Quote:
Originally Posted by Tempester
Backgrounds with no people, especially of large areas in cities
Prevalent in Bakemonogatari, the Ef series, and, to a lesser extent, Madoka Magica. Supposedly a Shaft trademark. It can get very strange sometimes. This isn't entirely a bad thing, as it forces me to connect to the characters, but that doesn't keep it from being unnerving. It would have been a big improvement to just have random shots of one or two people walking around in the background of Bakemonogatari to remind me that the setting the characters live in isn't a ghost town.
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i see it as a conscious style in some of Shinbo's works. He portrays contemporary Japan with very stark images. In
Bake there's a constant motif of cages though which we often view the characters. There's a repeated scene in
Madoka where the characters cross a bridge with nary a person in sight. I take these as deep criticisms of Japanese society and culture by Shinbo. He depicts Japan as a barren place and its people trapped behind bars. Perhaps I'm over-reading meaning into something where it does not exist, but I don't think for a moment those stylistic choices in recent works by SHAFT are just eye candy.