Forum - View topicWhat Makes Kyoto Animation So Special?
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Blackiris_
 Posts: 535 |
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Very good article, thank you.
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jojothepunisher
 Posts: 799 |
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Kyoto Animation is certainly my all time favorite studio. I just really love how all of their shows have consistent animation qualities that never falters.
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Alabaster Spectrum
Posts: 528 |
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They are the most vocal and defensive for sure and seem to always think the studios are hard done by and unappreciated when IMO its thr exact opposite in that they are appreciated almost at the expense of other studios. You'd never see another studio have an entire personal piece pulled out to yet again sing their virtues but then other studios don't have the kind of fans Kyoani and Shaft seem toattract with that ffeeling that they need constant validation. I'm not going to say good article here, redundant studio discussion and favoritism seems more appropriate. It feels like the kind of article I'd read on a personal blog five years ago when people were still singing the same old song. Anyway my favorite studio is Sunrise. Almost always enjoyed the shows they make, ton of variety, anything but boring typically and I like how they seem to really pay attention to BGM, having composers do big soundtracks and fitting it well to scenes. There studios 1 and 8 also have great character and mechanical animation and their studio 2 is in fact Bones. It also helps that they have their own in house music studio in Lantis who funny enough frequently sponsor Kyoani and handle there shows music. Really without Sunrise and Lantis you wouldn't have Disappearances score or Sound Euphonium or many other Kyoani series at all. And yet where is that story of what they do or how its not just all Kyoani Magic or whatever. |
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killjoy_the
 Posts: 2460 |
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I feel like some people haven't really gotten what these two paragraphs were saying
KyoAni is a studio that I'm always curious about, no matter what their new show/IP is. Doesn't mean I'll always like it, as I'm not much of a fan of sakuga by itself, and also not too fond of some of their material, but it's always at least worth looking. They're all the way from "polishing a turd" (Chuu2Koi's novel is baaaad), to "making a turd turd-ier" (I'm looking at you, Lucky Star, Amagi), all the way to "polishing gold" (Clannad, Hyouka, Haruhi), and even some modests "adding glitter to some fairly okay-looking rock" (Nichijou, Free!) |
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chito895
 Posts: 512 Location: Lima, Peru |
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I really like slice of life shows. Most of the times these shows are relaxing and fun. And KyoAni is the best at doing those. They somehow get the most of everyday life scenes, something which can make a mediocre show something very entertaining. One example is Beyond the Boundary. I really can't stand the drama and seriousness of this anime. Those scenes feel rushed, forced, boring. But when it comes to the slice of life part of the show, everything somehow becomes better, more relaxed, even better written. Those are the moments that really give better development of its characters, instead of those dull flashbacks or exposition that really don't work.
KyoAni is one of the best at details. I may not be good at analysing what a hand and feet movement, body expressions, or camera positions and shots may want to convey to the audience, but just seeing all the effort put in how those hands are moving, how those feet are acting, how a body expresses itself, or how beautiful every scene and background scenary looks makes me love the work of KyoAni as a studio and the work of every individual that have spent their times doing such masterful jobs. Very nice analysis Nick, congratulations! |
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rdsathene
 Posts: 14 Location: Los Angeles |
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I appreciate this piece in that it really expresses how the nuances in KyoAni's scenes are integral to the overall works they appear in.
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H. Guderian
Posts: 1255 |
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Didn't know they were salaried animators. Nice to see someone doing it, and I assume nothing stops them from picking up extra work in their spare time, if needed perhaps?
