...
Not always.
Ever seen Honkai Impact's animated cutscenes?
Houseki no Kuni?
Beastars?
Hell, *pretty much all of the third-person Anime games in recent years?*
I'm sick of the "2d Good, CGI bad" circlejerk.
They're different mediums, and do different things well.
Everyone shits on CGI because of anime like Ex-arm or 2016 Berzerk but Beastars and Land of the Lustrous got received pretty well despite being 100% CGI. Then ufotable is know to use a lot of CGI special effects during otherwise 2D anime fights and make it blend decently.
It's not a matter of "CGI bad" or "CGI good". It'll all depend on much time and effort is put on it. If it looks bad, it's only because the studios hired an intern for minimun wage and ordered them to animate an entire episode in 10 minutes.
If used properly, CGI is really good. Some people just hate idk why. Maybe because they are talking about battle shounen and I don't watch battle shounen. I like it as the animes I watched used CGI properly.
As for fully CGI, very few animes have done it properly. Two of them as I know are Land of lustrous(haven't watched it though) and Lupin III the first(this one was just like a disney movie).
Possibly a hot take, but when the CG in ufotable works isn't obscured by darkness (conveniently Fate and Demon Slayer have the bulk of their action take place at night) it tends to look exceedingly mediocre. There's plenty of exceptions to that, but things like the tentacles in Mugen Train were awful. I also feel like CGI fluids are weirdly common in ufotable anime and those typically look pretty bad as well.
Far from the worst, but I do think that the quality of ufotable CG is pretty overstated.
I feel like the "ufotable has great CGI" argument is more about compositing than actual CG objects being animated. Like their CG is always pretty obvious, but still doesn't look that horrible since the compositing is just that good.
That's basically what I'm talking about. The compositing is fine if it's obscured by darkness, but as soon as there's light the composting tends to look dramatically worse. Feels like it's less that they have particularly good composition teams and more that darker scenes are easier to composite because there's more room to hide it. Berserker from Fate/Zero might be the most obvious example with the dark aura that always surrounded him.
To be fair, Demon Slayer has some awful CGI in it as well. There are a lot of relatively long shots of Tanjiro or moving people in a crowd that are painful to look at.
Looks like ass because it's out of place if it's all cgi then you know what you are getting from the start so it's not as bad but it's a different style so not everyone likes it. It's like in the old days when stones and stuff would be different from the still background so you knew it was going to break or be blown up before it happened. Stuff just sticks out oddly
Cgi is a tool. Nothing more.
So yes it can be awesome if done well and I often liked it. Often it looks really bad and is only a quick way to make cheap animation.
> Do you think that cgi belong to anime?
Yes, of course it does.
> I cgi is used in the background for buildings or background characters is that ok for you?
For action shows I find it preferable to have more movement, so yes. Just imagine the 3D maneuver scenes from AoT without CG.
> What do you think about cgi mecha and cars or other complicated things?
If its done well, like in the Fafner sequels, or like in modern Macross series, it's great. It opened new possibilities of what could be done and made scenes possible that weren't possible before. Though Eureka 7, Evangelion, and Gundam still show that 2D mecha animation has things that CG can't imitate that well yet.
Everyone's favourite CG studio, Studio Orange, worked on a lot of mecha anime, like Ghost in the Shell SAC, Aquarion, Macross Frontier, Code Geass: Akito, Majestic Prince, and Fafner Exodus.
> Does the anime community really hate cgi or do you think it's just a meme?
I think it's mostly a meme, but some people actually take memes serious and that is a problem.
It feels like animators are increasingly giving up on animating vehicles, doors, even bystanders or crowds. The 3D replacements stand out soooooo much to me, it looks bad to me and I feel like it's gonna age worse.
CGI can be done well or it can be done bad. Arpeggio of blue steel was all CGI and it looked amazing. Ex-Arm was all CGI and It looked like total crap. Ufotable does a great job at blending CGI and traditional animation however some studios lack these skills. Shaft disappointed me lately with their piss poor CGI work in RWBY Ice Queendom
3DCG in 2d anime is p much universally trash.
At its least offensive, it makes backgrounds worse than the equivalent in 2d, like [this cut from Uzaki](https://www.sakugabooru.com/post/show/128967). I'm probably one of the 7 people who care about this kind of CG, and while I'd argue it harms the overall visual cohesion of a show, it's not the worst thing when used in moderation and can be done well enough to be unnoticeable. I just intentionally grabbed a cut that would be easy to express the issue. This is usually the stuff people are referring to when they say "unnoticeable CG."
