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Anime and the Future of Digital Animation 137

Posted by michael from the moving-pictures dept.
Glog writes: "According to Wired Magazine Manga Entertainment has announced the release of their first digital anime feature Blood: The Last Vampire to theaters. The movie showcases a unique blend of japanese anime and computer animation. It will be streamed live for 24 hours all day Tuesday (August 28, 2001)." Jump straight to blood.sputnik7.com to see the movie; Real and Windows Media only.
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Anime and the Future of Digital Animation More

Anime and the Future of Digital Animation

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  • The name (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Red Moose ( 31712 )
    Yeah, they'lll have to have a heck of a plot to get the charm that traditional anime has.


    I also think it's so stupid to have names like "The Last whatever", especially as it's the first bloody release. Make a stupidly cliched name that only tries to make it look like they are not newbies. At least in Final Fantasy I he thought it was going to be his last game, but come on "Blood: the last vampire" is a bit over the top cliche. It's not a great way to create a respected house IMHO, and is a bit goddamn pretentious.


    A name, a year, something different. Why not just go all out like Microsoft when they released "Fury 3": hello? Where the fuck were the first two? NOWHERE. Trying to create the impression of a solid history is lame-o-central I think.


    But hey I'm nitpicking. It might be good. I just hate names like that one.

    • hey, that was a pretty good troll, but you forgot to mention when the 'Street Fighter 2' movie.
    • It wasn't Fury 3, it was Fury ^3 as in Fury Cubed, aka 3D.
    • Why not just go all out like Microsoft when they released "Fury 3": hello? Where the fuck were the first two?

      Heh, that was my first thought upon first seeing Armitage III [animefu.org]
    • He's got a good point, naming is too often overlooked in storytelling. "Blood" is a stupid obvious boring name, like a producer would come up with. "Escaflowne" however is brilliant. "Pod Race" is moronic, "Millenium Falcon" is excellent (don't know what happened there - Lucas did make up both names, didn't he?). It'd be good to see more effort put into naming, but as with everything else I'm sure it will always end up 90% crap.
      • Really? I love the series Escaflowne, but I never much cared for the title. Escaflowne is not the focus of the series, and while exotic, is a little to so for pretty much everyone I've encountered. (i.e. 'that sounds gay, and by gay, I mean bad')

        Cowboy Bebop also gets little well-earned respect b/c of the title, in my experience.

        As for Lucas, remember he also came up with THX-1138. (the George Lucas in Love short has some real fun at his expense here...)
        • Cowboy Bebop also gets little well-earned respect b/c of the title, in my experience.

          That's because, at least for those of us who lived through the late '80's in America, the name "Bebop" immediately brings to mind a certain warthog-esque henchman of the Shredder...

          ...and we don't like picturing him as a cowboy. Or much anything else, for that matter.

          InigoMontoya(tm)
    • Where does it say it's gonna be the last of a series? It's pretty obviously referring to "The Last Vampire", meaning like, no more vampires except for this guy in the movie. Kinda like "Last man standing" would refer to the person left alive, not that it's the last movie about a standing man.

    • I saw the movie a few months ago at the first screening in New England [mit.edu] and it was pretty good! The digital animation is very clean and striking. It's only about 45 minutes long, and I recommend watching it if you get the chance.

      My Neighbors the Yamadas [nausicaa.net] is also all-digital, but the way Ghibli (woohoo :) did the artwork, it looks extremely good; it looks like handpainted watercolors. (A great movie, btw.) Pure digital animation has real potential.
    • And how about that Bill Gates guy? He goes from Windows3.x to Windows95...where did the other 90+ go to?
  • ...attracts our best and brightest!
    Any doubts, see the posts above.

  • Good idea, post it on slashdot, and now ladies and gentlemen, it *WAS* going to be streamed for 24Hrs.... :)

    • Actually, though the web server seems to be getting hit pretty hard, and the JavaScript screwed up in Mozilla and Konqueror (I had to use Opera to use the site), I just watched the movie with nary a hitch once I found the actual address [sputnik7.com] for the RealPlayer stream.
  • The Power of /. can squash a web server hosting vanalla HTML...

