Anime: Kouya no Kotobuki Hikoutai

Watching this after the prestigious Legend of Galactic Heroes, it was hard to believe this is the better anime in the facial animations department. What I mean here is that in the small moments the character's face is in focus, they blink, their eyes have direction and there's subtle movements in their brows, noses and lips. Make no mistake, this is present in LoGH too but it doesn't happen frequently nor when it was necessary. That said, the animation for this show got to me. The show uses CG and drawn animation at the same time and at first, I thought it was only for the crew since they'll be in focus most of the time and I understand budget constraints would make them like that. However, they also animated the crew the same way as the rest of the drawn characters and mobs that in some of them, they gain a bit more emotion and movement. It kept me thinking that if this is the case, just uniformly animate them the same way and just cg the dogfights. It really took me out of my immersion because there's a break in the visuals that I'm seeing. The one that saved it for me was the story which was coherent as one event happens that leads to another compared to slamming your face with a backstory episode and that I believe it's a good thing. The story doesn't stop just to tell you a sub-plot and actually gives a reason why you're watching it happen. Adding to that the aerial fight that happens here and the animation decision got away from me in being a major issue. The aerial fight is in CG save for a few times as the pilots were drawn and not cg. What this offered were views in third and first person and the direction was spot on as you are shown dogfights that inform you on what's happening, the changes to that and reasons as to why it was happening. It's a strong suit for this anime and I wish there'd be more like this. Overall, it's a good show. I'd even endorse it to get english dubs so one can really enjoy it without constantly looking up and down.