So it took me a while to get the video for this post done but it's not for the reasons you guys might think. It's not that there was too much good animation, although there was certainly more that the first half of the show. It's because the editing in this half was ridiculously annoying to edit around. To provide context for you, this is around the time the show started catching up to the manga so as you would imagine, they had to pad out the events quite a bit and one method was to have a sequence of nice animation with shots of other characters reacting inter-spliced into that. This means that some well animated scenes i couldn't use because they were too badly spliced between the static shots. This continued to the very last episode and when you watch the show, it's not much of a problem because you're enjoying it but from an editing standpoint, that was annoying as hell. Well enough moaning from me, the video is done for you to enjoy.
So yeah, as you can see in the video above, The second half of the show was quite the improvement. Before i get into the analysis i'll just quickly present my thoughts on the plot. Episode 102 starts with the Melone Base invasion sub-arc and this has to be my third favorite sub-arc of the Future arc. It starts off with our heroes invading the enemy base and they are initially not discovered but within 5 minutes they are found out by a hulking brute of a man. He's also dumb as hell. He gets dispatched fairly quickly with our hero Tsuna getting to show off his new special attack, the "X-Burner." After this initial success, things start to slowly go downhill with 2 more successes until the get separated. the 3 groups each try their best and only 2 of them manage to keep going OK whereas Yamamoto who is the swordsman suffers a disastrous defeat by the hand of the 2nd best villain the show produced, Genkishi "The Phantom Knight." At this point the heroes are doing their best to get to their goal and even get some late backup from more supporting characters and only just manage to escape. The arc was not fun to watch week to week but marathoning it again was really fun. From this point there are a few more arcs with 2 filler arcs that proved to be quite entertaining and showed off Artland's better animators at the end of each arc and then there was the Final battle arc which is basically the build-up to the finale. At the end after the goal is achieved and the arc over, you could really tell that these characters had grown and weren't the stupid teenagers they were at the shows beginning The biggest change being in our lead who in the end had the confidence that he so sorely lacked at the series start. This ending, while not completely tying up all loose ends that were tied up later in the manga, covered enough in it's filler arcs that were actually canon that it feels complete in the end. The manga's ending didn't really show the growth of the lead as well, with him being the same immature little twat he was at the beginning. Overall this is a fairly good shonen story for kids who are getting tired of Naruto or Bleach and want something a little different. Anyone above the age of 18 would likely have a lot of trouble with episodes 1-19 but might enjoy most stuff after that point, especially this arc.
Onto the animation analysis. The character art from episodes 102-203 is generally very good. There are hiccups here and there but for the most part, Masayoshi Tanaka's designs look great and from the large amount of episodes that have well animated sequences, they look stylish and cool as fuck. The animator i mentioned in the previous post who i said did some great water effects animation might have also worked on the Yamamoto VS Genkishi sword fight sequence that you see in the video from 00:50-02:00. The sequence was one of the aforementioned weirdly edited ones so it's interspersed throughout the episode it's featured in. The fight itself was expertly story-boarded and had some really dynamic angles and great cuts of water effects animation. The only thing i would nitpick is that there isn't much sword-fighting It's mostly throwing superpowers at each other but there's enough to leave anyone satisfied. With help from braves133 on twitter, i was able to find out who animated 3 of the best sequences in the show besides the Yamamoto fight and it appears to be the Hironori Tanaka inspired Tatsuya Yoshihara. His work in the show looks a lot like some of Tanaka's work with me mistaking his work on episode 175 (05:46 in the above video) for Tanaka because it had all of Tanaka's flourishes emulated perfectly. The exaggerated movements the character Kikyo displayed were things you expect from Tanaka but before now i hadn't really realized that there was someone out there besides Hiroshi Tomioka who seems to have taken aspects of Tanaka's style and put their own stamp on it. Before i continue watch the following compilations of Yoshihara's work to get a sense of his style.
As you can see from the videos he also worked on the other show Artland produced in 2010 which would be Demon King Daimao and as i stated in the previous Reborn post, Don't watch it. Sure the animation is interesting from time to time but there's no getting past the shitty writing, music and overall direction. Yoshihara did a bit of work on that but he mostly worked on some key scenes in Reborn in it's final year on the air. These scenes would be Dino Vs Daisy which is at 06:54 in the video. This fight is notable as it is basically the best effects animation that the show ever got with a wave of intense yellow flames to start it off with and some great action with the whip after. The dynamism of the fight was something to behold and it's also helped by not having any weird editing and just being an all out brawl. The other main fight Yoshihara worked on was the fight with Ghost which follows in the video.It is also a great example of Yoshihara's effects animation and while some parts are lower frame-rate, they still look great because of his cool key poses. On top of that he also worked on opening 8 which is by far the best animated of all the openings but has the worst song. The story boarding is great and Yoshihara's work is very recognizable because he animated the best looking part of it which was the long continuous shot at 08:54. At least i think it was him but i do know he worked on the opening for sure. He is a very talented fellow and from what i know, the work he produced in 2010 on Reborn and various other shows got him some notice. He is currently working on his directorial debut which is being produced by Studio ZEXCS for the Anime Mirai project and is called Aruvu Rezuru so i'm looking forward to seeing how he translates his style to his own show. He is also directing another anime that premiers this spring so he's moving up quick i guess. The only other notable animator i will talk about now is Hiroyasu Oda. The only work of his in my video was at 06:02 and while it was short it was also some really good effects animation. He did do some other work on the show but the video was getting long as is and it wasn't at the level of most of the other work so i omitted it to be consistent. Nevertheless he is also a very talented man. It's a shame that i don't really see more love for the guy but i may do a animation analysis on him at a later date.
