly appealing either. The music by Taku Iwasaki (this guy never stops) is disappointing in the sense that it always feels jarring and misplaced.

There’s a chance I’ll watch a bit more, purely for the main character, but otherwise Mahouka is nothing special.

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Jojo’s Bizzare Adventure: Stardust Crusaders

I have to admit that I have no idea what to expect when getting into this new Jojo’s bizarre adventure. My previous experience with this franchise boils down to getting it confused with First of North Star. I tend to keep the macho hyper-shounen anime genre at an arms length, but this season I’d pledged to watch (almost) everything! Going into the show, I didn’t know what I was in for, and now that I’ve seen the first episode, I still have no idea what it’s all about. The plot itself was relatively straightforward, and I had friends filling in my many knowledge gaps, like who Dio is. But I still somehow don’t really know how to describe what I just watched. Frankly, I think I just don’t get it. There’s fire, magical goings on, lots of big muscley men being surly toward each other, ingrained sexism, shouting, and.. actually I think that’s about it. What’s the appeal?

Well I did pick up on the fact that it’s self-parodying and takes things to a comical extreme. But while I noticed it, I didn’t really find it funny. It seems that there’s not much for me in this anime. But I can see that is is very well put together and will probably fall into the open arms of this genre’s fans. There was a lot of animation throughout, and some beats where it was of noticeable quality – particularly impressive given the level of detail packed into the designs and the complexity of the fighting moves which feature swirling flames and supernatural beasts. The designs are detailed and styled enough that they could have come right off the manga pages. Unfortunately, its lost on me since I have no interest in said style. The designer/CAD is Komino Masahiko, which is his first time in the role, so he is to be commended for his efforts. He also did key animation this episode. I suspect that there is a fair amount of cash thrown at this series though, so hopefully the studio David Productions won’t have any trouble keeping up this standard.

Edit: I have actually watched on with this and I think I’m beginning to understand the appeal after all!

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Soredemo Sekai wa Utsukushii

A story about an obscure, down-to-earth princess moving to another kingdom to marry a powerful king, Soredemo Sekai wa Utsukushii is an anime adaptation of a popular shoujo manga. It has a selling point that most shoujo manga doesn’t – trading the well-trodden highschool romance setting in for a kind of cynical fairytale scenario. It’s fairytale because it’s about a spirited princess betrothed to a glamorous king, and it’s cynical because the princess, and the anime in general refuses to play cleanly play the part. She is tomboyish and a little rough around the edges, and the anime has the audacity to even break the fourth wall. In line with this, the anime is refreshingly earnest about things: the bad guys are your cliche dopey street thugs, the ‘good people’ she meets are a hard-working family who seem to live to be kind and generous to strangers, and the protagonist herself is good to the bone, even if she doesn’t carry herself in an entirely regal manner.

There’s no layer of mystery, no hidden, ulterior motives and no hints of a sinister force at work, it’s pleasantly straightforward storytelling. But what’s really interesting is that the cliches its built upon are not really anime cliches at all. Family values? Incompetent villain duos? It’s more at home in a Disney movie than anime or manga. Perhaps that is the appeal to the Japanese audience, but for me it’s just as familiar. This all adds up to pretty decent entertainment, albeit too straightforward to really garner much interest from me. Its minor quirks aside, I don’t see this anime going anywhere challenging or totally unconventional, and I don’t think the comedy facet of the series can summon enough laughter to justify me watching it.

The production qualities aren’t anything to rave about either. Studio Pierrot does an acceptable job making things move and look reasonable, but it’s far from eye-opening. Yet again the CAD/character designer is new to this job but has significant animation experience. I actually think he has done a pretty fine job of converting the manga designs to animation. The main character in particular is full of life and feels memorable as a female character. This is helped by the strong voice work of her seiyuu, Maeda Rena, whose only other major role up until now has been in Hunter X Hunter. She portrays Nike (Just Do It!) with the perfect comprise between playfulness and mature confidence. My thoughts are that the director doesn’t have a lot to throw at this, and it will be an under-the radar mediocre production that will please fans of the manga, but not achieve much else.

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Gokukoku no Brynhildr

A girl who can see the future and stop a giant falling boulder with surgery-and-drug based founded magic meets a highschool protagonist whose regret over the death of his beloved childhood friend has turned into a lifelong obsession with her and astronomy. It’s not exactly your on par with your usual anime set-up. Studio ARMS, known for their shitty ecchi anime productions, brings us this seinen manga adaptation with a bit of a unique kick to it. The elements of this story, when carved out from the consummate whole, ring ‘been-done Light Novel/manga’; You’ve got your magic, your plot gimmick (girl can see the future), your high-school setting, your boy-meets-girl romance, et cetera. But somehow Gokukoku no Brynhildr mixes it all together and creates something surprisingly exhilarating. For example, the MC’s inability to move past the lost of his precious Kuroneko felt genuinely soul-crushing instead of just being an arbitrary plot hurdle, and they actually wrung some tension out of Kuroha’s ability to foresee people’s deaths: I was getting very close to being at the edge of my seat for a moment or two. The reason Gokuhoku is more than the some of its parts? Good storytelling.

I can’t say how much we should be thanking the original author, or the anime staff, but at the very least series director Imaizumi Kenichi (Katekyo Hitman Reborn) has not stuffed it up. He also supplied the pace-perfect storyboard for this first episode. The animation carried its weight but never verged on being even slightly flashy. Karasu Irohaki (Maouyuu Maou Yuusha) is CAD/Character Designer and seems to be capable enough.

So I can’t fault the production, but what I can fault is the way that, from time to time, the episode blunders awkwardly into adolescent moe tones and tropes. Its as though the surgeons behind the super-powered Kuroha also embedded this ‘switch’ in her brain which can abruptly switch her from cool and collected to flustered and flirty. And I’m not talking the kind of flirt fluster a normal girl might succumb to – I’m talking forced moe along the lines of uncalled for sexual tension, shouts of  ‘urusai urusai urusai!’ and uncontrollable embarrassment. Dengeki called and wants their tropes back. I can handle moe, and sometimes I love handling it, but I don’t like seeing it wedged into an otherwise interesting story. Read the mood!

Despite this, I think there’s enough of a real story here for me to give it another couple of episodes.

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Mekaku City Actors

I was was fully prepared to hate Mekaku City Actors. My SHAFT dartboard is full of holes and I’ve got a pile of flashcards with preemptively prepared criticisms over a meter high crowding my desk. But then something happened: I actually watched Mekaku City Actors. Around about 1 minute into this new anime I realised I couldn’t stifle a smile any longer! The interactions between the bottom-of-the-barrel shut-in main character and his inexplicable and inexplicably adorable AI computer system, Ene are just impossible to resist. Their endearing relationship, which swings between Ene sweetly encouraging and supporting our ignoble MC, to Ene bluntly insulting him and reminding him of his many faults. Ene, voiced to perfection by Kana Asumi, is playful and has an irrepressible personality, while her master makes his mark this episode as a pathetic hikkikomori with a redeeming quality – what I can only describe as backbone. His first day outside, spurred by the urgency of needing a new keyboard, ends with him having to stand up to a group of heavily armed terrorists. All of the characters leave a strong impression and the dynamic between the MC and Ene in particular has a good comedic spark to it.

This anime is based on a light novel series, which, in turn, is based on a series of vocaloid songs called Kagerou Project. This is the last thing I thought I’d be saying about this anime, but I feel like its presentation as handled by SHAFT with Akiyuki Shinbo in his directors chair has elevated Mekaku City actors above its origins (the LN series anyway). I will say that my fears were realised: it was littered with SHAFT-isms like head-tilts, flat, 2-dimensional layouts, pointless close-up cutaways and detail-free background art. It’s nice that Shinbo has freed himself from the shackles of having to be original! At the end of the day, the reason this stuff gets to me is that Shinbo and ‘his’ studio have created a visual brand that all their anime are bent into – regardless of the intent of the source material it will just end up being a ‘SHAFT anime’. Not only is it lazy, but it also reeks of arrogant self-indulgence. But they got lucky with Mekaku City actors because the end result works well enough for me to look past that.

And I will admit that they have at least animated it well – the first episode had a lot of animation and one of it bad. But, like most things this season, nothing struck me with any sense of awe. One of SHAFT’s prime animators, Genichirou Abe, is character designer but, interestingly, is not CAD. Instead there are three CAD staff. Abe has not contributed any key animation, and there is no sign of Imamura Ryo either, perhaps another hint that he has left the studio. If this anime does feature SHAFTs usual spontaneous doses of standout animation it will either be Abe in later episodes or through a talented freelancer. Maybe SHAFT should consider hiring some more star animator talent. The director credits are the usual story – Shinbo as series director/overall director, giving him executive oversight without the hard work of being the actual director – that honour goes to the Hidamari Sketch director, Yase Yuki.

Depending on whether it keeps going forward or stagnates, this has the potential to be one of the best SHAFT anime. For now at least, its surprisingly snappy and entertaining.

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Bokura Minna Kawaisou

Bokura Minna Kawaisou is an anime adaptation of a seinen comedy manga constructed by the eminent studio Brains Base. The basic premise is that a highschool student moves into a shared living dorm which he quickly realises is a lively, strange and perhaps even dangerous cohabitation with an exquisite girl he swoons over in his spare time and a pack of extreme and unsavoury individuals. The unsavoury individuals include a determinedly odd pervert, and a gratingly drunk woman with bad taste in men. It sounds like hell to live in, but it’s a ripe setting for a comedy anime. The jokes basically revolve around the extreme personalities of the other tenants and the predictable difficulties the main character has in realising his romance with his crush. I actually found the characters a bit too annoying for the gags to tickle my funny bone, or the jokes too predictable. I don’t think I laughed out loud in this episode. Maybe I’ve just been spoiled by the likes of Teekyu recently, but this anime only makes a lukewarm impression as a comedy and doesn’t really try to be much else.

One thing I will say though is that Brains Base did a tremendous job pitching the gags with timing and visual humour. The anime has a real flare, and at times the characters’ expressions or movements are almost a punchline themselves. The style of the anime is also unusual and interesting, once you get used to it. There’s a weird shine to everything and the colours seem off at first, but in the end I saw it as lusciously and charmingly drawn. There are 4 character designers in total (two credited for major characters and 2 for minor) and it looks like the two major designers will be rotating chief animator roles per episode (with different ADs below them of course). It will be interesting to see if we can spot any differences in the way they draw certain characters in their episodes.The first episode had them both directly involved as ADs so they must have really nailed the look they were going for. Overall, it looks like the show is well-staffed and set for a steady schedule.

With all said and done, my overriding feeling towards this show is ‘ambivalence’. Its execution is great, but the jokes it has to work with just aren’t funny enough to me.

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Atelier Escha & Logy

I’m one of those many out there who are aware of the Atelier franchise but never actually got my feet wet and dipped in to it. I’ve seen the transcendently adorable artwork for the games floating around the internet, and I even have a borrowed copy of the one of the games sitting on my shelf staring down at me scornfully. I’m sorry, I want to play you, I just don’t have the time for a 5000 hour JRPG – I’m not ready for that kind of commitment. When I first heard that there was going to be an anime version I thought ‘here’s an easy way to get my foot into the franchise’s door’. Then I saw the promotional artwork and saw the magic of mediocre anime illustrators at work – taking a beautiful piece of artwork and turning it into a pallid, lifeless cast of its former self. The poor designs raised a warning flag above Atelier’s head, and I couldn’t destroy it in time because my worst fears came true in this first episode.

Atelier Escha & Logy is an ugly, cheap-looking waste of time for anyone but the most hardcore fan of the game. The story so far is pretty dull – a man, Logy arrives in an idyllic  village on assignment and is teamed up with local cutey Escha as a crack alchemist duo for whom no task is too menial or dull. The entire village lives off apples from a handful of trees in a nearby orchid, so when the windmill breaks down Escha & Logy are sent in to resolve the shocking crisis. To make matters worse, the village doesn’t have the foresight to keep any spare parts for the windmill in case of such a critical failure so the only solution is to use alchemy! This apparently means reading a recipe book, killing a wild animal and then putting things in a pot. I had a problem with the killing a wild animal part of this show, not because I’m a PETA member or anything like that, but because all of a sudden these two characters went from eating apple tart, greeting the old ladies on the street and going for long strolls to having an intense showdown with a magical beast almost as big as them. Whats worse is that it just flashed by momentarily as part of the montage. The only excitement and conflict of the episode was over in the blink of an eye with no explanation whatsoever. Why were they fighting it, why do they have combat experience, was it a tough battle? You would only know if you played the games, so it’s a bad-writing infringement!

Everything else is a bad writing infringement too. Bad characterisation, forced romance elements (love isn’t alchemy, you can’t just get a man and a woman and leave them together for a day to get a couple), and stupid plot abound. Case in point:  the flashbacks to the earlier apple scenes when Logy is shown the orchid and realises apples come from apple trees. It was treated like he figured out the overarching story of Lost or something. And as for everything else – infringements everywhere. I want to issue a fine to Gokumi for this one – my, how they have fallen from grace since A-channel. Gokumi was a promising jump-ship studio from Gonzo back then, now it’s a sinking ship itself. The animation is so cheap it borders on the offensive – jittery, off-model, moving unnaturally, you name it. The exception is the OP, which is actually really awesome and only serves to underscore the failing of the rest of the show. Nakano Keiya is to be blamed for the poor anime character designs, which is all the more unforgivable given how lovely their originals are.

I’ve talked about this one too much already – it’s bad, don’t watch it unless you have an irrational over-attachment to the games. 0/10 would drop again.

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Dai Shogun – Great Revolution

I’m actually stunned, lost for words. Was that really a commercially-produced anime I just watched, something that people would actually consider putting on TV? Scratch that, this isn’t even good enough to belong on the internet. Gonzo should be sending director Watanabe Takashi and the staff at A.C.G.T a thank you letter for taking the heat off Blade & Soul for the worst anime of the season award. How did Dai Shogun wrestle that title of dishonour from Blade & Soul? Well, the biggest failing point of this anime is the animation, or lack thereof. It’s actually legitimately impressive just how far these staff were willing and able to go to avoid animating anything – almost every single cut features some kind of animation shortcut and I think they pulled out every trick in the book here. You’ve got static characters with moving mouths, a wobbling effect on drawings to imitate movement, shaky-cam to cover up the fact that nothing is happening, pivoting and sliding cels across the scene in lieu of animation (this is a technique I wholly blame Trigger for). I can deal with some cheats, but this is taken to a level that no anime fan should accept. You could probably actually count the number of drawings used in this episode. How did they have two animation directors!!

And to make matters worse, the story and script doesn’t even begin to make amends for the under production. The best jokes of the show are juvenile and moronic and rely on every character being remarkably stupid to work. And that’s if it’s a comedy – it certainly can’t be action and there doesn’t seem to be a story beyond the main character wanting to fight everyone he sees (such a shame he’s physically debilitated by his framerate!). Unfunny, pointless, drivel – all of these words fit Dai Shogun quite nicely. The one positive is that the art and design work isn’t absolutely atrocious – if you just looked at screencaps you might think it looked pretty decent. IT’S NOT.

I can’t work out how this travesty occurred; Watanabe Takashi  is an experienced director who has overseen competent anime in the past, and the animation production is shared by J.C Staff and A.C.G.T, both with a proven track record of at least not being absolute trash. And yet the end result is absolute trash. But the biggest mystery is how Dai Satou got involved in all this. Dai Satou has been one of the better writers for original anime over the years and has always seemed to want to maintain his creative integrity. I actually didn’t believe he was working as series composition on this anime until I actually went and double checked it on the official website. He doesn’t seem to have had any positive influence over it. I don’t think anyone had a positive influence over this annoying and horribly produced anime. I couldn’t even make it right to the end of the episode (although I got close).

Please, don’t let them get away with this! Switch off to Dai Shogun!

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I enjoyed the first episode of Ping Pong for its rough, esoteric artistry and the fresh approach Yuasa has taken for presenting an anime. Actually, I guess you could say I appreciated it more than I enjoyed it. While it wasn’t boring by any stretch, it did lack a certain ‘hook’ or gravitas that I really need to get me genuinely invested in the show. Well, episode 2 changed all that, and episodes 3, 4 and 5 all rode that wave of change to make ping pong my anime of the season. In fact it’s probably more than that; You know it’s anime-love when you have this militant desire to make everyone else like it. Spring has come for this anime fan! I thought I’d better stop pestering my friends about dropping it and just let me passion out through a blog post instead.

Forget Everything You’ve Learned About Anime

Ping Pong’s success is hampered by the insular and cannibalistic nature of the anime industry. In terms of art styles, design work, and even the way things are storyboarded, there is very little variation. Sure, an anime girl might have larger eyebrows or different coloured hair, but they’re always recognisable as an ‘anime girl’. Anime is a medium, but most of the time we actually think of it as a genre – there is a look and a set of unspoken rules about what kind of stories should be told and how they should play out. This came about because most people in the industry are inspired by works from within the medium. How many light novel’s that get made into anime are written by otaku? It’s this feedback loop that has trapped both producers and fans. Most otaku expect to see “anime”, rather than “animation from Japan”.

Ping Pong is one of those rare cases of commercial Japanese animation that isn’t trying to be ‘anime’. It’s just trying to be Ping Pong. Sure, the characters are drawn with rough, lazy-seeming lines, and they’re definitely not colourful or attractive. They don’t stay on model all the time; and sometimes they move in unnatural ways. But who said anime has to do any of that? Who said Japanese animation has to be cleanly drawn, detailed, and stick to model sheets? Most of the time people who say Ping Pong looks ‘bad’ are actually saying that it doesn’t meet their expectations as an anime. It’s unfortunate that anime are punished when they try something too different – I know Aku no Hana suffered the same fate, but turned out to be easily one of the best anime of the year.

I don’t believe that comparing the way Ping Pong looks to other anime can be a valid criticism. There’s nothing inherently wrong with looking weird, rough and ‘uncute’. If everyone could cleanse their palate and enjoy Ping Pong for what it is, they might see some beauty and raw creativity in the messy expressionistic style of Ping Pong.

The style

I’ve just about exhausted all my synonyms for rough and wobbly in my discussions on Ping Pong so far, because that’s really the best way to describe its overall visual composure. The linework is skittishly wavy and the characters often have a mishapen bearing to them – but don’t mistake this for sloppy production values; the loose wonkiness of Ping Pong is deliberately realised. Even the background art has been drawn with the same scraggly linework to deliver a unified style.

On the one hand, I’m sure there’s a degree of trying to look different for the sake of standing out, but on the other hand, I think one of benefits of this it allows the animation to be looser and more expressive in different ways. Without strict character models and the need for smooth, neat lines, animators are more free to deliver raw expression through their animation. And that’s not a sign of a lazy production – it’s just a choice to undercook the animation to preserve more of its original flavour. The OP is a perfect example of this, showcasing some really astounding work from some of the best animators ever, all clearly done in their own unique manner. Its exhilarating, fresh and technically impressive in a way that a more strictly produced anime could never allow for.

Another point to the look is the lack of highlights/shading in the animation and the simplicity of some elements of the designs – especially the hair. The lack of highlights is becoming more common in anime and it gives the animation a very crisp, clean and modern look. The risk is that things can look flat without shading. Ping Pong avoids that trap with its strong use of perspective and warped posing that fills out the shots in a 3 dimensional way, and the lack of shading detail helps the series focus on the expressions and mannerisms of the characters. On top of that, there’s a lack of post-processing like lighting effects or filters (like the opposite of Ufotable or GoHands). The Ping Pong visuals are crisp and focused – I love it!

I think it’s fair to say that there’s more of a focus on presentation over animation in Ping Pong, and this is where Yuasa’s monumental effort of storyboarding and scripting every episode of the series comes in. Since the schedule of this anime isn’t so great (as in, it wasn’t in preproduction for that long), Yuasa has apparently been kicking out an episode storyboard once every 10 days. It usually takes 2+ weeks to complete a storyboard, so it’s quite a feat. It’s definitely a radical measure for a director to do every storyboard for a TV-anime (I can’t think of any other cases), but it means that he has a direct hand in the way every scene in Ping Pong plays out. As a result, Ping Pong feels tightly crafted in terms of its pace and visual presentation. The coherent vision he has mapped out from start to finish also imbues the storytelling with a focus and sense of purpose that anime often loses. Every scene counts, and every shot is perfectly in-tune with the Ping Pong style.

There are plenty of animation shortcuts in Ping Pong, and there are moments that seem cheap, but the style that Yuasa and Nobutake Ito have created here is probably its greatest asset.

The OP

I mentioned the OP before, and it’s certainly the animation highlight of anything from this season. It’s directed, storyboarded, and AD’d by none other than Shinya Ohira, easily one of most technically brilliant and fascinating animators to have ever lived. Ohira only really works on cinema anime these past few years, so his involvement here is clearly a sign of respect for Yuasa (he also did key animation on Yuasa’s Mind Game uncredited). He brings along kindred spirit Shinji Hashimoto and other top expressive animators including Hokuto Sakiyama, Tomoyuki Niho, and Yasunori Miyazawa to help create this impressive piece of work.

As expected, Shinya Ohira’s segment was the highlight – pure, unadulterated animation that strongly harkens back to his career’s earlier focus on ultra-realism but with a fervid edge of expressiveness that his work is now known for.

Shinji Hashimoto’s animation is also superb – you can feel the sense of power and momentum from his running sequence, as though it’s trying to charge right out of the screen!

Like he did with Azura’s Wrath episode 11, Ohira took this opportunity to let the talent of some top-grade animators speak for itself, to great effect! With the amount of drawings in this, I’m not surprised it didn’t get finished on time (it doesn’t play until the third episode). The OP was also improved going into the fourth episode, so it’s clear Ohira doesn’t consider it finished yet. It’s also perhaps another sign that the schedule on Ping Pong isn’t the best.

Shout-outs

Yasunori Miyzawa

Yasunori Miyzawa has been a major contributor to the animation of Ping Pong. He’s been a highly regarded animator for some time now, but has maintained a prolific workload in TV-anime unlike some of his lofty peers. He’s also been involved with Yuasa’s works for some time now, including all of his other noitamina series and being an associate animator on his Kick-heart movie. So it was pretty clear that he would show up here.

Sure enough, he’s credited with key animation in the OP, episode one and episode 3. He actually did animation in episode 4 as well, but it looks like they stuffed up his name in the credits, showing  宮沢康則 instead of 宮沢康紀… or was this intentional for some reason?

His animation in episode 4, a key part of the showdown between Ryuuichi and Wenge, was definitely one of the more interesting beats in the ep. Even though it was very limited, it was interesting to see the looming, monstrous portrayal of Ryuuichi, tapping into the psychology of the match without the need for cutaways and obvious narration.

Miyzawa is definitely a major asset to the show, and I hope he keeps working on it. He’s actually involved with the other noitamina show this season, Nanana’s Buried Treasure, having done genga for 2 of the episodes so far. Glad his talented drawing arm is being kept busy!

BahiJD

BahiJD’s next big break after his work on Space Dandy was supposed to grace Japanese television screens with episode 3 of Ping Pong, but it wasn’t to be.

Bahi is a young Austrian animator and a newcomer in the Japanese industry. He still lives in Austria and works with other staff over the internet. He is very passionate about anime and works very hard to make each of his cuts memorable. His work on Space Dandy episode 1 was actually very impressive, all the more so for someone so inexperienced in the business. Here’s a part of it on sakugabooru. After finishing his work on this, he moved on to his animation for the 3rd episode of Ping Pong, for which it seemed he was doing a whopping 20 cuts. That translated to basically the last climactic two minutes of the episode – a great chance for his work to really be put on a pedestal.

