Under the Dog

[Kazu-kun]

Originally Posted by Stark700

Latest PV (will be released on August 1st)

https://vimeo.com/164504075

Looks like shit compared to the first PV.

[Sides]

The OVA or episode 0 is out for backers to download.
I liked it, especially how it ends. We need more series/shows like this, that challenges the current framework on anime shows.

[Freeter]

Please elaborate for us non-backers. Is it comparable to early 90's anime or does it do something original?

[bakato]

Did they use American voice actors for the US soldiers? Guy sounded so polite. I frowned when she elbowed his face.

[Kazu-kun]

Looks awfully average for an $800k project. What did they do with the money?

[RDNexus]

Kozaki Yusuke being the character designer was the main reason for me wanting to see this story.
But, in the end, I have this feeling I've just wasted my time watching it.
Barely anything got explained and there was too much death and destruction for me to feel invested in the story.
And even the character designs didn't seem, to me, very Kozaki-esque. Totally not what I was hoping for

I'd like to know if what got presented to everyone is what was originally planned, which seemed way more interesting in the PVs.

[Sagitta Luminis]

Originally Posted by Kazu-kun

Looks awfully average for an $800k project. What did they do with the money?

How much do you think it takes to make an animated film?

[Kazu-kun]

Originally Posted by Sagitta Luminis

How much do you think it takes to make an animated film?

It's a 38 minutes "film". $800k is enough to make a piece of that length look theatrical-like.

[Moroboshi-kun]

Originally Posted by Kazu-kun

It's a 38 minutes "film". $800k is enough to make a piece of that length look theatrical-like.

It is actually 28min as there are 10min of credits, basically one anime episode. As per industry sources that would cost normally $100-$300k.

In reality they estimated themselves that they can use only 40% of the money from Kickstarter to the animation production so they are not far off what is the norm in the industry. Kickstarter is very bad financing model as whopping 40% of collected money goes for backer rewards and Kickstarter-related fees.

[Kazu-kun]

Originally Posted by Moroboshi-kun

In reality they estimated themselves that they can use only 40% of the money from Kickstarter to the animation production so they are not far off what is the norm in the industry. Kickstarter is very bad financing model as whopping 40% of collected money goes for backer rewards and Kickstarter-related fees.

Burning 40% of the money on rewards and feeds seems hard to believe, but even if that was the case, they would still have 60% of the money for production, not 40%.

Something doesn't add up here.

[Moroboshi-kun]

They had 15% booked for recovering money they already spent on PV, and 5% for miscellaneous office costs. It all adds up pretty neatly.

[DemonneoPT]

I liked what i saw! It was just a 28 minute prologue episode so plot-wise i was not expecting it to tell everything in one go or being blown away by it, however, it had a lot of interesting elements i would like to see explored in a future anime adaptation. The sci-fi theme, the action and mystery provided by the "Flowers" and "Pandoras" as well as the dark tone associated with the characters actions and fate really fits my type of anime! The scene were Anthea gets immobilized by the Pandora monster and we slowly see her getting injured by it's aura was fantastic and gave me Ghost in the Shell vibes for some reason.
I'm not sure about having highschool girls as the main characters tho... i would prefer if they were actually adults. I think it suits better in this type of theme/story. They could also explained/displayed a little bit better exactly what powers these girls actually have besides glowing green eyes! For some reason, that allowed them to face an organized small group of soldiers and i don't really know how, but the action was cool tho!

It's true that in terms of animation i was expecting a lot more from it. The art was weird at times and the animation only stood up when things were exploding. However, it's also true the majority of the crowdfunded money did not went to the episode itself but for other stuff like @Moroboshi-kun mentioned, which is a shame but that's how Kickstarter works. Sure the producers have more creative freedom but it's way too expensive to make a single episode this way. Unfortunelly, i really doubt this will succeed in order for us to have a full anime series or movies as sequels. A lot of people are already disliking it for some reason and nowadays Under the Dog-like stories have no market in Japan. Even if you put highschool girls as protagonists.

[bakato]

This is all we're gonna get? This had nothing from the initial PVs.

[TrienDarkform]

I'd backed this at the very beginning, and it was interesting watching everything play out during the last couple years of development.

Overall, I enjoyed it. The animation was a bit off in the non-action parts, but the action was quite well done. The characters are about as developed as you can get in the limited time available. The world concept is interesting, seems like sort of a futuristic Claymore type situation almost, and it makes me intrigued to want to find out more. I would not mind seeing a continuation, a series or film of some sorts that explored this world a bit more, but whether that happens or not is up in the air...

As with some crowdfunded projects, things changed along the way, and I know some of the disappointment stems from that. Such as the focus of the OVA being changed to a different character from the one in the original trailer. Said changes were announced in the Kickstarter announcements and on the webpage, so they weren't out of the blue unless you didn't pay any attention to those at all, but there's always a bit of an annoyance when things change. Given that this was a totally new world which I had no previous stake in, it really didn't make any significant difference to me in the grand scheme of things.

