How Not To Make An Anime (What Went Wrong With Crunchyroll's EX-ARM) | Animator Spotlight

[Music] i've been skeptical of x-arm since august when they first announced the show's staff and it was particularly strange because neither the director or the animation studio had ever worked in anime before at the time someone asked if i thought it would be like berserk 2016 but even that comparison doesn't fit berserk was the result of a failure during production they'd spent so much time on trying to determine what the show would look like that they ran out of time to make the actual show and in that team there were plenty of experienced people who saved it from becoming worse than it actually was but exam was doomed from the start once they chose this direction it was a failed project with no chance of repair and that's why i find it bizarre that anyone funded it let alone crunchyroll don't you give up now [Music] from that spark in your [Applause] [Music] before they found a director the producers had already decided the show was going to be a 3d anime this is fine on paper and it makes sense there's a lot of mechanical assets that would have to be done in 3d anyways so a full 3d show would mean that it would all look more natural but their next thought is perhaps the root of all of these problems the producers decided that instead of finding an anime director they would instead select a live-action film director to create the show believing that they would understand the 3d environment better except this has no basis in reality at all directors who mostly work with 2d can make for excellent 3d directors land of the lustrous was directed by the director of lovelive high school girl was directed by the guy who did little busters hell the next spider-verse movie will be directed by the director of legend of korra these skills are transferable the main part is that they understand how animation works enter someone who doesn't understand how animation works [Music] i mean that literally when psychopaths brought on live action director katsuyuki moto hero they gave him a co-director who would be able to translate all of his ideas into animation but exam's director yoshikatsukimra was left in charge and since he didn't really know how to make anime he didn't follow any actual animation production process kimra is known for his work on the film karate girl a kind of amateurish martial arts movie on a budget he believes that his entrance into the anime industry meant that he wouldn't be tied down to how things are usually done and so he could bring something new to the medium one point is that he'd be able to bring in his experience with a camera but not only are his films not particularly well shot to begin with but there's a world of difference between handling a real camera and a virtual one he believes that his experience in live action would help create impactful scenes that would feel extremely realistic and he strives for a show where all the images feel seamless citing spider-man into the spider-verse as his inspiration and honestly i feel like i'm going [ __ ] mad reading his interviews did he know what show he was making instead of the handcrafted look of into the spider-verse exxon relies heavily on motion capture with it being used for every single action scene so they create all these scenes together in a motion capture studio send that data off to an animation company and then they attach that to the model and then that's it right it might not seem that weird until you understand that motion capture generally doesn't look that good raw sure it might be all right for virtual youtubers who are doing the whole thing live but it's inherently going to feel uncanny in an animated show this is why you need animators to not just be part of the process but leading it before the show ad they announced the action director for the series and this was a good sign an action director on an anime is usually an experienced animator who will design the style of the action for the series and hopefully get all of this under control so i was hopeful until i looked them up and realized that in the case of x-arm their action director was takahito ochi a stunt coordinator it's very clear that the team didn't care so much about what happened in the show but rather what happened in the studio ochi and kimro worked together before when kimra served as director's assistant on the arjun live action film both of them are martial arts people at heart and so when kimra invited him to work on x-arm archie joined the project with his team of six stunned actors at a tribe stunt group together they donned motion capture suits and performs the action of the show and honestly it was probably really cool these guys are professionals on plenty of action films and music videos which meant that this is one case where an anime probably looked better behind the scenes than in the actual final product people have a habit of saying the anime that looks bad is low budget but no matter how awful exxon looks this process isn't cheap hiring out a motion capture studio and a team of professional stunt people is an extra expense that most anime won't shell out for even at square enix most motion capture is done by the animators themselves when they need to get professionals in like for a complex dancing scene they will but even the largest game company understands that it's better if animators record themselves acting out a scene and then head back to their desk to adjust those movements this is what i meant by saying that animation must lead the process and so the question is did exam have great animators on staff to transfer the work of expert stunt actors into jaw-dropping animation no in fact the only thing jaw-dropping about it is the way they animate the faces i mean that literally the faces aren't animated at all so they have a singular bone controlling the jaw which they'll push up and down to show the character speaking so this means that all of the expressions of the original manga have disappeared and when they're tasked with creating a kiss between two characters they took the bizarre decision of covering up their lack of animation with a bright white light behind that there's two blank faces clipping into each other this is something they managed to kind of fix in episode three with a close-up and they've had a couple more goes in it but it still feels utterly bizarre due to the simplicity of the animation character faces are kind of stuck like that meaning that any attempt to having them show emotion is kind of a bad idea [Music] the animation studio for exam is visual flight but even that description is misleading visual flight generally don't make animation they have animators on staff but the bulk of their work is modeling and environments in fact one of their biggest claims to fame is their environment work on sakura shadows died twice