1st season review - Started watching the episode #1 and by the first half I already felt triggered by what many are calling "triangle shadows" (see next paragraph). By the third quarter of the same episode I also had to revert the language to Japanese because the English dubbing was not to my liking.
The "triangle shadows" isn't an accurate definition, I'll try to explain: artists apply techniques to create the illusion of volume and these consist on the studies of light and shadows. On this show, the Tekken characters' lines and the overall art is fantastic, except for the shading. The technique used for the shadow is known as cell-shading, but it's only half done. There should be 2 layers: one for shade and other for highlights, and that's where the problem is, because the highlight layer is non-existing. Instead, they seem to apply over the characters a very rough angular shape as a "mask", and overblow the top of the heads and top edges. This creates a couple of problems: first, this creates the illusion of a layer shadow over the previous cell-shading layer and if you're an artist you will understand that it's not right, second, no matter to where the characters are facing, there's the illusion that the side we see is always in the shade, too dark. Jin can be facing a fire but his face is apparently in deep shadow!!! Characters may be in front of lightning (Jin's powers) but they're in shadow, no light reaches them (not even a flashing couple of frames for effect), characters may be in a dark room facing the window, but the outside light doesn't affect them, they still seem to belit from behind or above by light sourcess that don't seem to exist.
I can not believe that this is a decision for style, it rather seems like a compromise. Either budget or deadline, I speculate, maybe because creating and animating the highlights' cell-shading layer would be too time consuming. A bummer, because this distracts me in a way that prevents me from enjoying what otherwise would have been a delight of a show. My brain is always signalling me that what I see doesn't make sense, and takes me off the story.
One positive note: the characters fight with their trademark arcade movements, and along with the great line work thats what made me endure until the end.
To the creators, if you make more seasons, please no more "triangular shades", I beg you!
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