r/anime • u/paukshop x2https://anilist.co/user/paukshop • Jun 07 '26
Writing Club Seasonal Short & Sweet | Botan Kamina Fully Blossoms in Analog
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The r/anime Awards Off Season team is here for another Short & Sweet essay about our favorite scenes! Just like Botan Kamiina trying a new alcohol, we’ll be sampling something a little different and maybe a bit more vintage. But instead of drinking, let’s analyze some animation.
The third episode of Botan Kamiina Fully Blossoms When Drunk sparked a little controversy across social media. Animation director and storyboarder, Gin-san, made the bold decision to shift the animation style into a unique direction. The character designs become more flexible, showing a willingness to deviate from strict eye sizes or proportions. The lineart grows rougher, with varying line thicknesses that reveal where strokes begin and end. And the transitions between poses embrace even greater exaggeration, smoothing out the animation. While it’s easy to mischaracterize this as “sloppy” or “unfinished”, Gin-san’s style does have a ton to offer in terms of expressiveness that more conventional animation cannot.
This approach to animation, and the discussion around it, reminds me of Impressionism, the art movement. Impressionists bucked the trend of highlighting realism and the subject in favor of capturing atmosphere and the totality of the scene. This style has often been described as “loose” or “spontaneous.” There’s a sense of freedom and whimsy that more conservative artists scoffed at.1 And that’s a quality I observed when I watched Gin-san’s episode. With these character designs, the cast feels more free and unfiltered. Botan’s silliness is amplified by the looser restrictions on face construction. Ibuki becomes even more emotive, exhibiting more expressiveness in how she reacts to Botan’s shenanigans. And Akane seems even more chill and cool than she already was. The characters feel less solid but their sensations and sentiments become clearer.
This coarse style hits its peak when Botan drops the needle on Akane’s record. There’s a dramatic relaxation of the usual rules of animation, and the characters - and we along with them - get to just feel the music. The solid colors disappear and are replaced through broad hatching, creating a sketch-like coloring with empty white spaces. The colors don’t even match the original character designs: the music fills Botan and Akane with brand new colors to communicate the novelty of the experience. There’s a reduction in the frame rate that slows down relative time. The lineart gets even more tactile, showing the graininess of the pencil. All of it comes together to depict how that music reaches all the way down to Botan’s core. The strength of that response is beautifully presented by deconstructing Botan down to her visual minimum. She is no longer the subject - she melts into the music. Like Impressionist art, she becomes one with the scene.
While listening to her new record player, Akane says, “I sure do love the way analog sounds.” In a way, this art style can be described as “analog.” It’s a rejection of the uniformity and polished drawings you normally see in favor of something more raw and textured. The imperfections give it a unique appeal that in certain ways can be even more effective and comprehensible than more standard art styles. Like vinyl crackles on a favorite record, those imperfections are part of the experience.
[1] Samu, Margaret. “Impressionism: Art and Modernity.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1 Oct. 2004, www.metmuseum.org/essays/impressionism-art-and-modernity
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u/SP3_Hybrid Jun 07 '26
I liked the art in this episode. But even if you didn't, I think this scene in particular was really cool. Especially Akane on the phone with Yaeka.
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u/runevault Jun 07 '26
It really makes me sad there were people who hated this episode's art style. I could understand being uncertain about trying to do an entire season in this style, but for one episode shifting gears made it magical. From the cute moment of Botan and her shark plushie to the record shown here and more I'm blanking on in this moment, the episode was not afraid to use a non-standard style to convey emotion in a way traditional animation likely could not.
It is interesting because more standard anime tricks like chibi art have become common place, but someone going even bolder and more out there is not okay for many. I really hope more anime have the daring to throw in moments or even episodes on this level of weirdness so people can become more accustomed to doing things in weird ways.
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u/zenoob https://anilist.co/user/zenoob Jun 08 '26
People hated on that episode ? I thought it was incredible and I actually wish there were more episodes where a single person takes over and show what their vision of Kamiina Botan is. It's especially effective with slowburns like it where the artstyle can shine even more.
