#the animation is cute and it has cute moments but it's spotty with the developing the details

[gaiussaidno]

i thought i would like the dc supersons movie, but it is rushed pacing-wise. and dialogue is uhhh okay, but i kinda am like 'hmmm' at some lines and moments and the way they unfolded. it's really cute seeing jon and damian meet and become friends, but it's definitely a speedrun relationship. they set up A Lot with the writing and just zoom through the key points to get to the ending. decent movie to watch but the story is not gonna stick with me i dont think. the animation is pretty nice and cute, but this style isnt really for me tbh.

HOWEVER, the big surprise for me was dc superpets!! it was actually very enjoyable and impactful on me??? it's really good!! a very solid story with fun characters and pretty nice chara development! the animation was well-done and extremely charming!! if you want something lighthearted and cute to watch, i recommend super pets. it's cheesy and sweet in the best way and i even cried at points! when i fully did not expect to be emotional at ALL when i first started watching the movie. i know humor is subjective but i did smile or chuckle at a decent amount of the jokes. if you watch superpets, dont forget to watch the end credits scenes! i think there's one after the animated cast credits and then another after the full credits, which is a teaser to another dc movie. :3

[saltoftheplanet]

Why I’m skeptical about the Final Fantasy VII Remake

I’m skeptical that the remake will be good because there will be a lot of changes that will impact the direction, tone and narrative of the game, and Square Enix’s track record suggests to me that those inevitable changes will destroy and undercut what was special about the original game.

An essay breaking that down piece by piece is under the cut.

There will be a lot of changes

The remake will represent a huge and doubtlessly beautiful graphical update. With these updates, however, comes the need for a variety of new directorial decisions. For example, how should the camera behave during cutscenes? Who should they frame, and how? What will their body language and facial expressions show? Now that all the cutscenes will be voice acted, what tone will characters speak familiar lines with?

Likewise, the game is switching to a third-person, over-the-shoulder view. The original FFVII used a fixed camera and prerendered backgrounds to create a world that felt rich, full, and often cluttered. Every level will require redesign to account for the new way of moving about the world, and the amount of assets required to create the same feeling and to direct your attention in a same way will be exponentially higher. Likewise, there will need to be changes to account for the new combat system, as stages will need to be designed for both exploration and combat in many cases.

The episodic format of the game will necessitate changes to the pacing. Successful episodic games excel at creating self-contained rising and falling action and narrative arcs within each episode. Conversely, Final Fantasy VII was plotted and paced as a single complete narrative. Either the pace and order of events will need to be changed to make each episode stand strongly on its own, or the episodes on their own will be gawky and suffer pacing issues as they are pulled out of context from the greater whole.

Finally, the narrative itself will change. We have yet to see a verbatim line in each of the trailers, so the script itself is being rewritten, and with it many nuances will change. Square has stated point-blank that story changes are on the table. Finally, the compilation of Final Fantasy VII and the various Ultimanias released over the years have added a variety of changes to the narrative and to the lore. The teaser trailers we’ve seen so far have been in-line with the Midgar we see in Advent Children, itself a massive change to the famously ambiguous ending of the original game.

Direction and tone will be affected

All of these changes will not be neutral. In just about every decision of how this story is retold, some things are necessarily going to be emphasized and de-emphasized. Each of these decisions will carry and shift meaning in subtle ways. In that sense, the remake should more truly be considered an adaptation.

Examine the opening of FFVII; a meandering view of the stars fades into Aeris’ face. A single long shot pulls back to the city of Midgar. The tone here is mysterious, and the amount of time dedicated to the environment equals or surpasses the time spent on a character. This direction in cinematography echoes the game’s focus, as it is very much a story about the interplay between the characters as they exist inside of larger, overwhelming forces and environments.

