Review of Land of the Lustrous

tl;dr: Give this one a try. It will be unlike anything you've ever watched. I have never seen a series that has made me wonder, "what the hell kind of interests do you have that you were able to create something like this," more than Land of the Lustrous has. This is some of the most unique visual imagery I have ever seen. This series has a color palette that's filled with saturated colors but somehow isn't gaudy, characters whose body parts fracture like crystal yet still seem soft and lifelike, and environments that are filled with grass and wind yet somehow hauntingly lonely. But ontop of the wildly imaginative source material is a studio that was equally creative in how they chose to adapt it.

This is a perfect execution of 3D animation supported by Japanese 2D animation technique. It's clear that the show was built with 3D in mind from the ground up. The CG, instead of being used a time-saving crutch for difficult movements, is used an excuse to pack in even more difficult movement. Usually, 3D stiffens up characters, but here the time saved in drawing the character each frame is put towards making the characters move more; there's more head movement, more wild arm movement, and the fight scenes use crazy choreography and panning camera shots that would usually be reserved for a sparing few moments in a series.

And instead of going for the motion tweened look of western 3D animation, I believe Studio Orange is finally onto a 3D look that uses anime-style technique nicely. Instead of just taking a 3d animation and and cutting out 2/3rds of the frames, each frame is treated like a traditional 2D frame, and the space between each one is carefully pruned so that there's the same impact as 2D animation. I even spotted a few smear frames here and there.

Oh man, I haven't even talked about effects yet; constantly wind blown hair and clothing that adds so much life and interest to each scene, the rendered crystal surfaces reflecting light in a way that just wouldn't look as good in 2D. There's a character whose arms can become liquid, creating these half fluid, half branch things made of melted gold.

I really could go on and on about all this but there's no point... just trust me that this is a treat for anyone who loves eye candy. The only point that I docked from this show is that it ended on a cliffhanger; in other words, I'm mad that I only got this much of this show! Really hope we get a second season for this one.