The last thing we watched, cartoon/animu edition

[Ezekiel]

Wanted to finally check out Dirty Pair. I mean, still will. But really disappointed about the complete lack of grain and all the detail that's no longer in the photos (cels). Typical.



Morons wanting everything to look like squeaky new digital animation. If you can't see why this is bad, if you think it's autism, you're blind.



An oil painting. The girls don't look like anything.

I should know to expect this from the Japanese, but it's still so sad.

 

[BrawlMan]

Wanted to finally check out Dirty Pair. I mean, still will. But really disappointed about the complete lack of grain and all the detail that's no longer in the photos (cels). Typical.

Let me know when you get to the Dirty Pair OVAs and the two movies, Project Eden and Flight 005 Conspiracy.

 

[Worgen]

Tried watching Delicious in Dungeon. Couldn't get past the first episode, dub is pretty bad, voices really don't match the characters. Plus, its easier to read the early dialog then to hear it, not to mention the step by step butchering was weird enough in the manga, don't need it lovingly animated.

Instead started watching Scavenger's Reign, holy crap, its so good. Its weird, its interesting, its got a really cool art style and totally alien world that is so well thought out. Check it out on netflix.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Rewatched that one Felix the Cat movie that traumatized me as a kid and it's as much of a fever trip as I vaguely remembered.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Tried watching Delicious in Dungeon. Couldn't get past the first episode, dub is pretty bad, voices really don't match the characters.

Try the German dub.

 

[Worgen]

Try the German dub.

The problem is, I don't speak german, so I would still have to read subtitles.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

The problem is, I don't speak german, so I would still have to read subtitles.

 

[gorfias]

Rewatched that one Felix the Cat movie that traumatized me as a kid and it's as much of a fever trip as I vaguely remembered.

I was in the service and was subject to being killed at any time and yet? This fricken thing scared the ever-loving bejeepers out of me.


45 years later? Still pretty good but not the nightmare fuel it was in my early days!

 

[Ezekiel]

Trying to explain this to anime fans is frustrating. I know that I'm speaking in circular terms, but how do you get through?

Person 1: "The grain isn't supposed to be there, it's an artefact of the technology. If the makers had been able to keep everything free of grain, they would have. (At least in the vast majority of cases.) If you've become personally attached to the look, there's nothing wrong with that of course, but you can't really expect anyone else to seek to preserve what is actually a 'mistake', albeit an unavoidable one."

Me: "That doesn't make any sense. How is the photo that captured the image for broadcasting a mistake? Or the grain? 'Mistake' implies something accidental or an error. The grain is not an artifact, it IS the original image. (The paper they placed under the glass/camera was not the finished record. The negative is.) If you're using a film camera, knowing how the image is captured, it's intended. Film is all grain. Smooth out the grain and you lose much of that original image. Might as well say the grain in a live action movie is a mistake too. No, that's the technology."

Person 2: "Grain =/= detail.

"Grain in old anime was visual noise that occured due to analog production methods. It was never intended as an artistic choice - that's why you never see grain in modern digital productions.

"Let me get this straight: it's fine if you prefer watching anime with grain. But don't spread lies how grain adds detail. Grain was never detail - it was always noise."

Me: "Grain doesn't add detail. I never said that. Grain IS detail. You can only take away. Adding detail with grain would imply adding fake grain. Some film stocks will come out grainier than others, but it's all grain in the end, nothing but. All home video releases shot on film have some amount of noise reduction, but you need to be very careful with how much you apply because that's the image.

"Cel animation =/= digital animation"

Person 2: "Cease with the mental gymnastics. You are still wrong. Grain is not detail, it's noise that occured due to production techniques of the time. If they could have eliminated grain back then, they would have."

Me: "Grain is detail. Grain is the picture. You don't know enough about photography. Yes, if they could have eliminated grain back then, they would have. But then it would have been digital animation, and that's neither here nor there. 'If Hideo Kojima could have made the first Metal Gear Solid for the PS5, he would have.' So? You work with the tools available and accept those limitations. In the case of grain, you can't later completely remove it without harming the picture, the drawing. Because it only remains as grain."