But when the episode came out, there was no noticeably Bahi animation, and nothing notable from the final scenes. Then we see that his name wasn’t in the credits! An avid twitter user, he made a number of tweets suggesting that something had gone wrong with his work on Ping Pong in terms of meeting the schedule. It’s hard to say exactly what the problem was – perhaps he couldn’t finish his animation before his deadline, or maybe the deadline was miscommunicated thanks to him not being Japanese. But his animation didn’t make it in, and clearly they had to scramble replacement cuts together from somewhere. Although it didn’t ruin the episode, this is definitely an unfortunate stuff up! I hope it doesn’t hamper his career in Japan.

After the episode, he put rough concept versions of his cuts online, and I’ve gotta say it looks like he could have made them really great. If he had got them finished and in the episode, it definitely would have been awesome.

Eunyoung Choi

Eunyoung Choi is a female Korean animator who has really made a name for herself working with Yuasa on his projects from Kemonozume right through to Kick-heart. She is an accomplished animator with a budding career in directing. She handled episode 9 of Space Dandy recently, and, unless she’s busy on another future project, I wouldn’t be surprised to see her put the director’s hat on sometime for Ping Pong.

In the mean time, she has provided key animation for episode 2 and also did the ending animation by herself. Although it’s obviously rotoscoped from video footage, the ED is still visually delightful and would have taken a lot of work! Since there are no other credits, I guess she shot the footage herself or directed it and came up with what to record. I’m not really sure how walking, driving and then looking at a bird relate to ping pong, but it’s definitely pretty.

Flash Animation

The show’s use of flash animation mostly feels unnecessary and included for the sake of trying something new. Even if it does save costs for those shots of a whole bunch of people playing table tennis, I’d rather miss out on those scenes than see awkwardly placed full animation mixed in with the limited 2D animation. Also, since it’s artificially in-betweened, flash animation always moves unnaturally smoothly, and you can feel the ‘joints’ on the character. Adding to this, in Ping Pong, it has thicker, bolder lines without the same wobbly look that the rest of the animation has. It seems pretty jarring and pointless, but I guess it could have been done worse.

The Music

I didn’t notice this in the first episode, but the music for this show is actually awesome! Several times I’ve noticed just how much the music added to the energy of this show, to the point where it’s actually a vital component of why I enjoy it. It’s handled by Kensuke Ushio, one man techno artist also known as Agraph. He actually did a really cool track for Space Dandy called ‘Love you, Dandy’. Perhaps Yuasa discovered him when working on his Dandy episode? However or whoever found him, he was right man for the job. The Ping Pong soundtrack doesn’t feel like ‘just another anime OST’ – it’s genuinely fresh and invigourating.

Conclusion

There’s a lot to love about Ping Pong. Beyond what I’ve discussed here, the show has strong, unique characterisation. Overall, I would call it my anime of the season! It might not look right sitting next to other anime, but Ping Pong should be celebrated for trying something new and succeeding.

The next time I see girls playing trading card games I’m bolting! Wixoss starts of innocently enough humming along as a story of cute girls playing cards with a side helping of “please buy these cards – look how cute they are!”. But just when you start leaning back and soaking up the pleasant moe feelings it pulls you, gagging and struggling, in a different direction: by episode 3 you’re well and truly caught up in a soul crushing emotional maelstrom of forbidden love, loneliness, forlorn sadism and nihilism. It’s unrelentingly melodramatic as it throws each of its main characters into the fray and forces us to watch as their lives spiral out of control. It’s tough viewing but it’s like an imminent train wreck you just can’t look away from. If you thought Wixoss was just pretty young girls sitting around, drinking tea, fondling each others breasts and playing the occasional card game, you can think again. And if train wrecks are your thing, I fully suggest you strap in and join me for the ride. Selector Infector Wixoss will be two seasons long, so it’s not too late to jump on board the pain train!

I love this teenage angst stuff

Yep, I admit it, I’m a sucker for sappy teenage angsty stuff. I think it’s a condition that stems all the way back from my early years of watching Buffy the Vampire slayer, but it’s a guilty pleasure that’s stayed with me for life. Unfortunately it’s been a while since I’ve found an anime this heavy with it. I think the last time I was this revved up about the awry feelings of twisted young girls was Mai Hime. Back then my heart bled for Shizuru and her patently unfulfilled lesbian love for Natsuki, and for Mai’s crumbling soul beneath her happy facade. Now, with Wixoss, I can actually hear my heart cracking whenever Yuzuki starts the self-destructive talk of the love for her brother that can’t come true, and I’m glued to the screen with shock when Hitoe’s simple dream of making friends is crushed. Meanwhile, the main character seems to be harboring some strong nihilistic tendencies beneath her good girl front, while her talking card, Tama, is the cutest little bundle of adrenaline-junky sadism you’ll ever find. I know it’s all over-the-top and definitely bordering on silly, but the potency of these raw, naive feelings still guts me, and I absolutely love the unstable, flawed characterisation that hangs over all of the girls. As you might have gathered, I’m totally ensnared by Wixoss, and it’s the only other anime this season, alongside Ping Pong, that I hang out every week to see.

Incest is best

Probably the biggest hook that this show has stuck into me is Yuzuki’s totally obsessive crush on her brother. Her actual brother; none of that not-blood-related cop out crap. It’s not because I have boner for the idea of two people with the same mother getting it on, not at all. The reason I love stories like this is because they’re forbidden love. It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book of how to make the audience have feelings, but it works on me every time. If you’ve ever experienced unrequited love, you should be able to sympathise with poor little Yuzuki. Sure, loving her brother is creepy and not really the best idea, but love is illogical and notoriously unwilling to compromise for the people who are infected with misdirected feelings. Beyond all reason and responsibility, Yuzuki is bound by her aching heart to wish for the impossible – a normal relationship with her brother. Of all the wishes seen so far hers is the one with the most at stake – wixoss is the only way she can make it happen.

I don’t know if I support her wish, but I sympathise with her the most of all the girls.

Welcome to Fight Club

The main character of the series is another interesting piece of work. She’s probably the most atypical character in the show in the sense that she’s a girl drifting through life without a sense of purpose, almost detached from her own existence. Once she’s thrust into the combative arena of Wixoss, she realises she has nothing to lose, and she even starts to find a rare flicker of joy in the heat of battle. Her motivations for battling with the dreams of girls hanging in the balance is purely that it’s fun. I can’t really remember another female anime character with this kind of nonchalant, nihilistic bent, and it’s kind of exciting to see how far down this path she’s going to go by the end of the series.

Episode 7 was good

I watched episode 7 yesterday morning and it delivered all the things I love about this show. Yuzuki is wandering the streets looking for girls to start battles with, Ruuko is finally goaded into doing battle with Aki-lucky’s utterly evil and deeply perceptive colleague. While previous battles have lacked suspense, this one had a great energy and was probably the high point of the episode. This was partly because the dynamic between Ruuko and Iona really electric – they’re both a match for each other and they’re both in it for the thrill of the hunt. I see a really fun rivalry brewing here. Feeding off this energy, Tama’s thirst for battle was more irrepressible than ever!

She was so fierce this episode that sparks could’ve been bursting from the sides of my computer monitor. I could feel the heat of her excitement!

Another contributing factor was that Hiroshi Tomioka did a significant amount of drawings for it. His effect animation made things visually exhilarating, while the music and sound effects also held up their end to produce a bold and stimulating action sequence. The importance of the effect animation can’t be overlooked in Wixoss; since the card girls don’t actually make physical contact, there’s no actual choreography. It’s up to the flashy sparks, flames and beams of light to make things fun.

The episode ends on a really sharp cliffhanger, with a resurgent Akira taunting Yuzuki and Ruuko into an inevitable showdown in an abandoned warehouse. By the look of it, Akira is now off the rails with no hope of return. She was an intimidating figure before, but I expect to see her reach new levels of psychopathy now that her pride has been ripped to shreds. Her finally ‘Aki-raki’ of the episode literally sent shivers down my spine!

So I just watched Selector Infected Wixoss 8 and I think I now need professional help. 10 years from now you might find me in some creepy, out-of-the-way mental asylum for the irredeemably damaged screaming “NO YUZUKI. STOP, JUST STOP!!”. But I’ll at least finish this blog post before I admit myself.

I mentioned last week that watching Wixoss was like being a morbidly curious onlooker of a train crash about to happen. Well now the train crashed actually happened and I’ve gone from perverse curiosity to abject horror as I’m lift staring at the twisted, smoldering remains. And let’s not be coy about this, those remains are Yuzuki. Poor Yuzuki! After taking a backseat last week to the fall of Aki-out-of-lucky, she is thrust back to center stage from the very start of the episode. The first half of the episode was unsettling with its foreboding tone as Yuzuki ran around raising bad-outcome flags left right and center (see above screencap), and the latter half of the episode bought her storyline to a head, pitting her in a make or break selector battoru. At this point in the episode I was seriously panicking. I expected to suffer alongside Yuzuki for a good few more episodes as she slowly grappled with her soul-crushing tainted love, and yet all of a sudden there we were, on the brink of her wish coming true! Wixoss is proving to be full of surprises, and the breakneck pace at which it throws its characters into turmoil is truly amazing.

I’ve gotta say, I’m not usually the biggest fan of Mari Okada’s scripts, but she has really nailed it here. I think Wixoss is suited to her writing style because it’s under no pretense of being a nuanced, realistic drama, so she doesn’t have to pull any punches in packing in as much emotion as possible. But I really enjoyed the sense of doubt hanging over Yuzuki as she pursued her goal. At face value she had pulled herself together, taken command of her own destiny and was working confidently towards achieving her dream, but there was the nagging sense that she was making a mistake. We the audience had no reason to believe that her wish would not come true, but the episode still made us feel that something was off. It was a great way to maintain suspense.

And then there’s the outcome – goddamn! It all makes so much sense now! Why  they’re called ‘Eternal’ Girls, why Yuzuki’s LRIG was trying to stop her, and more. It’s actually an obvious development when you think about it, but It caught me off guard. So Yuzuki is now no longer herself – she’s split between being an LRIG and being a placeholder wish-fulfillment Yuzuki who will dubiously enact her fantasies with her brother. It’s clear that she won’t ever get to experience her wish, and, in the ‘be-careful-what-you-wish-for’ spirit, she has also dragged her brother into a toxic relationship. Seriously, it’s like these girls haven’t seen Madoka. Losing is probably better than winning in the never-ending selector war.

I think this show is going to take the direction of Ruuko taking up the cause of ending the whole selector infected thing. Her lack of a wish might mean she’s the only one who can ever truly ‘win’. It’s going to be interesting to see how it plays out, and I really hope Yuzuki’s storyline is continued somehow!

(laughs)

I really feel like Ping Pong raised the bar to new heights with its latest offering

Ping Pong presents a surging, heaving swell of grudges, lifelong dreams, responsibilities, love, passion,  and pride being stirred up by its entire cast, just waiting to break into uninhibited conflict. Although there have been minor clashes along the way, for example the upsets of Wenge vs Kazuma and Peco vs Sakuma, so far these motivations have mostly peacefully coexisted. Kazuma has been devotedly honing his skills and shouldering the ever increasing burden of redeeming his family name; Wenge has cast his pride aside and has put himself back to the hard work of training up; Peco has rekindled his childhood dream to make gold at the Olympics and is on an extreme up-skill regime; and Smile is silently honing his talent and reconciling his own reasons for winning. And it’s not just the players, the coaches behind them have their own hangups they’re fighting for. Exploring all these characters and what they’ve put on the line with ping pong has been the goal of this anime so far, and there’s an intensifying sense that something is brewing. Things are starting to gain a direction – they’re on a course for collision. Ping Pong has has had suspense and drama all throughout, but this episode sharply brings into focus the fact that the true meaning of the show will all be in the final meeting of these players across the net.

The episode also puts something else under the spotlight – that the core of this series is the friendship and inevitable rivalry between Smile and Peco. The other characters certainly flesh it out and explore the themes of what motivates people, but at the end of the day they’re more of a side-story. The narrative of Ping Ping has made itself clear – Smile will face Peco in an important career match and have to make a choice between listening to his coach and his friends and do whats necessary to win, or standing aside to let Peco go on towards his goal. The parallel’s drawn between Smile and his coach were undeniable, as was the flag of Peco having his leg wrapped. History will repeat itself, and Peco will be injured when he’s matched with Smile. That choice facing Smile is the crux of this series and the morale of the story will be about the meaning of winning. What I can’t predict is what Smile will choose: to win or to lose. If I had to guess at this point it would be ‘to win’, simply because it would feel too predictable otherwise.

• We’re seeing real pay-off here from Yuasa’s hands-on, DIY approach to writing/storyboarding each episode. Far from getting tired, he seems to be improving with every episode. This week felt like it had more visual depth and precise pacing than ever before. Every scene had a bite of humour, emotion or tension to it, and there was a pervasive atmosphere throughout. It felt like there were less incongruous moments of animation and more coherency to the rough art style. Combined with the sleek, emotive music, the show’s production was punchier than ever, and as close to beauty as it has ever been. I can now put my concerns about the schedule aside, it’s kept up. But I am hoping to see some animator big guns to come out for the final matches of the show

• I thought this was interesting -this is the color script for the first episode. Every episode has its own color script and the intention is to guide the flow of color throughout the episode. Masaaki Yuasa’s works have always had a strong focus on color and this is definitely a major part of that. I think it’s rare for an anime to use this pre-production step, but it seems to be a signature of his. The color scripts for Kick Heart were posted online on the kickstarter page https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/production-ig/masaaki-yuasas-kick-heart/posts/330918. As with Kick Heart, they would have been painted, based on Yuasa’s storyboard, by the series art director and close collaborator Kevin Aymeric. He recently gained attention for drawing every single background in Yuasa’s episode of Space Dandy (episode 9) himself. It’s clear that he’s a creative force to be reckoned with and a valuable addition to the Yuasa ‘team’.

Aymeric signature – the ping pong building

Disclaimer: This post does not contain any trace of spoilers; any resemblance to actual spoilers is purely coincidental and unintended. This post may cause all-knowing manga readers to violently shake their head and laugh, so please take pity on us anime plebs! Also, this is brought to you by discussions I’ve had with a friend.

I can now safely say that when I first started watching Shingeki no Kyoujin I had completely the wrong idea about the show. With gleeful ignorance I took the show at face value as a shounen anime about the struggle of little people to avoid being eaten by big lumbering, hungry people. It seemed like a simple but effective story. But it’s time to throw that view out the window, because it’s now clear that the show is anything but simple. In fact, it’s turning more and more into the animated version of Lost with every episode. If you pay close enough attention there enough questions hanging in the air that it can make anyone’s head spin. It’s no longer just an action series, but a sophisticated tapestry of hidden human motives and mysteries woven over a backdrop of a fractured society. Here’s a taste of some of the questions on our plate at the moment:

• Who built the walls and when?
• What are the titans, where did they come from, and is there more to their end-goal than just hording people in their stomachs?
• What is the significance of Eren’s Father and his magical medicine in the basement?
• Is there some significance to Mikasa’s heritage and is there an explanation to her preternatural strength?
• What motivates the human titans?
• What are the identities of the armoured titan and the behemoth?
• What is with the religious groups and their worshipping of the walls?

Having so many questions like this lingering around makes me really excited in the potential of this story to go on for a long while and get to some really interesting places. I really have to hand it to the author of this manga: he really has a handle on his storytelling. And what I like about it particular is that it has unfolded so organically into the complex beast it is today. Whenever we meet new characters, the breadth and depth of the story takes another step. He clearly has the story mapped out pretty well in his head.

No Shit it Was Annie!

So let’s get to business. We have questions, and now it’s our job as fans to come up with answers, right? I just finished watching episode episode 23 and that finally cleared the air on the identity of our lethal female Titan. We should be happy that we got some answers, but I think every man, woman and child had reached the conclusion that it was Annie already – it certainly didn’t come as a shock when she came out of the closet (although I loved Armin’s plan to out her). I mean, Annie was conveniently with the Military Police, shared the female Titan’s agility and combat prowess, and even looked just like her.

But Who is The Armored Titan?

But the burning issue for me now is putting a name to the armored titan and the behemoth (and doing it without the aid of spoilers).

Luckily, I think there have been several hints dropped about this. Let’s rewind back to when Annie first showed up in her titan shoes. This was episode 17. She showed up and killed some people near Armin before knocking him down.

Importantly, she spared Armin’s life – a key decision that would come back to bite her later. While we thought at the time this was done simply because she was only interested in Eren and he wasn’t perceived as a threat, I think it was likely an unusual moment of compassion from Annie.

The interesting stuff comes after this. All of a sudden Reiner shows up and joins Armin in following the titan. His reaction to Armin telling him that she is not an abnormal type but a human Titan is surprisingly intense – he looks concerned rather than surprised. Armin worked out too much, too quickly.

Now Jean shows up. When Armin mentions that the female Titan is searching for Eren, they all realise that they had been told Eren was in a different part of the formation – they all had deliberate misinformation. Armin then thinks out loud about where he would be and Reiner presses him on wear he would be.

Armin tells him that Eren would likely be in the center-rear. This is when Jean decides they should slow down and attack the female titan. His motives for this, which include a flashback, seem genuine. Meanwhile,  Reiner still looks concerned. The three of them attack. Interestingly, the female titan slows down for them.

And I don’t think it’s tired! They take the chance and attack. Armin and Jean and knocked down. This is when Armin lies to the female Titan and tells her that Eren is dead. She seems to stop, maybe believing him. Now Reiner suddenly launches a one-man attack straight for the neck, a suspiciously suicidal undertaking. He is grabbed by her and she covers his face. Note that at this stage, with her strength, she could easily have killed him.

But then the impossible happens – he explodes from her palm unharmed. An heroic escape by all appearances. But then she gets back on her feet. And she now seemed to have a new sense of purpose in her stride. Reiner says ‘she must be running away’ – which sounds like bullshit. Meanwhile Armin notices, to himself this time, that she is heading right for the center-rear.

So it’s pretty clear what happened. Annie slowed down when she noticed Reiner was chasing her down, perhaps to see if she had something to signal to her. Reiner jumped in at the appropriate time to be caught by her and then tell her where Eren is located before being allowed to escape. In my view, Reiner is definitely the armored Titan.

As For the Behemoth..

Now, who is the Behemoth? My only guess at this is based on a conversation back in episode 3, which further cements Reiner’s identity. Armin asks Reiner and Bertholdt where they are both from. Reiner and Bertholdt both seem close and they say they came from the same mountain village which was conveniently totally wiped out. That’s all I have, but maybe it’s Bertholdt..

It’s clear that there’s a lot of foreshadowing and hints in early episodes of Shingeki, and I definitely recommend giving them a rewatch with later events in mind. I’m confident I’ve worked out some of this stuff, now I’ve gotta start looking at some of the other questions. A fans work is never done..

Please share your own thoughts and theories but NO SPOILERS PLEASE.

It’s that time of the week again! Before the next episode in the series sneaks up on us tonight, I’m going to try lay out my thoughts and deductions on the mysteries of Shingeki no Kyoujin. Once again, a lot of credit goes to my friends and our discussions about the show. And note that this post contains no spoilers from the manga, which I haven’t read. Any manga spoilers that appear in the comments will be violently deleted!

So last time I’m pretty confident we worked out the identity of the armored Titan, and at least have one lead for the man behind the mighty Behemoth. I’m willing to lock in Reiner as the armored Titan, so I’ll uphold that as an assumption for this post. But let’s just leave Bertholdt-the-behemoth in the conspiracy corner for now, at least until we get some meatier evidence to throw at him. With these questions now more or less under control, I’ve been turning my attention to the following topics.

They Invaded

It was stated that anyone who has been in the military for more than 5 years can be trusted. Why? Because the human titans almost certainly came from outside the wall the day the Behemoth broke in. The theory goes that the Behemoth and the Armored Titan tag-teamed to breach the wall that day, and then transformed back to human form and, along with Annie, donned a peasant outfit and evacuated into Wall Rose disguised as normal citizens during the chaos.

Annie and Reiner both have question marks over their past, with no friends, family or old acquaintances to speak of. So that definitely points to them entering in this way. I’d say they entered the wall with a definite mission to infiltrate the military. Both of them showed natural capabilities in training, but did learn how to use maneuver gear there (meaning they couldn’t use it before most likely). We know Annie and Reiner infiltrated the military, but what about the Behemoth? Well we can safely assume that the Behemoth can use maneuver gear as well, since he must have used that to scale the wall in order to appear on the other side for the second attack.

That means that all three are in the military and all three went through in the same year of training (which also supports Bertholdt as the Behemoth). Annie and Reiner were the two skilled warriors, whereas the behemoth is probably less of fighter and more of a tactician/thinker – he certainly has the imposing presence of a leader.

Eren is Different

As the main character, Eren gets special privileges to be different. He is a titan shifter, but he is not the same as the other three. The other three came from outside the walls, are clearly aligned against human civilization, and there are hints that they are naturally titans. Hints such as the fact that normal titans do not attack them, and that they appear to have the ability to communicate with them as well (Annie screaming for help when she was trapped in the forest).

Eren isn’t one of them, and his ability to shift into titan form is clearly related to whatever was going on with his father and his daddy needles:

This works out through one of two ways:

• Eren’s Father went outside the wall, learned about the titans and gave Eren this ability in the hope that having humans with the ability to transform could save humanity. (more likely)
• Eren’s Father went outside the wall and found Eren there, and bought him back to raise him as a human rather than let him be a titan. (less likely)

He may be different, but when the other titans found out about his existence, they clearly wanted him on their side. Annie’s assault during the recon mission had the single aim of capturing Eren. She bit him out of his titan corpse and tried to carry him away to safety, before Mikasa and Levi awesomely got in the way.

If they wanted to capture Eren they either:

• Thought he could be convinced to fight for them.
  If they thought this, then that would mean that they do have a motivation for destroying the walls that’s not just KILL THE HUMANS! There must be some valid cause they believe in which they could convey to Eren. This could be very interesting.
• Didn’t want him as an enemy but couldn’t kill him for some reason, either due to a moral code about killing other titans, or because they were instructed not to.
  I doubt they see Eren as too much of a threat. With a coordinated attack, they could quite easily deal with him (especially because Annie and Reiner know his human form and could probably just cut his throat while he’s sleeping or something). But perhaps they were asked to capture him by someone who wanted him out of harms way – that would have to be Eren’s father, who is suspiciously missing.
• Wanted to question him and find out how he could be a titan.
  I don’t think this would be the case. If they want to know about the military, Eren would be a poor choice for interrogation, and I think they know that he doesn’t have much of an idea of how or why he has these abilities either.

Probably the single most telling thing about the capture plan is this:

When Annie fails to escape with Eren, she actually sheds a tear. As we all know, showing compassion or any emotion is highly unusual for Annie. At that moment I think she was clearly deeply saddened. Now, since last week established that Annie respects Eren, I think this suggests that Annie thought she was doing the right thing by capturing him.

What’s The Plan?

At this stage, this is probably the biggest question for me. The human Titans led an attack on the wall, not once, but twice. If all they wanted to do was to get in and infiltrate, then the once would have been enough. And similarly, if all they wanted to do was kill everyone and destroy humanity, they probably could have kept their attack up and done a lot more damage (although I guess they could be going for a more cautious, patient approach).

