(Moved from the comments to the previous episode)
5:42 mark. UGH. I hate combatus interruptus. Bad, bad, bad. We’re left to imagine the results of the fight. Oh, and just how did Tskune recover?
So far, none of the rest of this is making sense. Huge logic gap: If Ruby doesn’t know that Tskune is a human, then why did she attack him, when he was obviously a friend of Yukari’s? And if she does know he’s human (how?), why hasn’t she clicked to the fact that the others don’t seem to know?
So far, anime quality still seems to be up. Any hint of intelligence is down.
7:05. Whoops, I spoke too soon about the quality. Haven’t seen that much freeze’n pan since Mizore iced up the pond.
10:00: Correction, it’s better art, but lousy animation. By which I mean, more detail and improved “concept” but it’s still just a bunch of damn frozen pictures.
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Ok, i got interrupted and wasn’t able to finish it for an hour.
That was bad. Up until Gin-sempai showed up, I was asking myself if I thought it was bad because I was comparing it to the manga. I was mostly of the opinion that it wasn’t just the manga; it probably was just bad, thanks to the beginning and total lack of explanation. It felt like a half-episode had been chopped out, right there. And the whole “Norman” thing was a rip. But maybe I was being too harsh…. then
And that sealed it — thumbs down for the series. It’s been hard to forgive them for the crappy artwork when drawing pretty girls, but now it’s just painfully obvious that Gonzo is out of ideas and out of time. The only thing good about this episode was watching Chu get his just desserts, multiple times.
I was going to give them a bonus mark for dropping the extended “change sequence” for Moka in 9 & 10 — then I realized that it was a necessity, not a virtue. Moka wasn’t in her usual school costume, which would mean animating a change sequence to be used once. No, can’t have that kind of budget waster, can we?
Feh. Is KimiAru ready for download?
Actually, Gin does that at the end of chapter 17, too. I thought the truly sad thing about the battle was [spoiler]that Kurumu was helpless until Yukari used magic to pop her shoe off.[/spoiler]
-j
To me, the worst thing was that Ruby pre-enhacment, was able to capture and hold alt-Moka. We’re now obviously in variable-power territory, wherein a combatant is as strong or as weak (or as brain-dead or clairvoyant) as they need to be to advance the plot in the chosen direction. Consistency be damned.
Here’s something I didn’t expect: more than half of the comments about episode 10 on the AnimeSuki forums are positive. Some are downright glowing, thrilled that the series has finally lived up to its potential. I’m speechless.
[spoiler]I’d have been willing to write off Rubi’s power-up as part of her psychosis, which was a cheesy-but-acceptable way to get her onboard in only two episodes: “Norman” is basically harmless, but “Mother” is a world-wrecker. Unfortunately, the whole thing is so poorly executed that it doesn’t work at all. And that’s not even counting the other problems they created.[/spoiler]
I’ve decided that the PSC wasn’t supposed to be in the series at all. Rubi’s story was supposed to end it. Supporting evidence: she’s in the credits from episode 1 on, as well as production drawings on the web site from October. They’re not anywhere on the web site, though, and don’t appear in the ED until it was redone for episode 4.
-j
If they planned to end the series after Witches Hill (in 13 episodes), I think it would have been about right. It could also be used as the springboard to enter a second season that starts with the PSC and ends with the Anti-theists. That would have worked, but this hack job just isn’t cutting it. Did I get it backwards, and they had an option for 26, but decided after 3 or so not to exercise it? So what we’re seeing now are rushed changes to compress more story into the same number of episodes?
Based on the comments you saw, I’m inclined to think that the manga’s fans have wanted a dark story from the beginning of the show — which the manga was emphatically not at that point. That means Gonzo was being more faithful to the original than the fans! There were the occasional darker segments (one chapter of which Gonzo dropped — the photographer that was blackmailing Kurumu). But the overall story didn’t start turning until the Witch Hill arc.
Yeah, people have been lamenting the lack of darkness for a while, but this was worse: they liked the art and animation in 10, too. I can only assume that they were so thrilled by the story change that they couldn’t focus on the screen. Or the plot. I’m looking forward to browsing the various forums when the scanlations catch up to chapters 35-39; the whiplash should kill a few of the “darkness fans”.
The uneven drawing quality and unfinished animation makes sense if Rubi’s story was supposed to end the season: they pulled the main production team to work on the PSC, and handed their work over to a third-string group to finish. They probably just tore pages out of the original script until it fit into two episodes, and came up with the Norman hack to cover the edits.
-j
Well the art was better. Ruby’s wings are drawn very well, and the ravens are also quite detailed. Composition and concept of many scenes was also superior, and there were no really painful one-thing-in-the-picture-is-animated instances (like I’ve complained about before). When, that is, they remembered to animate anything. It’s just odd to have an exquisitely detailed still frame in a pan.
I saw some very off character art for Kurumu and Yukari in particular, and in the scene where Moka’s being held upside down, her head looks like it’s the wrong size and attached in the wrong place. The stills were well-drawn, but some of the minor scenes that did get animated were badly done.
I’d give timestamps, but I’d have to download it first, and it’s not worth it.
-j
I know which one you’re talking about, Moka struck me as weird-looking also, but I didn’t pause to examine it.
Just caught the episode, and I’d like to know what was going through the minds of Gonzo when they decided to animate this. I’d liken this to Gurren Lagann’s famed episode 4 where a change of director came with a drastic change in style, since it was as bad, if not worse. Ugh.
And what’s with the “Norman” thing you guys keep mentioning, anyway? Did I miss something? D:
Norman? That would be [spoiler]Norman Bates. In the manga, Rubi was basically raised to hate humans by her master (for pretty good reasons), but it’s the master who created the plant monsters in the field, used them to kill passing humans, and went insane in the end, consuming Moka’s power to fuel an irreversible transformation into a shapeless monstrosity. Rubi’s association with the gang awakened her basically good nature, and she ends up joining them to destroy her master. The whole thing takes up five chapters, and makes her a much more sympathetic character. Also sane. The anime replaces all of that with the end of Hitchcock’s Psycho.[/spoiler]
-j