Animation looks better than I thought it would be.
Being what essentially amounts to LotR fanfiction, I am tentatively excited to watch.
After Amazon buttfucked Rings of Power and Wheel of Time, I won’t watch a damn thing they make based on pre-existing IP. This looks good though.
I’m kinda disappointed it just looks like a generic Japanese anime?
Edit: as in the stylistic art for the characters is very just Japanese anime not fantasy drawings matching the books.
I really meant emphasis on generic not the anime part.
Like the characters all look like any generic isekai cast on some 3d mapped backgrounds from scans from the movie miniatures.
Its got a feeling of cheap and passionless like some rich guy just paid for an anime adaptation cause anime is currently popular.
I dunno maybe I’m reading into it but my hype went way down.
Traditionally speaking, anime looks the way it does because funding for animation in Japan was tiny, so they cut corners wherever they could. Character designs were cut and pasted, backgrounds were static, lip syncing was out of the question, and frame rates were kept low.
I guess, now that there’s more money for it, and updates technology allows for them to get around many of those early restrictions, they keep doing that stuff, just because, I guess.
With the amount of great unadapted stories in the Silmarillion, I don’t know why they have to go for generic fantasy fanfictiony crap.
Give me The Children of Húrin, give me The Fall of Gondolin, give me Beren and fucking Lúthien… any of those would make for an excellent anime or live action series, if done properly with enough respect and funding…
Using someone else’s work’s name just to ride on their coattails because your fanfiction isn’t good enough to stand on its own is a (sadly extremely common these days) massive red flag that guarantees I won’t be wasting my time watching it.
There’s legal issues. Embracer group owns the rights to make video games based on the lord of the rings and the hobbit, but the Silmarillion and unfinished tales of numenor is still owned by the Tolkien Estate, and they are pretty selective with it. The first age is basically off limits to everyone except Amazon prime right now.
Looks lame
