KYOUSOUGIGA

DESCRIPTION

CAST

ONA ActionKyousougiga (2012)
MANGA ActionKyousou Giga
ANIME ActionKyousougiga (TV)

REVIEWS

• 

  GreenRevue

  88/100
  One of the medium's highest peaks of visual experimentation, creativity, and (importantly) raw fun and personality

  Note: I watched the 2013 re-aired version (Episode 0)

  Just so fun and striking. No one is doing it like Rie Matsumoto (especially when paired with Yuuki Hayashi). 8.5, maybe even an 9 with all my biases.

  One of the medium's highest peaks of visual experimentation, creativity, and (importantly) raw fun and personality. Rie Matsumoto’s work never slows down in how much it tries to do, and this preview OVA is far from an exception.

  Yuuki Hayashi’s incredible character designs and animation direction lead to some of the most expressive character animation in the industry, incredibly fun and distinct, capable of smoothness and charming choppiness, and endlessly malleable to Matsumoto's ridiculous compositions, and aesthetic and charming in and of itself.

  Rie Matsumoto’s eye for colour (Yuki Akimoto on colour design) is of extreme note, and has been further improved since this OVA, bright and aggressive colours that pop off each other, a welcome assault to the senses throughout. Merged with the character designs and animation bouncing off of both, it all creates a sense of vibrancy and exaggerated fun that cannot be matched.

  Matsumoto’s compositions are also some of the best in the industry in my opinion, warped in many places with lens effects at times, allowing for really expressive and aesthetically pleasing shots, utilising malleability of environments and character designs. She can frame shots close up to take advantage of expressive facial expressions and animations, or in the distance to allow choppy distance animation to show its own kind of extreme charm. She can even do both at the same time, and loves to do exactly that, utilising both foreground and background in her multi-layered visual approach, a complementary contrast within shots.

  Striking framing utilising the angles provided by the tower, and a use of the mentioned charming animation placed at a degree of distance

  
  Matsumoto's multi-layered approach, impactful use of both foreground and background to create scale and space and utilise the charms of both.

  Stunning animation by Hayashi with great impact and charm, and a variety of striking compositions. The car also transitions between foreground and background as a solid example of that.

  Matsumoto also loves to transition between the foreground and background, to really utilise anime's ability for charmingly stylised character expression in every sense, or to create a sense of dynamism and scale. Her compositions, the warped perspectives and such, can be incredibly fun in the ways characters express, but they can also lead to extremely considered shots with a sense of shape and also a sense of scale, a powerful theatrical nature. Her sharp, angular panelling here works to a similar effect, and her use of CGI here, her editing quirks, and her match cuts, as well as colour and visual stylisations such as manga onomatopoeia, screens, and so forth.

  To put it simply. Matsumoto's direction (complemented particularly well by Yuuki Hayashi) is so unbelievably striking, yet unbelievably fun, funny, and emotional, and her ability to do all these things, to balance all of this, all while never not being fun, is why she is one of the best directors in the medium (if not the best). Her visuals are always so expressively warped or framed, her storyboards so strikingly composed, her multi-layered approach unrivalled. Her work is just so dense, yet fun and readable. It's chaotic yet controlled. Fun yet powerful. It's just really, really great, and I love it. An adrenaline filled burst of fun yet heart.

  I could go on, but without spamming screenshots and sakuga clips it will all end up as white noise, a barrage of praise. But that's exactly what it all deserves, me just throwing my praise on this review because I am just so entertained and awed, whether it makes sense or not, or I can truly explain. It's just so fun and expressive, so unrestrained yet measured.

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