"a staggering work of talent and attention to detail"
November 9, 2016 6:10 AM   Subscribe

From episode five, season two of Hibike! Euphonium, Kyoto Animation presents Kitauji High School Concert Band's performance of Crescent Moon Dance, with the explanation on how they got the technical details almost entirely right while still leaving the overall performance on a level to be expected from a talented high school band.

For comparison, the same piece as animated for the finale of the first season.

The actual performance was done by Senzoku Gakuen College of Music, who got a live action version up on Youtube. Several other concert bands have also performed the piece since the series first came out last year.

Crescent Moon Dance was composed by Akito Matsuda, responsible for Hibike! Euphonium's soundtrack. Though not a "real" wind ensemble piece and with the sheet music only having been published in Japan, the score is nevertheless available on musescore.

For more commentary on the animation technical side of things, Sakuga Blog is running an episode by episode examination of Hibike! Euphonium season two. For the musical side of things, Thoraxes has rundowns of each episode of both series so far.

Both season one and season two are available for legal streaming free on Crunchyroll.
posted by MartinWisse (10 comments total) 29 users marked this as a favorite
 
My current favorite anime! Thanks. I found the blog to be too much for me though and gave up on it about 1/3rd through. While I'm interested in the musical side of things I'm much more interested in character interactions. I'll have to check for a fanfare.
posted by evilDoug at 7:15 AM on November 9, 2016


I guess I'm the opposite of you evilDoug; I liked all the music stuff but didn't get into the characters at all.
posted by donkeymon at 8:00 AM on November 9, 2016


This is a great show, and really plays to Kyoto Animation's strengths. This level of detailed, painstaking character animation, for such a long sequence, is practically unheard of for a mid-season episode of a TV anime.
posted by Hargrimm at 11:37 AM on November 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


Wow, every now and then I get a nice glimpse like this into one of the many genres of possible nerdery and general endless complexity of everything. I may not understand a lot of what exactly is going on here but somehow that doesn't make it less fun to read over...
posted by eykal at 5:22 PM on November 9, 2016


Wow, that was the sort of budget and detail that usually only exists in the wistful imaginations of people who are fans of some niche property and are day dreaming about how it could be done. Is KyoAni making out extremely well at the moment, and/or do they have some just extraordinarily dedicated staff?

Besides the animation, the sound design and editing really stood out. One thing I think they do really well as a studio is using framing and static scenes in what feels like a very purposeful way to establish atmosphere, and not just a convenient way to fill four dozen frames.
posted by lucidium at 5:28 PM on November 9, 2016


As an euphonium player in a school band way back when, I love this to bits. We just played a lot of marches though, and for some reason the hilariously named "Turkey in the Straw". (Hilarious to a bunch of 4th graders at least.)
posted by of strange foe at 6:17 PM on November 9, 2016


Really enjoyed season 1 but still haven't started season 2. Seems like as good a time as any for a catch-up bingeā€¦
posted by danb at 7:53 PM on November 9, 2016


> Is KyoAni making out extremely well at the moment, and/or do they have some just extraordinarily dedicated staff?

Kyoto Animation is relatively unique in the animation industry in Japan because their animators are all full-time paid employees, rather than project-based contractors, which is the case at most other animation studios. What that means is that Kyoto Animation can train new staff with the expectation that they will stay at the studio. That in turn leads to quality and loyalty. It makes it challenging to staff projects of course, because it is easier to add/subtract headcount in a project/contract-based system but KyoAni ends up with higher quality output at the end of the day.

That episode was really amazing. Kyoto Animation, wow.
posted by gen at 9:31 PM on November 9, 2016 [4 favorites]


Wow, they're actually animating correct fingerings and technique? Mind blown. Stuff like that always annoyed me when watching anime music scenes, but the amount of work that it takes to make it accurate must be substantial. Kudos to KyoAni.
posted by Standard Orange at 10:15 PM on November 9, 2016


So much geek. Love it.
posted by signal at 8:07 AM on November 10, 2016


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