#8bit studio

Alright, so superheroes exist but there's only one per country, and they're chosen by "heart bracelets" which bring out the latent hero potential in the individuals. Shy, or Teru Momijiyama, is Japan's hero and the main character of this series as she endeavors to save people and learn how to be a hero herself.

Sounds pretty comic book-ish, yeah? Andou and the staff seem to agree, as they open with a comic book style explanation of the story. It's good, really good. But is also a point of frustration for me.

Why? Because they don't keep it consistent in the episode. Andou uses comic book panels during the episode to accentuate reactions to something. In concept it's a great idea, it's just executed on very poorly. There's no animation in the "appearance" of the panel, there's no effect to its appearance, nothing. It materializes on the screen and that's it. There's also nothing special about it, it's just layered upon the regular screen. There's no "comic book dots", there's no color change, there's not even an outline or shadow to help separate the panel from the image itself.

It's a great idea that ends up woefully underdelivered on which is a shame given how well it fits both the series and Andou's sense of direction.

It's even worse because there's examples of the same styling of layering an image on top of the environment where they do use that style, and I think it makes an important difference in how you see things.

I think about the only thing it does well is hide the lack of animation in a lot of sequences. Whether it's 8Bit's limits or Andou's intervention I've no idea, but a lot of the episode is still outside of superhero stuff. There's a few examples like this piece of Teru clinking her bracelets together in defeat, but not much. Overall, I'd say that the "average" visuals feel very awkward at times, which is disappointing.

However, the superhero stuff is very cool for the most part. The movement, action, and transformations are all very solid and pride themselves on impressive visual effects.