3D or 2D? A whole lot is riding on that final dimension.
What They Say:
Episode 5: “Those Who Blame Others Should Just Quit!”
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
So, Takanashi has really screwed things up, creating the “crisis of the week” for Musani. It appears that he’s angered Endou enough that the latter is going to drop out as the animation supervisor for episode eight of Exodus. Sadly, this is starting to become the show’s weak point, the constant and now predictable production foul ups that are hobbling the creation of the show within the show. It doesn’t help that Kinoshita has not completed the storyboards for the final episode and at the rate he’s working on them…they won’t be completed until the next year, long after the broadcast is over.
Faced with certain disaster, the company’s general manager Okitsu, suggests that Honda, the production desk manager, use “it.” What is “it?” A special jail cage in a storage room where they stick Kinoshita until he finishes the storyboards. That’s the easy problem to fix. More difficult is the somewhat petty dispute that has escalated into Endou quitting as the animation supervisor for episode eight. It’s made worse by how stupidly Takanashi is acting, since his delay in informing anyone higher up the chain is only going to make the situation worse, resulting in an even more serious problem. The young and idiotic production assistant is even directly responsible in many ways, as he is less than diplomatic in approaching Endou about a change that Kinoshita the director made: originally, an important scene involving an explosion at the end of episode eight was going to be done in key art by Endou, but after seeing a 3D model test including the explosion, Kinoshita prefers to go that route. It’s left to Takanashi to explain the director’s decision…which he does rather poorly. That’s an understatement. While in itself the decision should not have been a big deal, Takanashi’s disastrous fumbling while passing along the messages results in pissing off Endou.
Perhaps the more interesting part of this episode is the look at Kinoshita’s past. He did some award winning and popular stuff over a decade ago, getting quite a lot of attention before the disaster that was Jiggly Jiggly Heaven. Apparently even “the key animation jiggled,” leading to disapproval from the overanxious guardians of morality, the PTA. Then came the three (yes, three) recap episodes and the mass of complaints aimed at the show’s website, leading to it being shut down. An official apology only riled up the otaku further and people predicted the end of Kinoshita’s career. As part of this recap, Honda urges Kinoshita on to finish the work on Exodus.
It would appear that Endou is really upset about his treatment on Exodus, so he talks to another director, Saburou Kitano (known for a giant robot show of which are treated to a small snippet, including the famed “Kitano” Circus) and even introducing one of the key animators from Musani, Hotta, to him. While Endou is looking for validation from another 2D animator, it just so happens, however, that Kitano may well come to the aid of Exodus’s beleaguered production assistants. After he learns of Endou’s unhappiness, he tells the two traditional animators what he’s doing right now: teaching 3D animators the basics of Japanese animation. There is no use fighting technology; it’s better that the 3D animators become better animators than that the art and skill of traditional animation be lost.
The question is whether the lesson will be learned in time, since Hotta, who was working on episode nine, which leads in with the explosion that ends episode eight, is fired up to complete the key frames for episode nine’s picking up of the explosion. This leads poor Aoi to be thrown into the mess created by Takanashi and and Kinoshita.
This episode highlights some of the main strengths and glaring weak points of the show. On the positive side, the production team for Shirobako has given us, and perhaps their fellow animation production companies in Japan, a very quiet but clear manifesto concerning the current fight between traditional hand-drawn animation and the newer, still growing use of computer-aided animation production. 3D (which, when you think about it, is still a slight misnomer since the final product, animation shown on a flat screen, is two-dimensional) is going to become the eventual standard method of producing animation, since it is far more efficient and fast than traditional hand-drawn animation. But if that is the case, instead of allowing inferior work that lacks artistry and subtlety to be made, traditional animators should do all they can to teach their new younger colleagues how to make animation “come to life” and provide the expressiveness that comes with traditional artistry. It’s a quite mature perspective on the issue, though things are still at the ground floor, considering how most characters rendered in 3D continue to have frozen faces.
The weaknesses of the show are embodied in the “crisis of the week” format and the character of Takanashi, who is more a plot device than a character. In this case, Takanashi, who has only had a passing appearance in previous episodes, is given something closer to major focus because there needed to be a crisis of the week. His whole job was to cause it to happen, which he did. You could replace him with a monkey or an alligator or a talking teddy bear. There is nothing unique and specific to Takanashi. So, the writing for this week’s outing is rather uneven. I give the writing staff points for the mature and realistic response to the threat posed by the increasing use of computer generated animation, but I’m going to have to deduct some points for trotting out a hand puppet whose only purpose was to cause a minor crisis for the production of the show within the show. Certainly, this could be handled in a more interesting way.
In Summary:
Endou, the animation supervisor for episode eight of Exodus, is angered when he learns that the director has decided to go with 3D animation for an important scene which originally Endou was supposed to create in key art. A large part of the problem is that plot device Takanashi, whose sole role is to cause headaches for the production staff, is deployed to bring about the potential disaster. Even with this poor choice of introducing the subject, the show manages to then introduce an important and interesting perspective to the debate between 2D and 3D work.
Episode Grade: B
Streamed by: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Apple iMac with 4GB RAM, Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard