"Whenever I watch a SHAFT anime, I feel like I’m on acid. Not just a little bit of acid, a tanker truck filled with it."

Yeah I sort of became a Shaft animation supporter.  I have to admit, those guys are awesome.  But why do I think that?  Well let’s start with what normal people think of Shaft (or as I like to picture them).  “What are those nimwads doing?  Is that even considered animation?  Those lousy suckers are just trying to save money by doing nothing by cutting scenes, using weird colors, and using words and still pictures.  What a bunch of worthless bumbs.” 

I could agree with some of that.  Their style isn’t the norm and they do save a lot of dollars by using “efficient” methods.  Why do I respect them so much?  I think it goes back to that old idea of show vs. tell.  Nobody wants to hear a story that says “The girl broke her doll.  She became sad.  The sadness was so tormenting she had to escape.” Showing with gestures and details is the proper way for a writer to explain emotions.  

Sadly, books can only go so far.  Still words tell, no matter how subtle.  But the medium of TV is visual so showing becomes much easier.  Details that were previously written are forced to be expressed.  This can work well with actors, who have expressions and can send subconscious emotional signals, but what about animated characters?  Much harder for them to express emotions without being silly.  This is where Shaft comes in.  

With the (lack of) resources they have, they still easily express emotions.  They don’t go the normal route and use the face to make us realize emotions, but use the surroundings.  Surreal images, colors, texts.  They all flow together to provide a new dynamic to old animation.  It sort of reminds me of the last few episodes of Evangelion when they couldn’t produce the show in time so they “threw stuff together.”  That “random” stuff was genius because it expressed all the emotions vested in the show in a way where I didn’t just have to watch Shinji whine all the time.  Shaft in my mind is the next step in that legacy. Hmm I feel I didn’t explain my feelings as much, but I guess if I was talking about specifics scenes I could clarify, but this is general.