I'm
>>588
As far as the works of Kanada himself are concerned, since as I've said the style just doesn't click with me I wasn't too concerned to look up more stuff of his or like his. I liked Birth a lot however, but I think (and I may be very wrong) that the cuts in it I like the best are the ones that are the least "Kanada-style" in nature (yes, I know what "Birth" supposedly represents for Kanada-style animation and how stupid I'm probably going to sound for just having said that, but I'll take my chances).
I wonder though, if, like some of you mentioned, the absurdly limited animation in some cases isn't just a budget issue some people (like Arai) somehow took a liking to (all to my personal - and I'm sure others' too - displeasure). I mean you mentioned Imaishi, and some others (I didn't know Hiroyuki Yamashita was a kanada animator, doesn't seem like one to me at least - or are you talking about another Yamashita? I'm suffering from a mind lapse at the moment) and that (the still shot inserts and posing) doesn't always feature that much - from what I've seen- (although it's there to scrub my eyeballs occasionally) so there's that to concede as well I guess.
But, I notice that in a lot of the, imo, good Kanada-style cuts (let me think of an example - take the dragon, since it's perfect and perfectly cliche to bring up, and I mean the original one in Genma Taisen) it's just a matter of creating choppy, straight movements (but movements) and using a blocky, simplified style in the drawings. Or in short, it's more a matter of ignoring and abstracting detail in every frame, than ignoring and subtracting frames and movement in the animation. When this removal and simplification spills over into the frame-to-frame, movement side, I think _this_ is when Kanada-style animation is doing something... wrong. Wrong may be the wrong word here, I'm not trying to convince anyone that "Kanada style a shit" or anything, I'm just regurgitating my thoughts on this. Sorry...
So...You know, if I wanted to see a series of still shots on my TV/computer/whatever, I'd just read a manga/comic .zip or something, right? That stuff should stay on paper and magazines. It's called animation for a reason (of course, I'm crossing a line and I'm leaning in the wrong a bit - but only to get my point across).
Excuse my meanderings, by the way.