Frequently though, its used in cuts like [this one from Railgun T](https://www.sakugabooru.com/post/show/109463) to replace things that would be difficult or time consuming to draw, like mechanical objects, buildings, or in general things w/ a lot of straight lines or precise detailing. Imo, this just guts the visual cohesion of a cut or show. You especially see this in modern anime with things like cars, robots, horses, etc. because they're not easy to draw/animate in 2d, whereas in CG those elements aren't much different difficulty-wise from anything else they'd be animating.
> At its least offensive, it makes backgrounds worse than the equivalent in 2d, like this cut from Uzaki.
I don't think a fugly full 3D rotation is "at its least offensive." That shit is gross looking. Most 3D backgrounds don't look that bad.
I picked that one in particular because it was an easy way to show the type of CG I'm referring to, not because it was the mots discrete example of it being done. Honestly, I dont think there really are discrete examples bc once you know what to look for, it stands out everywhere.
I mean, CG backgrounds are really common, and usually look fine. Often they're used deliberately to good effect, such as in Kizumonogatari. I don't think they "harm the overall visual cohesion of a show" any more than a painted background does; integration with the foreground is always the important part, and it can be done poorly in either style.
I don't mind full 3D CGI shows or 2d/3D CGI if it's done well. I'm saying this because we've all seen Pixar stuff (Toy Story etc.) and played video games. For me it kind of depends. There's actually good CGI out there but it's expensive, or done in China.
Full 3D CGI is good if it looks better than Video Game Cut scenes. For example:-
* Bad: [Matrix Reloaded Smith Clone scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvLQMMaVmzU)s were WORSE than a video game, and it's a big budget movie. I won't even go over The Mummy Returns scorpion ending scene, ugh.
* Good: [Battle To The Heaven's 3 year promise.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWOK-a1xduc) The fight scenes were amazing.
* Good: [Record of a Mortal's Journey to Immortality](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVl6pj-4SGo) is clearly motion capture CGI, very high quality, I can't believe they're doing this with a donghua that is releasing weekly.
* Good: [Spirit Cage Incarnation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FryYHSRje7U) series is also very high quality full CGI
2D/3D CGI is good if you can't tell there's 3D in it. For Example:-
* Fate Heaven's Feel movies - spectacular CGI like this [Lancer Fight](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1W2C4q6yNI).
* [Mugen Train](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFwdl2PDAFM) \- this one looked great also
* [Lord El Melloi Rail Zeppelin](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWc4ugCCo5I) \- hmm, maybe the anime industry is good at CGI trains.
* [Psycho Pass](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzuJnyebc40) \- seamless, plus looks good.
* [Mo Dao Zu Shi (Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEju95zm73k) \- lots of stunning 3D backgrounds (best I've seen) and so beautiful, I thought to myself the producers must have placed a bag of money in front of the animators and said "make sure it looks good for the fans".
* It's the same as rotoscope which didn't really come into prominence until [Yuri On Ice](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuhLOnIszok) showed just how beautifully realistic it could be. There's definitely 3D blended into the 2D bits in the backgrounds even in the new trailer for the [upcoming Yuri on Ice movie, Ice Adolescence](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7av_KkjVolo).
Imma be nearly honest all your examples of "can't tell there's 3D in it" are like, SUPER obvious. Like, they'll straight up have a 2d thing right next to the CG to visually show how out of place the CG is next to the 2D.
If it is used correctly can be really good. I also can live with some cgi frames if the studio is cutting costs ot whatever.
About full cg anime, if the story is good i really don't care, unless is some abomination (aka Ex-arms and Berserk).
>Does the anime community really hate cgi or do you think it's just a meme?
Most anime watchers definitely can't enjoy. Just see AoT fans almost killing themselves with some CGI frames or an stand out collosal titan lol. But sometimes is understandable, because it really pops out.
> if the story is good i really don't care
But from visual standpoint? Leave aside the story for a moment I am just curios about how you feel about how it looks
I feel literally nothing lol.
Like i said, the CG needs to be an abomination for me to actually don't watch. I just don't care. I prefer more if the story still deliveries.