    So posting a link to a steaming movie will surly not degrade the ability for them to operate this service. :-P

    Maybe I'll try this link next week after everyone who's trying to watch it now gets done with the movie. :-)
    • The Power of /. can squash a web server hosting vanalla HTML...

      which is why they are doing it before the end of the summer. If they waited until the middle of september, there would be an awful lot of schools that would have their own bandwidth issues with all the students try to watch it on their own individual boxes.

      - - -
      Radio Free Nation [radiofreenation.com]
      an alternate news site based on Slash Code
      "If You have a Story, We have a Soap Box"

  • And furthermore, what is with Real and WMV only? How about nice open-and-available-on-all-platforms MPEG or something. Why don't they release in DivX which has nice compression to quality ratios?


    I don't like Real at all, and I resent having to either download it or reboot to Windows. So I won't bother watching at all, until someone somewhere warezifies it into DivX or something.

    • Think about it. By sticking to stuff that requires closed-source (or preferably Windows-only) code, and requiring things like registration, you protect yourself very effectively from the /. effect.

      I mean really, how many things really benefit from being featured on slashdot?
      • True, I didn't think of it that way. I suppose nothing really benefits from Slashdot, except maybe polls like Linux for PS2, and in older days when people got paid money from page impressions. Now I suppose it just costs the web host in question a fortune in bandwidth. Ah well.
    • Well, if you resent it so much, don't go watch the free movie. Jesus, give a mouse a cookie, and he bitches about no glass of milk....
    • AFAIK, DivX doesn't stream.
    • And furthermore, what is with Real and WMV only? How about nice open-and-available-on-all-platforms MPEG or something. Why don't they release in DivX which has nice compression to quality ratios?

      MPEG doesn't stream in any standardized way. Sure, it will stream, over HTTP for example, but IIRC there's no actual standard for real streaming?

      Agreed, downloading it might be a good solution...

  • I caught the "American Premiere" at the 2001 Anime Expo in Long Beach that happened this July. (If you were there, I was in the group of guys shouting "BLOOD!" at the top of our lungs in the front of the line.) I put "American Premiere" in quotes, because as I understand it, the movie was released well over a year ago in Japan, and has been seen extensively in the US in the form of fansubs.

    As far as the animation goes, it was as good as any other anime. If I hadn't known it was computer generated, I would never have known. Unfortunately, that was a problem. I was disappointed by how little they used that to their advantage. One time that I can recall did they use a moving background, a behind-the-head shot that was jerky and strangely disorienting. I was expecting massive and motive backgrounds and fewer of the static camera angles common to Anime. The movie doesn't make enough use of it to be really noticeable.

    As for the movie itself, I enjoyed it. The movie's action is strong and well done, but the plot feels like it's been taken from the middle of a TV series without context. It's also very short and ends rather abruptly. All in all though, it was very good and worth the four hours spent in line. (Though you lucky SOBs just get to stream it. What's up with that?)
    • I caught the "American Premiere" at the 2001 Anime Expo in Long Beach that happened this July. (If you were there, I was in the group of guys shouting "BLOOD!" at the top of our lungs in the front of the line.) I put "American Premiere" in quotes, because as I understand it, the movie was released well over a year ago in Japan, and has been seen extensively in the US in the form of fansubs.

      Still, it was pretty fast turn-around between Japanese release and US home video.

      I do have to point out, however, that AX was by no means the earliest legit showing of Blood in the US--JAFAX VI had it at the end of June.

      For those looking to pick it up, be forewarned that it's pretty short (around 45 minutes of movie) and general consensus is that it's pretty, but the plot isn't particularly deep.

    • Yeah, we too waited in line for 4 hours at AX2001. I enjoyed the movie, but a friend of mine didn't like it because of the computer animation. He stated that the feature looked too "Americanized" for anime. He's a firm believer of traditional cel animation. People attending FanimeCon 2001 might remember viewing the "test-pressing" of this feature. It was ok to view if you didn't mind having the words "Test Preview" superimposed during the entire 50 minutes of the movie.
    • One of the things about computer animation is that you are limitless in your posibilities. Heck, you could have watched Final Fantasy over the main character's shoulder if you wanted. However, that doesn't make it enjoyable. I think the animators wanted to go with the "older tried and true" shot angles and still backgrounds because quite simply...they work. And when they they do move or something does strike you as a great scene, it's a far greater impact.

