The rumours of my death have etc. etc.

It has come to my attention that all my friends think this blog is a big angry ranting platform and I am a big angry ranter who doesn't like anything. This isn't true at all! I think it might be because my reviews of Waltz with Bashir and Up somehow became infamous amongst my colleagues. Also everyone I know who has a blog uses theirs just to post their own work, so maybe people think I'm a weirdo for writing in mine instead, but that's another issue.

Anyway, I like plenty of things! It's just that they're things nobody else gives a shit about.

So I'm going to make another post about Hidamari Sketch. Sorry.

Since that last entry the second special aired, and we got subs for both of them, and then they were released on DVD so we didn't have to put up with TBS's hilarious HD upscaled broadcast quality. The second episode didn't have such obviously distinct art direction or colours as the first, but I think it was quite a bit better. It also became obvious fairly quickly why the animation quality was a bit dodgy in the first special, since more money was clearly spent on this one (though I think it wasn't always spent well: more on that as I continue writing).

We start with a fanciful little dream sequence, which begins with this crazy pan down a big grey halftone pattern. Crazy because, due to an unfortunate coincidence of the speed of the pan, the resolution of the pattern, and the frame-rate of the video, it strobes horribly. Which is a real shame because I think it's a nice idea.
Right from here the animation is quite a bit fuller than we're used to. It's pretty small and there's not much to it, but it's still nice looking. The first of many signs of where the animation budget for these two episodes went!
I like how the water as Yuno scoops it out is this very subtle, icey blue, and the raindrops have a very slight indigo tint. It works really well with the otherwise pure greys and contrasts nicely with the orange umbrella.

It's nice how one segment of the umbrella's lighter, too. It may or may not have any intended significance (it's hard to tell with SHAFT sometimes), but it stops it looking too plain. Also, given that I've now posted a picture of a naked underage fictional girl I think I am technically a paedophile and guilty of a victimless sex crime according to current British law. So are you for looking at it.

Things go almost black, but then the warm flesh-tone comes in, then the blues become warmer too. The animation on Yuno's hair in that fourth shot is very watery and pleasing. Then we're back to normal colours, but even then they're atmospheric: this looks exactly like the inside of my room on a brisk morning.
By the way, this cinemascope thing was only for the intros of these two special episodes. It felt a bit cramped and weird the way it was used the first one, but I think it works much better here.

I quite like bits of the sequence that follows, too.
Rushing for school, Miyako slips on the wet stairs and Yuno catches her by her strap, which tears, thus setting up the plot for the first half of the episode (gripping stuff, folks). This shot is simple but the timing is really nice, a great combination of "surprise" and "oh shit saw that one coming"

I'm not always sure what I think of bright blue skys like this but I like it here: it's a reasonably clear day but still feels kind of chilly. I also like the big pure white space in front of Miyako in the second image. Incidentally, that shot's in-betweened on ones, which I think is a bit wasteful as they could've spent the time and money just doing it on twos and made the drawings better (but, then again, being on ones does give it a rushed, hasty, tense feel, which is appropriate for the situation). There's a few instances of this throughout the episode.

Really nice use of spot-colour for emphasis here.

Later, in school:

More emoting backgrounds.

Remember those shots of Hiro's buns in the last episode? Here's some more "establishing shot of a character with a close-up on their hairstyle" (because that's the only way you can tell character designs like these apart, hohoho). I'm geeking out a little more than usual by knowing this but this girl is a recurring extra called Mami (one of at least two who appear much more often in the manga than they do in the anime).

Yuno's floaty hair here is another example of "inbetweening on ones rather than just doing better individual drawings".

This little graphic sequence is very cute. The arrow stops as it hits the bottom edge, accompanied by a little squeak from Yuno and the text changing (presumably to "Ow!" or some reasonable equivalent).

Some weird-looking flat-faced boys here. But I do like their inclusion because it removes us a little bit from the usual girls-only world of the moe SoL genre. And I like how that sparkly pink graphic is apparently what Shinbo thinks an abstract representation of "teenage boys trying to see a girl's bra through her shirt" should look like (or maybe it's not Shinbo himself, I'd love to know what the actual creative process for this show is).
Also, note the way the extras are represented in the second image. Other episodes have rendered them differently.

