Fate/Apocrypha Episode 22 Discussion

Well if anything this episode will show how little some people understand about animation.
I already see the complaints about character going off model ( which is essential for fluent animation with great cinematography to work ) in stead of staying perfectly on model with merely mouth flaps and very limited movement.

They pulled all stops this episode and it was a blast, a visual treat.

People have been hyping this up a lot since yesterday and i was getting excited to watch the fight scenes...

I do not understand why this episode is so highly praised. It is just typical scream-as-loud-as-you-can explosionfest at its finest.

First off, the artstyle is completely different compared to all the previous episodes so from start to finish this was very jarring to watch. Characters look way off-model in basic shots where they're simply talking. But, that doesn't even qualify as a problem compared to the atrocious frames in fight scenes. YES of course it's impossible for everything to look beautiful and drawn in detail for action sequences where characters are in constant motion and YES of course the pay-off for lowering the quality of your art on purpose is fluid animation. Problem is, apart from a few shots in the Atalanta vs Ruler/Achilles fight, this episode does not benefit from said added fluidity AT ALL. People are drooling over the Karna vs Sieg fight, but that fight was more or less absolute basic left to right stuff for what was essentialy a dick whose "beam" can make a larger explosion measuring contest. They were practically standing still most of the time and apart from the final attack they were just jumping backwards (whenever they actually moved) to open up space to fire their "beams" again. I do not need overexaggerated movements for such simple actions if it means the characters are going to look like absolute crap. If you make characters look like they came straight out of a Mickey Mouse show, then you had better give me the most badass beautifully choreographed battle in the Fate franchise. Needless to say, for me, this came nowhere near close enough to doing that. UBW was also explosions lightning shouting and special effects, but character designs looked perfectly normal without being any less fluid than what Apocrypha offered today.

It really is a shame because it's clear that a lot of effort was put into the making of this episode and i can see why people that like flashy stuff enjoyed this. I just feel that they had this team work on the wrong fights. The Achilles vs Chiron fight was practically BEGGING for this treatment. If they worked on that and ONLY that (low quality frames wouldn't work on a close-up fist fight) maybe we could have gotten something with potential to surpass the best fight in the franchise. Unfortunately, we didn't even get something that surpassed the Ruler bits vs Keter Malkuth...

Sound effects are still murdering my ears and we didn't get an explanation about how the NPs showcased work btw.