I said before that they likely have a righteous motive (from their view point anyway), but whatever their motive they clearly see normal humans as enemies or as expendables, because they allowed many tens of thousands of people to be killed by breaking the walls. This pretty clearly shows that there is something bigger at play here. I get the feeling their goal is to get to something in the very heart of the walls, something sacred to them. Perhaps this is also related to why we have the religious group among the humans who worship the walls. Could they be more than just bricks and mortar, could they have another purpose other than protecting humanity from titans?

So to summarise:

• The human titans, other than Eren, are probably naturally titan somehow.
• They have a motive that has more to it than just being evil bastards wanting to trample on the little people. They have something driving them which feels like the right thing from their perspective.
• Their aim is probably related to the walls, something in the center of the walls, and the origins of the walls and how humans came to be there.
• Eren’s titan abilities are the result of his father somehow, and is also related to what his father had in his basement.
• Eren’s father has gotta be still alive, and I get the feeling he is behind a lot of what is going on at the moment. One thought I have is that he may even be aligned with Annie, and was the one who wanted him retrieved from the military.

In my view, the question of ‘what motivates the human titans?’ is currently the single most pressing question facing fictional humanity, and it’s probably the hardest one to chew through right now as well. This is the WHY of Shingeki no Kyoujin, much more critical than the whos, wheres or whats of the world. It’s the most important question because I think the answer is also linked to all the other story elements underpinning the show – like the origins of the Titans, the whereabouts and significance of Eren’s father, and the wall itself.

I suggest we all keep this in mind as we watch the anime!

So  it’s been about an hour since I finished watching the first episode of Kill la Kill and the dizziness is just about cleared up. In a choppy, frenetic and dazzlingly colourful 20 minutes, the first episode of Kill la Kill has firmly placed the anime in the “What the hell did I just” watch genre. What I’ve yet to work out, is whether that’s a good thing or not.

On the one hand, this breed of whacky, irreverent and rapid-fire anime has produced some great titles over the years. There’s the new Cutie Honey, Excel Saga, Panty & Stocking, Kyousogiga, etc. – these all have a similar pace to them and were enjoyable. But on the other hand, there’s always a risk with this kind of anime that it will miss the mark and its hyper-activity will become tiring and monotonous instead of entertaining.

It’s often a fine line between fun and annoying. Both Panty & Stocking and Excel Saga dripped below that line sometimes, but they were rescued (mostly) by good gags and laugh-out-loud punchlines. Kill la Kill certainly wasn’t annoying, but it isn’t a comedy either. It’s not gonna make us laugh like Excel Saga, so it can’t rely on jokes as its main selling point. That means it’s going to need more than just fast-paced flashes of style to keep people hooked – it will need substance as well.

It’s obviously early days now, but I think Kill la Kill is caught between these two opposing forces – the attraction of style and the pull of substance. The first episode was probably intended to cram in as much as possible to make a big impact,  but the next few episodes will need to hit the pause button occasionally to flesh out the characters, the world and the story. I’m not saying it needs to have high-literature ambitions and become an intellectual masterpiece, but some simple gravitas of character to underpin the flambouyant look is something I’ll want.

As much as I love the company for its boisterous animation, I’ll be hoping that Trigger wants to tell a story with its animation.

I do have the sense that the anime will get a shift in tone to be a bit more serious and character driven. For a start, it’s 2 cour, and then this interview with scriptwriter Nakashima more or less confirms it:

Q: So with this major directional change, what were the effects on the story?
N: Initially we were making a battle-manga type show, but it changed to character drama. The battle-show planned for a complete story ended up becoming a work where regular characters’ development/drama will be thoroughly explored. The work coincidentally became much more interesting from there.

So beware of assuming that the feel of the first episode is all there is to Kill la Kill!

But is it at least winning on style?

Well, it’s not losing. This episode had an interesting production, which is what you should have been expecting from Trigger. And by interesting I mean it had elements I liked, and elements I didn’t. It was a little all over the place in an appealing amateurish kind of way. In the TV-anime industry today, Trigger are the antithesis to the smooth and pedantic Kyoto Animation, and I appreciate that free approach.

This is enhanced tenfold when Hiroyuki Imaishi sticks himself at the helm of a project. Say goodbye to the soft subtleties of Little Witch Academia and welcome back the exaggerated anarchy of Imaishi and his like-minded henchmen, Akira Amemiya and Sushio. The animation is fast, furious and lovingly limited.

One thing I didn’t like about the show was how much its style was a replica of Gurren Lagann, with dashes of Panty & Stocking here and there. It was just much too obvious that Imaishi liked what he did with Gurren Lagann and just wanted to do more. This anime is supposed to be Trigger’s breakout so I think Imaishi should made the effort to impress with a fresh visual flare. We’ve all seen this look before.

Kill la Kill does have some tricks of its own, but it’s style is largely built on Imaishi’s loaded war chest of visual cliches.

Imaishi’s storyboard worked really well in some places and not in others. I really appreciated its density in some scenes, particularly all the everyday-life stuff around the city and at school. I think it’s fair to say that a lot more information and humour is crammed into these shots that you would normally expect from a TV anime.

I also like the jagged angles he applies to his scenes here, and it’s probably the biggest stylistic distinction between this and Gurren Lagann. Almost every shot in this anime is framed very confrontationally, skewed towards a target. This fits in well with its hot-blooded battle theme. But I do think this may have been used too much, to the point where every shot felt emphasised. And of course, if you emphasise everything, you end up emphasising nothing at all.

Perhaps my biggest problem though was that he just had too many cuts for my liking. Just when I felt I was enjoying a scene it was chopped away into something else. He was clearly aiming to keep a running pace with this episode, but it was too much. I guess the problems with the production for Kill la Kill episode 1 can be summarised as ‘trying to cram in too much of a good thing’.

The Designs

Sushio created the character designs for this one, and I think his talent shines through quite well. I thought this was his first big gig as original character designer, but apparently he did the designs for Engage Planet Kiss Dum, which I know nothing about. Either way, this is a big break for him, and being the character designer and chief animation director on Kill la Kill is a big step in his career. There’s an interesting interview with him about it here.

Interestingly, the anime designs are purposefully inconsistent in their style. Usually anime, especially modern anime, will give characters a similar facial structure and eye style. But here, there’s quite a bit of variation. Actually there’s sort of two strains, there’re the cool ones on the right, and the more cute and silly ones on the left- which seem to be the ordinary folk of the city. There are a lot of characters, and they all stand out well with a nice design.

The highlight for me is, as it should be, the heroine, Ryuuko Matoi. I’m not 100% behind some of the costume design choices, but I love her face and her hair. She carries herself with effortless swag and emits a ‘cool’ aura. But when her badass demeanor is compromised she can be frighteningly cute.

I’m so glad I got a 1080p version just to see that adorable blush in high-res. It’s great that they seem to have crafted a strong, hot-blooded heroine with sex appeal AND a lovely shoujo side. Ryuuko Matoi has got the lot.

Key Animation

The Key Animation was really good this episode. While I wouldn’t say there were any scenes that blew me away, there was plenty to like. The fight sequences had enough gusto with a mix of fluid choreography, and dramatic still shots while the day-to-day occurrences at school and on the streets adopted a playful limited animation approach, cramming in as many facial expressions and gesticulation as the framecount will allow. Going back to the two different ‘looks’ to the character designs – it’s almost seems as though Mako and her family will be the characters to get the comical limited animation treatment, while Ryuuko and her rivals will remain more smooth and composed!

One thing I really appreciated about the animation were some of the gags they managed to slip in. Just by the way they animated some moments made me laugh.

Hiroyuki Imaishi worked on the episode as a Key Animator, and I dare say Sushio had his work cut out for him correcting as Animation Director. I expect there will be some big Sushio and Yoh Yoshinori cuts coming up in the future for us Sakuga fans to look forward to, but for now the rank and file Trigger animators are doing a stellar job at keeping it lively and fun. Actually, speaking of the Trigger staff, the best thing about the credits for the episode is that it included all 5 of the inexperienced animators that worked on Little Witch Academia to be trained up. It’s heartening to see that they have all stayed on and have been taken under Trigger’s wing! Keep your eye on these guys!

I should also mention the use of CG in the episode. It was contributed by Sanzigen, a company that focuses on creating 3DCG animation. Sanzigen sits alongside Trigger and Order in the holding firm Ultra Super Pictures. All three of these companies collaborated on the anime Black Rock Shooter, which I wrote about here. It was in BRS that Sanzigen matured its limited 3DCG animation approach – the CG characters in the fight sequences were made to move more in line with 2D TV-animation by selectively dropping frames from the render. Imaishi helped them craft this limited CG animation for the anime’s action sequences.

Given Imaishi’s involvement with them, it does make sense that they would make an appearance in Kill la Kill. Fortunately, most of the CG is inoffensive, because it’s not models of characters, but 3D backgrounds. That makes shots like this one far more achievable and means the animators can focus on the character acting or choreography. There were also a few times when they used 3DCG for people, but nothing that stood out enough to ruin my immersion! Honestly, despite my love for 2D animation, I think there is merit to what Sanzigen are doing – and they’re certainly good at it.

Wrap-up

Perhaps the best thing about studio Trigger is not their mark of quality, but their charisma as creators. So far, Kill la Kill has served as a platform to demonstrate this. It has the frantic, high-energy animation and flashy production we all expected, and more (perhaps a bit too much more). But for this anime to really be a hit it’s going to need to develop a bit more depth and character. I think that’s exactly, what’s going to happen, so I’m cautiously optimistic that this anime will turn out to be great.

Believe it or not, it’s actually been about 4 weeks since I started writing this post. Every time I get a sliver of free time coinciding with a surge in self-motivation, I’ve been trying to get it finished. The problem is, everytime a new episode comes out, I have to go back to the drawing board and totally rethink my feelings toward the show. But I’m finally starting to get it – there’s no point in trying to form an overall opinion. Space Dandy is that kind of series.

In the same way that Dandy himself is aimlessly and nonchalantly drifting through space, the show has a free-spirited approach that isn’t hampered by things like character development, overarching plot or even basic continuity. It’s looser than your average standalone episode series; in Space Dandy, the episode creators have the freedom to completely change the tone, style and character of the series week-to-week. As a result, we’ve gone from the hyperactive, frivolous stupidity of episode 1, to the more subdued, sentimental notes of the fifth installment, and then bouncing straight into the good old-fashioned episodic fun in episode 6. Space Dandy is all over the place, and there’s no point trying to pin down its fluid nature.

I was disappointed in the first two episodes, because I felt like the show had set itself up as purely silly, hamfisted comedy series. The first episode was a freefalling mess of unrelenting flamboyant nonsense that was more annoying than entertaining. But I’ve enjoyed every episode since then for different reasons, and now I’ve decided to just embrace the unpredictability of the show and take each episode as it comes. It’s like a lucky dip – part of the fun is not knowing what kind of episode you’re going to get!

There is one form of consistency in this series, and that’s the quality of the production. Of course, we would expect no less given that its overseen by one of the arch good-guys of the anime industry, Shinichiro Watanabe. Watanabe pushed Sunrise to their limit with the astounding Cowboy Bebop, whipped up the top-shelf Samurai Champloo with the help of studio Manglobe, and more recently oversaw the nuanced high-school jazz anime, Kids on the Slope. Prior to these large projects, he’s had his hand in a lot of excellent anime work (including co-director of Macross Plus). It’s so nice to see him actively back in the directors role for TV anime again, after being mostly AWOL since Champloo, other than a few collaborative efforts and production assistance.

Combine his presence with the premium talent at Studio BONES, and you have a recipe for sure-fire quality! While I definitely don’t rate Space Dandy among his other greats in these terms, it definitely excels in many ways, and in a different kind of way.

In my mind, there’s an uncommon creative vision behind this series, spearheaded by Shinichiro Watanabe – instead of gathering the staff he’s needed to tell a particular story, he’s assembled a whole bunch of quite passionate creators and given them a loose canvas to showcase their skills. While this certainly isn’t unheard of, it’s cool to see it happen in the context of a big-budget commercial series!

The Animation

The animation is awesome at times. The first episode alone set the bar well above where most studios or directors could hope to reach, putting aside a good few minutes to showcase some truly jaw-dropping action animation.

With the clout Shinichiro brings to a project, I imagine pulling sponsorship is a lot easier, as his anime always have the privilege to push the limits of TV-anime budget. This is nothing to speak of his talents in pulling together some of the best animators in the business and then getting them to produce some of their best work. The list of names involved has been really strong so far, and I’m thrilled to see what we’ll see further down the track. Some notables so far:

As Ben from anipages discusses at length, BahiJD’s sequence from the first episode is just awesome, and was the saving grace of episode 1 for me. BahiJD worked on Shinichiro’s last anime, Kids on the Slope, and raised eyebrows with the individuality he poured into his cut (arguably too much in that case). But he proved his animating abilities and was bought back for this high-profile segment (which goes from when they are launched into space by an alien through to them being zapped while inside the water alien).

I loved his use of effects lines and many layers to convey speed and a fun kind of arbitrary three-dimensional space through which the characters were flung. The scene brings a smile to my face because of the over-the-top, extraneous movements of Meow and Dandy as the flail through space. It has a rough , cartoony charm while still feeling like real human movement and momentum at its core. It’s truly unique and exhilarating animation. I hope he does more in this anime!

Not to be outdone, Yutaka Nakamura’s following sequence presents the same thrilling speed and action-humour but with a smoother and more polished spin. That BahiJD can work alongside Nakamura in a star-animator capacity, at his young age, as a foreigner, is a testament to his hard work and talent!

Episode 5 is the episode that stands out from the crowd the most, bringing a more serious, and character-focused tone. As a result, the design work and animation was more based on realism than comical exaggeration. High-level animator Takeshi Honda , who usually now only works on movie anime, made an appearance this week and brought some strong, expressive acting animation with him.

I don’t know a lot about the other animators involved, but these particular cuts caught my eye (as well as others since they made their way onto the sakuga booru)  with its difficult layering and 3D camera movement: [1][2]. While it definitely jumps out as limited animation against the rest of the episode, it definitely added a nice touch of action.

But episode 6 is probably my favourite so far.

Most of the work on the episode was handled by a single person, Michio Mihara. He’s credited with doing the story draft, storyboard, animation direction, direction, and did the bulk of the cuts for key animation himself! He even designed the two featured aliens himself! The actual screenplay is credited to the veteran Dai Satou, and the very tight, focused standalone storytelling must be credited to him, but Mihara did come up with the concept it seems.

Mihara, as far as I see, isn’t so well known, but has many achievements to his name as an animator. He has been working in the industry for some time. He worked on some classics like Jin-Roh, where he apparently impressed Okiura with his handling of some of the difficult crowd shots from the riot sequence. He’s one of few animators able to handle large mob scenes like that. He has also done a few anime shorts.

But probably his biggest claim to fame is that he’s one of very few animators who does solo episodes in recent times, since anime required so much more staff to complete. He is particularly famous for Kaiba episode 4, where he handled storyboarding, directing, writing and did all the animation (every key frame and in-between) by himself. That’s one man doing 5170 drawings for the episode by himself. Also of note is his Kemonozume episode 12.

Usually when we talk about stand-out, sakuga animators, we discuss how they express themselves through the movements and idiosyncrasies they apply to the content they’re given to work with. But Mihara seems to be an animator who is creatively driven at a storytelling level. It’s so rare for an animator in commercial anime to have the opportunity to come up with a plot, plan how it should look and play out, and then actually get to enact it to the most precise personal detail. And he doesn’t let the opportunity go to waste.

In a way, there’s probably a different feeling to an episode that’s directed and storyboarded by someone who is also actively an animator as well because they’ll have a more natural focus for what can and will be expressed via animation, not just camera angles and composition.

Here, his overarching presence gives us a tighter narrative and visual coherency than Space Dandy usually provides. In my view, the episode is the most solid entry in the series so far. Despite the unapologetically silly premise of two dying alien species fighting over whether wearing underwear or vests is better, it was surprisingly entertaining and held my attention throughout. This was definitely attributable to his work all the way through. The backbone of the episode, the storyboard, provided a fun pace, interesting layouts and gave the episode its own unique visual flare. Colours were also important to creating such an attractive episode, with the aqua-blue and brown hues of the asteroid planet set against the sharp black void of space, and the red/blue themes of the opposed aliens. I’m sure Mihara at least had a hand in this, as he also has a separate ‘Set Design’ credit for the episode listed alongside the other core staff roles.

His animation seems to be marked by a strong feel for anatomy and thin, scraggly lines, which was evident here. I actually quite liked how his gas clouds looked due to these lines, despite being simple they have a very natural feel to them. But the episode culminated in a really stunning animation sequence of Dandy surfing the gas eruption of the destroyed planet. The flowing movements were mesmerising and suave, as animated by sakuga fan-favourite Hironori Tanaka. He and Mihara were the only two key animators who worked on the episode.

The segment is very Tanaka, his movement style is naturally very rhythmic in a wavey kind of way, if that makes any sense. What I mean is his characters kind of lurch smoothly from one pose to another. I used to feel that it was actually a weak point of his because it sometimes made his fight sequences feel like they were fought by puppets. But it’s a rythmn of movement perfectly suited to space surfing and results in a great end to the episode. You can really see the difference between his gas clouds (left) and Mihara’s (right).

Of course the scene still benefits from the vision of Mihara, conveyed well in his storyboards.

There’s actually another interesting point to the credits. Apparently Michio Mihara is a fan of the idol duo LinQ, and it seems as though he actually got their help on the episode. He tweeted a screencap of the credits after it aired,  which showed them as Speech Supervisors, and thanked them.

I wondered exactly what a speech supervisor did, and he later clarified with a photo of the storyboard showing their revisions to his dialogue:

I find it so weird and kind of amusing that an idol duo helped him with his storyboard dialogue! I guess idols have a better idea of how ancient underwear-obsessed aliens would communicate!? What a weird collaboration. I also don’t quite understand how their contributions gel with Dai Satou’s work on the screenplay.

The Music

Watanabe also seems to have a strong affinity with music – all of his anime series have put a heavy emphasis on excellent, grabbing music. His collaboration with Yoko Kanno on Bebop remains one of the best musical efforts put into an anime series, and Samurai Champloo wouldn’t have been the same without its juxtapositional instrumental hip-hop sound. The theme of Space Dandy’s music seems to be to not have a theme, and the show’s soundscape is lit up with an eclectic range of collaborating and featured artists, including Yoko Kanno (who arranged the ED).

The soundtrack has been so fun and playful and is an essential ingredient in Space Dandy’s energy. My favourite music moment so far has to be during the action highlight of episode 1. Overall this has got to be one of the best-sounding anime I’ve heard in a long time and I can’t wait for the OST!

The Future

I look forward to what animation and design work future episodes will give us! In particular, I’m really keen to see Keiko Nobumoto’s episode 8. Although her name isn’t well known, she’s essentially the writer behind the Spike story episodes of Bebop, as well as the creator of Wolfs’ Rain. Her storytelling has been absent from the realm of anime for too long now! I hope she delivers an interesting return!

Following the trend of episode 6, that episode looks like the production of that episode will mainly be handled by one man, Hiroshi Shimizu, who originated from studio Oh Pro and has been doing prominent animation in anime for decades. His largest creative involvements have been on Michiko to Hatchin and Kemonozume. I’m expecting a strongly animated episode for Keiko Nobumoto!

Timeline of events that led to this post:

Friday:

me (said to a mate over dinner): “I feel like watching some shitty anime tomorrow!”

Saturday:

I watched all three episodes of Robot Girls Z

There you have it. I’m not sure if anyone else gets in these same moods as me, but every so often I just get this nagging sensation start to brew in the cockles of my heart – a yearning to watch a mindless, plotless and unapologetically trashy anime. It’s illogical and irrational, but it must be done. This time, Robot Girls Z, a 3-part OVA series by Toei, just happened to catch my eye and looked like it would fit the bill to satiate my needs.

The basic gimmick behind Robot Girls Z is that it features personified mecha from Toei’s classic old-school franchise, Mazinger Z. Actually, rather than ‘basic’ premise, maybe I should say the ‘whole premise’, because that’s about all there is to it. The robots-turned-girls are a team of superheroes who are locked in an amicable struggle with an evil organisation who aim for world conquest, which is also wholly staffed by cute girlised-robots. When it’s all said and done, the story is all a thinly veiled pretense for gags, fanservice, and cute, silly fun. Oh, and tickles of nostalgia for the veteran fans of the old super robot series.

The allusions to and in-jokes from Mazinger Z are probably the only drawcard this series has for a lot of people – the one thing that makes it not just another pile of moe nonsense. But for me it was maybe the only deterrent for the show. Because I am a giant, unenlightened pleb when it comes to the realm of mecha, or super robot .. or whatever this is (see what I mean). I see the genre as some Macross Wing Gattai Destiny Z haze, and can barely tell a Gundam from one of those other ones that isn’t Gundam. Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating, but I will say that, although it’s not something that keeps me up at night, I do feel like I’m missing out at times like these. Like the time I had to watch Carnival Phantasm with a well-nasu-versed Type Moon friend so he could explain the jokes to me and tell me when to laugh.

Ditto here; I couldn’t count the amount of times I felt a joke or homage skim over my head. Even without my prior knowledge, I actually started to get curious about how the grabbing, adorable designs came to be. This provides a nice comparison.

So most of the design work is pretty simple, it turns out – a touch of costume colour scheme, whack on a helmet styled after the robot’s face and hey presto you have a robot girl. I do like what they did with Doublas M2 though – converting the twin heads to cute hand puppets is a nice little idea. Actually, Doublas M2 is the character designer’s favourite robot/mecha so it makes sense that she got the extra dash of ingenuity. On the other hand, Poses oII’s unflattering, finned wetsuit is a fitting conversion of the original ugly sea beast. But I think it would be really interesting to see how the personalities of the girls, and their interactions were translated from the original series. I’m sure there’s a lot more nuance to the parody behind that.

I do think a Mazinger fan would get a lot more laughs, smirks and knowing nods of appreciation from this than I did, but I ended up enjoying it for other, more carnal reasons.

You see, Robot Girls Z embraces the otaku nature of its target audience, and doesn’t think twice about piling on the fanservice, cliche, references and moe ingredients. I enjoy a good story or sakuga artwank as much as the next man, but I’m also willing to put aside my pretentiousness sometimes and just get swept up in the rush of pretty colours, cheap laughs, cute girls and panty-shots that anime is often known for. It’s as though Robo Girls Z knew I had my mecha Learner plates up, because it offset my Mazinger ignorance by turning up the dial on all those things.

I really didn’t expect this show to take the fanservice as far as it did, but I can’t say I’m disappointed. Yes, I’m one of those despicable fans who doesn’t see a problem with creators flaunting the good looks of their heroines (or heroes if you’re that way inclined). This show had everything from underwater breast molesting, loli panties, right through to a lesbian trap near-sex scene. The whole show had a pleasant air of eroticism to it that meant it was hard to see a dull moment behind the barrage of eye candy. I guess it makes sense, since the original robots never wore clothes either, right? The fanservice was obvious, but always cute and vibrant, and never went far enough to feel dirty or pornographic. Much like Yozakura Quartet: Hana no Uta recently, it’s fanservice done right – just the right degree of prurience.

And it really helps that the girls themselves have really adorable character designs! I found myself forgetting they were based on an old super robot show, and just appreciating their charming designs at face value. I really love this style of facial design – their colourful, rounded eyes and childish expressions just sing moe!