The remake does have the opportunity to give us more meaningful cinematography in its cutscenes, but it may also make directorial decisions that change the meaning or impact of scenes. Especially likely is an increased focus on the characters and the action, and implicitly, the “cool” factor of both of those things, seeing as how the Remake and Square Enix as a company largely foreground great visuals and cool sequences. There’s absolutely room for that, of course, considering the bike scene in the original - but the broader point here is that no intervention can be neutral, and the Remake will inevitably have a different focus from the original.

One influential decision the writers have made is in their audience. All promotional material thus far has been aimed squarely at “returning” players, with no explanations offered for newcomers. What we’ve seen so far is in line with the marketing material - they are not simply trying to recreate FFVII as it was, but also tap into our collective sense of familiarity about it. The direct engagement with an expected audience means they will likely try to recreate the feeling of the experience rather than the experience itself, which would then necessitate certain story changes to keep things surprising or mysterious. This approach will inevitably widen the gulf between the remake and the original game.

SquareEnix’s Track Record

SquareEnix has been behind many beloved games, but they are not the company they were when they released FFVII. Their track record over the past decade, maybe even closer to the past 15 years, has been one of spotty quality, half-baked ideas, poor execution, and a narrative flexibility that suggests a lack of commitment to telling a story with singular vision and protecting the integrity of that story. Whatever your opinion or personal enjoyment of more recent Final Fantasy entries, they objectively lack the clarity and direction that made older entries of this series so beloved. To be completely clear, it is not that I believe these stories could never get there; it is that I’m keenly aware of the fact that they came short.

But more relevant than Square’s entries in the mainline Final Fantasy franchise are the entries to the Compilation of FFVII. These, two, have come with a variety of directorial changes that the new format and technology demanded. They’ve built their own lexicon that will likely be drawn upon in the creation of the remake, and that bring subtle changes along with them. For instance - Advent Children’s visually spectacular fight scenes introduced us to the idea that the characters were all able to leap vast distances and perform acrobatics mid-fight, and we’ve seen this idea carried forward into all subsequent entries of the series, even though it’s somewhat at odds with the more grounded, cyberpunk tone of the original game that earmarked these kinds of superhuman abilities as specifically unusual.

That may seem like a minor quibble, but I would argue that it’s a series of minor changes that have led to the difference in tone and focus between the compilation and the original game, and it comes down to a variety of directorial decisions that continue to be pertinent. For example, in Advent Children, the writing team made a decision to base Cloud’s character around what people would most remember from the game, and decided that would probably be the Cloud that we see at the beginning of the game. This decision was in play as early as his cameo in Kingdom Hearts, and for as inconsequential as it may have seemed then, it’s carried a rippling effect with it. By choosing to write the character in a way that they felt most fans would recognize, they also chose to downplay the growth and the specific quirks that wound up making that character interesting - a repeated issue with many of the characters.

Likewise, because the compilation prioritizes its returning Final Fantasy VII fans, it also tends to prioritize fanservice and recognizable, digestable moments over the overarching narrative of the world of Final Fantasy VII. One memorable example would be a cute Yuffie cameo in the midst of the Wutai War in Crisis Core, a war we are told repeatedly was extremely brutal and which actually destroyed Yuffie’s home and embittered her for years thereafter. The result is a story that’s at odds with itself due to tonal and character inconsistency. The prioritization of a quick moment of familiar joy robs the character of her impact in the long term, and this pattern is repeated for many other characters throughout.

Of course, the compilation has changed more than tone and framing of characters, and has also contributed several ideas to the world of Final Fantasy VII that are now in play. For example, the idea that upon death, people return to the Lifestream, whereby their spiritual energy is used by the planet to create new life. This is a distinctly animist idea that the Compilation has leaned away from, as they cannot cameo dead characters if those characters have since been reincarnate as trees. The compilation has since introduced the notion that a person’s soul and consciousness not only stays intact, but that they can come into contact with the living - an idea that’s fundamentally at odds with the themes of life, loss, death, existentialism and uncertainty that are extant in the original game.