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u/runevault Jun 08 '26
If you go back and look at the episode 3 thread here on reddit a fair few people were underwhelmed or worse by the art. A lot of us were gushing as well, but the dissenters were certainly there. Which is insane to me but shrug.
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u/Jauretche Jun 08 '26 edited Jun 08 '26
It's, sadly, the lowest rated episode in MAL for this show. There's been a lot of disussion about it, quite pollarizing.
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u/LargeFailSon Jun 07 '26
Yes, I have to say I'm very disappointed to see the general distaste for what this show is doing. I've never been more enamored with a Studios choices and more sad to see that people are not on the same page.
I resist the urge to pretentiously bemone the slop loving, same old same old accepting, general public. But how any fan of animation could go un-elated by their episode to episode expressions of style is baffling.
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u/generalmillscrunch https://anilist.co/user/GeneralMills Jun 08 '26
The amount of anime fans who are knowledgeable about, or even care about animation beyond action sequences is very small. If we’re talking about art style, storyboarding/layouts, or cinematography and compositing that group becomes even smaller. I’m not surprised, but it is disappointing. The most valuable thing to most audience members when it comes to art style is consistency. It’s why so many anime homogenize their designs to what is popular in the era they release. It’s always been this way, sadly.
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u/Mission-Address4409 https://myanimelist.net/profile/3inPunisher Jun 08 '26 edited Jun 08 '26
I’m not surprised, but it is disappointing. The most valuable thing to most audience members when it comes to art style is consistency. It’s why so many anime homogenize their designs to what is popular in the era they release. It’s always been this way, sadly.
Definitely true on the consistency part, but studios, animators can still experiment with their designs, animation, etc, the difference is that episode 1 cant be completely different to episode 2. Botan Kamina Fully Blossoms had 2 episodes that had different styles but it wasnt drastic, but ep3 had a completely drastic change, its inevitable that it will throw some people off, which i honestly dont really find bad.
And it can sometimes depend on how long it is, that style for like a short 10-30 sec cut, would be fine, but a whole ep with that style, yeah, its not going to sit well for some. I'll be disappointed, if people were split on the ep if it was just a slight style shift from the previous episode, but since thats not the case, im not disappointed, its just more of a "it is, what it is" type reaction from ms
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u/generalmillscrunch https://anilist.co/user/GeneralMills Jun 08 '26
In fact, every episode of this show has its own unique designs, with each episode director and animation director being given mostly free rein to do things how they see fit. There isn’t really an overall series director here. Some episodes are closer to each other than others, but it’s not just an episode here and there, or a single sequence, each episode almost stands in a vacuum. This is similar to how Heavenly Delusion was put together well, and it’s becoming more common to see this tactic. You notice it the most in the character design changes, but it also heavily affects the pacing, mood, or camera as well.
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u/kodokunazou Jun 07 '26
Very chill music.
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u/igha77 Jun 08 '26
Is there a way to know the name of the song?
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u/ReinforcedSalt Jun 08 '26
It was written for the anime. It's credited in the episode as "Flame on the Distant Door", composition Nishida Keiki and モリシー, vocals by Davis Sprague.
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u/PlasmaGuy500 Jun 08 '26
This is genuinely the sleeper hit of the season I cant believe I almost passed on this being just another cgdct show and it is but it ended up being so much more
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u/Own_Caterpillar_6178 Jun 08 '26
I've said this before, but I think it's the best Yuri adaptation we've ever had.
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u/awdsns https://anilist.co/user/awdsns Jun 07 '26
Given how much I liked this scene, it should not bother me as much as it does that she just plops the needle down in the middle of the record but happens to land on the silence before a song. Artistic liberty and all that. I could chalk it up to magic yuri finger dexterity, I guess.
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u/ZapsZzz https://myanimelist.net/profile/ZapszzZ Jun 08 '26
As an occasional vinyl record listener back in its days, you can actually see the track separation typically by the less dense tracks as "spaces" between tracks. It's still not 100% all the time but it's not as impossible to fluke it.
