When 3D CGI is used in anime, it has generally speaking been a bit of a mixed bag. Largely, it’s been used as a cost cutting measure because why would you pay animators to spend hours drawing a single frame when you could just toss a character model at a computer and have it do the work for you. Even though CGI could (in some cases) cost more in the short term, when those models can then get reused throughout the entire series, it generally saves both time and manpower. This is an oversimplification, but you get the point. Most of the time I’ve looked at it as an unwelcome, but sometimes necessary, tool used by animation studios to create the work that they do.
While I can point to several examples of when CGI was used subtly to great effect (even going back to, say, the 90’s when Cell animation was still king), we can all think of a few times when an anime has used some godawful CG. A few works somehow cross the uncanny valley into so-horrible-it’s-good territory, but more often than not there are works that infuriate us enough to go Berserk. So when a series comes along that’s being touted as a fully 3D-animated series with no 2D whatsoever, I become heavily skeptical. It’s a good thing then that the series in question for today is just so gosh darn purdy that it doesn’t matter anymore.
Ladies, gentlemen, and others, my name is Arkada and today on Glass Reflection we are taking a look at the 2017 anime produced by Studio Orange and based off the manga by Haruko Ichikawa: Hoseki no Kuni, Land of the Lustrous. Let’s jam.
Story & Characters
The story of Lustrous takes a bit to actually get ramped up, mostly because it doesn’t start with any base of reference for us to draw a narrative comparison. If it started in a school, medieval town, or space station, we could at least start with a point of reference as to what we are in for. Instead, its story about anthropomorphic gems has to do a boatload of world building to do before it can start to draw us in, which can be perceived as one of its few flaws. All of the main characters in Land of the Lustrous are based off of real gemstones found on Earth, with particular emphasis placed on their strength or hardness and personality traits developed from the gem’s actual traits. For example, Diamond is beautiful, strong, and lights up like a disco ball, while Cinnabar is distant, possibly toxic with all of the floating mercury, and hides like a MissingNo out by the shore.
All of the gems live in some kind of flatlands and don’t have much of an outside purpose besides just living their lives, and listening to the one monk dude, who isn’t a gem but has lived for hundreds of years and so probably isn’t human either. Our main character Phos is a bit of a lazy layabout, mostly stemming from the fact that the actual gem Phosphophyllite is known for being extremely brittle and prone to breaking, something that happens in the show quite often. Despite this, Phos is still trying to find some purpose for existence besides just lounging around enjoying the sunshine. Much of the surface plot for this series has Phos battle internally with finding a raison d’être, sprouted forth from a desire to help fellow gem Cinnabar, who keeps to themselves and sticks to the night patrols to avoid interactions with others.
This journey that Phos takes helps develop this world that we don’t know much about, as well as the rather large group of gems which populate the show’s cast.
It’s hard to imagine, at least on the onset, who would be interested in a show about talking rocks. It’s not like that’s ever taken off before. Oh wait. I kid, of course, but while it’s easy to make the comparison between Lustrous and Steven Universe, it’s not an accurate one. Lustrous is like if Steven Universe was going through an angsty teenager phase of naïve outlooks counteracted by a harsh reality.
The writing of the series, barring its slow introduction, is one of the things that makes this show unique. So much of each individual character is tied down to the actual science behind the gems, which is then highlighted even further by placing the mantle of Main Character onto a gem that physically can’t handle the pressure. Phos is initially a conduit of internal anguish and self-loathing. But Phos starts to get grander ambitions, to fight against the world that says no, and eventually becomes a role model for anyone who is battling their own personal inadequacies. Of course the Phos that exists by the end of the series is a very different character, and were you to compare them side by side, it would be difficult to tell the similarities.
This all leads to what I personally believe to be the current downfall with Lustrous’ narrative, though this is a temporary problem to be sure. Beyond Phos, there’s virtually no development of the secondary cast. All other gems get introduced with some key personality traits and are never expanded upon due to time. Both Phos and the world itself is where the development goes. In fact, when you tear down the unique elements of the world and the story itself, there is much about Lustrous that would fit into a very generic mould of a Magical Girl anime. Perhaps this explains the overly feminine design of the characters whose gender originally in the manga was far more ambiguous. And you know, this heavy focus on Phos would be fine if that led to any semblance of a narrative conclusion by the end of the series, but it doesn’t.