Finally, though not least significantly, Polygon’s An Oral History of Final Fantasy 7 reveals that the reason Advent Children and subsequently the compilation was created was to save Square Enix from financial ruin, not to continue the story for its own sake. It is important to acknowledge the reality that Final Fantasy VII is bankable, and the reason for the remake to begin with may very well be that bankability rather than a good faith intention to retell a story that touched many. The episodic nature of the release does nothing to help that faith, nor does the fact that initial development was outsourced to a third party.

What was so special about FFVII

“So what?” you might ask. Even if there are a ton of changes, and those change the direction and tone of the game, does that really mean it won’t or can’t be good? To that - the jury is out. But I don’t particularly care if the FFVII remake is a good video game - I care if it’s a good representation of FFVII.

I admit without reservation that FFVII is, to use a technical term, anime trash. It has lots of rule of cool sequences that keep the game light, bits of spotty translation, and narrative stumbles. It is not a perfect work. But there is a reason why it was enduring; there was meaning to it, and that meaning was what made it special and unique.

FFVII was a ponderous game. It seldom presented an idea without later exploring and unpacking it. Its characters are seldom what they appear, the mission they undergo is hardly as noble as it seems, and what you expected to happen simply didn’t. It’s rife with deliberate ambiguity and doesn’t work overly hard to explain itself. Its story is shot through with uncertainty, about identity, faith, morality, justice, and every other waymark we use to navigate our life. Its most memorable moments rest in the loss of that certainty, and its most triumphant in the character’s perseverance regardless.

Though FFVII is primarily remembered and beloved for how it made people feel, it wasn’t written to be deliberately provocative or emotionally manipulative. The story was deeply impacted by a real-world loss, and the mandate of the team at the time was to convey that loss for how it truly felt, without the celluloid gloss and tropes like a dying speech that have since proliferated through the compilation. There was an honesty, an integrity and a complexity to this story that caused people to argue in earnest that it was the first video game that could truly be considered a piece of art.

I think the ephemeral nature of these qualities often leads people to conclude that FFVII is mainly loved due to “nostalgia,” but that’s a dismissive take that fails to acknowledge the deliberateness and consistency of its themes and ideas. The same care has very obviously not been given to any of the subsequent FFVII games.

In other words: this was never going to be an easy game to remake. A remake worthy of standing on the same pedestal as the original would require the same careful dedication to thematic consistency and integrity, to tone and feeling as the original. It would require careful thought to the impact and presentation of each of the monumental changes demanded by the new technology and platform.

Square-Enix has yet to do anything to suggest that it is up to this task. I have tremendous empathy for the development team that is taking on this task, but that doesn’t mean I have faith in their ability to really, truly, pull it off.

[kiyoitsukikage]

First Databook Character Sheets

Yoshi! @silalcarin asked me to do Hinata's concept art + Masashi-sensei's inteview (which, I discovered, is not really an interview, but a description of the pictures).

To be honest, I might have misinterpreted your request (maybe you just wanted the part regarding Hinata), but the interview was very interesting and I got carried away (especially after I saw that there was also something about Jiraiya). So...

Some terms you’ll meet in this interview:

- 設定 settei. I translated it with “setting”, “creation”, “design”, “character sheet” and so forth. Basically, it’s a character’s or a place’s concept art, to be used as a reference (it can be both for the artist’s staff, for the animators or for the artist himself, for later uses).

- 先生 sensei. It obviously means ‘teacher’, but it’s also the form you use when you speak to artists who became famous in their field: when they say sensei here, they mean Masashi Kishimoto.

- イメージ ime-ji. I often translated it with ‘mental image’. It’s a loanword from the English ‘image’, sometimes used as a verb meaning ‘visualise’. It has mostly to do with the author’s imagery of the world.

- 世界観 sekaikan. Literally, the ‘vision of the world’ (I translated it with various words). It’s the outlook of the fictional world, how the world of Naruto looks like. In this interview, it’s mostly used with the expression ‘slightly off’ (when Masashi-sensei decided to discard an idea because it would sound inconsistent/weird in the Narutoverse).