Initially, it really reminded me of Kanzaki Hiro’s design work (Ore no Imouto, Go! Go! 575), which  I then discovered made a whole lot of sense, because the designer here, Tetsuya Kawakami, was the chief animation director for much of OreImo. That means he was the main person in charge of transferring Kanzaki Hiiro’s designs to anime form. I do think Hiro’s designs rubbed off on him a bit here.

But he is also a very successful character designer and animator in his own right. He seemed to fall into the animation business from his childhood affinity with drawing, and got his foot in the door working at Studio Mu. He built up a strong biography of key animation work for studio BONES and J.C Staff on Full Metal Alchemist, Wolfs Rain, Eureka 7, Kurau Phantom Memory, A Certain Scientific Index, and others. I’m not familiar with his animation specifically, but apparently he was called upon to add fluidity to action scenes quite a lot. But he’s known more for his prolific illustration and character design work, which started out with Shigofumi and has reach its popular pinnacle so far with Sword Art Online’s characters.

Robot Girls Z is a great display of his skill – he designed a lot of characters for this, and every single one of them stands out in their own. Here’s a few samples of the designs, taken from the official website:

Their facial definition, and the gamut of expressions they exhibit gives them a natural, almost effortless striking personality. And, aren’t they just so cute!? He’s certainly very in tune with the popular style, and has a real knack for drawing beautiful girls who strike the moe chord but can also look fierce if they need to. Kawakami must have moe flowing through his veins. It wouldn’t surprise me because drawing cute girls and alluring heroines has quickly becoming his speciality (a forte  he acknowledges himself). Not just for his design work, his animation is usually employed for bishoujo scenes. His more recent lineup of work illustrates this quite well.

But he also has a predilection for the slapstick and comical. That might not be apparent from his body of design work, but when you consider that he was the chief animation director for this series, it’s not a stretch to consider that a lot of the comedically exaggerated facial expressions had his input. Whether it was his doing or not, they were much appreciated and really gave this anime a lively boost. He actually got down and dirty and did some genga for episode 3, and I’m actually pretty curious about which cut(s) were his, now that I’ve read about him!

The animation overall was a great boon to the OVA, with the right amount of exaggerated poses and demented motion to help pull off the jokes. The look of the anime is vivid and rich in colour, but not colourful to the point of being obnoxious.

The action scenes were enacted with fast, spurious and spirited limited animation, and dabbed with stylistic throwbacks to the animation of the old original shows, the heyday of Yoshinori Kanada and others of his ilk.

I also noticed these little references. Blink and you’d miss ‘em but the little man in Z’s mouth is actually a caricature of Go-Nagai himself (who created Mazinger Z).

The key animator lineup stayed pretty consistent throughout, and this resulted in an anime with a cursive visual coherency, with every episode delivering the same polish and punch as the last. On the downside, that meant there were few idiosyncratic moments to give it that ‘sauga’ edge – one of the few being this brutal punch in the third episode. The rough, bold lines and jagged movement indicate that it was Kan Ogawa. You can see the similarity for yourself in this MAD. I’d called them a sketchy charisma animator – some things in life can only be expressed by rough pencil lines!

I’ve always said that good designs, and strong animation can turn a anime that sounds bad on paper into something genuinely enjoyable, and Robot Girls Z one of many examples of this. Its appeal is essentially otaku nostalgia and smut, but it’s fashioned with such gleam and energy that it’s hard to resist. Robot Girls Z is cute, fun and easy to swallow, so if you find yourself in one of those moods to watch something less high brow, I’d recommend it.

Birds are singing, flowers are blossoming, and we’re all hibernating indoors watching Japanese cartoons – that’s right, spring season is upon us! My dormant passion for anime has been stirred again, and I’m in the mood to put thoughts into words and words into the unheeded abyss that is my blog! So please enjoy my borderline sarcastic and marginally informative thoughts on the Spring o’ 2014 lineup!

Let’s be clear about what’s going to happen now, before I just go wild and leap into it: I’m going to briefly review and discuss every first episode of the season! But there’s a catch: I’m skipping second seasons that I have not seen and have not been forced to watch regardless by friends. Such exclusions include: Cardfight Vanguard, Date A Live, Dragon Ball Kai, Fairy Tale, etc. Actually, there’s another catch; I’m also going to skip series I can’t be bothered summoning the interest to even think about watching, such as Hero Bank, Kamigami no Asobi, Kiniro no Corda, Marvel Disk Wars, etc. Yep, as you might have guessed, I’m an anime badass with no time for shows for women and children.
Also, please note that these reviews are based on the first episode only! In many cases I have watched on, but I don’t have the time to revise all the reviews in this post or it would never be finished! Honestly, this took me a lot longer than I expected, which is why it’s only just seeing the light of day mid-season. On the upside, I definitely have my finger on the pulse more than usual this season after writing all this!

I would love to hear people’s feedback or differing opinions on any of this stuff, so comment away if you get an inkling!

Captain Earth

Bones is juggling three anime this season, but Captain Earth is probably their flagship! This is their latest entry in their staple line of original mecha anime, which in recent years has been: Eureka 7 > Star Driver > Eureka 7 Ao. Actually, It’s more than just the next one in line, but really feels like an evolved amalgamation of these preceding works; it has the summery, colourful design aura of Eureka 7, the exotic locale of Eureka 7 Ao and its BGM exhibits the vocal harmony sound of Star Driver. More than just the dress code, it also seems to have picked story elements from these forbears – especially Eureka 7. The main character is in a similar place to Renton – disillusioned with school life and not having a whole heap of fun with the not having a dad thing. Combine this with a childhood complicated by mecha anime plotlines ala Eureka 7 Ao, and Captain Earth almost feels like a sequel.

On the upside, Captain Earth’s inheritance is a strong one – I loved Eureka 7, and it’s good that they’re building on their success. But, on the downside, I kind of hoped for something totally fresh from Bones, like Eureka 7 or Star Driver was at the time. Originality issues aside, Captain Earth is impeccably produced and easily entertaining. It’s handled by Studio C, which was founded on FMA:Brotherhood and which created Star Driver.

There is one caveat to the entertaining tag: it needs to get less sloppily confusing in later episodes. I’ve got to admit, I found the first episode a bit muddled and maybe too fast-paced for my liking. It reminded me of Rahxephon in that respect, but without Rahxephon’s atmosphere of mystery. Instead of being really intrigued I’ll nonchalantly just wait until it decides to start making sense.

But the time I spent not understanding the plot was spent admiring the pretty visuals. There was some nice mecha animation in the gattai scene near the end, but other than that it wasn’t especially animated, especially for a Bones anime. I wonder if Bones aren’t biting off more than they can chew here, or more than they should chew – before Noragami finished they were working on 6 shows (including preproduction for this season). And let’s remember that Space Dandy is a bit of a beast in terms of its production – I doubt we’ll see Yutaka Nakamura’s animation in Captain Earth at all. I DO expect Tanaka Hironori to show up a fair bit (he was already in this first episode, likely doing the end of the Gattai sequence). Bones should just employ this guy! Even if it does have less animation than usual for Bones, it will still be better than most anime out there, and there’s no doubting the fact that it is pretty – with fantastic background art and storyboarding.

Captain Earth is a solid, entertaining mecha anime without being ground-breaking in any way. Its rich render and sharp production values are a pleasure to watch! The story and script will need to improve in future episodes for it to be a worthwhile series all-round though.

• Imamura Ryo’s animation featured this episode. If you don’t recognise the name – he has been one of SHAFT’s few stand-out animators, accounting for most of the well-animated scenes in their anime for some time. What is a SHAFT employee doing working on a Bones anime? It seems he might have gone freelance.
• I have to state again how much I love the storyboard for this episode. It didn’t play out in typical anime fashion and found some new, more cinematic way to present things. It was done between Takuya Igarashi ( the series director) and Yasushi Muraki.

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Seikoku no Dragonar

The story follows the frustrating school life of an adolescent boy in a fantasy world where dragons are a part of everyday life. His frustration comes from the fact that the school is attended almost exclusively by fanatical gossip-mongering bullies who have labelled him ‘the school’s biggest problem-child’ because he gets angry when people insult him to his face (which always seemed like a reasonable reaction to me). Meanwhile he is regularly plagued by sinister nightmares in which a hideously hyper-breasted naked magical lady sneaks into his room and tortuously licks his body. Anyway, the school is devoted to riding and using dragons, and every student has magically summoned their own dragon except for our poor, inept protagonist. In other words, it’s basically a cross between Zero no Tsukaima and How to Train Your Dragon.

The premise could have been pretty interesting if executed right (who doesn’t love dragons right, or disrobed fantasy females for that matter!). But, at the end of the day, it all falls pretty flat and is more annoying than interesting. This anime is in the hands of studio C-Station. If you haven’t heard of them before it’s because this is the first anime they have produced themselves. Originally just a substudio of Bee Train doing outsourced key-animation work, they recently split off to go it alone. If this is anything to go by, they’re not going to be a game-changer in the industry! That said, the animation isn’t terrible, just average, and the other production values aren’t terrible either, just dull and uninspiring. This is a by-the-book light novel adaptation which does not have the kind of production qualities needed to make it stand out.

Within its mediocrity there are still a few things to like about Seikoku no Dragonar, such as the surprisingly sincere characterisation of the protagonist. He quite clearly has principals, empathy and a backbone to him, making him pretty likeable (unlike the foul behaviour of his schoolmates). I also like the fact that it is a fantasy, and there are a few cool designs here and there. I have a soft-spot for the ninja whose costume is a seasonally confused combination of a large scarf and a micro bikini, for example. On the whole though, I don’t think I could call it worth watching.

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Nanana’s Buried Treasure

A-1 Pictures delivers a cute, vibrant treasure-hunting anime with a sense of adventure and an alluring moe vibe for the Noitamina timeslot this season. While this series is unusually otaku-oriented for the noitamina timeslot, it still makes an effort at universal appeal across a wider demographic – avoiding too much fanservice, featuring more earnest characters and leaning on themes of adventure. Where it does dabble in otaku enticement is the ‘awkward sexual tension of living with a beautiful supernatural girl’ situation, and the moe-fied character designs.

Fortunately, I like moe, so don’t look to me if you want complaints about that. As long as it doesn’t step on too many cliches going forward, or get stuck in a rut of going nowhere, I’ll stay happy. And the character designs are moefied in absolutely the best way – they were put in the hands of one of the prodigies in this field: Tetsuya Kawamaki. I talked about him briefly in my Robot Girls Z review, but he’s most famous for his character designs on OreImo and Sword Art Online. His aim with each project is to make his designs stand out from his previous works. He’s somewhat successful – anyone watching this anime can see the similarity to the designs of OreImo, yet these characters definitely have something fresh to their look. The colours in their eyes are so beautiful they really catch your gaze and absorb you! I could stare into Nanana forever.

The animation is also strong. It features some big-name animators, namely Yasunori Miyazawa, Tetsuya Takeuchi, and Tadashi Shida! There are several well-animated scenes throughout, and none that struck me as bad. Yasunori Miyazawa and Tetsuya Takeuchi would have handled the cave-scouring segment in the first part, since their names are seperated in the genga credits and the animation is in their style. I’d guess that this part is Takeuchi and this part is Miyazawa. It’s a really great sequence with a lot of energy. If every episode has a thrillingly animated Indiana Jones style treasure raiding scene this is going to be one fun series!

On the whole, this is a really attractive, inviting and potentially exciting anime. Its moe implementations don’t feel too rehashed and generic and actually injects a nice cute spirit to the series.

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Soul Eater Not!

Before I go any further, let’s reach into my dark trove of shameful secrets and pull out the fact that I never watched the original Soul Eater! I’m sorry, please don’t leave! I did watch the first few episodes, and saw all the animation highlights in various sakuga MADs, but something about the series rubbed me the wrong way and I never got into it. But even the title of this anime has gone out of its way to convince me that this isn’t Soul Eater, so I’ll clean the slate and go into this as though it was a brand new anime.

That approach worked pretty well for me – while others were lamenting how Maka’s eyes have changed colour or how there never used to be an airport in Death City, I was sitting back and enjoying the comedy cum psuedo-slife-of-life ride! Soul Eater Not! is probably something that doesn’t need to exist – there are plenty of other anime out there that aren’t Soul Eater and are already doing a decent job at putting unrealistically cute 2D schoolgirls on TV and making us laugh. But BONES bit the bullet and went with it anyway, using their clout and production assets to barge past the competition into center stage. What I’m trying to say here is that while it’s not unique series, this anime still delivers on the entertainment value through well-timed jokes and competent production. I did laugh at the gags, and I did swoon over the girls, and I never felt the contrivances stack up to the point where I felt the compulsion to roll my eyes, or shake my head.

The production is handled by BONES Studio A, basically the Noragami crew from last season. That means we should get a few pricks of good animation scattered throughout the series but overall just a decent standard of quality. I also find the colours to be a bit muted and there’s something slightly off about the designs, but I can’t exactly put my finger on it. Still, the presentation is fine and Soul Eater Not! is simple, fun entertainment. It’s been good to watch with a group of friends so far.

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No Game No Life

The anime No Game No Life was born into a sad, seemingly inescapable fate as a trite light novel adaptation. Yuu kamiya is the man behind the original light novel of the same name. He was responsible for the quickly-forgotten Itsuka Tenma no Kuro Usagi novel series, and he was sure to instill the same fluoro colour scheme and banal, gimmicky storytelling into No Game No Life. The premise of No Game No Life is that a pair of utterly home-bound siblings – a high-school aged boy and his cute, adoring, flat-chested little sister – are geniuses at any computer game they get their hands on and totally bored with the real world. They are unwittingly given the chance to escape their dull existence when they are dragged into another, more fantasy-styled world where, by some miracle of suspended disbelief, everything is decided by games. Of course, they thrive in this new setting and, of course, the world is teeming with moe, voluptuous life forms just waiting for a genius Earth-boy to impress them at games. It’s premise is such an obvious play for the attention (and wallets) of escapist hikki-types, and its sprinkled with panty-shots and other sexual tones to reel in the otaku.

So, its obviously cliche but, if pushed, I can happily put that aside and enjoy the show for base entertainment value. As for fanservice: absolutely no problems with it and, if I’m being honest, I kind of enjoy it. But the show could have fallen flat on its face if it weren’t for Madhouse’s deftly handled production. Despite its humble status of ‘light novel adaptation’, No Game no Life does have some significance to Madhouse. For those not aware, Madhouse has been endangered for the last while – since the leak of talent to the defect upstart studio MAPPA and the adjustment to Nippon Television buying it in 2011. There has been outsourcing of animation to other studios in the first episode, and I expect this to continue (and it’s not necessarily a bad thing – it’ll probably keep it on schedule at least).

This anime is headed by director Atsuko Ishizuka – a relatively young female animator who has quickly become one of the major players at the studio. She has a background in graphic arts and music, and did some impressive music videos earlier in her career. On one hand, it’s a little sad to see someone who originally worked on quite interesting and unique projects now working on such a thoroughly commercial affair as No Game No Life. On the other hand, she has clearly struck a good career in anime – an impressive feat for a young female animator of her background, and filled a void since the departures from the company. The old Madhouse gave her that chance, but I fear the new Madhouse won’t be giving any others the same opportunity. She is clearly a competent director, because No Game No Life looks more polished than a lot of anime this season.

• The character designer and chief animation director is Kouji Ooya, who also contributed genga in the first episode, suggesting he has a kind of ‘main animator’ role. This is his first stint in this kind of series role, following a trend this season of new faces in big credits. So far it looks like he’s doing an exceptional job.

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Selector Infector Wixoss

Some months ago in Japan a group of maverick, cutting edge producers sat around and agreed that the thing Japanese nerds really need right now is yet another trading card game. And so, Selected Infector Wixoss was born! They were wrong of course – even if the soon-to-be-released game turns out to be good, it feels like there’s already plenty happening in the TCG space. On the upside, the people behind WIXOSS seemed to know that they had to really nail the anime and make it more than just about selling cards. Although I saw warning flags above this anime’s head at first, especially when I heard that J.C Staff were involved, this turned out to be one of the anime I enjoyed the most so far this season. It’s crisply produced, but still allows for enough expression and individuality in the animation and storyboard to avoid that bland and shallow feeling I get from most of JC’s by-the-books commercial ventures.

For example, the animation in Ruuko’s mysterious nightmare world has a raw, violent feel to it that creates and eerie contrast to the softer and more moeblob art in the real world. Adding to this, the sound design in that nightmare world, and in the virtual card game arena is really excellent (although I didn’t really notice until I rewatched those scenes with headphones in). It’s this visceral, eschewed digital noise that creates an engrossing mood in these scenes. I’m a bit surprised by this given the sound director (http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/people.php?id=979) and series musician (http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/people.php?id=57014). Perhaps the director pushed for an attention to atmospheric sound, since it seems music is his main hobby and passion (and music like Sigur Ros, no less).

The production as a whole stands up well, with strong animation and art. Interestingly, the character designer Kyuuta Sakai only did the character designs for this series. Normally the character designer is also the chief animation director (the person responsible to oversee the animation across all episodes to improve overall consistency with his/her designs). However, this anime has a different chief animation director each episode. This isn’t unheard of, but the first anime that springs to mind with a similar set-up is Noein, which had an intentionally free production and varying character designs per episode. I doubt that’s what they’re aiming for here, especially since they even have assistant chief animators for the episodes as well. I note also that episode 3 has 6 animation directors. Perhaps this anime just has the money to splash out on animation directors to keep this a high-quality, on-schedule production, but I do wonder about why they didn’t go for having a series chief animation director role!

But we have to trust the director, Takuya Satou, who is probably best known for Steins;Gate (for which Kyuuta Sakai was also character designer). I expect this anime to stay entertaining and well-made to the very end! The story also grabbed me pretty well, it didn’t have Captain Earth’s problem of being overly convoluted, but it’s not overly simple either. It features genuine, likeable characters and just enough of a sinister, foreboding vein through it to make sure we know it’s not just about cute girls playing cards.

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Black Bullet

Here we have yet another seinen Light Novel series adaptation. Black Bullet retreads the fighting supernatural detective path with the usual LN-sourced layer of otaku appeal, this time in the form of utterly adorable battle lolis. Like countless anime before it, Black Bullet’s story is basically an elaborate excuse for having an expansive cast of underage girls fighting monsters.  If you are allergic to unnaturally cute little girls being moe and kicking ass, then this this might not be the show for you. Otherwise prepare to be tickled by the sweet and awkwardly fanservicey Enju. Enju is super cute … and the action was actually pretty cool when she and her male MC accomplice leapt into battle. But I can’t think of much else positive to say about this one. It’s really quite generic; with the exception of Enju, the aesthetics are rather bland, and I feel that it lacks heart at the centre of its story. It doesn’t have a creatively interesting story or much emotional gravitas, so I guess what I mean to say is – why should we care? And since it takes itself seriously, it doesn’t fit nicely in the brainless entertainment bin either.

The studio behind this is Kinema Citrus, another fledgling studio, founded in 2008 by Ogasawara Muneki, an ex-BONES producer, in cohort with some people from Production I.G and Bee Train. Initially, they were affiliated with BONES, but quickly became a studio standing on its own feet. The one work that Kinema Citrus has done that makes me respect them a lot is .Hack//Quantum. Unfortunately, due to its mostly flaccid design and production, Black Bullet diminishes the promise of this new studio. But don’t get me wrong – it doesn’t look horrible, just pretty average. I guess that really sums up the show.

• The character designer, and one of the main animators (AD episode 2, Prop Design ep 2) , is 海島千本. This is an odd one because I can find very little information on him. I feel like its a new psuedonym (or just starting to use his actual name), but I can’t find what he would have used previously. But I did manage to find his pixiv, http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=18362, twitter https://twitter.com/Kaisen_Tobiuo  , and blog http://kaisendon.exblog.jp/ .
• This series has 5 ‘main animator’ credits, so these guys will be doing a large portion of the work on the series: Kuroda Yuka (黒田結花), Nonoka Masayuki (野中正幸), Moromeki Tetsuro (諸貫哲朗), Toda Mai (戸田麻衣), and (竹内由香里) whose reading I can’t be sure of.
• Yoshinari Kou was easily the most famous animator involved in this first episode, but didn’t really do anything remarkable by the looks of it.

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Mushishi

Director Nagahami Hiroshi continues his hallowed reign over the franchise, returning as series director, and bringing in tow the same core staff as the first season: Toshio Masuda (music), Yoshihiko Umakoshi (Character designer/chief AD), Takeshi Waki (Art Director), et cetera. As anyone who’s already a fan of the first season will tell you, this is very good news, because it means more of the same lusciously realised, and creatively charged storytelling as before. Yoshihiko Umakoshi is celebrated as a designer and animator, and it’s always nice to see his skills being put to use on something that isn’t Precure. Hiroshi Nagahami meanwhile, has recently pushed himself to the head of the pack as being one of the best directors working in anime right now since his eye-opening adaptation of Aku no Hana last year. He challenged conventions with that work, giving everyone a rare reminder that there’s more than one way to make an anime, and avoiding the trap of being arty-weird to make that point. Mushishi is more familiar ground, but it is still unique as an anime, with a pace, atmosphere and style that is tailored to the manga it is based on, breathing life into it in the best way possible.

I guess I don’t have a lot to convey about this second season, other than to say it has not faltered at all since its first entry – it’s the same Mushishi I remember, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. For those of you who haven’t experienced Mushishi yet, – it’s a wandering, pondering exploration of a culture and its people living in a world veined with unseen mysticism, seen through the eyes of a nomadic, solitary doctor who treats people who unwittingly come into contact with this supernatural force. The thing I love about the series, and it’s something that the author is clearly passionate about, is that the supernatural elements seem both entirely fictional yet also have a worldly, natural realism to them. And these life forms also have a spiritualism to them in their connection with human beings, and the story really uses them to ultimately engage in very human stories.

Mushishi is one of those A-grade anime with universal appeal, an uncompromised creative vision and a superb production behind it. Check it out!

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Hitsugi no Chaika

A fantasy anime adapted from a light novel from the same author as Scrapped Princess. Who else remembers Scrapped Princess? Funnily enough that was one of the few anime I have every marathoned in a single sitting (I was sick at the time). It was a simple but pretty effective fantasy series, and an awkward mix of equal parts cliche and interesting story ideas. I can see Hitsugi no Chaika falling into the same boat, with the wow-factor of an aggressive, carnal unicorn being shot into two gory slabs of intestines by a magical sniper bullet being immediately followed by a comical smash-up-the-eating-establishment stoush between bickering siblings. There’s a lot of contrivance and cliche, but it does somehow entertain without being too annoying.

The production is handled by Bones, Studio D – to my mind, the least interesting department of Bones. The producers’ saw fit to resuscitate the Director and Chief AD of Scrapped Princess for this anime as well; Soichi  Masui is back in the director’s seat, while Takahiro Komori is now working as his his assistant Director. The character designer/ chief AD here is Nobuhiro Arai and, as far as I can see, it’s his first time with his name to this credit (another this season!). I do have to question his design wisdom when it comes to the decision to grace the lead heroine with oversized, thick black eyebrows. While it’s nice that designers don’t have to stick to conventional moe style, I don’t think eye-brow size inflation is the best avenue for that. She looks like the unfortunate result of someone messing around with the character customisation in their second play through of an RPG.

The animation itself can only be described as passable, with no stand-out moments to speak of. I can’t see Bones putting the talent into this to make it memorable from an animation stand-point, so let’s not get our hopes up for mind-blowing fantasy action. Basically, everything points to mediocre right now, and even if it does have a faint entertainment buzz,

The anime’s only hope to get ahead is if the story evolves into something interesting. Of course, that is actually possible with the author of Scrapped Princess… but can I sacrifice another 20 minutes of my week on that chance?

