STOP THAT BLURRY ANIMATION TECHNIQUE NOW!

Anime titles within this category used a nausea-inducing blurry animation techniques that pisses me off. It look like motion interpolation algorithm going SERIOUSLY BAD.

Review: Chaos;HEAd (カオス;ヘッド)

Posted by ranpha on 7th September 2012

Posted in: anime review, STOP THAT BLURRY ANIMATION TECHNIQUE NOW!. Tagged: Chaos;HEAd (カオス;ヘッド). Leave a Comment

The unassuming main male protagonist, right before his life turned to hell.

The main reason why I chose to watch Chaos;HEAd for today’s review is mainly because I want to watch its spiritual successor Steins;Gate in the near future. Just like Michiko to Hatchin, this is a 2008 title, therefore it will not wrest this blog’s ‘Anime of the Year 2008’ title away from One Outs. In fact, Michiko to Hatchin is better than this anime, for reasons that you will find out. And that’s a shame, because this anime has so much unfulfilled potential.

Please spare a thought for our main protagonist who are being monitored around the clock by a pink-haired serial murderer just because he happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Story:-
The tranquil life of our reclusive main male protagonist, living his hikkikomori dream in a shipping container at Shibuya’s rooftop, shatters when he inadvertently become a witness to one of the serial murders cases that is happening in his district. Because of that incident, crazy delusional sword-toting beautiful ladies suddenly appears out of nowhere and starts chasing after him! A certain pink-haired one in particular, seems obsessed at ‘erasing’ him off the surface of the planet, therefore he has to live in constant fear, anxiety and paranoia, around the clock without any place to hide.

Surprisingly for its genre type, this anime is a character-driven title, with the main male protagonist at the center of all things. By far the best character in this anime, the single best aspect of this anime is watching his delusions become stronger as time passes. I think he is like that because he watched too many anime. One thing I like about him is that he is surprisingly perceptive, a rare trait for a main male protagonist in a harem title. The main male protagonist is the single bright spark this anime has, because the rest of the character roster and the anime’s elements are nowhere as interesting as him.

Personally, I think she was introduced into the anime just to make up the numbers, do you agree?

Somewhat related to what I said above, character developments for characters in this anime is pretty much non-existent, apart from the main male protagonist of course. The only girl of the harem that is just a tiny little bit interesting is the bespectacled one that has streaks of yandere tendencies. Unfortunately for this anime, she has little airtime after the first few episodes. The aforementioned pink-haired girl, whilst important to the storyline, did not have the same impact as the yandere girl. Personally, I think even the main male protagonist’s little sister is a little bit better than her. Ditto for the short-haired girl too, but the other two characters, especially the one that has speech impediment problems (see the screenshot above), seems to be there just to make up the numbers (the magic number is 7).

This is the problem inherent in an anime title with low episode count, yet having big amount characters with the writer trying to put some kind of story behind each of them. I found out that this anime is a visual novel adaptation. If I were the writer, I will make the magic number as 5, then cut off a couple of characters entirely from this anime and concentrate with the rest. This anime is a very good candidate for a adaptation with improvised storyline, unlike many other titles out there that has one.

Speaking about the storyline itself, this anime really missed a golden opportunity to become a masterpiece. This anime starts strongly, and after 4 episodes or so, I started to think that I am watching another Another (pun definitely not intended); an indication of how good the mystery elements this anime has. But around episode 7 or so, it seems that the author started to channel the main male protagonist himself, throws out the mystery elements from the storyline and replaced it with some conspiracy-themed plots instead. The quality of the storyline collapsed dramatically after that point, culminating in one of the worst endings I have ever seen since Princess Lover. Watching the cliché-laden final two episodes is truly torturous; in fact, I think Princess Lover’s ending is a little bit better than what you can see in this anime. I think if the anime starts right way with the conspiracy stuff (like having the true nature of the antagonist revealed earlier), this anime would not have done this badly story-wise.