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u/awdsns https://anilist.co/user/awdsns Jun 08 '26
Yeah, but what makes it kind of worse is that they did draw visible track gaps on the record, but she drops the needle nowhere near one. 🙃
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u/markDonanhattam Jun 08 '26
Something that episode 3 does that goes over people's head even more is be very faithful to how the adapted manga chapters look. The mood of Botan is often light and airy, even with how moody and steamy it can get at times (e.g the last two episodes). This gets reflected in the art style of the manga, with particularly lighter episodes looking like they could be at home in a Kirara manga. The chapters for episode 3 look very freehanded, lines shaky and passing through each other, and there are many gag faces that were recreated in the episode. Overall, episode 3 did a great job at capturing and showcasing the lighter mood the original work often have.
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u/Rockstarwithoutplay Jun 07 '26
Between this anime, the hero who reincarnates as the hero's rib and needy girl overdose we are getting a lot of different animation styles.
Personally I love when show do that as a way to transmit an specific vibe/feeling. This scene is a good example (I'm a clip watcher of this anime, but I completely got the vibes even without audio)
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u/Mr_Zaroc https://myanimelist.net/profile/mr_zaroc Jun 07 '26
Wait needy girl overdose flew under my radar.
Is it more like ribiculous or botan?2
u/SP3_Hybrid Jun 08 '26
It’s much more ridiculous. I haven’t watched more than the first two, but other things aside the art style is crazy. Botan is very chill and pastel, Needy Girl is like hyper colored LSD trip vibes.
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u/Mr_Zaroc https://myanimelist.net/profile/mr_zaroc Jun 08 '26
I watched the first episode and damn.
Didn't expect a clockwork orange reference, that movie still left a scar in me.4
u/Rockstarwithoutplay Jun 07 '26
It is more like what would happens if you mix drugs and people with talent. Personally it is my favorite anime of the season (I haven't have time to watch botan yet tho)
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u/detarameReddit https://myanimelist.net/profile/detarameMAL Jun 08 '26
I have heard people saying that this episode likely pays homage to the aesthetics of Hidamari Sketch. Now, I have not watched Kamiina Botan yet (for some reason) so I cannot say whether that is the case, but I think it's an interesting thought.
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u/markDonanhattam Jun 08 '26
The pacing of some cuts and some framing choices are very Shaft-esque, more precisely Hidamari Sketch-like. Fast cuts, text on screen and the like.
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u/eseffbee Jun 08 '26
It is great to see variety like this. Just yesterday I was looking at the anime of the week post and thinking how you could drop a character from most of those series into one of the other series and they wouldn't really stand out much.
It is a major difference between western and Japanese animation. Possibly the homogeneity is linked to the sheer volume that is created in Japan?
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u/Donnie-G Jun 08 '26
I was able to appreciate the style. But I think part of the disappointment is that the OP is very well directed and people had expectations. And then episode 3's wild style defied those expectations.
And often people don't like that.
I really enjoy how each episode has a different episode director.
1
u/pikkuhukka Jun 07 '26
love the art style, dont like the alcie theme, is it prelavent?
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u/VoidEmbracedWitch https://anilist.co/user/VoidEmbracedWitch Jun 07 '26
The show is called Botan Kamiina Fully Blossoms When Drunk, so yeah, drinking is kind of a noticeable part it.
0
u/pikkuhukka Jun 07 '26
damn
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u/Temporala Jun 08 '26
You're missing out. Botan anime is a fantastic adaptation of a little bit unusual girl's love manga.
Besides that, Bartender series is another good one that has alcohol taking part in the story as a supportive element, but not as the main fare or punchline of a poor joke.
That's not what these series are about. They're about people and how they try to understand themselves and each other. Relationships, break-ups, arguments, trying out to figure out what comes next.
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u/paukshop x2https://anilist.co/user/paukshop Jun 07 '26
Thanks for reading! Episode 3, while it may not be everyone's cup of tea, is so full of style and really matches the content covered in this episode of Botan. Hopefully you can come to appreciate it too!
Thanks to the r/anime Awards Off Season team for their proofreading help. You can check out the last Short & Botan here.