I agree with some of your points about the show but some, as an animator, are cherry picking In the animatic part [4:25] I understand what you mean, but tweening is not bad, it is a common thing in Japanese animation, you can call it the "quirky"/"cheese" animation depending on the scene, but using tweens like this is not part of the animatic, like you explained it, it's the sketches that give the idea of the movement, but that doesn't mean it can't be used, and sometimes is used to save time and money for other scenes for example 5:25 when the bottle goes down, yeahh, it would look cool seen Eirin going down, but to save money for another shot they probably did that. With timing movement at 8:32, The movement of Marisa is actually good, the confidence that her character shows in this scene works with the movement, it doesn't need it, using it a lot on characters or certain situation makes the scene or character look weird or out of place. SMEERS!! [10:17] the Marisa shot doesn't need it, she is going fast, sure, but the smeer is NOT to indicate speed, is to "fill" the empty space of a long space between drawings. Aya shot is probably for how she was acting, a joke... AND THAT SHOT WITH HANGING THE PHONE YEAH!!!! all the budget went to hanging the phone ahha The silouhette!!!... COME ON!! you are cheating the comparation with getting rid off Reimu's bow. While I agree with you in how some characters have the same thing, most of the time there is a characteristic thing they have to say "AH! THAT'S THIS CHARACTER", if you took Yuyuko's skirt and fan... yeah... I WOULDN 'T KNOW!!! aqnd the eyes well... that's something many people complain/make fun of, the common anime style if you will. I can talk more about animation (I agree with most, like your idea with Marisa and the stairs) and such BUT what I want to talk about more is.. well it takes a lot of money to draw a simple anime character, IMAGINE ANIMATING IT! with sprites is easy to keep the shadows and lighting.. but with a drawing you need to be careful or the animation will look wonky, that's why there is no lipsync and most of the time you see tweens or static characters. I WISH IT WAS LIKE SUMMER DAY DREAM! I love that one so much!!! but sadly the amount of detail they put in MoP will make everything take more time and more money, and sadly, being an indie project, it can be affected by all of the factors the team put themselves. I like it for what it is, but I wish they spread the animations in a smart way. BTW!! Good video!!! I like watching stuff that talks about animation a lot!!!! I didn't expect to watch one about touhou!
Hey Pelo, didn't expect to see you here! Still, a welcome surprise! It's true that I should've talked more about certain things, I really didn't go as much in depth as I should've... Stuff like tweening as you've said, could've been better handled for sure but I just wanted to convey the idea that even though it's often used in Japanese animation, it's weird to see a detailed character design with...well, a very simple movement. For the movement, it's true that I could've picked another scene but the issue is that well...examples were actually pretty sparse a few areas, so I ended up picking this one. At the time the movement felt pretty uniform, but it might've been me. The smears part...oh man, I was confident that I should've removed the Marisa shot but when I realised this, the video was pretty much complete. Still, I'm glad the phone's example gave a chuckle at least.😅 For the silhouette part, it's true that it was a bit cheap. But it was to give a proper example of what it would look like without accessories basically, though in retrospect, I would've wanted to go for another example. The only issue was...the given material, most artbooks were out of stock basically and I wasn't able to scan mine. So I was basically in a pinch here while doing it. The same face syndrom however, is a real thing that I know people complain about but I still had to mention it somewhere.😓 Though even if I agree that it takes money to animate, let alone draw a character and I don't deny that it takes a ton of effort as well, especially as you've said when it comes to small details like the shadows, the lighting and others, I still think there was a way for them to avoid dropping their quality so hard after the fourth episode. It's an indie project and as you've also said, it basically suffers from comparisons to other more carefully crafted animations (even if those have their own issues) but in general I just wanted to show that the issue isn't always coming from the scenario as many people would point out (even if...it's still the case here, let's not lie to ourselves). But thank you very much Pelo, I'm glad that you took the time to watch the video! I didn't know anything about animation before that and I basically tried to learn things in order to understand why the anime didn't appeal to me.
@@Surnist I get what you mean, I was excited for Eiki's episode but the lack of movement in that episode is underwhelming, I still hate when they get out of the food truck! But I get what you mean! Oh I didn't know the books are out of stock! I wish they make a big book with everything rather than a magazine, would be perfect for stuff like the silhouettes! And no problem Surnist!! I love your videos and they are incredibly fun to watch! (specially the backgrounds) and it's ok, you got most of the animation rules right!!
@@SrPelo Yeah the books which as you've said are more magazines centered around one character most of the time and were never really restocked, which left some of them being hard to find, especially in good quality. There are a couple I managed to find but a few of them are...something. For example, the first artbook was on Lily White and contained a whole six pages of genga, which...uh...yeah.😶 But thank you once again! I'll probably try to dial the characters in the background down a little bit though because they take a long time to move around and are too distracting at points, but I'll surely try to keep them around in some way. Glad I at least didn't butcher animation as badly as I could've, that would've been horrible. 😅
I've heard this man suffer day after day, week after week, and month after month only to progress for mere seconds. Now I can fully enjoy the blockbuster with some microwave popcorn, thanks!
Did the world really need me, I'm not so sure but I'm at least glad some people are happy about this. :) Don't worry about not being able to watch it yet. I don't even mind if people watch it bit by bit seeing the length of it. But yeah, it's been a long time coming...
@@Surnist being "needed" is always a weird thing to think about imo so don't focus on it too much. What really matters is that you're definitely wanted and appreciated (by most at least). You've left a positive impact on lots of people and you have evey reason to be glad for that
I suppose you're right. Maybe I tend to focus too much on things like these in the first place. If I can make some people happy, I guess that's a good enough start. 🙂
Usually I play hour long videos in the background, but I decided to sit through this to the end and it was worth it. Glad to see you posting videos again after a 2 year hiatus, hope you continue making quality content like this.
This video puts into words one of the feelings I have about MoP pretty clearly - which is just how visually jarring it often felt. I don't quite agree with some of the points made, but I think the majority of these are on point and even explain it well enough that someone who doesn't know a lot about animation can probably understand it. I think my biggest problem is how the anime clearly wants to do its own thing, but it's still trying to adapt the game plot. In adapting the game plot, they decide that some things should just be skipped over/made into slideshows either out of interest or, more likely: budget. I would have vastly preferred them doing their own plots that would better fit the episode time rather than making diluted and messy adaptions of game scripts. I think that alone would have made the anime at least tolerable for me. Unfortunate, really.
Glad I was able to at least convey the message at the end correctly, that would've been the worst thing to mess up, haha. 😅And obviously, I'm not asking people to agree with me on all points, that tends to be difficult to do so in such a long video anyways. But yeah, nothing much to add to what you've said right here, they should've clearly gone with a home-made plot from the very beginning and this would've caused way less trouble. Instead...well, we got what we got which is very unfortunate.
Man what a comeback and a half! Honestly I share a lot of sentiments when it comes to MoP. I remembered with some old friends we watched one of the latter half episodes of the IN arc. I didn't really keep in touch with the series but throughout that time I'm just wondering "Why are we just focused on this moment?", "Why is the energy of the scene at a mismatch with the story?", "Why is Kaguya stoned out of her mind?" which was eventully capped off with the cries of how the IN arc was still teased to be going after it ended. Granted I think some crossed wire I heard about some people involved made me think of the series as more devious which honestly to now I feel pretty bad in letting myself go on thinking that one bit, but with how my disapointment was for the chaotic (yet dull) story telling and the huge bulk of unremarkable scenes which I felt were pretty gross in their character interpritation in both canon and fanon regards it's an easy trap to fall into. An adaptation of Touhou in anime, ESPECIALLY on doujin budgets is gonna be a huge ask and there will probably always be a drawback... Which quite frankly I think with the inate nature of doujin it'd be impossible to do the most in depth adaptation of Touhou without some compensation or huge alteration done in one aspect or another. In that sense if someone were to give such an idea another stab I at least hope that it's more so true to what the creator wants rather than what the collective fandom may want. I'd love to see a full adaption of some of the games as anime (especially say HMs story to be given an outlet that isn't bound to an albeit jank game) but I'd also be content with something the people who make it show genuine fondness over whether it takes elements and limits it to make it feesable. But alas, it might be awhile before someones tries to give it a shot again. Least it made for some good gifs and screencaps at the end of the day.
Honestly, I don't really know what to say here considering that I went through a lot of the same steps when I started watching the anime as well. But I don't think it will take time for people to give it a shot and show their own vision of what an animated Touhou adaptation can be because... well, some people are already doing it. 😅 Still, the idea of animating things such as the fighting games has a ton of legitimity since you have a lot more material to work with when it comes to fights and the likes. But doing that would probably be a little trickier to pull off.
Nice, welcome back! Personally, I didn't have much of an issue with the animation because MOP seems to simply be a fan project and as far as those go, this one looks pretty good. The use of animatics is something done even in professionally made anime, so seeing it used so much in a fan project wasn't a big deal to me. And on the topic of smears, I don't think they're necessary for fast movements. I've seen some animations from animators depicting fast action sequences without the use of smears and played around with it myself, it's really about how the drawings are timed IMO, which you covered really well.
To be fair, the animation isn't the first problem when people watch the show, truly. But the downgrade it sees between a lot of episodes is really tough. As for the animatics, while it's true that professionally-made sometime use them, they do because they have a tighter release schedule, which isn't really the case of Manpukujinja. It's all context-sensitive really. The smears sections on the other hand, I somewhat agree, I really skimmed over it and the examples could've been way better chosen. Unfortunately, by the time I told myself that...the video was close to being finished. Still, thank you for the feedback, it's the first time I tried doing this kind of thing, so it's all really new!
After a bit over 2 years it is finally out. You really put in a lot of effort into this video and I'm very proud of you for going through with this idea and finishing it in the end. I really hope for you that it's gonna do well and hopefully you can get a bit of rest now, before you tackle your next project. ♥
It's very interesting to see you breaking down the animation in this series, as so many people hype up the animation in it as something amazing. For me though, I always felt like it wasn't really...well, full of much energy other than a few parts, as you pointed out in your video. It's funny, so many fans always said "Oh my God, it's great and does great to serve as an "anime" for the fandom to introduce others to the series!" Meanwhile every time I watched it, I was always like "Well, it looks really nice...it's pretty nice for something made purely for the fandom by fans to release at Comiket. But I wouldn't say it's the best thing in the world." A friend of mine from college who has worked with modeling and animation pointed out how homogenous it all felt and how, for a vibrant fantasy world, it all feels so same-y and bland except for some parts in fight scenes. Excitement is an interesting thing in that it can drown out a lot of the objective observation of something that is occurring, even if we try to be objective. That is why, with something you enjoy, sometimes observations and judgements are best left until some time after first experience with it. But sometimes, the innate and instinctual feelings of observing something like MoP being same-y and slow and way too even from point-to-point can overcome the excitement of observing something like it. It sucks and I wish they would do better, but it also is being birthed from their desire to tailor it towards the majority of fans and make it enjoyable and familiar for them. So that also makes it rather difficult... I'm just sad the other anime that you brought up ended up getting stopped ;n; That one was so fun for the few episodes there were!
