The Old School Otaku Lounge

I've been watching ACCA, a show about political intrigue, smoking, food, and bureaucracy. It seems kind of Francophile, although maybe that's just me: http://www.crunchyroll.com/acca-13-terr ... ction-dept

Not bad if you have a high tolerance for slow shows. Much of the show is about following the protagonist around at his day job and watching him take lunch breaks. (^_^;)

One thing I found a little fascinating is that Yoshiaki Kawajiri is doing a bunch of the storyboarding for the show -- there hasn't been a single gristly death or crazy spider demon, after all. (^_^) I think maybe some of the city-scapes you see out the windows have that 80's Future Tokyo vibe, though:


(Courtesy of the sharp folks over at Sakuga Blog)

You can tell that's a Madhouse background. Ever since they went CG, their multi-layer backgrounds, which are still drawn by hand, have used a different color to outline the top layer, such as in this case where there's red/yellow lines around the bars. Granted, backgrounds have never been Madhouse's strong point, but it's odd seeing how they used to trim this part during their cel production days whereas now, they leave it.

I've seen Kawajiri draw, and it makes more sense for him to do storyboarding than anything else. You don't have to be super detailed when storyboarding and it's rare to find a storyboard that anything more than some really rough sketches. Often, it's just squiggles, circles and other simple shapes.

This is true. I rarely see storyboards that are super detailed....of course there are some exceptions (off the top of my head, Satoshi Kon often did highly details storyboards, as did Miyazaki....that just might be their obsessive nature tho )

Akage wrote:You can tell that's a Madhouse background. Ever since they went CG, their multi-layer backgrounds, which are still drawn by hand, have used a different color to outline the top layer, such as in this case where there's red/yellow lines around the bars. Granted, backgrounds have never been Madhouse's strong point, but it's odd seeing how they used to trim this part during their cel production days whereas now, they leave it.

Nice! I hadn't noticed that. Is it a stylistic choice, or more of a shortcut due to tight schedules? I get the impression that Madhouse doesn't quite have the staff it used to, which is one of the reasons they subcontract so much of their work. (This isn't unique to Madhouse, of course. A lot of old-school studios struggle as their founders age and their staff split off to start their own studios.)

I'll have to provide some pictures of Madhouse CG backgrounds later to illustrate this. I own a large portion of all the backgrounds from a Madhouse anime called "Kobato" which was released in 2009/2010. All of these backgrounds were discarded by the studio and in some cases, you can tell that the background was folded to fit into a circular wastebasket.

mbanu wrote:Nice! I hadn't noticed that. Is it a stylistic choice, or more of a shortcut due to tight schedules? I get the impression that Madhouse doesn't quite have the staff it used to, which is one of the reasons they subcontract so much of their work. (This isn't unique to Madhouse, of course. A lot of old-school studios struggle as their founders age and their staff split off to start their own studios.)

Madhouse has always contracted work out to other studios, even back in the cel days. You probably won't notice it unless you have access to the layouts that often came with backgrounds. For example, "Cardcaptor Sakura" farmed its artwork to several studios including Vega Entertainment, Imaginet (their layouts simply say 'Imagine'), Dangun Pictures, Ripple Film and Garan, with the final two studios being the ones that handled the bulk of the more filler episodes. For example, I have yet to see any farmed out artwork from CCS Episode 1, but episode 48 (where Sakura converts 'The Firey' into a Sakura Card), was done by Ripple Film. I also have yet to see any artwork used for promotional purposes (hankens) handled by other studios. My guess is that Madhouse contracted work it felt was insignificant to other studios while having its artists focus on other projects.

Interesting side note - I decided to check ANN to see if there was any information about these companies. While they're all listed, none of them have been credited with involvement in CCS.

With Kobato, everything was done in studio. All of the layouts I have, most of which were partial copies, were done by Madhouse. Though, the one thing I have noticed with this particular anime is the amount of backgrounds that are reused multiple times per episode. A large chunk of these backgrounds were used 4+ times per episode. Compared to CCS, this is a very high number. While CCS did reuse backgrounds in the same episode, I can only think of a couple backgrounds that I own that were used more than 3 times per episode.

Akage wrote:I'll have to provide some pictures of Madhouse CG backgrounds later to illustrate this. I own a large portion of all the backgrounds from a Madhouse anime called "Kobato" which was released in 2009/2010. All of these backgrounds were discarded by the studio and in some cases, you can tell that the background was folded to fit into a circular wastebasket.

Wow! It's really surprising what some folks throw away. (^_^)

Akage wrote:Madhouse has always contracted work out to other studios, even back in the cel days.,,My guess is that Madhouse contracted work it felt was insignificant to other studios while having its artists focus on other projects.

That makes sense. I know that Madhouse was an early adopter of Korean outsourcing with their relationship with DR Movie; it must have been a tactic they used even when they had the staff to work in-house. I guess I'm used to thinking of outsourcing as something that studios do when there is some emergency (like being behind schedule or understaffed), even though now that I think about it that seems like maybe an area where I should reassess my understanding.

Akage wrote:Interesting side note - I decided to check ANN to see if there was any information about these companies. While they're all listed, none of them have been credited with involvement in CCS.

The ANN Encyclopedia is a truly valuable resource; a big chunk of the anime world relies on it as their groundwork for understanding shows. studios, and the habits of particular staff. The big risk is that folks rely on it to be exhaustive and error-free, when it is the product of a relatively small group of people with a limited set of resources they draw from. I hope you considered updating the entry -- good data about who did what is really helpful, after all. (^_^)

We'll, decided to watch some old tapes recorded from various sources and just wanted to ask if anyone has the Witch Sally DVDs? Do they have ANY "making of" videos as extras? The old video I just watched was a fan made production which was exactly that from the 1989 series. Fascinating stuff...

Getting back into watching some of the old tapes but sadly, all of my Beta decks are broken, so I've had to put a moratorium on those until I can get one or more working again. That still leaves plenty of old VHS tapes though including the stuff from Hawaii starting in 1992. Some stuff has so little info available. Hopefully I can add to it once I have the shows in a digital format.

Watching Jormungand. It is "okay". Production values are functional, but I wouldn't say it's spectacular. It's not a particularly good looking series, with instances of stiff and bad drawing and questionable use of "fake grain" (seriously, I wish anime studios would stop using fake grain on modern productions. It doesn't look organic or film-like at all). Still, shows like this are increasingly rare so I'll support them. Still think Canaan was the last "good" gun-fu show because it had a director who knew how to direct "hard" (non fantasy/sci-fi) action. Though Black Lagoon had its moments.

Hmm.. I know that I could google it but... I would like the opinion of people here..

For a person that really enjoyed Legend of the Galactic Heroes... what else comes close to it?

runesaint wrote:Hmm.. I know that I could google it but... I would like the opinion of people here..

For a person that really enjoyed Legend of the Galactic Heroes... what else comes close to it?

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