Obviously Sakuga is a tool that should be used. And if they ever make a Superman Anime I'd want to see some Sakuga flying and battle scenes, as well as him evading missiles in an Inato Circus.
But I'm tired of lack of Sakuga being an inherent criticism. And I'm also tired of Sakuga scenes being considered inherently good animation even if the art being Sakugaed is ugly as sin, like with Pokemon Sun and Moon. I don't care how much motion that show has, if the character designs we're looking at are literally vaguely humanoid blobs of vomit, moving crap is still crap.
Remember that fraking Evangelion was a limited Animation show, and so I bet if Digibro re-watched it in the mindset he's been in lately he would now hate it. I'm far from Evangelion's biggest fan, but I do like Supereyepatchwolf's defense of the elevator scene.
And on a related note, I'm tired of characters going "off model" being a criticism. This is animation, I want to see things you can't do in real life, and in live action actors can't go off model.
The Pedantic Romantic has a pretty good informative video called Eromanga-Sensai: One Year Later. What interests me here is how she talks about episode 22 of Fate/Apocrypha as having inherently better Animation because it had more "work" put into it. I was enjoying Fate/Apocrypha from the start, and this episode while not bad was distracting to me with how different it was from the way the show was usually animated.
And I wasn't alone, this sentiment was also all over the KissAnime comments section for the episode (Subbed version). You can say it makes those commenters look stupid since many thought this episode was cheaper when it seems the opposite was true. But the fact remains this attempt to change things for one episode to impress the Sakuga fanatics just annoyed the people who already liked what they were doing. And I would simply say that Expensive Animation people thought was cheap was a waste of money.
Here is one particular comment I found interesting.
I'm not an expert on any of this, I just know my reaction to the episode was that it felt out of place.
My only criticism of Kyoto Animation recently is that I think they definitely over do the Sakuga, especially if it's just a High School show like Euphonium. At one time Digi would have been inclined to agree, in his video Can Anime be too Pretty for it's own Good. But lately he seems to have sold his soul to the Sakugists.
Make no mistake, I'm as annoyed by outright using Stills when there is no justification for it as much as the next guy. But I also feel there isn't enough respect for the interesting things you can do with Animation that would never qualify as Sakuga.
Take these clips from episodes 4 and 5 of the criminally underrated Witch Hunter Robin. Unfortunately since I don't know how to torrent I can't quite show you the highest quality versions of these.
As someone who does need glasses in real life, I can tell you we do play around with them like that sometimes. And to my limited knowledge this is the only time I've seen that depicted in a work of fiction, in any medium. It might be impossible to do in Live Action, I'm not sure you can recreate it putting Glasses in front of a camera.
And then there is a my absolute favorite Anime, Noir. I feel like the tone and vibe of that show would be ruined by extensive use of Skauga (I don't even know if I can say the show has no Sakuga, but like all Bee Train Shows it's commonly accused of being amateurish and cheap for not looking like Akira). To me it's animated in the perfect way to make it like an Anime version of a modern Film Noir (a topic I'll be returning to in a future post), the stillness of the show complements it. Maybe it's that way partly because of a lack of Budget, but guess what, the same was true of many actual Film Noirs which people forget were mostly B movies.
That's not to say there isn't an equally valid way to capture a Film Noir feel using good Sakuga, Kara No Kyoukai is great at that. But Noir took the route that worked for it and it worked perfectly.
And I think saying the show's Animation had no effort put into it would be offensive in light of this clip from episode 13. Again the version provided here unfortunately doesn't look nearly as good as it does on my DVD, much less the newer BluRay release I still haven't gotten.
I'm sure it's not Sakuga since not everything is moving, but just showing cloths and hair blowing in the wind takes a lot of work when they could have just used stills again here (I will admit Noir is guilty of the Stills sin in at least it's first episode).
Sakuga is good, but it's not the only thing that matters.
Update May 24th: So I got a response on Reddit that suggests I'm defining Sakuga wrong. Well blame the Anime critics I'm reacting to, particularity Digibro, for that. They're the ones gushing over Sakuka while making it sound like it's just a matter of motion.
Update February 2023: I didn't even choose good sources for those Noir and Witch Hunter Robin clips, those shows are in fact in remastered 16:9 on Crunchyroll now.
Good article, sakuga and flashy animation isn't everything for anime. Noir is not a show that requires everything to be moving all the time. That wind and hair blowing although simple to execute, is not easy to do well and perfect for capturing the mood of that scene with Milosh. Also Noir might have stills but it's used well and there are periods in the combat scenes where the animation is smooth and slick. I argue Noir's animators are more like artisans than artists, doing things unnoticed for the anime to flow rather than being noticed.
ReplyDeleteAgreed, and thank you for the Comment.
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