Masaaki Kondo is a well-known manga critic who contributes to specialized magazines mainly for manga criticism, and has a certain readership.

He can also do film and television reviews, so he should be regarded as a "very free" freelance writer...... It may be inappropriate to say that he swears people for a living, but he does make a living by picking thorns, and he is relatively good at picking thorns, so if he is limited to the field of comic book criticism, he is considered a "celebrity" in this industry.

Due to the relevance of the industry, after the end of the new animation every quarter, he will also write down some opinions on animation, but most of the time such articles will only be published on the Internet, in exchange for views - "animation" is a Chinese term, animation and comics still have to be distinguished.

And if it's limited to the new animation, this time of year is naturally what Kondo needs to focus on...... Compared with the other two quarters, October and April every year have always been the broadcast seasons for dramas that can generate heat and topicality.

This year's October,For people like them,The first work to pay attention to is the second season of the super popular animation "Rose Girl",This work with the main character design and exquisite painting style created a lot of topic when it was first broadcast.,And now the second season can basically be said to have continued the popularity...... From a later point of view, the "puppet fans" have taken on the nature of a "cult".

In addition to Rose, the second thing that should be paid attention to is the heavyweight lightweight work "Burning Eye Xana", thanks to the large readership of the original work, this anime had a considerable degree of popularity before it was broadcast.

However, Kondo didn't want to say anything about these two works, because there were so many such comments, and if everyone was writing about something, it would inevitably be repetitive, and it would be difficult for anyone to write a new point of view. So, the somewhat "discerning" reviewer set his sights on an anime that didn't come into his sight beforehand, but unexpectedly sparked heated discussions after it was broadcast - "Black Rock Shooter".

In terms of online topicality alone, it even goes far beyond the two.

Sure enough, it still reflects the saying: the charm of original animation lies in its unpredictability. For example, by the end of the Black Rock Shooter's playback, the number of entries displayed in the "COINCOIN Animation" was more than 1,000, and the cumulative number of views of all the short videos exceeded 500w - basically if someone browsed the pages of this website, then they must have browsed the Black Rock related news and knew that such an animation existed.

Of course, this should be related to the "laissez-faire" attitude of the copyright owner.

From Kondo's point of view, Kuroiwa's popularity, especially on the Internet, is first due to his music...... Each of its OPs is independent in style and has a very high pop element.

From Incomplete Combustion, Black Bullet, MKALIEZ, to OP4's "Flash", OP5's "LOVERS", and OP6's "Backlight Wings...... To put it simply, with the OP of the "Black Rock Archer", you can fight against the remaining other October episodes, and you can also "win the battle".

If the song CD is released, there is no doubt that Kuroiwa Shooter will be able to achieve the best sales of the anime song CD this year.

The production company's tilt in the music of this work makes Kondo feel a little "putting the cart before the horse", but this is also relieved after he learned a little that this work has the nature of a promotional video for a music website.

And after studying the "characteristics" of this animation in detail, he wrote such an article on his blog, titled "The Law of Twenty-Eight and the Black-clothed Matao":

"Personally, I didn't realize that I would write an article for a short anime like 'Black Rock Shooter' because I didn't think it was a very thoughtful work.

Black Rock Shooter is an animated work co-produced by the music website ListenNepster and the animation company Mad Poihat, with a total of six episodes, each of which is only 12 minutes long, but it is this work that left the deepest impression.

Or this year's new anime,The first one that impressed me the most was Ryu's son.,And the second is this one-Black Rock Shooter's average production level can't be compared to Raven's.,But its high point is undoubtedly the level reached.。

To say something that has nothing to do with this article, the unfinished is a bit too regrettable.

Mad Poihat is an unknown animation company from Kyoto, but no one knows why this company suddenly started to make a big splash this year, and the current popular "Hatsune Miku" is the result of their project, and the sister story Kuroiwa has also achieved unimaginable popularity.

In terms of the level of graphics, the pinnacle of Black Rock Shooter's production lies in the last three minutes of the sixth episode. As a new animation company,It's reasonable that its painting resources are scarce.,It's true from the performance of the first few words of the work.,This kind of objective conditions are idle and beyond reproach.,At least the animation picture has not appeared to collapse in a large area.。 On the other hand, despite the use of music, art, and special effects, the drawing flaws do exist if you look closely, or compared to the previous points, the Black Rock Shooter's painting is too mediocre.

But no one expected that by the end of the anime, the quality of its painting would suddenly take a qualitative leap. The level of the ending of the Black Rock Shooter is the pinnacle of TV animation and the top level of theatrical animation.

Of course, this is not because the level of concept art of this production company has improved by leaps and bounds in a short period of time, how can it be easy, it can only be said that Mad Poihat finally used a capable concept artist for this part of the painting. Or maybe thanks to Mad Poihat and Black Rock Shooter, at least they brought a top-notch concept artist back into the industry.

It is understood that this 3-minute、A total of more than 120Cut's high-intensity original paintings were all completed by an original artist named Yamoto Apricot House.,It's unbelievable that the other party is still a female original artist - there is no discrimination against women here.,But this kind of intensity of painting is estimated to be unable to support even men's physical strength.。

In this animation, the picture as a whole is in a state of high contrast and transitional exposure, Mad Poihat abandons the delicate portrayal of the background in the previous episodes, and boldly uses strong light, which makes the details of the characters and the background blur and protrude the lines, and the abstract action design and exaggerated line changes make this series of battle shots full of tension.

In terms of drawing technique, there is no doubt that this animation borrows from and uses the shadowless technique, which may have the same purpose as the use of bright light, and the emotions of the characters in battle are highlighted...... The paleness and emptiness of the character of Kuroiwa is greatly deepened, or perhaps this is the moral of this shot.

Shadowing is a necessary technique used in animation to express the layering and three-dimensionality, although there is no difference between the use of shadow and shadowless methods, but it seems that the expressiveness of shadowless is more suitable for this shot, but this also increases the difficulty of production - if you use the shadowless method and eliminate the three-dimensional sense of inconsistency, then the action portrayal must be coherent, delicate and powerful.

So the total number of paintings in these 3 minutes exceeded 2,000, which was almost the same as the number of paintings in the first 9 minutes...... In other words, this is a full-motion painting. And the success of this shot is not so much praise for Mad Poihat as for the original artist, 90% of the credit is given to the original artist.

It can be said that in the process of animation production, it is inevitable that the resources will be tilted, but the animation that implements the rule of 28 to such a point is ...... I haven't seen anything other than the Black Rock Shooter.

So in a sense, this can be called a 'revolution' in the way it is made. ”

Concentrate:

The shining line - OP, Koji Kananko

Lovers——OP9，Seven Oops

Backlight のフリューゲル - Interlude, Wind Wing / Sky Feather Song. Because it's a chorus with Nana Mizuki, this is a rare song that Takayama Minami can't hear the feeling of Conan.