Person 2: "The brainrot of users thinking noise = detail"

Good analogy: "It's comparable to tape hiss on analogue recordings. Yes - if artists 50 years ago had been able to record digitally without tape hiss, they would have. But they weren't, and digitally removing hiss cannot be done without affecting the original recording. Same with film grain."

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Trying to explain this to anime fans is frustrating. I know that I'm speaking in circular terms, but how do you get through?

Person 1: "The grain isn't supposed to be there, it's an artefact of the technology. If the makers had been able to keep everything free of grain, they would have. (At least in the vast majority of cases.) If you've become personally attached to the look, there's nothing wrong with that of course, but you can't really expect anyone else to seek to preserve what is actually a 'mistake', albeit an unavoidable one."

Me: "That doesn't make any sense. How is the photo that captured the image for broadcasting a mistake? Or the grain? 'Mistake' implies something accidental or an error. The grain is not an artifact, it IS the original image. (The paper they placed under the glass/camera was not the finished record. The negative is.) If you're using a film camera, knowing how the image is captured, it's intended. Film is all grain. Smooth out the grain and you lose much of that original image. Might as well say the grain in a live action movie is a mistake too. No, that's the technology."

Person 2: "Grain =/= detail.

"Grain in old anime was visual noise that occured due to analog production methods. It was never intended as an artistic choice - that's why you never see grain in modern digital productions.

"Let me get this straight: it's fine if you prefer watching anime with grain. But don't spread lies how grain adds detail. Grain was never detail - it was always noise."

Me: "Grain doesn't add detail. I never said that. Grain IS detail. You can only take away. Adding detail with grain would imply adding fake grain. Some film stocks will come out grainier than others, but it's all grain in the end, nothing but. All home video releases shot on film have some amount of noise reduction, but you need to be very careful with how much you apply because that's the image.

"Cel animation =/= digital animation"

Person 2: "Cease with the mental gymnastics. You are still wrong. Grain is not detail, it's noise that occured due to production techniques of the time. If they could have eliminated grain back then, they would have."

Me: "Grain is detail. Grain is the picture. You don't know enough about photography. Yes, if they could have eliminated grain back then, they would have. But then it would have been digital animation, and that's neither here nor there. 'If Hideo Kojima could have made the first Metal Gear Solid for the PS5, he would have.' So? You work with the tools available and accept those limitations. In the case of grain, you can't later completely remove it without harming the picture, the drawing. Because it only remains as grain."

Person 2: "The brainrot of users thinking noise = detail"

Good analogy: "It's comparable to tape hiss on analogue recordings. Yes - if artists 50 years ago had been able to record digitally without tape hiss, they would have. But they weren't, and digitally removing hiss cannot be done without affecting the original recording. Same with film grain."

I understand what you're trying to say, but you're saying it in a pedantic way.

When people are talking about film grain they aren't talking about the individual grains, they're talking about the overall effect, and the reason that the effect exists isn't because of the grains that make up the image, but because of the size of the grains and also the size of the space between the grains. The effect is caused by gaps in between clumps of grains.

You are correct that the image of the film is made up of individual grains, but the EFFECT of film grain is caused by the negative space between the clusters of grains. Therefore it's actually characterized by a lack of detail because the film grain effect is created by gaps in the image that aren't captured. It's similar to looking through a screen door where the screen is blocking some of the outside world. Different films have different sized grains and different sized gaps between the grains (just like screen doors have different sized holes, and also different screen thicknesses) therefore obscuring more or less of the final image. So I would say that the people you are arguing with are actually correct, because the film grain effect is characterized by a lack of captured detail.

HOWEVER the final product of anime at the time was that film grain was going to be in it due to the technology used. It was unavoidable. Therefore, because everything had film grain in it the animators worked with the limitations of that technology in mind, and the final result is meant to be viewed with the film grain. It looks worse without film grain because it wasn't meant to be viewed that way. Similar to how pixel art that was meant to be viewed on a CRT TV or Monitor looks worse on other types of displays because the additional clarity makes the individual pixels more visible.