Yeah, in general I never saw anyone talk about this aspect when in reality, it's probably the one which ends up making the anime feel the way it does in the end. So I felt it wouldn't be such a bad idea to do so, even if it's not a perfect critique by any means. 😅 Even then, I feel that if something is tailored to a certain audience, it shouldn't be a justification to take massive shortcuts just to bring temporary excitement to a particular event, it's always better to make it so it can last in time in my opinion. Also, if you're talking about A Summer Day's Dream, it was never stopped! In fact the last Episode that was released was in October of 2021 with Episode 4! People thought it was the case because of a rumour saying that ZUN had put a stop to it, but the true story dates back to 2008 where ZUN indeed contacted the creator of this anime to tell him to change the name just to prevent it from looking like an officially-made animation. At the time, it was called "Touhou Anime Project" which explains it. And people in the west heard about this way later, which lead to the confusion.
Thanks for the compliments! I haven't really changed my mind about AoCF, though I've not really played it much recently but the game's still rather fun.
Extremely good video from start to finish. Honestly learned a lot more about animation here than I have from a majority of other content I've consumed in general? So this was a fun way to go about it. I think this really helped put into perspective some of my problems with the show though. I watched it for the first time last year and found myself thinking it could've been so much better, but when you put its lacking aspects even in the better parts of the show (The animation, in spite of its many issues, is still stronger than its writing :B) into direct focus, suddenly I start to realize why I found the show so downright forgettable. So many of its episodes barely do anything to grab your attention, right down to not even trying to use its animation properly most of the time to create memorable character moments. It really feels so strangely half-baked at the end of the day. Also glad you pointed out how the inherent formula behind the show itself is kind of a problem, you can really see what more time and energy breeds when even MoP's best episodes are compared to things like Sealed Esoteric History.
To be fair, although the video may tell a lot, there's also a whole lot that I feel I could've done way better, haha. But you're completely right, a lot of it feels really half-baked and uninteresting which is kind of sad. They should've gone with a more down to earth formula, it may not have been as shiny but at least, it would've been better continuously. Still, thank you very much for the compliments, I'll try to keep the videos going and make them better!
This was a very interesting deep dive into the animation of MoP. I'm glad that it was way more than "Eww this is bad because cheap" and move on. In fact much different instead of just doing the latter you instead deconstruct the scenes and find the flaws and point out why they're flaws. In certain points of the video there were opinions where I would beg to differ (like using quick jumps to transition poses in those "quirky" scenes. I see them more as time savers, though I can also agree that they are used a bit too liberally ). Other than that I find my self agreeing with a fair amount of your analysis. Also with the amount of motion/info graphics displayed in this video you can color me surprised. A bit over done in certain areas but it definitely did its job by keeping my eyes glued to my screen. For that, I kneel Very good video , thanks.
Hey, it's THE Jo! Thanks for stopping by. 🙂 Glad you've enjoyed the video, I tried making it enjoyable but it's true I might've gone a bit too far on certain aspects. The quick jumps you mentioned for example aren't all bad, as you put it, it's the way they are used which makes it look off. As for the visual side of the video, I find it to be too much at times, which is why I'll be slowing things down in the next one. I know some people were bothered by it, but it's true there was definitely a lot of time put into this side of the video, maybe too much in fact. Also, you're the one doing animation in the first place, so you're kneeling to no one. 😅
Oh man, our dear Iku lover is back I haven't watch MoP in a few years, and I didn't even know that episode 17 was a thing, or that the studio even officially announced the end of the show. I don't really know much about animation, so I kinda glossed over most of the "animation problems" you mentioned in the first half of the video when I watched MoP. However I remember being bothered by pretty much everything else you mentioned, as well as the fan-service aspect of a bunch of scenes (like the scene with Yukari and Ran bathing for example) or some character designs - I'm just not here to see a Sanae with more bosom volume than actual relevance. So I essentially forgot about the show after episode 10 or 12. But on the other hand, I remember the first few episodes pretty fondly, so I have so pretty mixed feelings about the anime. I don't know if Manpuku Jinja did a bad job with planning or work distribution or whatever - honestly, I just think it's unfortunate the series took this path of "having to regularly put out new episodes at all costs", but at the same time, I feel like it was kind of inevitable, with them needing to still make at least of bit of money off of it, because of how much work it requires... I think I would still recommend at least the first 5 to 6 episodes to people who are new to Touhou, and would like to see some nice animated interpretation of it, but unfortunately, that's about it.
I wouldn't blame you for not keeping up, the episodes kept releasing so fast that it was pretty hard to keep count. There are eighteen in total. But yeah, there are plenty of things that could've been said about the fan-service but it would've been too easy and also pretty subjective to go over that. Because well...it's a bit touchy. I think in general, the issue with Manpukujinja was a whole lot of management, nothing else. Though it wasn't a necessity, other Touhou animations manage to do it quite well with long spans of time in-between, while still keeping their fan-base. But yeah, same over here though I'd reduce it to four episodes instead, as they are probably the best of the whole series.
to be fair, animatics is probably the only way a lot of this could've happen if budget was an issue. But from a genuine animation perspective I think you've underlined some pretty jarring stuff haha
I don't deny it, budget must've been a factor but considering they still had moments that should've eaten the budget later on, that's why I underlined it. Otherwise yeah, some points are so hard to forget that once you've seen them, it's impossible to unsee them. 😅
Just watched the entire video, while i was thinking about making my own bone-chilling, slow-burn, aesthetic, genre-defining, character-driven Touhou fan anime where instead of Reimu Marisa or whatever Medicine is the main character. But then i remembered i can't even draw much less animate yet lol. Wait like 8 years and that might happen but i don't know for sure.
Simply put, there is pretty much none! I just put the picture because I had it and the panicked expression of Youmu made it seem as if she had done a mistake.
You make some good points, but I think given how for most fans the priorities are probably correct in the show, and for casual watchers many of the tiny issues aren't particularly noticed. Touhou fans probably: -Want to see their favourites made faithfully (thus the detail) -Lots of included characters (shortcuts to allow this cause weaker character design) -Want to see really cool fights that they can clip to show other people why they like the series (momentary sakuga) -Want funny character moments (goofy sliding) -Will lose interest if too much time passes between releases (many quality compromises and focus on specific scenes and not so much others or timing) -Want intrigue and posturing (Mystery plot that ends up not really making a lot of sense) -Want to make references to a lot of characters and situations (Some sequencing issues or parts that don't need to exist like chasing Ch'en in ep 1) Given those considerations and what was likely the budget and other restrictions, I think they made a pretty decent and memorable product with some really exciting high moments, but otherwise kind of lacking elsewhere. Given that no one has really outdone them in adapting the property and that most people won't particularly care about the minutia you've pointed out, we can call it a good anime, if not a great anime- and it's certainly the most realized one at its level of ambition. All of this 'potential' you allude to has been ruined in series with higher budgets and with more experienced staff. In other words, I don't think your central point of potential really holds much water critically- everything was done for a pretty obvious trade-off, and they understand all of the techniques you talk about and simply choose not to use them to match their time and money budgets, and what the average fan is looking to see.
I want to thank you for writing down that much, and it's your right to agree or disagree with what I'm saying. However, I wouldn't go as far as saying that the argument of potential is moot. Sure, Touhou fans will want to see their characters, they will want to see funny scenes, they will want to see references and the like, with a certain dose of faithfulness to the original material. And I agree on this. However, that isn't what I was criticizing here, because otherwise, no anime would ever be good because of restrictions and limit. Mostly, the issue to me is starting an anime, showing well done animation with good fights, somewhat okay plot and interesting premise at the start and ending up completely gutting it to the point where none of these points are even remotely here anymore. Sure, there is a budget and other factors but those are managed by the director and producer. And if the business plan is to quite literally drop the bar after the beginning, with no intention to ever keep the initial quality of the first few ones, then it's not exactly a great series you are creating. Again...granted, you have some great moments and some of the effort cannot be denied but other animated series have managed to do the opposite with less. Again, A Summer Day's Dream is a great example. The animation is done by a maximum of eight people and it still looks good, the issues with ASDD come from somewhere else however. My point is, just because it is Touhou doesn't mean an anime dedicated to it should lower their standards drastically just because "fans will watch it regardless". If they have done good before, they could've done good after. Hence the idea of "lost potential". As for the minutia part, I talked about it because those create issues with the pace of the anime. People may not realise it after one or two episodes but will after four or five. And when even the studio itself admit their defeat by releasing a Blu-ray Disk containing all episodes (reinforcing the idea of a full package), where they all last 2 hours and 11 minutes when put back to back instead of the 4+ hours that you get when purchasing all of the DVDs... it basically shows that after trimming the fat of MoP, there is barely more than half of the actual anime left, hence the reason why it's important to talk about it. If a fan doesn't see any problem with that however, who am I to blame them? But just because higher budget series and more experienced staff have also encountered those issues doesn't mean they couldn't have been avoided from the get-go from a better management. That being said, there are good things coming out of the anime and I don't deny it. but once again, if you think that no one has ever been able to adapt Touhou to a same level of ambition, I heavily recommend you to watch other animations realised with the series' in mind.
They really didn't show Youmu enough considering how much they rub Sakuya and Sanae in your face in comparison. The show's bias in general is super annoying.
Not to show unilateral support for the show, but almost every piece of Touhou media has character bias, often towards ESoD; when this show was made, it wasn't clear that Youmu was quite that popular until a recent poll, and her cheesecake potential obviously doesn't match some of the characters they chose to focus more on. Your particular complaint is so subjective however that it's almost meaningless regarding what I wrote, though. If your point was that my argument was that the creators of the show still made some fan viewers mad, then sure; almost every touhou fan thing gets arbitrarily blasted for not having their faves. Personally, I thought Youmu got an okay representation given that she's less flexible as a character than the other two fifth-level boss characters, like that scene with Yamaxanadu verbally ripping her apart after her drinks with Komachi being pretty funny. @@Shyguymask
@@FerrignousBlob MoP's bias towards mainly SDM is particularly blatant and major relative to other Touhou works. Youmu was always known as one of the more (if not most) popular Touhou characters, and even asides from that she is clearly one of the "Main" playable characters after Reimu/Marisa. Yet in the IN arc of MoP, every "team" was prominently displayed and important to the arc & final battle... except Netherworld Team, who pretty much was sidelined and did almost nothing. They spent like a minute at most showing Youmu one-shotting Reisen and *that's it.* It comes off as pity from the makers of the show wanting to show they didn't literally forget about Netherworld team. And even in that moment they had Sanae hang out with them... *just because.* It's better than nothing, but there's a lot more than could and should have been done. We couldn't even have something as easy to set up as Netherworld Team fighting Mokou after the main IN arc, which would have made obvious sense and be a great opportunity for more representation and screen time. No, instead it's Scarlet Team/SDM ONCE AGAIN. This isn't some personal preference or subjective thing, it's an objective blunder. How in the world is Youmu any less "flexible" than Sakuya and Sanae? How do you come to that conclusion? If Netherworld Team showed up in the Eirin confrontation instead of Scarlet Team, would that be "inappropriate" or less fitting? Would it not have been possible for the show to have more serious scenes showing Youmu's backstory with Youki or something? If hypothetically Youmu joined Reimu's side in the MoF arc & confrontation, would it have been somehow more inappropriate or unfitting than Sanae appearing in the IN arc at all? If hypothetically MoP continued and they reached TD, would Youmu not be "flexible" enough to hypothetically star as the main incident solver? What's the problem here, I don't understand.