The pacing of the storyline is spot-on at first, but increased slightly in the last 4 episodes or so. It is obvious that being overloaded with too many characters isn’t good for this anime’s storyline. For what it’s worth, the flow of the storyline is good though, even in the bad parts. There are several scene transition problems though, an example would be the ‘encounter’ at the start of episode 4 that is not bridged properly with a related scene in episode 3.

Life is hard for our main protagonist because he has to deal with insane asylum escapees like the character above.

Character Design:-
The character designs in this anime is average, and definitely unoriginal. Only the character design of the main male protagonist is decent, with its’ realism that matched his hikkikomori status. Black hair is rare in this anime that takes place in modern Tokyo, with only one of the girls (one of the worst ones) having one.

Voice Acting:-
Just like the character design, voice acting in this anime is pretty much normal in quality. There are no bad gigs here in particular, but there are no great ones either. For all of the main male protagonist’s greatness character-wise, his voice acting does not really stand out from the rest.

Music:-
The OST of this anime is good, but the same cannot be said for the OP/ED themes.

Animation/Direction:-
This anime uses the blurry animation technique last seen in Daily Lives of High School Boys, therefore one point will be deducted from this anime’s final evaluation. Other than that, the animation quality in this anime is actually good, better than the ones in the aforementioned Daily Lives of High School Boys and also Michiko to Hatchin. Choreography of action scenes is mostly average though, unlike Michiko to Hatchin. The directing is not the best; the problems in presentation I mentioned earlier are some of the mistakes he has made.

Conclusion:-
4 out of 10. Same score as Princess Lover is. I’ll decide when to watch Steins;Gate by the time my next review is posted. I already have the HDTV rip in my queue, and if I decide to watch that version, Steins;Gate will be the title I will watch after my next review comes up. If I want to wait for the Blu-ray version just like I decided to do with Mirai Nikki, then the wait would be indefinite. One thing for sure is, I hope Steins;Gate to be considerably much better than this anime.

What he said is completely on the mark, but what he forgets is that he is in an anime series, not in real-life.

Shortlink: http://wp.me/prgSo-ze

Review: Daily Lives of High School Boys (男子高校生の日常)

Posted by ranpha on 1st June 2012

Posted in: anime review, STOP THAT BLURRY ANIMATION TECHNIQUE NOW!. Tagged: Daily Lives of High School Boys (男子高校生の日常). 1 comment

The three main protagonists of this anime.

Today’s post marks the start of the audition searching for this blog’s ‘Anime of the Year 2012’ inaugural winner. Actually, I want to only start this audition once the 2012 spring season ends, but because I cannot wait to watch Daily Lives of High School Boys for reasons that will be detailed below, I started the audition early. Because of this, there are only four titles in the audition, and they are Nisemonogatari, Papa no Iu Koto wo Kikinasai!, Another and of course, Daily Lives of High School Boys that will be reviewed today.

A beach episode. Obviously it is nowhere as good as the outstanding Highschool of the Dead OVA.

Story:-
The two main protagonists, alongside a secondary character sidekick, are 2nd year students in a normal all-boys high school somewhere in Japan. Permanently trapped in that class ala Urusei Yatsura, the three characters does their daily own stuff in and outside the school, between each other, between them and their own schoolmates, plus their own families and students from other schools too.

This plot-less comedy anime is suspiciously similar to another anime that involves plenty of high school boys, titled Sakigake!! Cromartie Koukou a.k.a Cromartie High School. Both of them are comedies and features male high school students, mostly in high school settings. Don’t even bother trying to find anything that resembles plot in here, this anime is one of those titles that that are purely driven by character strengths and the humor.