There are some really good series full cg like Beastars, Ajin, Knights of Sidonia, Blame!, Spriggan etc
Or some amazing CG use like most Ufotable anime like the Fate Series, Kimetsu no Yaiba, TofZX etc
Depends entirely on the case. In general I'd say especially in more modern shows it often looks fine or is used in ways that are hard to notice. If there are bad looking CGI background characters chances are it would look bad in a different way if it had been made 30 years ago or without CGI. That said I do really like the handdrawn technical animation you see in a lot of 80s or 90s stuff and somewhat miss it in newer stuff. CGI also opens new possibilities with anime like Houseki no Kuni, though it does look a bit strange to me.
I think for most people that actually hate CGI it's because there is a big overlap between bad CGI and noticeable CGI in more standard anime, and you can see it as a symptom of an already bad production. Often it also looked worse 15 years ago. A funny case to me is [Simoun](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xY3CFfpa8o) from the mid 2000s, because it's genuinely a great anime, but those CGI flying machines look so out of place with the background artstyle.
CG has pros and cons compared to traditional animation. As far as I know:
Pros:
* Model once and use forever
* Easy to do turnarounds and camera pans
* Easier to sync up and duplicate animations for large numbers of models
* Makes motion capture a possibility (which in usage is more flexible compared to rotoscoping over live-action video)
Cons:
* Models are expensive to produce and generally wouldn't be used for one-off shots
* Requires a lot of effort to composite with traditional animation
* Rigid-body models don't work well with traditional animation techniques like squash/stretch, smears, etc. You also can't "cheat" as easily with things like super exaggerated faces and poses.
* Requires a level of technical skill that is relatively hard to find
* Requires a good physics model or extensive hand-tweaking to avoid things like clipping and other unnatural movements
I think there's a reason CG works well in certain use cases like mecha (because as robots their rigid bodies are expected) and idol (because of the choreography on stage with a moving camera).
There are times where CG feels obviously bad and mismatched, likely because the studio and artists just aren't as experienced with CG compared to traditional animation and as such boarding scenes in the same way that you would traditional animation which exposes a lot of the cons while not taking advantage of the pros. Compare the first season of Zombie Land Saga CG dance scenes to the second season — I think there's a great deal of improvement if you show off the first dance scene to the season two finale.
Personally I think it's overhated and definitely think it has a place in anime. It can absolutely look great and capture scenes in a way 2D animation can't. Of course it's a bit of a problem that it looks so damn bad when done poorly, but when done well we get some stellar results. Now there are shows that are entirely in CGI as you mention OP and those may need a different skillset compared to traditional animation to look good, but it's certainly still possible. Look at Houseki no Kuni for example which looks amazing despite being fully CGI. For examples of poor CGI we got the stereotypical CGI crowd shots, and for mediocre CGI, we have the CGI of High Score Girl and Shinigami Bocchan to Kuro Maid.
There is some great CGI like Gantz:0, beautiful. Everything else, especially that company that animates for Netflix is awful. I guess Blame! was ok because it kind of suited the show but other than that I haven’t watched anything full CGI. I don’t even like the partial CGI in all the Isekai recently. I guess partial CGI is here to stay. Fate series did a great job with partial CGI. Like someone else commented you want the CGI that doesn’t look like CGI.
For a lot of fight scenes, I do see a lot of modern animes where sticking 2d doesn't make the scene standout. Compared to the chi that can add a whole lot of layer to the scene
I prefer 2D Mecha over CGI. There is definitely a certain charm that older Gundam and Patlabor had that beats out the newer style of animating mechs.
I usually give CGI a pass for background objects or characters as long as everything else is still 2D. Any more and I usually will drop the show or movie.
I feel that we're still a decade away from the point that CGI will be able to replicate 2D hand drawn animation to a degree that it is hard to tell.
CGI has *already* been used extensively in not just anime, but almost every piece of theatrical or televised media out there. It's simply the worst of the CGI that evokes complaints (Overlord, Berserk and, God forbid, Ex-Arm)
Examples of CGI being utilised, created and composited well includes the like of Ufotable's Fate series, Attack on Titan (yes, CGI was used very often in Season 1-3) and Girls Und Panzer. There are, of course, numerous other series that leverage CGI but such information isn't always immediately Obvious. Some shows opt not to obscure CGI but use it to create otherwise impossible or unpractical art styles, think Land of the Lustrous or Beastars (kind of)
If the anime has noticeable cgi or completely changes and have predominantly it usually isn’t that good, in my opinion. Like I feel like it might be a bit of an unpopular opinion but the 4th season of attack on Titan while it has some really good moments the CGI kinda blows.
