the anime addition of suguru hearing applauses in the water sounds of the shower and the rain is such a genius move. he was so deeply traumatised even after one year and this detail really conveyed how easily his traumatic memories were triggered. literal chills.

Today's translation #526

Yuri!!! on Life official guidebook, Toshiharu Mizutani (Art Director) interview

Part 3.

-- For sure, there is a lot of small things in the designs.

M: When I look at just the line arts, I always think that they are drawn in a very loose way, and a lot of those small things are skillfully drawn in a simplified way/omitted. It's something that only somebody with a lot of practice can do. Even newcomers can draw precisely, if they look at a drawing and try to copy it, but the most important thing is not to draw something that is not necessary. If you have to later erase something that you drew, then you give yourself twice the amount of work, but only people with a lot of skill can simply not draw too much to begin with.

-- Then it must have been a good opportunity to learn for the younger staff members, I'd guess?

M: They were all very desperate [to get the job done] and working while on the brink of death.

-- The ice in the skating scenes is very realistic, too. Was it a request from the Director?

M: Yeah. Since the first PV. Even I have watched some figure skating on DVD, so it was something that was on my mind, too. In case of ice shows, the lights are very elaborate, and your eyes are really drawn to the ice, cut with blades of skaters' shoes. Because of how it sparkles. I was wondering if it would be possible to try to achieve this effect, but I thought that if I touched this subject, we all were going to suffer, so I kept quiet. But then I decided that I want to have those cuts in the ice, after all. All were drawn on the same layer, but then split into multiple layers. We put at least three such layers on the surface of the ice.

[Notes: Long time no rant, so...

((Just in case, newer readers may not be aware, that I'm a "fujo-hater" 😂 But fret not, I'm not against seeing relationship between Yuuri and Victor as romantic or against people reading BL, but I'm very much against fujos, who as it was in the case of YoI, try to "teach"/press the creators/other staff members to make the canon bend to their doujinshi tropes.))

The talk about staff members on the brink of death reminded me about that huge controversy about MAPPA that happened last year 💀 It's not a secret that Sayo was overworking animators during YoI and there are still screenshots of animators calling her names on twitter and say condolences to each other, bc of being involved with YoI. So, YoI fandom now hating MAPPA, bc "bad MAPPA, bad working conditions, poor animators...", while demanding that they should stop producing shonens, bc they should make YoI instead is well... an example of how spending time in an echo chamber and just following the crowd can make you a huge hypocrite.

It should also be said that it's not that those shonens are "just for boys" or anything like that if we talk about this topic, btw. GoYuu from JJK (Gojo x Yuuji) is so popular with fujos that it has now more views in total on pixiv than VicYuu, and gets more views in 10-30 min than VicYuu gets in 24 hours (a huge credit for that should ofc go to YoI's IP holders, as they've been trying to starve the fandom to death since 2018, basically...) It's really ironic that it's YoI fans who are so much against MAPPA making those popular shonens, bc so many Jp VicYuu fujos moved to GoYuu (it's basically the same trope "the most awesome, strong and cool man in the world the seme" x "fujoshi avatar the main character in the center of the universe the uke") - one of the reasons, why Jp fans don't attack MAPPA - they very much enjoy those shonens. (Another is that they can read and it's very easy to check who owns the IP.)

To sum up, as always, it's very unfair for YoI fans to call Otsuka CEO the greedy homophobic liar, while absolutely refusing to see the bigger picture.]

Quick random anime adaptations thoughts

Undead Unluck was niche from the start but it being hulu exclusive just killed any chance of a boost, David Production made and awesome job, though.

Speaking of niche, Yozakura getting an anime made by silver link is sad.

Now that Blue Box anime was announced and my wishes of Cloverworks doing it came true, Sakamoto Days by Bones and Kaoru Hana wa Rin to Saku by... Cloverworks, too (2025 maybe?) Are next on the wishlist.

Frieren nailed it. 10/10

Dandadan anime when

Mappa should just take the Ufotable route and make slower releases, JJK is barely scraping by now and shit's hitting the fan