CGI - three letters that anime fans dread every time those get associated with their favorite anime franchise. Sometimes it's a way for animators to cut costs and manpower needed for particular scenes while other times, it's an aesthetic choice. Based on those two reasons, you can probably guess which will end up ruining the anime and which will make it look decent.
If handled poorly, a CGI in a mostly 2D anime will be enough to give you an actual headache. The sight of seeing something that doesn't fit right into the 2D world breaks the suspension of disbelief, essentially ruining the anime. One the other hand, there have been some masterful uses of CGI that draws the line between good and bad. So, here are five extreme(ish) examples of each.
10 BEST: ATTACK ON TITAN
One look at Attack on Titan's action sequences and you'll know that those are most likely dizzying to choreograph using only a pencil and a paper. That's why the animators saved themselves the migraine and resorted to combining 2D and 3D especially for fast action with plenty of camera panning and rotation.
The result? It was glorious and reflected the anime's atmosphere well enough. Their trick was to only pair CGI with fast motion in order to hide its flaws to the viewers. This is apparent when members of the Corps are doing their aerial acrobatics. Hopefully, they keep it limited to that.
9 WORST: MOST ANIME WITH CGI CROWDS
You've most likely seen this before: low-budget anime that take place in cities or anywhere crowded. Their animators had to create and simulate hordes of walking pedestrians to successfully portray a certain locale like a crowded district in Tokyo. However, these CGI crowds are often more trouble than they're worth.
Apart from making the one or two 2D protagonists look out of place or devolved, CGI crowds don't get as many details as they do. Zooming in on their faces and their expressionless visages will most likely convince you that God has left us all alone because of our hubris.
8 BEST: LAND OF THE LUSTROUS
The thing about anime with poor CGI is that many of them probably could have done much better by fully committing to CGI. The creators and animators of Land of the Lustrous understand this and also know that CGI also offers creative opportunities not available in 2D. As such, they've taken advantage of this to full effect.
The general consensus among anime fans is that Land of the Lustrous is CGI in anime done right. The animators knew that 2D body language was not applicable in 3D and focused more on improving fluidity and natural movement, as well as facial expressions. The result is one of the best CGI anime available today.
7 WORST: KNIGHTS OF SIDONIA
Knights of Sidonia is a good example of how CGI disorients a lot of anime creators. It's an action-packed and dramatic sci-fi anime where the characters have the expression and facial emotional range of mannequins. You could see a character scream in pain (the actor certainly did his job) but the visual expression you would get doesn't show the same level of emotional intensity.
It's the complete opposite of Land of the Lustrous in that regard. Even the lip-synching is horrible as if all the show's characters lost control of all the muscles in their face and could only hold one static expression while talking. That isn't to say it's a bad anime, everything else is great including the overall visuals and non-character action sequences but the characters' faces have proven to be the weakest link in the chain.
6 BEST: STEAMBOY
From the creators of the legendary Akira comes Steamboy with a similar story and thematic backdrops but with a steampunk twist. Despite being released way back in 2004, Steamboy showcased a harmonic combination of 2D and 3D animations. Everything was fluid in Steamboy from the camera panning, the dialogue synching, and most importantly, the CGI action scenes.
What's even amazing was Steamboy having around 440 CGI cuts or sequences - that was an astounding amount of CGI back in 2004. What helped, of course, was most of the motion being modeled after real-world physics and movements leading to a more natural world and environment.
5 WORST: THAT BEAR IN GOLDEN KAMUY
Sometimes a 2D anime looks decent enough in the style department to be watchable but then it does something like what we see above. It looks Photoshopped but that is actually a poorly rendered CGI bear fighting 2D characters. It's by far the worst CGI animal in any anime ever, courtesy of Golden Kamuy.
Not only does it look way too realistic to fit into any anime world, but the animations for the bear are too janky; it's like someone edited a GIF into a 2D video. It's a shame because everything else in the Russo-Japanese War anime looks solid. Even the CGI in the battle scenes look like a far cry compared to the bear.
4 BEST: SUMMER WARS
You might not have heard of Summer Wars before but it's actually kind of a big deal. The 2D/3D anime film actually won many prestigious awards in 2010, including the Best Animated Feature in Japan Academy Prize. That speaks volumes of how Summer Wars masterfully pushed the boundaries of both 2D and 3D aesthetics in an anime.
It's also one of the first anime (or perhaps the only anime) in this list where an actual combination of 2D and 3D animations makes sense plotwise. That's because the story's about a genius falsely accused of hacking a virtual game world that would somehow make it collide and merge with the actual physical world, a great excuse to use CGI in anime.
3 WORST: MEKAKUCITY ACTORS' OPENING
Look at that screenshot, it doesn't have to be moving or showing any action at all for you to know what's wrong with it. That's Mekakucity Actors for you. When it shows everything in 2D, i.e. most of the show's running time, it's actually decent and tolerable. However, once you see it's original opening, every bad and traumatic experience and nightmare you had as a child suddenly comes back to haunt you.
Thankfully, only the opening music video of the anime is like that. It was so horrible that the Blu-Ray version of the anime scrapped the opening visuals completely and replaced it with 2D animations. If you do manage to get past that opening ordeal, you get to enjoy the actual 2D anime.
2 BEST: FATE/ZERO
Fate/Zero is what happens when the studio has its own in-house CGI team that has full grasp of what the creators are going for in terms of style and art. The result is one of the most beautiful uses of CGI in anime whether in fight scenes, dramatic camera movements, or fast action.
Ufotable, the makers of Fate/Zero and many other anime with successful CGI blending, know their craft when it comes to implementing 3D animations. A quick look at Fate/Zero's fight scenes and 3D might even win you over 2D; it's just hard to imagine how intense its fights would be with traditional 2D drawings. That's when you know that the CGI use is great.
1 WORST: BERSERK (2016/2017)
Berserk is considered as the darkest manga or anime franchises ever and also one of the most compelling stories in its industry. So, how did they treat Kentaro Miura's carefully crafted world and meticulously created characters in the 2016/2017 anime adaptation? By giving it the worst anime CGI we've seen in years.
Everything is bad in Berserk, whether it's the 2016 o 2017 season. The CGI made everything a joke and all the action scenes are laughably bad from Guts' lack of facial expression to the distracting CGI textures and robotic movements. Even PlayStation 2 era games have better cutscene animations and framing than the latest Berserk anime. Really, stick to the manga, you'll like it better.