Early Access - Vinland Saga | Reaction & Review 1x14 "The Light of Dawn"

deleted! :)

Daniel Jorgenson

I don’t think I’ve seen any mangaka that can draw hands as well as Yukimura. Not even Murata

Reinhard's Burner

Absolute cinema. One of the best standalone episodes of anything ever. Yukimura is very talented when it comes to focusing on one individual character/side story that's happening during the main plot.

RaijinCloud

When I realised Vinland Saga won the poll all that time ago I knew in my heart that no matter if you loved or just liked the show that as a fan of filmmaking you’d adore episode 14. It’s honestly magical. I’ll never forget when I first watched this episode. A friend and I usually watch anime together and we’d often pause them to talk about and debate the episode’s contents but when we watched this we stayed in silence almost all the way through and for a good few minutes after the episode finished. We just sat there and I honestly thought I had transcended. It sounds ridiculous but it’s honestly true. And honestly… there are some episodes even still to come that left me feeling the exact same way. This is such a special story. You made a comment about the character’s hands in your discussion and it made me remember something. I have no idea if someone has already brought this to your attention but just in case you haven’t there was an interview with Yukimura (the mangaka) and he had this to say about drawing hands “Hands take time to do well. The strength of a character’s grip on a sword, for example. Male and female hands are hard to differentiate, too. Hands are the most expressive part of a character, after the face. I’ve heard that you can tell a person’s character from their hands, so I always look at them [laughs] You can fake a facial expression, but hands will show how hard you work or how hard you don’t. If you show the character’s life in their hands, you’ll get a good result.”

Sacha

From the top of my head, I can't recall a similar situation where the core stays with a studio switch. But I am still confident saying that this isn't the first time this has happened considering there's half a century worth of anime history. I would never rule out anything. So yeah, the art style could change, the approach could change. The committee might only provide enough funding for a 12-episode season instead of a 24-episode season. Much of the above can often happen even if the studio doesn't change. That being said, I don't believe any drastic changes are going to happen. The director and the character designer are both fluent in English and very in-touch with the overseas fans of the series on Twitter, who are the sole reason the adaptation is getting continuation in the first place. The anime's success wasn't anywhere near similar domestically in Japan, be it with viewer count or BD/merch sales. Be cautiously optimistic. The show is in great hands. Personally I'm just crossing fingers that Takeda and Studio Bamboo have room for Vinland in their schedule. He and his studio are one of the most sought after art directors and studios for TV anime.

@sakesake Since you seem educated in how studios work, did this situation ever happen before (referring to a show changing studio but keeping its core staff)? If so, what changes when they change studio in terms of the final product? does the art style change? is there a different approach? I want to know because as a manga reader, I feel like the season 2 content is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make one of the best seasons in anime.

Rudi Gonçalves

Had a very strong feeling this ep would blow you away. It's just visually stunning.

Martin

The show leaving Wit Studio is near guaranteed. It is possible that Vinland is going to Mappa, but nothing is confirmed. The only reason why people are throwing that around is because the director is currently employed there. Being on a studio's payroll doesn't necessarily mean that their contract disallows them from working outside of the studio. He was never an employee of Wit's but directed a whole show for them. It's confirmed that the director, animation producer, as well as the character designer/chief animation director are sticking with the production. Same with some other staff like this episode's director. Out of these the only person who has ever been an employee of Wit Studio's is the animation producer. In Attack on Titan's case, the studio and the whole core changed. The industry is extremely freelancer dependant. The name of the studio definitely matters, but it doesn't matter nearly as much as the extremely loud majority of anime viewers make it seem. The biggest factor in talent showing up in productions are friendships and connections amongst the staff members themselves. Just in this comment section there are talks of this "40-person studio giving us the first three seasons of Attack on Titan," when in reality the staff headcount in every season exceed a thousand. Wit was a studio of Production I.G's that changed its name and went independent. Production I.G is a massive studio and is regarded as one of the greatest spawns of animation talent. AoT was their first project and they were still leaning on Production I.G for a huge amount of help. This is why the "tiny studio" worked as such a magnet for talent to gather together. An animation studio often is just a hired hand by the production committee and nothing more. No matter what the end result might look like, Wit quite literally dropped AoT because they couldn't handle it anymore. There is a reason why it took five years for the second season to ever see the light of day. The executives of the studio no longer wanted to put their staff through the extremely pathetic conditions they had been working under so far. They weren't a part of the committee, just a company hired to handle the animation production of the show. They were raking in zero profits from the series' massive international success. Lose-lose situation, so they dropped the show. The committee needed to find a new hand to hire and no studio wanted to accept the terms the committee was offering, until Mappa's CEO raised their hand. Options were either Mappa, some other studio which's executives care as little about their staff, or the adaptation of Attack on Titan stops at episode 59. Here are also two interesting interviews between CEOs with polar opposite views on how to run an anime studio. Otsuka (Studio Mappa) https://otakumode.com/news/5ef5be86a516d17635f4dbf1/Anime-Site-Collaboration-Project-Vol-21-MAPPA Minami (Studio Bones) https://otakumode.com/news/5bc11f7889172b6a7aa76bc8/Anime-Site-Collaboration-Project-Vol-2-bones

