#ex-arm

It’s like - we’ve all seen bad shows, probably worse shows than Ex-Arm. We’re familiar with the reasons why: Low budget and no idea how to stretch what little budget they have, incompetence, lack of interest or inspiration from the creative team, executive meddling, what-have-you. It’s old hat by now.

But Ex-Arm is just endlessly interesting to me because it’s an animated series where the director decided he didn’t need any animators. As other people have pointed out, it’s not like Ex-Arm is cheaply made, it’s got what is probably a very impressive budget! And it isn’t like the director is necessarily wholly incompetent, he’s directed several live-action movies and dramas! And Crunchyroll, who deal exclusively in anime, must surely have some idea of what does and does not make a good anime!

And yet, multiple people signed off on this animated series whose staff did not include animators.

If you ever needed a more perfect crystallisation of the idea of high-prestige and low-prestige work in entertainment, and the idea that the industry elevates individuals in managerial positions while devaluing the teams under them, just - just think about that. Think about Yoshimatsu Kimura, who has never directed an animated series before in his entire career, declaring that he was just going to hire his usual live-action team, and multiple producers going “I see no way this could go wrong.”

It sounds absolutely absurd, like a parody of the industry’s devaluation of certain workers, and yet it actually happened, and then Kimura declared that Ex-Arm was going to be the best science fiction anime ever created and make every other work in the genre look like trash.

I don’t understand how anyone could find that less than riveting. 

But it doesn’t even stop there!

So Kimura, the music director, is a guitar teacher and part-time DJ under the name SIGMA X81. He’s never worked on an anime before, and his music is ... pretty terrible, to be honest. Not the worst, but, like, if you listen to it, and then you heard ‘And this was composed and played by a middle-aged guitar teacher who is also a small-time DJ,’ you’d go ‘Yeah, no, that tracks.’

Tommy Morton, the writer, is also a first-time writer, and appears to not ... actually ... speak Japanese? Like, anime adaptations that utilise a Japanese animation team but which are initially written in English and dubbed into Japanese after the fact aren’t uncommon these days, especially on streaming platforms, that’s what the excellent Castlevania was and also what the equivalently terrible Dragon’s Dogma was. But there’s two differences here: Firstly, Ex-Arm is adapted from a manga that hasn’t been localised into English yet, which means that Morton was either translating as well as writing, or that he was working with a translator and writing based on their work, neither of which is ideal. The second difference is that Ex-Arm wasn’t scripted and recorded in English and then dubbed into Japanese, but rather seems to have been translated from the manga, scripted in English, translated back into Japanese, and then recorded in Japanese.

And as you can probably tell by now, Crunchyroll’s seeming intent here was to give first-time directors (for anime, at least), composers, writers etc a platform to get their names out there, which is very admirable. Unfortunately, they picked a director who didn’t think he needed animators, a composer who’s a middling DJ, and -- I mean, admittedly, the writing is the most competent part of the whole production here, even if it’s not that great.

Just ... fascinating. If we emerged from the hellscape of 2020 for one thing, it was so we could bear witness to Ex-Arm, and I say that without even a hint of irony or sarcasm. They say you learn more from failure than success, and Ex-Arm is a masterclass, far and away the most interesting anime of the decade from a production standpoint.

Visual Flights’ television anime adaptation of Shinya Komi’s Ex-Arm has been making waves in the industry recently with bold choices like putting a poorly animated 3D CGI character next to a 2D character and hoping no-one would notice and assembling a main staff unbridled by burdens such as any experience working on anime at all. Yoshikatsu Kimura directs his magnum opus, and its groundbreaking avant-garde approach has earned the attention and scrutiny of the anime community, as they struggle to comprehend the sheer stupendousness of it all.

Questions were raised about the series recently when a kiss scene between two female characters appeared to be censored, with a bright flare of light appearing on the screen during the frames of the kiss. (Shown: a screenshot of the kiss from the anime, and a panel of the same scene from the manga).

Calls went out on Twitter for Crunchyroll, which streams the anime as a Crunchyroll Original series, to respond to the perceived censorship. However, another possibility was offered by many of the show’s “fans.”

Some proposed that the light was not intended to censor a same-sex kiss, but to disguise problems with the animation itself. Many have noted that the 3D characters in the series do not have animated faces beyond opening and closing of their jaws in a ventriloquist’s dummy-like fashion. Indeed, it may not have been an intentional elimination of LGBTQ content, but an attempt to hide distorted or nonexistent animations created by a staff so woefully unprepared and poorly managed that they were unable to deliver the scene properly.

Today’s anime dog(s) of the day is:

Shingeki no Kyojin: The Final Season - December 7

Urasekai Picnic - January 4

Beastars - January 5

Yakusoku no Neverland - January 8

2.43: Seiin Koukou Danshi Volley-bu - January 8

Jaku-Chara Tomozaki-kun - January 8

Horimiya - January 10

SK∞ - January 10

Kemono Jihen - January 10

Kai Byoui Ramune - January 10

Ex-Arm - January 11

Bungou Stray Dogs Wan! - January 13

Wonder Egg Priority - January 13

Dr. Stone: Stone Wars - January 14

With the exception of High Guardian Spice(which I fairly liked), idk if there is any Crunchyroll Original that appeals to me aesthetically. ^^; And I'm talking about the ones that are in a more western cartoon format. (Like, there there is something in the future that reminds me of Di Gi Charat, then I'll probably have something to like more than HGS in terms of aesthetics.)

As for the anime side of CR Originals... well.. I know there is probably some decent content there... it's just... well.. my friend and I were heavily morbidly curious about EX-ARM because of the backlash that got, lol.