Forum - View topicREVIEW: Kemono Friends
|
Goto page Previous 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Next Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
| Author | Message | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
v1cious
 Posts: 6203 Location: Houston, TX |
|
|||
|
I wouldn't have any problems with the visuals if the series wasn't so painful to sit through. I found myself fast-forwarding most of it. While I do I like the actual plot stuff, most of the show was incredibly boring (I did like the war episode, though). I'm still trying wrap my head around why this was a late night series. Otaku have no right to mock western animation any more, because this really felt like something that would air on PBS Kids.
Last edited by v1cious on Tue Apr 04, 2017 7:20 pm; edited 1 time in total |
||||
|
||||
|
H. Guderian
Posts: 1255 |
|
|||
|
On Visuals alone I'd watch Kemono over the first two RWBY seasons. And the later is a hit. Even when the writing back then was atrocious.
I made it mostly through the show and didn't find it amazing either. but I will clear it soon, just to be safe. I feel we're seeing a lot of extra resistance against the visuals, moreso than usual to prevent something uncouth from becoming popular. Likewise I feel some people are playing it up too much. But they're all being nice about it. Like Friends. If you're ever in a foxhole taking cover from shellfire, having a Kemono Friends fan in there with you is about as good as it gets. |
||||
|
||||
EricJ2
 Posts: 4016 |
|
|||
That's because part of the reason we think it's a preschool "kids" show is because of the constant non-violent emphasis on what friends the Friends become, once Kaban teaches them to work together. One of the reasons I'd thought it was an afternoon kids' show was the way every plot twist was resolved with "Wow, that's so amazing! Kaban is so SMART to think of that!" Thus teaching kids that humans have an unique zoological trait apart from birds or higher mammals too, namely our ability to build bridges, create non-violent sports to replace war with ball games, and work together to create strategies. (And not just the late-nite appeal of hearing moe girls gush in cute voices. One overenthusiastic Japanese-fan theory taking the "sci-fi premise" too seriously thought that Friends must have not fully-evolved difficulty speaking human language, since everything in the manga was drawn-out "Ee-eee??..U-sooouu!  " )
|
||||
|
||||
|
omegafinal
Posts: 125 |
|
|||
|
The visuals are terrible, yes. Admittedly, also one of the reasons why I didn't watch it. Though in many respects, it could have been worse. Such as using realistic shading instead of toon shading, or adding more detail to the character models. Granted, some of the designs didn't quite translate well in 3D, like the weird cheeks whenever they turn to 3/4 view. The character designs themselves are great, but the execution from the modeling and motions are just "meh". But the character interactions, the lore, and mysteries pretty much what drove me to watch the series. Ended up enjoying the ride.
Also on the South Park thing from earlier. Don't think it's a fair comparison, given that South Park's look is intentional due to its cardboard roots (and is pretty much its identity), while Kemono Friends' is most likely due to resource constraints (either time, money, or people). |
||||
|
||||
Blood-
 Bargain Hunter Posts: 23797 |
|
|||
Cool, another person who doesn't understand my ultra-simple point. Guess I'll explain it again in the hopes somebody with some reading comprehension might see it. People don't care what South Park looks like because it's funny. It doesn't matter that its crappy visuals are intentional. Hey, I'll repeat that: it doesn't matter that its visuals are crappy because the show is funny. So people don't care what it looks like. Get it? People. Don't. Care. What. It. Looks. Like. Maybe I'll repeat it again. People. Don't. Care. What. It. Looks. Like. Get that? There is a show out there that is popular even with crappy visuals. Gee, it's almost like the content of the show is sometimes more important than the visuals. Gee, I wonder if there might be a parallel to Kemono Friends? Now, Kemono Friends crappy visuals are not intentional. They are almost certainly due to its 5 cent budget. However, the show was warmly humorous and had a bit of a mystery surrounding it and it became wildly popular because a lot of fans didn't care what the show looks like. It's almost as if a show delivers on its content, sometimes people don't care what it looks like. Like South Park. Wow, I wonder if this actually got through or is some genius gonna come by and say, "but, erm, actually South Park intentionally looks like crude paper cut-outs..." |
||||
|
||||
Valhern
 Posts: 916 |
|
|||
|
You're making comparisons that just don't make sense, Blood-.
