Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Welcome to the Ballroom
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DuskyPredator
 Posts: 15470 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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Don't know if it was my imagination, but it kind of felt like episode at the very least got the music right. It felt fitting, that I wonder what in the world was different between this episode and the previous.
I am kind of hoping that it is going towards Mako having to lead, that it will be giving power to a female cast member, but who knows. |
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CrowLia
 Posts: 5505 Location: Mexico |
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Wow this episode was horrid. From how Hyodo cares more about Tatara than Shizuku, to how absolutely nobody acknowledges the reason Shizuku broke it off with Hyodo to begin with, to the insinuation that it's Mako's fault that Gaju was a dick to her (he meant well, she was just too indecisive!!), to how Sengoku shows more remorse towards Hyodo for keeping him in the dark about Shizuku's new pair than he ever did about not telling Shizuku about Hyodo's injury, to how Shizuku has to watch her former partner and her mentor root for her to lose when neither of them has apologized to her for keeping her out of the loop, to once again the insinuation that the women have no participation in the dance and that a newbie like Tatara is the one who will make Mako -who is more experienced than him- into a better dancer than Shizuku, and don't even get me started on Marisa's boobs? Did we really need the "hurr durr pervy old man trying to cop a feel IN FRONT OF HER OWN SON"???
And that's not even getting into the legit ZERO dancing happening. We're two episodes into this competition and I don't think we've had more than a minute of actual dance in motion (no still frames), and with rare exceptions, the music was pretty much absent or completely unimportant. How is this show doing everything so wrong? |
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nemuyoake
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There is actually more dancing scenes (and good ones!) in Shingeki no Bahamut than Welcome to the Ballroom. There should be a mistake...
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11368 |
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I was about to post the exact same thing! Much prettier to look at too.
About the only notable thing in this episode was finally seeing at least one of the girls (Mako) with a smile on her face instead of that just-been-goosed look. |
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Chrysostomus
Posts: 335 |
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Before this season started I never thought it would come to this but, in spite of the first two episodes being dreadfully boring, and also in spite of being made on a shoestring budget, I unironically think Dive is a much better anime than Ballroom.
The former has a few things going for it; it's serviceable, nothing great but not terrible either. Had a very slow beginning but managed pick up and become engaging. That one diver with the back problems has more things going on with his character than the entire cast of the latter. Meanwhile Ballroom is an obscene amount of shounen cliches rolled up into the most generic ball, while not taking any advantage at all of the benefits provided by the audio-visual medium known as anime: no music, no good sakuga, terrible aesthetic and ugly-looking proportions. In short, it's a mess. |
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AksaraKishou
Posts: 1411 Location: End of the World |
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This forum suddenly turned into "lt's bash Balroom" :O
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nemuyoake
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Nobody(?) would think of bashing Haikyuu. It's the same studio, the same team (or so, for what I've heard) so what went wrong? I may make a mistake, but this show is making me think that they are cutting corners, slacking off (don't know the right word) because of some obscure reasons. Because they didn't get the same amount of money so they can't animate a lot of dancing scenes? Because of not getting adequat production time? Because they wanted to give enough rest to their staff? Because they have other works that have their priority? I don't know. I'm just wondering.
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AksaraKishou
Posts: 1411 Location: End of the World |
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>because they didn't get the same amount of money so they can't animate a lot of dancing scenes? Probably because dancing is more or less the hardest thing to animate and instead of doing a 30/60 seconds dance scene every other episode, they just decided to elevate the overall quality of the art/animation/whatever throughout the 20 something episodes. |
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CrowLia
Posts: 5505 Location: Mexico |
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Yet Yuri on Ice managed to animate an average of 6+ minutes of skating per episode (actual motion skating, not still frames), or a total of 24 different skating programs (28 if you count the ones that were shown very briefly) with a very limited budget and messy production schedules. One might argue that the in-between animation had derpy anatomy and there was a lot of recycling, but that didn't undermine the impact of the performances or how they presented each characters' uniqueness and the beauty of the sport. Compare that to Ballroom's "performances" that barely feature any movement at all and depend much more on the audience telling us how awesome it is because they have so far been unable to show us that awesomeness. Sure, the faces and bodies look "pretty" (and that's arguable, I really hate the crazy look on the guys' faces), but what is even the point of making it an anime if there's not going to be any animation at all. Seriously there was pretty much no dancing in the last two episodes even though they are set in a dancing competition! There was more movement in Marisa's breasts than in any of the dancing scenes this episode. I honestly have to wonder what is going on with this production that it's failing so hard at portraying its main subject in any way that may be compelling, and it's specially confusing considering the staff reportedly took dance lessons to understand the movements and steps. |
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zrnzle500
 Posts: 3767 |
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^The difference is Yuri on Ice was only twelve episodes and Ballroom needs to make it through two cours. Yuri on Ice barely made it as it is, taking the better part of one hundred key animators at least for the last episode. Doing that for even one more episode let alone an entire second cours is not feasible. We all would like to see more, but it has to be sustainable.
