Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Welcome to the Ballroom
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iatheia
Posts: 130 |
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That dancing animation, or lack of thereof, is rather frustrating. When I hear people praising it, it almost makes me question if we are watching the same show. This is worse than Nodame Cantablie S1.
The protagonist is seriously unlikable and bland. Declaring that you want to become a professional after 0.5 lesson and a video is laughable. Getting free lessons from someone who is supposed to be one of the top professional dancers is unthinkable. And somehow we are supposed to cheer him on when said professional expresses doubt in our shujinkou’s abilities, because “they just don’t know how determined he is and therefore they are wrong” trope. The way they are teaching him makes me roll my eyes so hard. It was several weeks that he is taking classes. Doing nothing but basic for the waltz. And, sure, basic is extremely important - some variety wouldn’t have hurt, and a simple box shouldn’t really take _that_ long to learn, but if they want to make sure that he has that down perfect before doing anything else, I wouldn’t argue with that. It is a rather stereotypical Japanese approach to these things, I guess. What makes me mad is that they have him dance all this time by himself. Ballroom requires two people. Yes, practicing on your own is important, but until you are familiar with the weight of your partner in your arms, until you know how to make them respond to your movements and make them move, you don’t know how to lead. Which means that, as a leader, you don’t know how to dance. And, since he is practicing so much only on his own, developing muscle memory, he will learn all the bad habits that would be difficult to forget once he actually does start practicing with a partner. Oh, and they decided that this is a perfect time to get him pants for dancing. Like that is the single most important thing for him to have at this point in his studies. And I can’t help but to think that the whole “look at me” scene from the first episode somehow missed the point? As leaders, we were always taught that our first and foremost purpose was to make our followers look beautiful, to provide them a solid frame to accent them better. Any attention given to the leader is secondary in nature. So if the protagonist’s eye immediately gets drawn to the leader first instead of the follower, it keeps nagging at me that the Sengoku is not doing his job correctly. |
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Mojave
 Posts: 178 |
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You have to remember that Sengoku is a pro. At that level, the male partner isn't always just the frame. It's not uncommon when watching pros to sometimes see the male partner be the one that really stands out. For beginners your minsdet here is correct, but the further you advance beyond that the more it changes, so this depiction is actually fine and accurate. Also, even at lower levels there are sometimes moves specifically meant to showcase the male partner. |
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GoldCrusader
Posts: 1021 |
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[quote="CrowLia"]
Yes they are a few still, I won't argue about that fact. But here is what I think they are doing. Dancing is I assume really hard to animate with lots of details and heavy on movements. What we got, even if too short for a few people, looked great and served to deliever the important scenes. The other options I feel would have been YoI's cheaper looking animation and reused animation. I would have hated that personally, but I guess that's what some people here would have wanted? Ballroom his also really strong on facial expressions in the manga and those stills really recreate those moments well at this time and I feel they haven't been abused. And yes even if Hyodo was solo. The scene itself has no equals yet either way. Visually it is a pure work of art. Also, the point of that scene was too show us and Tatara that Hyodo is soooo good that even when he is shadow dancing we can see a partner. Knowing what's too come I suppose they decide on the level of animation of each scene based on importance, like they should. I am really happy they are giving Ballroom the animation level it deserves. I would have been sad with a cheaper looking dance. |
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yuna49
 Posts: 3804 |
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So, presumably, is ice skating, yet Yuri on ICE!! managed to animate a lot of skating. Now it's possible that the directors for Ballroom thought that the animations in YOI were insufficiently realistic and decided that taking that approach wouldn't work for their show either. So they could be relying on still frames because they don't feel competent to animate ballroom dancing with sufficient flair. Or they could just have a pretty skimpy budget. I suggest this as the more likely reason. Maybe they are saving up to do some high-quality dancing animations later in the series. Let's hope so. |
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GoldCrusader