@@Shyguymask Most Touhou fiction is biased towards ESoD. You need to chill out. As someone whose favourites are Yuugi and Kanako, it's just the reality that it's the jumping on point for a lot of fans historically. Why you are dumping this on me is mysterious, but I will attempt to at least explain my meaning. The marketing and possibly the author's intent is generally focused towards large tits- and Youmu's are in fanon generally considered much smaller than those of Sanae, and in this case Sakuya. I agree that Youmu is cool, but she has a lot of characters to compete with. Youmu one-shotting Reisen is a pretty neat scene in my opinion, but it's not like I was stopwatching how much focus each group got. Obviously Reimu/Marisa got the lion's share of the focus as they are the typical heroines regardless of whether or not it's a missed opportunity to try something different. In terms of character flexibility: Some characters are reused more for their function as a narrative device or as a conventional viewpoint. Aya, Rinnosuke and Nitori are excellent emissaries of the former camp- used in countless pieces of media to disseminate information, shopkeep, and invent respectively. Sakuya being a maid that acts as a regular liaison to the village is a flexible role. Her job has her interacting with the largish cast of ESoD and Marisa and Reimu smoothly- and her power for time stopping creates a lot of creative problem fixes or animation saves as well as showy stuff with the knives. She's capable of acting independently or with her mistress with no setup, and SDM is closer to the human village than Hakugyokurou. She's extremely easy to write for. Sanae's flexibility comes from being a decent viewpoint character. As another shrine maiden, and having come from our world and being a relative newcomer to all of the fictional world of Gensokyo, she's a character that is easy to have ask questions or be brought out dramatically, or make references to our world. She has theological expertise as well as the whole Moriya trinity thing and knows everyone on Youkai Mountain, which is again useful for leading into other characters or explaining/solving things. She's naive and good natured and very faithful to the shrine and is fairly easy to write for. She also in fanon has huge tatas, which is in line with this show's marketing ethos. Youmu is comparatively, more cut off from Gensokyo. Pairing her with Komachi for PoFV's scene was a good idea as they have somewhat similar working situations while having extremely different work ethics. She is obstensibly a gardener, which is less applicable than maid or professional exorcist for leading into conventional situations or incidents respectively. She serves Yuyuko, who is generally not a very well-integrated character in fan works. Her personality, outside of being serious and easily off-put, is somewhat nebulous as far as I can see, making her slightly harder to write for. She has, in fanon, some of the smallest breasts of all, which I hate to keep bringing up but it's relevant. I am almost undoubtedly wasting my time given how much of a meaningless hot-button issue this is for you, but let me finish by saying that this issue never crossed my mind. Again, I think there are plenty of issues with this show that are mostly understandable, but my original problem was that most of the central complaints in this video were mostly irrelevant or reaching, but none more than yours. Cool, you like Youmu. Good for you. I can't believe I wrote this up.
Glad to have you back finally and seeing you take this undertaking to the end! Great vid over all and I agree with a lot, if not everything you said, even if I think it's a little unfair to put a fanmade anime, no matter how easy it on the eyes, in comparison against actual professional standards. But you did address the fact of it being a fanmade anime and the issues brought with it in the latter half of the video. I guess the main difference in how you and I view this show is the conclusion. You clearly love animation and want to have good content to watch (like SDD, that shit is godlike), but for me Memories of Phantasm has never been anything too exciting. It's just eye candy every 7 or 8 months. I don't much mind if it isn't up to par with professional standards. But I can also understand why do you care. It is something you wanted to see succeeding so seeing it disappoint is frustrating. Coincidentally, the conclusions you brought near the end mirror my views on modern Touhou as a whole so I understand the feeling of frustration, even if for me it has a different target. Anyway, hope to see more content from you in the future too.
I don't disagree, comparing with professional anime may be unfair but even then, if I were to compare it to other fan-made anime, whether it'd be within Touhou or not, it would still not be as stellar. Besides, it wasn't exactly the point. Explaining the rules was just there to emphasize how some these are present at the beginning but not in later episodes, showcasing the decline in quality of the series. But yeah, MoP is pretty much a theme park ride. It's quite short, it takes ages for you to get in and you come out of it feeling a bit underwhelmed most of the time. Still, it's obviously a bit much to ask for perfect animation from an indie studio but it's not wrong to ask for what was given at the beginning of the series. 😅 That being said, I won't do that sort of video again any time soon, editing like that is super exhausting. But other videos are on the way and they probably won't ask for that much time.
2.5 years if you're talking about normal time, but in terms of effective time, it's a completely different story. It could've been finished much faster. :(
I love the warning at the beginning, implying that every opinion he just said is possibly not even his opinion anymore since it was made from 2 years prior.
I still agree with a lot of what I've said in the video. Just wanted to put a warning since a lot of what I say at the end is stuff that could help to improve, which isn't possible anymore since they stopped production, basically turning things into past tense.
@@SurnistAh yes that's understandable, i just thought that the warning itself is pretty funny. Though after rereading my sentence i felt like i left quiet a bitter tone, so i would like to apologize in advance if it did offend you as i had no intention of it.
That is the third video in a row i wacth that explain how animation works, first the one by Noodle, then the one byt Diable Positif (chaine française hehe salut surnist comment tu vas) and now this I feel like i have all the knowledge to start animating now, and i've never even drawn digitally before lol!
Welcome back man Was kind of looking forward to this since when we last talked I was interested on your opinion on this and was wondering if you were going to make a video on it
I get that people don't like MoP for one reason or another, I personally think it has some scenes that are a little too fan service-y, but what doujin isn't. People forget this is a fan made anime, it's obviously not going to be perfect. MoP serves it's job as a fun, light-hearted anime featuring some of the Touhou cast. If you go into it expecting it to be a fully complete anime adaptation, have perfect animation, and strictly adhere to what ZUN considers to be canon, you will be disappointed, but again, it's a fan made anime which is why I think it gets way too much hate. It's the product of people who genuinely love and enjoy the Touhou series and it's evident just from the sheer time spent making MoP, which I think is a quality of it's own. Sure, the pacing is weird, characters show up for no reason, and some of the animation is subpar, but that's what makes it special imo, you can obviously tell it's the work of fans who love the series for what it's worth. There are next to no series that have fans that love it so much that they'll spend over 10 years of their lives producing anything for it. I feel like people go into MoP expecting it to be something it's not intending to be and then being disappointed because it didn't live up to their expectations that they set for it. The creator even said he never intended for it to be a lore-accurate adaptation, yet people still expect it to be. Perfection is the thief of happiness, sometimes it's ok to just sit and watch something.
I never disagreed with the fact that Memories of Phantasm was a passionately-made anime, far from it. Otherwise, as you've pointed out they would've not spent ten years on it if they didn't feel interested in the project. But on the opposite, I also feel like the mantle of "fan-made anime" is too often used as a shield. After all, if you look at the early episodes of the anime, you'll notice a much different quality than the one you can find in Episode 18, it's night and day. Meaning that they weren't unable to keep this quality going if they truly desired it, it didn't even have to be perfect as I pointed out at the end of the video. If you can enjoy it for what it is, then by all means, do! I'm not one to dictate if people should have fun watching this anime after all. But I've got a hunch that a lot of the disappointment comes from how many things MoP tried to be at the same time, being a jack of all trades but master of none. Meaning that it was bound to disappoint more people in the end in more ways than just lore. As you said, it was never meant to be completely lore-accurate and this is not what I based my video around either. This is why my approach was instead to show the decline of quality through the episodes, which cannot be denied. Again, comparing Episode One and Eighteen is night and day. The former is a short pilot adventure through the events of PCB, the latter is an attempt at a half-comedic, half-fanservice episode with one-and-a-half minute dedicated to nudity which made me feel ashamed of watching. Not to mention the way they sold the episode in the first place, not having an individual DVD release. At the end of the day, it is a fan-made anime, yes. And for Touhou, there are several others who also have their different qualities. It's simply a bit of a shame that the one that is usually shown as an entry into the franchise is probably the one with the most plentiful issues. It is fine to enjoy it despite the issues of course but it's equally as important to recognize them.
I can never complain about Touhou content such as this, because I view myself as spoiled in comparison. Touhou fan content is in its own league of volume of content and quality of said content. Most other series I used to like are dead, having a drought or were ruined. With that said, I never expected MoP to be some deeper retelling of the events of the games; I've always viewed it as fanservice and filler since the beginning, and in that realm, I find it quite charming. If people had Touhou misrepresented to them from MoP, honestly I think fanon has misrepresented many more things. And the majority of people who like Touhou do not deep dive into the lore out of a lack of interest in the games themselves. That, in my opinion, is their own loss. As for if Touhou deserves better? Sure, Touhou deserves the Moon, but I'm not going to complain about what is essentially fanmade material which, despite your complaints, looks better to me than the corporate schlock dime-a-dozen isekai anime that are released like a plague out of Japan these days. Most anime I grew up with honestly looked worse than MoP. Peoples' standards for animation are way higher now. Honestly, I couldn't care. Osana Reimu, with limited production values, touched my heart more than any anime. Did MoP ever reach those levels narratively? Obviously not even close, but I never expected an amazing story from it. I wasn't disappointed by it because it was everything I expected it to be. Did they kind of waste some of the money and opportunities they had and rush things? Definitely, but I'm surprised just how much content we were able to get out of it, and I appreciate it enough for that. If anything, MoP being a success makes me happy because it shows Touhou has so much more potential to go even further if another group comes around to try another OVA-style thing.
À cause de mon niveau en anglais catastrophique, j'ai pas vraiment tout compris les explications sur l'animation etc... Mais sinon le travail qui a été fait dans cette vidéo est insane !
Et bien écoute, merci beaucoup pour les compliments ! J'aurais bien mis des sous-titres mais disons que faire ça plusieurs fois pour une heure de vidéo, c'est plutôt long. Peut-être que je m'y attèlerais un jour mais ça va prendre un peu de temps.🙇
i thought you died :((( Jokes aside, this was a very well researched and thought-out! I always had my gripes with MoP and this whole video sorta exemplified exactly what I felt. There were budgetry issues, animation errors, and overall just a lot of stuff that didn't look so great, especially since I think the style itself looks washed out and drainy... though, I'm honestly quite surprised you didn't go over the writing of the anime itself. It felt really dull, uninspired and dragged on the already sluggish tone the animation brought to the series, such as the setup of Yukari as the villain being really underdeveloped, a lot of the dialogue feeling really strange, and many of the plots of the episodes just felt boring, though I suspect that this is just a problem I had with it personally. Overall an amazing video! I learned a lot and am glad to see you back in action :D.
May die in the future, I dunno. But yeah I didn't go over the writing for a simple reason, it's quite easy to do so. Anyone can take a crack at it if they desire to do so and because of that, a lot of people have already realised that the writing sort of sucks. It's absolutely a problem, a massive one in fact but considering the video is already an hour long, I would not want to see the length of it if I had talked about the writing too. Would probably still be dead as we speak otherwise. 😔 Still! Thank you very much! The video definitely has some issues so I'm not exactly satisfied with it but I'm glad people enjoyed it in spite of that.
