#the missing 8

I know it’s been a hot minute since the episode premiered but i can’t get over this man, I LOVE HIM!!!

Look at Thomas with Pop 🥺 so cute

These are very beautiful backgrounds for anime The Missing 8.

The Missing 8 is a web anime (ONA) that was completed very recently. It's something I didn't expect at all since I started following a youtube channel called FUZI. They made some pretty cool music videos and I thought that was all the channel would do. Imagine my surprise when one day I found out an anime that builds upon the story hinted at in the first music video posted on the channel.

So how did it go? Well it was great! .....For the most part.

The plot of The Missing 8 can get too dramatic too quickly. It doesn't earn its melodrama to make you really feel it. To me, it felt like there were a lot of big moments in the story that the writers were very excited about, but when the time came to connect all of these moments together they found it difficult to to.

A lot of these moments are very good, they just happen so suddenly that my emotions are too slow to react. It doesn't help that this is 8 episode anime is about the length of a movie. I'm still trying to make sense of what happened when the next big moment is ready hit me with a new emotional set piece. Slow down! I'm not ready!

This isn't to say the story was told poorly. A fantastic amount of world building is done without the characters explaining it themselves. The characters make a lot of dumb decisions, but it's believable considering what they are.

The only time the story drops the ball at its most dramatic and emotional moments. I'm not able to feel their impact either because I'm confused or I don't care enough about the characters to feel anything about them.

It pains me to say it, but The Missing 8 has too many characters. I love these characters, but many of their roles feel mute compared to the main characters.

As for the confusion issue; the stakes get raised extremely high to the point where it feels completely disconnected from where it started. (Not to mention the consequences faced in the ending didn't quite make sense. Was that really necessary Poppy?).

Overall, good stuff.

Time to nerd about the production.

DID YOU KNOW WIT STUDIO WAS INVOLVED IN THIS!!??! The animation looks SO good...at least when they are animating. A lot of the story gets told through static images, but when they do animate it's some beautiful sakuga every time. This is some of the best action I've seen in a while. (To be fair, I haven't kept up with most modern anime). The choreography is done really well with each action scene. I couldn't believe I got to watch that for free. Great work from FUZI and the other animators.

Funnily enough, FUZI wasn't the director despite it being their story. That role goes to Yoshibe Naoki.

If you didn't know, this is the man you can thank for the incredible animation of the first few Jojo openings. He directed those! (Also thank all the animators putting it all together).