(this from the first episode of season 2, by the way, which I will have to do a post on because it's great)

It's great how they mix things up like this, just for its own sake. A few more scattered examples from this episode.

I like how Yuno's been blanked out in the third one but still has her X's. That shot is also one of many elaborate, wobbly, fully animated camera moves in this episode, more evidence of where the budget went.

Again, later, after class, Yuno and Miyako head to the mystical "arts prep room" at the summons of Miss Yoshinoya, to get Miyako's strap fixed. On the way they ponder what goes on inside.
Normally I'd complain about this sort of clutter, but I think it's used cleverly here. The big circle draws your eye very strongly, and you kind of filter out the messy surroundings automatically because of it, and thus it's like the real process of letting your mind wander and reducing the outside world to background noise: it's getting the audience to do the same thing as the characters.

There's also a couple of other unrelated interludes here, one of which is this.

In this sequence Natsume, the token schoolgirl lesbian (well, the only confirmed lesbian) gets lent an umbrella by the unwitting object of her affection, Sae. As normal she puts on a typical tsundere act (look it up), though it doesn't get very far this time.

Why am I picking on this sequence? Well, I love the coloured ripples at the start. I love that long, slow, clever pan down the building (I just about shat a brick the first time I saw it). I like the shot where Hiro opens her umbrella, shown in a graphic, almost abstract way. I like the suddenly hot, bright colours about 43 seconds in. I love the way the sound of the rain fades out behind that sparkly sound effect towards the end. And overall I think it's just a nice, sweet, understated scene.

I just kind of wish that really weird-looking move from about 00:49 to 00:51 wasn't there. It's kind of clear that, rather than putting the time and effort into thinking about the acting or good drawing, it was just put into thoughtlessly in-betweening on ones, and it's a real shame. There's no consideration of timing, the in-betweens are completely even, so there's no emphasis or focus on anything, and the actual point of the shot (that she's smiling) is completely lost. The drawings don't even animate properly, as you can see from the strange morphing hair and the sliding nose. Even if they did, as I said before, animation on ones looks tenser and faster than if it's on twos or threes (especially if you can't afford cleanup good enough to avoid boiling lines), which clashes badly with the mood of this scene.

The shot before and after achieve alot more with alot less, I feel.

Anyway, there's my one mini rant. Back to the plot, Yuno and Miyako get to where they're going, and the strap gets fixed.
Nothing visually stunning here, but I am rather more amused than I should be by this: Miyako slips her uniform back on over her head whereas, when she put it back on earlier after Yuno's patch-job, she was painstakingly animated doing it up properly.

I chuckle, but this is, I think, not an entirely arbitrary decision, since each way fits the pacing of the specific scene. Of course, in order for the second time to be shorter they could've just showed us the last step of Miyako doing up the buttons after putting it on normally, but that would be no fun, and this is Miyako.

Also these desks are so wide I had to widen my blog to fit them.

The second half of the episode adapts a story that actually came from the Hidamari Sketchbook artbook, where Yuno loses her own sketchbook. Things shift more from stylised visuals to plain slice-of-life, so there's not so much to post from here, but there's still a couple of nice touches.

I love this pallette.

Thinking back to the slipping sequence, it's styled slightly differently.
This eyecatch is kind of funny because, despite looking all airy and light, it's accompanied by a hilarious "BONK" sound effect thanks to the context of the preceding scene (which I shan't tell you).

More nudity, sorry. If this offends you, don't look at it!

This is pretty much just cute. And actually, it's straight out of the manga. Well chosen in that regard, though.
End.

Overall, despite a few slip-ups and dodgy decisions, I still feel the episode as a whole worked well, and there's constant little experiments going on. Actually, I'm inclined to think some of those things I called poor decisions might have been experiments in themselves, SHAFT seeing what results they get if they concentrate on different aspects. They did something similar way back with the second episode of the first season, where the editing style was very choppy. It was a bit jarring, but clearly it was just an experiment because it was pared back and much more pleasing in subsequent episodes.

