Animation Analysis: "Arknights - Lonetrail 3D PV" 

Okay, here’s an explanation of the story you’re seeing in the cinematic. In order of appearance, the main characters you’re seeing are Muelsyes (pronounced Mule - sees), Ho’olheyak (Hole - heh - yak), and Silence. All three of them are scientists in some manner, and in this animation, all three of them are trying to reach for the same goal. I am not too sure about this next point since I haven’t read up on all the Rhine Lab lore yet but I think the scenes with Muelsyes and Ho’olheyak are meant to be largely figurative. The person who’s talking through the animation, who is also the same person Silence sees when she reaches the light, is Kirsten Wright, one of the co-founders of Rhine Labs and likely one of the smartest people in Terra (though that is my own conjecture). This implies that the golden light all three characters are running towards is Kirsten Wright and her knowledge, and what’s interesting is how all three react. Ho’olheyak is the first person to reach Kirsten, via a fantastic mode of symbolism where Ho’olheyak uses the books in the library as stepping stones to reach Kirsten, showing how all the knowledge she has amassed is aiding her in this moment. While the process is rather violent for Ho’olheyak, she doesn’t might as it seems the prospect of learning something new is enough to push her forwards. When she actually reaches the light, she actually acts apprehensive at first, wearing a stoic face as she looks like she tries to “command” or “push back” the light. But after realizing what the light really is, Ho’olheyak is more than happy to give her whole self to the light. If you’re wondering about what’s going on with Muelsyes, she canonically has an Arts ability that allows her to control water molecules. She’s never been seen doing so, but it seems like breathing underwater and swimming at high speeds isn’t outside of her abilities. Muelsyes has a very carefree attitude, even though she does know a bit more than she let’s on. She’s not a mastermind character so to say, but she isn’t naive either. But we do she that she seems to have an optimistic disposition as she willingly moves towards the light, skipping on the water’s surface as she leaves her past behind, the scene figuratively showing how her knowledge and use of her Arts ability helps to guide her towards Kirsten. Lastly, we have Silence, who we see is shown to literally be fighting against Rhine Labs itself and the very concept of it’s foundation. There are many reasons why Silence is somewhat against Rhine Labs, but that’s something that you should take the joy of discovering for yourself via the Rhine Labs manga. But back to the animation. We can see that the ordeal for Silence is particularly tough, and that she gets knocked down really hard. She does look at a burned memento she has on her wrist and a fire lights up in her eyes as she very likely remembers Ifrit (who is a girl that was subject to Rhine Labs experimentation). This gives her the strength to push forwards, and when Silence finally arrives to the light, when she arrives to Kirsten, she looks at it not with joy, nor with fear, but with caution. And as we see Kirsten’s silhouette, we see that the knowledge Kirsten has is something that is supposed to expand Terra’s horizons. It will be the start of a new frontier, a chance to reach “The Truth” as Kirsten herself puts it. I suspect that this event will shake Terra, and by proxy the story of the game, to it’s very core.

Arknights anime does a good job in using said micro expression and angle shots to convey "emotions" of the scene, parts of the characters or objects. It made the animation much more powerful. They been doing the same to the trailers too recently

one thing to note about hoeluwk (the girl with the snake tail) she was a villain in a previous story so i think the choice not to use micro expressions is to make her seem more menacing and less human so as to convey that she is a villain

One of the things I always love is their mix of 2D effects into the 3D. Stuff like when silence (Owl with glasses) slides around there's these flat movement effects They've used that in other animations too but IIRC it's the last year or so they started to mix the two on screen when some previous animations might cut between full 2D and full 3D

Glad you enjoyed, I think that Arknights always does quality 3D Chinese anime and it is always improving

Ho'olheyak the lady with grey hair is a snakebird like feathered serpent from mesoamerican myths. Thats why her pupils are slit. Her eyes showing barely any emotion while her smile twists into a sneer is something that suits her personality well.

I absolutely loved your analysis of the video, and as an artist myself I geeked way too much on the art direction, and oh my god.. that snake girl's smile.. just perfection ! You should totally make an art account where you showcase your animations/artworks

Wow! Really awesome breakdown I followed because of the arknights music reactions, but now we even have animation breakdowns? Amazing!

Even I first saw the two event PVs, I was blown away by the sheer amount of time and dedication it took just for my eyes to gobble up. I absolutely love these new event trailers. Plus it’s something new that has been theorized within the commune.

Eversince reading the rhine lab manga the whole event sequence just feels like an action movie adapted into a sieries of funny tower defence gacha events

I was waiting with baited breath for this! Though, you won't feel the same way that many of us did that read Mansfield Break, Dorothy's Vision, read the Records of Originium manga and more, you can at least appreciate the epic track and incredible animations of those wonderful visuals from the perspectives of the three people searching for the same thing for one reason or the other.

