Better brace yourselves people, the legend has revived and arrived.
Reviews for "Kagemusha Prologue"
I went back and re-watched the original series you are basing this one off of because I wanted to compare them. And I must say, this version already looks like it is much more polished. It is clear just by comparison that your skills and experience have grown a good amount. I love your knew approach to combat. The animation is good. The voices are pretty good so far. The story appears to be similar. I am glad you are doing this.
The negatives:
Not many. Just a few nitpicks.
1. Despite the similarities to the original series, the atmosphere in this is somehow not as dark and foreboding as your prologue in that. Don't get me wrong. The atmosphere here is quite good and probably fits your improved combat better. But it almost seems heroic somehow. Not exactly fitting for an assassination attempt. The atmosphere in this is still great and I do like it. But I did find I missed how dark and bleak the feel was in the original prologue. Perhaps I will find that darkness in future episode. Interestingly, none of your episodes from the original you had ever captured that same feel again.
2. I thought the tone of the word "purpose" was pronounced kind of off in this. Although, there is the possibility that was done on purpose to make it seem more like the way they would say it in Feudal Japan, if they spoke perfect English... Ummm... Well... You do know what I'm trying to say, right?
3. I had a problem with some of the swaying back and forth. Some of it fit well. Some of it didn't. When it didn't work, it seemed excessive and unnatural, like they were seasick or something. I realize you were trying to connect it with the various camera angles. And that isn't easy. I would almost prefer you cut some of it out and kept some of the characters relatively still in certain spots. Or at least had them sway a little less. Your combat is quite fluid, and the animation was great overall, but I think you should work on the fluidity when the characters are stationary. Sometimes less is more.
Going forward:
The one thing I will say about the original is that the plot was really disjointed. I think some of that was because of the time between episodes... But regardless, I want to be clear: This is NOT an issue here in this movie as you just have the first bit. But I wanted to get into it in case my advice helps you going forward. I do think that the "betrayal" (for lack of better way to say it without potential spoilers) in the original series came too soon without enough development building up to it. I felt that there should have been at least a couple episodes to help introduce the early setting in the story before it was picked apart so to speak by the events surrounding said betrayal. And some of the characters that were introduced out of seemingly nowhere could have used some prior plot development.
Now I don't know what you have planned for the story. My guess is your plot is better because you have gotten better at this. I don't know if you are planning going a similar route or not. But based on the similarities between this prologue and the last, I would guess that will come up sooner or later. My advice is to make it at least a little later if you do.
Final score:
4.5/5 or 9/10.
Kel-chan responds:
Thanks for watching the original. I'm planning to flesh out the dialogue- alot of which was cut in the original to show more action and also because at the time I didn't want to bore the audience with my terrible animation.
This script has alot of exposition thats just through characters talking since its a dialogue so I have to get better at animating that and I'm looking at alot of video game cutscenes for clues.
I think part of the reason the atmosphere was different was pretty much just the music- I changed it because to me it felt a little too emo and a little too holier than thou- I'm probably going to rewrite a bit of the asides to get rid of that and try to find a balance.
As far as that betrayal plot push, I think I can fix it by making a longer episode to keep in time with the series. By this- i mean those events are what sets the series off and, since I didn't finish the original and left out alot of the political reasons for character choices, you never really understood why things were happening.
I think alot of the setting introduction can be done with characters talking about things that never got shown in the first and also with scenes and things I wasn't able to do before.
More of the divergence comes out after chapter 2/3 where I rewrote alot and added in a bunch of new characters to fill in holes of connecting the stories
Thanks alot for the tips
Awessome, tho I am sad that EVERY guard in anime is like a peasant with a sword. It's like they receive no training to battle assassins....
Kel-chan responds:
Ashigaru were peasant farmers for the most part- conscripts. Just like WW1 and 2 they're given basic training and then work in the army for a period of time. Then go back to farming, so against a lifelong trained swordsman one on one...they're probably not going to win. It's like special ops vs regular military or more like Sam fisher from splinter cell vs the average goon or guard soldier.
Also the series would be very short if the main character died in the first few minutes of the show.
That said- next episode has a competent duel, first of many in the series
What was doing the third hokage there? Also she looked like a rule 63 of Sasuke. Nice work by the way, I can't wait to watch more.
Kel-chan responds:
nah she doesn't have spikey hair nor the emo suit.
the reason some chars look naruto-ish is because i found some naruto 3d models and used them as a base for some characters
that looked and sounded like the hokage from naruto liked the fighting vey cool