As person who dislikes Memories of Phantasm quite a lot, and even was a very vocal hater of it for some time, I am... very puzzled by this video, because 99% of the stuff you are listing here are the things that I've not only never thought about, but don't even understand why are you making them such big of an issue. There's even a number of times when you show a supposetly "bad" scene and my reaction was "I don't get what's wrong here", even after you explain the "wrong" part (I also fail to see how that scene with Cirno which is supposedly "good" is different from the scenes with Marisa which are supposedly "bad"). When I saw the intro and an hour long timeframe, I've expected a video I'm gonna vastly agree with, but instead most of the time watching this I've felt an urge to defend the thing I've literally personally attacked other people for liking. Gonna say that if this was about something I liked, I would have been outraged, but since you've made it about the thing I hate, I am just confused. Honestly, not only I think that you hate MoP for all of the wrong reasons, but also don't get the reasons in the first place, and why are they worth to hate anything for.
I don't think it's unreasonable to dislike something for different reasons, in fact I'm sure plenty of people don't enjoy Memories of Phantasm because of its plot, or also because of its copius fan-service that ended devouring the series during the last episode. And I agree! All of those clearly don't make the series any better and also have the right to be criticised. But other people have done it before me and frankly anyone who's watched the show will be able to tell you that something is wrong with that. However, I decided to take the axis of animation instead which it's a whole harder. Especially since it also is a question of standards and what you expect from the series itself, even if not entirely. The point I was trying to make while explaining things in the video is that there was almost no reason for Manpukujinja to go the way they did for the anime considering they had done a few good episodes at the beginning. It causes an issue by setting up false expectations for the rest of the series, which it doesn't follow upon. Only having short momentary scenes to "fill the gap". Comparing Episodes such as 3 and 13 easily shows this, both in terms of quality and length. Explaining the rules was necessary beforehand in order to show why those are important in the domain of animation and to showcase what we often take for granted. I don't exactly know which scene you're taking as an example when you're talking about the "Marisa" scene but I'm assuming it is the one I'm talking about during the Acting/Staging section. In that case, I didn't say it was bad, just that it wasn't great in the context of an in-universe logic because of Marisa's innate lack of reaction. When you see the scene with Cirno in Episode 7, it just flows perfectly and you can clearly see that there is a lot more effort put into that scene from the way characters move, even when hitting the ground at a high speed. The reason why I dislike Memories of Phantasm is because...with the team, time and possibly budget that they had, they could've gone and made a series that would be remembered for all of the good reasons, which isn't what they did, instead preferring to follow customer demand, which in turn, lowered the quality of their product, especially on the animation's side. And I don't expect everyone to agree with this, but to me...an animation's main selling point is the animation, followed by the story and the visual style. And if the animation isn't your main priority when it comes to watching an anime, well... you're obviously not going to see why I'm so worked up about this. But that's okay! Again, we don't all need to 100% agree on why we dislike something! Often, it's nice to just discuss and explain things instead.
Gotta respect the dedication. My man spent years learning about animation and anime economics... just to tell everyone that a doujin work sucks 🙂 Truthfully, I hopped off after the first few episodes (back when only 4 or 5 were released) because I've found it just... boring. They don't really do anything interesting with the plot or the characters - on the contrary, they're rather simplified. And the fight scenes... well, this is obviously not minusT. Interesting to hear that it only gets worse!
If only I had spent years learning, the video would probably be a lot longer, haha. No, most of the time was instead spent on editing and other things happening in real life but it's true that regardless, it was to tell people that MoP isn't great. 😅 Though I wouldn't blame you for hopping off the series around the fifth episode's mark, fights were pretty good at that point (if you're not expecting MinusT but that's a high bar) but it's true that characters still felt a little flat. At least the action was there and it wasn't a complete fan-service simulator yet. Because even if fan-service isn't bad by itself, Episode 18 shows how badly it impacted the show, with the 7 minutes of episodes having 1:30 minutes of nudity. Believe me when I say, it's actually that bad of a contrast...💀
While I can understand that point of view, I would advise watching the video in its entirety before saying that. As I go over it in some way, shape or form.
As much as I appreciate the amount of effort that went into this video, I feel like this whole thing could have been equally expressed with a simple "I don't like it."
Well, doing that would've been much less interesting, it's better to explain why and why it may not appeal to others. Besides, the thumbnail did say that.
The fun part of opinions are the arguments to support them, imo Opinions (and arguments) are always going to be subjective, but that doesn't mean there's no fun in exploring why someone likes or dislikes something. It's also an interesting thought exercise, like, in general. If someone goes "I just don't like it", there's nothing to discuss or argue about. But if an argument is made, then you can disect the premises or the logic, agree disagree, etc.
Honestly, more could be said about the lackluster story. Every character motivation is just: Humans are weak, youkai strong until last minute ass pull. Ignoring the copious titty cause lets face it, most of these characters would be stack anyways. But Touhou is more than it's girls and retelling the... admittedly short incidents by stretching them all out and poor characterization that plague's touhou fandom. Nothing wrong with wanting better quality for what they love. Unfortunately, we won't get a fully realize anime that actually feels like the series tone. Though, I do miss the more interconnected "good" story plotlines. The newer in hell arc is kinda disappointing and boring. Nothing I couldn't see from Touhou 17 to 19 has been interesting to me.
Granted, it's true I could've talked about the story or the fan-service more but honestly...I believe a lot of people who watched the anime noticed that there are some glaring "plot" points. And since some other people have done it before me, I thought it would be redundant to do so. As for the "good" story plotlines...well, I don't think it's all bad at the moment. Sure, it's not as interconnected as it used to be, but I feel there still are some pretty nice ideas in the games, even if it's not flawless. But then again, Touhou hasn't often been about good plotlines in the first place, EoSD is a notorious example and PoFV's plot isn't really one in the end, even if it ends up being more "poetic" than anything which works in its favour. I hope you'll still be able to find things you can enjoy in future games, though. 😃
@@Surnist Probably should've said the character depth isn't as good as it was after LOLK and AoCF. Granted, I am writer and overly critical of what I take in as entertainment. Gameplay for the most part has been fun...minus the crashing in Touhou 19. Yes, you'll be correct in that the ideas are good but the execution lately is a mixed bag. Though, I did like the talk about animation, it's just isn't something within my wheel house. Take care btw.
@@slycershad Don't think being critical of things is a bad thing, although I would probably say that the character depth isn't there as much for the time being because the characters from those games haven't been there as much. There's also all of the fan interpretations, some of which are pretty great. Though I agree that some ideas aren't perfect in execution. Animation isn't my main thing either though but I just wanted to talk about it. 😄 Still, thank you very much and take care as well!
I'm really disappointed and confused, because I expected from this video, which is 1 hour long, a deep analysis of anime and/or its problems, all problems, not a damn lesson on "right" animation. I mean, you spent 1 HOUR of time talking about "bad" animation and rules... This video is high-quality and great, and I get that animation is not perfect, but damn...
There's a reason why I took this approach and explained animation rules, it's because people will often refer to Memories of Phantasm as a greatly animated series. This however, is only true for a few scenes and much less of a true statement the further into the anime. Yet, before making the video, I never saw anyone talk about it. Whereas it's easy to find people talking about the vapid scenario or other issues the anime has. And while it's a big part of the video for sure, explanations are only there for half of the video, whereas the other half is criticism of other points, where the issues could come from and why they are, ideas to remedy them and a conclusion, showing that the anime had a sharp decline in quality. The point was to show that, even if you can like it, it's also important to recognise its low points. With animation being one of them in many parts.
Sorry, but I find your presentation style very exhausting to watch. The way you constantly keep sliding in words and symbols from every corner of the screen for every single spoken phrase in riddle like fashion might be fun putting together, but it ends up distracting from the actual point you want to present. It's like trying to have a normal conversation with a person, who keeps pulling out an endless amount of objects and signs out of his pockets that somehow relate to the things being said, like a magician.
I completely understand what you're saying and don't worry because I wholeheartedly agree. At the beginning, the video was supposed to be much slower paced, which would've made this much less of an issue. But I ended up messing the audio and preemptively editing over it, which made it almost impossible to come back to a previous point and so I had to roll with it, which resulted in...the editing that you've seen. I wouldn't be surprised if some people were to be deterred from the video just because of it. My apologies. I'll make it slower in the next one.
@@Surnist Okay, fair enough. I'm still interested in your take on MoP (you're not alone in your dislike in the series), so I'll try to keep it running on the side without letting the editing distract me too much.
I'm back with some spoiled and spilled milk... anyone?
but what kind of milk is it
@@puzzlepuddles6712 Urumilk.
@@Surnist cow moment
@@Surnisti gotta think abt it
@@Surnist *oh*
I agree with some of your points about the show but some, as an animator, are cherry picking
In the animatic part [4:25] I understand what you mean, but tweening is not bad, it is a common thing in Japanese animation, you can call it the "quirky"/"cheese" animation depending on the scene, but using tweens like this is not part of the animatic, like you explained it, it's the sketches that give the idea of the movement, but that doesn't mean it can't be used, and sometimes is used to save time and money for other scenes for example 5:25 when the bottle goes down, yeahh, it would look cool seen Eirin going down, but to save money for another shot they probably did that.
With timing movement at 8:32, The movement of Marisa is actually good, the confidence that her character shows in this scene works with the movement, it doesn't need it, using it a lot on characters or certain situation makes the scene or character look weird or out of place.
SMEERS!! [10:17] the Marisa shot doesn't need it, she is going fast, sure, but the smeer is NOT to indicate speed, is to "fill" the empty space of a long space between drawings. Aya shot is probably for how she was acting, a joke... AND THAT SHOT WITH HANGING THE PHONE YEAH!!!! all the budget went to hanging the phone ahha
The silouhette!!!... COME ON!! you are cheating the comparation with getting rid off Reimu's bow. While I agree with you in how some characters have the same thing, most of the time there is a characteristic thing they have to say "AH! THAT'S THIS CHARACTER", if you took Yuyuko's skirt and fan... yeah... I WOULDN 'T KNOW!!! aqnd the eyes well... that's something many people complain/make fun of, the common anime style if you will.
I can talk more about animation (I agree with most, like your idea with Marisa and the stairs) and such BUT what I want to talk about more is.. well it takes a lot of money to draw a simple anime character, IMAGINE ANIMATING IT! with sprites is easy to keep the shadows and lighting.. but with a drawing you need to be careful or the animation will look wonky, that's why there is no lipsync and most of the time you see tweens or static characters. I WISH IT WAS LIKE SUMMER DAY DREAM! I love that one so much!!! but sadly the amount of detail they put in MoP will make everything take more time and more money, and sadly, being an indie project, it can be affected by all of the factors the team put themselves. I like it for what it is, but I wish they spread the animations in a smart way.
BTW!! Good video!!! I like watching stuff that talks about animation a lot!!!! I didn't expect to watch one about touhou!
Hey Pelo, didn't expect to see you here! Still, a welcome surprise!