      The CG, while good for stylish effects, should not be noticable in that "Oh my! That's a beautiful CG shot." That's what bothered me about movies like SW Ep I. Sure, good CG (in the current time), but it was plainly noticable. Same with FF, but of course, that was the whole point I think.
      • The CG, while good for stylish effects, should not be noticable in that "Oh my! That's a beautiful CG shot."

        I absolutely agree. CG effects are often over-used, but that's not to say that they can't be under-used, and I think that's the case here. I didn't think the CG significantly contributed to the movie in a way that made the movie any better than it would have been if it were hand drawn. And yet, as you said, computer animation opens limitless possibilities. Why adhere to those limits when you don't have to?

        You might argue that those limits make for a better film, but I would say that Anime filmmakers create such films despite the limits of the medium rather than because of it. Classic live action films rarely follow these limits, and I think with good results. I only wish that Blood would have done the same.
    • I was actually glad that they didn't decide to overuse the cliched CG and computer assisted type shots. I really didn't want a "Beauty and the Beast ballroom"-type camera sweep every 5 minutes. It sticks out like a sore thumb. I think that they did a great job integrating the computer work with everything else.
  • Beauty and the Beast, Titan AE, I can think of a lot more scenes but I can't remember what shows they were from. Now "Blood". Gee golly, something new?
    No.
    And if you don't like violent people in school uniforms, don't watch Japanese cartoons! Shall I complain about the awful special effects in I Dream Of Jeannie? Why bother?
    Pokimon has one great aspect: Young people with concealed weapons going around helping people and defeating badguys. Morally speaking, it's a gun-control freak's nightmare!
    Bob-
    • Beauty and the Beast, Titan AE, I can think of a lot more scenes but I can't remember what shows they were from.

      Suprisingly enough, The Rugrats Movie was one of these. I was quite suprised at how well it was integrated. Of course, having done some 3D work for an early game, I keep an eye on this kind of thing.

  • It's already Wednesday here!
  • Anyone that wants to buy it (and can handle PAL recordings) may wish to buy it from an Australian online DVD retailer, it's been out here for about 3 weeks.

  • Mononoke Hime (Score:2, Insightful)

    by MikeyNg ( 88437 )

    Didn't Mononoke Hime (Princess Mononoke) use digital animation in it as well? There are a couple of scenes with that super-clean look that you get from mixing traditional animation with computer animation. Heck, Futurama uses that blend all the time!


    • Re:Mononoke Hime (Score:2, Informative)

      by ll1234 ( 167894 )
      Yes, read all about it at the Mononoke CG page on Nausicaa.net: http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/mh/cg.html

      Or pick up the "Art of Princess Mononoke", it contains a section on CG.

      Uh oh! Microsoft was involved!
  • No need to get it through Manga. Just go to your local Japanese video store and rent it. It's almost all in English, and the stuff that's in Japanese isn't very important to the plot (not that it has one), although I'm sure Manga won't miss the opportunity to do a horrible dubbing job ( Blood's english voice acting was better than most of the dubbing you get from American distributors).

    I don't know what the big deal about the animation is either. It looks very similar to what they did with Ghost in the Shell, and actually I think some of the attempts at photorealistic backgrounds look funny. They are claiming it's "Japan's first full-digital animated feature" whatever.... The art was hand drawn, scanned and then painted and manipulated digitally... I think Ghibli did the same thing with Mononoke Hime.

    The REALLY interesting Japanese application of computer graphics is Furi Curi (FLCL) from Gainax (the guys who did Evangelion, Nadia and Wings of Honneamise). THAT is some freakin amazing stuff.
    • Yes, anyone who likes Evangelion and Lain NEEDS to check out FLCL the minute it's released in North America (this fall I think). I watched all six episodes (fansubbed) in one sitting and just walked around stammering to myself for the next couple of days.
      • Oh, thanks. As if I didn't burn enough brain cells trying to decipher Eva and Lain (and I'm not finished watching Lain yet). Some anime is better than hard drugs.
  • Hey How can you save the streamed video to disk so you can watch it without having it skip, or post it on an FTP site so the rest of us can watch it before the site gets Slashdotted...
  • The comination of 3D backgrounds and 2D characters was very nicely intergrated.