Regarding the screenshots you posted earlier complaining that there's missing detail...well there isn't. It's just that the film grain effect in the image would have originally blocked you from noticing the lack of detail underneath (along with scan lines and all the other things TV images had in 1985). Essentially there was no point to making a super high resolution image with a lot of detail when the technology wasn't able to reproduce a high detail image for the viewers watching at home on a tiny 19" TV screen. Now when we're looking at those images 40 years later on 65" screens that are 10x the resolution of the original release of course we see a startling lack of detail.

 

[Ezekiel]

I think there IS detail hidden under that DNR.

I'm not gonna watch Dirty Pair on DVD, because they're crappy DVDs, but here, through the low resolution and compression, I can barely see texture on the top of the door frame that's been smoothed away on the Blu-ray. I know that it's not the DVD encoding because it remains constant as the scene continues.

The paint details in this mechanical shot would have been easier to discern in HD, but with the wet look they filtered over the Blu-ray scans you really gain nothing.

Look at the North American (top) and Italian (bottom) Blu-rays of Cowboy Bebop. Open the screenshots in new tabs. American version is smothered in DNR.

Notice the better clarity of the floor. Of the countertop. The lines on the ceiling. That dirt/stain (Bullets and a thrown drink?) on the left wall. The light above the barkeep. The sign at the top of the liquor cabinet.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

I think there IS detail hidden under that DNR.

I'm not gonna watch Dirty Pair on DVD, because they're crappy DVDs, but here, through the low resolution and compression, I can barely see texture on the top of the door frame that's been smoothed away on the Blu-ray. I know that it's not the DVD encoding because it remains constant as the scene continues.

The paint details in this mechanical shot would have been easier to discern in HD, but with the wet look they filtered over the Blu-ray scans you really gain nothing.

Look at the North American (top) and Italian (bottom) Blu-rays of Cowboy Bebop. Open the screenshots in new tabs. American version is smothered in DNR.

Notice the better clarity of the floor. Of the countertop. The lines on the ceiling. That dirt/stain (Bullets and a thrown drink?) on the left wall. The light above the barkeep. The sign at the top of the liquor cabinet.

Well now you're arguing about something completely different. You aren't arguing that film grain adds more detail, you're arguing that the tools (most likely some kind of AI upscaling+sharpening) that they used to remove the film grain has smoothed over minor details. The film grain didn't add detail, and removing it didn't remove detail, the tool used in the removal process removed detail.

You're arguing the wrong thing and then getting confused about why people are disagreeing with you.

Having said that, I don't actually see any significant difference between the clarify of either Cowboy Bebop version. The gamma looks to be slightly higher on the Italian version, which could be as much of a reason for the slight differences you're noticing as anything else.

 

[Ezekiel]

I don't understand what you mean when you say "space between the grains." Clusters? Some areas can appear grainier, but it's all grain. The overall effect is determined by how fine the grain is, by how big the grains are.

Studios had been smoothing movies and TV shows into wax and oil before AI. I've only seen AI used in a few movies, always with results ranging from detrimental to disastrous: Prince and the Revolution Live, Queen Rock Montreal + Live Aid, The Beatles: Get Back, Aliens (UHD), Avatar (UHD), True Lies (UHD), The Abyss (UHD), Titanic (UHD), American Graffiti (UHD). I don't think my screenshots have any AI. It's just smoothing and some kind of noise reduction.

The differences of those Cowboy Bebop screenshots are obvious even before zooming in. Imagine them filling a big TV. It's not the gamma.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

I don't understand what you mean when you say "space between the grains." Clusters? Some areas can appear grainier, but it's all grain. The overall effect is determined by how fine the grain is, by how big the grains are.

Here's a picture of what film grain looks like zoomed in.



Film is made from from mixing silver halide grains and suspending them in gelatin, which is then applied to the film base. The grain clusters aren't uniform in size, some of them overlap each other, and there are spaces between the different grain clusters. The grains are basically floating in a gelatin suspension, the film isn't "all grain" like you're describing. The silver halide grains are what are capturing the light and providing the image, but they aren't uniformly distributed in the film, and they don't perfectly cover every part of the film. There's negative space in between the grains.

