Animation Appreciation Thread #3

The Sakuga Wiki [JP] - http://www18.atwiki.jp/sakuga/
ANN Database - http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/

Animation Blogs [Eng]:
http://www.pelleas.net/aniTOP/
http://aninomiyako.wordpress.com/

Animation Twitters [Eng]:
http://twitter.com/raito_kun
http://twitter.com/Duune99
http://twitter.com/kyouray
http://twitter.com/catsuka

Previous threads:
#1 http://dis.4chan.org/read/anime/1291816034
#2 http://dis.4chan.org/read/anime/1314681601

I want to move away from using the term "Sakuga" as it often alienates people and can be misleading. There has been a bit of backlash against the Sakuga movement lately, and I'd like to think many people come to this thread to talk about the animation and visual aspect of anime, which is something that often gets overlooked elsewhere. It would be nice if we could get a wider appreciation of visuals in the anime fandom without being seen as elitists.

>>360

Well, everyone knew that Ghibli would win.
Being nominated is surprising enough for K-on!

>>360

Thank god!

>>361
Yeah I think being nominated was a very high honor for K-ON and KyoAni.

That picture of Yamada is pretty funny though; wonder what she was thinking.

Guilty Crown animation has been shit lately.

>>364

If lately means "ever since the second OP debuted", I agree.

>>365
Why do you think it went downhill so much?  Could they really have slashed the budget given the lukewarm reaction to the first half of the series?

I'd like to think a big project from IG would be more ahead of schedule than that though.

>>366

I don't think they slashed the budget; I don't think I've ever heard of that happening. The staff was just behind the schedule, I bet. Maybe they're focusing their efforts on the ending, like Bones did with Star Driver.

Bad scheduling always ruins productions. Often the reason why you'll get DVD fixes, because they had to rush episodes, but they know that wasn't the quality they truly wanted.

It is a little disappointing the animation in GC has been so poor in the second half.  Good animation was one of the few things going for that show.

What's the most well-animated show this season?

It's pretty much agreed on /a/ that the most well-animated show is Nisemonogatari.

>>370

The Nisemonogatari thing is a troll, dude.

>call Nisemonogatari a well-animated show
>get called gorespammer

>say that Nisemonogatari is not well-animated
>get called gorespammer

I love /a/

>>372
That's because both statements are incorrect.
Nise animation has been average with a few good looking scenes.  Not the typical shaft shit but not super impressive either.

>>373

/a/'s mentality is dividing everything in BEST SHIT EVER and WORST SHIT EVER, no inbetweens allowed.

>>373

That's right, but what this season DOES have exceptional animation? I'm not watching much so I'm curious as to what's actually good at the moment.

Next season will be much better.

This season has a bunch of constently decent looking but unimpressively animated shows, at least. Rinne no Lagrange, Aquarion Evol and AnoNatsu are almost always on model, but they don't have anything particularly interesting or impressive in terms of animation.

>>376

I forgot PapaKiki; that's also consistently on model.

Kazuto Nakazawa and Shinya Ohira are directing the DLC anime for the videogame Asura Wrath: https://twitter.com/#!/m_katakai_cc2/statuses/175429606302679042

Wow. Just... wow.

http://animemirai.jp/buta/
http://animemirai.jp/juju/
http://animemirai.jp/shiranpuri/
http://animemirai.jp/wasurenagumo/

Opinions?

>>379

That's this year Animation Training Project, right?

>>379
Been waiting for that.

https://twitter.com/#!/kyousogiga/status/176309720448122880

More Kyousogiga announced.

>>378
I have no idea what this is, so will it be animated or 3D CGI seeing its a video game?

>>383

No, it's animated. You don't actually need the game to buy it. DLC just means that you will need to buy it off PSNLive. Kind of like Xam'd, I guess.

I don't play games. Can someone clarify if I need a PS3 to buy it?

>>385

Or a 360.

>>386
I see. I love Ohira but I'm not gonna buy a game console to watch it. Hopefully someone will rip it.

>>387

Of course someone will rip it. It's rather easy, honestly.

Hmm, people are saying there is alack of decent animation this season, but looking at Sakuga MADs for Jan/Feb - there seems to be a lot of nice and varied stuff.

