The animation lapse in Exodus

There's only one animated moment in Shirobako really gets my critical juices going, and I suspect they might have done it on purpose, in a meta way that's the hallmark of the series.

Generally, the creators of Shirobako try to get every little bit of detail, within the budget. A great example is Mrs. Okutsu's drift, where she does the thing that Kyoichi Sudou mentioned about his underling, Shinji: the mastery of the 4WD drift is the mastery of steering while keeping the right foot planted on the gas. So, first you have to understand the steering with the gas (of which poor Shinbo was a big fan). Once you grok that, you cease doing it. And when the keeper goddess of Musani demonstrates it, you can actually see her steering inputs — in the outside shots! — and they make complete sense.

However, when we see the footages from the finale of Exodus, this happens:

The maneuver onee-sama is performing here is called a "side slip" and it is very natural under the circumstances. A pilot cannot see anything under the nose of the airplane and she must bank in order to look down. However, once you bank, the airplane starts to turn, and you must "give it some boot" in order to keep it going straight. You also have to give it a little pull and often bump the power accordingly, as slipping creates a lot of drag. The problem is that none of that transpires and as a result, the motion is terribly unnatural, fake looking.

Why did something so jarring was animated? Because they did not have a Sugie of airplanes who could do it right at Musani.

UPDATE: They fixed it in the BD release. But instead of animating a complex motion of the forward slip, they made onee-sama to side-slip left and quickly arrest the slip with a decisive right stick. Now I'm not exactly sure what the purpose of the maneuver was, but it looks believable.

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