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Akuma no Riddle

It seems like yuri might be coming back in fashion in the otaku world, with the success of the Sakura Trick adaptation, and now this action thriller which is clearly marketed as a yuri show. I have a feeling that Akuma no Riddle might do comfortably well out of this, as it’s still all too rare to see a yuri series with more to its premise than two girls being intimate. In the sense that it does feature girl love (albeit more blatantly) and also action/thriller set up, this series harkens back to Bee Train’s old works such as Noir. And from what I’ve seen of the first episode, it will do the yuri aspect rather the well: they’ve struck an appealing dynamic between the cold, cool and badass Tokaku and the honest, cute and caring Haru. But even if they tick this box, Akuma no Riddle is weighed down by a teenage-fancfiction style of presentation and storytelling.

The dialogue lacks any nuance and is always very obvious in the way it is advancing the plot or characterisation. The same goes for the characters themselves, whose complete personalities are almost instantly established in the first episode. I say it feels like fanfiction because it plays out in this dot-point manner, leaving no room for the story to breathe. Some may prefer this direct approach to writing, but it feels amateurish and simple to me. The look of the show follows the same principle – every scene is framed and lit in a very overt way to tell us whether its supposed to be menacing, happy or whatever else. But even if this approach stops me from feeling involved in the story, I can admit that the show does have a personality with its visuals and blunt script. It’s not bland, nor is it annoyingly derivative like I find SHAFT anime. And the animation was largely faultless, even if it didn’t exactly impress.

The CD/Chief AD is Ide Naomi, who was the same for Mondaiji-tachi ga Isekai kara Kuru Sou Desu yo, which I really enjoyed the animation and designs on. I think he has also done a good job here making the designs look fresh and attractive. The director has a long history of working on successful anime, so I’m sure he knows what he’s doing with Akuma no Riddle. Perhaps it’s just the source material, but I didn’t find myself getting into this one at all.

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Ping Pong

My friends have almost unilaterally whacked the ‘boring’ stamp on Ping Pong, but I’m happy to stand alone in saying that I really enjoyed the first episode.  I can see where they are coming from though; Ping Pong isn’t exactly the most thrilling sport on the planet – it lacks the heat, thuggish competitiveness, the passionate drama and the raw physical athleticism of other games. And this anime makes no attempt to glorify it. It trades in having a booming narrator, over-the-top special effects or wedged-in sex appeal for a dose of everyday human drama and a realistic treatment of the sport. Still sounding boring to you? Well, Ping Pong may not deliver in thrills, but it does deliver in style.

In the adroit hands of Masaaki Yuasa, even mundane scenes like riding the train and talking about brands of bubble gum seem somehow purposeful and captivating. He also brings his usual disciples to the table for Ping Pong – most notably Nobutake Ito as chief AD/CD. This closely-tied duo have bought us Kaiba, Kemonozume and Tatami Galaxy in the past. Other notable staff he’ll bring on board are: Yasunori Miyazawa and Eunyoung Choi. Normally we’d expect to see Michio Mihara involved as well, but there’s a theory that he had a falling out with them (or just Choi) at some point, but hopefully that’s overblown. The studio behind this one is Tatsunoko, which has a long and industrious history behind it going back to the 60s. Modern Tatsunoko has proven to be a residence of strong talent.  But at the end of the day, Yuasa himself has the biggest influence over the show’s look and went to the unusual length of storyboarding and writing every episode himself (apparently pumping out an episode storyboard an impressive once every ten days!).

The end result is that Ping Pong has a dishevelled look about it, with rough, sketchy lines and at times an almost warped, angular presentation. Movement is either minimal or unexpectedly dramatic, and the storyboard includes some shots that are not usually seen anime – such as the multiple triangular cutaway shots. Ping Pong’s whole production has this refreshing spontaneous energy to it, but in a laidback way that doesn’t detract from the story or feel attention-seeking. There’s no doubt in my mind that if this anime had been storyboarded in the conventional manner, the show wouldn’t hold my interest at all. Another contributor to the visual flare of the show is the excellent background art, which is seamlessly fashioned with the same rough wobbliness as the animation.

Ping Pong looks good, but if you give it the chance, it also does have a story and interesting characters. The Chinese player, Wenga is fascinatingly competitive and demotivated at the same time, while the passiveness of the apparent protagonist hints at his own masked skill. The absence of unnecessary drama, and the stoic, even dry portrayal of some characters may deter a lot of viewers, but I admire the aesthetic expression and the lack of cheap thrills. Perhaps it’s comparable to Mushishi in that respect.

• The ED is solo animated by Yuasa regular,  Eunyoung Choi, and it’s quite pretty! Of course, it’s all rotoscoped though.

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Kanojo wa Flag wo Oraretara

If you were feeling as lazy as I am right now, this anime could be summed up as a comedy with an interesting gimmick at its premise and featuring a horde of moe characters who will rapidly fall into a harem around the main character. Any self-respecting season of anime these days should have something in this format! So we know this show isn’t going to be a ground-breaking emotional journey, or a thinking man’s exploration into the human psyche – this anime has signed itself up for the role of mediocre entertainer. The question then becomes, is it good in that role? It’s essential for an anime with moe appeal to have cute characters, and it’s a fundamental law that a comedy anime should be funny. I’ve seen better attempts, but Kanojo has a good crack at both of these basic criterion.

The girls, only a couple of which I’ve had the pleasure of being introduced to so far, are appealing in that comforting otaku-targeted kind of way. They’re sweet, lovingly abrasive, permanently blushing, and physically attractive with big, sparkling eyes and cute, childish school uniforms. I actually adore their skirts so much, with their impractical tangent from the thighs and the pastel pink decorations. The original character design is by CUTEG who also designed the very fetching girls of Kono Naka ni Hitori, Imōto ga Iru!. The comedy is based around the MC being able to see prophetic flags above peoples heads, such as friendship flags, love, flags, and even death flags. Think visual novels. The show makes reasonable use of this for gags, but mostly reverts to the standard repertoire of awkward youthful love jokes and such. It’s not without laughs, but you’d have to take my best friend hostage if you wanted me to say that it was a good comedy.

The animation isn’t really an important factor in this series, beyond the fact that it gets the job done. Hoods Entertainment are the studio behind it, and they’re basically known for doing anime like this, so they can probably be trusted to pull it off fine.

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Blade & Soul

Blade & Soul is the kind of over-the-top ninja fantasy that a sexually frustrated DnD playing teenager might think up. Now, there’s nothing wrong with playing DnD, or being sexually frustrated, but the result of this fantasy is not something I have any interest in seeing. As it turns out, this is an adaptation of a Korean MMORPG. I don’t know if the original game is any better, but I can tell that the staff behind this anime have taken the simplest and least inventive route to converting it to an anime. Every beat of the story plays out in the most predictable, droll way possible. I don’t think you could make it more cliche if you tried. But the issue doesn’t end with there- after years of controlled dosages via anime, I can stomach quite the hit of cliche. Blade & Soul takes it further by also being consistently stupid and poorly written. Interactions between characters seem forced and no one in the show is believable as a person to any degree. Their motivations are all trite I’ve heard a hundred times before, and their dialogue is very clunky. Blade & Soul is witless and comprehensively unoriginal. Its writer, Tomioka Atsuhiro has offended yet again.

But what about its production values? GONZO is in charge of the animation production. Or should I say neo-Gonzo? Gonzo’s revival continues to disappoint, having only gone downhill since the new Last Exile. Apparently Range Murata recently said that the company seems to be going broke (again). Blade & Soul has a couple of moments of good animation in it (mainly just this bit), and these stand out all the more against the overall cheap feel of the series. Flat, lifeless layouts, jittery framerates, even some poor drawings marred the episode throughout. But this might have been palatable if the designs were pretty. They weren’t; while the main characters verge on okay, some of the minor characters are downright ugly and ridiculous-looking. Following the trend this season, this is Eri Nagata’s first shot at being CD/chief AD. It’s sad that it didn’t work out so well in this case, although I will say that at least the way they draw female eyes is pretty appealing.  The storyboard was also boring, so I’m really struggling to find a redeeming factor here. Actually I give up: In my view, Blade & Soul is worthless trash!

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Gochuumon wa Usagi desu ka?

The best description of this anime that I’ve heard is ‘comfy’. It’s almost completely innocent and devoid of all tension or melodrama. Instead, Goshuumon wa Usagi desu ka invites you to watch the pleasant and friendly goings on at a tucked-away, quaint little cafe staffed by little moe anime girls. It just wants you to sink into its warm and fluffy atmosphere. There is some light fanservice, but only enough to enjoy it if you’re looking for it but not distract you if you’re not. For example, the bath scene with the two girls this episode was cute and drawn superbly by Masafumi Tamura, but wasn’t really played up for the sexyness factor. The girls are very cute, which is the essential ingredient for a moe anime like this to work – they have to be cute enough themselves to carry the entire show. Essentially, without them you would have a plotless, uneventful, and only vaguely funny slice of life series.

One other thing I do appreciate about this series is that the production seems pretty close knit and spirited feel to it. Hashimoto Hiroyuki is directing here and its his first foray into series direction that I can see. It looks like quite a career step for him given his few episode direction credits. Here’s his twitter (https://twitter.com/lainnet01/) . He also storyboarded and directed this first episode. There is one ‘main animator’ credit, which goes to 武藤信宏, who was a major animator/AD for Maou-sama. Sure enough, he’s been at the top of the genga list for the first two episodes. Interestingly, there is no CAD role, instead the character designer has taken a very hands-on role by working as the AD for each episode (so far at least, and probably for every ep to come). To help him with this monumental charge there are multiple assistant AD roles. White Fox is the studio and they do competent job here by and large, but you can tell it’s not a big budget outing. Even though the animation is quiet and understated, it has its moments of awkwardness. But given how heavily involved some of the main animators are, I think that some of the staff are pretty passionate about adapting this one.

I’m going to call this kind of anime ‘snug anime’. It doesn’t really motivate me to tune in every week, but it’s the kind of thing I’d watch over a winters day if I was home sick. I think the the staff should be commended for capturing the radiant cuteness of the manga and doing it with a touch of class.

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Isshuukan Friends

Isshuukan friends was a delight to watch. Probably the biggest thing for me was the visual work on the show. The backgrounds are faded with an almost dream-like pastel palette, which brings attention to the characters and their interactions. The characters themselves are also softly envisioned, with a lot of detail in their uniform, and precise strands in their hair, but avoiding any bold lines or striking features. But that doesn’t mean they don’t feel unique and grabbing – character designer, chief AD and regular episode AD Eri Yamazaki has breathed life, individuality and mundane beauty into these characters. Her hands-on approach through episodic AD work shows how much this show is the realisation of her vision. It’s impressive work given that this is her first major CD role that I can see. With the drawing power of Brains Base behind her, Ishuukan Friends is a pleasure to lay eyes on, elegant to the nth degree. But this is even more of an impressive feat given that this is only the second series director credit Tarou Iwasaki has had (the first being the little known Ryuko’s Case File). Fingers crossed that the quality of the first episode can be maintained.

The gentle aesthetics match the delicate unfolding of the story, which is about a girl who loses her memory every week, making it impossible to form friendships, let alone friendship. But our MC is up for the challenge, even after learning of her ailment he cannot be deterred, reforming their friendship every week with the hope that one day she won’t forget. I like the fact that this seems primarily about friendship rather than a standard highschool crush, and the main character has a unique determined bent to him, a dichotomy of apathy and passion that makes him a much more interesting and nuanced male MC than anime usually delivers.

I think the washed, understated style of Ishhuukan Friends is a barrier to being really taken in by it from the first episode, so, while it was sweet and lovely to watch, I’m not really excited to see the next episode. I guess I like my anime with a bit more punch, but I’m aware that that’s just a personal thing, and I can see that this is objectively a good show. I also think this show could have problems staying interesting after the interesting idea of weekly amnesia has been fully introduced? Where can it go?

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Mahouka

Mahouka is a frustrating anime to watch. Why? Because its bad but I really want to enjoy it. I’m motivated to like it because it has some really interesting elements to it that aren’t straight out of the ‘how to make a mediocre anime’ handbook, and its bad because the rest of it is exactly the boring, well-trodden crap you’d find in that handbook. The opening few minutes is a perfect example of this – right off the bat, the anime quickly establishes an intriguing, post-WWII world for its society and magic users but then instantly dives into a typical high-school setting and surrounds its make MC with beautiful moe girls who are so sweet someone’s gotta be paying them. Oh, and we can’t forget the MC’s pure-maiden younger sister, who is blushingly obsessed with him in a confusingly romantic way.

But then I began to realise there was something more to this still – the main character is actually so brokenly perfect as man and a hero that it’s kind of impressive seeing how he deals with the banal highschool bullshit thrown at him. He’s a strong warrior, keenly intelligent and analytical, diligent to the point where he doesn’t even need leisure time, humble, honourable, fearless, pragmatic, and unwaveringly principled. His flawlessness probably comes from the authors wish-fulfillment, but even still it’s oddly interesting to see a male character with this brand of mature heroism. Most anime heroes are portrayed with an adolescent’s view of manliness – muscled, and comically bad-ass, but Tatsuya’s strength comes from more genuine, mature traits such as patience, hard work and a cynical kind of smarts. It’s just so sad that he’s misplaced in this pointless magic-high school situation!

With Saki and Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere Director at the helm, this is Madhouse’s other show this season. As with No Game No Life, the animation quality holds up well. There was a pretty cool hand-to-hand fight sequence at the temple, which was handled by experienced and accomplished action animator Takashi Tomioka. He has done some very memorable action scenes for BONES (just check out this MAD). Since he was also credited with Action AD, he would have had total control on that sequence’s animation. It was a fast, frenetic and entertainingly choreographed fight! Unfortunately, the design work doesn’t work quite so well. The school uniforms look ridiculous, and the pervading turquoise colour scheme of the anime makes it feel dull. I  don’t find any of the character designs to be particularly appealing either. The music by Taku Iwasaki (this guy never stops) is disappointing in the sense that it always feels jarring and misplaced.

There’s a chance I’ll watch a bit more, purely for the main character, but otherwise Mahouka is nothing special.

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Jojo’s Bizzare Adventure: Stardust Crusaders

I have to admit that I have no idea what to expect when getting into this new Jojo’s bizarre adventure. My previous experience with this franchise boils down to getting it confused with First of North Star. I tend to keep the macho hyper-shounen anime genre at an arms length, but this season I’d pledged to watch (almost) everything! Going into the show, I didn’t know what I was in for, and now that I’ve seen the first episode, I still have no idea what it’s all about. The plot itself was relatively straightforward, and I had friends filling in my many knowledge gaps, like who Dio is. But I still somehow don’t really know how to describe what I just watched. Frankly, I think I just don’t get it. There’s fire, magical goings on, lots of big muscley men being surly toward each other, ingrained sexism, shouting, and.. actually I think that’s about it. What’s the appeal?

Well I did pick up on the fact that it’s self-parodying and takes things to a comical extreme. But while I noticed it, I didn’t really find it funny. It seems that there’s not much for me in this anime. But I can see that is is very well put together and will probably fall into the open arms of this genre’s fans. There was a lot of animation throughout, and some beats where it was of noticeable quality – particularly impressive given the level of detail packed into the designs and the complexity of the fighting moves which feature swirling flames and supernatural beasts. The designs are detailed and styled enough that they could have come right off the manga pages. Unfortunately, its lost on me since I have no interest in said style. The designer/CAD is Komino Masahiko, which is his first time in the role, so he is to be commended for his efforts. He also did key animation this episode. I suspect that there is a fair amount of cash thrown at this series though, so hopefully the studio David Productions won’t have any trouble keeping up this standard.

Edit: I have actually watched on with this and I think I’m beginning to understand the appeal after all!

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Soredemo Sekai wa Utsukushii

A story about an obscure, down-to-earth princess moving to another kingdom to marry a powerful king, Soredemo Sekai wa Utsukushii is an anime adaptation of a popular shoujo manga. It has a selling point that most shoujo manga doesn’t – trading the well-trodden highschool romance setting in for a kind of cynical fairytale scenario. It’s fairytale because it’s about a spirited princess betrothed to a glamorous king, and it’s cynical because the princess, and the anime in general refuses to play cleanly play the part. She is tomboyish and a little rough around the edges, and the anime has the audacity to even break the fourth wall. In line with this, the anime is refreshingly earnest about things: the bad guys are your cliche dopey street thugs, the ‘good people’ she meets are a hard-working family who seem to live to be kind and generous to strangers, and the protagonist herself is good to the bone, even if she doesn’t carry herself in an entirely regal manner.

There’s no layer of mystery, no hidden, ulterior motives and no hints of a sinister force at work, it’s pleasantly straightforward storytelling. But what’s really interesting is that the cliches its built upon are not really anime cliches at all. Family values? Incompetent villain duos? It’s more at home in a Disney movie than anime or manga. Perhaps that is the appeal to the Japanese audience, but for me it’s just as familiar. This all adds up to pretty decent entertainment, albeit too straightforward to really garner much interest from me. Its minor quirks aside, I don’t see this anime going anywhere challenging or totally unconventional, and I don’t think the comedy facet of the series can summon enough laughter to justify me watching it.

The production qualities aren’t anything to rave about either. Studio Pierrot does an acceptable job making things move and look reasonable, but it’s far from eye-opening. Yet again the CAD/character designer is new to this job but has significant animation experience. I actually think he has done a pretty fine job of converting the manga designs to animation. The main character in particular is full of life and feels memorable as a female character. This is helped by the strong voice work of her seiyuu, Maeda Rena, whose only other major role up until now has been in Hunter X Hunter. She portrays Nike (Just Do It!) with the perfect comprise between playfulness and mature confidence. My thoughts are that the director doesn’t have a lot to throw at this, and it will be an under-the radar mediocre production that will please fans of the manga, but not achieve much else.

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Gokukoku no Brynhildr

A girl who can see the future and stop a giant falling boulder with surgery-and-drug based founded magic meets a highschool protagonist whose regret over the death of his beloved childhood friend has turned into a lifelong obsession with her and astronomy. It’s not exactly your on par with your usual anime set-up. Studio ARMS, known for their shitty ecchi anime productions, brings us this seinen manga adaptation with a bit of a unique kick to it. The elements of this story, when carved out from the consummate whole, ring ‘been-done Light Novel/manga’; You’ve got your magic, your plot gimmick (girl can see the future), your high-school setting, your boy-meets-girl romance, et cetera. But somehow Gokukoku no Brynhildr mixes it all together and creates something surprisingly exhilarating. For example, the MC’s inability to move past the lost of his precious Kuroneko felt genuinely soul-crushing instead of just being an arbitrary plot hurdle, and they actually wrung some tension out of Kuroha’s ability to foresee people’s deaths: I was getting very close to being at the edge of my seat for a moment or two. The reason Gokuhoku is more than the some of its parts? Good storytelling.

I can’t say how much we should be thanking the original author, or the anime staff, but at the very least series director Imaizumi Kenichi (Katekyo Hitman Reborn) has not stuffed it up. He also supplied the pace-perfect storyboard for this first episode. The animation carried its weight but never verged on being even slightly flashy. Karasu Irohaki (Maouyuu Maou Yuusha) is CAD/Character Designer and seems to be capable enough.

So I can’t fault the production, but what I can fault is the way that, from time to time, the episode blunders awkwardly into adolescent moe tones and tropes. Its as though the surgeons behind the super-powered Kuroha also embedded this ‘switch’ in her brain which can abruptly switch her from cool and collected to flustered and flirty. And I’m not talking the kind of flirt fluster a normal girl might succumb to – I’m talking forced moe along the lines of uncalled for sexual tension, shouts of  ‘urusai urusai urusai!’ and uncontrollable embarrassment. Dengeki called and wants their tropes back. I can handle moe, and sometimes I love handling it, but I don’t like seeing it wedged into an otherwise interesting story. Read the mood!

Despite this, I think there’s enough of a real story here for me to give it another couple of episodes.

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Mekaku City Actors

I was was fully prepared to hate Mekaku City Actors. My SHAFT dartboard is full of holes and I’ve got a pile of flashcards with preemptively prepared criticisms over a meter high crowding my desk. But then something happened: I actually watched Mekaku City Actors. Around about 1 minute into this new anime I realised I couldn’t stifle a smile any longer! The interactions between the bottom-of-the-barrel shut-in main character and his inexplicable and inexplicably adorable AI computer system, Ene are just impossible to resist. Their endearing relationship, which swings between Ene sweetly encouraging and supporting our ignoble MC, to Ene bluntly insulting him and reminding him of his many faults. Ene, voiced to perfection by Kana Asumi, is playful and has an irrepressible personality, while her master makes his mark this episode as a pathetic hikkikomori with a redeeming quality – what I can only describe as backbone. His first day outside, spurred by the urgency of needing a new keyboard, ends with him having to stand up to a group of heavily armed terrorists. All of the characters leave a strong impression and the dynamic between the MC and Ene in particular has a good comedic spark to it.

This anime is based on a light novel series, which, in turn, is based on a series of vocaloid songs called Kagerou Project. This is the last thing I thought I’d be saying about this anime, but I feel like its presentation as handled by SHAFT with Akiyuki Shinbo in his directors chair has elevated Mekaku City actors above its origins (the LN series anyway). I will say that my fears were realised: it was littered with SHAFT-isms like head-tilts, flat, 2-dimensional layouts, pointless close-up cutaways and detail-free background art. It’s nice that Shinbo has freed himself from the shackles of having to be original! At the end of the day, the reason this stuff gets to me is that Shinbo and ‘his’ studio have created a visual brand that all their anime are bent into – regardless of the intent of the source material it will just end up being a ‘SHAFT anime’. Not only is it lazy, but it also reeks of arrogant self-indulgence. But they got lucky with Mekaku City actors because the end result works well enough for me to look past that.

And I will admit that they have at least animated it well – the first episode had a lot of animation and one of it bad. But, like most things this season, nothing struck me with any sense of awe. One of SHAFT’s prime animators, Genichirou Abe, is character designer but, interestingly, is not CAD. Instead there are three CAD staff. Abe has not contributed any key animation, and there is no sign of Imamura Ryo either, perhaps another hint that he has left the studio. If this anime does feature SHAFTs usual spontaneous doses of standout animation it will either be Abe in later episodes or through a talented freelancer. Maybe SHAFT should consider hiring some more star animator talent. The director credits are the usual story – Shinbo as series director/overall director, giving him executive oversight without the hard work of being the actual director – that honour goes to the Hidamari Sketch director, Yase Yuki.

Depending on whether it keeps going forward or stagnates, this has the potential to be one of the best SHAFT anime. For now at least, its surprisingly snappy and entertaining.

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Bokura Minna Kawaisou

Bokura Minna Kawaisou is an anime adaptation of a seinen comedy manga constructed by the eminent studio Brains Base. The basic premise is that a highschool student moves into a shared living dorm which he quickly realises is a lively, strange and perhaps even dangerous cohabitation with an exquisite girl he swoons over in his spare time and a pack of extreme and unsavoury individuals. The unsavoury individuals include a determinedly odd pervert, and a gratingly drunk woman with bad taste in men. It sounds like hell to live in, but it’s a ripe setting for a comedy anime. The jokes basically revolve around the extreme personalities of the other tenants and the predictable difficulties the main character has in realising his romance with his crush. I actually found the characters a bit too annoying for the gags to tickle my funny bone, or the jokes too predictable. I don’t think I laughed out loud in this episode. Maybe I’ve just been spoiled by the likes of Teekyu recently, but this anime only makes a lukewarm impression as a comedy and doesn’t really try to be much else.