That said, it would not be wrong of me to say that Phos’s character arc is one of the best in anime from last year, perhaps even the last couple of years, but the one thing that it’s really missing is the final payoff. The culmination of why Phos went through this transformation in the first place, but apparently that’s a story for another season.
Animation & Sound
All of that is made up for in spades, however, because Land of the Lustrous is one of the most visually beautiful anime released at present. The one major plus side of having a fully CG anime about colourful gems is just how clean and reflective the CG can make it look. It’s an example of a series that is beautiful because of its CGI, not in spite of it. A lot of the cinematography in this series looks like it’s set up to appear 2D if shown in still frames, but to still have that range of motion that 3D allows. It’s something that’s not really been done to this scale before. What this has allowed though is for you to be able to take a screenshot from almost any scene, and have it look beautiful.
Now the show’s director, Kyogoku, is no stranger to the blending of 2D and 3D animation. Previously, he was the director of the anime series Love Live School Idol Project, a franchise known for swapping to 3D animation for a variety of dance numbers that the cast performs. Channeling that to a full series is just a logical next step. While the character designs of the gems are a far cry from those of Japanese idols, the combat scenes in the show do play off as a kind of intricate dance that’s not really able to be replicated in either 2D animation or live action. Having these scenes done up in 3D allows for the camera to be free-range, untethered by either the laws of physics, as a live action production would, or the careful planning of animation storyboards.
Lustrous also had, in this humble fan’s opinion, the best intro sequence of last year. Long-time viewers know that I like to judge an anime opening based on three pieces of criteria: the visuals, the music, and how both of these fit the themes and narrative of the show itself. Lustrous checked off all three boxes with ease. Other shows from last year may have had more engaging visuals, or a song that I would listen to on repeat for days after hearing it the first time, but Lustrous was the only one from last year that I believe did all of that on top of being extremely fitting for the show that it was representing.
Final Verdict
However, as we wind down to the end of the video, I should explain why after all of this praise I still don’t consider Lustrous to be the best anime of last year. That was a title which I instead handed to Kinema Citrus’ Made in Abyss. The final two episodes of Lustrous are most of my reasoning. While I stand by my statement that the character arc of Phos is one of the best in recent memory, the final moments in this arc are left with many a door left open, many a question left unanswered.
Abyss did a similar thing in regards to several plot threads, but Lustrous’ way of wrapping things up felt less like a conclusion and more like a cliff-hanger. And after so many years and so many shows that never get sequels, I have become less and less enthused when such an ending is used. Not only is it a cliff-hanger to Phos’ own story, but in the final episodes the narrative is still introducing new characters and doing last-minute world building instead of trying to wrap things up. It’s like when you’re trying to leave for work in the morning but constantly think of “just one more thing” that you have to quickly do before walking out the door, leaving you feeling rushed and exhausted because of it. It’s that sort of feeling. It doesn’t help that the production of Lustrous began a number of years before the show even aired, leaving the very real possibility that it might be quite a number of years from now before we get a sequel, if we even do at all.
But I can still recommend that you watch this series. As such, I am pleased to give Land of the Lustrous the Glass Reflection rating to buy it! It is a visual spectacle that sets an extremely high bar for the next series that wants to come around and be animated entirely in 3D. Now at least there’s something favourable to compare it to, instead of some of the…less-than-stellar 3D animation in shows past.
If you are interested in watching Land of the Lustrous, you can stream it from Amazon’s streaming service or the streaming service HiDive, if you have access to either of those. If not, then the series will also be available on home video formats from Sentai Filmworks in the near future. If you’ve watched Lustrous and can’t wait to find out what’s going to happen next, in case a second season never materializes, then you can head over to our friends at Bookwalker and pick up the original manga digitally.
For alternate anime recommendations, I have no illusions about attempting to recommend another 3D animated series to you guys because the quality just won’t compare to this, even with something like Kemono Friends, which I adore. However, I can make recommendations based on similar narratives. So I’ll start with Haibane Renmei, a series about a young angel-like being named Rakka who was just born into a world that she does not understand. You might find the story of Rakka to be similar to Phos in a number of ways, though Rakka is nowhere near as bubbly personality-wise. Second recommendation goes to Sound of the Sky, another series with a different kind of visual spectacle, but one that has a deeper story hidden beneath its layers of beauty. This one does lean much further towards the Slice of Life genre than Lustrous ever did though, so just keep that in mind. Between those two, you should hopefully find something to your liking.
Until next time – ladies, gentlemen, and others – stay frosty.
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