Wandance

Memes aside, Wandance has a decent story. Memes aside, it looks as bad as any edit you've ever seen. Wandance arrived with all eyes on it simply for being a Madhouse production. Unfortunately, it's a series that succumbed to the pressure. The anime is a co-production where Cyclone Graphics was in charge of CGI and motion capture. It's clear there was no communication between the studios because it feels like a team effort where everyone did their part and they just slapped it all together at the end. There are many points to address, so let's get to them. 1. CGI and Motion Capture: Let's address theelephant in the room. The dances are very bad and uncomfortable to watch. The problem lies mainly in the 3D character modeling. When you see how the motion capture was done, thanks to the videos shared by the production, you can see that the dancing and movement were never the issue. The characters' movements are incredibly fluid; if you compare them to any dance video, or if you dance yourself, you'll understand that their movements are perfect. However, if you combine those movements with inefficient character modeling, then you ruin the good part of the work. The characters in their 3D models are expressionless to an extreme. You focus on their faces, and they look like possessed dolls about to undergo an exorcism. They're always smiling but don't move; they're frozen in the same expression, to the point that they become uncomfortable after a certain amount of screen time. It doesn't matter how well-done the dances are; it's all for nothing if you make the viewer look away from the screen. 2. The story: If you happen to be blind or have myopia and astigmatism, then you might enjoy the story. The story is well-crafted, with two very charismatic protagonists who complement each other. You have a boy who stutters but doesn't have social anxiety. He simply can't control his stutter, and that prevents him from communicating the way he wants to. The girl is beautiful and attracts everyone's attention, but she doesn't know how to communicate, so she ends up pushing everyone away. The two of them meet and understand each other, finding in dance a way to express themselves without using words. Throughout the story, we see how they both grow personally and how they evolve. When you ignore the awful CGI, you're left with a pretty interesting story about overcoming challenges. It also has light romantic undertones that you'll appreciate because it's not like the protagonists can ignore their feelings, even if it's not the main focus. 3. The Sports Part: While dance is an artistic form of expression, the anime doesn't want to leave everything in the ambiguous and subjective realm of art. They have a school competition system with judges and so on. At first, it's a good idea, and you can use the characters' competitive spirit to help them grow through frustration and other emotions. However, in the final stretch, this aspect falls apart. The male protagonist is often sidelined to allow the female lead to shine even more. They momentarily undermine the entire structure to make the male protagonist emotionally dependent on Wanda. The final tournament isn't even fully depicted because the final battle isn't shown. The competitive aspect, where Kabo should shine, is only used to destroy him so Wanda can claim the glory. I'm not going to tell you not to watch Wandance because it looks awful, like 90% of the internet does. I want you to be aware that the greatest appeal of this work is also its greatest weakness. The dances are the last thing you'd watch this anime for. It has a good story, good characters, and good sound design. I would recommend giving it a chance, although I also understand if you don't want to watch it. Ultimately, it's a dance anime, and if its best feature doesn't appeal to you, then nothing else will.

This is one of those shows that I picked up by pure curiosity since I have never watched a dance anime before and color me surprised I actually liked it very much. I really like the dance breaks even though the CGI was stiff it didn't really bother me and I felt like the dances were still flowy and nice to watch. The animation effects when they were dancing were also nice to the eye in my opinion. I like that we also got a glimpse of each dancer's characters. The characters had development and growth between each dance, we also got to see what theythink when they are dancing and how they feel. The characters themselves were likeable overall. The opening and ending songs were nice, very fitting to the theme and even the music used in the episodes was overall nice to hear and great pieces to showcase the dancers rhythm and how they use them. The choreographies were also nice, I couldn't stop rooting for our main characters. However, I would've liked to see also their opponents dance routines when they were competing as a high school, I think that would have made it more competitive and see who our main characters are competing against and raise the bar higher. Overall I think it's worth watching it because it was well made, very light and fun, great characters that I wish we could have seen more of, it definitely deserves a 2nd season.

I expected nothing going in since I saw initial ratings were low, but Wandance ended up my AOTS. A nice dance sports series with a lot of heart and I think it did a good job in conveying the power of the dance performances despite the difficulty of the task. Also Wanda is very cute (On too, for that matter). I imagine some people were turned off by the use of the 3DCGI in the dance numbers, but animating those normally would've been an actually impossible task, and the effects they used in them were very well utilized to convey the effect of the differentdance techniques.

I'm going to keep this short because the main talking point about this show has been thrown around on the internet a LOT so if you're here it's likely that you've already heard about it, this show has 3D animation with CGI in it, and yes it often looks pretty awkward. They used real dancers to make all the moves realistic and accurate and if you're not focused on the poor physics and the models all the time you can genuinely appreciate the dance itself a lot more, and that's one of the things that this show actually does really well. It's very clear that itwas a first for the studio, but you can generally see the quality improving as the show progresses and certain parts of the animation get more polished. It takes a bit og getting used to, but if you're not a stick in the mud about it, the show has a lot to enjoy. Which brings me to everything else. It's all quite well done. Characters are strong and memorable, the interactions between them feel real and fitting, the dynamic between Kabo and Wanda is endearing and wholesome. The show does a good job engaging you in its story and providing information about dance as a whole. Once the CGI settles in your head, the rest of the experience is solidly pleasant. The CGI is still a downside, otherwise this show would be an 8/10. Perhaps if a season 2 were made it would be more polished now that there's some experience here. There's a live action in production, which is interesting.

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