One thing I will say though is that Brains Base did a tremendous job pitching the gags with timing and visual humour. The anime has a real flare, and at times the characters’ expressions or movements are almost a punchline themselves. The style of the anime is also unusual and interesting, once you get used to it. There’s a weird shine to everything and the colours seem off at first, but in the end I saw it as lusciously and charmingly drawn. There are 4 character designers in total (two credited for major characters and 2 for minor) and it looks like the two major designers will be rotating chief animator roles per episode (with different ADs below them of course). It will be interesting to see if we can spot any differences in the way they draw certain characters in their episodes.The first episode had them both directly involved as ADs so they must have really nailed the look they were going for. Overall, it looks like the show is well-staffed and set for a steady schedule.

With all said and done, my overriding feeling towards this show is ‘ambivalence’. Its execution is great, but the jokes it has to work with just aren’t funny enough to me.

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Atelier Escha & Logy

I’m one of those many out there who are aware of the Atelier franchise but never actually got my feet wet and dipped in to it. I’ve seen the transcendently adorable artwork for the games floating around the internet, and I even have a borrowed copy of the one of the games sitting on my shelf staring down at me scornfully. I’m sorry, I want to play you, I just don’t have the time for a 5000 hour JRPG – I’m not ready for that kind of commitment. When I first heard that there was going to be an anime version I thought ‘here’s an easy way to get my foot into the franchise’s door’. Then I saw the promotional artwork and saw the magic of mediocre anime illustrators at work – taking a beautiful piece of artwork and turning it into a pallid, lifeless cast of its former self. The poor designs raised a warning flag above Atelier’s head, and I couldn’t destroy it in time because my worst fears came true in this first episode.

Atelier Escha & Logy is an ugly, cheap-looking waste of time for anyone but the most hardcore fan of the game. The story so far is pretty dull – a man, Logy arrives in an idyllic  village on assignment and is teamed up with local cutey Escha as a crack alchemist duo for whom no task is too menial or dull. The entire village lives off apples from a handful of trees in a nearby orchid, so when the windmill breaks down Escha & Logy are sent in to resolve the shocking crisis. To make matters worse, the village doesn’t have the foresight to keep any spare parts for the windmill in case of such a critical failure so the only solution is to use alchemy! This apparently means reading a recipe book, killing a wild animal and then putting things in a pot. I had a problem with the killing a wild animal part of this show, not because I’m a PETA member or anything like that, but because all of a sudden these two characters went from eating apple tart, greeting the old ladies on the street and going for long strolls to having an intense showdown with a magical beast almost as big as them. Whats worse is that it just flashed by momentarily as part of the montage. The only excitement and conflict of the episode was over in the blink of an eye with no explanation whatsoever. Why were they fighting it, why do they have combat experience, was it a tough battle? You would only know if you played the games, so it’s a bad-writing infringement!

Everything else is a bad writing infringement too. Bad characterisation, forced romance elements (love isn’t alchemy, you can’t just get a man and a woman and leave them together for a day to get a couple), and stupid plot abound. Case in point:  the flashbacks to the earlier apple scenes when Logy is shown the orchid and realises apples come from apple trees. It was treated like he figured out the overarching story of Lost or something. And as for everything else – infringements everywhere. I want to issue a fine to Gokumi for this one – my, how they have fallen from grace since A-channel. Gokumi was a promising jump-ship studio from Gonzo back then, now it’s a sinking ship itself. The animation is so cheap it borders on the offensive – jittery, off-model, moving unnaturally, you name it. The exception is the OP, which is actually really awesome and only serves to underscore the failing of the rest of the show. Nakano Keiya is to be blamed for the poor anime character designs, which is all the more unforgivable given how lovely their originals are.

I’ve talked about this one too much already – it’s bad, don’t watch it unless you have an irrational over-attachment to the games. 0/10 would drop again.

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Dai Shogun – Great Revolution

I’m actually stunned, lost for words. Was that really a commercially-produced anime I just watched, something that people would actually consider putting on TV? Scratch that, this isn’t even good enough to belong on the internet. Gonzo should be sending director Watanabe Takashi and the staff at A.C.G.T a thank you letter for taking the heat off Blade & Soul for the worst anime of the season award. How did Dai Shogun wrestle that title of dishonour from Blade & Soul? Well, the biggest failing point of this anime is the animation, or lack thereof. It’s actually legitimately impressive just how far these staff were willing and able to go to avoid animating anything – almost every single cut features some kind of animation shortcut and I think they pulled out every trick in the book here. You’ve got static characters with moving mouths, a wobbling effect on drawings to imitate movement, shaky-cam to cover up the fact that nothing is happening, pivoting and sliding cels across the scene in lieu of animation (this is a technique I wholly blame Trigger for). I can deal with some cheats, but this is taken to a level that no anime fan should accept. You could probably actually count the number of drawings used in this episode. How did they have two animation directors!!

And to make matters worse, the story and script doesn’t even begin to make amends for the under production. The best jokes of the show are juvenile and moronic and rely on every character being remarkably stupid to work. And that’s if it’s a comedy – it certainly can’t be action and there doesn’t seem to be a story beyond the main character wanting to fight everyone he sees (such a shame he’s physically debilitated by his framerate!). Unfunny, pointless, drivel – all of these words fit Dai Shogun quite nicely. The one positive is that the art and design work isn’t absolutely atrocious – if you just looked at screencaps you might think it looked pretty decent. IT’S NOT.

I can’t work out how this travesty occurred; Watanabe Takashi  is an experienced director who has overseen competent anime in the past, and the animation production is shared by J.C Staff and A.C.G.T, both with a proven track record of at least not being absolute trash. And yet the end result is absolute trash. But the biggest mystery is how Dai Satou got involved in all this. Dai Satou has been one of the better writers for original anime over the years and has always seemed to want to maintain his creative integrity. I actually didn’t believe he was working as series composition on this anime until I actually went and double checked it on the official website. He doesn’t seem to have had any positive influence over it. I don’t think anyone had a positive influence over this annoying and horribly produced anime. I couldn’t even make it right to the end of the episode (although I got close).

Please, don’t let them get away with this! Switch off to Dai Shogun!

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I enjoyed the first episode of Ping Pong for its rough, esoteric artistry and the fresh approach Yuasa has taken for presenting an anime. Actually, I guess you could say I appreciated it more than I enjoyed it. While it wasn’t boring by any stretch, it did lack a certain ‘hook’ or gravitas that I really need to get me genuinely invested in the show. Well, episode 2 changed all that, and episodes 3, 4 and 5 all rode that wave of change to make ping pong my anime of the season. In fact it’s probably more than that; You know it’s anime-love when you have this militant desire to make everyone else like it. Spring has come for this anime fan! I thought I’d better stop pestering my friends about dropping it and just let me passion out through a blog post instead.

Forget Everything You’ve Learned About Anime

Ping Pong’s success is hampered by the insular and cannibalistic nature of the anime industry. In terms of art styles, design work, and even the way things are storyboarded, there is very little variation. Sure, an anime girl might have larger eyebrows or different coloured hair, but they’re always recognisable as an ‘anime girl’. Anime is a medium, but most of the time we actually think of it as a genre – there is a look and a set of unspoken rules about what kind of stories should be told and how they should play out. This came about because most people in the industry are inspired by works from within the medium. How many light novel’s that get made into anime are written by otaku? It’s this feedback loop that has trapped both producers and fans. Most otaku expect to see “anime”, rather than “animation from Japan”.

Ping Pong is one of those rare cases of commercial Japanese animation that isn’t trying to be ‘anime’. It’s just trying to be Ping Pong. Sure, the characters are drawn with rough, lazy-seeming lines, and they’re definitely not colourful or attractive. They don’t stay on model all the time; and sometimes they move in unnatural ways. But who said anime has to do any of that? Who said Japanese animation has to be cleanly drawn, detailed, and stick to model sheets? Most of the time people who say Ping Pong looks ‘bad’ are actually saying that it doesn’t meet their expectations as an anime. It’s unfortunate that anime are punished when they try something too different – I know Aku no Hana suffered the same fate, but turned out to be easily one of the best anime of the year.

I don’t believe that comparing the way Ping Pong looks to other anime can be a valid criticism. There’s nothing inherently wrong with looking weird, rough and ‘uncute’. If everyone could cleanse their palate and enjoy Ping Pong for what it is, they might see some beauty and raw creativity in the messy expressionistic style of Ping Pong.

The style

I’ve just about exhausted all my synonyms for rough and wobbly in my discussions on Ping Pong so far, because that’s really the best way to describe its overall visual composure. The linework is skittishly wavy and the characters often have a mishapen bearing to them – but don’t mistake this for sloppy production values; the loose wonkiness of Ping Pong is deliberately realised. Even the background art has been drawn with the same scraggly linework to deliver a unified style.

On the one hand, I’m sure there’s a degree of trying to look different for the sake of standing out, but on the other hand, I think one of benefits of this it allows the animation to be looser and more expressive in different ways. Without strict character models and the need for smooth, neat lines, animators are more free to deliver raw expression through their animation. And that’s not a sign of a lazy production – it’s just a choice to undercook the animation to preserve more of its original flavour. The OP is a perfect example of this, showcasing some really astounding work from some of the best animators ever, all clearly done in their own unique manner. Its exhilarating, fresh and technically impressive in a way that a more strictly produced anime could never allow for.

Another point to the look is the lack of highlights/shading in the animation and the simplicity of some elements of the designs – especially the hair. The lack of highlights is becoming more common in anime and it gives the animation a very crisp, clean and modern look. The risk is that things can look flat without shading. Ping Pong avoids that trap with its strong use of perspective and warped posing that fills out the shots in a 3 dimensional way, and the lack of shading detail helps the series focus on the expressions and mannerisms of the characters. On top of that, there’s a lack of post-processing like lighting effects or filters (like the opposite of Ufotable or GoHands). The Ping Pong visuals are crisp and focused – I love it!

I think it’s fair to say that there’s more of a focus on presentation over animation in Ping Pong, and this is where Yuasa’s monumental effort of storyboarding and scripting every episode of the series comes in. Since the schedule of this anime isn’t so great (as in, it wasn’t in preproduction for that long), Yuasa has apparently been kicking out an episode storyboard once every 10 days. It usually takes 2+ weeks to complete a storyboard, so it’s quite a feat. It’s definitely a radical measure for a director to do every storyboard for a TV-anime (I can’t think of any other cases), but it means that he has a direct hand in the way every scene in Ping Pong plays out. As a result, Ping Pong feels tightly crafted in terms of its pace and visual presentation. The coherent vision he has mapped out from start to finish also imbues the storytelling with a focus and sense of purpose that anime often loses. Every scene counts, and every shot is perfectly in-tune with the Ping Pong style.

There are plenty of animation shortcuts in Ping Pong, and there are moments that seem cheap, but the style that Yuasa and Nobutake Ito have created here is probably its greatest asset.

The OP

I mentioned the OP before, and it’s certainly the animation highlight of anything from this season. It’s directed, storyboarded, and AD’d by none other than Shinya Ohira, easily one of most technically brilliant and fascinating animators to have ever lived. Ohira only really works on cinema anime these past few years, so his involvement here is clearly a sign of respect for Yuasa (he also did key animation on Yuasa’s Mind Game uncredited). He brings along kindred spirit Shinji Hashimoto and other top expressive animators including Hokuto Sakiyama, Tomoyuki Niho, and Yasunori Miyazawa to help create this impressive piece of work.

As expected, Shinya Ohira’s segment was the highlight – pure, unadulterated animation that strongly harkens back to his career’s earlier focus on ultra-realism but with a fervid edge of expressiveness that his work is now known for.

Shinji Hashimoto’s animation is also superb – you can feel the sense of power and momentum from his running sequence, as though it’s trying to charge right out of the screen!

Like he did with Azura’s Wrath episode 11, Ohira took this opportunity to let the talent of some top-grade animators speak for itself, to great effect! With the amount of drawings in this, I’m not surprised it didn’t get finished on time (it doesn’t play until the third episode). The OP was also improved going into the fourth episode, so it’s clear Ohira doesn’t consider it finished yet. It’s also perhaps another sign that the schedule on Ping Pong isn’t the best.

Shout-outs

Yasunori Miyzawa

Yasunori Miyzawa has been a major contributor to the animation of Ping Pong. He’s been a highly regarded animator for some time now, but has maintained a prolific workload in TV-anime unlike some of his lofty peers. He’s also been involved with Yuasa’s works for some time now, including all of his other noitamina series and being an associate animator on his Kick-heart movie. So it was pretty clear that he would show up here.

Sure enough, he’s credited with key animation in the OP, episode one and episode 3. He actually did animation in episode 4 as well, but it looks like they stuffed up his name in the credits, showing  宮沢康則 instead of 宮沢康紀… or was this intentional for some reason?

His animation in episode 4, a key part of the showdown between Ryuuichi and Wenge, was definitely one of the more interesting beats in the ep. Even though it was very limited, it was interesting to see the looming, monstrous portrayal of Ryuuichi, tapping into the psychology of the match without the need for cutaways and obvious narration.

Miyzawa is definitely a major asset to the show, and I hope he keeps working on it. He’s actually involved with the other noitamina show this season, Nanana’s Buried Treasure, having done genga for 2 of the episodes so far. Glad his talented drawing arm is being kept busy!

BahiJD

BahiJD’s next big break after his work on Space Dandy was supposed to grace Japanese television screens with episode 3 of Ping Pong, but it wasn’t to be.

Bahi is a young Austrian animator and a newcomer in the Japanese industry. He still lives in Austria and works with other staff over the internet. He is very passionate about anime and works very hard to make each of his cuts memorable. His work on Space Dandy episode 1 was actually very impressive, all the more so for someone so inexperienced in the business. Here’s a part of it on sakugabooru. After finishing his work on this, he moved on to his animation for the 3rd episode of Ping Pong, for which it seemed he was doing a whopping 20 cuts. That translated to basically the last climactic two minutes of the episode – a great chance for his work to really be put on a pedestal.

But when the episode came out, there was no noticeably Bahi animation, and nothing notable from the final scenes. Then we see that his name wasn’t in the credits! An avid twitter user, he made a number of tweets suggesting that something had gone wrong with his work on Ping Pong in terms of meeting the schedule. It’s hard to say exactly what the problem was – perhaps he couldn’t finish his animation before his deadline, or maybe the deadline was miscommunicated thanks to him not being Japanese. But his animation didn’t make it in, and clearly they had to scramble replacement cuts together from somewhere. Although it didn’t ruin the episode, this is definitely an unfortunate stuff up! I hope it doesn’t hamper his career in Japan.

After the episode, he put rough concept versions of his cuts online, and I’ve gotta say it looks like he could have made them really great. If he had got them finished and in the episode, it definitely would have been awesome.

Eunyoung Choi

Eunyoung Choi is a female Korean animator who has really made a name for herself working with Yuasa on his projects from Kemonozume right through to Kick-heart. She is an accomplished animator with a budding career in directing. She handled episode 9 of Space Dandy recently, and, unless she’s busy on another future project, I wouldn’t be surprised to see her put the director’s hat on sometime for Ping Pong.

In the mean time, she has provided key animation for episode 2 and also did the ending animation by herself. Although it’s obviously rotoscoped from video footage, the ED is still visually delightful and would have taken a lot of work! Since there are no other credits, I guess she shot the footage herself or directed it and came up with what to record. I’m not really sure how walking, driving and then looking at a bird relate to ping pong, but it’s definitely pretty.

Flash Animation

The show’s use of flash animation mostly feels unnecessary and included for the sake of trying something new. Even if it does save costs for those shots of a whole bunch of people playing table tennis, I’d rather miss out on those scenes than see awkwardly placed full animation mixed in with the limited 2D animation. Also, since it’s artificially in-betweened, flash animation always moves unnaturally smoothly, and you can feel the ‘joints’ on the character. Adding to this, in Ping Pong, it has thicker, bolder lines without the same wobbly look that the rest of the animation has. It seems pretty jarring and pointless, but I guess it could have been done worse.

The Music

I didn’t notice this in the first episode, but the music for this show is actually awesome! Several times I’ve noticed just how much the music added to the energy of this show, to the point where it’s actually a vital component of why I enjoy it. It’s handled by Kensuke Ushio, one man techno artist also known as Agraph. He actually did a really cool track for Space Dandy called ‘Love you, Dandy’. Perhaps Yuasa discovered him when working on his Dandy episode? However or whoever found him, he was right man for the job. The Ping Pong soundtrack doesn’t feel like ‘just another anime OST’ – it’s genuinely fresh and invigourating.

Conclusion

There’s a lot to love about Ping Pong. Beyond what I’ve discussed here, the show has strong, unique characterisation. Overall, I would call it my anime of the season! It might not look right sitting next to other anime, but Ping Pong should be celebrated for trying something new and succeeding.

The next time I see girls playing trading card games I’m bolting! Wixoss starts of innocently enough humming along as a story of cute girls playing cards with a side helping of “please buy these cards – look how cute they are!”. But just when you start leaning back and soaking up the pleasant moe feelings it pulls you, gagging and struggling, in a different direction: by episode 3 you’re well and truly caught up in a soul crushing emotional maelstrom of forbidden love, loneliness, forlorn sadism and nihilism. It’s unrelentingly melodramatic as it throws each of its main characters into the fray and forces us to watch as their lives spiral out of control. It’s tough viewing but it’s like an imminent train wreck you just can’t look away from. If you thought Wixoss was just pretty young girls sitting around, drinking tea, fondling each others breasts and playing the occasional card game, you can think again. And if train wrecks are your thing, I fully suggest you strap in and join me for the ride. Selector Infector Wixoss will be two seasons long, so it’s not too late to jump on board the pain train!

I love this teenage angst stuff

Yep, I admit it, I’m a sucker for sappy teenage angsty stuff. I think it’s a condition that stems all the way back from my early years of watching Buffy the Vampire slayer, but it’s a guilty pleasure that’s stayed with me for life. Unfortunately it’s been a while since I’ve found an anime this heavy with it. I think the last time I was this revved up about the awry feelings of twisted young girls was Mai Hime. Back then my heart bled for Shizuru and her patently unfulfilled lesbian love for Natsuki, and for Mai’s crumbling soul beneath her happy facade. Now, with Wixoss, I can actually hear my heart cracking whenever Yuzuki starts the self-destructive talk of the love for her brother that can’t come true, and I’m glued to the screen with shock when Hitoe’s simple dream of making friends is crushed. Meanwhile, the main character seems to be harboring some strong nihilistic tendencies beneath her good girl front, while her talking card, Tama, is the cutest little bundle of adrenaline-junky sadism you’ll ever find. I know it’s all over-the-top and definitely bordering on silly, but the potency of these raw, naive feelings still guts me, and I absolutely love the unstable, flawed characterisation that hangs over all of the girls. As you might have gathered, I’m totally ensnared by Wixoss, and it’s the only other anime this season, alongside Ping Pong, that I hang out every week to see.

Incest is best

Probably the biggest hook that this show has stuck into me is Yuzuki’s totally obsessive crush on her brother. Her actual brother; none of that not-blood-related cop out crap. It’s not because I have boner for the idea of two people with the same mother getting it on, not at all. The reason I love stories like this is because they’re forbidden love. It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book of how to make the audience have feelings, but it works on me every time. If you’ve ever experienced unrequited love, you should be able to sympathise with poor little Yuzuki. Sure, loving her brother is creepy and not really the best idea, but love is illogical and notoriously unwilling to compromise for the people who are infected with misdirected feelings. Beyond all reason and responsibility, Yuzuki is bound by her aching heart to wish for the impossible – a normal relationship with her brother. Of all the wishes seen so far hers is the one with the most at stake – wixoss is the only way she can make it happen.

I don’t know if I support her wish, but I sympathise with her the most of all the girls.

Welcome to Fight Club

The main character of the series is another interesting piece of work. She’s probably the most atypical character in the show in the sense that she’s a girl drifting through life without a sense of purpose, almost detached from her own existence. Once she’s thrust into the combative arena of Wixoss, she realises she has nothing to lose, and she even starts to find a rare flicker of joy in the heat of battle. Her motivations for battling with the dreams of girls hanging in the balance is purely that it’s fun. I can’t really remember another female anime character with this kind of nonchalant, nihilistic bent, and it’s kind of exciting to see how far down this path she’s going to go by the end of the series.

Episode 7 was good

I watched episode 7 yesterday morning and it delivered all the things I love about this show. Yuzuki is wandering the streets looking for girls to start battles with, Ruuko is finally goaded into doing battle with Aki-lucky’s utterly evil and deeply perceptive colleague. While previous battles have lacked suspense, this one had a great energy and was probably the high point of the episode. This was partly because the dynamic between Ruuko and Iona really electric – they’re both a match for each other and they’re both in it for the thrill of the hunt. I see a really fun rivalry brewing here. Feeding off this energy, Tama’s thirst for battle was more irrepressible than ever!

She was so fierce this episode that sparks could’ve been bursting from the sides of my computer monitor. I could feel the heat of her excitement!

Another contributing factor was that Hiroshi Tomioka did a significant amount of drawings for it. His effect animation made things visually exhilarating, while the music and sound effects also held up their end to produce a bold and stimulating action sequence. The importance of the effect animation can’t be overlooked in Wixoss; since the card girls don’t actually make physical contact, there’s no actual choreography. It’s up to the flashy sparks, flames and beams of light to make things fun.

The episode ends on a really sharp cliffhanger, with a resurgent Akira taunting Yuzuki and Ruuko into an inevitable showdown in an abandoned warehouse. By the look of it, Akira is now off the rails with no hope of return. She was an intimidating figure before, but I expect to see her reach new levels of psychopathy now that her pride has been ripped to shreds. Her finally ‘Aki-raki’ of the episode literally sent shivers down my spine!

So I just watched Selector Infected Wixoss 8 and I think I now need professional help. 10 years from now you might find me in some creepy, out-of-the-way mental asylum for the irredeemably damaged screaming “NO YUZUKI. STOP, JUST STOP!!”. But I’ll at least finish this blog post before I admit myself.

I mentioned last week that watching Wixoss was like being a morbidly curious onlooker of a train crash about to happen. Well now the train crashed actually happened and I’ve gone from perverse curiosity to abject horror as I’m lift staring at the twisted, smoldering remains. And let’s not be coy about this, those remains are Yuzuki. Poor Yuzuki! After taking a backseat last week to the fall of Aki-out-of-lucky, she is thrust back to center stage from the very start of the episode. The first half of the episode was unsettling with its foreboding tone as Yuzuki ran around raising bad-outcome flags left right and center (see above screencap), and the latter half of the episode bought her storyline to a head, pitting her in a make or break selector battoru. At this point in the episode I was seriously panicking. I expected to suffer alongside Yuzuki for a good few more episodes as she slowly grappled with her soul-crushing tainted love, and yet all of a sudden there we were, on the brink of her wish coming true! Wixoss is proving to be full of surprises, and the breakneck pace at which it throws its characters into turmoil is truly amazing.

I’ve gotta say, I’m not usually the biggest fan of Mari Okada’s scripts, but she has really nailed it here. I think Wixoss is suited to her writing style because it’s under no pretense of being a nuanced, realistic drama, so she doesn’t have to pull any punches in packing in as much emotion as possible. But I really enjoyed the sense of doubt hanging over Yuzuki as she pursued her goal. At face value she had pulled herself together, taken command of her own destiny and was working confidently towards achieving her dream, but there was the nagging sense that she was making a mistake. We the audience had no reason to believe that her wish would not come true, but the episode still made us feel that something was off. It was a great way to maintain suspense.

