The Devil Tesla posted:

Get a load of this guy. It takes a lot of skill to look this unpolished and still communicate so much emotion.

Zorak posted:

All anime needs to look uguu sugoi as hell, otherwise its lazy and

This is using the original manga's style. Yuasa uses a similar style on occasion. It allows / enables pretty fluid "meaty" animation

laplace posted:

The scary thing is that all of Yuasa's art is extremely technically good. Compare this to Angel Beats or Clannad, which has incredibly inconsistent anatomy and character design that borders on almost offensively gender dimorphic non-humanoids. People eat that instagram filtered garbage up for some reason and yet Yuasa's art is "bad".

Callick posted:

First, that's exactly what I was saying. You're reinforcing my point. People like boring, dull cookie-cutter poo poo because they are dull, boring cookie-cutter people with low level taste that doesn't extend beyond a basic appreciation for something looking like regular anime. Second, I think Aku no Hana's anime had excellent art. It was extremely consistent, conveyed emotion and poignancy very well, and was hugely pleasing to my aesthetic sense. Really, I think it discredits both Yuasa's body of work and the team that produced the AnH anime to not think of them as bold contemporaries in the world of unique, artistic anime production that pushes boundaries and challenges what the common person's perception of what "anime" actually is. I think it is the exact same issue.

laplace posted:

Yuasa's art and his team's art have a very strong sense of consistency and direction. While it is easy to tell when scenes or episodes are animated by different people in Yuasa anime, the art itself and its construction still maintains itself. Also, Yuasa has a very strong grasp for actual scene placement and cinematography, which most anime art does not. You can be not into its aesthetics it from a personal standpoint all you want but pretty much all Yuasa anime has been super well produced consistent fundamental-focused stuff. Yuasa characters have defined shapes and bodies, with an actual focus on their anatomy and how their bodies would work even under stylization. I'm not singling out Angel Beats for being generic, I'm singling it out for being a very popular show that has really confused art direction in that regard, where the characters anatomies aren't even consistent between character to character.

Also, when I say Angel Beats is Instagram Filtered I actually mean that the show has a post processed filter over it. I am not being a hipster, it is just a fact that the show actually has a red to green filter over it that is extremely visible throughout the show.

laplace posted:

laplace posted:

Smile has always been about having fun, and reconciling that with how other people play. It is interesting that he managed to both become a better player and understand his opponents and respect them while at the same time understanding that if he had gone all the way he would have destroyed the theme that had come together over the course of the series. By ruthelessly beating Peco in the final match he would have gone back on everything constructed thus far. It's really great that Peco and Smile end up together because, naturally, Peco (The Hero) appears right when Smile is about to really lose himself.

laplace posted:

But it's not like Peco is intrinsically the "hero", but rather whole "spirit of ping pong"/"Alien from planet ping pong". Peco fades in and out of this character (as we see over the course of his arc) but he always finds himself back in it when he is having fun, and when he is playing the game from a standpoint where he respects other players. Smile was the opposite, ruthlessly destroying everyone like a robot and becoming a machine that couldn't be overcome because that was Smile's way of dealing with things. It's not necessarily Smile's defeat as much as it is Peco saving Smile himself from the Robot he became -- Hence the actual visual metaphor of Smile breaking free, tumbling into a heap, and then emerging more powerful than ever once he, like all of the others, understood the reason why they began to play to begin with. It's not that Peco himself is just some depthless god hero, but rather that he tuned back into what made the game feel good and thus so did the others, who over the course of the show learned to understand their opponents. That's the thing -- As children, the characters played for fun. They played to their most, but for fun and enjoyment. At the start of the series, Peco is playing to Win and Smile is playing for Fun, but they've lost that connection that makes the game valuable to them. It's really thematic then that Peco's arc would involve returning to having fun, and then embodying that to the other characters who would be so close to falling over the ledge of "playing only to win" and "staking one's life on ping pong" that Peco had at the start of the series.

I would hardly say that the hero motif is one with little substance. It's entirely constructed and well backed up within the narrative of the show. Peco isn't near-mythical with no reason. We witnessed him get there through hard work and determination and it made sense that he would get to where he was. Having Smile beat him in the end would have just retreaded water -- We already know what happens when someone "plays to win" and gives up on enjoying themselves. Peco existed entirely to prevent that from happening, and that's why him going through that is important.

Also, Manga Spoilers, but It's heavily implied in the manga and the movie that Smile, while not "throwing the match", doesn't play the same way he had been because he knows how much it means to not only Peco, but himself and the others, that they play Ping Pong for the reasons that they originally had. I think Yuasa established this pretty hard with the children scene as well.

laplace posted:

I don't think things necessarily need to be meta or make grand overarching statements about things though, is all. Sure, It doesn't say much about heroism as a literary symbol but it doesn't need to because that would be sort of irrelevant and unconstructed? It'd be one thing if the show was about conflicts of heroism and what heroism *is* or what have you, but it isn't.

I get what you're saying now, I just don't know if that really applies as criticism because that's more an issue with the content than an active flaw in the writing.

laplace posted:

Gurren Lagann is not a good example of anime writing but that's sort of a strawman argument.

laplace posted:

I know what you're saying isn't about metafiction, but I'm saying the literary function of a "hero motif" and "what makes a hero" as a theme are two different things and are not mutually exclusive. It's not poor writing to write about one of them and not the other. I would say it's worse to just throw extra unnecessary stuff into a plot than it is to focus on the elements that are important and supported.

laplace posted:

That being said: It's not just about Peco "reverting to the hero" nor is it that role the actual end-goal of the character's arcs. It's a function of Peco, sure, but the end release is getting back in touch with why they played Ping Pong in the first place and acknowledging eachother's reasons for that. Peco played Ping Pong originally because It made him feel good, and he could connect with his friends -- mainly Smile, through it. Smile played Ping Pong because he could connect with Peco through it, something that made him genuinely happy. So while Peco's heroism is a core aspect of his character and the overall arc and his relationship with Smile, the interaction isn't ABOUT heroism as much as it is about the function of that heroism in that relationship. You're missing the forest for the symbol trees there. That's not poor writing at all.