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Yuyucow
Posts: 18 |
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They don't, since their animators are full-time employees. For a while last year they opened up their doors to freelance animators for the first time, but that eventually stopped with apparently no results - the one animator who joined during that period was Ryo Miyaki, ex-P.A. Works youngster who'd gone freelance but is now full time at KyoAni. I suppose that the idea of keeping everything in-house prevailed over the opportunity to get some extra help. As it is, KyoAni shows are only worked on by KyoAni staff (save for like, BGs now and then and stuff animation studios flat out can't do) and KyoAni staff only works on KyoAni shows - also different from the norm, basically every single other studio does some outsourcing for others' productions. Been quite a few years since they stopped doing that and decided to simply produce their own stuff. |
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relyat08
 Posts: 4125 Location: Northern Virginia |
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Well, they've only been doing these Feature articles for a couple of months now, so it's quite possible that there will be more of these "dedicated to a particular studio" articles in the future. On the other hand, there are a lot of reasons why KyoAni would be the first to get something like this, and possibly the only. They are really one-of-a-kind. No other studio has a full time staff like KyoAni now that Ghibli is done, and no other studio has the near flawless financial record of KyoAni, just to name the two obvious things. Anyway, I'm pretty sure there are articles on various websites across the internet about individual studios. And I'm sure Sunrise has a good number of them too...
Weren't you just complaining about people not having variety of opinions and having the same favorites? Not really bucking that trend much, eh? |
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Knoepfchen
 Posts: 698 |
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Thank you, Nick, another great article.
I wouldn't call myself a "fan" of Kyoto Animation. I'm a character person first and foremost, and if the characters are good, I'm willing to excuse cheap or limited animation any day. But I'm also very able to appreciate great craftsmanship, if it's editing like in Satoshi Kon's case, Shinichiro Watanabe's visual storytelling or Kyoto Animation's sensitivity and celebrating of the little things. It's a wonderful way to make use of the medium's possibilities, making shows like Euphonium or Free an absolute joy to watch even though I wouldn't have cared one bit about the latter thematically. |
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Francisco GC
Posts: 1 |
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I like how KyoAni focus body language and characters emotional energy. K-ON! is one of my favorite anime from Kyoto Animation studio. I liked your analysis.
I hope you will write about others studio, it'll interesting. |
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Alabaster Spectrum
Posts: 528 |
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If anything I've found people are more likely to shit talk that studio so no I don't think it's a popular or oft stated favorite at all. As for writing about other studios, somehow I doubt that's going to happen unless it's SHAFT the other studio people are willing to talk about and praise. Same old same old, nothing ever changes, we should all know the drill by now. Also yes there are articles about studios elsewhere on the internet and almost all of them are about Kyoto Animation and SHAFT, that's kind of the point I'm making. People say great article like Nick Creamer accomplished something significant but IMO nothing particularly unique was covered here at all, it's just the same old praises and rundowns of Kyoani business practices that have been made dozens of times on various blogs before that people could have easily googled years ago and found out about leading me to wonder when people might consider moving on from this topic of why they think Kyoani is the one and only shining light of the animation industry. Like here's a tip google the name UltimateMegax and see how unique and fresh these kinds of Kyoani praise articles really are. Anyway if people genuinely want to see good attention to detail and expression and character animation by a studio that isn't god forbid Kyoani really check out Gundam The Origin which IMO nails this sort of thing about as well as anything I've seen in a while. It's also not soul crushingly boring to watch and about just fluff high school stories and club room hijinks like what you can expect out of a Kyoani series, like the staff involved actually gets to experiment with various scenarios be it a medieval style sword fight, a brother and sister bonding and then slowing starting to go their separate ways, brawls in night clubs, battles in space, chases in crowded colony city streets, horseback riding, political discussions and intrigue, just all around interesting stuff. Like you wouldn't think a glass falling off a dais and crashing to the ground could look as interesting as it does but it helps with the symbolism that it's the case. Or how about this recreation of a classic scene from the original series. IMO it's one of the better directed and dramatic scenes I've seen from anime in a while. Also people could stand to check out some classic late 80's/early 90's OVAs and Movies and see what hand drawn animation, a bubble economy and highly skilled key animators looking for a challenge used to get you on a pretty regular basis. In fact if people are legitimately interested in Sakuga and not just joining in praising Kyoto Animation yet again here they should spend a few minutes just browsing that Sakugabooru site, there're tons of interesting cuts and examples from throughout the years. |
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Valhern
 Posts: 916 |
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What I do believe is that the most remarkable feature KyoAni has is enhancing whatever is there. No matter what anime they're making, no matter the writing, they'll get conveyed the message and core of the anime in the best way possible, that is not to say they're off critic.
