His and Her Circumstances – 5/5.5/6 [Days of Labyrinth/His Ambition/Your Voice That Changes Me] – Throwback Thursday

Welcome everyone, to another week of His and Her Circumstances! This week was an odd one, and perhaps an indicator of things to come from what I’ve been told. There’s no better way to deal with that though than to just talk about. So lets dive in and do just that!

Starting off, the animation felt like it took a hit this week. There were a lot of reused scenes, stills, and overall minimal cost-saving animation practices. Oh don’t get me wrong, Circumstances was very clever about it! What we did get was well directed and story boarded to produce a specific effect or emotion. Take for instance the way it showed us the same scene twice, once from each of our leads perspectives. Showing us just how different they are and how they weren’t quite on the same page yet. Only for them to have the same response in the last of such scenes in the episode, showing how much closer they have become over it’s course. I’m not saying the editing didn’t have purpose, it very much did and when I understood it, I was impressed. But it’s a fact that it still wasn’t particularly interesting, visually at least.

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His and Her Circumstances – 3/4 [His Circumstances/Her Difficult Problem] – Throwback Thursday

Welcome everyone, to another (probably late) week of His and Her Circumstances! This week we get into the weeds, as things start to happen and our leads start to truly get to know each other. Is it good? Is it trite? Can it cover in 4 episodes what took Kaguya-sama 3 seasons? Let’s jump in and find out!

Starting off, I feel the need to repeat just how good this show looks. Like seriously, His and Her Circumstances looks absolutely gorgeous. Not because of any high detail models/backgrounds or any kind of interesting art style. Both of those are actually pretty standard for the genre and era I feel. Rather, it’s just how consistently expressive Circumstances is. Whether it be clear and emotive facial expressions or clever visual metaphor’s, it never fails to communicate the emotions of a scene. And despite having so many still frames, it never feels like a static show. Instead all I can remember when thinking back on it are the edits and implied motion from said stills. I’ve been told multiple times, from multiple people, that it’s production falls apart in the latter half, so I don’t want to get to excited. But its hard not to when it looks this good.

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His and Her Circumstances – 1/2 [Her Circumstances/Their Secret] – Throwback Thursday

Hello everyone, and welcome to the start of His and Her Circumstances! We have a lot to talk about this week. Only 2 episodes in and it’s already moving at a mile a minute so lets just jump right in to our new season of Throwback Thursday!

Right off that bat I have to say, Circumstances look good. Not in any kind of unique way. We’ve seen this style and aesthetic all over the place, its the 90s and cel animation. And while I love both of those, they aren’t the reason I think Circumstances looks great. No, that honor belongs to the sheer creativity and expressiveness of the characters. The way they completely ignore their models to sell an emotion. Or that flipcard effect with showing Miyazawa’s inner thoughts and feelings vs what she shows to the public. Or the postcard memories, or the visual metaphors, or this or that, the list goes on! To make a long story short, Circumstances is animated gorgeously. It’s different from the modern “drowning in digital effects” of Ufotable sure, but that doesn’t make it bad. In fact, with how consistent and ubiquitous it is, I say this is better

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