After I saw the preview for the next episode, I got the feeling the next episode might be something special though. Rather, it needs to be as it seems like a climax and people are getting impatient as it is. If you conserve all your lead time for the latter half, it doesn't mean anything if people have already left the theater so to speak. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11368 |
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All the technical problems aside, viewers are willing to forgive a lot if they love the story and/or characters, and this has failed on both of those scores too, which have nothing to do with budget. The lead is barely tolerable, and Mako is the only other character who has a shred of warmth to them. All the rest are the sort of people that would make you want to steer clear of the sport even if you loved it. Whereas Haikyuu!! made you want to play volleyball with them even if you hated the sport. 
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CrowLia
Posts: 5505 Location: Mexico |
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Ballroom is 8 episodes in and we haven't seen one continuous minute of moving dancing though. I remember timing one of the longest dancing scenes -Hyodo's tango, which should have been a momentous climactic moment that warranted at least a decent amount of animation I would've thought- which lasted 4 ish minutes, of which 2:13 were audience pans (telling us about how amazing it was rather than showing us for more than half of the performance) and the remaining 2ish minutes, barely 50 seconds were motion dancing, the rest was still frames.
Not to mention this show's episodes are being done much in advance. According to Zac who interviewed the producers recently, they had at least 16 episodes pretty much done, whereas YOI was making final touch ups on every episode literally at the last minute and had a much more convoluted and messy production schedule. Although this show too seems to be having production issues, particularly regarding the amount of redraws it has required, all of them appear to be unrelated to the storyboard/script, which is what I feel is the show's biggest flaw, both for the poorly written characters and the uninteresting directorial choices It's just unbelievable and baffling that 1/3 of the show in (at least half of which has taken place in dance competitions) we haven't had a really satisfying animated dancing performance. Lately I've been translating an interview with Sayo Yamamoto for my Japanese class and at one point she says "If the characters aren't expressing through action, then it's not animation". I feel that's what's happening here, and if so, what is even the point of making it an anime, if its main and most unique feature -the dancing- is not going to be animated? |
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zrnzle500
Posts: 3767 |
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All anime have to be and are produced somewhat ahead of time. It's just that nowadays, many productions burn through that lead time and are making the final touches at the last minute. I don't know that I would rule out less than ideal planning on MAPPA's part, but the intensive animation in Yuri on Ice definitely was a factor in making the production schedule so troubled. All that animation is a lot of time consuming work. They wouldn't be mostly done with 16 episodes now if they were going at it like Yuri on Ice. I agree that we need to see more animated dancing, but I can see why they would want to be more economical with their time than Yuri on Ice. |
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CrowLia
Posts: 5505 Location: Mexico |
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But is it really worth being so economical that it kills the series's main point of interest and drives people away from watching the show? Besides, it's not like they're being economical in regards to key frames, they're obviously being very careful about the characters looking pretty, but there is no such attention given to the motion of dancing itself. And I think those decisions -whoever made them and for whatever reason- are costing the show too much in terms of making it appealing for the audience. I mean, coming in the heels of Yuri on Ice's massive success, with a popular manga and an established fanbase, made with high quality production values and the team of Haikyuu who have vocalized their passion towards the project, this should've been such a surefire hit, but that's not what's happening at all. It's going to be hard to judge if the series is getting a significant manga boost, since new volumes seem to come out every six months or so, so we won't see a new volume getting released while the anime is airing, but the BDs preorder estimates are deplorable and there doesn't seem to be a lot of merchandise around either, it's just not catching on at all. Of course it's impossible to say with certainty that it's because X or Y -so many series flop every year after all-, but I don't think it's too off-base to speculate when there are so many glaring problems. |
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yuna49
 Posts: 3804 |
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Are you suggesting that they are saving their money for a flashier second half? To me, that makes no sense. You need to invest some money in the early episodes to grab viewers' attention so they'll stick with the show over the slower parts. I've always been impressed with how well Kamiyama Kenji and I.G managed the budget for Seirei no Moribito. They clearly invested a lot of money and effort on episodes one and three, with the river rescue and the remarkably choreographed fighting sequence between Balsa and the assassins. In contrast there are many more "slice-of-life" sequences later on that required fewer resources like the scenes in the cave. I don't see that kind of careful management in Ballroom. Either they don't have the money to animate the dancing (if so, then why animate the series at all?), or they are holding back for later episodes. From the reactions here, including my own, that strategy could be losing them audience over the longer run. |
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