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Spring Anime 2013 |OT -7| My Giant CG Pony Can't Possibly Read This Much Baudelaire

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N

Novid

Banned
yo. man. I mean for real. Aku animators... come to the us, pay us and we will help yall out cause /zandig jeeuss for real...
 
R

RangerBAD

Member
What were they thinking? Why isn't Kodansha suing them right this minute? Why would they even sign off on it? They get early screenings. ZEXCS isn't even a bad studio. I've seen doujin games with bigger budgets.
 
D

duckroll

Member
RangerBAD said:
What were they thinking? Why isn't Kondansha suing them right this minute? Why would they even sign off on it? They get early screenings. ZEXCS isn't even a bad studio. I've seen doujin games with bigger budgets.
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Regarding this project, the producer told the director that they didn't have to worry about selling any DVD/BDs at all, and instead they should focus on making a work which will be remembered for decades. I feel they have succeeded.
 
R

RangerBAD

Member
duckroll said:
Regarding this project, the producer told the director that they didn't have to worry about selling any DVD/BDs at all, and instead they should focus on making a work which will be remembered for decades. I feel they have succeeded.
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It's one for the ages. Producer needs to be fired.
 
J

Jarmel

Banned
duckroll said:
Regarding this project, the producer told the director that they didn't have to worry about selling any DVD/BDs at all, and instead they should focus on making a work which will be remembered for decades. I feel they have succeeded.
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I imagine you smiling when writing that last sentence.
 
M

Moonlight

Banned
Joe Molotov said:
ohysakunohana-01animanmlfw.jpg
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duckroll said:
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Branduil said:
ib5UtKMBUqSwI.jpg
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[Clark Gable];52793853 said:
Every anime season has been bad for the past five years.

o4FQbTD.gif
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Hahaha, holy shit.
 
S

Soma

Member
Aku No Sales Episode 01

Wow. So ignoring the "unique" visual choices, this was like what 18 or so uneventful pages of the first chapter of the manga stretched to fit the length of an entire episode. I can understand the artistic intent behind reusing certain scenes that invoke the feeling of a mundane, rudimentary lifestyle (and this first episode alone does it several times) but it's hard to take it seriously when it looks so lazily implemented. The background art looks gorgeous despite almost being ruined by having those unfortunate character designs juxtaposed against them. I like the music, however minimalistic it might be, and I legitimately like the ED song and how it leads into the credits.
 
S

Steroyd

Member
Hataraki Man Maou-sama - 01

It's tough going from a demon overlord to a fast food worker, now demon lord-san knows the joys of working hard for an earning.

Yahari oreI'm a harem magnet #24617735 - 01

The venom between the main guy and main girl was amusing to see, will give this more episodes, so far first impressions makes it feel like a Haganai setup with Oreshura club activities.
 
N

Novid

Banned
duckroll said:
Regarding this project, the producer told the director that they didn't have to worry about selling any DVD/BDs at all, and instead they should focus on making a work which will be remembered for decades. I feel they have succeeded.
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that some fucking business suicide - almost as worse at that Dragon Quest X MMO amirite?
 
T

Taruranto

Member
I wanted to say something like "well, at least it looks better than K-on samefaces!", but then i realized it would have been too much, even for me.
 
C

Conan-san

Member
Novid said:
that some fucking business suicide - almost as worse at that Dragon Quest X MMO amirite?
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Would be if DQX wasn't a fairly big seller. The Wii U version was a mistake (really it should have been a upgrade client for owners of the Wii version or something) but I can't imgaine that being much more than a Hi-Texture pack with some podunk coding for the tablet.
 
C

CorvoSol

Member
Let us begin the watching of Gundam 00's final episodes and also movie. God help me, for I will also be doing stats homework between episodes, which means I have 10 pages of my research paper to finish with all this. MY BRAIN IS READY.

Gundam 00 S2 19

Just like Lockon was the only good character in S1, Soma is the only good character in S2. Alleluia was showing serious improvements, but now suddenly Hallelujah is alive again? ROLLING OF EYES. Oh, and Anew Returner is an innovator! WHO DIDN'T SEE THIS COMING? UUUUGHHHH.

