you've seen it. you love it. and if you dont then a group of Berserkers is on their way to your house/place of residence to slaughter you brutally!^^

the artwork is great, the animation and events flow, and for me, it replaced the Lee/Gaara fight as the best.
this was due in large part to the lack of flashbacks in my oppinion.

Naruto has some great back story...they just give it to you at all the wrong times^^;

I saw it. I wasn't terribly impressed by it. The animation looked a bit sub-par. And, it had Sasuke in it, which is the biggest fault. Just kill that bastard off and be done with it. It's okay to let main characters die. And not revive them (Neji and especially Chouji, I'm looking at you). I just hope that Sasuke's death is long, slow, excruciatingly painful, and humiliating. :)

The animation reminds me of some of the worse stuff in The Hakkenden.

I do agree about the flashbacks, though. They need to figure out a better way to give backstory.

So because there is ACTUALLY MOVEMENT the animation is worse???!!!

And of course we all know that creativity in animation=sub-par. I guess you'll hate mindgame also :P. The Hakkenenden was inconsistent but it did this on purpose to showcase the style of each animator, it was showing off in a creative way an aspect that anime has over other commercial animation - the lack of a directoral system (which means that every animator doesn't have to conform to a set style). The Hakkenenden featured some of Japan's top animators (Masaaki Yuasa, Shinji Ohira, Takashi Nakamura). I bet the ep you hated the most was Hamanji's Revenge because it was such a radical departure. We can't have anything like creativity, I think its illegal :blink:


I guess the other eps of naurto where characters mostly stare at each other and don't move appeals to you. I personally looove action shows that have absolutely no action :P

-Read my title :P

Excellent use of biting harshness and frequent smilies to totally mask your point, Neil!

I agree though that the animation was awesome beyond compare in that episode. Norio Matsumoto (who also did the animation in a few other choice fights in that show) is a freaking master of kick-ass action, and he filled that episode with lots of subtle motions, reactions, and details worthy of frame by frame watching, reminding me of the old days of tracking all the missiles in macross frame by frame on a VHS!


Although with the directorial system in Japan, I need to point out that it is almost always extremely strickt, with checkers in place to make sure that everything matches the original artists style. While many artists are employed, it is the rule, rather than the exception, that the art will be standardized to the original directors specifications. Only rarely will a show (a shounen jump series especially) invite another director to do a scene IN HIS OWN STYLE as Naruto did.

Your right, Miyazaki is the most nazistic when it comes to style (though he let a bit of Yoshinori Kanada's and Hideaki Anno's work show through in Nausicaa). The opposite end of the spectrum is The Hakkenenden where everything changes scene by scene.

It's a really cool aspect about some anime. :)

So having movement is your definition of good animation? Personally, I look for clean, crisp, consistent (pick a style and stick with it) animation. Preferably with details such as accurate shadows and highlights, and things like rocks looking like actual rocks instead of greyish-brownish lumps.

Movement or no, it looked to me like the images were simply pumped out to meet the deadline, particularly later in the ep, after the Kyuubi posessed Naruto. It's like they all but completely forgot about things like shading and highlighting and thus it looks flat, at least to me, and there also seems to be a lack of detail. What it looks like to me is that they only had a small budget for this ep and used it all on the glowy-Kyuubi effects, and had no money left over to make sure the rest of it looked good. It could have had all that movement you crave and still looked good, if they had taken the time and effort to pay attention to details (a bit of shading/highlighting could have made a world of difference, I think).

As for Hakkenden: If those were the top animators, I don't want to see the work of the bad ones! I think I would have to gouge my eyes out to rid myself of the sheer ugliness that it must entail. As for "Hamanji's Revenge," I honestly don't remember which episode that was, but nothing really stood out with Hakkenden other than the awful blobby animation and the "what... the... hell?" feeling I got during and after each episode.

I'll admit, I don't follow animators all that much, I just occasionally notice if something looks good (Mononoke Hime, since you guys brought Miyazaki up) or if it doesn't look good (Naruto 133).

I think it's a good thing Miyazaki is so anal about his work: the stuff he puts out point blank looks good. It's polished and professional. There's a ton of quality control, and it shows!

...I might add more later, but it's almost 5am and I want to go to bed...

Consistancy is probably important.

Personally I don't really care much about animation, but rather plot. Still, I like a good fight scene.

Episode 133 had a great fight scene. In hand to hand fights, I like lots of movement and animation. I've seen shows like Gundam Wing or Beck that have awesome mech fighting or guitar playing animation, but when they get to a fight they might as well just drag cells across the screen. Nanaca crash has better beat downs!
So I like it when a show like Naruto takes the time not just to throw in a quality act of brutality, but to show the skin twist under the spin of the punch, to see the bones give way, the hair and clothes shifting from the impact. That's what I like to see. 133 took it a step farther by adding awesome body twisting and flailing as characters skid across the battlefield like a deragned pinball game of pain!
Even the non-pain inducing parts of the fight were cool, seeing the characters weight shifting into an attack or dodge, the impulsive attempts to block an attack, struggling to climb up onto the water, and other things. I just think it all looked really well thought out and smooth, even if the characters were off model in every frame (which while the art community may claim is brilliant, I'll take or leave)

Also, Naruto torpedos.

Animator Yasuo Otsuka (a mentor of Hayao Miyazaki who actually holds a similar view) would probably beat you up for saying that exact quote :) ... If you've seen Animation Runner Kuromi 2 it has an Otsuka likeness... or you can check out his documentary to see what I mean...

A lot of anime fans tend to confuse animation which is character motion with design which is how the character is drawn. I'm talking specifically about animation whereas you are talking specifically about drawing.

In my mind a lot of action anime aren't really action shows, unless you have really insane camera shots like Texhnolyze, you can't portray action in a really kickass way without motion. I feel that its much more interesting to see action in an action show than characters just staring at each other for 20 mins out of the 23.

also for some reason this is kind of reminding me of the debate here