So there you go, I only complained a bit! I promise the next entry will not only not centre around complaining, but it also won't be about anime, so people might actually want to read it.

Belated pumpkin treats

It was meant to be Tom Cruise but I found that I had to omit quite a bit of detail and it ended up just looking like a generic scary face. Or Barack Obama. Well, either way it got quite a bit of positive attention at the party I took it to before the 6 candles I put inside it caused unsightly charring to the design.

Also goddamn is there a better way to update this thing than just the "New Post" link? Like, one that gives me more than 200 pixels of vertical space to type in so I can see what the hell I'm doing when I'm posting alot of images?

I'm a real nerd now

I did something interesting recently. I watched a raw anime episode; that is, one with Japanese dialogue and without subtitles, recorded straight from TV or digital storage media (DVD or BluRay). I've never done this before since I've never bothered following a series as it was airing, and thus have never been in the situation of waiting for fansubbers to do their job (for free), but in this case nobody's stepping up to the plate to do that and I couldn't wait. The episode in question is the first of two new TV specials for Hidamari Sketch, a series I ended up falling in love with several months ago. It's kind of bizarre that I did, since it's not strong on drawing or animation at all, and those who've heard me talk on the subject know that I really value these things. I think I like it mostly because the pacing clicks with me somehow, and in general it's just a really sincerely nice show to watch, since it's just about enjoying time spent with friends, but puts it across in a much more sincere way than similar series.
It sits firmly in the "high-school moe slice-of-life" genre, complete with the usual four-girl-ensemble slotted into the standard character archetypes.

Our lot is the third row down, from left to right: Miyako, Sae, Yuno, Hiro (look up the words you don't know)

And, in common with all shows of this sort, it mostly consists of our main characters going to school (one that specialises in the arts, in this case), living every day life, and being fairly cute about it. Unlike Azumanga Daioh it's very much "slice-of-life" rather than "comedy", though, and unlike K-On! or Lucky Star it's not super obnoxious about the cuteness. Something that really sets it apart is that the main characters not only go to school, but also live together, in a small apartment block across the road from their school, the Hidamari Apartments. This may sound inconsequential, but it actually changes the dynamic alot. Most episodes take place on a single day, and at least half of most of them is spent on the time after school, with the girls simply relaxing and chatting together at home. It also means that episodes not on a school day don't have to be the standard beach episode (actually, there isn't one at all so far, though there is a pool episode), sometimes it'll just be about all of them spending the day at home (though maybe with a specific activity), other times they'll make an excursion of some sort (for example, in one episode Yuno and Miyako go to do location drawing at a shrine on top of a hill). On the whole, it just means we relate to the characters in a different way to how we normally do with these series: it changes the "space" in which it takes place. It's really pure slice-of-life.
Another series where the "space" was specifically important is Pani Poni Dash!, so maybe I'll talk about that some time, too (it was also by the same studio and director, which is interesting).

Despite the often barely-there animation, Hidamari Sketch also has lots of really nice visual turns. The director (Akiyuki Shinbo) and studio (Shaft) seem to love playing weird games with colour, graphics, icons, text, editing, cinematography... actually almost everything BUT the actual animation (though this may partly be due to the fact that they somehow have no money and even less time for most of their projects). I'm still in the process of catching up with their other shows, but Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei and Bakemonogatari look particularly interesting.

