The Crunchyroll Original series didn’t really think through with choosing the right director and team for animating
Crunchyroll hasn’t stopped receiving hate for their currently airing anime EX-ARM. The sci-fi series has been made by director Yoshikatsu Kimura and studio Visual Flight who has never made an anime before, and back when it was announced, many feared that the show might end up being a disaster. Well, that’s exactly what happened.
Amateurs brimming with overconfidence
The trailer, and now the series itself looks amateurish in every way. It’s not because the animators have used CGI to make it. While CGI doesn’t have a lot of fans like the hand-drawn images, it works well if done right. For example, animes like Dorohedoro and Kengan Ashura are fully made of CGI and fans have loved it as much as the regular ones.
The movements of the characters are blurry, the way they move their mouths are similar to that of a first-generation 3D video game, and the makers had the nerve to put a pretentious tagline – “Declaring war against all of the SF series around the world!”
Miscalculation upon miscalculation
Their first mistake was to hire a director whose resume included only live-action movies. During an interview with Anime News Network, Yoshikatsu Kimura stated that the animation will be 3D and live-action directors normally deal with a three-dimensional space. Instead of working with experienced 3D animators, Kimura called upon his usual live-action staff.
This is the right example of doing something dirty, as the original manga of EX-ARM by HiRock and Shinya Komi is very well-drawn with a great story and great fanservice as well. Crunchyroll doesn’t really have the best track record of dishing out successful animes back to back but this might really be the worst of them all.
This will be sending home the message that those with experience should do something so delicate as animations, or at least learn from the pros.
You may also like: My Hero Academia Season 5 updates