The comedy in this anime is great, just like what you can see in Cromartie Koukou. But if those two’s comedies quality are compared, I think Cromartie Koukou will still edge ahead of this anime in this regard. Just like Cromartie Koukou, this anime is also a dialogue-heavy anime, but this anime has the distinction of having far more action in it. Just so you know, Cromartie Koukou is set up at a delinquent-only all-boys high school, yet that anime has almost zero violence in it. In this anime, set up at a normal all-boys high school, punching people as a response of being at the wrong end of a joke is a very common event in this anime.

The ending of one of the best comedy arcs in this anime.

Another thing these this anime has in common with Cromartie Koukou is parodies and references to external sources, especially for Square Enix (where the source manga was published) and Sunrise (the studio that produced this anime) intellectual properties, amongst others. No DiGi Charat though in here, although Mahou Shoujo Madoka★Magica can be glimpsed. This anime is markedly different from Cromartie Koukou in one aspect though, and that would be the existence of a bunch of recurring FEMALE characters throughout the this series. Those characters from the opposite sex do enhance this anime in ways that Cromartie Koukou will never be able to experience. For example, characters in Cromartie Koukou can never talk about how to get girlfriends…

The three main protagonists and the best characters in this series, all of them MALE high school students, are central elements of this anime, after all they have the most airtime and are involved in almost all arcs in this anime. The central main protagonist (the one at the center in the top-most screenshot above) has his airtime cut severely in the final third of the anime, and that’s why I downgraded him to the sidekick status in the synopsis in the first paragraph above. Due to the nature of this anime, character developments in this anime is almost non-existent, with almost all of the characters in this anime is virtually the same between the start and the last episode. The three characters are also backed up by many good secondary characters, from the high school itself or from within the characters’ households. Even the aforementioned recurring female characters has done well, most of them anyway like the ‘High School Girls Are Funky’ characters and also the student council president from the all-girls high school.

This side show at the end of each episode is quite good too, it managed to give the main series a run for its money.

This anime has the Azumanga Daioh’s storytelling method, where each episodes contained small arcs that is several minutes long. Therefore the pacing is fast just like what you can see in Seitokai Yakuindomo that uses the 4-koma manga storytelling method in its anime version. This anime minimized the negative effects of using such a storytelling method by not only keeping arcs in the same themes together more often than Seitokai Yakuindomo is, arc pairing method is also used where one given arc will be followed by another arc that will use the context from the previous one. It also helps that the arcs in this anime is longer too than the ones in Seitokai Yakuindomo. Transitions between distinct arcs are largely seamless too but not perfect, considering the storytelling method this used.

The ending is open-ended, setting up nicely for a second season. The only drawback about the ending is that the arc is one of the weakest arcs in the whole series, mainly because the anime tried to step out of its comedy genre and having some melodramatic scenes in it. Somehow, the way the last episode being presented reminds me of Hayate no Gotoku. When was the last time I’ve seen a last episode that isn’t one?

Just one of the humor in this anime, that is not possible at all in the likes of Cromartie Koukou.

Character Design:-
Definitely different from what you can see in Cromartie Koukou for sure. In Cromartie Koukou, 95% of the characters has that ‘wild’ looks that makes little kids cry, while only 5% of the characters in this anime has it. And to think that violence is more common in the latter. In general, character designs in this anime is is much typical for a shounen though. There is implicit acknowledgement that hair dyes are used by characters in this anime so I’ll overlook all of those blond and yellow-haired and purple-haired characters. Not bad but not outstanding either.

Voice Acting:-
The quality of voice acting in this anime is grossly uneven. Amongst the three main protagonists, one of them (the bespectacled guy) has done an excellent job, another one (the central protagonist turned sidekick) is mostly decent while the blonde guy is just barely above average. As for their schoolmates, their families and also the female characters, the quality also vary widely. The two student council presidents, the bearded guy from the main protagonists’ class and his older sister, and the bespectacled girl and the Archdemon from the ‘High School Girls Are Funky’ skits also has excellent voice acting gigs.

Want to know how those three characters ends up on the ground? Watch this series then!