Catharsis previously telling he's not a pure Arknights RU-vidr alongside the fact that after this PV all of his recommends were Arknights related made me laugh hard

The breakdown was a surprise to be sure but a very welcome one. My father watched Sinbad literally dozens of times, definitely his favorite animated movie. I also watched it a ton too lol. It has a certain feel to it that few movies over the years captured. The villain is also a case of, if evil why hot? lol.

Really nice breakdown! Id love to see you talk more about past arknights animations. I will say that it feels like theyre constantly getting better, so the older stuff will also be interesting cause you can see where they started and how theyve grown! My recommendation would be the Il Siracusano 3D animation. Its got a nice fight scene as well as a couple cool camera momebts that even a complete novice like me noticed

Yea AK has done so well nowadays with thier animations. As for the lady where you said the pupils shouldve become like a small circle or something. Shes snake-like. So her eyes cant go past being as they are. The flying thing you say closer to the start is a drone the girl with glasses controls.

I loved this analysis! Used to do 3D animation professionally and watching this PV live had me nerding out super hard. Underwater hair physics and fluid in general are an absolute nightmare to work with and big props to the animators for getting it to look so good.

These types of videos are great! I would love to see more

The community needed more content like this. Hope you'll do more animation analysis in the future (whether it's Arknights or not). Thanks again for your hard work Catha! (and love the new setup)

Omg so cool! Love your explanation on everything. Imo that is the best animation they've done so far and still, will hope for even better ones! Expecting your breakdowns on them too😂 Have a good time! ❤

really enjoyable video, it was interesting to see what caught your eye the most about these animations and hear something interesting about that

Can't believe I'm so late, I loved how you broke it down to the details and I'm glad you liked it. Looking forward to all the future content and thank you for the video!

omg im so glad ur doing animation breakdowns

This was sooooo much interesting to watch man!! Now I have a deeper respect for the animation and the team at hg because I can understand a little bit more about the how much effort they put into making these things for us. Really looking forward to more videos like these. As someone who doesn't really know anything about animations, it's very interesting to hear about what the different techniques are and different terms. Thanks Catharsis. I had a blast with this. Gonna show it to my friends.

Loved this breakdown and analysis of it.

I think the reason Ho'olheyak (the character you were analyzing at 10:40) doesn't have the same micro-expressions that the other character (Silence) did is because she's... not quite right. Whether she's detached, insane, both, or something else entirely, her character in the game gives an impression of being a little "off" in some way, and I think the lack of those micro-expressions is a deliberate choice to reflect that. That's just my 2 cents, anyways.

Animator: so, how much vfx you want for the next event teaser? hypergryph: Yes.

Just watched this. Someone who's a drummer AND has knowledge in 3D Animation? Arknights is literally the perfect game for reaction for you XD

Yeah man, feel free to nerd out about animation all you want, I love it!

Loved your analysis!

I took the shadow sequence to be hand-drawn animation overlayed onto the 3D.

13:03 I have watched this trailer multiple times and this is my first time seeing Silence riding her drone.

Animation analysis ????? I was surprised in a good way!!!! If you are thinking in doing this as a separate content to the reactions, go for it man. 🔥🔥🔥🔥

This kind of animation breakdown is pretty interesting too!

This was an absolute joy to watch, I really hope to see you do more of these, naturally if you're willing to do the other Arknight PV animations as well lol! Do you think you'll do this kind of video for 2D animations as well? Would have loved to hear what you thought of the characters after the animation, I felt like it did a great job at showcasing a bit of their individual personalities through the various expressions and scenes showcased. It was really fun seeing you talk about the various details and your thoughts on how they might've been done, like the staff forming! It probably was indeed done with a pre-existing rendered map structure, adding layers & effects onto it. Definitely a ton of interesting aspects to the water scenes, interactions, flow & lighting effects.

Not an AK channel btw. Speaking of which, the Near Light PV is the best bar none for newcomers, because it's the only one you can watch without having any context of the setting or characters, and still understand what is going on and who everyone is.

Awesome analysis, Plz do more...

This is nice! Would like to see more of this for sure. Even if its not Arknights related

We are actually going to FUCKING SPACE!! Holy shit as an Arknights lore nerd this PV made me geek the fuck out. Not to mention Silence getting an alternate (glasses-less) version and an iconic character finally becoming playable? This is gonna be hype as hell, brilliant choice for the 4th anniversary

Oh I love this! This is exactly why I follow experts, because they show me new thinsg to love about the things I like

Honestly I wouldnt be super shocked if the launch site was mostly 3D, Hypergryph loves making 3D models (I would assume for reference and for practice for Endfield) and they even released a small scale figure of the Rhodes Island landship too

I'm huge fan of 2D animation as well, so overreliance on CGI everywhere definitely is one of my pet peeves. I wouldn't mind it as much (even though 2D is still my preferred medium) if not for the fact that 99% of time it's clearly used to make things easier and faster, so it's often very cheap and half-assed, because spending time on it to actually make it good would defeat the point if they're using it to be cheap. Either way, the point is that's why I love those Arknights 3D animations, because there's clear effort and passion put into them, which made me realize I don't hate CGI in general, I just hate poorly done one and hearing someone talking about it and breaking it down is definitely very interesting to listen to, so definitely keep it up! Also if you love micro-expressions so much, I think taking a look at Nearl Light Event Teaser next would be good idea.

