The fourth season of the Ascendance of a Bookworm anime, produced by WIT Studio, premiered on April 4 this year, though to an unexpectedly rocky start. The long-running series was faced with serious backlash after the reveal of the animated opening sequence, which viewers suspected featured AI-generated assets. In response to the criticism, WIT Studio posted an official announcement on April 10, in which it states that upon investigation into the opening’s production process, it confirmed that generative AI was involved. Consequently, the opening sequence recently published on YouTube has been removed from the platform. ……
I hope the replacement scenes will fix the moon. That’s the only thing that’s offending e in the OP.
The OP (Opening) is supposed to represent the best of the show, but sometimes it shows things not in the show or straight up misrepresents the show. The best example of this is Bradio’s Flyers from Death Parade, a macabre semi-anthology series about people competing in billiards games in a bar in Purgatory to determine which of them takes the elevator up and which one goes down. Or something like that. The show is very dark, but the OP is bright and cheerful.
I think anime’s bigger sin is the use of CGI. It’s very obvious in many cases. I don’t hate it, I just think it’s slightly more offensive than OPs that misrepresent the show (therefore, I don’t care about AI in them if they’re pretty). I’ll skip an OP I don’t like. Like in The Promised Neverland any time they run down hallways. It’s so obvious and distracting. Lots of animes do it, though.
The greatest sin in anime is the texture of clothing. This is most obvious in the Count of Monte Cristo anime due to the art style. Basically if a character is wearing a robe or some other clothing that has patterns on it, the patterns do not move with the person. The pattern is fixed, almost like there’s a layer of nothing but the pattern across the entire frame, and the outfit is just “transparent.” In fact, I think that is exactly how they do it. Almost how a lot of PlayStation games (Final Fantasy 7 and Resident Evil were notable for this), where you have a pre-rendered scene and the characters move across it within invisible walls which are supposed to, but do not always line up with what is drawn behind them.
The greatest sin in anime is the texture of clothing. This is most obvious in the Count of Monte Cristo anime due to the art style.
Gankutsuo, if that’s the one you’re talking about, was also a very early (possibly the first) use of the technique. I can forgive a pioneering show for getting things wrong. Its successors aren’t always as easy to forgive.
Much worse than messed-up clothing textures is the occasional show that puts a texture over the entire picture (the most blatant example I’ve ever seen used a watercolour paper type one, but damned if I can remember the name of the show), but binds it to the viewport rather than the background, so that when the camera pans or zooms, the texture moves with it and completely destroys the impression I think they were aiming for.
I recently sropped an anime for AI (Dragon Raja). I’m not as strongly opposed to it as most people are… Season 1 had some goofy looking textures and patterns but I didn’t mind much. But in season 2 they had full generated backgrounds, entire scenes of AI slop, and then they started using it more for animation and it got so ick and looked so bad that I dropped it like 30+ episodes in. I was enjoying the show but it just kept getting worse and worse quality-wise, and the cadence and animations were just gross to the point where it kept pulling me out of it. I started just skipping ahead and seeking through random episodes and it kept getting more egregious with every one, and then they had blatant errors, some not even having to do with AI; like no one even bothered to proof-watch it. If they couldn’t bother making something, why should I bother watching it? Ugh.
Anyways, that’s a long way of saying “good”. I hope they piss off with that shit and everyone holds their feet to the fire. I like Ascendance and I’d hate to see it slopify.
I was afraid of stuff like this. The show is one of my favourites and now it’s at least partially soured
Yeah, esp in a brutal “all day crunch, everyday” industry like anime it was unfortunately very likely they’d be tempted to use slop as a shortcut (jist like in the games industry)
I’m binge watching earlier seasons of this series, in preparation for the one currently airing. Frankly? The story is amazing, but the series was always poor on the visual aspect.
I’ll keep watching the earlier ones but I don’t know if I’ll watch the current one, or just read the light novels as usual.
The new season is animated by a totally different company, and the first episode looks great (aside from the OP).
That being said, I spent years reading all the light novels, totally worth it. The series is longer than The Wheel of Time by word count, but is so fucking cozy.
The new season is animated by a totally different company, and the first episode looks great (aside from the OP).
That’s good to know! To be honest I don’t mind some usage of AI; but I tend to judge books by covers, and anime series by the OP, so if they’re getting sloppy with the OP I’m concerned about the rest.
The light novels are some of the most dangerous I’ve ever picked up.
I’ve read bits of the light novel already, mostly because I was unsatisfied with the manga. I think I reached the point Myne manages to get the print the children’s book?
Then I had to stop it due to time issues, and never picked it up again. Might as well do it now~
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Consequently, the opening sequence recently published on YouTube has been removed from the platform.
Anyone save a copy of it? Would be interesting to see what they thought was OK to ship vs what they replace it with.
I would say are the ones like this. Like WTF is this tree?
Funny that it wound up being a tree. I often joke that they should let the animators outdoors more often so they know what plants look like. I’ve seen at least two anime now where trees growing on a slope are drawn growing perpendicular to that slope instead of parallel with earth’s gravitational pull. It looks dumb as hell to anyone who’s ever been in a forest before.
Sure one of those anime was an absolute joke anyways (Trails of Cold Steel) but the other one was Re:Zero!