Music:-
This anime has also done pretty well in this aspect. The OST is decent, but too sparse for my liking. If the dialogue-heavy Seitokai Yakuindomo can have a great soundtrack, I don’t really see this anime that has similar presentation cannot have it. The ED theme is below average, but the OP theme and the insert in 3rd episode are quite good.

Animation/Direction:-
This anime used the blurry animation technique here (just like in Sunrise’s Sacred Seven), usually in slow-paced scenes, the reverse of the application seen in Cardfight!! Vanguard. A point will be deducted from the final evaluation then. Apart from that, the animation quality is not exactly good, especially in laid-back slow-paced scenes. Compared to the recent two Sunrise titles reviewed here before, Sacred Seven and Tiger & Bunny, the inferiority of the animation quality here is really apparent. Despite the delicious amount of violence in this anime, choreography doesn’t really apply to this comedy title. The director has done a good job too, especially for minimizing the negative effects of this anime’s storytelling technique.

Conclusion:-
7 out of 10. This anime was suggested to me by some of my Left 4 Dead 2 game friends, and I will recommend it to anyone who likes comedy titles too. My friends sure has some strong attachments to the literature girl (that is crap) and the ‘High School Girls Are Funky’ skits though…

Quoted for Truth!

Shortlink: http://wp.me/prgSo-xU

Review: Cardfight!! Vanguard (カードファイト!! ヴァンガード)

Posted by ranpha on 23rd May 2012

Posted in: anime review, sport genre standard, STOP THAT BLURRY ANIMATION TECHNIQUE NOW!. Tagged: Cardfight!! Vanguard (series), Cardfight!! Vanguard (カードファイト!! ヴァンガード). Leave a Comment

The blue-haired main protagonist. His name is not Kai though.

Cardfight!! Vanguard is a series I’ve glimpsed in a satellite channel I’ve subscribed to but rarely watched, Animax Asia. From the few episodes I’ve watched, I decided to get the whole shebang and watched it from the start to the finish, all 65 episodes of them. This is a 2011 title, therefore it will challenge Tiger and Bunny for the ‘Anime of the Year 2011’ title, but this series’ quest for glory will be made harder because the sport genre standard handicap will be applied here.

This series has a beach episode too. I wonder if it can be mentioned in the same breath as the Highschool of the Dead OVA is.

Story:-
The deep-blue-haired main protagonist has the hots for the brunette Toshiki Kai, a person who saved him from his suicidal tendencies a few years back. The latter is a very ~~lucky~~ skillful at this thing called Vanguard card game, therefore the main protagonist decided to learn the said game too from the scratch so that the love of his life will look at him. He have to act fast though, because slowly and surely, the brunette is falling into the arms of a surly, yet beautiful white-haired card shop girl. As the main protagonist works hard at sharpening his skills in playing the Vanguard card game, he started to hear strange voices…

Vanguard is just a card game, yet it attract many shady participants…
...as well as quirky ones.
…as well as quirky ones.

For the purpose of this review, knowledge of how the card game works is essential, but I don’t really feel like explaining them. What is important for you to know is how a match’s result usually decided though. In the Vanguard card game, in almost all scenarios, when the competing two players are roughly equal in skills, tactics’ execution and deck constructions, the result will always be determined on which player has the most luck when it comes to drawing trigger cards. Actually, this anime even admitted it as such. In other words, luck plays a hugely disproportionate role in determining a match’s result. Skills only comes to the fore only if the participants isn’t on the same level (skill + tactic + deck construction), an occurrence that is not exactly common in this title.

What this means here is that the major directions of the storyline are determined by the most important plot device in this series: the 4 Vanguard trigger cards. Personally, I think the writer uses this plot device very well to steer the direction of the main plot the way he/she wanted it. As you may suspect, the trigger cards is a fertile source for deux ex machina moments (the third battle of the finale is such a fine example of this) but the writer really minimized the damage that such moments can do to the series.

OMG!! DRAMA!

