Kyoto Animation: Studio discussion, speculation, and whatnot.

[Westlo]

Originally Posted by Sumeragi

That explains why FMP Another was a success in Japan.

eh looking @ oricon sales it's doing alright but far from a world beater, would need an anime to spike its sales...

[Kirarakim]

Okay I would definitely love more Haruhi. In fact I would rather have more Haruhi than Full Metal Panic because I like the former much more (please don't shoot me).

But I suppose if Haruhi never comes to be at least fans outside Japan can still experience the story through the translated novels. Haruhi fans are extremely lucky that way.

Just think of all the fans who enjoy an anime series based on a continuing work who don't get the rest of the story because it isn't even being translated.

[Reckoner]

^

Only problem is that the author is taking similarly long hiatuses to push out volumes of the light novel which is pathetic considering the difference in output someone like him pushes out compared to say GRMM for Song of Ice and Fire (Who is anything but outstanding in his pace himself) over a period of 3-4 years.

But sure, at least being able to read the source is nice, so long as the guy is actually writing anything.

[Kirarakim]

Originally Posted by Reckoner

^

Only problem is that the author is taking similarly long hiatuses to push out volumes of the light novel which is pathetic considering the difference in output someone like him pushes out compared to say GRMM for Song of Ice and Fire (Who is anything but outstanding in his pace himself) over a period of 3-4 years.

But sure, at least being able to read the source is nice, so long as the guy is actually writing anything.

GRRM's output in his last two books wasn't all that impressive either. Sure he wrote a lot of words but for all the time he took the story barely advanced at all, hence the drop in ratings between books 3 and then 4/5

But not to compare the two because I do expect more from GRRM. Haruhi is mainly fun fluff.

But your point doesn't really take away from what I said. There needs to be source material for there to be anime (and of course there is enough for another season or 2).

I am just saying if there is never more anime we at least have the source material to enjoy. Whether the author ever finishes the novels is an entirely different matter.

[Sumeragi]

Originally Posted by Westlo

eh looking @ oricon sales it's doing alright but far from a world beater, would need an anime to spike its sales...

The point was to show just how wrong the comment was.

[Dextro]

Originally Posted by ultimatemegax

All of their works have non-employees handling series composition except for the Munto series, so saying Hyouka is a different case is untrue. Chuunibyou had Junki Hanada composing the series/writing the script for each episode and Tamako Market had Reiko Yoshida composing the series and writing most of the scripts with Hanada and Michiko Yokote also assisting on scripts. Everyone I just listed was not a KyoAni employee.

The interesting part about Hyouka is that, outside of Gatoh's episodes, every episode's script was written by a KyoAni employee. Therefore, going by that, your point should be that more scripts should be written by the "KyoAni" entity and they shouldn't outsource them instead.

What I was getting at was that KyoAni original works tend to have poor plot (story composition itself). If that's due to poor choices or lack of good ideas inside the team isn't particularly important to the point. Chuu2 and Hyouka are only there since they're mostly original even if based on a previous work.

Originally Posted by Kirarakim

Okay I would definitely love more Haruhi. In fact I would rather have more Haruhi than Full Metal Panic because I like the former much more (please don't shoot me).

But I suppose if Haruhi never comes to be at least fans outside Japan can still experience the story through the translated novels. Haruhi fans are extremely lucky that way.

Just think of all the fans who enjoy an anime series based on a continuing work who don't get the rest of the story because it isn't even being translated.

Like FMP then? Whose official translation was not only subpar but stopped at the forth volume when the company went bust.

Yes yes I know there are fan translations. I have yet to read them since I have them in pdf format and that's a pain to get in the Kindle.

[yellowscarves]

I've read the fan translated FMP, and honestly, at times, it seemed like Google translate was used. We're lucky to have Sigma though. The art is nice and it's close to finished.

[Dextro]

Originally Posted by yellowscarves

I've read the fan translated FMP, and honestly, at times, it seemed like Google translate was used. We're lucky to have Sigma though. The art is nice and it's close to finished.

Not much better than the official translation then?

[yellowscarves]

Originally Posted by Dextro

Not much better than the official translation then?

A lot of times, it's actually quite good. It's just inconsistent, and I suppose that's mainly because it wasn't just one fan doing all the translations.

[Kirarakim]

Originally Posted by Dextro

Like FMP then? Whose official translation was not only subpar but stopped at the forth volume when the company went bust.

Yes yes I know there are fan translations. I have yet to read them since I have them in pdf format and that's a pain to get in the Kindle.

Well I did say I am not a big fan of FMP so I don't know about that.

But the Haruhi translations are fine and in fact I think they should be caught up with Japan by November. They even have a Kindle release.

