Last year for the 12 Days of Anime Christmas I talked about how thirsty I had gotten for real knock-down drop dead gorgeous animation and how when Little Witch Academia premiered it’s animation left me feeling slightly buzzed, pleasantly elated, and silly happy.
I wasn’t expecting to have that type of reaction from anime again but a year later and here we are again. This time the culprit is episode 3 of the OVA Yozakura Quartet – Tsuki ni Naku – more specifically, the fight between the two werewolves.
Looking at it from one way I shouldn’t be surprised. I had already penciled in the Yozakura Quartet TV series as the Best Animated TV series from 2013 in the Year End Best of Anime posts that I never finished. Ryo-timo aka Sawa Ryousuke, the director, has been a favorite animator of mine for a long time now and his production brings out the best of the Yozakura Quartet franchise (less said about the original series the better).
On the other hand, Holy Gee Willikers was that fight AWESOME! The physics of it – the inherent weight of objects and people, how they interacted with each other, the speed that was obviously inhuman; the way it was paced, framed, and shot for maximum impact; the sound effects!!!! (worth all four exclamation points); the storytelling and plotting that made this fight meaningful.
In short, in a year that was filled with really great animation and from a franchise I was well versed in, this fight blew me away and made me feel like a kid again. A kid who just encountered their first piece of amazing animation and is picking their jaw off the ground and deciding there might be something to this animation business.
Here are two short clips from this fight.
I just realized I’ve watched this fight enough times I can “hear” the sound effects while playing these silent clips. 🙂
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The Null Set 