Garo Makai Senki 23 released

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Garo Makai Senki 23 released

Post by takenoko »

Too much CGI. It's a pity, but the episode felt like watching a long, badly animated cut scene from a video game.

There were some good parts of course. But seeing the fifth CGI guy flip around 100 times while taking down a million dudes gets boring in like two minutes, because it's obviously not real.

The worst part of the episode were the nameless Makai Knights. Did we really need to see mass produced (shittily animated) expendable Makai Knights? This is like seeing what Jango Fett looks like under the mask. It ruins the image in one's mind's eye a little bit.

The opening, okay variation using colors and the song's second verse. The ending was good though, with Kaoru walking through her drawings.

Obviously the best parts of the episodes were any scenes that had actual humans in them. Like the Makai Priests fighting at the surface or Gonza helping Shiguto. Even Rekka had a good yell during the fighting. Ganon's actor was particularly good. What great facial expressions. Oh, I guess she needs the stilts since they need room for Sigma to be in her crotch.

There were some good CGI moments though, like the knights playing toss with Garo to boost him to the top. The CGI fighting got a bit better when they brought out the horses, but it was still too much fighting on a fake looking background. I just wonder if they ran out of money or what. I mean, even Garo and Zero look badly done, and we know they've got those CGI models created already. It's really bizarre how bad

Gouten Missile? Is that really what you want to do with your horse, Kouga? I mean, why not just throw your sword like in the midpoint of Beast of the White Night? Is Gouten especially explosive?

I dunno, the few actual interactions there were was pretty good, but overall this episode felt like the embodiment of how CGI ruins modern action movies nowadays.
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Re: Garo 23 released

Post by SacredCultivator »

During that throwing Kouga scene, I could only think of the scene from FInal Fantasy: Advent Children where the team is throw Cloud up.

But agreed, there was way too much CGI used that distracted me from enjoying the episode.
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Re: Garo 23 released

Post by PHurricane »

Too much CGI is bad, but lots of poorly executed CGI is even worse. I had thought the quality dropped in parts of Red Requiem, but this episode had me doubting that Garo was using the same company as the original series. Nope, VFX is still done by Omnibus Japan. Unless they assigned the show to a less experienced team, on the assumption that most of the legwork was done, there's no good explanation for why so much of the CGI was so jarring. Case in point - the scene where Tsubasa is running toward Kouga, Rei and Wataru. It was glaringly obvious that the background he was running in front of was added in post production, and the enemies weren't really there because his weapon met no resistance. I've seen better examples of blending CGI effects with the live-action in Kamen Rider and Sentai recently - and those shows usually don't make much of an effort to conceal where they throw in CGI.

I didn't place it until I read takenoko's post, but a video game is exactly what this episode looked like. It reminded me of the Garo video game clips that were released alongside Red Requiem. Ironically, when I went back to look at them, I think they had better CGI than what was in this episode.

The other thing I found really distracting was the fact that Kouga was in his Garo armor for over half the episode without reverting back or facing any consequences. Guess that’s one reason they phased out showing the timer.

Since when do Madou devices double as walkie talkies?

It was bad enough when Kouga used his giant sword as a surfboard in White Night, but a surfing horse? I laughed so hard at that scene when I first saw it, which is a pity because it's not meant to be funny at all.
Last edited by PHurricane on Tue Mar 20, 2012 9:42 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Garo 23 released

Post by takenoko »

Yeah, it's like Amemiya wasn't around or something for this episode so they had to put it in the hands of his less qualified assistant. I mean, I kind of do feel like they brought in a bunch of CGI help since I saw a lot of foreign names in the credits, but at the end of the day it's all about art direction. At the end of the day, who looked at this episode and decided that looked good?

I don't pay attention to the credits, but did the action guy who did the first series not come back or something? I know we're also missing Mark Musashi's talents.

Basically, this episode needed more real backgrounds. Instead, almost everything was greenscreened like the Phantom Menace. Couldn't they have gotten all those extras to stand in a real field or a mountain and used CGI to add the pit instead? I guess the Shin Makai needs to be CGI... but that's sort of why we only visited the Makai in short bursts in the first season.

The episode just kind of makes me angry because aren't we past the point where people think CGI can replace reality? Like Tsubasa appearing and jumping into the hole was cool. But like PHurricane said, his entry was TERRIBLE since he was killing the air and it was the fakest shit.

