I think about 50% of the episode consisted of shots of Saki’s crotch and butt. If they were going to do this, you think they would have invested in animating these two body parts well. But alas, no. Seriously, this is awful. I can barely even tell this is a human body when they cut out the heads.
The butt shots are even worse. Are they even trying to animate this show?
Of the remainder of the episode, about 20% were pictures of Shun’s mask, and the rest was random spooky lights and floating balls. This episode was basically a clip show.
As for the contents of this episode (aside from the “fanservice”, if you would deign to call it that) this episode felt emotionally cheap and exploitative. They kill off the dog we met five minutes ago and everyone starts wailing. “She… she was my only friend!” Wah wah wah. I feel myself giving zero shits right about now.
Shun’s confession felt the same way. Dude, if you always loved her, why were you just making out with that other guy the other day? Again, the show doesn’t spend the time to convince us that there is weight behind these characters’ words.
We are learning more about the world (while we stare at Saki’s poorly animated behind, of course) but with animation and storytelling like this, I can’t really bring myself to care. It takes more than an interesting world to tell a good story. If that were the case, Horizon would be the best anime ever. (Ok, no, it would still stuck because the world is complex but remains completely retarded.)
I really want to like this show, but they sure aren’t making it easy.
I do want to love this anime, they have interesting plot but sometimes the graphic is really poor and cheap.. Sigh..
They do have a great story so far, but the way they tell it can be extremely frustrating.
Lol cope harder. Fucking twat
Your criticisms about the character development all have some truth to them, but I’m kind of fond of the way they’re dealing with it. For one, I love the fact that everything is so subtle. Shin Sekai Yori survives on the bare minimum of dialogue — preferring to show everything through the environment or body language.
Throughout the beginning of the episode, Saki didn’t say a word and understandably so. She was alone; she didn’t need to verbalize her thoughts and actions. These little things make the characters harder to understand, but at the same time, more human. Obviously this method has its faults (as you pointed out above), but I still find it interesting and pretty enjoyable too.
I love how they don’t rely too much on dialogue as well. The first 9 episodes were great in this regard. My only complaint is how the characters changed so drastically in this single episode— here it seemed me dropped all of the subtlety for blatant confessions of love and crying over a dead dog we met ten seconds ago.
Re Saki’s crotch and butt: They really messed up the best part! I didn’t expect any fanservice in this series but indeed I would have appreciated some better drawings here.
For some reason the episodes set in the school/ village tend to be fairly nice imo and the action packed episodes turn out to be disasters. I wish they did away with that awful 3DCGI which doesn’t fit at all w/ the 2D part of the picture. I don’t mind saving on actual animation for increased care on the details but please no CGI like this!
“I really want to like this show, but they sure aren’t making it easy.” Same for me. The story is best of season, direction is excellent more often than not but there are also many episodes w/ rushed animation and storytelling. Perhaps they need to save time and budget for later? I wonder what’s expecting us in the remaining eps!
Exactly! I’d personally prefer they minimize the fanservice, but if you’re gonna do it, you may as well do it right!
I actually liked the previous episodes outside the village with the queerats. It was quite interesting to see more of the wider world.
But yeah, the weird thing is how inconsistent this show is across the multiple episodes. It seems like different people are in charge, even.
You’re a fucking creep
After 3 days of staring at this title in Google Reader I finally watched the Crunchy stream. I was ready to give the show a pass, especially within the first minute or two when it appeared to be just an odd artistic choice. Then they just kept doing it. Over and over. I almost wanted to believe they were trying to cut the tension to keep the drama from getting out of hand, because every time the tension would build Saki’s butt would fill the screen.
Haha I hadn’t meant to convince anyone to watch this from the title! Oh well, whatever works. So much butt.
Cheap or not, they executed that piece well under the constraints. At first I didn’t care for the dog, but seeing the newly introduced hero mutated for its master, (or more aptly victimized), and then killed worked for me… Its not just that overly sterile story-telling bores me, its also because it racked up the tension and proved that staying would be fatal for Saki.
On a limited budget the point of animation in general is to distract your mind during the neccessary mood-building scenes/slow parts, when characters pause to think, or nothing is going on. Any movement to prevent you from staring at a static mask, even if it means Saki constantly twists her neck when she talks.
..I do agree a little more curve would’ve gone a long way…or just leave the camera somewhere else. It seems praiseworthy for them for budgeting their limited animation so the metaphysical looks sharp (without it, the cat attack would’ve been horrible, and without the cheap auroa boralis effect you’d have been bored by the shack in a lake )
Given the animation quality I can only watch an episode once, that doesn’t mean I don’t love it, wish there was another episode already, or think about it from time to time….as opposed to SAO where I can’t be bothered to remember the what happened last week with regards to plot, characters or setting…Well, without breaking into chortles of laughter…
The dog’s introduction was so brief it seemed its only purpose was emotional exploitation of the audience. Not a fan of that.
It did move around a lot, I guess. Parts did look impressive, as you say. But as a whole, I don’t think the animation was successful.
Definitely better than SAO though.
Lol crybaby