This movie has been one that i have looked forward to for a while since it's Kenji Kamiyama's newest project and after that wait i feel kind of disappointed. I wasn't expecting anything as complex as Stand Alone Complex but i was expecting something fun to watch as it seemed from the trailers to be a fun action movie with a seemingly interesting plot. Anyway before i get more into this here's the customary video showcase of the film's animation.
To begin this analysis i'd first like to say that the plot for this movie and some of the characterizations may be polarizing. For some reason there only seems to be 3 female characters of importance and one doesn't speak. The one featured most prominently is fairly sexualized and gets in her undies within the first 15 minutes which was one of the most awkward looking pieces of animation rounded off with a badly animated kiss. Besides that the plot kind of goes all over the place for me and the ending left me confused. This was the first 009 related property i've ever seen and i don't know if a needed to know something extra to get the plot but i was left a bit disappointed plot wise, especially seeing as Mr Stand Alone Complex himself wrote this movie. Another thing i found confusing was that i thought this was going to be some kind of team movie in the vein of The Avengers but the Cyborgs are separated for some reason. Again maybe i skipped an expanded premise or something else but this bothered me quite a bit since i wasn't really feeling the protagonist and would have preferred more of the high flying Jet character. Thats all i have to say in terms of the plot so onto the analysis.
As you saw from the video, i would say that the animation doesn't disappoint in terms of the action sequences but in terms of normal character interaction it falls short. The thing about using 3D models over 2D drawings is that the only way that you can show emotions is somewhat held back by how well you rig the facial model and how smooth you make the transition between expressions look. In this case, the low framerate and stiff movement doesn't really help. 2D gets away with stiff movements because viewers are accustomed to characters moving from expression to expression fairly quickly in 2D but that doesn't quite work for 2D. The most glaring thing i would say that lets down the character animation would be the way they look when they talk. The only part of their faces that moves is their mouths which generally just move up and down and barely make different shapes to go with the words spoken. I know that this is more to ease the localisation process but it does look quite weird.
Looking at Sanzigen's previous work (Black Rock Shooter TV) i now realize that one of the things that their 3D sequences didn't have to worry about was the mouths moving because for the most part the action happened without any dialogue and near the end when they did have dialogue, the mouths were animated in 2D if i remember correctly. This movie however is very wordy which is why it bothered me so much. Another minor issue i would like to point out is the art direction in this movie was rather bland. I'm not sure if it's just the fact that the art directors work just doesn't look as good in a 3D space because it looked suitably futuristic in Stand Alone Complex. Maybe it was the fact that with it being 3D they were constrained in that he couldn't just paint a background that looks good and it depended on which angle was used to see if the composition of the background looked good enough. Either was i was underwhelmed by this aspect of the movie.
The final issue i had with the animation overall is the frame rate. It's not as noticeable in the action sequences in the sky for example but during sequences like the black guy wading through the crowd to find that little girl, it looks noticeably choppy and distracts from your immersion for a while. This was an issue in blackrock shooter in the sections where the characters were walking towards each other but here it looks like this a lot of the time and when the camera isn't spinning around to make the framerate look somewhat decent everything feels somewhat cheap which it shouldn't in a movie of this scale. The characters just didn't look as expressive and their movements and expressions look too choppy a lot of the time. This is a bit of a shame as well because the character designer did a really good job making the designs look modern while still feeling like the same characters that have appeared over the years in various mediums.
Onto what i actually liked about the animation. There were genuinely several sequences that you see in the movie that you can't do in 2D either because there aren't any animators that can animate planes well or that you have to go out of your way to make the camera move like this in 2D and that's what excited me about the sequences involving flying because they felt so dynamic and with the camera moving to show such interesting angles it all just looked really cool. Another area that i think that Sanzigen has improved in as to be the effects animation because it all looks suitably realistic while still being simplified for animation. The explosions in particular are improvements on their work on BRS. The smoke trails the missiles leave look like smoke this time and the detail work done to make the shading look natural is much appreciated.
The studio seem to have done their best to improve in what were issues in their previous work and for the most part have done just that but in the ned the framerate ended up being more of an issue than it should have been. That may have been to save time or lower the budget somewhat but either way it worked to the detriment of my viewing experience in the slow scenes. In the end while 3D continues to improve and i like the direction the studio has taken, i'd like to see them continue to improve to the point where we can see Hironori Tanaka style hair deformation in 3D animation and of all the japanese CG studio's, Sanzigen seem to be the ones that may deliver on that front. To end this post i give this movies animation a rating of 3/5 as in the end it succeeded for me more because while i had issues, the action scenes were so good and frequent that they made up for it.I may have nitpicked a lot here but hey it's my blog. Anyway for the next month here we shall be having Dante's Inferno Month as i review the animation studios Film Roman, Manglobe, Dong Woo, JM Animation and Production I.G.'s work in the animated adaptation of the well liked (by me) game Dante's Inferno. I'll be experimenting with a new analysis format with these so i hope you guys enjoy starting from next Friday.
