Holy shit. What happened?! The quality took a tremendous nosedive!
Like I was sitting there watching the episode and actually thought to myself that with the little time I spent studying animation formally, I'd be able to create an animation with the same quality of this episode like no sweat if I actually had the time for it. The problem for me isn't the actual animation, but the consistency (if that makes sense). Like, yo, at least go for the same animation and such from episode one to whatever episode you're ending on.;; You can have stick figures for all I care, just keep it consistent. And they didn't. In some scenes, it looked like the faces were dripping.
As for the plot, hoooweee. They sure picked a bad episode for this stuff to be going down. Yet at the same time, I guess it's a good thing that MOST of this episode was kinda blah plot-wise anyway until near the end, because straight up, they weren't even letting the characters emote properly for the most part. Someone was yelling in a frustrated way at some point and they were like smiling. Like you need to be able to grasp the emotions of the characters if you want to connect with them, so this was definitely a bad episode for actually wanting to like the characters even more if you wanted to. A shame because these teams getting together to train would have been a really good opportunity for anyone to change their mind about someone if it wasn't already too late. Then you have this poor side character getting her debut this episode and lordy I feel so bad for her. First off, they planned to introduce YET ANOTHER character when they were only supposed to have three episodes left. That is already a bad move. Now they have one. Now it's a really bad move. This poor, poor character. This gives people pretty much no time to connect with her. I already thought it was bad that they introduced so many characters and just kinda made them lose so quick that they were out of the picture. You didn't even get a chance to know them-- even if they're in the opening and ending-- even the dang key visuals! So bad... and they have the nerve to introduce Wonky over here? Nah. It's just a bad move.
I do feel really bad for those who liked this show as opposed to those who disliked, were neutral, or undecided about it. This was an incredibly improper way to treat a series. And from what I read, it's been hard on the staff too. I do feel bad for them too.
I did think the premise of pretty much creating a persona of sorts based on tales was a cute little concept. I usually love that type of thing! But they went a really eh way with it. Going the battle each other route is often not as fun as many think. I think many prefer characters to work together because that's honestly a much more fulfilling endeavor when characters can genuinely create a bond that actually works, but not just for functionality. It's true that it's harder to write, but the pay off really is better. I mean really, I don't care about the fighting at all and I appreciated the parts where these girls came together way more. I would have appreciated THIS episode if we were actually given access to the emotions of the characters (which is an essential part of bonding characters genuinely). Though even with this episode, it wouldn't have been enough of a genuine bond and at this point probably would have been fanservice more or less. "Oh, we heard Japanese do pillow fights". Yeah yeah, get out of here with that. If their motive was to bond I would have believed it, but that wasn't their motive at all. So probs just fanservice if we could have actually witnessed it more.
But yeah anyway I thought that's what this show was missing, but in order to even improve upon that aspect, they would have had to go a whole other direction most likely.
Welp, I guess one more episode. I'm watching on Crunchyroll, so I'll see the end on the 5th of April I guess. |