Seems pretty good.
Reviews for "Kagemusha Prologue"
This one of your animation that I liked best so far, even though the characters were stiff and had overlapped clothings at times, but overall, it's quite beautiful. The story is serious (I like it) and the combats were cool and well animated too, and it's not monotonous to look at it too. I also liked how you responded to the previous comment about ripoffs. I'll say that typically everything in this world is quite cliche already, even the most crazy psychopath or the abnormal personality are already seem quite common and unsurprising to the viewers. So don't talk about cliche bullshit which is for those with no common sense, but more on just simply enjoying it or not. Some people like violence nor matter how many times they see it while some prefer mystery while others prefer fan service and I don't see people getting cliche about it. Some stories' settings or character's designs and personality also may be similar in what ever shows or animations seen too, and why? Because there is only restricted options to choose from while the rest those weird personalities are tagged as eccentrics which them themselves are not surprising either. So again, in my opinion it's better and more on enjoying the animation and story itself than rating down a work due to it's similarities, well typically everything have it's similarities anyway.
Kel-chan responds:
I'm going to try and fix alot of those artifacts (like the clothes clipping though models and things) those problems stem from overalpping layers of clothes and robes and long coats especially-
I'm gonna really try to work on the story and character acting for this so it's more like a historical drama and character driven rather than fight scene or event driven
Art influened by Naruto I see. Also ive never seen this type of animation on newgrounds before, really cool, looks like hard work
promising
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