Aku no Hana “A Crime Against Manga”
- Categories: Anime, News
- Date: Apr 7, 2013 14:31 JST
- Tags: Adaptations, Aku no Hana, Animation, Character Design, Comparison, Image Gallery
The universally loathed character designs inflicted upon Aku no Hana in its anime adaptation are proving incendiary amongst fans of the original, a well regarded adolescent romance manga formerly known for its elegant art.
The show is described by ZEXCS as “the first ever fully rotoscoped Japanese TV anime,” the producers perhaps having missed the reason no other TV anime had been produced in this format before:
The original was known for both cute and sexy character designs:
The fate of this poor manga has inspired a wave of horrified comparisons:
Why an otherwise promising title has been consigned to guaranteed commercial oblivion with what has charitably been described as an “experimental” style has been the subject of massive speculation – some even speculating that the whole thing is a ploy to generate notoriety for the show.
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it looks like the animators used Rotoscoping or a digital filter to animate this.
I was actually considering the possibility that they used a filter of some kind. It looks that lazy.
last picture is fantastic.
Move over North Korea, the internet has something better to talk about now.
Your nukes are nothing compared to the sh*tstorm this anime has caused.
Even Kim Jong Un might be outraged
Kim Jong Un is confused why these 'people' look like his people.
Rotoscoping itself isn't the issue; it's the people they picked to work off from.
I actually kind of like the way it looks, but I don't like how they deviated from the source material. I know anime adaptations sometimes "update" designs when the style of the source is old or difficult to animate, but this is completely unnecessary. I wouldn't mind watching an original anime in this style. (Though I also believe rotoscoping is an outdated practice and shouldn't be the "standard" way to animate things.)
I love rotoscoping!
I just want to see it combined with lots of CGI.
Like? It's 110% uncanny valley which is why no one does that. They should have just made it live action if they wanted it that lifelike.
BTW, this is still better than what was done to Fractal,here at least they managed to keep the hair colours and vague resemblance to original cast whereas in fractal you could troll unsuspecting people by making them pair up original and anime char designs.
Rotoscoping can be extremely useful for animators but it's kind of awful to use it on EVERYthing and dear god you never want to rotoscope FACES unless you're trying to make some surreal nightmare-fuel.
Rotoscoping is fine. You people are just trying to rationalize your distaste for it, which is also fine. What's not fine it pretending you know better when you clearly don't. Please learn the difference between subjectivity and objectivity.
03:55, you're the one not being fair here. The uncanny valley is a well-researched phenomenon. It's not subject to subjective perception, unless something in your brain is wired wrong.
We are rightfully criticising that they could have avoided the uncanny valley by using rotoscopy in an adequate way or avoiding it entirely. Fans of the manga are rightfully upset that the work they like, among other things, for its beautiful and sexy art has been uncanny-valley'd.
If this is uncanny valley then almost everyone in the show is horribly disfigured.
lol, show of hands for who actually has seen the show animated? It looks bad in stills when compared next to the manga but if you ACTUALLY WATCH IT and not try to compare it to anything else then it looks fine.
Or they could have just used it to only get the character posture and some critical feature lines, and do the rest in-style.
But that would have taken actual effort...
If this anime has a season 2.... End of the world.
So like those moetards say!
Let me feel your rage. Your tears sustain me an that crap. How does it feel? You had it coming!!!
I liked this unique style, lets see how the plot goes.
Glad to see I'm not the only one comparing the main character's manga design to teh Rei.
Its like 2D tries to be real life 3D...
Hahahaha QFT
At least they kept it real
How did they get this so wrong.
Pathetic japs can't handle how they really look in reality. Anime, lol what a joke.
Funny, because popular Western animation (and even some live media) also fail to represent reality.
Easier to point the finger at others than yourself, right? Ha ha.
Wow, that's definitely a slap to the face for anyone who read the manga and then started watching this psuedo-2D reality augmentation of a mess you call an anime. Now I feel sorry for anyone ever watched it.
lol how is ecchiness of this gonna play out when the characters make you wanna vomit.
no wonder the trailer didnt show any face
They arr rook same.
