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EP. REVIEW: Whisper Me a Love Song


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Key
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Joined: 03 Nov 2003
Posts: 18433
Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley)
PostPosted: Tue May 28, 2024 11:59 am Reply with quote
Yeah, I'm really glad the lyrics of Shiho's song were subbed, because that episode would have been missing a lot without knowing how full of invective it was.

MartinWisse wrote:
I think she had a crush on Aki and couldn't handle it when Aki was looking at Yori rather than her, that the only way she could deal with that was to quit.

I had a similar interpretation. There may well be some elitism involved as well, but she's hardly be the first character to hide her real feelings behind bitchy behavior.
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Thesarum
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Joined: 25 Mar 2022
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PostPosted: Tue May 28, 2024 12:54 pm Reply with quote
Key wrote:
Yeah, I'm really glad the lyrics of Shiho's song were subbed, because that episode would have been missing a lot without knowing how full of invective it was.

MartinWisse wrote:
I think she had a crush on Aki and couldn't handle it when Aki was looking at Yori rather than her, that the only way she could deal with that was to quit.

I had a similar interpretation. There may well be some elitism involved as well, but she's hardly be the first character to hide her real feelings behind bitchy behavior.


She seems angry. It's not clear what with. I'm not totally sold on the elitism angle. I think that attitude is directed inwards as much as anything, but she's the sort that projects. She's driven to prove something to someone and she's in a real hurry to do so. She gives off the vibes of someone who feels a ticking clock. Any moment spent being less than perfect is time wasted, but she does get frustrated with others who don't share her maniacal drive.

She totally has some unresolved feelings with respect to Aki too of course, and "deals" with that, like everything else, by lashing out. Seems Himari can just naturally hit some sort of weak spot though. Perhaps she can get her to open up a little.

I feel production was a bit off again this week, there were some oddly shaped faces and I found the missing mic stand in the wide shots that was present in the narrow ones in SSGirls performance really distracting too for some reason. Up to this point I think the art itself has largely been good even if the animation was a bit lacking (or missing entirely).
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darkchibi07



Joined: 15 Oct 2003
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PostPosted: Wed May 29, 2024 9:20 am Reply with quote
The communication aspect of Whisper Me a Love Song still impresses me especially between Himari and Yori as I do get behind their loving relationship. And then we have Shiho who's bringing in the melodrama baggage onto this series sort of like a wrecking ball (granted not even she's immune to Himari's niceness). Laughing

The band performances for this show continues to be the biggest oof especially compared to other girl band anime that had much more polished performances. Heck even right now we have Girls Band Cry and Jellyfish blowing this out of the water. I get the whole environment with the anime industry, but it's just a shame this show got dealt an iffy hand with the production overall.
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Yuvelir



Joined: 06 Jan 2015
Posts: 1624
PostPosted: Wed May 29, 2024 11:53 am Reply with quote
The animation in the performance was... interesting. Very uneven but better than expected considering they seem to have outsourced most of the animation again.
My favourite shots are the ones that were technically well animated but still completely off model somehow.
The music itself... I guess the singing was technically better but I just came from watching a couple Mizuki Nana concerts on YouTube and the comparison wasn't kind.

As for Shiho... geez, chill bitch. I'm sure she'll have her motives but damn she's nasty, she really wants it to hurt. Something interesting, her tall friend was introduced with her in the last scene from the previous episode. Her role there was retorting Shiho's more biting remarks, so that softens her character a bit.
About her uniform, I don't think it's modded? Mari got the same sleeves as her (although she IS loaded) but I don't think I've seen anyone else with frills on her ribbon.
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Glordit



Joined: 11 Sep 2020
Posts: 643
PostPosted: Fri May 31, 2024 1:26 pm Reply with quote
Apparently, Yokohama Animation Lab stepped out from this project citing impossible working conditions. CLOUDHEARTS are the only ones left and they have been outsourcing things to various people and studios to help them. Hence the big decline in overall quality.