That lack of uniformity as well as the negative space between the clusters of grain is the reason for the "film grain effect." Like I said before, it's similar to looking at something through a screen door.

Different film has different ISO. The higher the ISO the bigger the light sensitive silver crystals are that make up the film. Larger crystals also means more negative space between the crystals.





Note how the image shot with a higher ISO has more noticeable film grain. A higher ISO captures an image faster, but with less detail. The lack of captured detail is because each individual grain is larger and therefore there's more negative space between the grains.

Of course film isn't perfectly made like the illustrations above. An ISO 400 film doesn't mean that all of the film grains are bigger than on ISO 200 film, it means that the average grain size is bigger. This means that the smaller grains in the film can end up under exposed when when shooting with a higher ISO, and this also greatly contributes to dark spots in the film where detail isn't being captured (and is a significant reason that higher ISO film ends up more grainy), however even if film was made with perfectly uniform grains like in the illustrations there would still be areas of negative space where detail isn't captured.

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

Garden of Sinners

A series of 7 movies, each between 1 and 2 hours long, plus a 30 minutes epilogue, based on a series of novels by prolific fantasy author Kinoko Nasu.

Nasu is probably one of the most interesting modern fantasy writers. His most succesful work definitely being Fate/Stay Night and the vast multimedia franchise it eventually spun off into but his library, and by extension his greater connected universe, also include the Tsukihime series, Witch on the Holy Night, DDD and...well, Garden of Sinners is where it started.

GoS is certainly a freshman's work in many regards. What would later become his writing trademarks are definitely already present. Urban fantasy, supernatural romance, rambling philosophical diatribes and a complex cosmology, here for the most part only hinted at, that makes you wonder how a single guy can even come up with all of it. The execution, however, is .. less than consistent and taken as a whole, the Garden of Sinners series is a rollercoaster of quality whose lows ultimately outweigh its highs.

So, Garden of Sinners follows, in a non-chronological order, the relationship between idealistic young man Mikiya Kokuto and mysterious young woman Shiki Ryougi. After becoming fascinated with her in high school, they both end up working at a sort of supernatural detective agency run by chain smoking sorceress Touko Aozaki where they pursue a variety of supernatural mysteries and gradually explore Shiki's and Touko's own secrets as they investigate various mysterious murders.

I could go over it on an episode by episode basis but frankly, I'm too lazy. So I'm just going to say: Garden of Sinners builds up to its first 2 hour movie, where it peaks, and then just sort of declines until really hitting rock bottom in its final movie. The first four movies go back and forth between episodic mysteries, one of which hinged on a... pretty stupid premise and looser, more slice of life episodes that elaborate on Shiki and Mikiya's background, which are actually somewhat charming. It culminates in the two hour Paradox Spiral movie which is far and away as good as it gets.

Paradox Spiral, aside from offering a more substantial, more thoroughly explored mystery and some very sophisticated visual direction and editing, is Nasu's first work to establish what would become consistent aspects of his approach to mages and magic... pardon, "mage craft" and builds a mystery out of it that feels like a satisfying climax to all that's been built up. Set in a cursed apartment complex created as a sinister experiment by two evil mages, both Nasu and the production team at studio Ufotable go all out to create an over the top urban fantasy spectacle, backed with a loose understanding of daoist and hermetic mythology, that feels like something Suda51 would write if he really got into Harry Potter.

It's not exactly very smart, its morals and philosophies are still an exercise of saying as little as possible in as flowery and wordy a way as possible, but it has very fun action and dynamic direction and memorable dialogue. "Magi are an enemy to logic", we are told. They sure are, Nasu. They sure are.

And that's where the series really should have ended. What follows are what's effectively a filler episode at a mage school with a weird incest angle (don't ask) and the finale which... boy, does the whole thing collapse there. Episode 7, "Studies in Murder Part 2" is where Nasu's writing drops the ball and his lack of understanding of topics like medicine, criminology and drugs that reared their head from the very beginning are starting to become an active detriment while he's trying to compensate for how undercooked his philosophical musings on violence and murder are by mulling them over, over and over again, trying to bring out a profundity they simply don't contain. And ending on a note that makes it hard for me to see what their point even was.

