The new season has begun, meaning Why It Works has a whole new crop of shows to talk about! Today I started with Izetta, breaking down a bunch of the details that come together to make that opening train scene work so well. It’s nice to have such a broad selection of new things to discuss!
Why It Works: Izetta’s Great Train Escape
Thanks for writing this! Izetta is my favorite new show this season and is written by my favorite anime writer (yeah, I know -not many people list Hiroyuki Yoshino as their favorite anime writer) so it was nice to see the series get some expert analysis. I’d actually found the first episode of Izetta notable for its pacing and use of framing even before reading this, but I hadn’t fully appreciated some of the finer details you pointed out.
I realize you’re not in a position to answer this, but it would be interesting to know how much of this sequences is from the script and which parts came from the storyboarding stage. From what I’ve been told significant changes can be made at the storyboarding stage, and that seems like it might be particularly true for action sequences. On the other hand, anime scripts can get pretty detailed.