Mysterious Disappearances First Impressions

Synopsis

Sumireko Ogawa is a busty bookstore clerk who wants to become a novelist after some writing success in her youth. When strange occurrences start cropping up around the city, she teams up with her flirtatious co-worker Ren Adashino to look into them. But Ren is hiding a secret of his own! With their combined skills of occult knowledge, what will they discover as they investigate?
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Staff

Storyboard

Tomomi Mochizuki

Episode Direction

Takeshi Shiga

Chief Animation Direction

Takuya Tani, Yuusuke Isouchi

Animation Direction

Yuusuke Isouchi

Key Animators

Miho Shitaya, Yuuki Minagawa, Naoko Imaoka, Sena Terada, Shingo Fujisaki, Toshiki Oohira, Daisuke Makino, Yuuzou Sasaki, Risa Suzuki, Tomoya Takayama, Masako Gotou

Conversation Corner

The first episode of the adaptation of the exciting supernatural manga, Mysterious Disappearance, has arrived at Zero G, helmed by Tomomi Mochizuki. He might have soured people’s opinion of him with his work on Pupa and Rainy Cocoa. However, he’s genuinely a unique director who direct some very distinct series like House of Five Leaves and, in recent times, has become a very good episode storyboarder, as seen in The Case Study of Vanitas. I feel like his work in this episode is no different, although the compositing and overall editing of the episode fails him a bit. I think it’s hard to argue against recognizing his strong visual ideas, just from the opening sequence of the show.

Bluedash

At the very least I can say that the compositing does present a few different issues. It saps the episode of that air of mystery and tension, and in the looser terms of editing, the soundtrack can really throw a wrench into the feeling of a scene. One second you think you’ve got a read on things, and the next the episode flips it on its head. I definitely get that Mysterious Disappearances is meant to be about that sort of dichotomy, as they set it up early in the episode, but it feels like the studio at large is playing favorites with a few sequences. The horror and tension can be solid, the more blue-collar style humor lands well, and the fanservice is “well done”, but it leaves bald-spots in a few other areas.

Piro

It’s hard to describe the feeling of the animation without just showing the readers. While it can’t be classified as stiff, in the debut scene of the show, there’s a very weird sense to how the characters move that I just can’t put my finger on. It reminds me of almost like how claymation animation moves at certain parts. It’s not stiff, but there’s something that feels like it’s not the average amount of smoothness. Piro might be giving me crazy eyes right now as I say that. I do agree that compositing is not great; it feels pretty “regular” for what the series wants to be. When I read the manga, personally, I imagined a much stronger stylization of the night atmosphere. But unfortunately, the compositing makes the series feel more normal than the content it contains. There are some strong moments like when Adashino first confronts the de-aging Sumireko. The blue light surrounding the whole scene is quite intense, and I was hoping most of the scenes were going to be like that even for more casual moments.

Bluedash

Yeah, it’s a bit of an “all or nothing” production on that front. At the very least, the story remains decently consistent though. The boorish humor does well to offset the atmposhere of the episode, and Mochizuki’s boards are a nice complement to the narrative with things like Adashino’s exclamation sign. Overall it’s work that might go unappreciated, but it’s very helpful in passing on clues and other pieces to the reader. I just wish that Crunchyroll would actually pay decent wages and give reasonable time to the people behind subtitling the episode, as the poem sequences here are abhorrently terrible. It’s unironically worse than what a fan sub group would accomplish. Entirely unreasonable work for subscribers to be paying for, and a finished product that only takes away from value of those scenes.

Piro

Yeah, that was a bit atrocious. I don’t want to divert from this article just to criticize Crunchyroll, but they kind of deserve it. That type of subtitling is something a fansubber could have considered ugly back in 2008. There’s no excuse for this. Plus, they announced that they were licensing this series like 30 minutes after it aired in Japan? It’s just a mess. Not only is it detrimental to the subscriber’s experience, it can possibly harm the anime’s popularity as the debut episode is very important and most people did not have any idea where it was going to air.

Bluedash

Absolutely, yeah. Zero-G might not be the best studio ever, and Mysterious Disappearances certainly doesn’t wow with an episode that will knock your socks off, but at the very least it’s a series that shows potential- potential which Crunchyroll seems to have negative interest in. It’s built a solid world beneath its feet with this first episode, and with its very unique concept there’s sure to be more than a few people interested in the work. Hopefully things clear up with the second episode, but until then we’ve just got the work of today’s. I’m not leaning either way, personally. It’s not near as rough as Yozakura Family was, but doesn’t really sell itself enough visually to contend with the better works of this season.

Piro

I personally enjoyed this more than our previous write-up in Yozakura Family. Just because I feel like Mochizuki is actually trying to work with the source material and is really trying to showcase his style. Much like Minato, for some reason both of these guys have a pretty strong hold on their series, they both like to do the scripts for their own shows. It’s just that giving someone this much control over a series benefits someone like Mochizuki a lot more. There’s no doubt in my mind that most of the positives from this episode are his boards and while the execution is questionable, you can tell they were still inspired in a sense. It seems like he worked the script to his favor in the visuals that he wanted represented. Whereas Minato’s hold on the Yozakura Family anime just feels like its hindrance, like there’s this force depriving the series of a more fun nature, it’s not a real style of anything. While it’s not the perfect episode, I had a pretty good time with this, and I’m curious to see how the rest of the upcoming arcs will be adapted and whether or not Zero-G will kick up the production for some of the arcs coming up.

Bluedash

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