Just like those japs.
hate me if you will but i am one of those people where i judge the anime by the art (sometimes though). and in this case Aku no hana is one of those animes. from the 24 minutes i waste on watching this new type of 3d anime shit, i rather use that time to read the original
my opinion though :|
Anyone else find this gross overreaction funny in the light of the fact that this is what nips look like in reality?
Yes, it's basically all a traced live-action drama.
Since the backgrounds are astoundingly agreeable, the characters' presence literally soils it with their inherent ugliness and it may be that it was supposed to be like that, with the outro and the original poems giving you clues.
On the other hand, the backgrounds don't have a life of their own aside from what the characters take away from them.
It's an ugly attitude to denounce something as ugly just because it doesn't look like what you're used to. But it's understandable, so whatever.
3:52, the main issue is not because it is "ugly" ,the reason is why it is so different from the manga style. Monster and Afro Samurai were realistic yet successes.
none of them were fuckin half-assed soap opera, live action bullshit. hence, the success.
The thing is that this animation somehow looks unrealistic in spite of the rotoscoping. Probably because of the heavy use of flat shades and the faces looking off-model a lot.
Are you nuts? Characters are creepy because of uncanny valley not because they are asians
But isnt that the point?
Yes, the whole show was creepy...but I think it works much better this way then our standard-cutey-anime-girlies....seriously
You wish, boy. You wish.
LOL @ all the asspained slanty eyes downvoting.
I agree. I'm sick of the moe-tard crap
those faces.... that chick with the glasses....i...i...
..............(oh god)
DO
NOT
WANT!!
0__0
The faces are so lacking in detail, you could probably color them differently and they'd look like any other race. Maybe.
That's the thing that's off-putting for me. How did they pull off making rotoscoping look so flat and unhuman? And doesn't that kill the point?
Actually, from a purely medical sense, the bone structure of the characters seem more asian than 99.99% of anime out there.
I like the plot but the art is a rather large bit of turn-off. I'll still watch based on the plot alone though.
I agree that reading the manga is a great alternative to the time here but why not just do both. I enjoyed watching the 24 minutes and the music made up for the "rotoscoping" technique.
If this was an original animation, I bet it would have garnished at least some positive reviews.
However, since it is supposed to be an adaptation from a manga, it is clearly a failure in that aspect.
Also, looking at the great character designs from the original manga, you have to wonder whose bright idea it was to use rotoscoping... if it was a ploy to save animation costs, it clearly shows... and why retain the standard background if you are going with rotoscoped characters? It is really distracting to watch.
I think the mangaka suggested rotoscoping. From what I've read, the mangaka wants this anime version to be what he originally envisioned for the manga.
It makes a lot of sense judging from the first episode, actually.
The mangaka didn't suggest rotoscope, but he did agree with the producers choices in using it. Him and Producer both decided that the anime deserved a different tone. When the idea was first pitched for the adaption, the producer said it would be better as a Live drama. I'm glad he gave it more consideration. This look like it can be something real special. I got the feeling like Triangle Staff has to be a part of production house after watching though. This is so much like their style, regardless of rotoscoping select scenes being their niches when they were around.
They must of done Japanese version of Ralph Bakshi style of animation to try to make it look that way which they didn't do a good job of it.
Rotoscoping can be great when it makes sense to use it. Look at the 1983 film Fire and Ice, for instance. They were able to combine the realistic motions of live actors with a fantasy setting that would have required a huge budget to pull off well in live action. They took the best of both worlds, and the result was visually impressive. In this anime's case though, I see no benefit to using rotoscoping. It's a standard real-world setting, so they might as well have just left it live action rather than going through the process of rotoscoping it. I suspect the idea was to attract anime fans who might not otherwise be interested in live action, but since it's based on a manga, it's bound to draw unfavorable comparisons with its source material.