In regards to the talks about the production of Vinland Saga. A wall of text in the next reply for those interested:

@Rudi I edited my comment just to be on the safe side, hope it’s ok. I don’t want to spoil anything!

Sarah S

Video thumbnail depicting the passive energy released by Im's brain. The imagery combined with the music at the end was so great, everything felt so ethereal.

Serodin

You'll be pleased to know that the boarder and director of this episode, Atsushi Kobayashi, will be working on the second season of Vinland as well. He boarded four episodes this season (5, 7, 14, 23) and this is the only episode which he also directed. Elevated his own board even further. The second opening which you'll get to see once you're done with the season is also his board and direction. Beautiful work by the man. My favourite, and hands down one of the most beautiful episodes of the show.

Please read his post "End of March Update", it states that hinting and sharing excitement towards future episodes or scenes is not something he wants in his comments, I agree that it is very vague but it still creates some sort of expectations.

Rudi Gonçalves

My personal take on Anne is what you were saying about her feeling liberated. There’s a lot going on there, but I think in that moment the only way she can process and rationalize what happened is to tie it to her fear of judgment and how she can be released from it now after seeing such cruel people that day. Pretty surprised after reading the comments, how in the world did this episode receive negative feedback? This is in my top 2 or 3 favorite Vinland Saga episodes

Sarah S

I always wondered if the girl ever blamed herself for the pillaging of her village, as in her seeing all this to be a heavy/divine punishment from God because she stole that ring

xyz

Amazing reaction as always. This was definitely an incredible episode. Looking to more Vinland Saga.

Hydro

I appreciate how much you recognized the open-endedness of Anne's "lesson" from this massacre. There is a lot of different ways you can interpret it and it's not uncommon for viewers to sort of give up on trying to figure it out, but I think it's because it was never meant to bring clarity. Anne clearly took her own interpretation away from it, we know she comes to some kind of epiphany, but the audience, which is privy to dramatic irony, knows a bigger picture to contextualize why this happened. I think this sequence might even be meant to sort of illustrate how, if a higher power does exist, interpreting their will is effectively impossible. For instance, from my perspective, there's no doubt that Anne's family have all sinned at some point. They even go so far as to illustrate how some sins pale in comparison to others. Because of that running theme that all mankind is dammed to this hell on earth, sure you could lean one way and say that her family escaped from hell via death. But the other perspective can just as easily be that because death doesn't discriminate between the good and the evil, when she fell into the snow, despite the fact that death *should* have taken her, it did not. If you follow that line of thinking, she was indeed spared and has some purpose left to fulfil. Of course, you can also see this from Anne's own perspective that she might truly just be stuck in hell. It gets rather circular after a while, but it's so good and thought provoking and there is so much more I wish I could add to this given future revelations in the series but dammit am I excited to see your analysis when we get to that point! I know I'll be here to write another rambling essay in the comments lol

Shmengels

Just finished watching your reaction and got to say that this was probably one of the best post discussions you ever did.

Rudi Gonçalves