    I liked the story too. It was rather short, and the ending was a bit abrupt, but all in all I think it was a job well done. Not as ambitious as something like Final Fantasy or Titan A.E., but a much more straightforward plot. better emotional content too, IMHO.

    I haven't seen a lot of Anime, but I've seen some good and some bad. This is good.

    It seems like most of the posters here were reviewing it without having seen it. I thought slashdotters were supposed to be smart.

    As far as a marketing concept is concerned, it worked for me. Now I want to see it on the big screen, and I know what I wiil be paying for. Other moviemakers take note. Give us a free taste of something good, and we will gladly pay for the full meal.

    And if you like 3D animation, check out my 5 minute streaming movie, ROADTRIP [mac.com]. Quicktime required. Let me know what you think of it.

  • I saw this with friends about a fortnight ago on video, here in Oz.

    We were terribly disappointed because the vid only ran for 60 minutes, and then was followed
    by a skin-crawling self-congratulatory "making-of" doco, which padded the overall runtime of the vid to 90 minutes.

    So, is the movie longer than 60 minutes? I hope so.
    The version we were subjected to was slow; we're talking people walking as if they were on tranquillisers(!),
    so that shots of characters going from a car to a building took 10-15 seconds - way too long for an action flick.
    We eventually decided they did this to stretch the film to even get to 60 minutes at all, and not for an atmosphere of dense terror.
    It just became utterly frustrating, when compared to the pace and intrigue of the opening scene.
  • Well I'm glad that slashdot posted thist, mostly because I didn't know it exsisted before. I am also bemused that Slashdot managed to destroy the server. Bravo guys! I was hoping to post a review of the movie but it seems that I'll just have to wait for it to come back up, or go find a copy of it myself. ^_^
  • "The movie showcases a unique blend of japanese anime and computer animation. " uhm.. i cant even count how many animes do this (and *have* done this). the more popular i can think of would be Ghost in the Shell. does alot of anime and computer animated stuff. whats so special about this one that makes it stand out?

    i personally havent been very impressed with anything US Manga has released. ADV seems to be doing better.. or maybe they're just getting the better animes before US Manga.

    • Interesting you mention Ghost in the shell. A lot of the same people worked on Blood as well. But I imagine you knew that, since you're being a good flamer and gathering all the relevant facts before complaining. By your choice of grammer though I have a feeling you didn't know that. That's OK, I didn't know either 'till I took the time to look into it. Try it sometime.

      I do agree with you a bit though. CGI mixed into anime isn't close to new. And Ghost in the Shell [manga.com] is a great example of how it's done well. And (now that we all know) since these two projects came from some of the same people, you could see a similarity in style, to me especially in the ways characters were drawn. But the CGI was more of a headliner in Blood. It actually reminded me a lot of Blue Sub #6 [animetric.com].

      Again, I agree that it's nothing drastically new. Perhaps a lateral step, re-exploring familiar territory in a new way. But large changes rarely come about without the help of small steps for them to build on. So it makes it worth it to pay attention when something, even if it's only slightly different, shows up.

      It wouldn't be fair if I didn't admit that I'm generally not a fan of vampire anime. But I am a fan of well used CGI. The CGI drew my interest into Blood, and I ended up enjoying it more then I would have thought. It might not be ground breaking material, but it was creative enough to pull my attention. If for no other reason, I give them points for that.
    • How about Akira ?
      You can't really get much better known then that.
      That already used computer animation as well, and is together with Lensman one of the oldest animes i can recall having computer graphics mixed with cgi.
      both around the half eighties.

      i guess it all depends on your definition of unique.


  • What good is being able to disable Anime in my prefs if you keep spitting it out in different topics?

  • *Now* they say its streaming live.....

    I only bought the DVD last week..... b*ds!

    It is well worth seeing though and on the DVD the making of doco is pretty cool. The way they handled it as a 'project', it was almost like a bunch of geeks sitting around planning a case mod or something [:

  • is its running time of 48minutes or something.

    They should have spent less time on Jinroh and more time on Blood. Since everyone knows, vampires and school-girls rule. If you combine the two, its gotta be good right?! Oh and swords... did I forget ze katana? :) Oh for another hour of anime goodness... and an hour less of inexplicable rambling from Jinroh.
  • I got through the interview at the end, but then I couldn't get a clear feed. What happened?