You're saying that South Park could have any style, any type of animation, who cares what, and it would still be sucessful just because it's funny. It's totally the contrary. It has that style and it's funny BECAUSE of that style. That's literally the difference between intentional and shortcomings. Kemono Friends simply doesn't look the way it does because that's what they wanted to do, but what they could do. Fun fact, South Park used to look EVEN worse because that's what they could manage to do at that time without being a sucessful show. What they did later was enhance that "crappy" style so it would play to the strenght of the show rather than making it look completely crude (and unfunny, even) What you're thinking of in anime is the style of Akira Amemiya, Sushio and Hiroyuki Imaishi. They're known to make this sort of "cutout" animation in which its characters are just stills that move around clumsily (basically, like the PPP previews) and they're barely animated, because THAT'S the point, that's literally what they wanted to do, they thought that style was what they wanted to convey. Just because you find it charming, it doesn't mean that it's even close to the same type of animation other people do because of a stylistic choice because, in any case, Kemono Friends' style doesn't try to imitate that. Not a matter of quality, but about craftsmanship and execution. Kemono Friends had a style that was never able to pull off at its best possible. |
||||
|
||||
|
EricJ2
Posts: 4016 |
|
|||
Oh, I can think of a few-- Ever watch "Danger Mouse"? One of the most BRILLIANT cartoons of the 80's. If you had an animation-industry stick up your hinder about frame rates or recycled footage, you'd be foaming at the mouth within thirty seconds, but if you were a cartoon fan who, ahem, didn't care what it looked like, and just watched it for the funny dialogue, you'd be laughing too hard to care. We were following in the generation of those who didn't really care what the design looked like on "Rocky & Bullwinkle" either. I've already mentioned the looping backgrounds on "The Flintstones", right? (One of the smartest written sitcoms of the entire 60's, live or animated.) Not anime-related? How about a few other less fluid anime shows from the 80's? Macross? Dirty Pair? Anything animated by Sunrise? Bet those drove you fine animation experts screaming into the hills, didn't they?
Then again, you hear very few people say "Last night's South Park delivered a stinging satirical attack against Trump, by having its views expressed by intentional imitations of cutouts!" Last edited by EricJ2 on Thu Apr 06, 2017 12:04 am; edited 1 time in total |
||||
|
||||
|
Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 23797 |
|
|||
|
Valhern, I reject utterly your contention that South Park is funny because of the way it looks. The best you can say is that the crudeness of the visuals doesn't interfere with crudeness of the humour. Yeah, South Park would have been just as successful no matter what the visual style, no doubt. At the time, there simply wasn't another show where you that had Paris HIlton horking up big wads of sperm every time she coughed and got used as a butt plug. That's what people tuned in for, not the look.
Plus, you continue to miss my main point which is (for the ten billionth time): most reasonable people will overlook a show's visuals IF it compensates in other important ways. Clearly, the not-insignificant sized fanbase of Kemono Friends proves this. |
||||
|
||||
DuskyPredator
 Posts: 15480 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
|
|||
|
Anime and animation is really more than just animation. There can be a lot of angles to go from such as eye candy, a nice tone and easy to watch. This season has had to have had a lesson about how wrong the opinions can be of what makes something good.