Here's a series of tweets on what happened: https://files.catbox.moe/5ldq3u.png
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Millhi



Joined: 20 Feb 2017
Posts: 143
PostPosted: Fri May 31, 2024 1:58 pm Reply with quote
Glordit wrote:
Apparently, Yokohama Animation Lab stepped out from this project citing impossible working conditions. CLOUDHEARTS are the only ones left and they have been outsourcing things to various people and studios to help them. Hence the big decline in overall quality.

Here's a series of tweets on what happened: https://files.catbox.moe/5ldq3u.png

Actual production crash aside, It's clear enough that something went amiss during the (on-going) production as anime does, that person looks pretty clueless about what they are actually talking about. Or their so called "friend that worked on the show" is clueless.
>Says YAL has walked out, their tweet making it sound after ep 3? YAL did ep 5, have been involved in duties related to every ep out so far including ep 7 and I expect them to be in the credits until the show is finished.

>Says the concert scene in ep 7 only had 2-4 people. Credits beg to differ.
https://ibb.co/M6dQYZv

>The show uses outsourcing.
Is this some kind of late april fools joke? Outsourcing is one of the most common things in anime production, why is this framed as being special again?


So yeah take that whole thread with a grain of salt, prod issues aside.
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Yuvelir



Joined: 06 Jan 2015
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PostPosted: Fri May 31, 2024 3:03 pm Reply with quote
Not to say the tweets aren't bogus but they do mention miscredits, so the stories not matching up is expected.
Also, it's one thing to outsource inbetweens and some scenes, it's another to have no credits at all (ep 3) or pretty much every single name in animation roles not being Japanese.

Honestly almost everything in those tweets are things I theorized based on observation and credits, so those tweets might very well be educated guesses disguised as leaks.
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Millhi



Joined: 20 Feb 2017
Posts: 143
PostPosted: Fri May 31, 2024 4:40 pm Reply with quote
Yuvelir wrote:
Not to say the tweets aren't bogus but they do mention miscredits, so the stories not matching up is expected.


No studio is just gonna miscredit 10+ people on a special credit when it was supposed to be just 2-4 people. Having names missing or mistyped is a bigger occurrence then having a ton of extra names added.

Yuvelir wrote:
Also, it's one thing to outsource inbetweens and some scenes, it's another to have no credits at all (ep 3) or pretty much every single name in animation roles not being Japanese.


And what exactly does that change to my outsourcing statement? I wasn't talking about just inbetweens or other animation aspects, it includes full gross outsource too. Again, it's a very common occurrence.
for the record ep 3 has credits, I'm looking at them right now, you sure it's the correct episode?

Edit: Dun really want to turn this just into production bickering, that's not helping anyone and will only derail.
Production issues aside, I do still enjoy the show a whole bunch. Won't lie that I'm more interested in Shiho (even in her bitchy nature rn) than Yori or Himari.
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Cardcaptor Takato



Joined: 27 Jan 2018
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PostPosted: Fri May 31, 2024 9:37 pm Reply with quote
The next episode has already been delayed so they are definitely having production issues https://x.com/HIDIVEofficial/status/1796597908260688336
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Millhi



Joined: 20 Feb 2017
Posts: 143
PostPosted: Sat Jun 01, 2024 1:21 pm Reply with quote
Cardcaptor Takato wrote:
The next episode has already been delayed so they are definitely having production issues https://x.com/HIDIVEofficial/status/1796597908260688336


Adding to the above tweet that's just a few hour delay. Next eps are delayed too.
https://vxtwitter.com/sasakoi_anime/status/1796949835150467576
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Yuvelir



Joined: 06 Jan 2015
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 01, 2024 1:44 pm Reply with quote
Millhi wrote:
for the record ep 3 has credits, I'm looking at them right now, you sure it's the correct episode?

It was a bit of an hypebole, but I'd say putting almost every animation role under "Studio Shigure" doesn't quite qualify as crediting people for the job done. At any rate, I haven't looked into Studio Shigure but I doubt YokoAni or Cloud Hearts, so it adds up to the point of msot episodes being entirely outsourced.

