Everyone, believe me — I’ve found a major source of this animation’s CGI issues, and I managed to fix it easily. After the fix, the dance looks much better.

That's just a special effect flair. It doesn't change the fact that the 3D parts are in a completely different artstyle in every sense of the word, and they try to cover it with a wonky cel shading.

It's cool that you can just add motion blur yourself.

But the difference is barely noticeable in my eyes. Maybe I just don't have the eye for this kind of thing.

As @uselessDM mentioned, the biggest problem for me is the faces. The characters just look like puppets with a dead stare, and no amount of post-processing and effects will hide that fact.

I would be much happier if they just give them more expressions, movement and straight-up any kind of detail on their faces. Girls Band Cry characters have a huge variety of expressions, despite being fully 3D. Maybe that's too high fidelity and way beyond their capabilities, but at least they could've moved their eyebrows and their eye lines. Just look around more and look where you're moving. Smile. Frown. Grit your teeth. Mouth the lyrics to the song.

I think the animators were aware of this but couldn't really do anything about it, because they really try to draw the attention away from the faces. By putting on hats and hoodies, moving the camera away, having hair cover up their eyes, etc. Wanda suffers a lot because you can see her face clearly most of the time.

Another problem is just the plain mismatch between the 2D animation and 3D animation. It's not even the fault of 3D CG, I think they could've done something with the 2D art to bring it closer to 3D CG art style. It just breaks immersion when they alternate between the two, or worse, put them next to each other, and the whole thing is laid bare.

The 3D CG figure skating in Medalist looked pretty good because the characters' faces matched the 2D art almost exactly and had interesting expressions, and the animators weren't afraid to show their faces front-and-center. You buy the idea that this dancing CG figure IS the character.

It's frustrating, it feels like they couldn't execute on the most important step, but went all-in in other aspects that aren't as important, like the obviously-skilled dance choreography and motion capture work.

@perseii Maybe it’s because I’m a dancer that my focus in animation naturally leans in a certain direction. For example, regarding the point you mentioned at the end, I actually hold the completely opposite view. I believe that high-quality motion capture, choreography, and the final presentation of the movement should absolutely be the most important aspects of this animation. The model quality and facial expressions come second. If it had extremely beautiful visuals but only mediocre dance movements, I definitely wouldn’t keep watching. And I also believe it couldn’t possibly have reached second place in last week’s Anime Corner weekly ranking if that were the case.That was almost an entire episode of 3D dancing.

I’ve also noticed that different people have very different perceptions of motion blur effects. But if you understand Chinese, you’ll see that in the video linked at the end, about 80% of the on-screen comments are saying things like “the effect is practically miraculous.”

AI looks better than any CGI

AI looks better than any CGI

@Suginami85

Actually, the original looks better. The CGI in the show isn't even that bad. The original has shading and just looks better. The colors are richer. The AI version looks more cropped and washed out, and somehow has even less detail.

@Euthymia_Gerv AI looks better...