Sorry for the lateness, but I’m finally ready to review the second batch of Genius Party shorts. Dimension Bomb features an all-star cast: it’s directed by Koji Morimoto, animated by Jamie Vickers and voiced by Yoko Kanno. Now, if this isn’t a recipe for success, then I don’t know anymore. And indeed, Dimension Bomb is by far the best short of Genius Party I’ve seen so far. And also the weirdest one.
Dimension Bomb is a visual masterpiece. Not in the way that there’s an extreme amount of detail in everything like in Eden of the East, but instead it’s like every single shot kicks ass: every single scene speaks to your imagination and is visually stunning and creative. The character-designs are amazing, and just about everything is a gorgeous visual feast. The characters are incredibly expressive and just about everything in the art is made to provoke a reaction from the audience.
Don’t expect the story to make a lot of sense, though. There is a general storyline, but without looking it up you’re going to have no idea what the heck is going on in this short, and instead the stuff that happens is open to all sorts of interpretations, depending on whoever watches it. Dimension bomb makes excellent use of its limited time by not just showing a story from A to B, but instead it tells a vague story with lots of symbolism. In order to like this one, you’re obviously going to have to like experimental animation and storytelling, otherwise you’ll feel incredibly lost.
It’s because of things like this that I keep saying that Studio 4C should make another full-length television series (one that takes itself seriously, not a silly one like DMC). If they do, it’s going to be an incredible amount of kickassness. I’m not sure if that’s a word, but it should be.
| Storytelling: | 9/10 |
| Characters: | 8/10 |
| Production-Values: | 9/10 |
| Setting: | 8/10 |
Ooh, I like experimental animation and storytelling! I guess Genius Party is on my to-watch list for this season. And it’s not a big (Canaan, Kara no Kyoukai movies, Umineko) list.
It’s fine to say ‘an incredible amount of kickass.’ 🙂
And YES, awesome. Also, BSS didn’t bother puttung the shorts in the order they’re presented this time. You can find the correct order in the credits, if you’re interested. I remember Gala comes first, and Dimension Bomb comes in last, but unfortunately nothing specific.
I recall someone volunteering to translate the other two shorts from the first volume on BSS’s site, but they said it would take a month or so, and nothing has turned up yet.
do anyone here knows BSS’s site’s adress page?
I can’t find it on google..
http://bssubs.net/
Eden of the East has extreme amount of detail in everything now? Please. You clearly dont know what you’re talking about.
Anonymous: it doesn’t? Since you apparently do know what you’re talking about, can you bother to enlighten me why?
i for one agree with Anonymous. i think Michiko e Hatchin more detail than any other show
Hey, you two dumb asses, namely Anonymous and reverse, please shut the fuck up. Clearly you two need to have your eyes examined. Eden of the East has one of the most meticulously detailed anime I have ever watched, stating that it’s not is completely moronic.
Anonymous, psgels has one of the more popular anime blogs out there, so obviously, a lot of people believe he knows what he’s talking about, so in the futute, I advice you to take the time to think before you type anymore statements that makes you look like an utter douchebag.
Hellian: I really want to stress that I’m not perfect, and actually make a lot of mistakes. I appreciate it that you like my site, but if you start cursing like that, you also end up making yourself looking like an ass.
Besides, there isn’t just “one way” to look at animation. I’m actually curious as to why Reverse and Anonymous don’t believe the animation of Eden of the East to be full of details.
Well, to put it bluntly Eden of the East is hardly animated. To begin with, from a pure technical standpoint, the frame rate is very, very low. This wouldn’t be a problem if the in-betweeners knew how to do their job, but sadly that wasnt the case there. Look for example to the moeblob running animation at 9:00 in episode 1. Only SIX frames (badly drawn at that too) just looping over and over with only a change in shading and a slight movement of the character’s head. Six frames is a Toei number, not Production IG number. And that anime is chock-full of cheap scenes like that. Another thing that really shows a low quality is the lack of good shading on the characters. Most of the times their skin palette is composed of only two tones (pink skin and generic shadow), while very often it drops to just one and really, really rarely reach three (like when they blush). Of course to add insult to injury a lot of times the animators didnt bother shadowing facial details, going for a generic “sphere” shadow over their faces. The result is that when a character is right in front of the camera it looks like an air balloon with facial features drawn on it. Lastly the backgrounds. While they’re decent, you can clearly see that for the most parts its just photos with some filters to make it look “cartoony”. This is okay, since the cartoon has a realistic setting, but damn they could have masked it sooo much better. And sometimes the backgrounds just became splotches of colour, like in the subway at the end of episode one.
Compare those to the insanely detailed HAND DRAWN ones in Dimension Bomb.
In the end, saying that Eden of the East is more detailed than Dimension Bomb is really an insult to Morimoto’s crew amazing work.
Even with its superflat aesthethic (animation fluidity over details) DB clearly is more detailed than EotE in just about every way.
I can’t believe you guys forgot to mention Juno Reactor that did the soundtrack for this short.
Just as the visuals were all going out of whack, the kickass music kicked in to boot. Sorta like Juno Reactor’s Matrix movie soundtracks, except the insanely creatively visions lends itself to techno rather well.
So it WAS Juno Reactor, I knew as I was listening to it.
Ya.. Juno Reactor did a marvelous job in it too… Just listen care fully to that Piano whr the two guys r catching butterflies… I like da most!!
Awesome film
An pleasure for the senses