And then there’s the outcome – goddamn! It all makes so much sense now! Why  they’re called ‘Eternal’ Girls, why Yuzuki’s LRIG was trying to stop her, and more. It’s actually an obvious development when you think about it, but It caught me off guard. So Yuzuki is now no longer herself – she’s split between being an LRIG and being a placeholder wish-fulfillment Yuzuki who will dubiously enact her fantasies with her brother. It’s clear that she won’t ever get to experience her wish, and, in the ‘be-careful-what-you-wish-for’ spirit, she has also dragged her brother into a toxic relationship. Seriously, it’s like these girls haven’t seen Madoka. Losing is probably better than winning in the never-ending selector war.

I think this show is going to take the direction of Ruuko taking up the cause of ending the whole selector infected thing. Her lack of a wish might mean she’s the only one who can ever truly ‘win’. It’s going to be interesting to see how it plays out, and I really hope Yuzuki’s storyline is continued somehow!

(laughs)

I really feel like Ping Pong raised the bar to new heights with its latest offering

Ping Pong presents a surging, heaving swell of grudges, lifelong dreams, responsibilities, love, passion,  and pride being stirred up by its entire cast, just waiting to break into uninhibited conflict. Although there have been minor clashes along the way, for example the upsets of Wenge vs Kazuma and Peco vs Sakuma, so far these motivations have mostly peacefully coexisted. Kazuma has been devotedly honing his skills and shouldering the ever increasing burden of redeeming his family name; Wenge has cast his pride aside and has put himself back to the hard work of training up; Peco has rekindled his childhood dream to make gold at the Olympics and is on an extreme up-skill regime; and Smile is silently honing his talent and reconciling his own reasons for winning. And it’s not just the players, the coaches behind them have their own hangups they’re fighting for. Exploring all these characters and what they’ve put on the line with ping pong has been the goal of this anime so far, and there’s an intensifying sense that something is brewing. Things are starting to gain a direction – they’re on a course for collision. Ping Pong has has had suspense and drama all throughout, but this episode sharply brings into focus the fact that the true meaning of the show will all be in the final meeting of these players across the net.

The episode also puts something else under the spotlight – that the core of this series is the friendship and inevitable rivalry between Smile and Peco. The other characters certainly flesh it out and explore the themes of what motivates people, but at the end of the day they’re more of a side-story. The narrative of Ping Ping has made itself clear – Smile will face Peco in an important career match and have to make a choice between listening to his coach and his friends and do whats necessary to win, or standing aside to let Peco go on towards his goal. The parallel’s drawn between Smile and his coach were undeniable, as was the flag of Peco having his leg wrapped. History will repeat itself, and Peco will be injured when he’s matched with Smile. That choice facing Smile is the crux of this series and the morale of the story will be about the meaning of winning. What I can’t predict is what Smile will choose: to win or to lose. If I had to guess at this point it would be ‘to win’, simply because it would feel too predictable otherwise.

• We’re seeing real pay-off here from Yuasa’s hands-on, DIY approach to writing/storyboarding each episode. Far from getting tired, he seems to be improving with every episode. This week felt like it had more visual depth and precise pacing than ever before. Every scene had a bite of humour, emotion or tension to it, and there was a pervasive atmosphere throughout. It felt like there were less incongruous moments of animation and more coherency to the rough art style. Combined with the sleek, emotive music, the show’s production was punchier than ever, and as close to beauty as it has ever been. I can now put my concerns about the schedule aside, it’s kept up. But I am hoping to see some animator big guns to come out for the final matches of the show

• I thought this was interesting -this is the color script for the first episode. Every episode has its own color script and the intention is to guide the flow of color throughout the episode. Masaaki Yuasa’s works have always had a strong focus on color and this is definitely a major part of that. I think it’s rare for an anime to use this pre-production step, but it seems to be a signature of his. The color scripts for Kick Heart were posted online on the kickstarter page https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/production-ig/masaaki-yuasas-kick-heart/posts/330918. As with Kick Heart, they would have been painted, based on Yuasa’s storyboard, by the series art director and close collaborator Kevin Aymeric. He recently gained attention for drawing every single background in Yuasa’s episode of Space Dandy (episode 9) himself. It’s clear that he’s a creative force to be reckoned with and a valuable addition to the Yuasa ‘team’.

Aymeric signature – the ping pong building

I thought of doing a new regular segment where I talk about an anime staffer who has really made an impression on me in the last month. The first lucky pick is Masaaki Yuasa for his work as the director/storyboarder/screenwriter of Ping Pong. Not all the MVP posts will be this long – it will just depend on the person and how much there is to discuss!

There’s no doubt in my mind that Ping Pong, currently airing on FujiTV’s Noitamina timeslot, is the best anime on TV right now. Having not read the original manga from esteemed author Taiyou Matsumoto upon which it’s based, I can’t speak for exactly how this works as an adaptation, nor to how much of its strengths come from the source material. But what I can say is that the end result is an exhilarating and poignant story realised with a peculiar intensity and gravitas that could only have come from one man: Masaaki Yuasa. This is just the latest step in an accelerated career decorated with achievements and acclaim, as an animator, a designer and as a director. Yuasa is one of the most influential and creatively charged players in the anime industry today, with a history of top-shelf anime under his director’s belt (such as Mind Game, Tatami Galaxy and Kaiba) and a trusted team of artists under his wing.

Make no mistake, no one but Yuasa and his flock could have rendered Ping Pong with the unique visual lustre, punchy sense of style and rough, yet charming production qualities. To celebrate that fact, let’s take a moment to venerate the man and his work. First, how exactly did Yuasa get on board the fast-track express ride to this pinnacle of an anime career? By being a driven, career focused ‘ideas man’ who found himself in a fortunate position early in his working life, basically. Even more simply, by being incredibly talented. But let’s tell the story.

Road of Yuasa

• His interest in making things move through the medium of animation was first sparked by seeing Hayao Miyazaki’s Castle of Cagliostro.
• When entering the industry in the late 80s he chose to work at Asia-do because it was run by two animators he was inspired by, most notably Tsutomu Shibayama, whose animation when at A-Production he was a fan of. He was also keen to take part in the anime shorts that Asia-do often produced.
• After leaving Asia-do in around 1992, he did a significant amount of animation work on Crayon Shin-chan, including animation directing credits. His involvement on Crayon Shin-chan was heightened by the receptiveness of its director to new ideas, which Yuasa had in no short supply.
• Owing to this, he took charge of several short episodes focusing on a popular side character (Buriburizaemon’s Adventures), which was his first effort in scriptwriting and storyboarding. Even at this early stage, those episodes showcased an outstanding and unique approach.
• He Collaborated with the enigmatic Shinya Ohira in the distinguished 1994 Hamaji’s Resurrection.
• His penchant for anime with a more artistic bent became clearly visible with his work on Koji Morimoto’s Noiseman Sound Insect in 1997, and then in Tatsuo Satou’s Cat Soup a few years later.
• This direction of his career culminated in the 2005 movie anime, Mind Game, which he was offered to direct. His involvement revolutionised the project and ultimately created a powerful and widely extolled film which cemented his status as a creatively uninhibited yet practically adroit director.
• This led to him directing a series of memorable tv anime works in the years to come, all of which aired on Fuji TV’s noitamina timeslot, and all of which had its own dissonant variation on Yuasa’s style. It’s a testament to his skill as a director that he challenges himself with new approaches every anime, while still building upon a transient style that remains uniquely his.
  • Kemonozume
  • Kaiba
  • Tatami Galaxy
• On the front-foot with new avenues of production, Yuasa reached out globally to fans to create a new anime movie through kickstarter, called Kick Heart. The call to arms was overwhelmingly successful, raising the $200,000 to create the fun and quirky short film (it’s only 13 mins). This was probably the first significant anime project to have been born from kickstarter and is just one example of Yuasa’s pioneering temperament
• It was after this project that he returned to his bread and butter, at the helm of a new Noitamina timeslot manga adaptation – Ping Pong! Altogether a more conventional anime, Ping Pong is still evidently the product of his artistic flare and prodigious handle on the director’s chair.

Yuasa Squad

(Kevin Aymeric, Yuasa, Michio Mihara, Eunyoung Choi) – thank you photo for Kick Heart

But, as with any great director, Yuasa doesn’t walk alone. Sharing this path to success are a number of close affiliates who are perhaps just as essential to bringing his anime to life with the pizazz we’ve come to expect. Let’s look at a few:

EunYoung Choi

A South Korean female animator who studied animation in England before moving to Japan to enter the industry. EunYoung Choi attracted a lot of attention for her weird but captivating work on the pre-OP scene in Yuasa’s Kemonozume, episode 10 (which you can view here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l696kcAunhs). She subsequently worked on future Madhouse projects under Yuasa, with a rapidly increasing involvement – she directed/storyboarded/AD’d several episodes of Kaiba. Now that Yuasa appears to no longer be aligned with Madhouse (and let’s face it, who is?), she seems to have followed him to bigger and better things, being instrumental in the development of Kick Heart, and ultimately credited with assistant director with Ping Pong. Their close and strong working relationship is very clear – she often accompanies him on visits to conventions/events and regularly acts as translator for his western interviews. I’m sure she has played a big part in Yuasa’s worldly approach to making anime. Hiring foreign animators and communicating with overseas fans is probably a big reason why Yuasa’s work is often unique and evolutionary compared with the more insular, traditional industry.

Kevin Aymeric

Aymeric joined the Yuasa team with Kick Heart, and I have a suspicion that it was through EunYoung Choi. One reason being that he pulled a huge effort on Choi’s episode #9 of Space Dandy (drawing every single bit background art over 4 and half months), which didn’t actually have Yuasa’s involvement, suggesting a separate working relationship. Beyond that, it’s just a hunch. In any case, he was the art director and background artist for Kick Heart, and then the background artist for Ping Pong (there was no way he could draw all of those backgrounds himself!!). Aymeric worked on an uncommon preproduction facet for both Kick Heart and Ping Pong – colour scripts, which provide direction on the flow of colour throughout the anime. You can view his Kick Heart colour scripts here. Although Choi was credited with Color Coordination for Kick Heart, I feel like Kevin has really introduced a greater understanding of colour and more vibrancy into team-Yuasa’s works.

Michio Mihara

Michio Mihara is a dedicated animator and episode director with a truly fantastic career behind him, as a valuable mainstay of Satoshi Kon’s works, and with impressive work on other big anime films such as Jin-Roh, Princess Mononoke and Spriggan. He is well known amongst fans because he ran a column on anime-style (a well-known animator focus magazine). It was actually through this column that he wrote about EunYoung Choi and raised her profile. Although his accomplishments in the field of animation were well known, his raw creative excellence wasn’t truly discovered until he was given the chance to do all the key animation for episode 12 of Yuasa’s Kemonozume – a challenge that few animators are able to meet in the arena of modern anime. From then it seemed to be a tradition for Yuasa anime to feature a Mihara episode, as Kaiba and Kemonozume both offered highly praised Mihara episodes (in Kaiba he went even further and drew every single drawing, including in betweens). He was the animation bedrock of Kick Heart, being the character designer and sharing all the key animation between only himself and Choi. There is no doubt that he was a valuable associate of Yuasa, but there’s a theory that a falling out occurred between him and Choi (almost certainly over Kick Heart), which casts his future involvement with them in doubt.

Nobutake Ito

Nobutake Ito is another experienced, premier animator who has worked on films such as Ghost in the Shell:Innocence, Summer Wars, Wolf Children, and most recently a new career pinnacle – storyboard, character design and animation on Production I.G Giovanni’s Island. His technical proficiency is well regarded, enough even to have been trusted by Mitsuo Iso to animation direct a good portion of his Denno Coil. But, in a similar story to Mihara, Ito’s creativity and flair was never seen so rawly and freely as in Yuasa’s works. Yuasa, perhaps after meeting him on the production of Cat Soup bought him on board for Mind Game, for which he animated probably the most thrilling sequence in the film – the final chase scene. From then on, he became a regular and vital presence on Yuasa’s shows, being the character designer, animation director and recurring animator on all of his TV anime outings – Kemonozume, Kaiba, Tatami Galaxy and now Ping Pong. With such a huge involvement, Nobutake Ito is probably the animation champion of the Yuasa team, and it’s doubtful that these shows would have looked nearly as good without the ardor and experience he brings with him.

Yasunori Miyazawa

Taking up a main animator role, Yasunori Miyazawa has been called in as a kind of main animator to all of Yuasa’s efforts since Kemonozume. Ever a rich source of finesse and expertise, Miyazawa is to thank for many of the more memorable and impressive animation sequences of all of his anime. This tradition has continued in Ping Pong, although I feel like a thin schedule has hampered his animation work this time! it appears he has less of a collaborator status than the others and more of the scenario where Yuasa respects his work and wants to keep him onboard for all his projects.

Yuasa ‘Style’

Originally starting out as an animator, his inventive and free work in animation, as well as his original interest in making things move still informs his approach to making anime today. It can be seen in the playful, unpolished animation and drawings you’ll find in all his works. It’s his belief that animation should be something enjoyable to do, allowing animators to express themselves through their work without the burden of stringently adhering to a clean character model and style. This is counter to the direction that the anime industry as a whole is going, and his anime certainly stand out for it, but in a good way. His corrugated lines and elegant roughness make for an unexpected kind of nuance and emotiveness and provides a platform for his staff to put their own ideas and efforts on display at their full potency.

But, while he is one of those directors with an animator origin story, he proved early on that he was brimming with ideas that extended far up into the production hierarchy and sprung quickly into the role of director. I believe he’s most effective in this director’s role – in assembling and harnessing talent, guiding the production of his anime and coming up with new big-picture ideas from the ground up. I’ve talked about how he can bring the best out of some of his notable animators and give them the opportunity to flaunt their individualistic craftsmanship. He’s also good at trying new things, like the fusion of live action footage and 2D animation in Mind Game and Tatami Galaxy, the kick-starter fundraising for Kick Heart, the purposefully under-planned antics of Kemonozume and through to writing and storyboarding every episode of Ping Pong himself.

There’s one big reason reason Yuasa is easily one of the most interesting directors in the industry today. There are many other directors out there who get a lot of attention and garner a fan following from their popular works but ultimately succumb to a rut of over-indulging in the comfort of their own stylistic devices and approaches (Hiroyuki Imaishi and Akiyuki Shinbo are my favourite examples of promising directors who fell into this trap). But Yuasa isn’t content to just sit back and not fix things that aren’t broken, but instead strikes me as the kind of creator who would rather risk breaking them to see what new things he can fashion from the debris. As a result, each of his works promises something fresh and exciting and stands out uniquely as a memorable anime in its own right, not just as another entry rolled out in the Yuasa series. Every project is treated as a challenge and every challenge is a story of growth for this rising director. With a team of imaginative and skilled writers, directors and animators surrounding him and a pioneering attitude, Yuasa is someone who we should all be looking to for great things going forward.

He recently gained another wave of attention overseas by guest handling an episode of the strangely popular cartoon, Adventure Time, so it might be hard to guess which direction his career is going to go. One thing that is assured is that he will be handling an episode of the second half of Space Dandy, so I’ll be keenly awaiting that!

Further Reading/Sources

Anipages articles on Yuasa: http://www.pelleas.net/aniTOP/index.php?s=masaaki+yuasa&advm=&advy=&cat=&author=&adv_types=all

Sakuga wiki entry: http://www18.atwiki.jp/sakuga/pages/37.html　(Japanese)

Good interview with Yuasa: http://twitchfilm.com/2013/09/interview-yuasa-masaaki-talks-about-anime-part-1-of-2-kick-heart.html

Love Lab is a romantic school comedy based on a four-panel manga straight from the pen-hand of Ruri Miyahara. The premise is simple – the student council at a respectable all-girls are drawn into their president’s whirlwind of naive romance fantasies, ultimately becoming a club for practicing at the art of finding love. At first it didn’t sound like it was worth the effort of giving a go, but I think fate must have been at play; I ended up stumbling into it anyway, and, when I did stumble into it, I fell head over heels in love. Yep, as it turns out, Love Lab has a hell of a lot more going for it than its synopsis belies. Beneath that thin veneer of been-done romantic comedy genre clone, Love Lab has a beating heart and a healthy pulse. Its characters are earnest and charming, its jokes are genuinely funny, and its production is unexpectedly fresh and energised. Make no mistake, this is one of those series that just has something about it, a spring in its step, a glint in its eye, a certain buzz that makes it feel really alive. At its best, Love Lab is totally irresistible and kind of electric to watch. But don’t take my word for it, please go check it out!

Even if you don’t, let’s take a look at why it turned out the way it did; why wasn’t Love Lab just another cute-girls-messing-around-in-school comedy destined to be relegated to the bargain bin of forgotten mediocrity? Maybe it’s the exemplary voice acting work of the main cast (especially Chinatsu Akasaki as the elegant and lovably weird Maki ). Maybe it’s because it was spearheaded by perhaps the most notable director-writer duo of the anime industry’s comedy corner: director Ohta Masahiko and writer Aoshima Takashi. Bordering on not actually being separate people, Aoshima has been the series composer and main writer for every last one of Ohta’s works. Together, they had left a string of well-received comedy series in their wake by this point, from Minami-ke, through to Mitsudomoe and Yuruyuri. Aoshima is a natural at writing scripts that juggle comedy and endearing characters and stories, which definitely comes through here. Ohta meanwhile is known for the extra-animated, energetic visual comedy he often puts into his work.

But never have these two struck success as they did with the breakaway hit Yuruyuri. Why? I would argue that it’s because of the group of animators that was assembled across that show’s two seasons who were able to go that extra mile in injecting fun and interesting animation. Ohta’s other shows certainly have memorable moments of animation, but not with the intensity or pizazz of Yuruyuri. That same team were reunited for Love Lab a year later and in their resurgence they pushed the quality and charisma of their animation to new heights! Many anime out there have exceptional voice acting and solid scripts, but fewer can compete with Love Lab when it comes to the vigour and personality of their animation.

The Animation of Love Lab

If you think of the directors and the writers as building the frame, then the animators are the ones that put in all the hand-made details and final touches. It’s their finish which can either make or break an anime which is good by design. Love Lab was one of the fortunate ones, with an enamoring animation quality that really made the anime the engrossing and fun series that it was.

The animation on the whole has a vibe to it that I haven’t seen anywhere else: at times it’s unabashedly limited animation, lavished with intricate detail such as lusciously-drawn, swaying hair or precisely folding clothes; other times it’s fluidly realised with cartoonish distortions and expressions. But, remarkably, although it casually flickers between eclectic styles, it feels coherent in its own playful kind of way. There’s just something natural about the way these animators work together that makes their styles compliment each other and add attitude and richness to the series instead of clashing. And above all there’s this feeling emanating from the animation – that it’s the product of an aspiring and talented young generation, of their extra effort and the pride they took in their work.

Often, animation quality is a topic that gets left behind (or completely misrepresented) in most fan reviews and discussions, but I doubt there would be many viewers who didn’t sit up and notice it in Love Lab, especially in some key episodes. Maki’s sensuous twirls as her cross-dressing counter part, Suzune’s clumsy flusters, Riko’s raw, fierce punches – the colourful and charismatic way the characters move in Love Lab defines their personalities as much as the things they say. And it wasn’t just the joke cuts either –  the scene of Riko being upset in the hallway in episode 3 portrayed Riko with an unspoken tenderness and vulnerability that we never would have seen without the creative spark of the animator behind it. This is what I mean by the animators being the ones who put in the finishing touches. There are plenty of anime out there with more expensive and technically impressive animation, but Love Lab is a shining example of how a handful of animators can bring a character to life in ways that the director and writer couldn’t possibly envision. There are a few studios and directors out there who should pay attention to this fact. You can spend thousands of frames making a character walk around fluidly and say a whole lot less than a turn of the cheek, a shudder or a glance can in just a few.

The Dogakobo Yuruyuri Gang

The dynamism in Love Lab’s animation comes from a group of younger, up-and-comers working at or associated with studio Dogakobo. The studio has actually been around for some time: it was founded in 1973 as a pure animation workshop and, since Nausicaa Valley of the Wind that year, has done considerable work on Ghibli movies. It changed tack in 2005 by making a push to producing its own works. It gained a reputation as a studio for mediocre eroge adaptations such as Koihime Musou and Hoshizora e Kakaru Hashi with its subsequent works. But between 2011 and 2012 a kind of revolution happened at the company, hand-in-hand with the success of Yuruyuri. The studio has now become known for quality animation and popular comedy series. The company hired up at this time, opening its doors to a new generation of animators. The 2012 sequel to Yuruyuri gave them the first real opportunity show what they could do, and it was glaringly obvious that they had struck some real talent with their new employees and those other young animators they gathered for the project.

source: http://www.jec.ac.jp/anime/2012/09/post_54.html

Yuryuri was transformative for Dogakobo and a pivotal career launching point for this group of skilled animators. In that sense, it was an important anime in terms of the broader industry as well, as these guys are out there and very active today. Only a year later, Love Lab was the very next step that this group would take all together and they proved they weren’t a one hit wonder, raising the stakes and delivering their best work yet. The vigour of these fresh animators at Dogakobo is put on great display in Love Lab.

Let’s look of some of the most notable people in this group:

Nakajima Chiaki (Dogakobo) (中島千明)

The one with the most obvious stamp on the show’s look has got to be the character designer, Nakajima Chiaki. Nakajima is an animator and Dogakobo employee who has been active since 2005. She resumes the role of character designer/chief AD after having done it for the first time on Yuruyuri. Her designs for Love Lab are stellar, undeniably cute but also full of character and zest. She didn’t get to do any actual key animation on the show, but the visual roadmap she laid out with her designs and animation oversight work make her a major part of its charming look. Although she was integral in both Yuruyuri and Love Lab, I don’t see her as being part of the following group of animators as much as she is just a prominent Dogakobo staffer. The reason for this is that she hasn’t often worked alongside them in a key animation capacity.

Ooshima Enishi (Freelance) (大島縁)

Ooshima Enishi left a huge imprint on Love Lab, being a major animator on several episodes (there’s a good chance he did more animation than anyone else). But he wasn’t just a mindless workhorse of the show – the style and charisma he wove into his animation was a major part of Love Lab’s aesthetic. His drawing style is distinctively crisp and highly detailed, while his motions are an exhilarating mix of swaying hair and clothes and boppy, cutesy character acting. His predilection for eloquently detailed hair is definitely noticeable in Love Lab. He also gives me the impression of an animator who takes great pride in their work and is willing to work himself that extra mile. He recently gained a lot of attention for animating all of Gochuumon wa Usagi-desu-ka alongside only one other person (key animation). Although not a Dogakobo employee, he has worked closely with them since Yuruyuri season 2.

Yuuki Watanabe (Dogakobo) (渡邉祐記) {https://twitter.com/aninabe05}

Yuuki Watanabe is another animator who has only just burst into the animation industry. He has rapidly risen to become one of Dogakobo’s most valuable assets. From doing animation on only one episode of the 2012 Yuruyuri, he stepped up to doing a significant amount of key animation for a whopping 5 episodes of Love Lab, and even more for their following series, Mikakunin de Shinkoukei . He brings the more whacky and cartoony moments to the show, with very fast, fluid movements and fun, inventive distortions such as people’s body parts being left behind between frames. The mix of his comical, expressive animation and Ooshima’s more flamboyant, detailed work, these two probably had the biggest hand in crafting Love Lab’s memorable, charismatic animation palette.