This latest episode of Hidamari actually seemed to have even less animation budget than usual, as the drawings were considerably ropier than most of the second season (which itself was a vast improvement over the first). It was still nice, though. Enough of words, here's some pictures!
Isn't this autumnal green delicious? Green is a colour I feel is often handled poorly for some reason, even in shows with otherwise good colour design (e.g. Manabi Straight). This image is actually taken almost straight from the equivalent panel in the manga the anime adapts, but it's carefully selected in that regard, and fits right in with the feel of the rest of the show. Also, note the halftone-pattern. This was also inspired by the manga, but is used alot in the anime as a sort of visual trademark, and often to very nice effect.
It's kind of an anime/manga cliché to illustrate embarassment or fear with vertical blue lines coming down over a character's eyes. Here it's taken to such an extreme that it becomes a sort of parody, a gag in itself.
Orthographic camera (that is, no perspective). This is used a fair bit. Sometimes it's a bit weird to look at and chances are alot of people just won't like it, but I like it just as another visual trademark.
Some moments will be accented with these tightly drawn, super stylishly inked close-ups. I love these. Lovely colours, too. Also, make a note of the fourth one for "identifying a character by a close-up of their hair". There's a few other instances of this throughout the series (usually involving Yuno's magical floating X-shaped hairclips).
A few semi-random images just to show some of the different types of colour schemes employed. Usually the colours are pretty muted, but it'll also switch to very bold or warm palettes, monochrome, pastel shades (see some of the close-ups above) or what have you. This episode mostly uses a sort of autumnal pallette, but tending more towards dulled browns and yellows than oranges or reds, since it doesn't actually take place in autumn (February 10th).
A couple of interesting shot choices for you. The first reminds me of this amazing sequence in another episode where one shot from behind a bookcase is used repeatedly over the course of a scene, but each time the books are arranged differently to obscure different characters, reflecting the progression of the conversation. Nobody's got up to re-arrange them or anything, they're just moved by the laws of cinematography, or something. It's so bold! It drives me absolutely crazy because it's the sort of thing I can never think of!

Of course, this is all just from one episode. Alot of the things I've shown here are employed repeatedly, but there's a bunch more of those "visual trademarks" that I either haven't picked out or that weren't used here, and there's also plenty of unique, one time things that I could talk about from almost any episode. And I haven't even mentioned the anachronic ordering yet!

Are there any modern western cartoons that are this inventive and playful? If somebody combined this sort of stuff with cartoony designs, better drawing and real animation I'd just about have a fit.

As well as these two specials, a third season's going to be airing early next year (February, I think). The first two seasons adapted manga material covering Yuno and Miyako's first year at high school and the Hidamari Apartments (as well as adding some new content, which, far from being filler, actually really added to the show as a whole). From the next year two new girls move in, Nazuna and Nori, bringing the main cast to six.
Reading their character descriptions on Wikipedia I was initially worried that Nazuna would be just a more exaggerated version of Yuno, and Nori a less exaggerated version of Miyako. I checked out a couple of more recent scanlated manga chapters featuring them, and while they didn't necessarily assuage those specific worries it was some of the best material I've seen so far, so I've no fears. I'd love to see some tighter drawing (god knows they should have the money for it by now, considering Bakemonogatari actually managed to beat K-On's DVD and BluRay sales somehow), but to be honest if Shinbo just keeps doing what he's been doing I'll be happy enough.

Expect more on this series in future.

Oh god oh god oh god how did this get here I am not good with computer

I watched Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs yesterday. In 3D. I had written that film off completely upon seeing the trailer, but after Mr Kricfalusi said it was the best CGI film he's seen (giving it a 0 out of 10, as opposed to the negative thousands he'd give everything other than Toy Story 1) I had to give it a chance. It was actually pretty fun, despite the unpalatable character designs. Unashamed silliness saved it.

I haven't been posting lately because I've been working. FINALLY I HAVE MY OWN MONEY AGAIN. What was the first thing I purchased after getting a paycheque? A ton of manga. I'm so ashamed.

I'm trying to think of something relevant to say but I can't. So here's an irrelevant image.
If I had this t-shirt I would never take it off ever.

My graduation film and blog just got a very pleasing (for me, because he said nice things) write up on Iam Lumsden's cleverly named Animation Blog. It seems Ian takes it upon himself to expose any and all animation work that interests and intrigues him, alot of it by lesser known small-fry such as myself, which I think is a wonderful thing to do. Go read what he has to say about me, and look through the rest of his postings too, he's covered alot of stuff across a huge variety of styles and you might find something new to enjoy.

Maybe a proper post this evening or tomorrow, I've got some thoughts swimming about.
[EDIT] Okay make that Thursday or Friday evening. There's something I want to "test" first.