Posts: 1021 |
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Thats what I am saying though. They could have went with what YoI did, but the fact is with the exception of maybe 3-4 performance? The skatting sequences looked cheap and badly animated with lots of off models shots. They even reused the badly animated parts of Yuri's routine like 5 or 6 times. So the skatting animation ranged from bad to good. The performance we got animated in Ballroom all looked great so far and the use of stills keeps the sense of quality high because of how highly detailed they are. Sengoku or Hyodo look imposing and strong in those stills. I don't think competence is any factor here. Since in a single dance animation, Ballroom had one of the best piece of animation of the year. It's more that they know how to use their ressources. Ballroom's team seem to really know how to do their job imo. |
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iatheia
Posts: 130 |
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YoI did overexert itself, sure, but they had like 8 million performances every episode. I assume that in the same amount of time they wouldn't have nearly as many competitions. Having a well-animated extended dance segment very early on is extremely important, in my opinion, because it would show what it is that is that our protagonist found interesting about ballroom, instead of relying on hearsay. Show, not tell, after all. After that, sure, I would expect that another 5-6 or even more episodes may pass before may be they are at a point where they need to show another extended routine. |
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MiloTheFirst
Posts: 429 |
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I wanted to like this one but I got put off by two thing: first sengoku being a jerk for no reason in every scene since he decided to train the protagonist. I don't think a show having asshole characters is a demerite by itself at all, but they just don't know how to treat his character well, to me it seems as if he is just acting overly bitter because the show needs him to do so for the time being, the other thing is the fatal lack of animation, come on!!! I wanted to see people move not being bombarded by a stream of stills.
I guess it was just not for me |
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Songster01
Posts: 73 |
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I disagree your un-nuanced assessment of YOI, which had some stellar, HQ animation that felt far more human and realistic than I see in many other movement-heavy series (hello ep1 for example!). Yes, especially episodes 5-6 were weaker than previous episodes because of the ambition to animate so much of the skating, but dramatically it really worked so goddamn well in providing natural opportunities for drama and characterization with the inner monologues of the skaters vs. press and audience. I was treating the skating like a RL skating competition, holding my breath and gasping when they did well, or wincing if they fell or made an error. Note I heard the exact same response from any other RL skating fans who watched the show. That is not a reaction I personally normally get from sports/action anime. The humanity of the characters and their skating really made me care for them, Another thing in YOI's favour is it was an original series with no existing fanbase that was rejected by multiple studios and therefore had a smaller budget than might otherwise be given to such an outstanding director. BeY, with its loyal manga fans didn't have to fight nearly as hard to get animated and likely had a bigger budget given all the hype and PR it had as well. So SY and MAPPA did fantastically well with the more severe limitations they faced. Now that's YOI's a huge hit, I think it will be fairer in the end to judge the movie against BeY, or for more exact fairness, any future S2 of YOI (so tv series vs. tv series, both with good budgets thanks in part to both series's popularity). Check out the Welcome to the Madness extra, which points to what the staff will be able to do with the additional time and personnel afforded a film for a successful franchise. I think to be fair to both shows you also have to accept that that the shortcuts and relative lack of dancing in BeY are legitimately frustrating, even as you applaud the beautiful dance animation so far. It will be interesting to see if the quality that will go down as they are forced to animate more dancing once competitions become more important (in short the same thing that happened to YOI) or if they will double down on the speed lines/head/audience shots. And if that happens, please recall that errors and weaknesses in animation will be largely fixed in the BDs/DVDs (in YOI and surely also in BeY). |
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Lactobacillus yogurti
 Posts: 844 Location: Latin America |
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I wish there were another explanation, but spoiler[Sengoku IS a b*****d. And he's not above laughing at the others], because sadly, narcissism is a big component of dancesport. Don't believe me? Look for Maksim Chmerkovskiy's wonderful reply to the judges in Dancing With The Stars: "This is my show."
