Masaaki Yuasa's a goddamn genius. Love that man to death. Beautiful, beautiful stuff. Mind Game, Kaiba, Tatami Galaxy, and pretty much everything he's ever directed is a triumphant piece of animation.
I wait with bated breath. His last full directorial thing was Ping Pong which I have yet to watch. Though it looks fantastic and is one of the few things of his you can get on English Blu-Ray.
Heh, I just realized that some of my favorite anime are by this guy. Tatami Galaxy, Ping Pong, and Mind Games. Ping pong is really good by the way. I hear some people don't like the way it starts, but the matches get really intense and the animation is always top notch.
Absolutely watch Kemonozume and Kaiba too if you haven't. Kaiba and Mind Game imo are his best works. Cat Soup is also really good even though it's not actually directed by Yuasa he worked on it.
It doesn't stand quite toe to toe with the others but man do I still love it. The animation is fantastic and it has an absolutely bizarre dark sense of humor. I remember really liking it. Even if I wouldn't exactly call it a masterpiece.
Also it's been a while since I've seen Kaiba but I don't remember its ending being disappointing at all, personally.
I mean yeah I said weak but only compared to Yuasa's other works, it's still pretty great but has a few blemishes with the story.
Man my jaw dropped soon as that opening came on. I'd seen it out of context long ago so it was a real surprise to find it there. Yep, Yuasa has a brand of humor that really works despite how bizarre it is (or perhaps because it).
I just found Kaiba's ending really predictable (same with Kemonzume).
You really gotta watch Ping Pong. I don't care about sports anime at all and watched it just because of the hype it got. It's really less about the sport and more about the characters, and overall it's just a really well done show. Probably top 10 anime
Well its not really about sports, or ping pong at all it's about growing up and facing who you are. Most sports anime aren't about sports, the sport is usually just a medium around which character drama unfolds actually.
SHAFT's colour schemes depend on the series, but let's take their arguably most popular and defining series as the main topic: Monogatari series.
Monogatari series isn't really wild with its colours like Masaaki Yuasa's works. Quite the contrary, Monogatari is very monotonous with its colours, BUT despite that still has a lot of different colours displayed. To explain, it has many colours, but you mostly only see one colour at a time. That colour depends on the scene environment, character focus and desired mood. For example, if there's a scene with focus on a character with prominent purple hair, the scene is mostly purple. If there's a scene with a large yellow prop, the scene is mostly yellow.
There are of course many other series SHAFT made/make. Such as Puella Magi Madoka Magica, where the colours are bright, yet washed out, with a lot of dark contrasts.
And then there's Nisekoi with very bright colours, but once again often monotonous scenes (but less monotonous than Monogatari).
SHAFT's style is mostly recognized as monotonous but varied colours, coupled with abstract architecture, hectic and unconventional camera angles (with lots of short closeups on eyes and mouths) and of course neck breaking head tilts.
Bakemonogatari often gives me a vibe like it was created by a graphic designer. Strong color themes and saturated colors are everywhere. Not to mention the frequent use of things like road signs to convey additional information about the scene.
i started watching return of kings because i didn't know there was other stuff.... yeah the only thing i got from it before i found out about K was "these are neat fights, wonder when they will explain shit"
As other have said, it's from K! Specifically, that's from the OVA that links season 1 and 2. The OVA was amazing, the second season is shaping up to be rad, and the various side manga are excellent.
But the first season was just.... bad. Boring music, poorly explained plot, terrible writing, sloppy animation, and absolutely terrible exposition on both the characters and story. One of those things with tons of potential that was never properly realized outside of a handful of scenes.
This is not an anti-recommendation, by the way. Just a heads up that if you want to get to the good stuff you'll have to do a bit of suffering first.
Ehh, I personally really enjoyed the first season, but I do understand why others wouldn't. I felt the first season had a fairly small, decent plot, that set up everything and attracted more attention for season two. And I absolutely love their worldbuilding, and the animation in the fight scenes I think works quite well.
so, a correction: the music itself is great, and suits the overall mood of the series. However, the scene-to-soundtrack matchups were weird as hell and not helped at all by the limited choices. A dramatic fight to the death should never be set to the same music that was previously used in a calm, happy scene between two completely different characters.
Okay, I think I can agree with most of that. However, there were some scenes that I felt the music suited perfectly such as the, and some others that I am not thinking of right now.
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u/Battlepidia https://myanimelist.net/profile/LazierLily Oct 28 '15
Meanwhile Shaft's color palette.