The frequent visual cut ins (like when the screen flashes a certain color with the emphatized text across the screen) heavily reminded me of the Monogatari anime, could this have been an inspiration? Or pheraps other works from studio shaft like madoka magica?
It is inspired by Bakemonogatari.
What inspired those choices in Bakemonogatari?
Most people say French New Wave.
The final translation to celebrate Kizumonogatari’s 5th anniversary is with none other than director Tatsuya Oishi: his feelings after wrapp
Some of that comes from Shaft as a studio; the directors' tastes and the animators' backgrounds. But Bakemonogatari as an adaptation probably lends itself to it especially. The series was originally light novels- very dialogue heavy. So how do you, as an animator or director, translate that to your medium? How do you add visual variety to a scene that's just two characters talking?
French New Wave was, generally speaking, about breaking the rules of cinema, flirting with convention. Keeping the audience aware of the fact that they're watching a movie and not experiencing reality.
Part of that arose from the fact that the filmmakers didn't have the budgets to do things "the right way," building massive sets in studio back lots and filling them with dozens of extras. They had to try to "convey" a crowd rather than show it, or use editing to "suggest" an action that they couldn't show because they never had time to film it.
It's interesting thinking about how this relates to visual novels and videogames in general.
Why /do/ we hide a scene transition by making the player squeeze through a gap in some rocks?
Is it embarrassing to put up a loading screen because it's "not cinematic"? Is yellow paint more dignified than a controller icon? Why is a jump-cut immersion breaking but a palette-swapped enemy isn't?
And every time a visual novel cuts to a shot of a sunny blue sky in lieu of showing a specific, probably-hard-to-draw action, and instead just has the characters narrate what's happening-
Is that actually just a tasteful tip of the hat to French New Wave cinema's tradition of utilizing non-standard editing to exaggerate the audience's sense of hyperreality?
Well, probably not.
But maybe sometimes!