Don't know about choices made by the producers, nor of the creator. But one would also note that the anime states clearly that this will be a 13 eps series only in the Title Card. Something I've never seen before and therefore leads me to believe that the story will diverge far away from the original to create a complete story which in itself is great. The rotoscoping technique is bold, but is a far FAR a better experiment in showing a story than spamming NINE worthless eps to tell a TWO eps story!
+
Looking at you haruhi producer who raped so many episodes to be artsy. The choices made by kyotard these days are confusing and sad now. Sooo many artists wasted daily on sappy crap that isn't even the moe bread 'n butter of that company.
rotoscopeing is a very expensive process, at least it use to be, im not exactly sure now though...
anime though... what they have a 50-200k an episode budget? that is so not the budget you need for proper rotoscopeing, and it shows in this.
"QUALITY"
THE
ANIME!
No, it's not. Adaptations can be whatever they want to be, and mangaka often request them to take directions that aren't the same as the manga.
It's all down to how shallow you are about such things. SAO and Shin Sekai Yori were still hugely successful despite all the nay-sayers.
If you wish to be bothered by this, then you're free to be bothered by it. You don't have to seek validation for not liking it.
Do PA Work's backgrounds bother you the same way? Probably not, because you're too busy saying "aw, they look like KyoAni character designs!" Don't kid yourself.
If you can't stand looking at it how do you think people are going to watch it. If I was weaker of stomach I would have probably thrown up watching the show.
you cant compare this to SAO mainly b/c of how they were successful... SAO was eye candy bad development left and right but exceedingly good animation. in fact you compring it to SAO is actually destroying your own argument. SAO was good to look at so people liked it aku no hana is not and so people do not....
Dragonball Z the movie was an adaptation as well. The author also agreed to it, even though the direction they took was different than the manga.
Please try to defend that.
@23:59, the mangaka didn't agree, he had many complaints but they released it anyways.
>Shinsekai was successful
Good joke, but very few people liked it enough to buy it.
OP is a fucking idiot. This is in the least bit a new style. It just hasn't been used commonly in TV animation. Rotoscoping against 2D background has been around for decades. Canada actually has a lot of notable short films in this style. That france film, Triplets of Belleville, one of the most respected animations of the 2000s used this process. The film is gorgeous in and out.
It was very insightful that they choice to go this route with this anime. I for one am very impressed how much the change of direction influenced the mood of the show. This doesn't look like the manga, sure. It doesn't invoke the feeling that the manga does exactly either.
But is does feel eerily real. I think the accomplished what they were going for.
I don't think people are oblivious to the origins of Rotoscoping. Here in America especially, we are quite familiar with it thanks to people like Don Bluth and Walt Disney who used it a lot. But just because it has been used in a lot of famous movies (The Sword in the Stone, The Jungle Book, 101 Dalmatians, The Rescuers, All Dogs Go To Heaven, Anastasia, Titan AE, Atlantis, Treasure Planet, etc), that doesn't mean everyone will agree it is good. I personally thought the style looked strange even back in the 80s when I first saw it as a child. And I still think it looks strange today. Just like I think the overly animated 120 FPS CGI films Pixar/Dreamworks pumps out look unnatural.
And none of this has to do with the real issue that is making most people mad. The fact that the character designs and overall look of the anime is nothing like the manga. If the manga author really wanted the art to be changed like this, that would be one thing. If not, then its just yet one of a thousand different examples of a production group changing things for the sake of change. And it bit them in the butt.
>This is in the least bit a new style.
Rotoscoping entire "it" can be called new but
since WHEN turn it realistic is something NEW?
Rare for me to say but the art IS beyond exceptional it makes me focus a lot its not generic damn things all rotoscoped
Makes you focus less on the characters The Realism is surreal if not the decor dated
That said I would like the original art more
Reading through the comments looks like this is something else
Well I will watch it as it goes down this weird path
That ending song was also something
Despite I'm not fan of this manga since mecha lover, I'm have the same opinion of you.