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I really like the staff that is working on this. They've done a lot of stuff I like. And I love Blade Runner, both the original and the quality sequel. So I'll give this a shot, CGI or not.

For once Crunchyroll produces something of worth...

insomniaq wrote:

Inb4 the second Berserk 2016. This project just screams high ambition but low production values to me. Sorry but "anime CGI" still looks worse than most ps3 CGI cutscenes and the ps3 is more than a DECADE old.

Sola generally does pretty good work, and Shinji Aramaki and Kenji Kamiyama are both well versed in this genre and style of animation. I mean, sure, there's always the chance that it ends up being a mess, but there isn't anything that stands out to me right now to suggest it's likely.

Last edited by Hellsoldier on Thu Nov 29, 2018 2:51 pm; edited 1 time in total

residentgrigo wrote:

Blade Runner Black Out 2022 is one of the greatest short films of all time and this franchisee has a stellar record, outside of the novel sequels. I don´t know if anime fans will care about this project but this is the greatest anime news of the year, outside of the Pluto and Vinland Saga announcement. Godspeed Sola Digital Arts, you make nice looking things as long as the funding is there. Now if BL 2049 didn´t flop so hard...
Honestly, who funded this anime? A true angel of the arts.

I am yet to understand how something as good as both Blade Runner movies can be commercial flops. But then again, happens so often, so...

Maybe they feel that there's a crossover between old school anime fans and Blade Runner fans, so maybe they are more certain of this investment. Also, no matter how expensive the show, should be cheaper than Blade Runner 2049.

LightningCount wrote:

Wait, what happened to their new Ghost in the Shell collaboration? Kenji Kamiyama and Shinji Aramaki were supposedly working on the next iteration of Ghost in the Shell at Production I.G. last year. (animenewsnetwork.com/news/2017-04-06/ghost-in-the-shell-gets-new-anime-from-kenji-kamiyama-shinji-aramaki/.114481)

Anyway, Adult Swim/Toonami said a while back they were working on more collaboration projects post-FLCL Season 2 and 3. I guess this is one of them. I can see why they'd try this particular project given the short anime, but I can't say it's something I was looking for. I kind of get the same feelings I do when I think about turning Cowboy Bebop into a live-action series. No offense, but it seems sort of superfluous at this point. I mean, if we're talking about new Blade Runner-esque stuff right now in the world of anime, why not a new Bubblegum Crisis or A.D. Police update? That's just as valid a route to take.

I think there's still room for a new Ghost in the Shell project, and I don't believe that was canceled.

I'd love a new Bubblegum Crisis/AD Police anime. But perhaps what I'd love the most would be a true sequel for the original, rather than the disaster that is Bubblegum Crash. I mean, after Blade Runner 2049, it's proven that you can make retro-sequels in this day-and-age.

In either case, the Blade Runner world, much like the Bubblegum Crisis world, is vast enough for more stories to fill it.

Shiflan wrote:

LightningCount wrote:

No offense, but it seems sort of superfluous at this point. I mean, if we're talking about new Blade Runner-esque stuff right now in the world of anime, why not a new Bubblegum Crisis or A.D. Police update? That's just as valid a route to take.

Agreed, though I see those as equally valid choices. They just picked one and it happened to be Blade Runner.

I'd love a new take on Bubblegum Crisis or AD Police files, just as long as they don't screw it up like they did the last entries in both of those franchises. BGC 2040 and AD Police Protect and Serve were both nowhere near as good as the originals. I know BGC had issues where they couldn't get the original character design rights, but now that one company owns the rights that problem shouldn't exist anymore.

As I mentioned above, a true sequel would be a dream project.

I liked Blade Runner Black Out 2022, I can not remember how much CG there was in it, but I can not remember being bothered by it, so if it can be like that, then it should be fine. I do not like how every time a US company gets involved there seems to be a tendency for full 3DCG or at least a ton of it thrown.

Sherris wrote:

For once Crunchyroll produces something of worth...

