Yozakura Quartet ~Hoshi no Umi~

[Yurielvtars]

Character art is still strange, but this trailer is a lot more promising than the 1st one.
Animation is top quality (at least in the trailer).
Looks like many things happening story wise and it's just the first(?) ova. 45 min. runtime?

[Shiroth]

Originally Posted by LKK

I really miss the first series' character designs. Not to mention the manga's character designs!

I totally agree. I'm seriously not liking these designs. Pretty damn bubbly for my taste.

Also it's funny how the new trailer spoilers so much of the chapter it's going to cover.

[LKK]

Originally Posted by Shiroth

Pretty damn bubbly for my taste.

The characters also look younger to me which isn't a good thing as far as I'm concerned.

[Kunagisa]

What's up~~~ Day before was the sale of OAD and ... second OAD is coming april next year =P along with the sale of volume 10 (wonder if we see a 3rd one with release of volume 11 =P).

Homepage has the announcement. Here's the product page for release of volume 10 and staff list. Everything is relatively the same, only the OP and ED group changed as well as the storyboard writer.

[Shiroth]

Yeah just heard the announcement, good news. Now i just have to see how the first OVA is handled.

[Malkuth]

I just show some screencaps, and I really did not like the new designs, I think they depart even more from the source material, which I loved.

[Kakkou]

From the opening alone, seems that the animation and style is nicer but I still can't seem to like the character designs (Mariabelle, what have they DONE to you =[), really doesn't look like Yasuda Suzuhito's style. Tbh, some parts of the OP felt like I was watching a doujin animation on nico. Whether that's in a good way or a bad way, I'm still not sure. The song's sorta growing on me after a few watches.

[Blue-kun]

From the opening alone, seems that the animation and style is nicer but I still can't seem to like the character designs (Mariabelle, what have they DONE to you =[), really doesn't look like Yasuda Suzuhito's style. Tbh, some parts of the OP felt like I was watching a doujin animation on nico. Whether that's in a good way or a bad way, I'm still not sure. The song's sorta growing on me after a few watches.

You've got to tell me which doujin animations you've been watching on nico, since I'm apparently missing out on really good stuff. I mean, if this OP is anything like whatever fans put on nico, there must be loads of people who can do stuff as good as Yamashita's (and the others) there!

Seriously though: I've been following the fans' reactions (western ones, I should actually see what the japanese think about it) over the Internet and it worries me that 99% of them are unable to say anything other than "the art is different from Yasuda Suzuhito's!". Alright, we get it. It's different, but that doesn't mean it's bad. Personally speaking here, I quite like ryochimo's take on it. Rin looks cute, Akina is actually recognizable now, and not just another Mikado/<insert character with dark short hair here drawn by Yasuda>. Same goes for Touka.

That aside, though, let's go beyond character designs. The first series was plagued with stills everywhere. It was a pain to watch, seeing as I'd like to have some actual animation on my animated series.This one? It has all-around great production values, the animation is very well done throughout the whole episode, and you still get the bonus of having some great scenes. Rin's dynamic noodle catching, Yae kicking the burglars' asses and Rin going berserk all looked awesome. Definitely the work of some talented key animators there.

Then there's the actual adaptation job. They handled the material perfectly, hardly any boring moment with unncessary exposition and talking heads. The story is faithful to the manga and next DVD the Hoshi no Umi arc will kick off. The music was - and now this was the first season's saving grace - spot-on as well, with Suemitsu doing a fine job. The piano bits sounded great, as expected. And so on. It's hard to find any real complaints about a show that was this well produced, and it really bugs me that people are ditching it solely because of how they changed the character design a bit.

But oh well. I guess I'll never understand the way the fans' heads work. All in all, though, the above is how I feel about this first episode. To sum it up, I enjoyed it, yes, and I can't wait until February for the 2nd episode. Now god allow it to be longer, because these 28 minutes passed far too fast, and having to wait months is the only con that this OAD format has.

[Kakkou]

I did say "seems that the animation and style is nicer" before going on about the designs. That's virtually the only thing I'm not very comfortable with in the ova. Everything else is good or even better, hence the nicer animation and style portion of my post. I don't even think anyone else here has actually expressed worry about the adaptation job itself. I certainly didn't.

On the subject of character design, I'm not one of those who go "they changed it so it sucks now" regarding adaptations, this is very much my own personal preference speaking. Had I never had exposure Yasuda Suzuhito's work, I'd still find the designs to be not quite my liking except I wouldn't harp on it as much as I currently have. Also fyi, I hold the doujin animation scene in rather high regard, both in and out of nico, so comparing it to that is by no means an insult. What I meant by some parts were mostly about the look like the lineart background at the beginning, somewhat flat colouring and slightly rougher lines. You could say Ryo-chimo's visual style itself makes me think of doujin animation, except with far more fluidity and choreography and to me most of the time it's not a bad thing.