Honestly, Setsuna is pretty awful. Like seriously he is the worst Gundam pilot, excluding people who get in Thrones. Bad as Setsuna is, though two characters stand above him as the worst.

SAJI CROSSROAD AND LOUISE HALLEVY. Saji because here we are, 44 EPISODES INTO THIS SERIES and he has STILL DONE JACK ALL. His romance is the most painful part of the entire plot and it makes me want to bore a hole in my skull to forget about it. For a character who gets an inordinate amount of focus in a show where the main characters themselves are background characters, you think they could've troubled to make him LIKEABLE. But no, Saji's just a dumbass who wastes my goddamn time chasing some dumbass bitch across the universe.

Louise is the worst character in the show though, and is frankly on par with Nina Purpleton for being the most ridiculously contrived and terrible love interests in the series. I'd sooner watch Heero and Relena's not-romance a thousand times before this. Here's this pampered ass girl who SUDDENLY AND WITHOUT FUCKING EXPLANATION is an ace mobile suit pilot. JUST LIKE THAT. Because apparently they're so easy to pilot that some stupid fuck like Louise can just climb in and pilot one. FUUUUCK. And then she's all "I DON'T LOVE YOU SAJI CROSSROADS BECAUSE I USE DRUGS."

LET THIS BE A LESSON TO YOU ALL: JUST BECAUSE RAU USED DRUGS AND WAS COOL DOESN'T MEAN ALL YOUR DRUG USERS ARE COOL.

OH SHUT THE FUCK UP SAJI CROSSROADS. LET SOMA HAVE HER FUCKING REVENGE. FUUUCK I CAN'T BELIEVE THEY STOPPED BECAUSE SAJI TOLD THEM TO.

There goes the ONE good thing about this episode. Oh and now Mr. Bushido is there agreeing with Saji. UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGH.

This show makes me want to do homework.
 
B

Branduil

Member
Fleur de Mal AKA Flowers of Evil AKA Aku no Hana 1

iDAE9jpNGxQA7.jpg
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Why did you willingly participate in this farce, Studio Pablo?
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This was worse than I could have possibly anticipated. There are pretty much only two good scenes in the entire episode, and they're both just montages of Studio Pablo backgrounds set to music. Even the backgrounds wear out their welcome when they just keep lazily reusing them over and over. The "acting" is horrifically abysmal, featuring monotone J-drama actors droning out their lines set to jerky, ugly rotoscoping which doesn't succeed in evoking any kind of mood or emotion except revulsion. It's impossible to feel empathy for the characters because they just look like bizarre blobs of color and they discuss trivial matters with all the excitement of a CSPAN commentator. Nothing even happens until 18 minutes into the show. I'd rather rewatch all of Sword Art Online than keep watching this. This feels like some kind of awful practical joke, in the final three minutes the show descends into some kind of awful art-house parody with the worst song I have ever heard in my entire life; but the real joke is that it's not a parody, it's deadly serious.

RIP Nagahama. RIP anime.

i85BS6vBHffHg.jpg


Am I cute uguu?
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Wonzo are you okay? Please post if you're okay :(
 
D

duckroll

Member
So, I looked through the credits of episode 1 for Aku no Hana to see how many people are responsible for this visual trainwreck. Here are the stats:

- There is no storyboarder or unit director for the episode, presumably because the direction is the live action base, so it's not needed.

- Instead there is a full live action cast of 38 people for the first episode, and a crew of at least 19 including 2 directors.

- There is one overall animation supervisor, 1 animation director, and 4 assisting animation directors, and 16 key animators. Pretty normal for anime, so they don't seem to be saving any manpower here either.

Overall it's clear that the director wasn't lying when he said what they are doing takes much more effort than usual, and probably costs more too. Viva la expérimentation!
 
B

Branduil

Member
duckroll said:
Regarding this project, the producer told the director that they didn't have to worry about selling any DVD/BDs at all, and instead they should focus on making a work which will be remembered for decades. I feel they have succeeded.
Click to expand...

