Well... I'll start this article by saying that I was betting on the anime EX-ARM. According to some reports that I will be bringing extracted from the ANN .
During Anime Expo Lite in July, Crunchyroll announced three new titles under the company's "Originals" label. Among them was EX-ARM. At the time, all we knew about the EX-ARM anime was that it was an adaptation of a cyberpunk , a genre that always captivates me, whether in films or TV series.
But things got weirder with this work.
At the end of August, the names of the director, writer, music composer, and animation studio were revealed. They are:
- Director: Yoshikatsu Kimura
- Writer: Tommy Morton
- Music: Sō Kimura
- Animation Studio: Visual Flight
According to the article published on the ANN related to the team, none of them have ever worked on anime before.
Yoshikatsu Kimura made his name writing and directing live television shows. Tommy Morton is likely a pseudonym. Sō Kimura is a guitar teacher who works as a DJ at night. Later, they announced the name of the action director, Takahiro Ouchi. And like the others, he has no animation experience, with his closest ties to anime being his stunt work in the first two live-action Rurouni Kenshin films.
Well, that brings us to Visual Flight . The only anime-related project they've been involved in was creating a bizarre dance demo in Unity. And their credits seem to only include modeling work for Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.
Returning at the Crunchyroll Expo event, director Kimura and voice actor Sōma Saitō appeared on a panel to give fans a chance to learn more about the upcoming series, including why no one on the staff had worked on the anime before.
According to Kimura, he was asked to direct the series because the team felt a live-action director would better understand 3D space. Rather than working with an anime studio, he chose to create EX-ARM as if it were his own live-action work. The focus would be on acting out scenes with actors in motion-capture suits and then applying that to the character models. Kimura stated that the work would be "extremely realistic" and that fans could expect action scenes never before seen in anime.
Check out the trailer for yourself:
BAD EX-ARM ANIMATION:
EX-ARM is bad. In other words, it's shamefully criticized for its animation quality, serving as a case study of what shouldn't be done in a 3D animation process.
Despite being well aware of the fact that live-action directors rarely direct anime, director Yoshikatsu Kimura stated, "I have experience as a director, so I decided to give it a try."
OPINIONS FROM OTHER EXPERIENCED DIRECTORS:
The article for this text cites an example of a live-action director in charge of an anime: 2011's Psycho-Pass, led by Katsuyuki Motohiro . However, in this case, he was assisted by co-director Naoyoshi Shiotani, a veteran key animator. This is because being an anime director requires an understanding of animation, but Kimura had little interest in the artistic capabilities of the medium, instead choosing to focus on camera and motion capture work.
BEASTARS director Shinichi Matsumi said, "Motion capture is the first step. And we tweak the movement to make it look more anime-like." This is one way to capture realistic timing and basic movement, but it requires additional keyframe animation work to make these elements work and look appealing in anime. Square Enix Visual Works cautions against using motion capture as a crutch, and EX-ARM's awkward movement is proof. While the show's creative team is perfectly capable of directing actors in a motion capture studio, they clearly had no idea what to do once those movements were mapped onto 3D models.
EX-ARM GRAVITY:
The gravity-defying action he refers to as a virtue of the medium is perhaps the worst part of this trailer; it all feels silly and weightless. In EX-ARM, Alma is an emotionless android, but this seems to be a result of the crew not bothering to move her face. The same seems to be true of the maid she fights. Her hair rarely seems to move properly: it changes when she runs, but when she turns upside down, it appears static—certainly not the "extremely realistic" animation we were promised.
And unlike most 3D anime, the entire trailer is full of motion blur, despite Kimura stating that “every frame is important.”
Ultimately, it's hard to criticize Visual Flight's animation team because they were asked to tackle something outside their strengths. But somehow, neither the Crunchyroll producers nor the director himself seemed to realize their mistake until now.
The lessons of EX-ARM are clear and obvious: Anime is best produced by those who understand and respect animation. And if you, the reader, already understand this, then congratulations. You would have made a better EX-ARM director.
Text translated and taken from the ANN .