It would have been nice if the ending had brought it all together but it did the exact opposite, it made it all come apart. Where Garden of Sinners, at its best, was a fun and atmospheric watch, its finale just fails to formulate a sensible thesis statement. And then there's the epilogue, a 30 minute conversation between the two leads on a snowy roadside which... well, it's another flowery philosophical/metaphysical ramble. I feel like I would have been okay with it if the ending it followed would have been better but it didn't feel warranted. I actually enjoy some of Nasu's overwrought diatribes, although they work a lot better in writing but at that point this story has just lost me.

If the series hat ended at Paradox Spiral I would have probably been overall positive on it, but then it kept going, right into a brick wall. Nasu went on to write things that were overall a lot better than this. It's very well animated and I enjoyed the overall mood but it just didn't amount to anything overall satisfying.

 

[Ezekiel]

Hmm...

Yeah, somebody tried to explain it to me. I still only kind of get it.

I understand what you're trying to say, but you're saying it in a pedantic way.

When people are talking about film grain they aren't talking about the individual grains, they're talking about the overall effect, and the reason that the effect exists isn't because of the grains that make up the image, but because of the size of the grains and also the size of the space between the grains. The effect is caused by gaps in between clumps of grains.

You are correct that the image of the film is made up of individual grains, but the EFFECT of film grain is caused by the negative space between the clusters of grains. Therefore it's actually characterized by a lack of detail because the film grain effect is created by gaps in the image that aren't captured. It's similar to looking through a screen door where the screen is blocking some of the outside world. Different films have different sized grains and different sized gaps between the grains (just like screen doors have different sized holes, and also different screen thicknesses) therefore obscuring more or less of the final image. So I would say that the people you are arguing with are actually correct, because the film grain effect is characterized by a lack of captured detail.

HOWEVER the final product of anime at the time was that film grain was going to be in it due to the technology used. It was unavoidable. Therefore, because everything had film grain in it the animators worked with the limitations of that technology in mind, and the final result is meant to be viewed with the film grain. It looks worse without film grain because it wasn't meant to be viewed that way. Similar to how pixel art that was meant to be viewed on a CRT TV or Monitor looks worse on other types of displays because the additional clarity makes the individual pixels more visible.

Film is made from from mixing silver halide grains and suspending them in gelatin, which is then applied to the film base. The grain clusters aren't uniform in size, some of them overlap each other, and there are spaces between the different grain clusters. The grains are basically floating in a gelatin suspension, the film isn't "all grain" like you're describing. The silver halide grains are what are capturing the light and providing the image, but they aren't uniformly distributed in the film, and they don't perfectly cover every part of the film. There's negative space in between the grains.

Whoever that is you're quoting has missed the point.

"Grains", technically speaking, refer to particles of reduced silver in the developed film. If we were discussing black and white film only, then it would be accurate to refer to such "grains" in the finished product because that is indeed what makes up the image in the final positive. Colour film however is different: the unexposed film of course contains silver, but the developed film does not, because it gets entirely bleached out normally. The colour image that you see is actually constructed from tiny "clouds" of oxidised dye couplers (cyan, magenta and yellow) that are amorphous in nature. The one exception to this would be if the film had been developed without the bleaching step ("bleach bypass"), which gives rise to a desaturated and higher contrast result because the monochrome image is overlayed with the colour one, and masks it to a certain extent; this is a rarity in the grand scheme of things however.

So yes I'm being deliberately pedantic, but am technically correct: the best kind of correct.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Notice the better clarity of the floor. Of the countertop. The lines on the ceiling. That dirt/stain (Bullets and a thrown drink?) on the left wall. The light above the barkeep. The sign at the top of the liquor cabinet.

No.

... wait... after scrolling back and forth for about 2 minutes I think I see it. Honestly I'd never notice if there wasn't a side by side comparison.

 

[Ezekiel]

after scrolling back and forth

That was your mistake. Should have opened them in new tabs. It's a pretty obvious difference.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

That was your mistake. Should have opened them in new tabs. It's a pretty obvious difference.

It really isn't.

 

[Ezekiel]

It really isn't.

Yes, it is.