That was one AMAZING 40-minute movie-like opening episode! ufotable really outdid themselves with the detailed backgrounds and incredible CG work. The bits of dust floating around in the library scene, epic pan around the detailed castle/church, and the smooth yet mechanical movements of the church's magical "fax machine". ufotable effective used CG to add detail and atmosphere instead of just filling up tedious animation cycles like what many other studios do. Their mastery of CG blending into hand drawn animation is probably on par with Shinkai Makoto.
See if you can spot the dust particles...
The weird magical "fax machine"
My first introduction to ufotable, I think, was The Garden of Sinners. While it looked pretty, it had movie budgets and was too far into the storyline (I think I saw the 5th or 6th movie) for me to bother. Next was the quirky OVA Yuri Seijin Naoko-san. Certainly bits of animation in that otherwise crappy OVA caught my attention and I found out more about ufotable. They actually have quite a large list of animation assistance credits in some big name titles, such as the 3DCG animation of Gundam Seed. More recently, they released an incredible trailer for "Anime Tencho x Touhou Project". They have really grown to be a respectable animation studio... Really looking forward to the action scenes now!
Bugs seen crawling under his skin...
Rin!
Beautiful church design
Spike Spiegel in a Shinkai Makoto movie? lol...
It's gonna be a loooooong week.