Edit: Horse attack reminds me of dog cannon from Final Fantasy 8:
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Re: Garo Makai Senki 23 released

Post by Phoenix512 »

The nameless Makai Knights looked pretty bad unless that was intentional to show the differences between the rank and file knight from the ones like Garo and Zero. I wonder if Shiguto is compensating for something since his brush is so big.
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Re: Garo Makai Senki 23 released

Post by deathzero »

totally agree what wad u all r saying. the cg looks some something from ps2. horrible! well atleast we get to see the white horse :p

really am disappointed with the mass produced makai knights, i really wish they dint come out coz it totally ruins the world of garo. every makai knight suppose to b uniquely badass!! seeing the unnamed makai knight wearing shittin clothes (un-transformed) was already bad but this generic thing made it much worse. no knights r suppose to look the same, the only reason they do is coz u dont wanna create new designs. sad. :(
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Re: Garo Makai Senki 23 released

Post by Yuusha »

It feels like they are trying o hard to make it epic and in turn hurt the production because of it. Did they add new tweaks to ZERO's Madou Horse? I don't remember all the blue and gold on it from the earlier episode. I definitely think the idea was to show that there are basic Makai Knights and Elite Makai Knights by having so many show up. Say Hello to GARO's version of the ZECT Troopers.

Hey all you Tsubasa fans, you happy now? Plus we finally get to see his bad ass Madou Horse!

They are aiming for a big finish and I hope it doesn't backfire

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Re: Garo Makai Senki 23 released

Post by locuas »

yeah, mass produced knights...heck, i wouldn't mind as much if they, at least, gave us some high rank knights between the other knights. but, i think it does work in a sense. If i have one complain with the first season is that the finale felt a little small, i mean, only two knights were fighting to stop the ressurection of this badass and giant horror...and only one of them fought him/her/it(not that i mind winged garo)
But here, we 4 knights fighting this giant thing and constantly beaten by it, we have hundreds of makai priests throwing giant beam after giant beam to it, hundreds of knights fighting hundreds of robots and buying team kouga enough time to try something AND kouga, zero and Tsubasa riding their badass horses like the badasses they are. even if the cgi could be better, this DOES give Ganon the feeling that he is a serious threat and that every help is welcome. i have to say this, THIS IS ONE OF THE MOST EPIC FINALES EVER!
On the other hand, i want the five of them to transform so people can start calling them "makai sentai" xD
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Re: Garo Makai Senki 23 released

Post by HIDragonstar »

I thoroughly enjoyed this episode. I know lots of people are complaining about the CGI, and how some of it was poor. Still this has to be one of the most epic battles done on a TV show. It seems like they tried to save as much of the Special Effects Budget for the last two episodes but it wasn't enough. So they had to cut some corners somewhere. Considering almost all of this is done in the Makai Shin World, I don't know if it possible to do decent backgrounds of a totally alien world. Also, since so much of the battle is in CGI we can noticed the problems easier.

I think this is one of the biggest baddies that someone has had to take on TV. Compared to Messiah in the first series, Ganon is a walking base. I'm still waiting for our Makai Artist to get involved some how, she helped Kouga take out Messiah, I wonder if she is going to help all the Knights get powered up.

Still, most shows have some combat with mostly talking. First time I saw a TV show with Mostly combat, and very little talking.
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Re: Garo Makai Senki 23 released

Post by Catastrophe »

The episode was awesome. Dan with his horse soloing that machine that Garo and Zero had to double team. Nothing could have topped it.
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Re: Garo Makai Senki 23 released

Post by Guardian07 »

Now, I can't disagree with people not liking this episode because of the CGI. But I really feel that making them look 'real' and 'good' in a conventional sense isn't really high in Amemiya's priorities list. Just look at, heck, all his other stuff. Some of them have CGI that look wonky as all hell (Tekkouki Mikazuki comes to mind) but for him, I think, what's more important is getting his ideas and the images in his head into the screen. And even though the CGI here varies from so-so to poor, it did just that. We just took yet another trip into Keita Amemiya's head. And personally, I loved what I saw. There were action set-pieces after action set-pieces after action set-pieces. It was epic.
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Re: Garo Makai Senki 23 released

Post by Silentwolfdog »

Yeah Gouten surfing on giant sword is a bit...hilarious.