Anyways I was thinking more I how I feel about something non-Kyoani like the Story of Saiunkoku which will never get another anime season and whose novels will never get translated here.

Or something like Baccano.

So even though I would love more Haruhi, I still think I am happier as a Haruhi fan than as a fan of Saiunkoku and Baccano.

[Folenfant]

Originally Posted by Triple_R

But it's particularly noted for two things - Animation quality and strength with adaptation work.

KyoAni is not perfect. It does have its weaknesses. Dextro is right that KyoAni has not shown anywhere near the same consistent strength with their story-writing as they have with most other aspects of their productions.

I have to agree pretty strongly with this assessment and disagree quite strongly with Warm Mists. I can see there's strong feelings here in general though so I'm hoping that shouldn't be a problem.

I think it really comes down to what one is talking about and what one considers to be "good period" and where such a notion begins and ends. In my case I too find that Kyoto Animation has quite a few weaknesses that balance out some of their strengths same as any major production animation production studio in Japan. I think a bullet point list would keep this simple and concise and keep in mind this is solely my opinion, I don't particularly like to try to speak too much for others, only myself.

Strengths:

- Exceptionally fluid animation. I think this owes mainly to maintaining a large workforce of animators and what appears to be good oversight.
- Ability to establish a report with an audience early on into a project. They are very good at the ground work game of generating hype and garnering attention for any new projects they are working on. This week demonstrates that quite well.
- Tendency to keep things internal leads to strong consistency in presentation and production values between projects.
- Very good at satisfying the audience that seeks that "moe" feeling in the shows they watch
- A clear love of the craft of animation is demonstrated in their nearly all their works. It is clear to me that at least some of their key animators simply enjoy what they do and this leads to occasionally above average or a greater number of Sakuga sequences per project compared to the average animator who is merely working for a paycheck.

Weakness:

-Tendency to keep things internal leads to a lot of fairly similar feeling products as well as a shortfall of creative ideas. Studios need new creative ideas in order to thrive and grow with the changing tastes of the general audience. Personally I find their most interesting productions on a week to week basis to be those that have involved the freelancer Shoji Gatoh as a writer in some capacity. You need a strong and creatively balanced writer on staff to maintain a strong interest in a production, animation quality can only carry you so far. Kyoto Animation lacks this kind of consistency, but they aren't alone.
- People that simply aren't strongly influenced by moe may tend to find themselves bored with the scenario writing in their recent productions.
- Overall music production quality can tend to vary wildly from project to project, sometimes producing memorable tunes, other times leading to mere background noise that fails to rise above the average cut. As a strong advocate of memorable background music in anime this is an area I feel they really ought to start paying more attention
- Tendency towards slow paced productions with minimal ongoing events and simplistic character interactions may tend to wear out their welcome with audiences rather early into their run.
- Comedy is hit or miss. Some people find it laugh out loud hysterical, others such as myself may find chuckles few and far between.

Some may notice some of the strengths I've listed overlap with some of what I find to be the studios key weaknesses. This is deliberate, it happens as sometimes a step in one direction requires a trade off in the other. I think Kyoto Animation is a balanced studio with a few key strengths but not a perfect one. This is not a bad thing, but merely a reflection of the reality of the environment within which they work. I also don't think that all their strengths nor all their weaknesses are solely unique to their brand on a production to production basis.

[Dextro]

Originally Posted by Folenfant

*snip*

I mostly agree with you and would just add a very important but underrated strength: the ability to consistently deliver a high-quality product on time.

I don't think I've ever seen a KyoAni show having a clearly unfinished episode like virtually every other studio does in virtually every season. Even the times they "fixed" something in the home video releases it was always minor inconsistencies or slight animation mistakes mostly invisible to the average viewer.

That's not something to underestimate in this medium.

[Dr. Casey]

Originally Posted by Warm Mist

According to that FMP rumour posted some time ago, they don't want to continue doing Haruhi because they consider that they "moved on" after Disappearance.

I don't care if it's true or not (and it's probably not, I wouldn't give much credibility to it even if some of its predictions were spot-on), but I do think similarly. If you disregard the existence of the LNs, Disappearance can absolutely stand as a pretty organic end to the series and there's no narrative obligation to keep going (besides, of course, the fact that more material is available).

