I don't post to the forums often but this episode was SO bad that I had to take a lot at the Episode 15 Discussion to see if I wasn't the only one. To my relief, many other people agreed, and noticed just how awful the art/animation is compared to the prior 14 episodes. Low-quality. Lots of reused frames. The worst and most uneventful fight scenes ever. Of course, this episode is a lot of other animes' bests... in other words, I'm not ungrateful. Work was still put into the episode. But the audacity they have to make it so obvious that less effort was placed into this episode then the others is pretty bad.
But the low-quality animation, which everyone else seems to have noticed, is just 50% of my concerns. And it seems others recognized my other concern alongside me: the plot holes. AND this arc was incredibly rushed. AND it felt a little "willy nilly" with all the jumpcuts and scene changes.
- Can we talk about that dreadfully long sequence where Hyak just FOLLOWS the Lord through the woods... what a time waster! (Side note, remember that painfully awkward scene where Hyak is running up a hill zig-zagging through trees, seemingly floating through the plane? Ack.)
- And throwing Kyak's brother in there was so irrelevant to anything else going on in the episode -- it could've been used later on. Maybe it originally was but they ripped it out of a future episode and slapped it in this one to meet their time threshold.
- What about the female ghoul seen with the "baby monster" in Episode 14? Why were her origins never explored? Even if she was the nun, why does she try to convince people to buy things from her?
- The moth demon's human counterpart -- the Lord's "wife"? The only time her human form is ever seen is in Episode 14, and only for brief moments. It doesn't seem right (in the THEME song sequence) for her to be the focal point of that one frame, with her (more frequently seen) husband standing behind her.
- How was Dororo able to find a flame to burn down the shed? He found oil but how'd he create the fire? We CAN speculate, but we shouldn't have to. It would've been smart from a director's standpoint to clarify how Dororo found a way to ignite a flame in that cavern.
-- Speaking of the cavern, why is it so giant? If it were a room, that'd be one thing. But when Dororo tried escaping from those caterpillars, she was sprinting through an all-out cave. Did they really build a rice storage shed on top of a ditch?
-- And how come the ditch just HAPPENED to be full of demons? Did the demons decide to burrow under it after the storage shed was built? Or was this their home before and the Lord thought it'd be a smart idea to build a storage shed (you know, containing the village's most valuable assets) on top of the demons?
- How did Hyak know where the main demon was? (What, hiding under a lake? Since when can bugs fully submerge themselves underwater. A key trait of the species of animals is that water is a weakness to them.) Furthermore, the transition to that scene was awful. One second Dororo and Hyak are in the woods, and the next second Hyak is alone on a boat in the middle of the lake (Dororo is later revealed to be on the shore.) I was left confused as to what was going on, since the prior scene didn't give us any insight as to what was happening. A viewer shouldn't have to feel as if they're missing context when a new scene is being presented, but the lack of prior set up did just that.
- Sabume (I think that's the Lord's name) died. But how? Didn't the staff think his death would be relevant? Maybe his fate doesn't contribute anything to the plot, but if the Japanese feel characters' bloodtypes are necessary knowledge then surely they could've given an indication as to HOW he died... being that he's in the fricking theme song.
- It was never revealed why his soul appeared white to Hyak but was outlined with reddish dots.
- When the moth flew into the tower, how was it able to cause an explosion? The watchman was holding a torch. However it's not like there was any oil up there... ...and I know it wasn't technically an explosion, but the fire spread in a matter of nanoseconds. I mean come on.
---> BIG issue with me: the watch tower "explosion". ... There wasn't even a transition frame displaying the in-tact tower to the pile of rubble. No transition. One second it's fine. The next it's a flame pile of wood planks. That had to be the worst modern animated explosion sequences I've ever seen. It reminded me of the low-quality of 80's and 90's cartoons.
Episode 14 was FINE in my opinion! It was a great episode, like any other, but it's a shame the two episode arc had to end in such a crappy way. Episode 15 had a noticeably less impressive animation AND had too much going on but in an incredibly confusing way.
... also, some of these concerns of mine are major. And while initially only including the major concerns, more things began to dawn on me over time, and so my list grew. Therefore I'll at least acknowledge that I'm nitpicking at some points.
I know I said this a few times, but I'm so glad I'm not the only one who noticed all of this stuff. I mean... it's just so obvious. Never, when watching the first 14 episodes, did this kinda stuff dawn on me but the fact that this stuff was able to capture my attention. Yikes. I hope anime's staff was just having a crappy week and they gain some composure in the succeeding episodes. |