== *Kemono Friends* shows that CG versus drawn animation is ultimately unimportant

*Kemono Friends* is made almost entirely in {{AB:CG:3D
computer graphics}}, and they're famously pretty janky and
limited, with a stilted and awkward look ([[even when it tried
https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/855260728185552897]]).
The show was made with so few resources that [[it took them
until episode 7 to make the bus's wheels spin in the opening
https://twitter.com/canipashow/status/846846145196273664]]. *Kemono
Friends* is also really good. Not 'good for its limited budget'; genuinely
good, to the extent that it's likely to make any number of people's
end of year lists ([[mine included Winter2017Retrospective]]). *Kemono
Friends* has a depth to it that anime rarely manages, and the show does
it without ever losing its lighthearted charm.

Would *Kemono Friends* have been better if it was made with adequate
resources using traditional 2D drawn animation instead of scrappy
shoestring CG? Probably; I'm willing to believe that all of the charm
could have been maintained with better art and animation. How about
a version of the show made in great 2D drawn animation but without the
excellent writing and direction that *Kemono Friends* had? There are some
people who would say that such a show would be better than the *Kemono
Friends* we got because it would look much better, but I'm not among
them. The greatness in *Kemono Friends* doesn't come from how it looks,
it comes from what's in the show, and if you take that away it doesn't
really matter how pretty what's left looks. A pedestrian but beautiful
show is still a pedestrian show. As we've seen more than once, not even
[[KyoAni https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Animation]]'s many talents
can save a show from its own writing.

What *Kemono Friends* illustrates, [[once again LetterToMomoView]], is
that whether a work is made in CG or with drawn animation is far less
important than what's in the work. While we've had illustrations of this
before, *Kemono Friends* is extremely handy because it has such a gulf
between its visual appearance and its quality of writing and execution.
You almost never get amazing things that were made on a shoestring and
show it.

This is what I mean by calling CG versus 2D animation ultimately
unimportant. The difference between the two is not nothing, but moving
from one to the other moves the overall quality and impact of a show far
less than other things do.

(Well, for most people. There are people who care a lot about [[sakuga
https://blog.sakugabooru.com/glossary/sakuga/]]; for at least some of
these people, CG is pretty much a deal killer in the same way that a
mandatory English dub mostly removes my interest.)

As a corollary, that a particular show will be made in CG instead
of hand-drawn animation is well down the list of things to worry
about. You should be worrying much more about things like who
is making it, under what conditions, [[what they feel about it
ThunderboltFantasyEmbracingGenre]], and what their goals are, because
all of those are far more likely to change whether the end result is
good or bad.

(This is part of the [[12 Days of Anime for 2017
https://perpetualmorning.wordpress.com/2017/11/14/12-days-of-anime-2017/]].)