An intro to studios Tumble and Flint Sugar

I was minding my business the other day just scrolling the TL when I saw something that really captured my eye.

The opening for Persona 5: The Phantom X was jointly animated by Studio’s Tumble and Flint Sugar. I guess it makes sense for the Chinese game to have its intro made by Chinese studios but it being these guys was a huge delight.

I’ve been following Tumble and Flint Sugar since late 2021 after watching Link Click (you should all watch Link Click btw) and it is so unbelievably hype to see them in a high profile project like this. They’re relatively new animation studios, largely made up of university students. Though considering the studio is a couple of years old they’re probably all graduates by now. They’ve made a bunch of really captivating short films and are now teaming up and combining their manpower to create a full-length series called “False Memory” (though it seems Memory Authority is a more accurate translation of the Chinese title) and an animated film called “Dragon Heart Girl”. All their work is STUNNING. I've linked to their Youtube channels and I would urge you to check their stuff out because it is really inspiring and I would like some company to wait for updates. This is a real lonely road to walk. All I have are some Youtube comments where people check in every few months to ask how progress is going. None of the staff are very active on any social media I can use, so we really just kinda gotta wait for it to be out lmao. They do use Weibo but it's tough to access without an account and you need a Chinese phone number to make one so there’s no luck there. Still you can go there and see some hiring material and a bit of behind-the-scenes stuff for the Persona 5X OP if that suits your fancy. To be honest the PV itself is pretty cool but the studios behind it are way more interesting to me. Below I’m linking both their channels along with a channel that has made some fan dubs (that the studios have seen and endorse!) of some of their projects for you to watch. 

Flint Sugars work is so frenetic and fun. They really capture some of that lightning in a bottle kind of energy that I usually only expect from Studio Trigger and I think Undetectable Box is my favorite individual project they’ve made. However the idea of a fully fleshed out “False Memory” series seems like it would be fucking incredible. One of the short films biggest weaknesses is how densely crammed it is with big ideas that would get more time to breathe in a full show. Plus “Undetectable Box” is just a much more resonant story to me but I think you’ll get what I mean when you watch it haha. Since I paid Flint Sugar some crazy praise just now, its only fair that I show Tumble some love. Which is hard to do because they are so fucking good at everything? They are putting out some truly fluid and fast-paced animation set to gorgeous backgrounds with beautiful color pallets and they are so committed to building out this world that it makes you need to see it in it's full glory. They have both charmed me deeply.

Now I'm not gonna post gifs of the animation because I can't get them in high quality and I'm not gonna settle for letting you see this in anything but the best definition your screen can put out.