To begin this analysis i'd first like to say that the plot for this movie and some of the characterizations may be polarizing. For some reason there only seems to be 3 female characters of importance and one doesn't speak. The one featured most prominently is fairly sexualized and gets in her undies within the first 15 minutes which was one of the most awkward looking pieces of animation rounded off with a badly animated kiss. Besides that the plot kind of goes all over the place for me and the ending left me confused. This was the first 009 related property i've ever seen and i don't know if a needed to know something extra to get the plot but i was left a bit disappointed plot wise, especially seeing as Mr Stand Alone Complex himself wrote this movie. Another thing i found confusing was that i thought this was going to be some kind of team movie in the vein of The Avengers but the Cyborgs are separated for some reason. Again maybe i skipped an expanded premise or something else but this bothered me quite a bit since i wasn't really feeling the protagonist and would have preferred more of the high flying Jet character. Thats all i have to say in terms of the plot so onto the analysis.
As you saw from the video, i would say that the animation doesn't disappoint in terms of the action sequences but in terms of normal character interaction it falls short. The thing about using 3D models over 2D drawings is that the only way that you can show emotions is somewhat held back by how well you rig the facial model and how smooth you make the transition between expressions look. In this case, the low framerate and stiff movement doesn't really help. 2D gets away with stiff movements because viewers are accustomed to characters moving from expression to expression fairly quickly in 2D but that doesn't quite work for 2D. The most glaring thing i would say that lets down the character animation would be the way they look when they talk. The only part of their faces that moves is their mouths which generally just move up and down and barely make different shapes to go with the words spoken. I know that this is more to ease the localisation process but it does look quite weird.
Looking at Sanzigen's previous work (Black Rock Shooter TV) i now realize that one of the things that their 3D sequences didn't have to worry about was the mouths moving because for the most part the action happened without any dialogue and near the end when they did have dialogue, the mouths were animated in 2D if i remember correctly. This movie however is very wordy which is why it bothered me so much. Another minor issue i would like to point out is the art direction in this movie was rather bland. I'm not sure if it's just the fact that the art directors work just doesn't look as good in a 3D space because it looked suitably futuristic in Stand Alone Complex. Maybe it was the fact that with it being 3D they were constrained in that he couldn't just paint a background that looks good and it depended on which angle was used to see if the composition of the background looked good enough. Either was i was underwhelmed by this aspect of the movie.
The final issue i had with the animation overall is the frame rate. It's not as noticeable in the action sequences in the sky for example but during sequences like the black guy wading through the crowd to find that little girl, it looks noticeably choppy and distracts from your immersion for a while. This was an issue in blackrock shooter in the sections where the characters were walking towards each other but here it looks like this a lot of the time and when the camera isn't spinning around to make the framerate look somewhat decent everything feels somewhat cheap which it shouldn't in a movie of this scale. The characters just didn't look as expressive and their movements and expressions look too choppy a lot of the time. This is a bit of a shame as well because the character designer did a really good job making the designs look modern while still feeling like the same characters that have appeared over the years in various mediums.
Onto what i actually liked about the animation. There were genuinely several sequences that you see in the movie that you can't do in 2D either because there aren't any animators that can animate planes well or that you have to go out of your way to make the camera move like this in 2D and that's what excited me about the sequences involving flying because they felt so dynamic and with the camera moving to show such interesting angles it all just looked really cool. Another area that i think that Sanzigen has improved in as to be the effects animation because it all looks suitably realistic while still being simplified for animation. The explosions in particular are improvements on their work on BRS. The smoke trails the missiles leave look like smoke this time and the detail work done to make the shading look natural is much appreciated.
The studio seem to have done their best to improve in what were issues in their previous work and for the most part have done just that but in the ned the framerate ended up being more of an issue than it should have been. That may have been to save time or lower the budget somewhat but either way it worked to the detriment of my viewing experience in the slow scenes. In the end while 3D continues to improve and i like the direction the studio has taken, i'd like to see them continue to improve to the point where we can see Hironori Tanaka style hair deformation in 3D animation and of all the japanese CG studio's, Sanzigen seem to be the ones that may deliver on that front. To end this post i give this movies animation a rating of 3/5 as in the end it succeeded for me more because while i had issues, the action scenes were so good and frequent that they made up for it.I may have nitpicked a lot here but hey it's my blog. Anyway for the next month here we shall be having Dante's Inferno Month as i review the animation studios Film Roman, Manglobe, Dong Woo, JM Animation and Production I.G.'s work in the animated adaptation of the well liked (by me) game Dante's Inferno. I'll be experimenting with a new analysis format with these so i hope you guys enjoy starting from next Friday.
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