#video-essay

[prokopetz]

The constant rolling disaster that is Overwatch's game development aside, what really perplexes me about how Blizzard is handling the broader franchise is their continual insistence that a canon narrative exists in spite of their equally continual refusal to tell anyone what it is.

Like, okay, the events of the games aren't canon. Fair enough: the games are multiplayer-only, and you can't account for player actions.

Oh, and the animated short films aren't canon either – they're properly understood as in-universe propaganda, not depictions of actual events. That's a little high concept for you guys, but fine.

But surely the comics are canon, right? Well, no; some of the comics (we're not telling you which ones) were canon at one point, but the writing team has decided to go in a different direction.

My dudes, what is left? The weird Source Filmmaker porn? Is that canon? Well, apparently it's at least as canon as anything else!

[akajustmerry]

I feel like those of us who are longtime Video Essay Enjoyers™ have been aware something was suss about James Summerton (I remember when Lawrence called out Somerton for stealing their Hannibal essay years ago) for a while. But I think it's cynical to reduce Hbomberguy's vid to just a "dunk" when it's more of an odyssey railing against how influencer and content culture devalues the work of culture critics, academics, and activists. As Harris said, it's not a problem exclusive to Somerton, but a corrosive attitude baked into late capitalist "content" culture. The video is a clear exploration of the consequences of all media and art being flattened into "content" creates a system where the labor of marginalised creatives and storytellers are exploited and stolen by people with more privileges and resources. As someone who has witnessed rich tiktokers quote articles and posts I've written verbatim without credit to make money from their 1000s of followers, this video hit super hard for me. From James Somerton claiming the works of dead gay activists, to Charli D'Amelio building a career from stealing dances created by Black tiktokers - plagiarism is often inseparable from discrimination and exploitation of labor rights. Harris' video is about how the nature of influencer content culture has further exacerbated the exploitative systems that already existed, wrapped up as YouTuber drama analysis. But I hope people don't miss the forest for the trees and remember you should always be citing your sources, fact checking, and be very wary of people who don't. And for the love of God, please stop getting your information exclusively from video essays, tiktoks and podcasts.

[yeehawpim]

[thefantastician]

is this relatable to everyone or just me

[swampjawn]

Time to talk an unnecessary amount about floors!

Episode 6 of Dungeon Meshi was produced in collaboration with a smaller studio, Enishiya - and it went way harder than I expected, for being made up of two relatively simple and self contained stories focusing on one character each.

And you can really see how those extra resources meant the animators could give full focus to both halves of the episode. Let's take a look at one piece that stole the show.

The first half was handled primarily by episode director/storyboard artist Keita Nagahara and co-animation director Hirotoshi (or Hiroaki? [1]) Arai. It's actually kinda insane how much of this section can be attributed to these two.

But the real star of the show is the second half, Chilchuck vs the mimic, led by co-animation director Toya Ooshima in his first animation director role for TV anime!

And the biggest aspect that knocked my dang boots off was something that's very consistent with Ooshima's style: background animation!

By animating the backgrounds rather than using painted still images, Ooshima and the team of other similarly skilled animators are able to create these beautiful dynamic camera movements that wouldn't be possible otherwise. Like these cuts by Takeshi Maenami where the camera becomes an expressive part of the scene, zipping forward and backward, and tilting to emphasize the speed of this murderous hermit crab. (Maenami's style is also very recognizable here - snappy timing and quick camera movements)

Or this cut by the incredible Kaito Tomioka which cleverly combines a traditional background for the walls with a fully animated floor. The level of detail in these tiles is just completely insane, and used to great effect with this wide, diagonal angle, and the way the camera tentatively drifts forward before reversing direction, and the tiles blur out as it speeds up.

I don't think I'm the only one caught off guard by how much they full-assed this little side story, but it was a pleasant surprise!

I broke down the entire episode in this video here. A lot of research went into this one, and I think it's the best one of these videos I've made so far, so if you're at all interested in more of this type of analysis in video form, I would really appreciate it if you checked it out, or re-blogged this post! Thanks

[1] It's listed as Hirotoshi on Anime News Network, but Hiroaki on a key frame that Studio Trigger shared on Twitter, so I'm not sure which one is wrong.