It's fair enough if they move on and don't feel like animating any more Haruhi, but it would be nice if they transferred the animation rights at some point rather than just sit on the license forever. It might be true that Disappearance could stand on its own as an ending (Or not? It's been a long time since December 2010, I forget much of the movie ), but, well, it's not the ending. The fact that more material is available is a very important factor. I know that Disappearance is the story that the fanbase always salivates over (I'll be honest, some of the later stories sound significantly better, the Disappearance hype seems over-the-top to me), but at the end of the day it's just one story placed very early into a series that at this stage might not even be halfway finished - Volumes 9 and 10 (or was it 10 and 11? Whatever the recent two-parter was) very much have a 'rising action' feeling to them, the story isn't winding down or reaching any kind of resolution. The author has a vision for his story, a vision for which Disappearance is only a single cog. KyoAni isn't obligated by any means to produce more Haruhi, but it does seem disrespectful towards his vision if their reasoning is "Well, we've animated Disappearance, the Holy Grail of the Haruhi novels and the center of the entire franchise. Nothing which happens afterwards is that important."

[totoum]

Originally Posted by Dr. Casey

It's fair enough if they move on and don't feel like animating any more Haruhi, but it would be nice if they transferred the animation rights at some point rather than just sit on the license forever.

I don't think Kyoani holds any rights like that,Kadokawa is free to ask anyone else to make an anime.

[ElCachicamo]

Their storyboard and layout work are of a really high quality, way above the average anime, and the average anime is more complex than your average cartoon. They're capable of really complex scenes because their animators are really good at it, actually their animators are getting even better with each show.

Some of those clever shots were there already in FMP: The Second Raid but the execution and the quality in the animation wasn't, they needed some time to improve their skills. That's the reason why I'm so disappointed with a lot of other studios like I.G productions which had amazing naturalistic animators in the 90's, very few of those remain working there and the new guys aren't as good at it.

Kyoani is a very professional studio, they try their best to improve with each show. For example, Tamako Market has a more naturalistic approach to their animation, more subtle than their last efforts and you can see their evolution in that style. Nichijou was a show where their animators had some freedom to go more crazy than usual and you can tell that they were having a good time animating that show.

Nichijou is amazing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL2lvFgeQsY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywDYS5Iy2EI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndmcRDWSj20

[Reckoner]

Originally Posted by Kirarakim

GRRM's output in his last two books wasn't all that impressive either. Sure he wrote a lot of words but for all the time he took the story barely advanced at all, hence the drop in ratings between books 3 and then 4/5

But not to compare the two because I do expect more from GRRM. Haruhi is mainly fun fluff.

But your point doesn't really take away from what I said. There needs to be source material for there to be anime (and of course there is enough for another season or 2).

I am just saying if there is never more anime we at least have the source material to enjoy. Whether the author ever finishes the novels is an entirely different matter.

Well what I was getting at is that there isn't a lot of solace to be found in the source material currently since the wait has been just about the same . At least with GRMM, even if spends a similar amount of years he produces WAAAAAY more content (Yes, yes I understand some of the fan criticism surrounding books 4 and 5). Light novels are really short with large text and are easy reads... The pace that the Haruhi LN's are going at is absolutely horrid.

But anyways, yes this isn't a Baccano or Moribito situation with the translations. That's a case of economics stopping it though. With Haruhi there is no such limitation, hence the amount of frustration this creates.

[Vegard Aune]

Originally Posted by Triple_R

No, it can't. It should be very obvious why it can't, given how the main conflict of the Disappearance movie resolves itself. I'll explain in more detail if necessary, but frankly, I shouldn't have to.

Disappearance is a terrible point to end off on, imo.

What, you mean how

Spoiler for Disappearance ending:

the ending quite clearly shows that the entire incident has not truly been resolved yet and Kyon still needs to do some more work in order for the world to truly be saved and all that? Yeah, I honestly don't think that's much of a reason why it apparently demands a sequel, because 1: We know from the movie exactly what it is Kyon needs to do, and 2: We know for a fact that he succeeds, otherwise he would have died during the climax of the movie. Actually, if I remember it correctly, the novels even completely treated him actually going back to finish off the job as a complete afterthought, giving it little more detail than just saying "I explained to Nagato, Koizumi and Asahina-san that we needed to go back in time to restore the world and so we did."

[Triple_R]

Originally Posted by Vegard Aune

What, you mean how

Spoiler for Disappearance ending:

the ending quite clearly shows that the entire incident has not truly been resolved yet and Kyon still needs to do some more work in order for the world to truly be saved and all that? Yeah, I honestly don't think that's much of a reason why it apparently demands a sequel, because 1: We know from the movie exactly what it is Kyon needs to do, and 2: We know for a fact that he succeeds, otherwise he would have died during the climax of the movie. Actually, if I remember it correctly, the novels even completely treated him actually going back to finish off the job as a complete afterthought, giving it little more detail than just saying "I explained to Nagato, Koizumi and Asahina-san that we needed to go back in time to restore the world and so we did."

Yes, that's what I mean.