Granted, there could be more choreography in the series, but considering that Tatara's barely starting to dance, I think they want to focus on him dancing, not so much on the others. I think that we'll see more dance sequences in spoiler[the Tenpei Cup arc.] Even so, I do wonder who'll voice spoiler[Kugimiya, Idogawa, Chinatsu and Akira]. |
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Angel M Cazares
 Posts: 5421 Location: Iscandar |
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For some reason I thought that Gabriella was reviewing this series. If she was the reviewer I expected her to say something about Sengoku spoiler[undressing Shizuku]. It did not really bother me, but it could be construed as borderline spoiler[sexual assault]. It was played for laughs, but that is some strange sense of humor.
Episode 3 to me was the best in the series so far. I am not in love with the show, but the execution continues to be solid, and it had some meaningful character development. I anticipate that episode 4 will be intense. |
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Mojave
Posts: 178 |
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This episode was a bit of a mixed bag, just like the series as a whole has been so far. It had moments of brilliance and moments that left me scratching my head, wondering what on earth the show's writers were thinking. This episode more than any other so far has made me feel that it's like two completely different writers are writing the majority of the show, one who has a lot of experience in ballroom dance and one who knows nothing about it outside of maybe having seen a televised competition once.
The way the backstage was portrayed was so incredibly accurate, with the type of mood hanging around the dancers back there being something that was so realistic that it almost made me feel like I was back competing again. And then it got completely ruined by those random shonen tropes in the form of Sengoku's behavior in the locker room, which had nothing to do with reality whatsoever. His move back there with Shizuku wasn't really creepy, as it made it seem like he just grabbed the closest thing on hand to him and there was nothing sexual about it, but it was still a completely pointless gag that added nothing to the scene and instead took away from it. The whole part of the episode with Tatara being Shizuku's partner was also a very mixed bag regarding accuracy. While it is true that they could possibly get away with Tatara just wearing Hyodo's clothes as long as he had already pinned his competition number to the back of his tailcoat, that still seems a bit contrived, as usually the female partner will pin the number on her partner's back before they go out there (also, since Shizuku and Hyodo were a highly-seeded pair, there would be less of a chance of this working). You usually don't pin the number on until the male partner is wearing the coat, as it looks really bad if you place it on in a position that doesn't have the male partner taking dance position (it crinkles and tears once you actually start dancing if you just tried to place it on the jacket without the male partner wearing it when it was pinned on). Having someone not already in the competition take Hyodo's place also seemed like a bit of a stretch, as when you have to have a replacement partner mid-competition, you can usually only get away with having it be someone already registered in the competition who was eliminated earlier. The dancing sequence with Shizuku and Tatara was probably the most frustrating part for me to watch, as it kept rapidly switching between moments of brilliant realism and moments of completely made-up stuff that has no basis in reality. The part where Tatara is completely overwhelmed and just blanks and holds his move is so incredibly realistic I could cry. I've done that exact thing multiple times before during competitions back when I was a beginner, and both his and Shizuku's reactions to that happening pretty much perfectly capture the feeling of what that's like. However, where reality breaks there is the fact that Shizuku doesn't start backleading, as someone of her skill and experience would have done that from the start once she realized she had a beginner for a partner who was in completely over his head. There's also the matter of Tatara dancing too well at a few points. I know that he's copying what he's seen Hyodo do, but someone at Tatara's level and experience is incapable of pulling off the type of sway (the slow in-place body movement you see him doing to emphasize the grace of the waltz) that you see him do. I don't think I've ever seen a dancer have good sway until they had been dancing for at least a year, and that's only the talented ones who can pull it off that quickly. For the male partner especially, it requires you to have a very good understanding of and feel for your frame, which Tatara absolutely does not have at this point. Tatara trying to use a mix of Hyodo's choreography and whatever he could remember is fairly accurate, but someone at Tatara's level actually would have looked better while doing his own steps, as a couple's specific routine is very much unique to them and won't look as