Meanwhile,we still don't know what that other original Crunchyroll production will be about because all they did so far was boasting that only women are making it...

johnnysasaki wrote:

Sherris wrote:

For once Crunchyroll produces something of worth...

Meanwhile,we still don't know what that other original Crunchyroll production will be about because all they did so far was boasting that only women are making it...

I can't stop smirking. Laughing

Some marketing division they have!

insomniaq wrote:

Inb4 the second Berserk 2016. This project just screams high ambition but low production values to me. Sorry but "anime CGI" still looks worse than most ps3 CGI cutscenes and the ps3 is more than a DECADE old.

To be fair, CGI animated shows in America are not much better. Have you seen the newer shows of Inspector Gadget (The 2015 reboot) and Garfield (The Garfield Show)? They are just awful looking as most anime CGI shows. The Inspector Gadget CGI show looks like something from a Sega Dreamcast cutscene than something from this decade.

insomniaq wrote:

Inb4 the second Berserk 2016. This project just screams high ambition but low production values to me. Sorry but "anime CGI" still looks worse than most ps3 CGI cutscenes and the ps3 is more than a DECADE old.

In discussing graphic style, it seems best to send people to watch or refresh themselves on Blade Runner: Black Out 2022 first -- it was Watanabe's Blade Runner short, it was animated by Sola Digital Arts, it's a 2D/3D hybrid, and it was probably a key calling card that helped this project come together. So it's still an educated guess at this point, but given everything we know about Black Lotus (Watanabe, Sola, 2D/3D all confirmed), it makes sense to look at the original short and assume the new series will be something of a TV-budget version of Black Out 2022's style...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrZk9sSgRyQ

I don't usually watch Crunchyroll (I prefer Hulu and Funimation), but I'll make an exception for this. I enjoyed the Blade Runner 2049: Blackout short, so I hope that this series follows closely in its footsteps. As a big fan of both Blade Runner and anime, this is a dream come true for me.

Shiflan wrote:

LightningCount wrote:

No offense, but it seems sort of superfluous at this point. I mean, if we're talking about new Blade Runner-esque stuff right now in the world of anime, why not a new Bubblegum Crisis or A.D. Police update? That's just as valid a route to take.

Agreed, though I see those as equally valid choices. They just picked one and it happened to be Blade Runner.

I'd love a new take on Bubblegum Crisis or AD Police files, just as long as they don't screw it up like they did the last entries in both of those franchises. BGC 2040 and AD Police Protect and Serve were both nowhere near as good as the originals. I know BGC had issues where they couldn't get the original character design rights, but now that one company owns the rights that problem shouldn't exist anymore.

I'd love to see new BGC too, and not that terrible ______ of BGC 2032. ADP was not far from the tree in that regard.

Marc Nix wrote:

insomniaq wrote:

Inb4 the second Berserk 2016. This project just screams high ambition but low production values to me. Sorry but "anime CGI" still looks worse than most ps3 CGI cutscenes and the ps3 is more than a DECADE old.

In discussing graphic style, it seems best to send people to watch or refresh themselves on Blade Runner: Black Out 2022 first -- it was Watanabe's Blade Runner short, it was animated by Sola Digital Arts, it's a 2D/3D hybrid, and it was probably a key calling card that helped this project come together. So it's still an educated guess at this point, but given everything we know about Black Lotus (Watanabe, Sola, 2D/3D all confirmed), it makes sense to look at the original short and assume the new series will be something of a TV-budget version of Black Out 2022's style...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrZk9sSgRyQ

Not necessarily. Cygames Pictures was involved with the animation production in Blade Runner 2022:Blackout. It is curiously absent from this announcement. Sola, the only company announced thus far, has only done 3d CG animation. I’m expecting the worst.

Ajc228 wrote:

Not necessarily. Cygames Pictures was involved with the animation production in Blade Runner 2022:Blackout. It is curiously absent from this announcement. Sola, the only company announced thus far, has only done 3d CG animation. I’m expecting the worst.

