A Quick Aside - To CG or not CG?

In the last 10 years, Anime has undergone something of a silent revolution, with the introduction and increasing use of Computer Generated aspects.


Hitting films first, due to costs mostly, its around 2003ish you start to see CG appearing in weekly serial anime series, replacing vehicles and "mecha" and so on. Early CG is fairly obvious, moving in unconvincing manners and looking completely out-of-place in comparison to the hand-drawn animation. An excellent example of this can be found in this fan-trailer for Samurai 7, compare how the battling robots in the first half look to the people in the second half

In some cases, like the one above, this can be excused or rationalised but in others, it makes no sense. take for example the first opening of Macross 7, the first scene for some reason is in 3D CG, and the first instance of seeing the Red custom valkirye, which moments later is seen as normal animation. Random, pointless and distracting.

Other series have taken to using CG to allow for rotation, scrolling and depth-of-field effects, again with hit-or-miss results. While finding exacting examples of this on youtube to show you all what i mean is hard, one example of a subtle use of "depth of field" can be seen here, as the various characters "pop out" from comic pages in the intro. An example of the "scolling/rotation" style can be viewed in the opener to "Lucky Star" at the point with all the cheerleaders

Another common use, normally done for ending/opening themes, is personified by the love-it-or-hate-it ending to The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi which uses motion-captured movement to provide the highly realistic movements performed by the characters.


It should be noted however, that as time has gone on the use of CG has become more complex, more fitting, with the drawn animations, largely thanks to advances in cell shading techniques in the CG field and better understanding on the part of animators on its use. A good example of this can be found in Nura - Rise of the yokai clan, with many of the battle effects making good use of CG to allow for more natural looking special effects without probable months of back-breaking hand-drawn animation. Of special note is the use of particle physics for the smoke effects (apologies for having to use an AMV to demonstrate this)


CG is a powerful tool when used well, but when haphazardly used to cut corners, save production costs or simply make up for a deficit its distracting, immersion breaking and can really impact how "polished" a series of film looks. Examples of CG used well include Gundam 00, the Rebuild of Evangelion films, Macross Zero and Macross Frontier, especially in its movies. This semi-AMV (it used inter-cut scenes from the point this song actually appears in the movie) highlights some of the best CG anime use I've ever seen, including my personal favourite moment of a 1/4th Kilometre long/tall transformed Battle Carrier surfing into an atmosphere on a piece of debris.. (not to mention highlights some of the amazing work of Yoko Kanno)


Its because of this "kill or cure" aspect of CG, massively enhancing or utterly ruining parts of all of an anime that I frequently comment on it during my reviews. If you feel i'm wrong in this judgement in an anime I review, please feel free to discuss it with me in the comments :D