It's true that I should've talked more about certain things, I really didn't go as much in depth as I should've... Stuff like tweening as you've said, could've been better handled for sure but I just wanted to convey the idea that even though it's often used in Japanese animation, it's weird to see a detailed character design with...well, a very simple movement.
For the movement, it's true that I could've picked another scene but the issue is that well...examples were actually pretty sparse a few areas, so I ended up picking this one. At the time the movement felt pretty uniform, but it might've been me.
The smears part...oh man, I was confident that I should've removed the Marisa shot but when I realised this, the video was pretty much complete. Still, I'm glad the phone's example gave a chuckle at least.😅
For the silhouette part, it's true that it was a bit cheap. But it was to give a proper example of what it would look like without accessories basically, though in retrospect, I would've wanted to go for another example. The only issue was...the given material, most artbooks were out of stock basically and I wasn't able to scan mine. So I was basically in a pinch here while doing it. The same face syndrom however, is a real thing that I know people complain about but I still had to mention it somewhere.😓
Though even if I agree that it takes money to animate, let alone draw a character and I don't deny that it takes a ton of effort as well, especially as you've said when it comes to small details like the shadows, the lighting and others, I still think there was a way for them to avoid dropping their quality so hard after the fourth episode. It's an indie project and as you've also said, it basically suffers from comparisons to other more carefully crafted animations (even if those have their own issues) but in general I just wanted to show that the issue isn't always coming from the scenario as many people would point out (even if...it's still the case here, let's not lie to ourselves).
But thank you very much Pelo, I'm glad that you took the time to watch the video! I didn't know anything about animation before that and I basically tried to learn things in order to understand why the anime didn't appeal to me.
@@Surnist I get what you mean, I was excited for Eiki's episode but the lack of movement in that episode is underwhelming, I still hate when they get out of the food truck! But I get what you mean!
Oh I didn't know the books are out of stock! I wish they make a big book with everything rather than a magazine, would be perfect for stuff like the silhouettes!
And no problem Surnist!! I love your videos and they are incredibly fun to watch! (specially the backgrounds) and it's ok, you got most of the animation rules right!!
@@SrPelo Yeah the books which as you've said are more magazines centered around one character most of the time and were never really restocked, which left some of them being hard to find, especially in good quality. There are a couple I managed to find but a few of them are...something. For example, the first artbook was on Lily White and contained a whole six pages of genga, which...uh...yeah.😶
But thank you once again! I'll probably try to dial the characters in the background down a little bit though because they take a long time to move around and are too distracting at points, but I'll surely try to keep them around in some way. Glad I at least didn't butcher animation as badly as I could've, that would've been horrible. 😅
sr
A formal Sr. Pelo isn't something I was expecting to see.
After 2 years he made a epic return
Wouldn't call it epic, but it is indeed a return. Glad to see you all!
I've heard this man suffer day after day, week after week, and month after month only to progress for mere seconds.
Now I can fully enjoy the blockbuster with some microwave popcorn, thanks!
Far from a blockbuster, you know. :p
But yeah, next time I won't make it that hectic, nor that long. Hope you can still enjoy it!
"and when the world needed him the most...
HE RETURNED!"
Really happy to see this video finally published... Even if I can't watch it yet😢
Did the world really need me, I'm not so sure but I'm at least glad some people are happy about this. :)
Don't worry about not being able to watch it yet. I don't even mind if people watch it bit by bit seeing the length of it.
But yeah, it's been a long time coming...
@@Surnist being "needed" is always a weird thing to think about imo so don't focus on it too much. What really matters is that you're definitely wanted and appreciated (by most at least). You've left a positive impact on lots of people and you have evey reason to be glad for that
I suppose you're right. Maybe I tend to focus too much on things like these in the first place. If I can make some people happy, I guess that's a good enough start. 🙂
Should have been called "2D animation guide" because I'm learning so much stuff I'll need to know in the future!
I wouldn't dare name it like that, considering I don't even know how to animate myself. 😅
Le boulot de malaaaaade omg je suis choqué
Mon respect pour toi augmente de jour en jour et semble ne jamais pouvoir attendre de limite
Usually I play hour long videos in the background, but I decided to sit through this to the end and it was worth it. Glad to see you posting videos again after a 2 year hiatus, hope you continue making quality content like this.
Will try! Though probably not of the same length but I will certainly try to not take as much time.
This video puts into words one of the feelings I have about MoP pretty clearly - which is just how visually jarring it often felt. I don't quite agree with some of the points made, but I think the majority of these are on point and even explain it well enough that someone who doesn't know a lot about animation can probably understand it.
I think my biggest problem is how the anime clearly wants to do its own thing, but it's still trying to adapt the game plot. In adapting the game plot, they decide that some things should just be skipped over/made into slideshows either out of interest or, more likely: budget. I would have vastly preferred them doing their own plots that would better fit the episode time rather than making diluted and messy adaptions of game scripts. I think that alone would have made the anime at least tolerable for me. Unfortunate, really.
Glad I was able to at least convey the message at the end correctly, that would've been the worst thing to mess up, haha. 😅And obviously, I'm not asking people to agree with me on all points, that tends to be difficult to do so in such a long video anyways.
But yeah, nothing much to add to what you've said right here, they should've clearly gone with a home-made plot from the very beginning and this would've caused way less trouble. Instead...well, we got what we got which is very unfortunate.
let's see the megafrog take on this video
One of the most epic comebacks I ever seen!
That part about the standard actually being somewhere between 8-12 fps opened my eyes about why Flipnote Studio only went up to 8.
Flipnote Studio was such a dope app, just doodling to do small animations was just the best.
Ça y est ! J'ai tout vu !
Il a tout vu !
you are the only touhou youtuber i watch and enjoy and the length of your videos along with the quality always surprise me
Glad you had a good time! I'll try to keep it up to make those videos enjoyable. 😊
holy shit you actually finished it, congratulations
Surnist finally returned with the milk...
glad to see you back~
Glad to see all of you again as well! 😄
Man what a comeback and a half!
Honestly I share a lot of sentiments when it comes to MoP. I remembered with some old friends we watched one of the latter half episodes of the IN arc. I didn't really keep in touch with the series but throughout that time I'm just wondering "Why are we just focused on this moment?", "Why is the energy of the scene at a mismatch with the story?", "Why is Kaguya stoned out of her mind?" which was eventully capped off with the cries of how the IN arc was still teased to be going after it ended.
Granted I think some crossed wire I heard about some people involved made me think of the series as more devious which honestly to now I feel pretty bad in letting myself go on thinking that one bit, but with how my disapointment was for the chaotic (yet dull) story telling and the huge bulk of unremarkable scenes which I felt were pretty gross in their character interpritation in both canon and fanon regards it's an easy trap to fall into.
An adaptation of Touhou in anime, ESPECIALLY on doujin budgets is gonna be a huge ask and there will probably always be a drawback... Which quite frankly I think with the inate nature of doujin it'd be impossible to do the most in depth adaptation of Touhou without some compensation or huge alteration done in one aspect or another. In that sense if someone were to give such an idea another stab I at least hope that it's more so true to what the creator wants rather than what the collective fandom may want. I'd love to see a full adaption of some of the games as anime (especially say HMs story to be given an outlet that isn't bound to an albeit jank game) but I'd also be content with something the people who make it show genuine fondness over whether it takes elements and limits it to make it feesable.
But alas, it might be awhile before someones tries to give it a shot again. Least it made for some good gifs and screencaps at the end of the day.
Honestly, I don't really know what to say here considering that I went through a lot of the same steps when I started watching the anime as well. But I don't think it will take time for people to give it a shot and show their own vision of what an animated Touhou adaptation can be because... well, some people are already doing it. 😅
Still, the idea of animating things such as the fighting games has a ton of legitimity since you have a lot more material to work with when it comes to fights and the likes. But doing that would probably be a little trickier to pull off.
When the world needed him the most, he returned
Nice, welcome back! Personally, I didn't have much of an issue with the animation because MOP seems to simply be a fan project and as far as those go, this one looks pretty good. The use of animatics is something done even in professionally made anime, so seeing it used so much in a fan project wasn't a big deal to me. And on the topic of smears, I don't think they're necessary for fast movements. I've seen some animations from animators depicting fast action sequences without the use of smears and played around with it myself, it's really about how the drawings are timed IMO, which you covered really well.
To be fair, the animation isn't the first problem when people watch the show, truly. But the downgrade it sees between a lot of episodes is really tough. As for the animatics, while it's true that professionally-made sometime use them, they do because they have a tighter release schedule, which isn't really the case of Manpukujinja. It's all context-sensitive really.
The smears sections on the other hand, I somewhat agree, I really skimmed over it and the examples could've been way better chosen. Unfortunately, by the time I told myself that...the video was close to being finished. Still, thank you for the feedback, it's the first time I tried doing this kind of thing, so it's all really new!
Came for the dissing of MoP, stayed for the animation classes xD
Awesome video!!
I liked it because it gave me a quick idea of how the story of each game went cause I was still new to touhou
After a bit over 2 years it is finally out. You really put in a lot of effort into this video and I'm very proud of you for going through with this idea and finishing it in the end. I really hope for you that it's gonna do well and hopefully you can get a bit of rest now, before you tackle your next project. ♥
Nope, no rest. I've got other things to attend to. :)
It's very interesting to see you breaking down the animation in this series, as so many people hype up the animation in it as something amazing. For me though, I always felt like it wasn't really...well, full of much energy other than a few parts, as you pointed out in your video. It's funny, so many fans always said "Oh my God, it's great and does great to serve as an "anime" for the fandom to introduce others to the series!"
Meanwhile every time I watched it, I was always like "Well, it looks really nice...it's pretty nice for something made purely for the fandom by fans to release at Comiket. But I wouldn't say it's the best thing in the world." A friend of mine from college who has worked with modeling and animation pointed out how homogenous it all felt and how, for a vibrant fantasy world, it all feels so same-y and bland except for some parts in fight scenes.
Excitement is an interesting thing in that it can drown out a lot of the objective observation of something that is occurring, even if we try to be objective. That is why, with something you enjoy, sometimes observations and judgements are best left until some time after first experience with it. But sometimes, the innate and instinctual feelings of observing something like MoP being same-y and slow and way too even from point-to-point can overcome the excitement of observing something like it. It sucks and I wish they would do better, but it also is being birthed from their desire to tailor it towards the majority of fans and make it enjoyable and familiar for them. So that also makes it rather difficult...
I'm just sad the other anime that you brought up ended up getting stopped ;n; That one was so fun for the few episodes there were!
Yeah, in general I never saw anyone talk about this aspect when in reality, it's probably the one which ends up making the anime feel the way it does in the end. So I felt it wouldn't be such a bad idea to do so, even if it's not a perfect critique by any means. 😅
Even then, I feel that if something is tailored to a certain audience, it shouldn't be a justification to take massive shortcuts just to bring temporary excitement to a particular event, it's always better to make it so it can last in time in my opinion.
Also, if you're talking about A Summer Day's Dream, it was never stopped! In fact the last Episode that was released was in October of 2021 with Episode 4! People thought it was the case because of a rumour saying that ZUN had put a stop to it, but the true story dates back to 2008 where ZUN indeed contacted the creator of this anime to tell him to change the name just to prevent it from looking like an officially-made animation. At the time, it was called "Touhou Anime Project" which explains it. And people in the west heard about this way later, which lead to the confusion.