Also missing is Black Out's character designer/animation director Shuzo Murase. So sure, could be quite different from the short.

That said, Black Lotus has been confirmed as a 2D/3D hybrid already, so either Sola Digital will need to get savvy on 2D fast or there are other subcontracted studios that the announcement didn't bother to list out (looks like Sola wasn't mentioned in the original Black Out press either despite Sola and Cygames sharing production.)

If anything, watch Black Out because it's very cool (though I hope the action is a little less over-powered in the show.) And if the show comes out looking like that, great. If not, we'll talk about what it does look like when we see it.

I'm guessing will be Black Out will be the template for the show (to some degree of fidelity given the budget -- can they do Black Out-quality animation work on Adult Swim/Crunchyroll budget?) If the show doesn't end up looking like Black Out, we will find out in time, but given that the only other works we have to discuss (besides the back-catalog of Watanabe/Aramaki/Kamiyama) are Sola Digital's Appleseed: Alpha and Starship Troopers: Traitors of Mars/Invasion, it feels like we're kind of going down a dead road talking about the animation studio's history and the dismal reputation 3D CGI has in Japan when Adult Swim's exec is saying Blade Runner: Black Lotus won't be like that.

Spawn29 wrote:

insomniaq wrote:

Inb4 the second Berserk 2016. This project just screams high ambition but low production values to me. Sorry but "anime CGI" still looks worse than most ps3 CGI cutscenes and the ps3 is more than a DECADE old.

To be fair, CGI animated shows in America are not much better. Have you seen the newer shows of Inspector Gadget (The 2015 reboot) and Garfield (The Garfield Show)? They are just awful looking as most anime CGI shows. The Inspector Gadget CGI show looks like something from a Sega Dreamcast cutscene than something from this decade.

The Garfield Show is animated and produced almost entirely in France, and Inspector Gadget is an international co-production between Canada and France,

#854626 wrote:

At the very least if the characters and there action sequences are in 2d I'll accept it. It's always better when theres no cg whatsoever but whatever. Doing my best not to get my Hope's up.

When the CG is well done, it can be hard to tell. (Most are not, however.) One example is the fight in Kill la Kill's fourth episode's third act, which was CG, but done in a particular way so as to imitate 2-D animation.

Not really sure how that was done, but I reckon it has similarities to The Peanuts Movie, which I really liked and was amazed at how they got Charles Schulz's style down, which by al means shouldn't work in 3-D.

Hellsoldier wrote:

I am yet to understand how something as good as both Blade Runner movies can be commercial flops. But then again, happens so often, so...

The first Blade Runner was a flop because the general public wasn't yet accustomed to cyberpunk. If you look at the professional reviews, as well as whatever little regular-viewer discussion has been preserved to today, you'll see the most common complaint was that it was visually overwhelming, even though by today's standards, it's a pretty standard cyberpunk look.

That's why I was surprised that they would make a sequel, but Blade Runner 2049 came out anyway. This one flopped for the opposite reason: There wasn't enough happening. 2049 was a slow, introspective movie released during an era where the highest-grossing films are high-energy, heart-racing spectacles, like the Michael Bay Transformers films, anything from Illumination Entertainment, anything made by Jerry Bruckheimer, and, of course, the rise of video games. 2049 worked for anyone who knew what to expect when they began watching, but for everyone else, not so much.

Spawn29 wrote:

To be fair, CGI animated shows in America are not much better. Have you seen the newer shows of Inspector Gadget (The 2015 reboot) and Garfield (The Garfield Show)? They are just awful looking as most anime CGI shows. The Inspector Gadget CGI show looks like something from a Sega Dreamcast cutscene than something from this decade.

On the other hand, the Star Wars and DreamWorks TV shows (and, to a lesser extent, the Lego TV shows) all look very nice.

The problem is that there aren't quite as many animation shortcuts for 3-D than for 2-D. Well, either that, or 3-D needs its own Hanna-Barbera duo to figure out how to reduce time and budget further while keeping it looking presentable.

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