Winter 2021 New Anime – EX-ARM

I didn’t really plan to do any single-episode posts this season for reasons that have been stated repeatedly by now. But I had a suspicion that I might have reason to set aside some extra time for this premiere, so I skipped ahead a bit in my viewing order to ensure I got to watch it almost as soon as it dropped.

I make it a policy not to dunk too hard on anything nowadays, because as fun as it is in the moment it leaves behind an unpalatable emptiness that I’d rather avoid. That said, because we’re all here to talk about an art form that we really enjoy, I think it’s important to be critical when it’s warranted, at least to the point that folks are able to make their own decisions.

EX-ARM

Streaming: Crunchyroll (it’s advertised as a Crunchyroll Original)

Episodes: TBA

Source: Manga

Story Summary: Akira Natsume is a pretty typical kid. One night when he’s out of the house for a late convenience store run, he’s hit by a truck. That’s the last thing he remembers before suddenly awakening in 2030, albeit without a body. After his accident his brain was preserved in a titanium container and suddenly seems to be a hot commodity among various factions. The briefcase encasing his brain is obtained by Minami Uezono, a police officer, and Alma, Uezono’s android partner. It is one of a number of cybernetic body parts that have become powerful and dangerous weapons called EX-ARMs. After awakening to some new powers that he has obtained as a benefit of being partially-electronic entity, including sharing Alma’s body in order to fight off an underworld criminal, Akira (or what remains of him) is taken into custody.

Impressions: From the time its trailer dropped, EX-ARM has enjoyed a sort of anticipatory notoriety the likes of which I haven’t seen in a long time. Unlike, say, a Studio GoHands production, which typically ends up being unwatchable due to certain very specific aesthetic choices (bizarre and garish use of colored filters, non-stop dizzying camera movement… I’m weeping for the upcoming Tokyo Babylon adaptation), this series seemed doomed from the start due to a very odd and misguided production philosophy. Callum May of “The Canipa Effect,” a respected blogger and YouTuber who focuses on anime and other animation, described some of these issues in an article released on ANN back in November 2020, so I won’t go into great detail here. To summarize though, the individuals tasked with creating this manga adaptation have nearly zero experience working in animation, and in some cases almost no experience in basically anything related to any kind of film production. The director has worked in live-action, and decided to bring his live-action philosophies to this entirely different and often idiosyncratic medium.

What could possibly go wrong?

I’ve long since disavowed myself of the opinion that 3D animation is the inferior form of animation; like any tool, it’s more a matter of how it’s utilized. I, for one, can’t wait until I get the chance to watch the newest season of Beastars because Studio Orange clearly knows what they’re doing. But as an anime viewer with little experience in the back end of anime production other than what I’ve heard from interviews and articles, I can only really comment on what I see in the finished product that’s given to me. So I hope the universe will forgive me when I don’t have a lot of nice things to say about the episode I just watched.

One of animation’s greatest illusions in my opinion is that of the physical weight that characters appear to have. My mind is often drawn to the key animation work of Mitsuo Iso (who also happens to have created and directed my favorite anime series, imagine that!) who manages to breathe life into animated characters using relatively limited frames (note that the linked video contains out-of-context spoilers for several anime, including most notably The End of Evangelion). This involves not only knowing how bodies work and how they move in space, but also knowing what looks “correct” when animated; things which occasionally run contrary to each-other. I mentioned in my recent review of LBX Girls that one aspect of anime faces and facial expressions is that sometimes they simply don’t make sense within a 3D space (as evidenced by the anime side-mouth phenomenon). Yet, they’re visual shortcuts that we accept because they look “correct” for the situations in which they’re utilized.

One of the biggest mistakes in this case, at least as I understand it, was using motion capture to plan out character movement, and then assuming that could be translated directly to the animation realm with zero refinement. Anime is an art form that’s, at least in my opinion, stylistically important due to having evolved from overcoming production challenges (primarily a short production cycle and the issues that come with that reality). It’s an animation medium that has an inherently lower framerate than what we might be used to in, say, the Disney features of our collective youth; we can thank the passion of Osamu Tezuka and his model for production on Astro Boy for the choppy, punchy look that many anime have nowadays. Things that may seem to be bugs – low total frames, camera angles that hide animation shortcuts – are so ingrained in the medium that they’ve become expectations (even in some cases features), allowing the rare sakuga-fest to shine ever more brightly. This is, by no means, meant to ignore the other reality – overworked, underpaid animators who often have their feet to the fire and are wrongly undercompensated for the work they do. But anime is a certain way, and assuming that you can come in and reinvent the wheel without really knowing what you’re working with is at least foolhardy and arrogant.

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I’m reminded of a book we read as part of a management team “book club” at my job. One aspect of poor leadership, it claimed, was entering into a leadership position and attempting to change things around as a sign of being the person in charge. Servant leadership requires realizing that you don’t know everything and that you must rely on the knowledge and experience of those who you lead (i.e. asking questions and learning). If you’ll forgive me for being mildly political, the American President who is currently on his way out appealed to folks as a political outsider – someone who could bring “new ideas” to the position, as we say in the business world. What that turned out to mean was that he simply didn’t know how to do his job and seemed disinterested in learning, appointing only “Yes-men” and firing them when the started to say “no.” Unfortunately the business world (and specifically, the corrupt business world) and the political world (at least the idealized political world we pretend that we have in the US) are fundamentally different at their most basic levels, especially when it comes to rules, regulations, and conduct.

In short, I believe jobs should be performed by those with experience, or those who are willing to benefit from the experience of others. Otherwise, the results speak for themselves.

I feel sad for the animators who worked on this series (as I do in any case where it’s clear there were major issues on the productions side). I think the actual story introduced in this episode is actually mildly interesting – kind of a cyberpunk Birdy the Mighty scenario that examines the trappings of augmented power. I think the key art for the series (I assume by the manga artist?) is especially beautiful. But these gasps of goodness are almost entirely buried behind the character animation, where characters feel like they’re floating in space and surrounded by a camera that circles them constantly like a predator. They, the occasional 3D model which never stops moving, exist in the world along poorly-drawn 2D compatriots, different species expected to somehow join together in harmony. It’s a product of hubris that, perhaps in opposition to what ought to happen, we’re likely to be talking about for a while.

Content Warnings: There is some dizzying camera movement during some action scenes. Gun violence. Physical violence including strangulation. Mild nudity (without detail).

Would I Watch More? – That’s really the question, isn’t it? The answer would typically be a hard no, but part of me suspects that this series might spark a lot of discussion in the coming weeks, so it might be worthwhile in that sense.