bought this after effects guide book by AC部, the duo you probably first heard about either from galo sengen, their poptepic work (hellshake yano), or maybe their group_inou MVs if you were deep into japanese music at that time

AC-bu has mainly two distinct styles: the scribbley mess of traditional cel animation that they (still) do on sketch pads and scan, which may as well be their own rechristening of squigglevision, and the interpolated loops of what look like budget irasutoya objects only possible with AE. the former is probably the more famous of the two, and most of their MV/CM work tends to blend both. as expected with this book, we mostly get perspective into the latter style and how they do final composites in software

naturally I didn’t buy this to learn anything about AE, ignoring also their highly unique workflow and it being a decade-plus old book, but because I knew even in a reference guide they weren’t going to restrain themselves from adding dumb gags. the best chapter covers DIGITAL STAR, the 80s pop burnout with a “digital complex” that pressures some big-wig into making an MV for his song. luckily the bonus CD that includes all the sample projects and final movies is still here, and since I think it’s probably some of the last published AC-bu stuff I haven’t seen I now have a real reason to get my CD reader working again

as I always do when mentioning AC-bu, here’s a plug to a good short documentary about them from archipel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmWHIN9LrSU