    Cool story, I will admit, and I like the style. But even broadband + slashdot_effect = miserable viewing experience
  • For those of ya that want to be able to watch this (or any other streaming ASF or WMV) skip-free there's a great FREE (no license, just plain old free) program called ASFRecorder that does exactly that, and can be compiled on just about any platform (but GUI is windows only) called ASFRecorder (what an original name =P). You can get it from http://www.lemuria.org/mirrors/asfrecorder/ [lemuria.org] (or just search google...original site died cuz author was hired up by some company). Just downloaded an watched the 143MB movie skip free, and damn is it cool =)
  • There is one scary question arising from this.

    It has recently been an issue in a court trial here in germany. It revolved around child pr0n and is therefore a subject which might offend some. If this might be the case with you, please don`t read on. Or do read on and voice your opinion.

    In that particular case, a computer was seized and child pron images were found in "moderate" numbers. Among these mostly harmless pictures/videoclips (they basically showed nude kids playing on the beach and stuff like that)were hardcore pictures of bestiality and rape of children. However, no matter how real these pictures looked, it is proven that they were made by a really talented gfx artist. None of the kids set into real backdrops were real, they were drawn/rendered/raytraced. While making these pictures, no one was hurt, no one was violated in his rights. No one was even touched.

    So, what would you consider this digital smut now ? Still within the right of free expression, maybe even a piece of "art" (art deserves a special status by the german constitution, equal to to freedom of speech), no matter how objectionable. Who would or could be charged for these pictures?

    It is an ugly question, and most people when confronted with this will say it should be outlawed. People have obviously strong feelings toward this. But when you think about it, isn't freedom defined by the freedom of those who think different?

    What is the future going to bring? Will digitally made child porn be available from video stores in the near future? Is there a way to keep this stuff away from the public without interfering with the artists rights?

    I would love to know what the /. community comes up with in this regard...
  • Does any remember 'Ghost In The Shell'? It came out in 1995 and was quickly hailed as the future of Japanese animation. It featured a complex storyline and some really, really impressive special effects and artwork.

    Six years down the line, GITS has yet to manifest itself in newer works of Anime. I wonder if this would apply to Blood too. Very often, some very revolutionary animated movies come along our way, but don't seem to influence their successors.

    I haven't had a chance to watch Blood yet, but I'm sure that even if this movie is a gem by itself, it will not go a long way in how animation is done.
  • What about Ghost In The Shell? This CLASSIC IMHO incorporated CG quite a while ago and did a better job at it (check out the transparency effects for example).

    Sal Monella

    Gimme that karma...

  • ... to show that film in the W.M. and Real-formats. I had the good fortune to see "Blood" in a real movie theatre and it was absolutely breath-taking.
    I haven't seen the streamed versions, but to watch it on a computer screen in one of the two worst film formats you can think of can't be all that good...

    Since it's more a visual experience then a plot-based movie (nothing wrong with that, though!), it's a bit ironic that they promote a film in way that more or less ruins it.

    /spunken/
  • I was lucky enough to catch this film on the big screen at Sydney's JAPANIME fesival which was held at Cricular Quay almost 1 year ago to this day.

    For those of you who arent heavily into anime or manga, Blood is produced by production IG, who are the same people who made Ghost In The Shell and Jinroh.

    Mamoru Oshii, the director of both Ghost In The Shell and Blood was present at the festival. With the help of a translator he was able to give a small talk on his work and an introduction to some of the deeper themes introduced in the movie just minutes before it was screened.

    Although Ghost In The Shell still remains my all time favorite film (of any genre), Blood definately ushers in a new dimension in realism.

    If you can catch it on the silver i highly recommend it, as with any animation, the more imersive the environment the better the suspension of disbelive and therefore the more enjoyable the experience.

    Sorry but DVD just doesnt cut it...
  • So I call up the local anime movie shop and ask if they've got Blood in yet. Nope, I'm told, it will arrive Friday and there's a strict no-sell policy from the publishers until September 4th here.
    Fug.
    That would explain why you can't order the DVD from their website directly if you live in Canada either.
    Now I gotta wait another week. Argh.
    Hope this saves a few people from running down to the local shop only to be disappointed.

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