That's the end of my Reborn animation analysis and i hope you found this at the very least interesting to read. Otherwise sorry for wasting your time but seriously, the score i give the second half of the show would be a very enthusiastic 3.5/5. It doesn't quite reach the heights of FMA or Other big shonen in terms of animation but the good stuff that it gets is very stylish and for that alone i would recommend this show. My next post will most likely be a look at how american animation has been influenced by anime so see you then and have a great day. *wink*
So yeah, as you can see in the video above, The second half of the show was quite the improvement. Before i get into the analysis i'll just quickly present my thoughts on the plot. Episode 102 starts with the Melone Base invasion sub-arc and this has to be my third favorite sub-arc of the Future arc. It starts off with our heroes invading the enemy base and they are initially not discovered but within 5 minutes they are found out by a hulking brute of a man. He's also dumb as hell. He gets dispatched fairly quickly with our hero Tsuna getting to show off his new special attack, the "X-Burner." After this initial success, things start to slowly go downhill with 2 more successes until the get separated. the 3 groups each try their best and only 2 of them manage to keep going OK whereas Yamamoto who is the swordsman suffers a disastrous defeat by the hand of the 2nd best villain the show produced, Genkishi "The Phantom Knight." At this point the heroes are doing their best to get to their goal and even get some late backup from more supporting characters and only just manage to escape. The arc was not fun to watch week to week but marathoning it again was really fun. From this point there are a few more arcs with 2 filler arcs that proved to be quite entertaining and showed off Artland's better animators at the end of each arc and then there was the Final battle arc which is basically the build-up to the finale. At the end after the goal is achieved and the arc over, you could really tell that these characters had grown and weren't the stupid teenagers they were at the shows beginning The biggest change being in our lead who in the end had the confidence that he so sorely lacked at the series start. This ending, while not completely tying up all loose ends that were tied up later in the manga, covered enough in it's filler arcs that were actually canon that it feels complete in the end. The manga's ending didn't really show the growth of the lead as well, with him being the same immature little twat he was at the beginning. Overall this is a fairly good shonen story for kids who are getting tired of Naruto or Bleach and want something a little different. Anyone above the age of 18 would likely have a lot of trouble with episodes 1-19 but might enjoy most stuff after that point, especially this arc.
Onto the animation analysis. The character art from episodes 102-203 is generally very good. There are hiccups here and there but for the most part, Masayoshi Tanaka's designs look great and from the large amount of episodes that have well animated sequences, they look stylish and cool as fuck. The animator i mentioned in the previous post who i said did some great water effects animation might have also worked on the Yamamoto VS Genkishi sword fight sequence that you see in the video from 00:50-02:00. The sequence was one of the aforementioned weirdly edited ones so it's interspersed throughout the episode it's featured in. The fight itself was expertly story-boarded and had some really dynamic angles and great cuts of water effects animation. The only thing i would nitpick is that there isn't much sword-fighting It's mostly throwing superpowers at each other but there's enough to leave anyone satisfied. With help from braves133 on twitter, i was able to find out who animated 3 of the best sequences in the show besides the Yamamoto fight and it appears to be the Hironori Tanaka inspired Tatsuya Yoshihara. His work in the show looks a lot like some of Tanaka's work with me mistaking his work on episode 175 (05:46 in the above video) for Tanaka because it had all of Tanaka's flourishes emulated perfectly. The exaggerated movements the character Kikyo displayed were things you expect from Tanaka but before now i hadn't really realized that there was someone out there besides Hiroshi Tomioka who seems to have taken aspects of Tanaka's style and put their own stamp on it. Before i continue watch the following compilations of Yoshihara's work to get a sense of his style.
As you can see from the videos he also worked on the other show Artland produced in 2010 which would be Demon King Daimao and as i stated in the previous Reborn post, Don't watch it. Sure the animation is interesting from time to time but there's no getting past the shitty writing, music and overall direction. Yoshihara did a bit of work on that but he mostly worked on some key scenes in Reborn in it's final year on the air. These scenes would be Dino Vs Daisy which is at 06:54 in the video. This fight is notable as it is basically the best effects animation that the show ever got with a wave of intense yellow flames to start it off with and some great action with the whip after. The dynamism of the fight was something to behold and it's also helped by not having any weird editing and just being an all out brawl. The other main fight Yoshihara worked on was the fight with Ghost which follows in the video.It is also a great example of Yoshihara's effects animation and while some parts are lower frame-rate, they still look great because of his cool key poses. On top of that he also worked on opening 8 which is by far the best animated of all the openings but has the worst song. The story boarding is great and Yoshihara's work is very recognizable because he animated the best looking part of it which was the long continuous shot at 08:54. At least i think it was him but i do know he worked on the opening for sure. He is a very talented fellow and from what i know, the work he produced in 2010 on Reborn and various other shows got him some notice. He is currently working on his directorial debut which is being produced by Studio ZEXCS for the Anime Mirai project and is called Aruvu Rezuru so i'm looking forward to seeing how he translates his style to his own show. He is also directing another anime that premiers this spring so he's moving up quick i guess. The only other notable animator i will talk about now is Hiroyasu Oda. The only work of his in my video was at 06:02 and while it was short it was also some really good effects animation. He did do some other work on the show but the video was getting long as is and it wasn't at the level of most of the other work so i omitted it to be consistent. Nevertheless he is also a very talented man. It's a shame that i don't really see more love for the guy but i may do a animation analysis on him at a later date.
That's the end of my Reborn animation analysis and i hope you found this at the very least interesting to read. Otherwise sorry for wasting your time but seriously, the score i give the second half of the show would be a very enthusiastic 3.5/5. It doesn't quite reach the heights of FMA or Other big shonen in terms of animation but the good stuff that it gets is very stylish and for that alone i would recommend this show. My next post will most likely be a look at how american animation has been influenced by anime so see you then and have a great day. *wink*
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