Meanwhile, in a show with a completely different art direction...
The overall premise of the episode was actually a pretty cool idea; there's an infestation of bookworms in the house, and Huey and Dalian stumble upon some that actually eat stories instead of paper, so they have to go inside the story to save it. The problem is in the execution; we never actually see any of that and instead are dropped directly into the book world and left to WTF at the sudden fantasy setting until the show gives an off-hand explanation at the end. I'm actually really interested in how they managed to go inside of the story, but I guess Gainax wants to start trolling now rather than later. I think that if it had been done differently, I probably would have really liked this episode, but as it is it just didn't work for me. Others can feel free to disagree.
From what I've been reading around the internet, it looks like the episodic nature of the series is just how the original material is, so there's not much to be done about that, although I'm still hoping for some kind of mini-arc wrap-up. Also, apparently there's some disagreement between the original series author and the editors about where the series should end. All of this makes me think that Gainax is just doing whatever they feel like, including greatly lowering the level of detail in this episode. Not that the animation was horrible all the time, and there was a reason for it; however, the change never said "storybook" to me. It just looked lazy, particularly some of the backgrounds. I guess after all of the great animation in this series so far, I've been a bit spoiled and didn't want anything to change. Also, apparently even people in the book world know who Dalian is. I'm not really buying that her existence is a secret anymore. In any case, it looks like we're back to the usual format next week... I think. This is Gainax, after all.
EDIT: Apparently the animation in this episode was the work of Osamu Kobayahi, aka the guy who was responsible for episode 4 of Gurren Lagann. Everything makes sense now.
Images from NicoNico.com.
I feel bad for the author, it sucks when editors do that instead of letting the series come to a natural end.
ReplyDeleteAs for the art in this show, I think if they really wanted to push this, why not animate the whole 'World Inside the Gourd' sequence too? It just strikes me as being lazy in that part. I did kind of like it though but like you, I was wondering how they got inside the book in the first place.
@Mira
ReplyDeleteYeah, it must be a really sucky situation. Hopefully the reception that the show is getting right now will convince them to let it end the way the author wants it to, not pad it out.
I agree, that whole part was basically just a pan shot until Huey moved his hand. DX I just would have been a lot more accepting of it if it was made clear what was going on in the first place. I can understand wanting to keep it a surprise, but instead I ended up focusing on the animation change instead of the story and it really threw me out of my sense of disbelief. But I can see why you and others like it though.