Did episode 7 have specific credits for the concert scene? I should have looked more closely. I'll say however that "2~4 people worked on it" is... indeed very much nothing to worry about for a scene like this so that person was quite misinformed/misleading. Although it was quite clear that something on the direction or production level was preventing the work of several people from meshing together well.
As an aside, it's pissing me off a bit seeing so many people bash the scene as some awful animation when... it really wasn't. It had its issues but many of the individual cuts were pretty good, and overall way above average for this series (... regretably). It's like every time an anime character picks up a guitar it HAS to be God Knows.
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lossthief
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Joined: 14 Dec 2012
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 01, 2024 2:32 pm Reply with quote
Eh, while the reactions to that concert scene were a bit hyperbolic, I don't think people were holding it to an unreasonable standard. Personally I thought it looked pretty bad, largely because it's so clearly unfinished.

Any individual cut of the girls performing might look fine in isolation, but in aggregate the heavily referenced or rotoscoped movements are really uncanny. The character move with a weight and fluidity that is totally outside the norm for the show, but also just unpolished enough to not really work as spectacle. There's a ton of really fast edits that don't match the music at all, and are clearly meant to paper over the parts of the sequence that weren't finished.

Then you have the contrast between those fragments of animation with the static audience shots. Sometimes it's to named characters who are standing stock still - which we cut to multiple times. Other times it's to a faceless, obviously CG audience in extremely unnatural looking poses. On top of all of it, there's a ton of reused footage, showing the same heavily referenced cuts in different orders than before, which makes the whole thing feel like a fever dream.

Hell, even within those cuts, there's weird inconsistencies in what parts of the characters are moving. The vocalist's fingers might be flying all over the guitar, but her mouth is wide open and only slightly changing shape to match the audio. There's multiple points where the characters' movements do not match the music that we're hearing. That just adds to the surreality of it all, until you're left with a lot of isolated animation that is fluid but totally out of sync with what we're hearing.

For comparison, I wouldn't call the concert scene in episode 7 of Healer Girl an animation power house, but it gets much better results with more limited animation and effective editing. Whatever it lacks in raw, fluid motion it makes up for with strong posing, well-timed edits, and animation flourishes at just the right time to give it impact without being majorly ambitious or complex.
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John the Dark Lord



Joined: 19 Jun 2020
Posts: 263
PostPosted: Mon Jun 03, 2024 11:00 am Reply with quote
Well, this break should give me time to think about where the anime will end, because I have no idea anymore. At first they were consistently adapting half a volume in each episode, so it seemed clear the stopping point would be volume 6. But then those last two episodes adapted nearly an entire volume each, Even if the remaining four go back to the previous pacing, it would end with the anime stopping at chapter 34 in Volume 7, and while that chapter may be important, it's not exactly a stopping point.

In fact, the only stopping point I can think about after that chapter would be chapter 37, which would require the anime to keep moving super-fast for at least one more episode. But any point after that, and I lose my faith that the anime will not skip something important (they are already cutting off some stuff from the manga, but nothing too vital yet).

Sure, this could all be dodged if it ends with an original ending, or adds filler to end in what I believed would be the stopping point at first, but those options are their own can of worms.
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TanyaTheEvil



Joined: 11 May 2018
Posts: 332
PostPosted: Mon Jun 03, 2024 1:35 pm Reply with quote
The manga is one of my favorite manga out there. The anime is good but hopefully they get through all the production problems. I just recently finish re-watching Märchen Mädchen. It is one of my favorite anime even though the many problems it had as well. I was happy to see that Märchen Mädchen was mentioned in any shape or form.
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Saeryen



Joined: 26 Aug 2020
Posts: 985
PostPosted: Mon Jun 03, 2024 2:31 pm Reply with quote
Wait, is Episode 8 a recap or not? I'm confused
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