- 読切 yomikiri. ‘Non-serialised story’ (though I should have translated it as ‘one-shot’ or ‘pilot’ probably), as opposed to the Naruto serialisation. I guess they’re referring to this one. I think that’s something a newbie artist draws for manga editors, a sort of let’s-try-and-see-if-the-readers-like-the-story.

- 打合わせ uchiawase. I translated it as “preparatory meeting”, I guess that’s something the artist and the producers do before publishing stuff. It can also mean “previous arrangement”.

- 担当 tantou. Translated it with “the ones in charge”, maybe I should have gone with “supervisor” or something. But, ah, you get the idea.

There. The numbers correspond to the pictures. Anything between square brackets is something I added up to clarify my translation.

[Sideband:] Character sheets

The Nine-Tailed Mythological Fox Spirit

1

“This is the non-serialised Naruto”

The non-serialised Naruto had the appearance of a human, but he was a fox inside.

Though in the present setting the mythological fox spirit is sealed inside Naruto…

Before the serialisation was decided, I changed it in a preparatory meeting with the ones in charge of it.

The demon fox is intense, they said.

No matter if he takes a human shape, he’s a fox really, then the readers won’t be able to sympathise with Naruto… they said.

And I also ended up thinking something like… “that’s pretty true” (laugh).

2

“This is the Nine-Tails drawn for the first time”

This is the Nine-Tailed Mythological Fox Spirit I drew in the spur of the moment as the image expanded [in my mind].

And then, since I was pleased with it, I used it as it is also in the main event [as opposed to preparatory sketch].

I traced it with a lightbox (laugh).

For this reason, I drew nothing but that after all, the Nine-Tails (laugh).

However, also the appearance of the present world of “Naruto” spread from it in some respects. Of course, also things like the creation of the characters and the development of the story expanded.

So it’s like the concept art drawn in order to transmit the story and the setting to the staff, when you make a movie.

 [I always rejoice internally when I see an awesome artist being a lazy bum. Because retracing a previous painting is something I’d totally do.]

The faces on the Hokage Rock [lit: the Hokage Face Rock, though I couldn’t find a corresponding term in English – it’s only called the ‘Hokage Rock’]

1

“There was a dog”

That’s the only thing that could upset the present appearance of the “Naruto” world from the root (laugh).

As a matter of fact, the Third Hokage was a dog, at the beginning.

He was the dog the Second Hokage had, an exceptionally awesome dog, so I tried to make him elected as Hokage in the setting.

Though I thought “It’d be interesting if a dog stood at the summit of the village, what would happen…”

However, in the end I thought that it would be slightly off with the appearance of the world, and I gave it up.

That’s why the present Third was supposed to be a dog.

So I changed it right before the serialisation, erased only the face of the dog in a hurry and it disappeared in the trash (laugh). I used the other parts as they were though.

Hokage

[Actually I’ve read a post long ago in Tumblr where they answered exactly that question, and my greatest regret is that I haven’t saved it and now I can’t add a link here, because it was freaking hilarious]

2

“There’s a heinous face (laugh)”

My mental image of the Hokage wasn’t quite settled at first. The first and the Second… I had put an x-mark on the First, but they haven’t changed much from now since the mental image in relation to these two was good enough; however, the Third and the Fourth Hokage are impressively different.

The Fourth had a rather heinous face (laugh).

Well, I had various things going on in my mind.

Design sketches 

1

“The Grass Nin looked like a troop”

The Grass Nin looked like a troop but they couldn’t convince me and I changed them. So, I drew them again, but… this guy (on the bottom right) suddenly turned into Orochimaru, so… finally I was pleased with it and made up my mind about various things (laugh).

2

“Lovable pugs”

They are the ninja dogs I thought about when Kakashi uses the Earth Release: Tracking Fang Technique. There’s also Pakkun. I like pugs, because they’re cute (laugh). When I drew him, while I made them chat about various things in my imagination I expanded the character’s personality.