I'm fully confident they will succeed at both of those goals.
 
R

RangerBAD

Member
duckroll said:
So, I looked through the credits of episode 1 for Aku no Hana to see how many people are responsible for this visual trainwreck. Here are the stats:

- There is no storyboarder or unit director for the episode, presumably because the direction is the live action base, so it's not needed.

- Instead there is a full live action cast of 38 people for the first episode, and a crew of at least 19 including 2 directors.

- There is one overall animation supervisor, 1 animation director, and 4 assisting animation directors, and 16 key animators. Pretty normal for anime, so they don't seem to be saving any manpower here either.

Overall it's clear that the director wasn't lying when he said what they are doing takes much more effort than usual, and probably costs more too. Viva la expérimentation!
Click to expand...

Rotoscopy confirmed. This better be a late April Fool's joke and normal anime activities will resume next week. (I CAN'T ACCEPT THE TRUTH! HELP ME!)
 
K

KuwabaraTheMan

Banned
Chihayafuru 2 13:
This was another good episode, with some nice back and forth between the two teams. Throughout the course of the episode, we get to see how Chihaya has grown (which is really driven home by Sudo's commentary), and then we also see how Megumu reacts to that. There's a nice rivalry brewing here, and we also see e how the rest of Mizusawa has dealt with their situations (although not really enough). Komano's scene where he's analyzing his opponent based on Hanano's reports was a great moment, and Nishida has some really funny moments in this episode.

The photography nerds are starting to really grate on me, though. Enough of these losers.
 
B

BluWacky

Member
I didn't hate Aku no Hana.

Sorry!

I mean, I don't think it's very good, mind you. It's a really boring first episode where virtually nothing happens, and shooting it in a live action, "realistic drama" fashion robs it of the melodramatic impact that it's presumably supposed to have when Nakamura utters the "shit eater" line. We get little sense of what the point of the whole thing is at this stage.

The rotoscoping is pretty much what I was expecting, I guess - maybe that's why I don't despise it as much as everyone else seems to. Of course with the drop in frame rate (because that's how anime rolls, I guess) and the lack of detail to the drawings it's not particularly attractive, and of course the manga has the benefit of everyone looking relatively pretty and completely unlike the actual facial structures of Japanese adolescents, but it's not totally hideous.

Also I really liked the animation of the actual flower of evil, so... there's that.

As I say, don't get me wrong, I don't think it's great. But as usual, "not very good" on the Internet seems to equal "A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY", and I don't think it deserves that level of hyperbole.
 
J

jgminto

Member
Aku no Hana 1
God, what a clusterfuck. I didn't want to hate on it for not being generic anime designs and it's an interesting idea, but it just looks cheap and crap, even in motion. The lack of basic details in most shots is terrible. It has video game like pop-in. The Last Express, an adventure game from 1997 did it better than this, in some areas.

It was also incredibly boring. The characters had nothing interesting to say. I guess perhaps it's supposed to be more "true to life" or whatever but they should be using this time to develop the characters. I didn't actually finish the episode though. Got further than duckroll but not by much. When other anime have boring characters they can rely on their visuals or fan service to keep an audience, but this...
 
R

RangerBAD

Member
BluWacky said:
I didn't hate Aku no Hana.

Sorry!

I mean, I don't think it's very good, mind you. It's a really boring first episode where virtually nothing happens, and shooting it in a live action, "realistic drama" fashion robs it of the melodramatic impact that it's presumably supposed to have when Nakamura utters the "shit eater" line. We get little sense of what the point of the whole thing is at this stage.

The rotoscoping is pretty much what I was expecting, I guess - maybe that's why I don't despise it as much as everyone else seems to. Of course with the drop in frame rate (because that's how anime rolls, I guess) and the lack of detail to the drawings it's not particularly attractive, and of course the manga has the benefit of everyone looking relatively pretty and completely unlike the actual facial structures of Japanese adolescents, but it's not totally hideous.

Also I really liked the animation of the actual flower of evil, so... there's that.