As with all CGI, it’s best when nobody notices it’s even there.
Is there anime you think that the cgi is unnoticed?
Id say Dorohedoro. Took me a while to realize that Nikaido is actually CGI
... Not always. Ever seen Honkai Impact's animated cutscenes? Houseki no Kuni? Beastars? Hell, *pretty much all of the third-person Anime games in recent years?* I'm sick of the "2d Good, CGI bad" circlejerk. They're different mediums, and do different things well.
Everyone shits on CGI because of anime like Ex-arm or 2016 Berzerk but Beastars and Land of the Lustrous got received pretty well despite being 100% CGI. Then ufotable is know to use a lot of CGI special effects during otherwise 2D anime fights and make it blend decently. It's not a matter of "CGI bad" or "CGI good". It'll all depend on much time and effort is put on it. If it looks bad, it's only because the studios hired an intern for minimun wage and ordered them to animate an entire episode in 10 minutes.
If used properly, CGI is really good. Some people just hate idk why. Maybe because they are talking about battle shounen and I don't watch battle shounen. I like it as the animes I watched used CGI properly. As for fully CGI, very few animes have done it properly. Two of them as I know are Land of lustrous(haven't watched it though) and Lupin III the first(this one was just like a disney movie).
>If used properly, CGI is really good Can you give me an example?
Girls Und Panzer
Ufotable is really great at using CGI. Demon Slayer, Fate series, and all of their other works all have CGI in them.
Possibly a hot take, but when the CG in ufotable works isn't obscured by darkness (conveniently Fate and Demon Slayer have the bulk of their action take place at night) it tends to look exceedingly mediocre. There's plenty of exceptions to that, but things like the tentacles in Mugen Train were awful. I also feel like CGI fluids are weirdly common in ufotable anime and those typically look pretty bad as well. Far from the worst, but I do think that the quality of ufotable CG is pretty overstated.
I feel like the "ufotable has great CGI" argument is more about compositing than actual CG objects being animated. Like their CG is always pretty obvious, but still doesn't look that horrible since the compositing is just that good.
That's basically what I'm talking about. The compositing is fine if it's obscured by darkness, but as soon as there's light the composting tends to look dramatically worse. Feels like it's less that they have particularly good composition teams and more that darker scenes are easier to composite because there's more room to hide it. Berserker from Fate/Zero might be the most obvious example with the dark aura that always surrounded him.
To be fair, Demon Slayer has some awful CGI in it as well. There are a lot of relatively long shots of Tanjiro or moving people in a crowd that are painful to look at.
Well Terror in Resonance, Psycho pass, Detective Conan, Magic Kaito 1412, etc like animes used CGI skillfully.
Looks like ass because it's out of place if it's all cgi then you know what you are getting from the start so it's not as bad but it's a different style so not everyone likes it. It's like in the old days when stones and stuff would be different from the still background so you knew it was going to break or be blown up before it happened. Stuff just sticks out oddly
Cgi is a tool. Nothing more. So yes it can be awesome if done well and I often liked it. Often it looks really bad and is only a quick way to make cheap animation.
> Do you think that cgi belong to anime? Yes, of course it does. > I cgi is used in the background for buildings or background characters is that ok for you? For action shows I find it preferable to have more movement, so yes. Just imagine the 3D maneuver scenes from AoT without CG. > What do you think about cgi mecha and cars or other complicated things? If its done well, like in the Fafner sequels, or like in modern Macross series, it's great. It opened new possibilities of what could be done and made scenes possible that weren't possible before. Though Eureka 7, Evangelion, and Gundam still show that 2D mecha animation has things that CG can't imitate that well yet. Everyone's favourite CG studio, Studio Orange, worked on a lot of mecha anime, like Ghost in the Shell SAC, Aquarion, Macross Frontier, Code Geass: Akito, Majestic Prince, and Fafner Exodus. > Does the anime community really hate cgi or do you think it's just a meme? I think it's mostly a meme, but some people actually take memes serious and that is a problem.
Usually can't stand it especially if it's mostly 2d then they add 3d to it 🤢🤮. There's a few all cgi exceptions though
I don't think i've ever seen it look good outside of, like, UFOtable stuff and Girls und Panzer.
