Quote:
Originally Posted by Clarste
I disagree with the idea that smooth animation is what makes animation uniquely appealing. If I wanted to to get the illusion of movement by watching a sequence of still frames go by quickly, I'd watch a live action series. Those have perfect animation, if you haven't noticed.
What's uniquely appealing about the animated medium is the freedom of design. You can have impossible camera angles, costume design, settings, etc in a way that looks at least somewhat natural in that it all fits together. Put that kind of thing in live action and it stands out in contrast to the actors. In that sense, I think Bakemonogatari is beautiful, even in the obviously flawed episode 10. Things like the backgrounds in episode 3 strike me as the pinnacle of animation as a medium.
Anyway, on the subject of the well animated sections that actually exist in Bakemonogatari, they can afford to be well done precisely because they're rationed. These things don't animate themselves you know. Animation is extremely time consuming and frankly tedious work. This is a weekly show that doesn't seem to have a particularly huge budget, so we could either have horrible and pointless animation spread out evenly (which wouldn't even make sense given the content as dictated by the dialog heavy source material) or mostly talking heads with a few awesome scenes every so often.
|
I can understand all that. But if you don't have animation, it isn't animation. It can't get any more literal than that. And I agree about live action versus animation. But really, I'm not all that into the live action stuff because the animation has that freedom of narrative and visuals, I agree. I know SHAFT is out there trying to show off how much of a budget animation studio they are, but sometimes they go a bit too far. And the amount of talking heads in Bakemonogatari is to the point of ridicule.
If we're talking about the risk of having uneven animation and all, we see that all the time with A1 and Gainax and you can see the iron balls they have for attempting it if at least to bring forth it as an animation. I do think this may be personal taste, but I'd rather see them try it bleeding from their eyes rather than use static screens and total emptiness as a segway.
That said, I actually strangely do admire Shaft for at least attempting this, even though I personally don't think it's been successful throughout.