I can understand a lot of viewers will get turn off by this episode, but allow me to say that the low frame rates and the off-model characters are all intentional and I can argue that despite its low-budget looking and jerky movements, this episode has very strong production values and inventive visual aesthetic. The person who direct this lovely episode, not surprisingly was Koji Morimoto; who directed episode 2 of 18if as well. I don’t think you can tell the two episodes were handled by the same person, since the visuals and the overall tones are vastly different, but one thing these two episodes shared lies in its total creative control. In fact, leering to the differences in styles between episode 2 and episode 10 make me more appreciate the broad range skills Koij Morimoto has. This is one of the best episode, along with episode 7, in terms how18if can use its dream premise to produce something audio-visually compelling.
Now, I want to dissect about this episode’s infamous artistic choices. You can see the character movements animate at the pace of the snail, and sometimes even the lines coming from the characters’ mouth seems off. The character designs, likewise, especially with Haruto and the Professor, are totally off – the ugliest designs we have encountered so far. Worst, the story doesn’t make much sense because everything is vague just like you experience a bad dream. But despite all of that, all those choices have its purposes. Low frame-per-second rate and off-model designs allow the movements, and the characters’ expressions, respectively, to be much more expressive than stricter, more traditional style. It’s important because this episode goes for expressionist style, most notably with its gorgeous background arts that stand impressively on its own (normally a bad sign but it’s precisely what expressionist art is about. If you look closely, those backgrounds arts are Hanako’s pictures hang in her room) and the top-notch musical score that not only strengthen the moody, dreamy atmosphere but also the way it handles the different types of music: a classical musical performance, tap-along-the-dancefloor beat and the rock guitar riff solo – all of them are magnificent. The background arts are seriously visually stunning, look at one of the screenshots above for the visual symmetry and I admit that I took like 40 screenshots for this episode alone. I will take a deeper look on those background arts later time to see if I can draw anything related to Hanako’s psychology or not.
Episode 10 also takes full advantage of its dream world, in terms of it follows its own brand of logic; doing whatever they feel like: swimming like a shark, flying like a bird, taking photoshoot in cute weird animal costume, having a sword fight, smoking and dancing. All these activities that Hanako wanted to try in real life but couldn’t. This week is one of the long time since the main cast is back as the main focus, which I’m glad to see; and I enjoy the interactions between them, especially now that the Professor can be able to see and talk to Lily, for some reasons yet explained. I also enjoy the company of the Witch this week – Hanako (or Jane Doe in English name – the most common name significant everyday man theme). Apparently, she still making blogs in the real world (and eat yummy strawberry while blogging), which further indicates that the dream world can have some connections and can have an influence on the real world (something that addressed explicitly in episode 2). Finally, it’s now more or less confirmed that Haruto experiencing Sleeping Beauty as well (hah!), and my guess is that the Professor needs all the previous Witches power to bring him back to life, and might as well to his sleeping sister. Wait, isn’t it make more sense that Haruto IS the Professor’s younger sleeping sister in real life? That would explain why the Professor give that much attention to Haruto and only him is the real-life connection to Haruto as of now. Only 2 episodes left, I believe it’s time we get to the gist of who or what Haruto really is.
Amazing episode.