Nishii Ryousuke (Freelance?) (西井涼輔)

Although he doesn’t seem to be a Dogakobo employee (the sakuga wiki postulates that he’s freelance), he has much the same career path as these guys and he is often associated with Dogakobo works. Like Yuuki Watanabe, his first credit is on the second season of Yuruyuri, on which he did key animation for 3 episodes. And, like all the others, his involvement ramped up for Love Lab – doing key animation for 5 episodes. Quite different again to Ooshima or Yuuki, Nishii’s style seems to be quite gentle and densely fluid with natural movements. He’s clearly quite a skilled and industrious young animator who I hope will get more opportunities to show of what he can do in the years to come. He hasn’t been that active lately, but did do some key animation in Ping Pong episode 6.

(source: http://sajiya.blog89.fc2.com/blog-entry-389.html, presumed)

Nonaka Masayuki (Freelance) (野中正幸)

Probably the most prolific of all these animators, Nonaka Masayuki started out at J.C Staff and produced a large volume of work for them on many of their main anime starting from 2009’s Hayate Gotoku. She did key animation for one episode of Yuruyuri in 2011 and then returned with a bigger presence in the second season in 2012. There’s a good chance this was a pivotal point in her career as well, since she went freelance around this time, and has since enjoyed constant work on a variety of different shows. She returned to work alongside Dogakobo for Love Lab in 3 episodes. She has a knack for embodying a very full, lively sense of movement in her animation, even when it is quite limited. Her characters seem to have this bouncy pep to them which means she fits in perfectly with this group.

Yoshida Kanako (Freelance?) (吉田奏子)

A quieter achiever of the bunch, Yoshida Kanako is a young key animator who seems to have been active for the past 5 years or so. She was involved with both seasons of Yuruyuri and since then she has also been a regular on Dogakobo anime, including 5 episodes of Love Lab (2 as an animator and 3 as an AD). She has an understated animation quality, which is a gentle kind of limited animation, creating soft yet lively and captivating movement. Her recent work on Ishuukan Friends has gained attention for this reason.

The Golden Episodes

What’s interesting is that this isn’t just a list of animators who worked on the same series, their efforts were concentrated in several key episodes. This means they directly worked with other on the series.

Dogakobo seem to have developed a very clear strategy in their scheduling which results in this particular clique of animators all working together in a concentrated set of episodes. In Yuruyuri season 2, it was episodes 1,6, 7 and 11 and in Love Lab it was episodes 1,3,5 and 12. It is no coincidence then, that these episodes are striking for their animation quality and intensity. Even to a fan who doesn’t know the first thing about animation, these episodes are clearly stand-out affairs, while the rest of the show is, mostly, simply ‘good quality’. To illustrate just how aligned these animators were for these episodes, I prepared this table:

As you can see, the episodes given to this team of animators are closely aligned with the episodes the series director and  main writer worked on. It makes sense that the director would consider these key episodes and arrange the best staff. On top of the main staff, some good freelance animators were bought in for these episodes (e.g Kouno Megumi in episode 1). Episode 13 is probably an exception because it was more about the emotional payoff than the comedy and therefore required less eccentric animation. The episodes outside of this set are frequently more outsourced and, in the case of 6 and 7, required character designer Chiaki Nakamura to act as a chief animation director.

Also an interesting thing to note is that these four episodes (and only these four) had a ‘Production Advancement’ credit. The person credited with this is Dogakobo employee Umehara Shouta (梅原翔太). Given that there’s little internal information or interviews available with Dogakobo staff, it’s hard to determine his importance in all of this, but the fact is he is intrinsically linked with these animators.

He was credited with production advancement in those key episodes of Yuruyuri as well. In fact, in pretty much any case where Dogakobo assembles some of these animators, he has this credit. If you see his name attached to an episode, you know it’s going to be a good one! And it’s not just the internal staff, but the freelance animators who worked on these episodes also rarely work alongside Dogakobo except when Umehara is involved. But until I know more, I’ll stop short of saying he was key in scouting and assembling this staff, since it could just be that those key episodes require more overall oversight/collaboration work which requires him to act in this capacity.

Was it the director, Ohta who pulled these animators together for Yuruyuri and again for Love Lab? Or was it Dogakobo, through Umehara or otherwise? And who developed the approach of scheduling them all into a handful of episodes? I’d love to know more, but we’ll probably never know.

Looking Ahead

It was the unified effort of these guys that bought Love Lab to our screens with the kind of gusto and energy that made it such an entertaining series. Despite their short terms in the job, these younger animators have already shown they have a brash idiosyncratic style and the ability to beat par when it comes to the quality of their work. In an industry that seems to becoming increasingly fractured, with most young, talented animators going freelance quickly, it’s too rare to see a group like this being assembled.

Soon after Love Lab, all of these animators joined forces again for Dogakobo on the Mikakunin de Shinkoukei Music Video (which has 9 animators in total), which was a promotional video released prior to the show.

This video is a concentrated rush of exactly the kind of lively, fresh and surprising kind of animation they whipped up for Love Lab. It’s cutesy, boppy and fun in a way that I can’t really recall seeing elsewhere in anime. It’s probably their best work as a team so far, but I just hope it isn’t their group’s swan song.

Mikakunin de Shinkoukei itself featured only some of these animators on different episodes, and subsequent Dogakobo productions haven’t ‘bought the gang back together’ so to speak. Director Ohta Masahiko seems to have moved on, now releasing a new anime with Studio Pierrot as the animation studio. Meanwhile, Dogakobo is working on Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun. Since they’ll be essentially competing this season, I don’t see Dogakobo sharing its resources, so our only hope is for Shoujo Nozaki-kun to make an effort to reunite this Love Lab lot, freelancers included. It seems unlikely, but even if we don’t see them all working together again, I will be keeping an eye on their careers.

With an utterly dazzling final salvo, Space Dandy has reached the end of its eclectic journey. I don’t have a lot of time on my hands these days to get drawn into discussions on anime, but I had to make an exception here. Following the path of its other recent top-tier title, Star Driver, BONES have concentrated a staggering well of talent, money and effort into ensuring Dandy’s last step is a remarkable one, and one that is brilliantly animated. But bluntly, they succeeded. I haven’t seen such an intense combination of animation of this caliber from so many vastly different styles packed into 20 minutes since Shinya Ohira directed the animation spectacle that was Azura’s Wrath 11.5! It was an entertaining, climactic rush, but more importantly, I got that feeling again. That visceral, gut feeling of being swept away by animation that isn’t just competent or technically impressive but is also alive with creative energy and spirit.

It kicked off with the furious speed of Hiroyuki Aoyama’s cuts of the Aloha Oe entering the battlefield, spinning and spazzing, really sucked me in with the smooth momentum of Keiichiro Watanabe’s chase scene, pushed higher with the jittery humor and raw drive of Norifumi Kugai’s work and then hit a resounding high-note with truly fantastic animation from arguably the biggest talents in Dandy: Yoshimichi Kameda, Yutaka Nakamura and BahiJD. These people all put the passion for their work on full display this episode, and you could really feel it breathing in every frame. There’s no doubt they were given free reign over their cuts to make them as great as they could.

Keiichiro Watanabe may have achieved his best work to date here with very tricky background animation work and a great sense of movement – I could really see the thrust of a powerful rocket behind the advance of the Aloha Oe. Meanwhile, Norifumi Kugai definitely reached new heights with his efforts here, being a relative newcomer to the industry. The sheer speed and determination of the ship could be felt as it pushed to the top of the tower.

Yoshimichi Kameda contributed a blatant reference to Yoshinori Kanada’s famous fire dragon, but it’s not just a throwaway nod to the animator that inspired him and so many others – it’s a full bow. Of all the allusions that animators have made to that dragon, this is the first time that anyone has come close to matching the original undulating beauty of its twisting, formless movement. Kameda has pushed himself to match the work of his predecessor and has really evoked his spirit in doing so.

Yutaka Nakamura handles the next beat, which is Dandy cutting the the space eels with the sword and then nakedly erupting from his mecha for a final push towards the centre of the weapon. Not to be outdone, he imbues it with his usual effortless gravitas and thrilling choreography. But this episode was also noteworthy for him because, as Bahi explained on his twitter, he was inspired to try drawing some of his raw animation digitally (using a tablet). It’s interesting to see the inter-generational influence going on in places like Bones. Bahi himself animated the final high-note of animation, ending with the awesome zoom-in to Dandy’s eye. His work on Dandy speaks for itself – as a young animator only really just starting in the industry, his achievements are remarkable and his skill undeniable.

Other than the animation, there wasn’t a whole lot going on with this final episode, but that’s the way it should be. As a show that has made no excuse for being almost solely about profiling the visual storytelling skills of a wide swath of the anime industry, there could be no better send-off. Someone gave Shinichiro Watanabe a whole bunch of money with few strings attached, and he did what any great anime director/producer would do and gave as many creatively-charged staff from across the industry a free stage to do what they do best.

As a series overall, Dandy isn’t especially memorable, but as an ode to so many of the talented people that make up the most alive and interesting 2D animation industry in the world, it was worth every second. It’s just a shame that even more people couldn’t have been involved – but uniting all the best anime staff is just a dream, not a possibility.

Within the diverse, colourful spectrum of overzealous anime fans across the world there exists a small but growing number of us with a particular bent. If you’re like me, then, at some point, being able to just enjoy good anime wasn’t enough – to satisfy a growing curiosity I had to know why it was good. As it turns out, this was the first tumble down a very slippery, very long slope which would eventually lead me to such depraved depths as spending a good few hours researching the credits a short anime review on a series I’m not even particularly passionate about! If you’re a part of this faction of the anime fandom you may exhibit symptoms such as:

• You see an anime and feel violent urges to pick it apart, down to its skeletal core of production values and staff credits.
• You might actually be bothered wanting to know who in particular animated the smoke in the background of a fight scene.
• You could find yourself watching anime you really hate just because it has some interesting staff in the credits.
• You might find yourself becoming irrationally angry at ANN reviews.
• You become a highly efficient, streamlined twitter-stalking machine for anime staff.

To others, this may seem like nitpickery, or even an obsession taken to creepy levels. Most people are perfectly happy seeing something that looks good and talking about the story and the characters. Conversely, they’re unhappy seeing things that they feel don’t look good.

And that’s perfectly fine. Let’s face it, that makes sense. But if you happen to have stumbled into that slippery slope, it can be hard to look back. That’s because you gain an appreciation of just how much work goes into anime from everyone involved, and how much of that work is creative, personal and born from a deep-seated attachment to the industry and the anime. Blood sweat and tears and donuts are the secret ingredients behind nearly every good anime, and even many of the mediocre ones. And those ingredients can’t just be bought in bulk by the studio or director of the day – they’re shed by people. So many of the names on the credit list that most people skip at the end of each episode are absolutely vital to helping make the episode what it was.

And it doesn’t just lead to nitpicking, for me, this deeper appreciation of the people behind anime has  unlocked a new, visceral love for the medium. In the climactic animation sequences of Space Dandy’s finale I got goosebumps seeing the work of animators Yoshimichi Kameda, BahiJD and Yutaka Nakamura, because I was in awe of their talent. 5 years ago I might have thought it looked ‘kinda cool’ and then quickly forgotten about it. But now I know: no other three people could have produced a sequence that looked quite like that. And I know that their efforts represent a new step in a career of hard-work and personal growth.

On Shirobako

Enter Shirobako: the anime about cute girls making anime about cute girls. In just 7 episodes, this anime has done more to convey exactly what I’m talking about than I could have in a thousand blog posts (even if people actually read my blog!). Not only does it do a great job of very realistically showing the production process of TV anime in great detail, but it also scratches beneath the technical workflows and gets into the motivations, aspirations, foibles and challenges of the many people behind it. Make no mistake, although these are fictional characters, their passion for the job, the struggles they deal with are all very real reflections of the very real people behind the industry.

I’m actually surprised it’s taken this long for something like Shirobako to come along (the closest thing I can think of would be the more comedic Animation Runner Kuromi). I’m not sure whether it’s because directors and producers have shied away from the topic for fear that there was no appetite among anime fans for this setting, or that they thought it would be too awkwardly introspective to create, but it’s been a long time coming. The men who finally made it happen are Kenji Horikawa (founder, director, and main driving force of P.A Works) and director Tsutomu Mizushima. Apparently, the idea for the anime started while they shared a train ride together around 3 years ago (possibly when they were working together on Another). They had the desire to bring the personal side of anime production to light and to explore every facet of production, connecting the many often isolated sections that operate in the industry into a story. Together, they originally nutted out ideas such as the beginning sequence of the group wanting to make a school-project anime and get into the industry, and the street-racing scene from the first episode.

But only now have they got it off the ground. There’s no denying this is their work, and their idea (mainly Horikawa’s by the sound of it). Both of them have a wealth of experience in the industry: Horikawa has worked at Production I.G, Tatsunoko Productions and Bee Train before finally starting up P.A Works. As the founder of the company, it’s clearly his experience managing all areas of production which has laid the groundwork for the show’s storytelling. Mizushima Tsutomu, with a prolific and rock-solid career behind him, including works such as Blood-C, xxxHolic, Squid Girl, etc, brings an effective directorial presence. The show’s production has been polished (albeit not very charismatic), and, being known for his comedy anime, he brings a much needed sense of humour to what might have otherwise been too dry of an anime to swallow. Interestingly, he’s also sound director on this anime which, as far as I’m aware, is quite unusual. His familiarity with music predates his career in anime though, as he originally wanted to be a music teacher after finished high school, before winding up in anime after not being able to get into that profession. Still, the director credit is usually enough work for one person, so he must really be stretched thin.

He would have bought on writer Michiko Yokote to this project, having worked extensively with her on the past on his projects, and she delivers a strong script packed with interesting interpersonal drama and multiple layers of story development with well-written female characters. As a side note, it’s rumoured that Michiko Yokote is actually a team of 3 female writers based on a blog post she wrote some time ago (a rumour that many English websites have echoed as fact). However, given the jovial tone of the post and the fact that it seems impractical, I’m inclined to believe it’s not true. Alongside her writes the accomplished Reiko Yoshida (Keion, Kaleido Star, REC, Scrapped Princess, and many more) who I actually think delivers more resonant and interesting episodes.

For an anime that brings to light the talents and hard-work of charismatic animators, the production is almost ironically mute in execution. There’s little room for expressionistic or idiosyncratic animation, except in the meta anime that the staff are producing. But the strength of Shirobako is in its fascinating look at the internal guts of the industry.

Exploration of the Industry

Shirobako is set in a fictional studio called Musashino Animation (look, the even made a fake website for the studio) who are currently working on a new anime series, Exodus. Musashino animation is a small Tokyo-based studio the likes of which comprise the majority of anime companies out there. Through this setting it tells the story of  5 girls who are living and working towards their high-school dream of creating anime together. There’s a rookie voice actress, a production assistant, a key animator, a 3DCG operator, and an aspiring script-writer The anime explores their lives in the industry as well as the many other production staff that surround them. Some interesting things they’ve covered include:

Schedule Hell

Your favourite anime

The apocalyptic struggle of one overworked production assistant against a tsunami of work and a tight schedule is vividly portrayed throughout Shirobako, and is the focus of episode 3. In the episode, Aoi faces an uphill battle to get an episode finished after it is derailed by a collapsed animator and a grossly indecisive director. TV anime typically run on tight schedules, going to air with only a handful of completed episodes to act as a buffer before inevitably being caught, pants-down in a frantic race to finish every episode. Stories of animators pulling all nighters or virtually living in the studio are commonplace, and it’s not all that rare for episodes to only just be completed in time for airing.

Typical lazy animator

Wow, such a great battle sequence!

Time is money, but money can’t buy time when things go to hell. Hopefully Shirobako’s glimpse into a studio grappling with the schedule demons might dispel the myth that drops in anime quality are caused by a studio ‘running out of money’. While this can happen, it’s very rare and extraordinary, yet it seems to be the go-to explanation for a shoddy episode by most anime fans.

The References to Real people

Shirobako is packed full with references to real people, places and events within the industry. Some of them are subtle, others not so much, but it’s a lot of fun to try keep an eye out for them! Probably the most obvious ones are the oafish, man-child director, who is modelled after Seiji Mizushima and the aloof, inexplicably culinary company president, who is based on the CEO of studio Mappa (and co-founder of Madhouse), Masao Maruyama. Given his real-life parallel, Seiji Mizushima’s character is portrayed in a surprisingly unflattering light, but he’s presumably in on the joke after he uploaded this photo of himself in a matching blue-polo shirt!!

I’m not sure where the proclivity for cooking in Masao’s character comes from, but it seems to be a running joke. I actually saw a photo of Maruyama cooking with a pot on the internet, but now I can’t seem to track it down again!

Studios and other anime series are often mentioned with bastardised or cryptic names, and the seiyuus actually appear as themselves! It’s a lot of fun for someone with an existing interest in the faces behind anime. As a point of interest, director Mizushima Tsutomu calls Tarou, the most annoying character int he show, his former self (hopefully he’s joking!)

JUST STOP. STOP BEING ALIVE.

CG versus 2D

The was palpable sense of tension between CG animators and traditional animators in episode 5. Apparently they actually consulted with the legendary Ichiro Itano for this episode, who actually went into direction with CG from his origins as a 2D animator (traitor!!). He also I saw somewhere that Itano might be participating in a commentary for the episode’s Blu-ray release, which should prove interesting.

Shoulda capped that bitch

Although obviously exaggerated here, I’d guess that there is an air of conflict in the anime industry between these two sides of the fence. The encroachment of 3DCG into more and more areas of the medium is like a dark, ominous cloud hanging over the industry. When anime first started to use 3DCG it was experimental and used for specific things that would either be too hard to animate traditionally or which were clearly suitable for a CG treatment like spaceships and mecha. It was used to add value to anime in specific ways like having a lot of moving background characters that would have been impossibly expensive and time-consuming for a TV-anime. This all enabled animators to focus more on better foreground, character drawings (and certain studios kept the 2D mecha tradition alive). But now we’re getting whole anime done in CG – clearly it’s gone from being a complement to the 2D industry to a rival.

Personally I think it’s about time we started drawing clear battle-lines here when it comes to CG. The western 2D animation industry basically immediately evaporated after directors and producers jumped ship when they saw the new shiny, trendy 3D animation, but Japan has so far not succumbed so readily. It’s like a last bastion of hope for fans of 2D animation (and I’m talking about GOOD animation, not flash-in-betweened rubbish). CG, while still taking skill in and of itself, is a form of animation that is more science than it is art – it lacks the raw creative spark that comes from the hand and the many nuances of drawn animation.

Let’s see CG do this!!!

So, to be honest, I was totally onside with the animator. CG can have its place, but now that we’ve got whole anime being done in the style, it represents a real threat to the industry and I say we should push back!

The Animator Crunch

The look into Ema’s struggle with starting out as a key animator. Just getting into the job, she is facing the crunch that most animators need to get through, the first big hurdle: the ability to draw both quickly and well, and being able to aptly juggle these two opposing forces in her daily work.

I think this is really interesting to see play out on a personal level, and I hope people watching take home the fact that there’s a lot more to being a good animator than simply being able to draw. Being flagged as someone with potential for character design, Ema is obviously a good drawer and a competent animator, but she is struggling with just 10 cuts under time pressure. Unless you have a reputation as a star animator, it’s not enough to be good, you have to be good and fast!  It really serves to highlight the herculean efforts of some animators who are able to draw entire episodes by themselves and maintain a high level of quality, or who are able to actually create animation that is thrilling on an individualistic level after just starting out.

Many animators-to-be quit the job because they can’t push past this roadblock with either talent or sheer guts and determination, so let’s give due respect those who do overcome it!

Pay discrepancies

Although it’s not exactly anything we didn’t know before, the Shirobako website posted a neat little info-graphic showing the salaries of the various people involved. It’s not news that the salary of a fresh key animator is terribly low, but it’s still frightening seeing such a stark comparison. With the much more attractive salary of an animation director/character designer it’s easy to see why most good animators work their way up to that role, or turn towards storyboarding and direction (although being an animation director is very tough work that doesn’t pay especially well on a per-cut basis).

Those animators who stick with key animation in the long-run are few and far between and tend to be the rare, prodigious individual who is talented enough to make a name for themselves as a top, sought after resource. These people find themselves with proper salaries or a much higher per-drawing pay-rate. Some animators who seem like they were born to walk the path of a pure animator include the likes of Shinya Ohira, Yutaka Nakamura, Toshiyuki Inoue, etc.  These days it’s usually better to be talented in a stand-out way than to work hard at progressing as an animator.

What I do like is how they subtly touch on the money issue without being preachy or self-pitying in the process. Although not well-paid, young animators take pride in their job and are driven by their love for it.

Interestingly, the role of Sound Director is not included here. A few years ago, a report from the Japanese Animation Creators Association which highlighted (and perhaps exaggerated) the plight of young animators caused a bit of stir. Yamasaki Osamu wrote for them discussing pay inequities within the industry and pointed out that sound directors are paid a little over half as much as episode director’s per episode, but are able to finish an episode in two days rather than a matter of weeks. As a result, they often juggle 2-3 series at a time and can commonly end up with salaries of $200,000 or more, more than the executive producer on the chart above. With that said, it sure is intriguing that Mizushima Tsutomu is also sound director on this anime! I certainly can’t tell any difference from other anime!

In the end..

There’s a story behind every anime

If you think back to a scene in anime that struck you as being awesomely animated and it was almost certainly thanks to the tireless work of a particular animator. Look at Yoshimichi Kameda’s scene from Space Dandy #26, the electric, swirling fire dragon was all animated by him and is a sentimental bow to the animator who inspired and influenced him from the beginning, the recently deceased legend Yoshinori Kanada; the action climax of the ghost in the Shell movie was animated by Mitsuo Iso who apparently studied a spider he’d captured in a jar to help craft the movements of the spider-tank; Ichiro Itano’s famous, twirling, spiraling missiles were drawn from his memories of strapping fireworks to his bike and riding as they shot out around him; hell, Gainax was founded by a bunch of university drop-out nerds who bound together to animate an intro to a sci-fi convention. We’re used to watching interesting stories play out in our favourite anime, but what Shirobako reveals is that those anime are often built on fascinating, real-life stories of the people involved. The more I look into the many remarkable people working in this medium the more I discover that they are driven by a passion for animation and storytelling.

I’m confident that Shirobako has lifted the veil over the anime industry for a lot of people, both in Japan and abroad, and all we can do is hope that this fosters more interest in and better understanding of the people who pour their life into the anime we enjoy every week. I’d love to see more people join me in the tireless pursuit of uncovering these people and stories behind anime! At the very least, some mainstream reviews might be able to start giving credit where credit where it’s due a little better instead of lumping it all at the foot of the director or any name they happen recognise.

Further reading:

Staff roles/pay:

http://bakudon.net/news/2008/02/27/financials-heaven-hell-reality-three-looks-at-the-business-of-animation-production-part-3-an-examination-of-the-production-costs-of-bamboo-blade

http://2chan.us/wordpress/2010/04/15/is-it-true-everyone-working-in-anime-is-poor/

How anime is made:

https://washiblog.wordpress.com/2011/01/18/anime-production-detailed-guide-to-how-anime-is-made-and-the-talent-behind-it/

http://www.pelleas.net/aniTOP/index.php/the-anime-production-line