Thoughts on Sanzigen and Black Rock Shooter TV

Seeing Hiroyuki Imaishi credited as the CG Battle director on the Black Rock Shooter TV Series really got me interested in seeing what the CG would look like. Seeing as I didn't even realize he did that kind of thing, after I did a bit more research I saw he mostly did storyboarding of the battles rather than being full on with the CG work. Here is the opening of the series just to show you what the CG is like.

As you can see, the CG looks very much like 2D animation because of the way that they went about doing the shading and modeling of the characters. Mind you it doesn't look perfect, I think it is definitely a step in the right direction for CG in anime. Before the series came out I saw a TV Special on NHK World that focused on the show and  basically explained the process they went through when creating the CG animation for the series. It would seem then that the series is basically one big demo reel for Sanzigen as they created all the actions sequences set in "the other world" that Black Rock Shooter and her pals reside in. The CG is some of the best I've seen in anime for characters rather than cars and the like. Here is basically all the CG sequences compiled into one video.

Before i continue with the analysis of the animation i would like to say that the series also had quite an engaging story with the basic message that i got from it being "GET YOUR ASS OUT OF THAT FUCKING FANTASY WORLD AND FACE REALITY." I found it amusing that a show aimed at figurine loving otaku would have a message like that hidden within and love the show even more for it. 

 Now on with the proper analysis. While I wouldn't like animation like this to eventually replace traditional animation, its a good look that they seem to be pushing further with 009: Recyborg. The only downsides I see to using this method would be that the effects animation suffers quite a bit because it can never look quite right (though for BRS some of the effects animation is done in 2D) and the hair is also very stiff in its movements on the characters. The berserk movies avoided this by having the hair mostly done in 2D in specific shots such as close ups of the characters.

 The other annoying thing is that for some studios they seem to think that cutting the frame-rate on CG animation to fit the 2D animation is a good idea when in fact it is not. It just further makes some of the animation look even stiffer than before and in my opinion if you are going to use CG, please make it smooth so that it at least isn't super distracting. This isn't something that was much of a problem in BRS since the 2D and the CG were distincly separated so one didn't really have to blend into the others because of the way the story is written. Here is a video showing what i was talking about in terms of the CG and 2D in the Berserk movies. Berserk 2D and CG

 The final downside would be for us sakuga fans it would be hard to tell which animators animated what. As this is something that is enjoyable and informative for us it would be a bit sad to see that side of the fandom slowly go if we went full digital like this. Not to mention the amount of really talented animators that would either lose their jobs or get a lot less work. To conclude i think that having experienced storyboard artists like Imaishi and his comrades really helped BRS look as cool and dynamic as it ended up looking in terms of the CG animation. Without that element it would have probably not been as much fun to watch as it was, so good on you BRS staff.

The score for the series animation overall would be 3.5/5.