For anime-only viewers, this bit makes it crystal clear that there's more story left to come. That the entire incident has not truly been resolved yet, as you correctly point out. In my opinion, this constitutes a horrible hanging plot thread if the Haruhi anime ends with Disappearance.


With all of that in mind, I disagree with you on your broader argument. I definitely think this means that Disapperance is a bad point for the Haruhi anime to end off on. It does not give an organic sense of narrative closure given how its main conflict is resolved. Sure, we can surmise the two things you pointed out, but that doesn't change the fact that clearly there is much more story left to be told. There's no way an anime-only viewer can sort of "pretend" that this is all the story there is (whereas an anime-only viewer of K-On can do just that with the ending of K-On's 2nd season and/or the K-On movie).

[Warm Mist]

Originally Posted by Triple_R

With all of that in mind, I disagree with you on your broader argument. I definitely think this means that Disapperance is a bad point for the Haruhi anime to end off on. It does not give an organic sense of narrative closure given how its main conflict is resolved. Sure, we can surmise the two things you pointed out, but that doesn't change the fact that clearly there is much more story left to be told. There's no way an anime-only viewer can sort of "pretend" that this is all the story there is (whereas an anime-only viewer of K-On can do just that with the ending of K-On's 2nd season and/or the K-On movie).

I can totally pretend this is all the story there is. I would know, I just watched the anime and have little to no idea about subsequent novels.
If your concern lies solely with that plot point, I'd argue that a story in the proper sense can't be made out of it. We already see everything we need in the movie to connect the dots and make the narrative consistent (besides all the paradoxes inherent to time-travelling stories). The audience doesn't require any more narrative to resolve that particular plot point by themselves.

I thought your concerns were more about character arcs and lack of understanding of the "bigger" mysteries of the Haruhi universe, which I also think are not necessary for the Haruhi anime to have a consistent narrative (not to say the later novels shouldn't exist or that they're irrelevant; my only point is that they don't need to be adapted for the Haruhi anime to make sense as it is).

Originally Posted by Folenfant

I think it really comes down to what one is talking about and what one considers to be "good period" and where such a notion begins and ends

I always refer to Kyoani as an animation studio. Their job, as a studio, is to make the most out of the material given. So I'm not addressing any issues raised about the quality of the scripts or stories in their shows, or issues with presentation dependant on the individual director handling the project, rather than endemic to the studio.

Tendency to keep things internal leads to a lot of fairly similar feeling products as well as a shortfall of creative ideas

I can agree with this. Going hard-inhouse is not inherently better than making use of freelancers or people external to the studio for their talents and what they can add to a project.
However, that doesn't make them a bad studio at all. It just means they could be better. I also think that in practice, the ideology behind Kyoani's structure works much better, and probably any person in the industry would strive for such an ideal if they were capable of creating their own animation studio. For example, ufotable is trying to go the same route with making their projects strongly in-house.

I can have fantasies about Hosoda directing a feature film backed by Kyoani's A team (I'm talking about animators, digital processing and photography departments mainly) plus some others (Takaaki Yamashita, Sadamoto, Inoue, and if I want to go full wet-dream, get Iso on board too). But in the reality of the Japanese animation industry, it's clear that Kyoani's approach is infinitely more effective and desirable for producers, directors and animators alike. The impossibility of most Tokyo-based studios to foster such environment is another issue that could probably merit its own thread.

One last thing: for the record, I think Tamako Market is a very good show, despite some weak episodes like 5 and 7 (and maybe the finale). In my books, it's a hundred times better than every KEY adaptation and much tighter than Haruhi. So I'd put into question the premise that they've been shown to fail at doing original projects, which has been taken as a given for some of the arguments presented in the thread.

EDIT: Oh, didn't see this post!

Originally Posted by ElCachicamo

For example, Tamako Market has a more naturalistic approach to their animation, more subtle than their last efforts and you can see their evolution in that style.

Do you think it's a major deviation from the approach used in K-On!(!)? How, in that case? From what I remember, Tamako was a bit less round and soft with the drawings of the characters, and used many more cartoony expressions than K-On!! and the movie (I think the first season it's about on par with Tamako in this regard). I think the K-On! movie shows the same kind of subtle naturalistic animation, polished to a T due to the fact it's a feature film and not a TV show. I do see how Tamako differs greatly from Chuu2, Hyouka and Nichijou, but I think it's not so much a linear improvement, rather than different character designs being more prone to different approaches to animation.

Tamako was also heavily constricted by schedule issues (well, only relative to Kyoani's standard), having two assistant animation directors and even 23 (!) animators for single episodes.

[rulfo]

Spoiler for Speculah Speculah... And even more Speculah!:

Nice try but that damn elbow just throw it all away.