[reallybadblackoutpoems]

secrets of farming (1863) - john w. large

"yeowch augh taking damage ough eurgh"

[sapphia]

congrats on hbomberguy for getting the internet's highest queer honour

[sluttypatrickstar]

i cannot fucking believe i am wheeling this out again

[setaflow]

Gay pride happens in June and gay wrath happens whenever hbomberguy drops a 3+ hour video essay about a specific topic

[lucdoodle]

He wants Alastor's attention (audio by: @Vindooly on yt)

[dumplinglion]

[prokopetz]

The trouble with the rise of the YouTube Video Essayist™ is that everybody wants to be the next Defunctland or Hbomberguy, but all the wannabes know is how to be an influencer, so the resulting video essays are always really about themselves. You'll get a forty-five-minute video with maybe fifteen minutes of actual, topical information padded out with half an hour of tedious theatrics about how hard it was to do research for the video and how nobody wanted to talk to them, and I'm just sitting here like "yeah, dude, it was hard because you don't know how to perform research, and nobody wanted to talk to you because your behaviour toward your prospective sources amounted to borderline harassment, and that's how it looks in your own version of events which has clearly been spun for optics – I can't even imagine how badly you must have gone about this in reality".

[american-boyboss]

[liimonadas]

randomly rememebered a very silly maya content creator AU i came up with like 2 years ago. its just dumb fun haha

[swampjawn]

Dungeon Meshi Episode 7 was super interesting from an adaptation standpoint - this'll be a little different from what I usually write about (though I do still talk about the animation in the full video).

Studio Trigger have never done a straight-up manga adaptation before - and led by Yoshihiro Miyajima, a big fan of the manga who pushed hard for the adaptation to get made, and who has never directed a full series before, it was unclear if they'd be able to find the right balance between a simple panel-for-panel recreation and making something that's completely different.

And in the first few episodes, you could really feel the tension between the influence of a cautious young creative with great respect for the source material, and a studio with a unique established visual style. It kinda seemed like they were ping-ponging willy-nillily between the two sides of that spectrum.

But this episode showed that Miyajima (and series writer Kimiko Ueno) can take 3 chapters, slice them up and rearrange them into a cohesive-feeling episode while taking into account the differences between screen and page, and using them to their advantage.

Starting with the way the water looks. This line from the manga describes a faint magical glow to the water in this lake and you can see that the cavern fades into darkness above, but Kui's illustration style doesn't really define lighting and shadows very much compared to the cel-drawing style of animation. So the animators took the opportunity to use the water as the light source, and make a whole episode that's lit almost entirely from below. It really gives an otherworldly feeling to this area.

Particularly when the Kelpie shows up, that under-lighting works wonders to define its anatomy within the relatively simple line art.

What do you do when you can't show the immense fuck-off scale of a monster with a beautiful full-page spread like this?

Well you use what you do have: the ability to move the camera instead. This is such a great way to communicate the scale of this thing, AND such a great way to show some of Senshi's anime-original butt-cheeks!

This is one of my favorite shots from this episode - this whole sequence is super hectic, cutting quickly from character to character, but they use tricks like this to keep you from getting confused. This is framed much like it is in the manga, but with the moving image, they're able to use the trajectory of the fish head in the background to lead your eye directly from Chilchuck, right to the point where Senshi pops up in the foreground and transition seamlessly from one character to another!

Now, it's not all good - I am a bit disappointed that they removed Marcille's own Senshi-style soap-making montage, which was the perfect visual representation of the culmination of the character development and understanding built between Senshi and Marcille.

It's a shame to see it go.

I get more into that, what else was cut, and much more in this video where I broke down the entire episode!

Check it out if you feel like it. If you don't, jump in a ditch, cover yourself in leaves and jump out at people as they walk by.

Thanks for reading!

[fordtato]

I am asking this for an essay. Try to answer honestly.