Haven't seen you in a while Surnist...
Welcome back!
WOUHOU I’m on tv !
woah this video actually exists
I can't believe it, does it really exist? It's like Schrodinger.
After 2 years your back with a well made vid well done.Btw do you still like aocf or did you change your mind about it?
Thanks for the compliments!
I haven't really changed my mind about AoCF, though I've not really played it much recently but the game's still rather fun.
Extremely good video from start to finish. Honestly learned a lot more about animation here than I have from a majority of other content I've consumed in general? So this was a fun way to go about it.
I think this really helped put into perspective some of my problems with the show though. I watched it for the first time last year and found myself thinking it could've been so much better, but when you put its lacking aspects even in the better parts of the show (The animation, in spite of its many issues, is still stronger than its writing :B) into direct focus, suddenly I start to realize why I found the show so downright forgettable. So many of its episodes barely do anything to grab your attention, right down to not even trying to use its animation properly most of the time to create memorable character moments. It really feels so strangely half-baked at the end of the day.
Also glad you pointed out how the inherent formula behind the show itself is kind of a problem, you can really see what more time and energy breeds when even MoP's best episodes are compared to things like Sealed Esoteric History.
To be fair, although the video may tell a lot, there's also a whole lot that I feel I could've done way better, haha.
But you're completely right, a lot of it feels really half-baked and uninteresting which is kind of sad. They should've gone with a more down to earth formula, it may not have been as shiny but at least, it would've been better continuously.
Still, thank you very much for the compliments, I'll try to keep the videos going and make them better!
SURNIST IS BACK WITH THE MILK (and video)!
This was a very interesting deep dive into the animation of MoP. I'm glad that it was way more than "Eww this is bad because cheap" and move on. In fact much different instead of just doing the latter you instead deconstruct the scenes and find the flaws and point out why they're flaws. In certain points of the video there were opinions where I would beg to differ (like using quick jumps to transition poses in those "quirky" scenes. I see them more as time savers, though I can also agree that they are used a bit too liberally ). Other than that I find my self agreeing with a fair amount of your analysis.
Also with the amount of motion/info graphics displayed in this video you can color me surprised. A bit over done in certain areas but it definitely did its job by keeping my eyes glued to my screen.
For that, I kneel
Very good video , thanks.
Hey, it's THE Jo! Thanks for stopping by. 🙂
Glad you've enjoyed the video, I tried making it enjoyable but it's true I might've gone a bit too far on certain aspects. The quick jumps you mentioned for example aren't all bad, as you put it, it's the way they are used which makes it look off.
As for the visual side of the video, I find it to be too much at times, which is why I'll be slowing things down in the next one. I know some people were bothered by it, but it's true there was definitely a lot of time put into this side of the video, maybe too much in fact.
Also, you're the one doing animation in the first place, so you're kneeling to no one. 😅
🗣️we are so back🔥🔥🔥
Oh man, our dear Iku lover is back
I haven't watch MoP in a few years, and I didn't even know that episode 17 was a thing, or that the studio even officially announced the end of the show. I don't really know much about animation, so I kinda glossed over most of the "animation problems" you mentioned in the first half of the video when I watched MoP. However I remember being bothered by pretty much everything else you mentioned, as well as the fan-service aspect of a bunch of scenes (like the scene with Yukari and Ran bathing for example) or some character designs - I'm just not here to see a Sanae with more bosom volume than actual relevance. So I essentially forgot about the show after episode 10 or 12.
But on the other hand, I remember the first few episodes pretty fondly, so I have so pretty mixed feelings about the anime.
I don't know if Manpuku Jinja did a bad job with planning or work distribution or whatever - honestly, I just think it's unfortunate the series took this path of "having to regularly put out new episodes at all costs", but at the same time, I feel like it was kind of inevitable, with them needing to still make at least of bit of money off of it, because of how much work it requires...
I think I would still recommend at least the first 5 to 6 episodes to people who are new to Touhou, and would like to see some nice animated interpretation of it, but unfortunately, that's about it.
I wouldn't blame you for not keeping up, the episodes kept releasing so fast that it was pretty hard to keep count. There are eighteen in total. But yeah, there are plenty of things that could've been said about the fan-service but it would've been too easy and also pretty subjective to go over that. Because well...it's a bit touchy. I think in general, the issue with Manpukujinja was a whole lot of management, nothing else. Though it wasn't a necessity, other Touhou animations manage to do it quite well with long spans of time in-between, while still keeping their fan-base.
But yeah, same over here though I'd reduce it to four episodes instead, as they are probably the best of the whole series.
to be fair, animatics is probably the only way a lot of this could've happen if budget was an issue. But from a genuine animation perspective I think you've underlined some pretty jarring stuff haha
I don't deny it, budget must've been a factor but considering they still had moments that should've eaten the budget later on, that's why I underlined it. Otherwise yeah, some points are so hard to forget that once you've seen them, it's impossible to unsee them. 😅
Just watched the entire video, while i was thinking about making my own bone-chilling, slow-burn, aesthetic, genre-defining, character-driven Touhou fan anime where instead of Reimu Marisa or whatever Medicine is the main character.
But then i remembered i can't even draw much less animate yet lol.
Wait like 8 years and that might happen but i don't know for sure.
18:13 Hmm... what is the implication by showing Youmu to represent the word "Mistake"?
Simply put, there is pretty much none! I just put the picture because I had it and the panicked expression of Youmu made it seem as if she had done a mistake.
@@Surnist That's actually a pretty funny perspective. I always saw it as Youmu being happy while hugging her half-phantom.
If you think that the MOP animation is bad or subpar, just see anything made by studio queen bee for comparison.
Agreed, comparing two hentai anime studios is pretty pertinent.
@@Surnist Exactly
You make some good points, but I think given how for most fans the priorities are probably correct in the show, and for casual watchers many of the tiny issues aren't particularly noticed.
Touhou fans probably:
-Want to see their favourites made faithfully (thus the detail)
-Lots of included characters (shortcuts to allow this cause weaker character design)
-Want to see really cool fights that they can clip to show other people why they like the series (momentary sakuga)
-Want funny character moments (goofy sliding)
-Will lose interest if too much time passes between releases (many quality compromises and focus on specific scenes and not so much others or timing)
-Want intrigue and posturing (Mystery plot that ends up not really making a lot of sense)
-Want to make references to a lot of characters and situations (Some sequencing issues or parts that don't need to exist like chasing Ch'en in ep 1)
Given those considerations and what was likely the budget and other restrictions, I think they made a pretty decent and memorable product with some really exciting high moments, but otherwise kind of lacking elsewhere. Given that no one has really outdone them in adapting the property and that most people won't particularly care about the minutia you've pointed out, we can call it a good anime, if not a great anime- and it's certainly the most realized one at its level of ambition. All of this 'potential' you allude to has been ruined in series with higher budgets and with more experienced staff.
In other words, I don't think your central point of potential really holds much water critically- everything was done for a pretty obvious trade-off, and they understand all of the techniques you talk about and simply choose not to use them to match their time and money budgets, and what the average fan is looking to see.
I want to thank you for writing down that much, and it's your right to agree or disagree with what I'm saying. However, I wouldn't go as far as saying that the argument of potential is moot. Sure, Touhou fans will want to see their characters, they will want to see funny scenes, they will want to see references and the like, with a certain dose of faithfulness to the original material. And I agree on this. However, that isn't what I was criticizing here, because otherwise, no anime would ever be good because of restrictions and limit.
Mostly, the issue to me is starting an anime, showing well done animation with good fights, somewhat okay plot and interesting premise at the start and ending up completely gutting it to the point where none of these points are even remotely here anymore. Sure, there is a budget and other factors but those are managed by the director and producer. And if the business plan is to quite literally drop the bar after the beginning, with no intention to ever keep the initial quality of the first few ones, then it's not exactly a great series you are creating. Again...granted, you have some great moments and some of the effort cannot be denied but other animated series have managed to do the opposite with less. Again, A Summer Day's Dream is a great example. The animation is done by a maximum of eight people and it still looks good, the issues with ASDD come from somewhere else however.
My point is, just because it is Touhou doesn't mean an anime dedicated to it should lower their standards drastically just because "fans will watch it regardless". If they have done good before, they could've done good after. Hence the idea of "lost potential". As for the minutia part, I talked about it because those create issues with the pace of the anime. People may not realise it after one or two episodes but will after four or five. And when even the studio itself admit their defeat by releasing a Blu-ray Disk containing all episodes (reinforcing the idea of a full package), where they all last 2 hours and 11 minutes when put back to back instead of the 4+ hours that you get when purchasing all of the DVDs... it basically shows that after trimming the fat of MoP, there is barely more than half of the actual anime left, hence the reason why it's important to talk about it.
If a fan doesn't see any problem with that however, who am I to blame them? But just because higher budget series and more experienced staff have also encountered those issues doesn't mean they couldn't have been avoided from the get-go from a better management. That being said, there are good things coming out of the anime and I don't deny it. but once again, if you think that no one has ever been able to adapt Touhou to a same level of ambition, I heavily recommend you to watch other animations realised with the series' in mind.
They really didn't show Youmu enough considering how much they rub Sakuya and Sanae in your face in comparison. The show's bias in general is super annoying.
Not to show unilateral support for the show, but almost every piece of Touhou media has character bias, often towards ESoD; when this show was made, it wasn't clear that Youmu was quite that popular until a recent poll, and her cheesecake potential obviously doesn't match some of the characters they chose to focus more on.
Your particular complaint is so subjective however that it's almost meaningless regarding what I wrote, though. If your point was that my argument was that the creators of the show still made some fan viewers mad, then sure; almost every touhou fan thing gets arbitrarily blasted for not having their faves. Personally, I thought Youmu got an okay representation given that she's less flexible as a character than the other two fifth-level boss characters, like that scene with Yamaxanadu verbally ripping her apart after her drinks with Komachi being pretty funny. @@Shyguymask
@@FerrignousBlob MoP's bias towards mainly SDM is particularly blatant and major relative to other Touhou works. Youmu was always known as one of the more (if not most) popular Touhou characters, and even asides from that she is clearly one of the "Main" playable characters after Reimu/Marisa. Yet in the IN arc of MoP, every "team" was prominently displayed and important to the arc & final battle... except Netherworld Team, who pretty much was sidelined and did almost nothing. They spent like a minute at most showing Youmu one-shotting Reisen and *that's it.* It comes off as pity from the makers of the show wanting to show they didn't literally forget about Netherworld team. And even in that moment they had Sanae hang out with them... *just because.* It's better than nothing, but there's a lot more than could and should have been done. We couldn't even have something as easy to set up as Netherworld Team fighting Mokou after the main IN arc, which would have made obvious sense and be a great opportunity for more representation and screen time. No, instead it's Scarlet Team/SDM ONCE AGAIN. This isn't some personal preference or subjective thing, it's an objective blunder.