Jan part 1: http://youtu.be/nC16AKb12uY
Jan part 2: http://youtu.be/oIDOa0QXt1Y

Feb part 1: http://youtu.be/L7dN4WZqKJA
Feb part 2: http://youtu.be/nJ37l_tXyIM

Ps, part of the scene from Gundam AGE ep 18 which were mentioned above: http://youtu.be/L7dN4WZqKJA?t=3m46s

>>389
I think what other people were saying is that there are no consistently interestingly animated shows around, which I kind of agree. Sure I like all the bank animation and the fights in Smile Precure, Gundam Age had a string of nice episodes and there's as expected a decent amount of nice stuff in the Satelight shows but it's mostly just the usual short and impressive half minute bits here and there, much like Nisemonogatari which at least is a bit more solid than Bake and most Shaft shows, Madoka and Yet the Town Moves exempted. From the little I've seen AnoNatsu seems like the strongest contender, which is kind of given with the Nagai/Tanaka combination, but to be honest it's just more AnoHana and as a whole nowhere as interesting as let's say Toradora.

But I'm really not complaining here, most of those show are watchable (if I were to give a rating it'd be around 5-6/10) and the little sparks are nice enough to see.

That said I've not seen Milky Holmes 2 yet, which the first season of had some really interesting episodes - content of the show aside. One thing I definitely liked is the ending variation in Inu x Boku, albeit some of the content is more repulsive again.

Thanks for linking those videos anyway, will view them later. Condensed good animation is always a nice watch.

>>389

A lot of that compilation comes from OVAs or shows that have been running longer than Winter season like the usual NaruBleachPieceToriko or Gundam Age. You can't actually use it as an argument to defend the bland Winter season.

>>390

>Toradora
>interesting

0/10

Either way, AnoNatsu doesn't actually feature good animation. It has good art, but the only well-animated scene so far is the running in episode 8.

Just have to wait for KyoAni and Bones next season to bring great animation.  Hyouka is confirmed 2 cour and I'm guessing AO will be as well; that'll last us until Fall.

>>391
Toradora was interesting. Really well done. Plenty of good animation. Deal with it.
>>390
Milky Holmes' content is also interesting. In fact Milky Holmes is super interesting. I see that the wrestling scene from the third episode was left out from the MAD but that scene was nice.

>>389

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJ37l_tXyIM&t=3m2s

Where is this from?

>>394
Eiyū Densetsu Sora no Kiseki THE ANIMATION ep 2 it seems

>>393

It had good animation, I'm not denying that. But it wasn't interesting at all. It's a pretty standard romcom with subpar writing and stock, by-the-numbers direction. What's so interesting about it?

I hated Toradora because it featured two of the things that annoys me the most:

a) People using out of place allegories to describe their feelings, making the dialogue feel artificial and contrived.(AKA: Mari Okada's trademark)
b) Nagai's "stock sentimental cue" direction; I hate the guy's timing. It's manipulative to hell and back and he doesn't understand the meaning of subtlety or visual symbolism.

Masayoshi Tanaka was the only one that delivered in that pile.

>>396
We're talking about the story and writing of the show but about its animation and craft - which was the whole point of the notion above - and in that regard it was clearly more interesting than any of this season's shows or AnoHana/AnoMatsu for that matter.

There were episodes which delivered a strong emotional punch by using just the right animators during the right moments (in particular 13,16,19,23), there were episodes which succeeded at delivering a precise and nuanced storyboard drawing out the characteristics of the cast and setting (1,14,19,25), there were episodes which were simply fun to watch because of the lively and idiotic cast in motion (4,5,7,9).

I don't think it's a particularly good show but it is one that was well executed and interesting regardless of what one might think of it as a whole. The same also applies to Milky Holmes for example.

>>393
Yeah, seen the videos above and certainly it looks like Milky Holmes 2 delivers much like the first season. I wish J.C.Staff would make more such interesting stuff but tone down the otaku fanservice until none is left, which was what annoyed me the most about Toradora, Milky Holmes and Ookami-san.

Is Kill Me Baby actually as interesting and fun as the few bits in those videos made it out to be? Looks like it goes exactly in the direction I meant.

>>398
>precise and nuanced storyboard drawing

Nah, it's all stock. I'm all for you praising the animation, but Nagai's framing is unsubtle tired manipulative shit. But whatever, this is the animation thread and not the Toradora thread.

Milky Holmes didn't really have many otaku pandering moments IIRC. If anything it parodied a lot of cliche'd pandering elements from other anime

on the subject of Milky Holmes, S2 has been good but it hasn't had any really amazing stand out episodes yet (well I guess episode 3 was kinda stand out). S1 had episode like 6 and 12 with all those gags and jokes stuck right in the imbetween animation which was pretty amazing. S2 hasn't delivered that kind of creativity yet but it seems to be building up to something. Hope the last couple of episodes are glorious sakugafests and whatnot