Hell, there were parts of the OP I loved (The brief fight + tuning of the fallen lizard, Hime slapping her scarf around Akina's head and overall direction, to anme a few.) that I was planning on commenting on when I've finished watching the whole thing.

Long story short, no one's ditching it just because of the designs. We just don't quite like them, but that's it. It's Yozakura Quartet, it's gonna take a lot to make me dismiss anything related to it. So I dislike the new look, but other than that I have no real complaints. Heck, if I hadn't used up my hobby funds the past few months I'd have purchased vol.9 with the OVA by now. Only speaking for myself, I do admit I have been beating on the chara design dislike like a dead horse (here and elsewhere) so I'll apologise that much.

[kyouray]

To my mind his OAD is really great specially for a first direction.
ryo-chimo was the principal reason for which I looked forward to checking out this OAD since I'm a fan of his works like his scenes in Noein or his chara-design and animation supervision for Birdy series.
People accustomed to Yasuda's design may be repulsed by the fluffy art but I think this design is great.
Needless to say the animation is gorgeous and fits the dynamism of the manga.
Many people tend to give priority to design and in preference something very close to the original source (just take a recent example like Naruto Shippuden 167 by Atsushi Wakabayashi) than animation. So people who read the manga will have difficulties to bear ryo-chimo's design which isn't close to Yasuda's art even if the animation is good.

But let's rather talk about the OAD itself.
Opening directed by ryo-chimo is visually and musically pretty cool. It's indeed well animated, we've nice animators like Shingo Yamashita (the part when Hime holds a bar ?). I love the fact they use the illustration with their black suits.

Spoiler for 1st OAD:

As the trailers showed, this OAD adapts the first chapters of volume 5. It's rather faithful even if they did some changes. For example they replaced the scene featuring Hime and Touka trying to hold Akina's hand by something more explicit with Juri's speech : it may be less funny but the blushings were cuter (and it fits this new design specially Touka).
I think the chapter 24 is greatly well adapted : russian roulette is missing but watching Yae jumping and dancing through buildings with her bear head is so priceless. Plus the animation truly let us feel her strength.
It seems they also put more importance into the character of Zakuro. Lalala lala♪

So in a nutshell we have great animation and something close to the source but with a value-added and the Rin's dynamic noodle catching mentionned by Blue-kun can illustrate this.
I'm sad it's just an OADs series instead of TV series and April seems so far...

[Haohmaru]

Did you guys buy the volume with the OAD or download it? I think I'm not searching well enough.

[Kakkou]

I could watch Yae waltzing through the city all day. Once you get past the initial adjusting to new designs phase, OAD was superbly done. There were some really nice shots where the designs stood out well though. I have zero complaints about Zakuro's look, which imo was the best. Production was really high level. Lots of dynamic movement and angles, with much livelier camera work. Music is good as well, took a few listens to like the OP but the ED was instant love. The use of photos of what I presume is the real life Sakurashin was a neat choice to go with Rin running. I wish it were longer though, a lot of nice scenes had to be changed/cut. The way the events leading to the final scene unfolded in particular, but I suppose it was a necessary change due to constraints. Can't wait for some real action to kick in, which will have to wait till next year ;_;. Hopefully I'll be able to buy it this time.

[Guardian Enzo]

Weighing in late, I thought this was excellent. It really calls to mind what an awful job the TV series did adapting the material. Though the look was quite different from the manga I thought the essence of the character designs were somehow closer than the TV were - but even if you don't buy that I still liked them in their own merits. Everything about the look of this OAD was sharper, stranger and more interesting than the series. All in all this is a really nice debut as director by Ryochimo.

[Shiroth]

I'm still not pleased they changed the character designs, but ah well. The manga is best for it's slice of life chapters, and that's what the first episode was. Plus, added foreshadowing of the upcoming arc was nicely done.

[Seihai]

Certainly better than the past series. I thnk the graphics support easier implementation of destructive action scenes. Me likes.

Spoiler for large pic:

Looking forward for more.

[Chaos2Frozen]

Somehow I barely recalled everything from the anime, even though I gave it up near the end Strange, I didn't recall Hime liking Akina as well...

[Shiroth]

Originally Posted by Chaos2Frozen

Strange, I didn't recall Hime liking Akina as well...

This is pretty much where it's first hinted at in the manga. Adaptation never made it this far, what with it going into anime original material quite early on.

[Sai Feng]

Yeah I wasn't too fond of the character designs, the characters look a bit childish. Although there was nothing childish about Juri and her nurse uniform...damn. Anyways, I did find the episode somewhat enjoyable even though they changed some things, it was still okay. Will be checking out to see how closely they'll follow the manga.

[Chaos2Frozen]

Originally Posted by Shiroth

This is pretty much where it's first hinted at in the manga. Adaptation never made it this far, what with it going into anime original material quite early on.

Ah, I guess that makes sense... So this OVA would be covering which chapters?

[Shiroth]

Originally Posted by Chaos2Frozen

Ah, I guess that makes sense... So this OVA would be covering which chapters?

First OVA episode covers chapters 23 and 24.