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REVIEW: ef: A Tale of Memories Blu-Ray

Oh my god, people are still bitching about the C- minus grade for the animation?

I agree. A C- is ridiculous. Ef is a work of art, and does not need extreme movement to be beautiful. However, I love ef, but Melodies is superb by comparison. AND YUUKO IS NOT A BRUNETTE! She has black, iridescent hair. Also, Elisa got her start in ef, so I guess you should say she did TWKOK later. Apparently, the director didn't even read the original script for the game before making the anime. Which is why Kyousuke and Kei were utterly ignored. I really would have liked to see more of the original story. They took out a VERY important point in Melodies too... I will comment with a spoiler text next time about what that was.
However, a good review, although it focused far too much on Chihir (and I hate Chihiro, probably mainly because her voice pisses me off).

I was very surprised to see the score for animation, since I was always under the impression that ef had stunning animation. In the AMV community, ef is a very popular source material. After looking up the actual source for some of the most (over)used scenes, I found out that they're actually from the visual novel game opening and that Makoto Shinkai directed it. Go figure.

Here's the OP if anyone's interested: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGnJdvt0dcQ&t=00m49s

Madoka Magica or Bakemonogatari may as well as deserve the same grade too. It's simply the way SHAFT shows work.

Quote:

Madoka Magica or Bakemonogatari may as well as deserve the same grade too. It's simply the way SHAFT shows work.

PMMM is completely different. Madoka has a ton of AMAZING backgrounds, and jaw-dropping fight scenes (that also tend to have incredibly screwed-up absurdist styles). Madoka has quite a bit of nice-looking animation; I'm amazed it was done on a Tv-Budget (unless SHAFT really does alter that much for home release).

This show is easily in my top 5, so I'm a little annoyed with this review on the overall score, but I grant when rating specific items it may make sense to give a C to animation where it's not done often enough. I think this may reveal why this kind of breakdown is simply unhelpful to a series like this one, however. If it had more plentiful scenes with complex animations in them, I don't think it would have made it even better.

So here I think it has absolutely nothing to do with the enjoyment of the series. The fact the overall review is only a B.. that's much more problematic to me. It seems really off. I agree the dub turned out well despite my initial complaints about Hiro's casting. I changed my mind on that when I watched the English version. This isn't perhaps as annoying as the review of Death Note a few years ago that was completely nuts (because it was based on the moral sense of the show rather than it's content) but I still feel it deserves better.

The problem I see as reflected in the review is more regards to how gimmicky it is at times. I think those of you who think animation has to be animated is either blind or just talking nonsense, since ef is clearly animated. There's actually plenty of animation. Just nothing animated in a way where it's eye-popping flashy.

And it's probably a conscious choice in ef, too, because the way it uses striking changing cuts. If you have two pictures to show and you don't want to show the transition, of course you wouldn't animate the motion that goes between the two pictures. There are also a lot of cuts where only one portion of something gets animated because they want to highlight that one thing. For example, spoiler[chihiro's arm is the metaphorical "13 hours" in the sheep-on-a-chain 11-year clock, so you see her move her hand or arm because her stretch reflects what is changing in her life in terms of her memories, etc]. I think some people would want to distinguish that sort of lack-of-animation versus the garden variety cabbage kind.

So I think it's better to say "gimmicky" rather than "lack of animation" because there's actually plenty of animation. I mean, I am in the middle of watching the series and there's about as much animation as most other late night, low-budget shows.

Theron Martin wrote:

"the scene [...] where this does happen is almost painful to watch."

...on the one hand, anyone who didn't see this coming needs to watch more moe shows.

...on the other, this does blatantly spoil one of the more important scenes in the show. Does it need to be in the review?

I think the review was pretty good, but I really wish ANN would provide more insight on the actual "english voice acting" because the characters can be great, the animation fluid, and the story is well fleshed out however you than encounter characters with spotty voices or voices that don't match them. If I wanted Japanese dub I would import, but I prefer english so I really want to know more about the PROS/CONS of the english dub. Sadly, only two sentences was written without stating the flaws leading to his rating of a "B".

If one knows the nature of Chihiro's particular defect then the presence of that scene in the series is so utterly predictable that I do not feel that it can reasonably count as a spoiler.

AnimeMaine wrote:

There is one general problem with the disks, confirmed by Sentai. In episode 6, about 19:54, for just a moment, a bar appears across the right side of the screen. Otherwise, I recommend this as a teenaged-romance anime; I look forward to ef: a tale of melodies.

I just bought the memories and melodies BD but haven't opened them yet. Is there more information about this? Is Sentai offering exchanges?

configspace wrote:

AnimeMaine wrote: There is one general problem with the disks, confirmed by Sentai. In episode 6, about 19:54, for just a moment, a bar appears across the right side of the screen. Otherwise, I recommend this as a teenaged-romance anime; I look forward to ef: a tale of melodies. I just bought the memories and melodies BD but haven't opened them yet. Is there more information about this? Is Sentai offering exchanges?

I don't think it's a major problem at all ... I watched the entire series and didn't notice at all.

THERE is a score for art style, which is a B+ so if you have something to argue about it would be why didn't he give it a A or A-. I think B+ is a great score considering it is 5 years old.

ShinnFlowen wrote:

THERE is a score for art style, which is a B+ so if you have something to argue about it would be why didn't he give it a A or A-. I think B+ is a great score considering it is 5 years old.

Gosh, I feel like a complete idiot. Thanks for pointing this out Shinn...I totally missed this. Apologies, Key...looks like I was arguing about nothing...