Showcasing a set of screenshots from each episode of the MDZS donghua that struck to me the most in terms of visual storytelling, from striking layouts to clever visual symbolisms!
Episode #22 (S2E07): Night Rush
Ok but so many things were stacked against this episode’s favor. The show’s painfully limited runtime meant that it had to cram a lot of events in a single ep, plus it’s also common for animation production to get a lot tighter for later episodes. And true enough, the episode didn’t really have the 'sakuga’ moments that earlier episodes had.
In a less inspired production this arc would have been completely butchered. Some people do feel that way, tho I beg to differ: it’s not like there weren’t sacrifices, but this episode in particular was so smartly directed that it managed to make this episode work somehow. The ep’s crowd animation could consist of barely-animated swordfighting and duplicates of Naruto-running corpses but the direction made sure not to draw too much attention to it, letting them scatter around out of focus to generate a sense of chaos.
But what particularly wowed me was the way Wei Wuxian’s and Wen Qing’s conversation was handled, letting it spoken over shots of him wandering aimlessly in the rain and checking in on Jiang Yanli. Having two different scenes happen at the same time was a bold move; clearly made to save time, but it somehow nailed the feeling of everything spiraling out of control so fast that he could not keep up. The moment Wen Qing said her iconic “Sorry, and thank you” line I was in shambles. Donghua, how the hell--
Anyway, most of the shots in this post employ things that I’ve already talked about before, like the claustrophobic composition around people who are in deep shit, the spikes in the background screaming danger, WangXian’s symmetrical composition, division between characters emphasized by use of cracks and pillars, colors as mood-setters, and so on.
Which leaves me with two scattered points here: first, the shot of the water showing Wei Wuxian’s reflection, as he, well, reflects on his past regrets. Second, still pay attention to the spikes the cave scene: one shot has a stalactite pointing towards Wen Qing (guess who dies), and there’s another where she and Wen Ning walked towards many stalagmites as they turn themselves in to Jinlintai. Ahh, Spain. But without the S. ༼ ༎ຶ ෴ ༎ຶ༽