but beyond that their credits are kind of bare especially when it comes to animation visual flight is a studio based in japan formed by chinese expats that allows them to work on both japanese and chinese productions but instead of valuing them for who they are a great modeling and design company for realistic works they were entirely misused on x-arm meaning that you have incredibly stilted animation with random glitches for talking scenes while having bizarre shaky motion capture for the fight scenes i'm not sure which part is worse but what is worse is that it's not consistently stiff hair moves but only sometimes the breasts jiggle but only in this one shot not when she's sprinting or fighting or anything but it's clear that there are people in this show who understand the process and can deliver good work even if it's just for a second and here's the thing this is a stain on their records if you're a work for hire studio you have to keep taking work wherever you can get it but from now on they're the exam team and it's not like they were given expert support either the director of the first episode also has no anime credits while the storyboard artist has only been credited for the 3d anime francesca gillsby ambitious in 2014 which barely moves to begin with and that somehow wasn't the weirdest decision because the storyboard artist for episode 2 is radius corporation a company that has nothing to do with animation instead they're like an i.t support company and they make like manuals and stuff it honestly doesn't feel like it was much of a job since this episode is just impressively unimpressive filled with uncomfortable zooms and random split screens it's such a strange production that the fact that episode 3's storyboard artist has worked in anime before is a surprise they're literally the only creative staff member who has having worked as an animator on yamamushi pedal in the past and it's actually the best storyboarding in the show so far but of course there's so many structural issues that one person would experience can't fix it all and they weren't even able to get all the characters in x-arm modeled to begin with instead having characters that would only appear a few times drawn in 2d now this isn't hugely uncommon b stars did the same thing but the difference here is that the visual design of b stars was so strong and consistent that it's not off-putting and the compositing team is able to blend the dimensions together this is the result of bringing on digital compositors with over a decade of experience in the industry for 3d series that are trying to replicate the look and feel of a 2d anime you need people who understand the look and feel of a 2d anime the job of compositing involves ticking each of the layers including the animation backgrounds and digital effects and bringing them all together neatly so they feel like they exist in the same world i've interviewed both the compositing director at you for table and facade online alicization in the past and both of them were very clear that an understanding of the animation process is essential exams compositor is real tomozaka and as you might expect he's never worked in anime before from what i can tell he's more of a generalist having set up a now closed design company a few years back and now works alongside the show's editor in a partnership called varnax but much like the rest of the staff he was clearly out of his depth here if you're going to do vfx within a 3d environment then it needs to exist within that space but most of ex-arm's effects are just stuck to the camera plus the fog effects that's on every action shot is insane and even when the camera pivots about the effects don't change it's just an overlay and instead of trying to make effects that fit in with the style of the show if you can call it a style there's literally just a video of real fire in the background here and that's just the vfx but even the most basic compositing decisions feel strange at best it struggles to keep up with the rest of the action but at worst it's [ __ ] hilarious when exam first showed us how bad it really looked there was a lot of comparisons people compared it to ruby or a ps2 game cut scene but this is nothing like either of those ruby started out as an independent low-budget production and even when there were lows there were jaw-dropping highs and there are plenty of ps2 game cut scenes that hold up today final fantasy 10 came out in 2001 there is no precedent for exam they had the money to bring on well-known voice actors and an entire stunt team but it didn't make the show any better none of this was a freak accident you can't blame covert for the whole thing and the blame lies squarely on the leadership director yoshikatsukimro wanted to make an anime but he was left alone to try and do it himself without any knowledge of how anime is made or anyone to ask for help what did they think was going to happen this show was funded and co-produced by a bunch of companies including shueisha crunchyroll and the japanese tv station bs fuji and producers from those companies made the decision that are so created by a director who had no idea what he was doing and an animation team that would rather be making maps for the next fromsoft game would be an anime worth making if there's a lesson to be learnt it's this executives and producers at these companies need to have a working understanding of how anime is made and not just the process but the conditions as well what it's like when someone asks you to do something that you've never done before with no guidance what it's like to crunch to an unreasonable deadline what it's like to have to put out a subpar product despite knowing you could do better if the brief wasn't so terrible these companies have dragged the mangaka the animation studio and the stunt team's name through the dirt all because somehow they didn't understand that this was a bad idea thanks for watching the canberra effect there's plenty of great shows this season sk8 wonder egg mushoka tensei if you can tolerate the protagonist re-zero slime log horizon's back and i'm here talking about goddamn ex-arm you're welcome but before i go i'd like to thank the people who pay for this torture in particular i'd like to thank austin hardwick dana meet edwin shale frizzy canadian frog kun jacob bosley jr pictures matthew grunsel my own mother nolan soga quentin elkin smith and that one artist for more videos just like this please consider visiting patreon.com the canaperfx

Channel: The Canipa Effect

Views: 393,717

Keywords: Anime review, anime reviewer, canipa, anime, EX-ARM, Animation, Crunchyroll, 3DCG, Bad Animation, Bad 3D, CG, Kiss, Censored, Alma, CR, Winter 2021, Worst Anime Ever, What Went Wrong, Analysis, Breakdown, Sakuga

Id: Haa0J8oEyWA

Length: 15min 10sec (910 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 27 2021