For example, to me, Beyond the Boundary was barely stomachable character and writing-wise, but oh I do love the idol episode, it really doesn't add anything to the series but it's the most entertaining episode and it's gorgeously animated, for all else, they just did what they do best, I can't blame the studio for the writing not being up to my standards or something like that since other person was responsible of that and they sticked to the material. The same happened to me with Hyouka (I still don't see what people liked about this, to me it's like SNAFU "meh" version) Amagi Brilliant Park was a weird product, honestly, all it had going was cute girls and slapstick humor, but aside of that, nothing of that really exceeded, in fact, animation was just consistent enough, nothing really amazing. Somewhat what happened with Tamako Market visual-wise, although I must say I loved Tamako Market (Yoshida Reiko's ninth episode is still in my head after one watch only) even if the ending sucked, the movie redeemed it a lot better. K-ON!! is like the older, successful sister of Tamako Market, which tried to replicate what it did but with a storyline that couldn't fit very well in the time, and I still would like to watch it, it's a very well-done slice of life, doesn't pretend much, but does what it's supposed to do. My yet favorite KyoAni anime is Sound! Euphonium (haven't watched Haruhi yet, I don't plan to soon either), I have nothing to add to the visuals, but I tremendously loved most of the characterizations and it hyped me so much from the potential left for the second season; even if they didn't play that much into Reina and Kumiko's relationship that way (you know what I'm talking about) it'd still be my favorite for the great character work enhanced by the excellent detail, even if that does not happen ever there will still be great characterization there, regardless of who gets wet who. -- On the note of overpraising KyoAni or Shaft I honestly do not mind, people do that all the time, I used to do so with Madhouse yet they've done Mahouka and Mahou Sensou which sucked horribly, and Hajime no Ippo Rising! adaptation was subpar compared to the first one and Challenger, I did it too with Ufotable yet God Eater has barely managed to go on air and with the little time it had it is extremely criticizable, and I have some nitpicking on FSN UBW production but that's another topic. I do know that sometimes is annyoing that only one studio or two are praised while the rest are looked over, but it's normal to me. Last edited by Valhern on Wed Dec 02, 2015 6:46 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Alabaster Spectrum
Posts: 528 |
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The main reason that episode even happened is so Lantis could have a single to release so thank them for essentially forcing that on them. It's come to be the norm and I'm not going to say that I mind per se, I mean hell people are free to think what they want and talk about what they want, it's the way democracy works after all and who would I be to tell them otherwise. However, it doesn't mean I have to not find it incredibly boring and one note. I mean it didn't take me much effort to come up with some examples of other topics to do with character animation that could stand to be discussed more and that I felt were worth bringing to the table, not that I expect much in way of reply because who the heck is going to know anything about those topics I discuss that's going to post in a thread relating to Kyoto Animation, the topic that tends to override all others whenever presented. Why people only like talking about the same damn things and people over and over again in this fandom these days is truly beyond me (lately for example I notice it a lot with Fate/Stay Night which I've almost grown averse to and weary of just from how constantly it's brought up and hyper analyzed over and over nowadays while other potentially interesting and fresh topics languish) I don't see why that should be the norm, but it indeed it has become that way to the detriment of again potentially interesting and fresh conversations pretty much everywhere there's an online scene for anime. Meh, it is what it is I guess and you can only really expect people to talk about what they know about and have any interest in. Last edited by Alabaster Spectrum on Wed Dec 02, 2015 6:57 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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maximilianjenus
Posts: 2868 |
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the direction was both what made the kyoto animation key shows the ebst shows, even though the later key shows (angel beats and charlotte) were written with as tv animes first, visual novel second.
I also loved the yuri in euphonium, because dialog wise they kept things subtex if at all; but the directiona dn framing of several scenes was just like a romance.
wit and trigger have also become pretty famous lately. though wit is also famous for runing out of budget, lol (which would make them like shaft), while trigger sometimes works with no budget at all. |
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