Liking the new content!

Love the animation breakdown, here's a super truncated version of the lore breakdown to give you some context. Just to be clear, we don't fully know what this event will be about, but I'm not giving the event breakdown, just some context for better understanding. This event will (almost definitely) take place in the Arknights expy for America, Columbia. In Columbia, it's strongly suggested that unscrupulous researchers would go to any lengths to advance the scientific research they're engaging in, often resulting in some kind of self-destruction. This event will centre around one of the pre-eminent scientific research organisations in Columbia, Rhine Labs, which has its own shady history with human experimentation and the like, but if you're interested in that I'll point you to the Record of Originium manga and the Dorothy's Vision event (summaries of which you can probably find on RU-vid). For this video, you will need to know a few things. 1. Silence (the one running through the lab environment) was at the centre of one of the most disturbing experiments in Rhine Labs, and it left her utterly disgusted with the organisation. While she is still affiliated in some vague capacity, she holds a much higher degree of skepticism towards what they do. Her design is based off an owl. 2. Muelsyse (the swimmer) is an elf, a mysterious race hinted to have disappeared off the face of the planet for one reason or another. She is the director of one of the sectors in Rhine Labs, and while she doesn't take part in the more egregious experiments that we know of, she is more or less a neutral party to their experimentation. The emphasis on the underwater elven ruins makes me thing we will get more information about the elves in this event. 3. Ho'olheyak (the snake lady in the study) is based on some kind of Mesoamerican feathered serpent, and is a historian. That being said, she has her hands in politics as well, having been shown to be in contact with the Vice President of Columbia, and she played a major role in supporting one of the latest unethical experiments in Rhine Labs. 4. Something is wrong with the Terran (read: Arknights Earth) sky, with efforts at travelling past the upper atmosphere thwarted up to this point in their history. We don't know what exactly is wrong with it, but my money is on this event giving us a whole lot more information about it. 5. The lady whose silhouette we see near the end is Kirsten Wright. If that last name sounds familiar, her parents are very likely based on the Wright brothers, but in their version of history, they were leading researchers of the sky and flight who died in a mysterious crash, leaving their daughter Kirsten to be singularly obsessed with continuing their legacy and unravelling the secrets of the Terran sky at any cost. This should be most of the context you need. If you want to know more about Rhine Lab, I'll again refer you to the Record of Originium manga which cover one of the major events in Rhine Lab's history, and the Dorothy's Vision event which covers another, more recent one. On a side note, while there isn't much animation to breakdown, here's a little history of the formation of the Rhine Labs which dropped at the end of the anniversary livestream. It has both the visual and aural aesthetics of the Fallout franchise and I love it to death. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-dLyoAqNtk7U.html

Omg, learn a lot from this video❤! Like it a lot!

dang! I love when you breakdown the animation in arknights PV, it make me more understand about what's going on with the animation and the way how it works. thanks for the explanation, I hope you also react and breakdown another arknights animation trailer, try Ill siracusano(3.5 anniversary) and stultivera navis(3rd anniversary) if you have time

I love how they using English as the official narration voice despite this pv exclusively released for CN server event for now.

17 minutes damnn. great analysis btw

You may not be an Arknights channel but arknights community has captured you. Also I would like to see you reacting to Arknights - Near Light Event Teaser and Arknights MV - Phenomenal Agents

Would love to see you react to one of the older animated trailers, Near Light.

Oh wow, i like this kind of stuff

From reacting to Arknights music to Breaking down Arknights animation What a journey 😭

wow

So we are a couple weeks away from the Catharsis plays Arknights video!

For the microexpressions, I think they didn't add them to the snake-like woman because she's supposed to be unsettling. That smile tells me she's more than a little unhinged.

now listen to control's wish

Are you going to be covering the other animations Arknights have done? I know you covered the song for Nearl Light, but there was an animation associated with it.

Ho'olheyak supremacy

Thanks for the video. Will there be more "animator reacts" videos for arknights? Their animations are cool, but there is not much content with them on RU-vid though

Arknights the goat

How you do that? Use marker in yt ???

That was an interesting breakdown from you, totally-not-arknight-youtuber-man 😏

I'm not exaggerating when I say I've probably watched this PV like 12 times now 🤣🤣

You should do honkai impacts animations there great

That was very interesting! can't wait for more