Hand Shakers has set itself up to be a huge atrocity of animation, and it is in spite of clearly a lot of detail and models that look like they have had a lot of work put into it. The two pieces of CGI and 2D did not marry together, the animation is distracting, and it feels like enjoyable story writing in general was a sunk cost that they thought they could get away with or was not really well thought through. It is my opinion that the simple animation of Kemono Friends keeps it from being generally distracting, and although bad by standards it actually stays pretty consistent, mitigating some problems. Another example would be Konosuba which I think is starting to finally sink in that a still frame of one scene means nothing, that there is other aspects of how something is conveyed to the audience. Kemono Friends does not have the same fluidity of Konosuba, so comparing them in this way is not really an only measure of quality, but similarly you do hear complaints. I have interestingly seen the topic brought up that the answer is "moe", which ironically not in the sense that these are animal girls. But that the series itself moe on a meta level, that it elicits the same feeling of seeing someone earnest yet clumsy try their very best with what they have, and you just want to protect them. It is not being offensive and looks to come from a good place, that as a whole package it is pretty good. What actually can be learned is probably a mystery, like the simple fact of trying to copy it would be disingenuous and thus missing the point. And to throw a quick hat into the South Park comparison. Valhern, you mentioned that South Park used to have worse animation, but it managed to become successful despite that, and later turned the style into a strength. Well Kemono Friends just had 12 episodes, in a way that no one thought could really work so well. Who really knows if there might be a way to perfect it that really makes it part of the enjoyment. |
||||
|
||||
|
Valhern
Posts: 916 |
|
|||
|
@DuskyPreadator; it's actually what I expect! If Kemono Friends retains the same core staff (not that many people, anyway) I doubt it would embrace the style I described. Not impossible, but if anything, I see them more going for a Noboyuki Mitani route (basically, Dogakobo's cutesy style), which would play excellently for the show.
I don't know of those "reasonable people", but I can assure you that I'm not one of them. I wouldn't ever just overlook a show's visual when it's animated medium. I will always say it has other strenghts besides of that without being blind to other aspects. PD: I like Kemono Friends anyway. And I truly say that if I ever find South Park funny, is because the visuals are funny too in conveying the jokes. True, no other show did those jokes, but that does not mean that any other show could've the way they did. It's not just purely what's on screen, the timing and direction are not just something haphazardly put because "the script is just that funny", at least, not for me. I'm not saying that any show needs a perfected harmony of all elements to even be enjoyable, it's always a weird mix and depends on how we perceive them. I'm not even talking about success, that's an entirely different thing and even harder to understand from my isolated point of view (though I don't think KemFriends is any particular oddity). |
||||
|
||||
|
Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 23797 |
|
|||
See, we are basically on the same page. I acknowledge the visuals of KF are rough, but I really like the show, anyway. Probably the only difference between the two of us is that I actually came to find the visuals endearing. |
||||
|
||||
|
Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11376 |
|
|||
|
I think another reason it's so popular in Japan and to a much lesser extent here, is that a lot of the people who like it are used to MMD videos (both making and watching them), and KF seems to be animated mostly with MMD software (or a more professional iteration of it?). So the MMD-style animation fits perfectly with the fun, simple, feel-good tone of the series. It's like your friends animated something that turned out pretty cool, so viewers are less critical of the animation than they might otherwise be if it were just poorly drawn, like Trickster.
|
||||
|
||||
darkchibi07
 Posts: 5470 |
|
|||
|
This show will forever fascinate me for years to come. Seriously, Kemono Friends had:
- little to no fanfare in the beginning - premature end of the smartphone game before the anime began - clunky as hell 3DCG - bunch of no-names working on this ...and finally an overall sense of this property having no hope of succeeding especially nowadays where it feels like the cute moe stuff is starting to plateau. Yet, Kemono Friends outright defied everyone's expectations. It's a real shame there's no telling how many units the discs sold. |
||||
|
||||
TheOtakuX
 Posts: 344 Location: Wooster, Ohio |
|
|||
|
The thing about the animation is, after an episode or two, you don't even notice it anymore. Once you get into the show you can't really tell the CGI sucks unless you're trying to see it suck.
|
||||
|
||||
DanQ
 Posts: 114 |
|
|||
According to interview with producer of Yaoyorozu, during production of anime, time slot wasn't decided. They wanted morning or afternoon slot, but in the end, (probably to low budget), they ended in late night slot (they are cheaper). |
||||
|
||||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group