As I say, don't get me wrong, I don't think it's great. But as usual, "not very good" on the Internet seems to equal "A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY", and I don't think it deserves that level of hyperbole.
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It's not a crime, but it is sorely disappointing.
 
S

Soma

Member
As much as I disliked the first episode I will say that I thought the scene between Nakamura and the Teacher and the final scene right as the music led into the credits were pretty well directed and for that reason I'm sticking with the show for a little longer at least. Those were the only scenes that I felt truly captured that sense of unsettling drama that the manga attempts and hopefully later episodes will have more of that.
 
R

RangerBAD

Member
moonspeak said:
As much as I disliked the first episode I will say that I thought the scene between Nakamura and the Teacher and the final scene right as the music led into the credits were pretty well directed and for that reason I'm sticking with the show for a little longer at least. Those were the only scenes that I felt truly captured that sense of unsettling drama that the manga attempts and hopefully later episodes will have more of that.
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Hopefully later episodes show the original staff was fired and a new one is doing things properly for the Blu-rays to milk Japanese money.
 
O

OceanBlue

Member
RangerBAD said:
Found this for Japanese speaking people. http://natalie.mu/comic/pp/akunohana Interview with the "staff".
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Looks like someone summarized it.
kuromitsu said:
And Google Translate is lying.

In short:
- At first Nagahama (the director) refused the offer to direct the adaptation, because he thought that simply turning this manga into a pretty, clean-looking anime would be pointless. He says that he believes that when the mangaka draws this story he's seeing something "else" which he expresses as a manga. So there would be no point in simply presenting it in animated form, at that rate you might as well just read the manga and be done with it.
- He thought if it was to be adapted at all, it should be done as a live drama. When he was offered the job the second time, he pitched the idea of using rotoscope. He was aware that the result would be different from the manga.
- Oshimi (the mangaka) says Nagahama is right about the way he creates the manga: the original story is something that exists in his head, and he draws what he sees in his mind. So basically the anime and the manga are two different versions of the story that exists in Oshimi's head. By the way, he was also aware that due to the rotoscope the anime would look different from his work, and he thought it was an interesting idea.
- Oshimi also says that he thinks Nagahama has a very deep insight into the story, and firmly believes that he's taking it in the right direction. He also very much approves of Nagahama's wish of the anime leaving the viewers with a scar.
- Oshimi was pretty much "in" on the whole thing, they tested the rotoscope method on him.
- The interviewer asks about the impact the visuals would have on viewers, and Nagahama says he's well aware that a lot of people will go "what the fuck" and "this is gross," "I hate this, I'm not watching this." But he's pretty much okay with that, too, because he thinks it's fine as long as it leaves an impact on people. Viewers may dismiss it right away, but some may check it out later and find it interesting, or they may come across the manga, recognize the title, and read that.
- Oshimi says that he once got a fan letter from a high school girl who wrote that when she read the manga in middle school she thought it was stupid, but she tried to read it again when she was older and she found it very good. Nagahama says that this is what he's going for, to leave an impact, even if it's negative. He's trying to create something that one can't just ignore or dismiss.
- Oshimi also says that the anime has many scenes that he wishes he would've drawn the way they are in the anime, for example a scene with Kasuga and Nakamura in the classroom.
- Also, he confesses he's writing the manga with the intention of murdering the readers with it (metaphorically, of course), thinks the anime is doing the same, and relishes the idea of the viewers getting slaughtered, jokingly of course. (lol #1)

They leave the following messages to the fans:
- Oshimi: He guarantees that those who feel very strongly about Aku no hana will enjoy the anime. However, chara-moe types, those who go "Nakamura-san, unf unf" will probably feel betrayed. (lol #2)
- Nagahama: Since it's so different from the usual anime, he can't say that everyone will love it. But those who watch the first episode and think "I want to see more" will not have their expectations betrayed.

If anything, this made me want to watch the show even more. :D I hope they're right and it's going to be interesting.

http://forums.animesuki.com/showpost.php?p=4622098&postcount=169
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