The only problem I see for now is that the widely spaced eyes sometimes become too widely spaced (in case of the Mao’s teacher). Maybe some face shapes were a bit strange too, but just a bit.

The story did not grab me, and Mao irritates me. Fortunately, Mao is not as bad as Kana of Minami-ke and does not have as much screen time, so I may be able to tolerate her. Oh well, I suppose it’s impossible to film an anime which has everything. Also, it may yet get better.

UPDATE 2007/11/08: Jason disagrees:

[Clannad has] Great visual quality, a step above Kanon. Animation’s really smooth (unlike ef), and the characters actually blink (unlike Kimikiss). Is there a studio that animates a TV series better than Kyoto presently?

What is it? Is he blind? Or am I?

UPDATE 2007/12/05: Seen at Sea Slugs:

Kabitzin has expressed his displeasure at the wideset eyes, but personally I really like the character designs. Next thing you know, he’s going to be complaining about the triangular mouths in Minami-ke….oh wait, never mind.

I wasn’t following, distracted by other series, but recent screenshots show the eyes migrating to the center. It’s a welcome improvement.

If you draw the relationship chart for Da Capo, Kanon, or most other bishoujo series you get a million arrows pointing from all the girls directly at the male lead, but Kimikiss’s chart would look more like Urusei Yatsura, closer to an explosion in a spaghetti factory.

Right. Still, I’m a little sad to fall behind on the show, because it is not a good sign: I might need to rent DVDs eventually.

The curious part of Suguru’s perspective is how the widely spaced eyes are not mentioned at all. It’s all relationships all the time.

I’m looking for superior animation. I’m looking for things like “How well do they make use of HDTV?”, “How many frames are animated?”, “Does the background move?”, “When a character speaks, do they redraw the whole character or just the face/mouth?”, etc. Some studios are really good at hiding their animation shortcuts, but I’m also not too bad at picking them out (after seeing thousands of frames of these, of course). There’s also bad drawing (like quality cabbage), bad animation (like the character-like statues in Kimikiss), and an unholy combination of the two (Gun Musashi, Neuro, Xenoglossia). There’s also good drawing (Black Lagoon), good animation (Minami-ke), and an unholy combination of the two (Haruhi Suzumiya, Gigantic Formula, Escaflowne).

This is very curious for me because I made a call for Kimikiss over Clannad. Another common complaint is the lack of blinking. I’m certainly going to have a harder look at the animation of motion.

On the second thought, I liked the art of Xenoglossia. You just look at that eye, it’s the best anime has to offer across the board. Perhaps my taste is just different from Jason’s.

After seeing Brett Farve play over the last decade, he had a great early career (along with a Super Bowl win), but then he started getting old and just started chucking the ball without care. More than one person thought he was washed up. Then 2007 came along, and it was like we got back age 28 Brett Farve instead of age 38. Gainax busted out of the gates with the landmark Evangelion, which influence still pervades anime today, followed it up with the fantastic Kare Kano, FLCL, Ebichu, and Mahoromatic, and then proceeded to mail in series like He Is My Master and Konomini. It’s scary the parallels between the two, especially with the “Who the fuck do you think we are?” power play of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann in 2007 for Gainax. The Absolutely Farvian tier is very dangerous just because they can submit a pantheon performance even better than The Pantheon tier, but they can also toss game-ending interceptions in the red zone. Still, I absolutely would not bet against this tier.

Jason probably thinks that he made himself a name with references to sports, although it’s equally possible that AoMM/DbD succeeded despite them. Oddly enough, I know how to spell Favre’s name, because he appeared in a guest strip of online comic PvP. In it, Jase yells at TV, “Favre, what are you doing?!”, and in the next frame Favre sits with them on the couch and says, “Sorry guys, my finger slipped [from the Xbox controller]“. The analogy above was good, however, because it still works even if you don’t know Favre.

Jason omitted UFOtable, which is too bad. I think it would probably climb up the ranks quite nicely on the strength of Shinobu’s body. Also, they invented the gradient hair in Manabi.

To reiterate, my acceptance of Nodame suffered from an excellent direction of rather dubious material: the arrangement which was impossible to appreciate without watching the anime. I would never believe any blogger, no matter what superlatives they used, if they described the little Gekigangar 3 inside Nodame. In any normal anime, the space candy would have fallen flat. Even now I do not understand exactly how Kenichi Kasai sneaked past my cynicism. I knew that it was corny when I watched it, and yet… it worked.

The art and animation are excellent, although it’s not apparent in most screencaps. Also, here’s one shot of Noda which looked strangely familiar:

It took me 30 second of intense concentration to recognize Kimikiss, only with eyes placed at normal distance. One look at ANN confirmed that both director and art director (Shichiro Kobayashi) were the same. I guess I’ll have to give Kimikiss a second chance.