Forum - View topic

Interview: Polygon Pictures President Shuzo John Shiota

Panoptican wrote:

relyat08 wrote: Because when someone offers you an interview, you don't derail it for a personal gripe. And this discussion has been had like 10,000,000 times already, so beating that dead horse is pointless. If you want to know why they do it, you can pretty much read it directly from the response "we don't want to turn people off who are used to the 2D look". Whether or not that makes sense or is successful is pretty irrelevant, but there is no sense is delving into it more, yet again... The discussion has been had a million times among random anime fans. The chance of having the discussion with president of Polygon itself is a unique opportunity that has far more value than those other conversations.

It has literally been addressed by this same person. And like half a dozen other people who work for the company. Check out their social media accounts and other interviews. They are aware that some people don't like it. They are also under the probably reasonable assumption that many people do like it. Nothing we can do about it. I don't think it looks so bad, personally.

Basically, this. An interview is about finding new information and discussing new perspectives. He already mentioned in the interview why they cut the frame rate down, it's a part of their process in making it feel like a 2D anime. I personally already knew this and had no intentions of asking about it, but he offered that fact anyways.

An interview isn't the chance to deliver people's qualms directly to a creator, it's about finding out new valuable information. It would be a waste of time for me to say "Quite a few people don't like it", only for him to reply, "Okay. Yeah, I know." You won't get far in interviewing if you focus on "gotcha" questions over the sort of discussions that involves new information.

Opposed to the likes of Sanzigen and Orange, who tend to make a model but resculpt it frame-by-frame, when we make a model, we try and make it look good from 360 degrees, rather than having to change it.

"Plus there's this movement for the Castlevania kind of thing where anime tastes are opening fans up to American-ised or European-ised international storytelling."

...

My reaction to this can best be summed up by this article:

"This is essential too. They are trying to change the aesthetic of anime. They want anime to become edgy American cartoons for western hipsters because that’s how Netflix thinks most Americans see anime and that’s how they want to market it. They intend to essentially rob anime of its unique Japanese cultural heritage and replace it with Western cartoons that happen to be made by a Japanese staff. To them, anime is a product aimed at Westerners that sells itself as “Exotic animation from Japan” but make no mistake, the audience they care about is the Western one. They don’t want anime to be what it currently is, they want it to be what Westerners think it is (Or should be). If they have their way, Japan will just become one of those countries Western states outsource animation to for what is still essentially a Western production aimed at a Western audience."


Maybe a little dramatic, but I feel like there's this push from America to change anime and in more ways than one. I don't like this "Let big corporations handle everything" attitude that's being encouraged as "revolutionary" for the industry.

I don't think the author of this piece quite gets what Castlevania is. Castlevania is an American production influenced by 90s anime. Shiota referred to it as "so-called anime" because that's what it's trying to be, but many definitions mean it wouldn't count.

Netflix has a preference to the sort of shows they collaborate on, but they aren't the ones making these. These shows are being greenlit, put into production and then they collaborate with Netflix for the release. So the idea that "Netflix is coming for your anime" is fundamentally broken. Even if they were producing shows, they're one platform, not the whole industry.

Should've told them to put more frames in their shows.

The most eye opening aspect of this interview for me was learning how they keep managing to find work despite so many complaints about their productions.

noblesse oblige wrote:

The most eye opening aspect of this interview for me was learning how they keep managing to find work despite so many complaints about their productions.

Like, I get what you mean, but the only people who are complaining significantly about their productions are petty non-fans. Almost no one in the industry is saying anything but praise about their work.

It also doesn't try to make the show look more like traditional animation by drastically cutting down the frame rate, a mistake previous 3D anime have made.

noblesse oblige wrote:

The most eye opening aspect of this interview for me was learning how they keep managing to find work despite so many complaints about their productions.

Like, I get what you mean, but the only people who are complaining significantly about their productions are petty non-fans. Almost no one in the industry is saying anything but praise about their work.

Because there are NOT overwhelmingly negative receptions to their stuff. At the very worst, some of them are middling. And it's not usually about the animation being bad either.

Maybe non-fans was the wrong word. But your(noblesse's) comment makes it sound like their work is universally despised for it's poor quality. It's not. Almost all of the complaints are from a fairly small minority of the fandom(and that includes western reviewers for a site like ANN).