And yeah, I do have to agree that it is a bit of a shame that a good chunk of the money does have to go towards production of physical products instead of all going towards production, but well, I am looking forward to receiving the BD.

As for the episode itself...

Spoiler:

The world setting I find interesting, and as I mentioned it reminds me of the Claymore world in some ways. Someone more peaceful looking on the surface, but still with organizations working against each other in the dark. Some sort of unspecified virus/mutation/augmentation/don't-know-what which enhances human abilites but which can also cause transformation into a monster--not a unique idea of itself, but a suitable springboard for developing all sorts of stories, so I have no gripe with that.

The action scenes were well executed, and in my opinion did a good job of giving exposition about the nature of this world setting, by showing the different factions involved, some of their motives, and capabilities of the characters/antagonists/etc. A narration or wall of text would have made things clearer perhaps, but who wants that to eat up precious time in an already short OVA? :P A good action sequence to me, besides the obvious good animation or stunt work/effects for live films, should have a decent 'rhythm' to it, advances the story in some way, and should tell you something about the character(s) involved (eg. their motives, fears, abilities, way of thinking, or something else) ... ie. not just 'okay, here have an action scene!'. The artwork felt rough in many places, but it looked like there were a lot more unique frames of animation rather than the more usual move/resize to make things look like they are moving; I'm okay with that. A bit more detail to the characters and shading during the non-action parts would have been nicer, since at those times you tend to have the extra time to focus on the details. Backgrounds were quite pretty.

Sound work was decent enough, no real complaints. Was pleasantly surprised to hear the spoken English, even if it wasn't necessarily professional sounding VA.

None of the music stood out to me specifically, but did its job in backing what has happening visually. A slight disappointment to me as I prefer the more melodic soundtracks of a decade or two ago, but pretty much par for the course for a soundtrack in this day and age.

This OVA was obviously written in a way to pique our interest, sort of as an 'episode 0', which I think it did a good job of at introducing enough elements that we sort of know what is going on, but leaving some questions behind about the bigger picture and story to come. (In contrast to certain ep. 1's from this season which just had me going 'Huh?!?').

And poor Hana. To also have her family taken out as well for her failure is just too cruel. I was also not expecting the subject of the rescue to end up doomed either...

<slight philosophical rant> I sometimes get mildly irritated when I read complaints about some 'character I don't care about' dying. I don't know, are we just so insensitive these days, as a generalization? Everyone's gone through different life experiences, different education, different upbringing, etc. and sees things differently I know, but is another person's life, even if fictional, such a minor thing, even if you don't know them? And at the least we got some background on Hana and her family, even if time constraints limited how much they could show us.

I just guess when you just get older, and have had to go to a few funerals (including a parent and a sibling), or having witnessed a death first hand (nothing traumatic, someone had a stroke in public and didn't survive), you perhaps think more about these things. It may or may not be anyone you knew in person, but it was still somebody with parents, friends, somebody who cared for them. I work with the public, some people are nice to you, and some people are nasty (luckily a minority), but every one is unique in their own way, and every life is special in it's own way; that's what I believe.</end rant>

[Iby]

Originally Posted by TrienDarkform

Such as the focus of the OVA being changed to a different character from the one in the original trailer.

That was one the campaign's page since its beginning.

[Azuma Denton]

As someone who watched without any prior knowledge of this title, all I can say that, this is just one generic scene of Japan High School girl shooting at US Army and a mutated person without any clear reason. In shorter terms, no story at all.

After that did some googling on internet, and found out the history of crowd-funding.
Trigger did much better approach than this.

[Dextro]

Finally watched the episode and must say that it actually exceeded my expectations. Of course that was rather easy to do after I had effectively written this off as a full loss. There's a larger discussion to be had when it comes to Kickstarter and the way projects are expected to have massive amounts of backer rewards whose costs sometimes overwhelm the actual product. I honestly have no idea how Trigger managed to do it with Little Witch Academia but clearly you can't follow through properly on a project if you have to spend over 50% of your funds just to send goodies to your backers instead of building the actually thing.

Anyway, back to the episode proper. Quality was a bit on the low side aside from the ending action sequences which looked pretty damned good if I must say. Character designs were a bit meh I would say but anyone who followed the campaign could see that one coming a mile a way. They'd been toning down the characters for quite some time now probably to get those action sequences up to snuff with the low budget they had for the animation.

Overall I wouldn't really mind watching some 12 or 24 episodes of this. It felt significantly more interesting than many other shows these last few years and the setting looked like it had some interesting prospects. Sadly I doubt they'll be able to sell this to a production committee to get it expanded but, more than that, I doubt there's still anyone behind this that has any will to continue working on it after that whole debacle at the end of the crowdfunding run.

[TrienDarkform]

Originally Posted by Iby

That was one the campaign's page since its beginning.

Hmm, I guess I remembered wrong. My mistake. Well, that really gives no excuse to those complaining about this 'change', then. Unless they never did read the campaign page to begin with.