My favorite part got to be Leo actually putting his helmet to good use. With horn-like ears, headbutting the horror and killing it in the process. Kinda awesome. Love that wolf helmet with twisted ears finally served its purpose.

Kinda surprised that Leo became a bit scared in this ep. I kinda forgot that he's still human being that went through so much. We are used to see him getting beat up nearly all the time and getting up regardless, bear the sins of his brother's actions and always stood by Garo's side. This is one of those moments where you take a step back and go "oh yeah that's right".
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Re: Garo Makai Senki 23 released

Post by JustiFan »

Guardian07 wrote:Now, I can't disagree with people not liking this episode because of the CGI. But I really feel that making them look 'real' and 'good' in a conventional sense isn't really high in Amemiya's priorities list. Just look at, heck, all his other stuff. Some of them have CGI that look wonky as all hell (Tekkouki Mikazuki comes to mind) but for him, I think, what's more important is getting his ideas and the images in his head into the screen. And even though the CGI here varies from so-so to poor, it did just that. We just took yet another trip into Keita Amemiya's head. And personally, I loved what I saw. There were action set-pieces after action set-pieces after action set-pieces. It was epic.
Totally agreed with you there, Guardian07. Yeah the CGI was lacking in places, but it all got the point across and I think that's what has to count the most here. The threat that they've been building up over the course of the series obviously needs everything that Knights and Priests have got to take it down, and you can't really argue that for the most part they're certainly bringing it.

So the finale next week then? One episode less than last time, though one of the eps from the first series was a clipshow so I guess that kind of balances it somewhat. Looking forward to seeing how this one plays out!
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Re: Garo Makai Senki 23 released

Post by Ivanhobe »

I admit that the not-so-good cgi is kind of distracting, specially since this is live action, but for a cgi battle it was good, i have certainly seen worse and some of the fight moves were pretty good, the highlight for me was Zero and Ginga (that´s the name of his horse right?), they have better moves than Garo and Goten.

Something i liked about the episode, even though is a small part, is how kouga tells Leo to "embrace" his Makai priests side and not his Makai Knight side. It´s a nice touch, ever since Sigma´s identity was revealed, the show started to portray Leo as a knight, but he clearly is a Priest, and this works well in this episode with all the Makai knights and Makai Priests working together to stop idea.

I am a bit torn with the mass produced makai knights, on the bright side, it does explain that little plot point introduced in kiba gaiden about Barago´s father being a knight without a tittle, and it does make sense that there are "lesser" knights. But the appearance of so many badly CGI generic knights kind of kills the magic of the whole idea, for starters, they look awful, and then you have to wonder if sigma really did put destruction seals on all those knights?. Is a neat idea nonetheless, it could have been executed better but this is what we got. Also, it does makes you wonder about how this knighting process works, did all of them inherited their armors like Kouga and Zero, and if you work hard enough can you gain a tittle and obtain a better armor, where does this armors come anyway? are they all crafted by the Priests?. I don´t remember if some of these points were addresed in the first series, but it would be nice if they explore some of this in some follow up like a movie or something.

Good entertaining episode overall, can´t believe were already at the end, hopefully it won´t dissapoint, thanks for the release!!.
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Re: Garo Makai Senki 23 released

Post by m4rc0 »

Leo using his horns was nice.

Tusbasa made it.

Generic makai knights. Nice to see they were made of less valuable metals. This maks Kouga being the golden and Rei the silver knights more important.

Thing is I didn't like all the CGI. But that has been a problem in Makai Senki for a long time. In the 1st series, they fought mainly in the city. Occasionally, in a forest. There was some CGi, but mostly against real background.

At first, it was the same in the 2nd season. But then they started doing a lot of fights agains CGI backgrounds and reduced the shots with the suit actors. That's bad because with the level of CGI they have, they just can't do a fight as good as the ones they do with the actors. And the backgrounds are not very creative. I mean is it just me or are you guys tired of seeing the knights fighting against a grey background. Shin Makai is just a desolate plain. Where are the rivers of poison, mountains of needles, menacing forests... Things taht would give it some flavour.

Also, I like hoe they are trying to give a more epic feel to this finale. It's certainly better than having just one knight (even if it's the golden one) fighting the super horror. I like how this season expanded the Knight's world. But the fight with the nameless knights was not good.

They have good ideas, but they don't have money to do them right. Specially because they are relying on the CGI too much, making the show suffer when it's not right.
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