Update: ugh, I feel worse compared to yesterday. Don’t know if this will have any impacts on my writeups when it comes to what time they come out, but it may impact how long my writeups may end up being. As if they weren’t short enough already.
BEFORE COMMENTING ABOUT THE NEXT TWO PARAGRAPHS, PLEASE READ THE UPDATE BELOW THEM.
Before I even get into the plot of the episode, I’d like to discuss how this episode felt like the worst integration of CGI — assuming it’s CGI and not a technology that I dislike but refrain from making accusations about the usage of because I personally don’t feel qualified enough to make these kinds of accusations — because the building crashes we see in the fight between Vordin and Clevatess felt way too realistic compared to what we’ve seen in the series prior to this point.
And just to make it clear: I’m bad at spotting CGI integration unless it’s really fucking obvious that it wasn’t created without the assistance of software to make CGI. If I can spot this kind of content, then it’s just obvious you’re preforming on just as low of a level as animators back when CGI was considered new tech in the animation industry, and could be indicative of usage of a different technology. Unfortunately, I’ll have to leave this as a “dude, just trust me” claim, as I think it’s most obvious if it’s in motion instead of in stills, and I really don’t wanna take the time to record the scene for myself. I even tried getting stills, but the stills don’t even look that bad. I think it’s just an issue with how the movement plays out.
UPDATE (09/26/26)
I have been informed by both a Tumblr user and a user that commented on this post that the scene I was talking about was made using real life miniatures to make the shots. According to the Tumblr user, that exact same method was used for some scenes in Season 1. I will admit, that does mean that I was inaccurate in spotting what technique was used in the scene, and I do apologize about that. I am an American member of Gen Z, and so my baseline for what modern shows use is digital software, hence why my brain hopped straight onto “bad CGI”.
Yes, I could’ve looked up an interview that reveals this information, especially now knowing that one exists, however, I feel like my sickness at the time that I wrote this writeup caused my actual criticism of the scene to not come through as clearly as I would’ve liked, instead having equaled it to “it looks too realistic”. What I was trying to say is “it doesn’t look like it blends in with the animation well enough”, which is exactly why I give it a “dude, just trust me” thing, as this is one of the rare instances where stopping on a random frame has it still look good, but the instant it’s in motion, it looks almost…I don’t know if “uncanny” is the word I’m looking for here, but we’ll just say that it is and move on.
I cannot recall any scenes from Season 1 standing out quite as much as this one, so I’m guessing those scenes were done either in situations where light level was already low so oddities were easier to hide, or they were able to blend in the scenes much better in Season 1 compared to Season 2. If it’s the former, then I guess it’s just a matter of these kinds of shots not working well in brightly lit settings. If it’s the latter, then I’m genuinely curious what happened behind the scenes to cause the other scenes to look well-blended in while this one just stuck out to me. After all, if a scene feels like something that I’d equate to BAD CGI, then even if I mistake what method was use, the core principal of why I said it still remains: it just stands out far too much compared to what surrounds it. While this scene may be good in a vacuum, I think it falls apart the instant you try surrounding it with the rest of the episode.
But yeah, I made a mistake in this post by falsely assuming that the scene was made with bad CGI, and I’ll own up to that! In the future, instead of trying to pin down what technique was used with the minimal information you can get from the episode, I’ll instead just point out when I believe scenes fail to blend in without trying to pin the blame on poor usage of a technique that may not have actually been used. This should still allow me to get my criticisms across without doing any misidentification like this again. Huge thank you to those two users for pointing out the truth of the production, as without them, I wouldn’t be able to make this update! :]
TL;DR FOR UPDATE: The scene being talked about is not CGI (which I misidentified it as) or the other technology that I refuse to bring up, but instead done using real life miniatures. Despite this being an explanation for why it looks more realistic than usual, however, I believe that I failed to properly communicate my issue with the scene when I first wrote this post, and my issue is more so that the scene in motion doesn’t look like it blends in as much compared to the other times that this method was supposedly used. In the future, instead of trying to get specific about techniques, I’ll just point out when I believe scenes don’t blend in, to prevent any mistakes like this from happening again.
ORIGNAL POST CONTINUES BELOW.
There was also a scene where Clevatess’s facial animation looked goofy compared to the dialogue that was being presented in the scene. While one could argue it looks realistic, I’d argue that it actually works against the episode. I can provide proof for this claim, however, as I believe that it’s obvious even with just a still.
This looks like the kind of face you’d see in a comedy anime or even just a comedic moment, not for something that should be a serious episode like this.
The episode itself is mainly just a continuation of Clevatess and Vordin’s fight (without a conclusion yet), as well as a telling of the time Vordin remembers but Clevatess doesn’t, as well as a scene that’s basically just a repeat of the ending scene of the previous episode but in Milena’s POV. Haven’t read the Webtoon yet, but it just feels like it’s there to be some time pad. And while it seems like the ending to Clevatess and Vordin’s fight could be argued to be a conclusion, I highly doubt that the fight will end the way it did.
Next episode next week, but I’m already putting my foot down and saying that if we get Season 3, I am not watching straight away. I feel disappointed enough with this episode, I highly doubt that anything will change with my opinion by the next one, regardless of if it’s either episode or season.
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