Category: Throwback Thursday

Welcome everyone, to another week of Now and Then, Here and There! This is a big week for me. Not because the episode was pretty good, though that did help, but because something I’ve long awaited for finally happened. What was it? Well lets dive in and find out!

The big news of course is this: Lala Ru talked! And did stuff! And it was good! I know some think that I’ve been a tad harsh on her recently. That she’s supposed to be withdrawn and quiet after everything done to her by Hamdo and others. But this episode is proof of what I was saying before. About how you can animate and emote withdrawn or quiet characters without making them emotionless dolls. Just look at all of the subtle movements Lala Ru takes throughout the episode. Clutching on to Shu as they drive, the way her voice sounds when talking about her past or how she reacts to Shu’s proclamations. Just the fact that she responds when he asks her questions but not when talking about himself is, alone, a sign of her mental state. This episode is everything I wanted now that she was free of Hamdo.

And I loved it.

Continue reading “Now and Then, Here and There – 8 [Two Lone Souls] – Throwback Thursday” →

Welcome back everyone to another week of Now and Then, Here and There! There’s a lot of posts coming, what with the new season, so glad you were able to find this one. We have a fair bit to talk about this week so lets jump into it!

Starting off, and god do I hate to bring it up again but its just so obvious, the visuals. Now and Then is wildly inconsistent here. When properly framed, lit and contextualized, Now and Then looks gorgeous. Just look at Nabuca confronting Boo, Shu breaking the glass or Nabuca finding Shu at the end. All of these are beautiful shots! The background and foreground contrast nicely, I love the colors they use, it’s great! And yet in the exact same episode, right before some of these shots even, we get pitch blackness. I’m talking about Shu climbing out of the pit, or running through Hellywood, etc. This isn’t just darkness, it’s… advanced darkness. I literally cannot see a thing and that’s just not acceptable. I don’t know what happened with Now and Then, if it’s just my copy or what, but it could look something special if it fixed this.

Continue reading “Now and Then, Here and There -7 [Night of Flight]- Throwback Thursday” →

Welcome everyone, to the halfway point of Now and Then, Here and There! We have a big week ahead of us, lots to talk about, and basically all of it is good. So without further ado lets dive in to what is my favorite episode yet!

This week was simultaneously nothing like what I expected it to be, yet everything I wanted. I figured we would get a rather standard invasion; some bad people would shoot some guns, and that most of it would be about Shu’s struggles. Instead we got what is, like I said above, without a doubt my favorite episode of Now and Then yet. For one, just look at some of the stunning visuals from it! Sara’s hair shining in the silver moonlight. The way it created edge highlights all across her face, drifting in the wind. Or how footsteps in the sand disappeared as they walked away. Showing that not only is there truly no way home, but also nothing to return to. Even the grainy, black and white, 1 frame per second way they shot the village sequence was great, though we will talk about why later.

Continue reading “Now and Then, Here and There – 6 [Disappearance in a Sandstorm] – Throwback Thursday” →

Welcome everyone to another week of Now and Then, Here and There! This week Hamdo see’s some action, Shu figure’s out we aren’t in Kansas anymore and Nabuca and co get sent on a vacation. Does any of that make sense? If not, read on, because we have a fair amount to talk about this week.

Starting off, my initial impression of the episode is… “Meh”. This feels like the most straight forward episode we have had yet, and is the first one I don’t feel enamored with. Not because it does anything wrong, Now and Then still has a reasonable standard of quality to it. Rather it’s because this is the first episode where we, the viewer, don’t learn anything new. Instead, Now and Then chooses to let the characters catch up with us. Because of this the episode largely feels transitionary. Like we are moving from the introductory phase of the story into something else. And in the long term, this is fine! I’ve long maintained that not every individual episode has to be a banger if it enables a banger story. It just means we have to wait and see what Now and Then does with this new direction.

Continue reading “Now and Then, Here and There – 5 [Murder] – Throwback Thursday” →

Welcome back everyone to another episode of Now and Then, Here and There! This is normally where I say something snappy like, “You won’t believe how dark this week got”. Or maybe “This is the darkest week yet!”. But I’m pretty sure you all know this show better than I do, and that we can also get so much darker. So instead this week I’ll just say… Oh god. Now lets jump into it.

Once again I feel the need to point out just how bad the lightning in Now and Then is. I don’t do this to rag on the show, I’m… Ok enjoying might be the wrong word but lets go with it for now, I’m enjoying my time with it. But some shots are just so incredibly hard to see through, or just look like ass. Take the opening shot of the episode in Abelia’s room for instance. What is this diffused filter? Is it supposed to tell me its early morning or something? Everything just looks foggy. Meanwhile the nighttime hallways, like the lynching, are once again impossible to see in. Outside of the, admittedly gorgeous, wide background shots there simply isn’t any complexity or care put into how it shows on screen. And I think that’s a damn shame. Enough about lighting for the nth time though, onto story!

Continue reading “Now and Then, Here and There – 4 [Discord] – Throwback Thursday” →

Welcome everyone to what is a very late episode of Now and Then, Here and There! The only excuse I have is Elden Ring which, in my defense, I have put 66 hours into since it came out. Such a great time. That said these posts wait for no man and have to get written eventually. So without further ado lets dive into the episode!

Starting off with a quick non-spoilery mention of the production: This week was largely fine. It seems this is going to be our standard level of animation for awhile. Episode 1 was probably an outlier to get us hooked in. That’s probably OK since Now and Then doesn’t seem like a particularly action heavy show, much more character, scene and atmosphere driven. However I do have one major bugbear that I’ve noticed across all 3 episodes: The backgrounds are way to dark. I get it, they want some stark contrast in lighting, and that does often look good. But more often than not it’s made scenes very difficult to actually see. Characters become hard to make out from the dark backgrounds, the slight differences in shade make it annoying to figure out what exactly we are looking at. They need to increase the contrast in their darks just a bit.

Continue reading “Now and Then, Here and There – 3 [A Feast in the Dark] – Throwback Thursday” →

Welcome one and all to another season of Throwback Thursday! We’ve been on a run of good shows recently, what with Haibane Renmei and The Vision of Escaflowne, so I’m hopeful Now and Then can keep that going. We have a lot to talk about so lets skip the rest of the preamble and jump right into it.

Starting with production, Now and Then looks alright. Color and design wise its pretty basic. Lots of flat colors with little in the way of complex lighting or color blending. Coming from The Vision of Escaflowne, a series released 3 years prior, that’s a bit of a step down. The same thing can be said for the character designs which, by and large, are lacking in complex details and linework. However for all that may sound like a criticism this does give Now and Then one very important benefit: It’s a lot easier to animate. And we can see that in just how much animation it actually has. Like seriously, the amount of small details in these shots, the expressiveness of each characters body and face, is great! I love how every motion is a full-body event. Hopefully it can keep this subtle movement going for its entire run.

Continue reading “Now and Then, Here and There – 1 [A Girl Admiring The Sunset] – Throwback Thursday” →