How in the world is Youmu any less "flexible" than Sakuya and Sanae? How do you come to that conclusion? If Netherworld Team showed up in the Eirin confrontation instead of Scarlet Team, would that be "inappropriate" or less fitting? Would it not have been possible for the show to have more serious scenes showing Youmu's backstory with Youki or something? If hypothetically Youmu joined Reimu's side in the MoF arc & confrontation, would it have been somehow more inappropriate or unfitting than Sanae appearing in the IN arc at all? If hypothetically MoP continued and they reached TD, would Youmu not be "flexible" enough to hypothetically star as the main incident solver? What's the problem here, I don't understand.
@@Shyguymask Most Touhou fiction is biased towards ESoD. You need to chill out. As someone whose favourites are Yuugi and Kanako, it's just the reality that it's the jumping on point for a lot of fans historically. Why you are dumping this on me is mysterious, but I will attempt to at least explain my meaning.
The marketing and possibly the author's intent is generally focused towards large tits- and Youmu's are in fanon generally considered much smaller than those of Sanae, and in this case Sakuya. I agree that Youmu is cool, but she has a lot of characters to compete with. Youmu one-shotting Reisen is a pretty neat scene in my opinion, but it's not like I was stopwatching how much focus each group got. Obviously Reimu/Marisa got the lion's share of the focus as they are the typical heroines regardless of whether or not it's a missed opportunity to try something different.
In terms of character flexibility: Some characters are reused more for their function as a narrative device or as a conventional viewpoint. Aya, Rinnosuke and Nitori are excellent emissaries of the former camp- used in countless pieces of media to disseminate information, shopkeep, and invent respectively.
Sakuya being a maid that acts as a regular liaison to the village is a flexible role. Her job has her interacting with the largish cast of ESoD and Marisa and Reimu smoothly- and her power for time stopping creates a lot of creative problem fixes or animation saves as well as showy stuff with the knives. She's capable of acting independently or with her mistress with no setup, and SDM is closer to the human village than Hakugyokurou. She's extremely easy to write for.
Sanae's flexibility comes from being a decent viewpoint character. As another shrine maiden, and having come from our world and being a relative newcomer to all of the fictional world of Gensokyo, she's a character that is easy to have ask questions or be brought out dramatically, or make references to our world. She has theological expertise as well as the whole Moriya trinity thing and knows everyone on Youkai Mountain, which is again useful for leading into other characters or explaining/solving things. She's naive and good natured and very faithful to the shrine and is fairly easy to write for. She also in fanon has huge tatas, which is in line with this show's marketing ethos.
Youmu is comparatively, more cut off from Gensokyo. Pairing her with Komachi for PoFV's scene was a good idea as they have somewhat similar working situations while having extremely different work ethics. She is obstensibly a gardener, which is less applicable than maid or professional exorcist for leading into conventional situations or incidents respectively. She serves Yuyuko, who is generally not a very well-integrated character in fan works. Her personality, outside of being serious and easily off-put, is somewhat nebulous as far as I can see, making her slightly harder to write for. She has, in fanon, some of the smallest breasts of all, which I hate to keep bringing up but it's relevant.
I am almost undoubtedly wasting my time given how much of a meaningless hot-button issue this is for you, but let me finish by saying that this issue never crossed my mind. Again, I think there are plenty of issues with this show that are mostly understandable, but my original problem was that most of the central complaints in this video were mostly irrelevant or reaching, but none more than yours. Cool, you like Youmu. Good for you. I can't believe I wrote this up.
Glad to have you back finally and seeing you take this undertaking to the end! Great vid over all and I agree with a lot, if not everything you said, even if I think it's a little unfair to put a fanmade anime, no matter how easy it on the eyes, in comparison against actual professional standards. But you did address the fact of it being a fanmade anime and the issues brought with it in the latter half of the video. I guess the main difference in how you and I view this show is the conclusion. You clearly love animation and want to have good content to watch (like SDD, that shit is godlike), but for me Memories of Phantasm has never been anything too exciting. It's just eye candy every 7 or 8 months. I don't much mind if it isn't up to par with professional standards. But I can also understand why do you care. It is something you wanted to see succeeding so seeing it disappoint is frustrating. Coincidentally, the conclusions you brought near the end mirror my views on modern Touhou as a whole so I understand the feeling of frustration, even if for me it has a different target.
Anyway, hope to see more content from you in the future too.
I don't disagree, comparing with professional anime may be unfair but even then, if I were to compare it to other fan-made anime, whether it'd be within Touhou or not, it would still not be as stellar. Besides, it wasn't exactly the point. Explaining the rules was just there to emphasize how some these are present at the beginning but not in later episodes, showcasing the decline in quality of the series. But yeah, MoP is pretty much a theme park ride. It's quite short, it takes ages for you to get in and you come out of it feeling a bit underwhelmed most of the time. Still, it's obviously a bit much to ask for perfect animation from an indie studio but it's not wrong to ask for what was given at the beginning of the series. 😅
That being said, I won't do that sort of video again any time soon, editing like that is super exhausting. But other videos are on the way and they probably won't ask for that much time.
Finally done after like what? Almost 3 years?
2.5 years if you're talking about normal time, but in terms of effective time, it's a completely different story. It could've been finished much faster. :(
hes finally back
I love the warning at the beginning, implying that every opinion he just said is possibly not even his opinion anymore since it was made from 2 years prior.
I still agree with a lot of what I've said in the video. Just wanted to put a warning since a lot of what I say at the end is stuff that could help to improve, which isn't possible anymore since they stopped production, basically turning things into past tense.
@@SurnistAh yes that's understandable, i just thought that the warning itself is pretty funny. Though after rereading my sentence i felt like i left quiet a bitter tone, so i would like to apologize in advance if it did offend you as i had no intention of it.
@@zerodofin936 Nah, it's alright, no worries!
The video took a long time coming anyway, so there's a reason to think what you were thinking. 😄
kept you waiting huh?
Welcome back king
Nice to see you too Pegmode!
that was a good match, i love the TF2 halloween event
My man finally found the milk
It was in the freezer, who put it there?
Speaking of which have you tried th19 yet?, if so will you also make a breakdown of it?
@@danteshi I probably will talk about it but I still need to find from which angle because it's not an easy game to talk about.
i see, take your time then
That is the third video in a row i wacth that explain how animation works, first the one by Noodle, then the one byt Diable Positif (chaine française hehe salut surnist comment tu vas) and now this
I feel like i have all the knowledge to start animating now, and i've never even drawn digitally before lol!
He back!
That anime has lots of potentials. It’s a shame it has to be end so soon. 🤔
He’s back!
Welcome back!
im so happy ;w;
Welcome back man Was kind of looking forward to this since when we last talked I was interested on your opinion on this and was wondering if you were going to make a video on it
Hi King
Welcome back
I get that people don't like MoP for one reason or another, I personally think it has some scenes that are a little too fan service-y, but what doujin isn't. People forget this is a fan made anime, it's obviously not going to be perfect. MoP serves it's job as a fun, light-hearted anime featuring some of the Touhou cast. If you go into it expecting it to be a fully complete anime adaptation, have perfect animation, and strictly adhere to what ZUN considers to be canon, you will be disappointed, but again, it's a fan made anime which is why I think it gets way too much hate. It's the product of people who genuinely love and enjoy the Touhou series and it's evident just from the sheer time spent making MoP, which I think is a quality of it's own. Sure, the pacing is weird, characters show up for no reason, and some of the animation is subpar, but that's what makes it special imo, you can obviously tell it's the work of fans who love the series for what it's worth.
There are next to no series that have fans that love it so much that they'll spend over 10 years of their lives producing anything for it. I feel like people go into MoP expecting it to be something it's not intending to be and then being disappointed because it didn't live up to their expectations that they set for it. The creator even said he never intended for it to be a lore-accurate adaptation, yet people still expect it to be. Perfection is the thief of happiness, sometimes it's ok to just sit and watch something.
I never disagreed with the fact that Memories of Phantasm was a passionately-made anime, far from it. Otherwise, as you've pointed out they would've not spent ten years on it if they didn't feel interested in the project. But on the opposite, I also feel like the mantle of "fan-made anime" is too often used as a shield. After all, if you look at the early episodes of the anime, you'll notice a much different quality than the one you can find in Episode 18, it's night and day. Meaning that they weren't unable to keep this quality going if they truly desired it, it didn't even have to be perfect as I pointed out at the end of the video.
If you can enjoy it for what it is, then by all means, do! I'm not one to dictate if people should have fun watching this anime after all. But I've got a hunch that a lot of the disappointment comes from how many things MoP tried to be at the same time, being a jack of all trades but master of none. Meaning that it was bound to disappoint more people in the end in more ways than just lore. As you said, it was never meant to be completely lore-accurate and this is not what I based my video around either. This is why my approach was instead to show the decline of quality through the episodes, which cannot be denied.
Again, comparing Episode One and Eighteen is night and day. The former is a short pilot adventure through the events of PCB, the latter is an attempt at a half-comedic, half-fanservice episode with one-and-a-half minute dedicated to nudity which made me feel ashamed of watching. Not to mention the way they sold the episode in the first place, not having an individual DVD release.
At the end of the day, it is a fan-made anime, yes. And for Touhou, there are several others who also have their different qualities. It's simply a bit of a shame that the one that is usually shown as an entry into the franchise is probably the one with the most plentiful issues. It is fine to enjoy it despite the issues of course but it's equally as important to recognize them.
he's back lesgo
Ay he back with the millk
HES BAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK
I still love memories of phantasm, shoot me.
I mean, that's fine if you do. I even say so at 1:01:09.
The very definition of nerd rage
Aw, shucks. I just became the AVAN (Angry Video Anime Nerd). 😔
I can never complain about Touhou content such as this, because I view myself as spoiled in comparison. Touhou fan content is in its own league of volume of content and quality of said content. Most other series I used to like are dead, having a drought or were ruined. With that said, I never expected MoP to be some deeper retelling of the events of the games; I've always viewed it as fanservice and filler since the beginning, and in that realm, I find it quite charming. If people had Touhou misrepresented to them from MoP, honestly I think fanon has misrepresented many more things. And the majority of people who like Touhou do not deep dive into the lore out of a lack of interest in the games themselves. That, in my opinion, is their own loss. As for if Touhou deserves better? Sure, Touhou deserves the Moon, but I'm not going to complain about what is essentially fanmade material which, despite your complaints, looks better to me than the corporate schlock dime-a-dozen isekai anime that are released like a plague out of Japan these days. Most anime I grew up with honestly looked worse than MoP. Peoples' standards for animation are way higher now. Honestly, I couldn't care. Osana Reimu, with limited production values, touched my heart more than any anime. Did MoP ever reach those levels narratively? Obviously not even close, but I never expected an amazing story from it. I wasn't disappointed by it because it was everything I expected it to be. Did they kind of waste some of the money and opportunities they had and rush things? Definitely, but I'm surprised just how much content we were able to get out of it, and I appreciate it enough for that. If anything, MoP being a success makes me happy because it shows Touhou has so much more potential to go even further if another group comes around to try another OVA-style thing.
À cause de mon niveau en anglais catastrophique, j'ai pas vraiment tout compris les explications sur l'animation etc... Mais sinon le travail qui a été fait dans cette vidéo est insane !