3

“The mental image had almost settled”

The jōnin I thought about before the serialisation began… I mean, the design sketch of the sensei and others. If you look at them, it’s already clear who was going to become which character. Well, if the mental image came clearly, I kinda made up my mind in one shot (laugh).

4

“I just drew it out of fun”

That’s just what I drew out of fun, right (laugh). This was what I drew once to convey my mental image of Hinata to my assistant though. I intended to draw it being aware of the appearance of the world, but… it turned into a more modern-style girl (laugh).

Discard

1

“The huge guy was deleted…”

He reached the level of rough sketch, but the just huge and unattractive guy was likely to be deleted from the moment he appeared already. In the preparatory meeting with the people in charge, we ended up saying “he doesn’t make your heart throb from a reader’s point of view, right?”.

Moreover, it was the scene that shows Gaara’s first battle, so I resolutely drew it again.

[In the first caption, it says 金太郎とペットのポチ Kintarou to petto no Pochi. I’m unsure about the meaning, I guess it’s the ‘pet called Kintarou’. Apparently, petto no Pochi is  something like ‘Spotty the pet’ (pet with a ridiculously common name).]

2

“I planned to use it in the Land of Waves volume”

Originally, there wasn’t Zabuza and I had planned to use this character. But I gave it up for the same reason of the discarded character of the page before. (Ah! It’s the character I had made earlier, haha…) I think just about the fact of making the enemy characters entry on stage, that is, how they’re likely to hurt the protagonists. [Twisted sentence here: I guess he means that when he creates villains, he also need to think how they’ll look appearing on the scene and the impact on the protagonists.]

3

“Serious taste…”

Naruto had just graduated from school so I thought it was okay even if I made him act in a funny way. However, it had turned completely like a story set in a school [学園もの gakuenmono I think it’s intended as a manga genre]… I had forgot about the whole “ninja” thing.

Sound effects lettering

Appearance pattern

1

“That’s incredibly unskilful”

That’s sound effects lettering practice. They’ve been incredibly poor from the time of the non-serialised story (laugh). I often practiced using various comic strips as a reference. Well, even now they’re not my strong suit really (laugh).

2

“Having a mental image of moving pictures”

It’s the thing in which I drew some pattern of the production of the scene where a ninja appears, or the scene where they disappear, having a mental image of moving pictures. Once inside your head, the action turns into a moving picture. Then, you draw thinking about the composition you cut out from there.

Signature

[The pictures in which he practiced his signature say (in this order): Masashi (with the ma and sa character written as one), Masashi (all linked together), Kishimoto Masashi (stand-alone characters), Kishimoto (above) Masashi (below, ma and sa together), Kishimoto Masashi (current signature).]

3

“That’s Naruto’s face together with the signature”

When I write my signature, I put the face of the protagonists. Well, that looks like the practice of that. The Naruto I drew here are all smiling, but I often thought what kind of expression I should do.

4

“I decided on the spot”

When the serialisation was decided, some friends came and saw me. So, make us an autograph, they said. That time, I ended up saying “Crap… I haven’t thought about my signature!” (laugh). I decided on the spot. Saying “Which should I choose, let’s do this” with my friends.

Jiraiya

1

“At the beginning, [I decided to] make a fatty middle-aged man”

I had decided from before the serialisation that Jiraiya would certainly appear even in “Naruto”, because of his fame in various ninja legends. At the beginning, I decided that I’d make him a fatty middle-aged man… that he’d transform in an unattractive-faced middle-aged man (like the picture at the very top) when he got angry or excited seeing pretty girls. That that’s why he got stronger when he transformed, but not good-looking. However, I thought that drawing him differently would have been troublesome (laugh). Though he was also supposed to use frogs that are carried on both his shoulders, in the same illustration.

Once, I made them do a two-man comedy act in the character sheet called “Husband and Wife Frog” (laugh).

However, it was difficult from the prospective of the design, so I also give it up…

  [I love how he dug out his old ideas, years later, to create Fukasaku and Shima and Jiraiya’s Sage Mode.]