As for the story itself, it is quite decent but not exactly a masterpiece. It is your standard ‘I wanna be stronger’ plot common for the genre if when its protagonist is a complete newbie at the start of the series. What grates me about the storyline the most is the existence of a couple of forced drama scenes (an example can be seen in the above screenshot) and also the tendency to insert flashbacks exactly at junctures where it isn’t needed. The latter in particular has the additional effects of disrupting the flow of the plot and also slowing down the pacing, at a time when the pacing should have been quicker. And I do mention that the flashbacks are annoying right?

While the pacing in the general storyline of this anime could have been much, much better, the in-game and in-tournament pacing is largely excellent, with only some minor blips. Thankfully, those scenarios makes up the majority of this anime. Unnecessary match-ups are not shown at all, especially those that didn’t involve the main protagonist and/or his team. Matches with less importance in it that involves him or his team are done quickly too, ensuring that the pacing didn’t suffer. More airtime is given on important matches, appropriately so. And as mentioned before, the flow of the storyline has been affected by those flashbacks thingy, and this actually affect both in-game/in-tournament moments as well as the portions outside of them. This anime has a second season; hopefully this aspect can be improved in the sequel.

As for character development, a sport genre title will almost always excels in this aspect especially if the main protagonist is a complete n00b in the game that are being portrayed. The same can also be said here, with the blue-haired main protagonist being the best character with his extremely extensive character development. The aforementioned surly white-haired card shop girl is another character that is almost on the same level as the main protagonist, while the latter’s love of his life is the sore exception in the team with his nearly static character development. The ending is decent and admittedly predictable, and it is written to accommodate a second season that is already airing. I wonder if Animax Asia will have that one or not.

This anime need less of this shit…
...and more of the fast-paced national tournament goodness.
…and more of the fast-paced national tournament goodness.

Character Design:-
Character design in this anime is just your common shounen genre designs, orthodox ones if you ask me. Therefore, do not expect to see many black-haired characters in this anime set up in card-crazed modern Japan. Instead, the manufacturers of hair dyes are swimming in mountains of yen as people with blue hairs or white ones or more commonly, many shades of brown makes up the majority of the characters in this anime.

Voice Acting:-
The quality of voice acting in this anime is uneven. The blue-haired main protagonist and his black-haired future brother-in-law is just average, while the brunette and the white-haired card shop girl is just a little bit better than them. Three outstanding voice acting jobs in this anime belongs to the main protagonist’s little sister (has orange hair – dammit, it is orange), the redhead antagonist and also Daimonji Nagisa (another brunette). Thinking about that, the main protagonist sure sound better when he is in that SEED mode!

Music:-
This anime has done really well in this aspect. Not only the OST is decent, but the majority of the OP and ED themes are actually good. After the below average 1st OP and ED themes, all themes that follows them (2nd OP theme and 2nd, 3rd and 4th ED themes) are actually good.

The blurry animation technique in action in this anime.

Animation/Direction:-
This anime used the blurry animation technique extensively throughout the series as illustrated in the screenshot above, mostly in fast-paced scenes. Therefore, one point will be docked from the final evaluation of this anime.

Another complaint I have for this anime in this aspect is the poor character animation quality. I mainly refer to its atrocious character animation frame rate, which can be likened to a slide-show at its worst. This happens mostly outside card battles though, and not in them.

Non-character animation quality is good, and so is the overall animation in in-game matches, even in fast-paced scenes. Choreography is just average though, what do you expect from a card game anime? The director can be credited for not resorting to the potentially finicky CGI animations and pacing management in in-game events. The staggered flow of the storyline is another matter though.

Conclusion:-
5 out of 10. The various handicaps this anime has really drag a reasonably enjoyable sport genre title down. Tiger and Bunny passed its second consecutive challenge very nicely as a result.

Speaking about music, if I am the manager in charge of this idol group, I will make them go to plenty of choreography classes. This is definitely the worst idol group in anime history.