Et bien écoute, merci beaucoup pour les compliments ! J'aurais bien mis des sous-titres mais disons que faire ça plusieurs fois pour une heure de vidéo, c'est plutôt long. Peut-être que je m'y attèlerais un jour mais ça va prendre un peu de temps.🙇
@@Surnist C'est pas grave ! Au moins comme ça, ça me fais bosser mon anglais ^^
holy shit hes back
i thought you died :(((
Jokes aside, this was a very well researched and thought-out! I always had my gripes with MoP and this whole video sorta exemplified exactly what I felt. There were budgetry issues, animation errors, and overall just a lot of stuff that didn't look so great, especially since I think the style itself looks washed out and drainy... though, I'm honestly quite surprised you didn't go over the writing of the anime itself. It felt really dull, uninspired and dragged on the already sluggish tone the animation brought to the series, such as the setup of Yukari as the villain being really underdeveloped, a lot of the dialogue feeling really strange, and many of the plots of the episodes just felt boring, though I suspect that this is just a problem I had with it personally. Overall an amazing video! I learned a lot and am glad to see you back in action :D.
May die in the future, I dunno.
But yeah I didn't go over the writing for a simple reason, it's quite easy to do so. Anyone can take a crack at it if they desire to do so and because of that, a lot of people have already realised that the writing sort of sucks. It's absolutely a problem, a massive one in fact but considering the video is already an hour long, I would not want to see the length of it if I had talked about the writing too. Would probably still be dead as we speak otherwise. 😔
Still! Thank you very much! The video definitely has some issues so I'm not exactly satisfied with it but I'm glad people enjoyed it in spite of that.
As person who dislikes Memories of Phantasm quite a lot, and even was a very vocal hater of it for some time, I am... very puzzled by this video, because 99% of the stuff you are listing here are the things that I've not only never thought about, but don't even understand why are you making them such big of an issue. There's even a number of times when you show a supposetly "bad" scene and my reaction was "I don't get what's wrong here", even after you explain the "wrong" part (I also fail to see how that scene with Cirno which is supposedly "good" is different from the scenes with Marisa which are supposedly "bad").
When I saw the intro and an hour long timeframe, I've expected a video I'm gonna vastly agree with, but instead most of the time watching this I've felt an urge to defend the thing I've literally personally attacked other people for liking. Gonna say that if this was about something I liked, I would have been outraged, but since you've made it about the thing I hate, I am just confused. Honestly, not only I think that you hate MoP for all of the wrong reasons, but also don't get the reasons in the first place, and why are they worth to hate anything for.
I don't think it's unreasonable to dislike something for different reasons, in fact I'm sure plenty of people don't enjoy Memories of Phantasm because of its plot, or also because of its copius fan-service that ended devouring the series during the last episode. And I agree! All of those clearly don't make the series any better and also have the right to be criticised. But other people have done it before me and frankly anyone who's watched the show will be able to tell you that something is wrong with that.
However, I decided to take the axis of animation instead which it's a whole harder. Especially since it also is a question of standards and what you expect from the series itself, even if not entirely. The point I was trying to make while explaining things in the video is that there was almost no reason for Manpukujinja to go the way they did for the anime considering they had done a few good episodes at the beginning. It causes an issue by setting up false expectations for the rest of the series, which it doesn't follow upon. Only having short momentary scenes to "fill the gap". Comparing Episodes such as 3 and 13 easily shows this, both in terms of quality and length. Explaining the rules was necessary beforehand in order to show why those are important in the domain of animation and to showcase what we often take for granted.
I don't exactly know which scene you're taking as an example when you're talking about the "Marisa" scene but I'm assuming it is the one I'm talking about during the Acting/Staging section. In that case, I didn't say it was bad, just that it wasn't great in the context of an in-universe logic because of Marisa's innate lack of reaction. When you see the scene with Cirno in Episode 7, it just flows perfectly and you can clearly see that there is a lot more effort put into that scene from the way characters move, even when hitting the ground at a high speed. The reason why I dislike Memories of Phantasm is because...with the team, time and possibly budget that they had, they could've gone and made a series that would be remembered for all of the good reasons, which isn't what they did, instead preferring to follow customer demand, which in turn, lowered the quality of their product, especially on the animation's side.
And I don't expect everyone to agree with this, but to me...an animation's main selling point is the animation, followed by the story and the visual style. And if the animation isn't your main priority when it comes to watching an anime, well... you're obviously not going to see why I'm so worked up about this. But that's okay! Again, we don't all need to 100% agree on why we dislike something! Often, it's nice to just discuss and explain things instead.
Heyy et je sais tu connais bien le mec qui gère welcome to the gensokyo tu ses quand il va revenir?
welcome back surnist! and yes MoP is fun, but not a good adaptation especially if compared to Summer Day's Dream
mop is bassically touhou fanon: the anime
summers day dream is touhou canon: the anime
Finally
No way this ia cirno day!!!!!
dunno man, I barely watched cap 1 to 5 not because I got bored of it, but I couldn't find any episodes of it
I hate that they show so much boobs in the later episode. It's insane
It's extremely sad to see the state of the last Episode because of this too...
Gotta respect the dedication. My man spent years learning about animation and anime economics... just to tell everyone that a doujin work sucks 🙂
Truthfully, I hopped off after the first few episodes (back when only 4 or 5 were released) because I've found it just... boring. They don't really do anything interesting with the plot or the characters - on the contrary, they're rather simplified. And the fight scenes... well, this is obviously not minusT.
Interesting to hear that it only gets worse!
If only I had spent years learning, the video would probably be a lot longer, haha. No, most of the time was instead spent on editing and other things happening in real life but it's true that regardless, it was to tell people that MoP isn't great. 😅
Though I wouldn't blame you for hopping off the series around the fifth episode's mark, fights were pretty good at that point (if you're not expecting MinusT but that's a high bar) but it's true that characters still felt a little flat. At least the action was there and it wasn't a complete fan-service simulator yet. Because even if fan-service isn't bad by itself, Episode 18 shows how badly it impacted the show, with the 7 minutes of episodes having 1:30 minutes of nudity.
Believe me when I say, it's actually that bad of a contrast...💀
Hey Surnist haven't talked to you in a while
I would cut them a lot of slack due to budget and lack of artist to make that much animation.
While I can understand that point of view, I would advise watching the video in its entirety before saying that. As I go over it in some way, shape or form.
спасибо за подарки в тф2
As much as I appreciate the amount of effort that went into this video, I feel like this whole thing could have been equally expressed with a simple "I don't like it."
Well, doing that would've been much less interesting, it's better to explain why and why it may not appeal to others. Besides, the thumbnail did say that.
The fun part of opinions are the arguments to support them, imo
Opinions (and arguments) are always going to be subjective, but that doesn't mean there's no fun in exploring why someone likes or dislikes something. It's also an interesting thought exercise, like, in general.
If someone goes "I just don't like it", there's nothing to discuss or argue about. But if an argument is made, then you can disect the premises or the logic, agree disagree, etc.
And he's based for that.
Honestly, more could be said about the lackluster story. Every character motivation is just: Humans are weak, youkai strong until last minute ass pull. Ignoring the copious titty cause lets face it, most of these characters would be stack anyways. But Touhou is more than it's girls and retelling the... admittedly short incidents by stretching them all out and poor characterization that plague's touhou fandom.
Nothing wrong with wanting better quality for what they love. Unfortunately, we won't get a fully realize anime that actually feels like the series tone. Though, I do miss the more interconnected "good" story plotlines.
The newer in hell arc is kinda disappointing and boring. Nothing I couldn't see from Touhou 17 to 19 has been interesting to me.
Granted, it's true I could've talked about the story or the fan-service more but honestly...I believe a lot of people who watched the anime noticed that there are some glaring "plot" points. And since some other people have done it before me, I thought it would be redundant to do so.
As for the "good" story plotlines...well, I don't think it's all bad at the moment. Sure, it's not as interconnected as it used to be, but I feel there still are some pretty nice ideas in the games, even if it's not flawless. But then again, Touhou hasn't often been about good plotlines in the first place, EoSD is a notorious example and PoFV's plot isn't really one in the end, even if it ends up being more "poetic" than anything which works in its favour. I hope you'll still be able to find things you can enjoy in future games, though. 😃
@@Surnist Probably should've said the character depth isn't as good as it was after LOLK and AoCF. Granted, I am writer and overly critical of what I take in as entertainment. Gameplay for the most part has been fun...minus the crashing in Touhou 19. Yes, you'll be correct in that the ideas are good but the execution lately is a mixed bag. Though, I did like the talk about animation, it's just isn't something within my wheel house. Take care btw.
@@slycershad Don't think being critical of things is a bad thing, although I would probably say that the character depth isn't there as much for the time being because the characters from those games haven't been there as much. There's also all of the fan interpretations, some of which are pretty great. Though I agree that some ideas aren't perfect in execution.
Animation isn't my main thing either though but I just wanted to talk about it. 😄
Still, thank you very much and take care as well!
I'm really disappointed and confused, because I expected from this video, which is 1 hour long, a deep analysis of anime and/or its problems, all problems, not a damn lesson on "right" animation. I mean, you spent 1 HOUR of time talking about "bad" animation and rules... This video is high-quality and great, and I get that animation is not perfect, but damn...
There's a reason why I took this approach and explained animation rules, it's because people will often refer to Memories of Phantasm as a greatly animated series. This however, is only true for a few scenes and much less of a true statement the further into the anime. Yet, before making the video, I never saw anyone talk about it. Whereas it's easy to find people talking about the vapid scenario or other issues the anime has.
And while it's a big part of the video for sure, explanations are only there for half of the video, whereas the other half is criticism of other points, where the issues could come from and why they are, ideas to remedy them and a conclusion, showing that the anime had a sharp decline in quality. The point was to show that, even if you can like it, it's also important to recognise its low points. With animation being one of them in many parts.
@@Surnist, Alright, I understand now. Thanks.
Sorry, but I find your presentation style very exhausting to watch.
The way you constantly keep sliding in words and symbols from every corner of the screen for every single spoken phrase in riddle like fashion might be fun putting together, but it ends up distracting from the actual point you want to present. It's like trying to have a normal conversation with a person, who keeps pulling out an endless amount of objects and signs out of his pockets that somehow relate to the things being said, like a magician.
I completely understand what you're saying and don't worry because I wholeheartedly agree.
At the beginning, the video was supposed to be much slower paced, which would've made this much less of an issue. But I ended up messing the audio and preemptively editing over it, which made it almost impossible to come back to a previous point and so I had to roll with it, which resulted in...the editing that you've seen. I wouldn't be surprised if some people were to be deterred from the video just because of it. My apologies. I'll make it slower in the next one.
@@Surnist Okay, fair enough.
I'm still interested in your take on MoP (you're not alone in your dislike in the series), so I'll try to keep it running on the side without letting the editing distract me too much.
@@IgoSplashman Hope you'll enjoy nonetheless. 🙇
I found it exhausting without Family Guy clips on the bottom of my screen.
Hope this gets fixed.
@@LoveFor298Yen No, no, no, no, no, you got it wrong. You need to put Subway Surfers down there.
I don't speak france
Good thing I don't speak france either in that video, then!
@@Surnist true
Good animation tips. I'll make sure to not follow any of them.