I'll preface this by saying that I've currently watched the series up to episode 8 (the last 2 have yet to be aired).
I love Genndys work. His last work, Primal, is one of my favorite works of animation. It has incredible style, animation, story and pacing. While U:WE has a cool overall plot, every other thing Primal got right is missing from this show.
1- Style: This show has a rubberhose-ish 30s style, but without any of the fluidity that came with the animations of the period. And I don't know how to put this, but it does not feel like the style is very well integrated with what it is trying to show. To put it simply - it looks ugly, with the exception of the backgrounds, which are good.
2- Animation: I am a fan of the art of animation, and I am an animator myself, so I think I may notice some things relating to animation too much. And I'll say that the action scenes are good (like 7/10). But for the majority of the time, the animation is simply awful. It feels clunky and cheap, like the studio was trying to limit the number of drawn frames to cut costs, and thought that motion graphics would make this imperceptible. It didnt. And I have nothing against motion graphics, I myself use them a lot. This was just badly done. And even the scenes with loads of frames end up not looking good, because their style of exaggerated motion end up just looking goofy and just... BAD, for a lack of other words. I think this show looked very good in the storyboard, but in order to look as good in motion, they should have used a more competent animation studio.
3- Editing: This one is short and simple: a lot of the scenes feel like they stay on screen for like 1-2 seconds too long. It ruins the pacing and the storytelling, and makes the characters feel like paper dolls or something, because they end up reacting to things in a very artificial manner. It feels like this show was written as well paced 18 minute-long episodes, and someone at the last minute said that the show has to be 20 minutes, so they slightly stretched every scene.
4- Insufferable Characters: I like Seng, and Copernicus is ok (he can't speak, and with the kind of dialogue writing in this show, that may be a plus). However, Melinda and her 2 lovers are just incredibly annoying. The behave like they are 12, when they are all adults and 2 of them are immortal beings hundreds of years old. I know they reincarnated into hosts that were too young, but even so. When you end up rooting for the evil people to be done with the main characters, you know you didnt do a good job.
I actually liked the worldbuilding (despite buing kinda tired of the steampunk thing) and I think that the characters have a lot of potential, but I feel like these 4 points cancel any of the good things with ease.
I love Genndys work. His last work, Primal, is one of my favorite works of animation. It has incredible style, animation, story and pacing. While U:WE has a cool overall plot, every other thing Primal got right is missing from this show.
1- Style: This show has a rubberhose-ish 30s style, but without any of the fluidity that came with the animations of the period. And I don't know how to put this, but it does not feel like the style is very well integrated with what it is trying to show. To put it simply - it looks ugly, with the exception of the backgrounds, which are good.
2- Animation: I am a fan of the art of animation, and I am an animator myself, so I think I may notice some things relating to animation too much. And I'll say that the action scenes are good (like 7/10). But for the majority of the time, the animation is simply awful. It feels clunky and cheap, like the studio was trying to limit the number of drawn frames to cut costs, and thought that motion graphics would make this imperceptible. It didnt. And I have nothing against motion graphics, I myself use them a lot. This was just badly done. And even the scenes with loads of frames end up not looking good, because their style of exaggerated motion end up just looking goofy and just... BAD, for a lack of other words. I think this show looked very good in the storyboard, but in order to look as good in motion, they should have used a more competent animation studio.
3- Editing: This one is short and simple: a lot of the scenes feel like they stay on screen for like 1-2 seconds too long. It ruins the pacing and the storytelling, and makes the characters feel like paper dolls or something, because they end up reacting to things in a very artificial manner. It feels like this show was written as well paced 18 minute-long episodes, and someone at the last minute said that the show has to be 20 minutes, so they slightly stretched every scene.
4- Insufferable Characters: I like Seng, and Copernicus is ok (he can't speak, and with the kind of dialogue writing in this show, that may be a plus). However, Melinda and her 2 lovers are just incredibly annoying. The behave like they are 12, when they are all adults and 2 of them are immortal beings hundreds of years old. I know they reincarnated into hosts that were too young, but even so. When you end up rooting for the evil people to be done with the main characters, you know you didnt do a good job.
I actually liked the worldbuilding (despite buing kinda tired of the steampunk thing) and I think that the characters have a lot of potential, but I feel like these 4 points cancel any of the good things with ease.