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The Fall 2013 Anime Preview Guide

uguu wrote:

The styles are very different but KLK is more "guilty" of the stuff that Key talked about. I'm genuinely curious if he thought the 'ugly' scenes I linked were KLK at its worst because I thought those were the best parts.

IIRC, didn't Key once claim that the technical merits of Kyoto Animation's Nichijou series were "mired in mediocrity"? I think it's pretty safe to say that he simply does not have a good eye for animation quality.

He once claimed the Fullmetal Alchemist movie looked so bad it would be unacceptable quality for a tv series.

So uh, yeah. Skip over the paragraphs when he talks about animation.

The animation quality is actually very good, with no shortcuts taken in depicting key action sequences, but the artistry is not.

Macron One wrote:

IIRC, didn't Key once claim that the technical merits of Kyoto Animation's Nichijou series were "mired in mediocrity"? I think it's pretty safe to say that he simply does not have a good eye for animation quality.

Believe what you want. Or it could be, you know, that I and others don't regard things like this (from YQ) as quality character rendering:



Now, all but the absolutely best series have occasional quality slips, so if this had been a one-off incident in the first episode I probably would have ignored it. This degree of character rendering comes up repeatedly throughout the episode, however.

Oh, and just so you don't get any ideas here, I'm not going to get dragged into a relative artistic quality debate about YQ and KLK. The latter has its own peculiar, extreme style, while YQ is a more conventional-looking series. You really can't directly compare the two.

Give it a rest guys... Key isn't going to change his opinion just because we say so...

And I gave the animation an A- rating. So if you're going to criticize me, get your facts straight about what I did and did not say was good. The animation was, the art otherwise was not. And I wasn't the only one who thought that, either.

The only weird part there is the hands, and, as jet_ pointed out, that frame is absolutely not noticeable at all in motion.

And TV anime is generally FILLED with these things; I could easily look at some TV stuff you gave an A in art to and find a bajillion instances of 'bad inbetweens'.

There's also the fact that the character in your screenshot was further from the camera than your screenshot implies. It's kind of like those 4chan trolls who zoom in on one tiny thing in the background and say 'lol bad art'.

And surely, there are quite a few "slip-ups" (by your standards, if 'one unnoticeable drawing in the middle of fluid motion in a TV anime' counts as a 'slip-up') in Kill la Kill too.

No such thing as good animation with bad art, especially in the kind of style that the FMA movie had. Maybe good animation with bad design, but good animation requires solid art. It does not work any other way and is one of the main principles of animation.

Also: Note that in the FMA review thread, Theron also stated that he would give The Girl Who Leapt Through Time a low art score as it does indeed suffer from the same flaws as FMA: Milos.

Heavily debatable. I know some people believe that the two are intrinsically linked, but I entirely disagree. I have seen many examples of animation over time (not just in anime) that I would say were well-animated in the sense of seeing characters/objects move fluidly but not aesthetically pleasing to look at.

Really, the extent which you guys are going to here to try to prove that I have no clue what I'm talking about on art quality - and the extent to which you're failing at it - is amusing. And again, I'm entirely fine if you subjectively think I'm wrong; it's when you try to objectively prove I am on something as subjective as art that you're going to get a push-back.

This shot was representative of a scene that played out over several seconds at the 5:10 mark, not an isolated shot, as you and the other person claim.

Did I ever say there weren't?

On the downside, the first episode plays up the whole Italian thing way too much and forces in Galileo references in a corny fashion.

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On the downside, the first episode plays up the whole Italian thing way too much and forces in Galileo references in a corny fashion.

So it's Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere?

Would it kill ANN to narrow the scope of the Feedback thread for the preview guide? I still believe that there should be a way to view all the previews for a given show on a single page. Trying to compare all the previews for a given show with the current system is tedious.

Side note: Would ANN kindly put tags on the ANN accounts of its reviewers, so these reviewers' posts can be more easily identified?

Kill la Kill is definitely a vibrant, energizing show with an unrestrained style, and the potential for some interesting characterization. It's very heavy concept, so hopefully it can chase that with a compelling plot for several episodes rather than the so far "Goku uniform opponent of the week" pattern.

The FMA: Milos complaints, however, imply that the film lacks solid drawing. . .

Art is not entirely subjective, not by a mile. Neither is animation. Preference is subjective. One could prefer, say, the art and animation style of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha over the art and animation style of Akira, but the fact still remains that Akira is a far more impressive showcase of well-timed animation and solid drawing. There's a world of a difference between saying "I found this style unappealing" and "this is crudely drawn". Both have their place in a review, but a writer should take into account that there is a difference between them.

You also didn't explain why you find the new Yozakura's colors 'blander'.

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This shot was representative of a scene that played out over several seconds at the 5:10 mark, not an isolated shot, as you and the other person claim.

It wasn't super-polished but it was a far-away shot of a character that wasn't super-important to the story. It looked fine, especially if you are willing to forgive the more unpolished shots in Kill la Kill.

I might be wrong, but it seems to me like you simply found Yozakura less stylistically appealing than KLK but attempted to make your commentary more technical, to make the negative comments about Yozakura seem more objective than just "I don't like this style". Hence 'the drawing quality is cruder, the colors are blander' etc.

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Give it a rest guys... Key isn't going to change his opinion just because we say so...

A pure 'opinion' would be something along the lines of, "I personally do not enjoy action scenes". There's nothing arguable there because there are no objective statements made. You also don't really have to explain anything; if someone isn't into action and prefers more subdued works, then that's that.

In-depth artistic criticism, however, has a lot more room for objectiveness. There are a lot of logical observations to be made about drawing and animation. Like that, for instance, Key specifically picked out a single frame not remotely noticeable in motion and used that as an example of "poor character rendering and artistry". I could make a gif of that scene and prove this statement.