good if one of them is replaced, no matter how talented the replacement is. Shizuku's reaction to the incident felt fairly accurate, as sometimes having everything go wrong and yet still being able to just let yourself go and lose yourself in the dance is a very real thing. One of the most fun competitions I ever took part in involved an opening heat where my partner and I got bumped right near the beginning of our routine and we both blanked after that, and did almost nothing but progressive steps for the rest of the song and just focused on our tone, frame, and presentation. For someone dancing as long and as seriously as Shizuku, having this awkward improvisation with a partner in over their head but enjoying themselves could certainly be refreshing. The accuracy of Hyodo's reaction is a lot tougher to gauge, without seeing it fleshed out more in the next episode. I don't think he was angry about Tatara using some of his steps, but was angry about how much fun Tatara was having out there and how joyful he was. IF that's the case, then the reaction was great, as someone who has taken such a serious and workmanlike approach to dancing for as long as Hyodo has could certainly feel frustrated at seeing someone experiencing such joy while dancing with his same partner. If, however, in the next episode we find out that Hyodo's that angry just because Tatara used part of his routine with his partner, the reaction is totally overblown. Nobody would get that angry at their last-minute replacement using part of their routine. Overall, it's almost like there's one writer with experience in ballroom dance writing most of the scenes and a separate writer in charge of randomly inserting shonen tropes throughout the story. The first is brilliant, the second is what's holding back the series so far. It's still a B or so in my book, but it should totally be an A based on the brilliance it has exhibited at times. |
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Merida
 Posts: 1945 |
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I feel your pain, Hyoudou-kun, not only is your knee damaged but probably your career as well...i'm not familiar with ballroom dancing rules, but i can't imagine that showing up with a different partner in the middle of a competition will get you less of a penalty than not showing up because of an injury. That was a really contrived way of getting the protagonist into the spotlight, even for a sports anime...
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Princess_Irene
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 2606 Location: The castle beyond the Goblin City |
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@Mojave
Thank you for filling in the dancesport culture details - my background is, as I've said, in Modern dance primarily, and clearly there are some differences! I've had dance teachers who were big on physical contact, so costume manipulation was pretty normal - not like the Sengoku bit in this week, but honestly, we'd all just strip down backstage if we had to, which is likely why it didn't strike me quite as much as it probably should have. (Although it was a primarily female environment, I should add.) |
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Desa
 Posts: 285 |
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I wasn't quite connecting with this show until this latest episode. When that stair scene came I was all "Oh?! EVIL IS AFOOT!!!". Now I'm intrigued.
And I guess "Imitation is the best form of flattery" doesn't apply to ballroom dance huh? I'm a pragmatist. I believe there are only so many ways the human form can move until you exhaust uniquely distinguishable variations, especially when limited to a particular "style" of dance, like waltz. After you've seen 1000 waltzes, it all starts blending together, like harem fantasy magic school anime. No two are strictly identical per se, but as the expression goes, once you've seen one, you've seen them all McWhinyPants: "Give it back!" WorldStar: Give what back? Your "pro" moves that a novice could copy? Thanks to that I just saved your team from disqualification. You're welcome by the way. McWhinyPants: "KIISAMAAAA!!!" WorldStar: Oh how's your knee btw? You gotta take better care of yourself, senpai. McWhinyPants: >:( Sometimes all a bland meal needs is a little extra salt. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11340 |
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I know nothing about dancing, but I kept thinking that as well, wondering why she didn't step forward to initiate the dance and unfreeze him, and help him out a little. I thought maybe there was some rule against her approaching him, or that doing so was such bad form that it would carry a greater penalty than just standing there or subbing in an unauthorized dancer. Since some people had already complained about an as yet to be seen scene in which Sengoku embarrasses Shizuku about her bra strap, I wasn't prepared for outright ripping her dress off. Was that original to the anime or did people somehow find that less egregious an offense? oO I did get a chuckle out of Tatara thinking how long that guy's neck was. 
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