Summoning Animals

2

“The oriental dragons and western dragons are different” [Actually, it’s “dragons and dragons are different”, with the first being ドラゴン doragon, the transliterated English word dragon, and the second being 竜 tatsu, the Chinese dragon]

This is the dragon I drew thinking that I’d make it Naruto’s summoning. In my mental image, Chinese dragons have a thin body. And western dragons are chubby and have big feet. So, that is an overly fat Chinese dragon (laugh). It became fat and looks like a western dragon…

3

“Speaking of ninjas, there’s the mental image of frogs”

That’s Gamabunta’s first design. But in the preparatory meeting, since he’s a toad I added warts and made him a toad. Then, I also decided to make him express himself in the Hiroshima dialect. So, I said “I come from the Okayama prefecture, near Hiroshima, so leave it to me” (laugh).

Frontispiece

1

“It’s a compilation of ideas”

Before the serialization, I drew some reasonable ideas for the frontispiece. I’ve almost never used them though (laugh). However, the picture in which [Naruto] is gardening appears (JC vol.3 pag.86).

2

“Imagining Naruto that makes graffiti”

That’s what I drew while thinking in what way I could make Naruto paint graffiti on the Hokage Rock.

It’s also the picture I thought I’d use in the first chapter, yes.

3

“I discarded it myself”

I drew it to use as the first chapter’s frontispiece, but when I thought that to point Naruto’s gaze towards the readers it became unnatural, so I discarded it. It was also slightly off with the appearance of the world (laugh).

Clouds

“Anyway, I love clouds”

That’s the thing in which I just drew Naruto and clouds imagining a moving picture, not to use or not use it.

I’ve liked clouds since I was a child, and also the sky (laugh). That’s why I love things like comics where there are clouds and the sky, and fantasy in which the clouds are whirly like the “Neverending Story” (laugh). I think I want to draw something like that once, too, though. It’d be nice one more whole chapter, a story in which they fly among the clouds (laugh).

...phew, that was long. But very interesting (artistically speaking)~

EDIT (CLARIFYING TRANSLATION)

So, @silalcarin asked me to include in this post something we've discussed about.

Her question was: Were Ibiki, Iruka, Kakashi, Hinata, Anko, etc., were all of these character sketches the earliest concept art? Were these characters the earliest characters Kishimoto created after Naruto himself?

(Apparently, there's a dispute about whether Sakura was created before Hinata or not. Silalcarin also provided me with a translation, made by Koshej back in 2013, which you can read here)

My answer: First of all: yes, they are early sketches. The first line of the paragraph says 連載が始まる前に, which is literally “before the serialization began”. I don’t know where that “I have designed the characters at a very early stage." comes from, to be honest: the Japanese raw of the title says イメージはほぼ決まってました, “the mental image had almost settled/I had almost made up my mind”. So, the other translation is not *wrong*, content-wise, but it’s not what the text says (more like a free interpretation of it). As for the order of creation, I admit I have no idea. The text doesn’t clearly say if they’re the very first characters, or if they’ve been created early in general. I think it’s difficult to say which characters he created first… because I remember I’ve seen other character sketches, which Kishimoto provided at the end of some Naruto chapters (I remember there were Iruka, Konohamaru, Kakashi, Sakura and Sasuke as well), together with some other he discarded in the end. Long story short: 1) yes, Anko and co. are pre-serialized sketches, 2) Koshej’s translation is not wrong in general, but mine is closer to the original one (that’s why I had a hard time explaining the terms, and sometimes my translation is almost unreadable), 3) there’s no way to tell which character was created first after Naruto, unless you’re Kishimoto himself I guess (or at least, this databook doesn’t clarify it here).

So, uhmm, that's what I have to say on the matter. Silalcarin also gave me this link (in which you can read further thoughts on the matter)

Last but not least, I feel like to add a link to another interview I translated, from the fourth databook, in which they talk about character creation and such (unfortunately, the part about Sasuke's creation was too difficult for me to translate, so once again I can't give an answer to the question "were Hinata and company created before Sasuke and Sakura")