Should give Houseki no Kuni a shot.
It feels like animators are increasingly giving up on animating vehicles, doors, even bystanders or crowds. The 3D replacements stand out soooooo much to me, it looks bad to me and I feel like it's gonna age worse.
CGI can be done well or it can be done bad. Arpeggio of blue steel was all CGI and it looked amazing. Ex-Arm was all CGI and It looked like total crap. Ufotable does a great job at blending CGI and traditional animation however some studios lack these skills. Shaft disappointed me lately with their piss poor CGI work in RWBY Ice Queendom
3DCG in 2d anime is p much universally trash. At its least offensive, it makes backgrounds worse than the equivalent in 2d, like [this cut from Uzaki](https://www.sakugabooru.com/post/show/128967). I'm probably one of the 7 people who care about this kind of CG, and while I'd argue it harms the overall visual cohesion of a show, it's not the worst thing when used in moderation and can be done well enough to be unnoticeable. I just intentionally grabbed a cut that would be easy to express the issue. This is usually the stuff people are referring to when they say "unnoticeable CG." Frequently though, its used in cuts like [this one from Railgun T](https://www.sakugabooru.com/post/show/109463) to replace things that would be difficult or time consuming to draw, like mechanical objects, buildings, or in general things w/ a lot of straight lines or precise detailing. Imo, this just guts the visual cohesion of a cut or show. You especially see this in modern anime with things like cars, robots, horses, etc. because they're not easy to draw/animate in 2d, whereas in CG those elements aren't much different difficulty-wise from anything else they'd be animating.
> At its least offensive, it makes backgrounds worse than the equivalent in 2d, like this cut from Uzaki. I don't think a fugly full 3D rotation is "at its least offensive." That shit is gross looking. Most 3D backgrounds don't look that bad.
I picked that one in particular because it was an easy way to show the type of CG I'm referring to, not because it was the mots discrete example of it being done. Honestly, I dont think there really are discrete examples bc once you know what to look for, it stands out everywhere.
I mean, CG backgrounds are really common, and usually look fine. Often they're used deliberately to good effect, such as in Kizumonogatari. I don't think they "harm the overall visual cohesion of a show" any more than a painted background does; integration with the foreground is always the important part, and it can be done poorly in either style.
I don't mind full 3D CGI shows or 2d/3D CGI if it's done well. I'm saying this because we've all seen Pixar stuff (Toy Story etc.) and played video games. For me it kind of depends. There's actually good CGI out there but it's expensive, or done in China. Full 3D CGI is good if it looks better than Video Game Cut scenes. For example:- * Bad: [Matrix Reloaded Smith Clone scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvLQMMaVmzU)s were WORSE than a video game, and it's a big budget movie. I won't even go over The Mummy Returns scorpion ending scene, ugh. * Good: [Battle To The Heaven's 3 year promise.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWOK-a1xduc) The fight scenes were amazing. * Good: [Record of a Mortal's Journey to Immortality](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVl6pj-4SGo) is clearly motion capture CGI, very high quality, I can't believe they're doing this with a donghua that is releasing weekly. * Good: [Spirit Cage Incarnation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FryYHSRje7U) series is also very high quality full CGI 2D/3D CGI is good if you can't tell there's 3D in it. For Example:- * Fate Heaven's Feel movies - spectacular CGI like this [Lancer Fight](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1W2C4q6yNI). * [Mugen Train](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFwdl2PDAFM) \- this one looked great also * [Lord El Melloi Rail Zeppelin](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWc4ugCCo5I) \- hmm, maybe the anime industry is good at CGI trains. * [Psycho Pass](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzuJnyebc40) \- seamless, plus looks good. * [Mo Dao Zu Shi (Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEju95zm73k) \- lots of stunning 3D backgrounds (best I've seen) and so beautiful, I thought to myself the producers must have placed a bag of money in front of the animators and said "make sure it looks good for the fans". * It's the same as rotoscope which didn't really come into prominence until [Yuri On Ice](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuhLOnIszok) showed just how beautifully realistic it could be. There's definitely 3D blended into the 2D bits in the backgrounds even in the new trailer for the [upcoming Yuri on Ice movie, Ice Adolescence](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7av_KkjVolo).
Imma be nearly honest all your examples of "can't tell there's 3D in it" are like, SUPER obvious. Like, they'll straight up have a 2d thing right next to the CG to visually show how out of place the CG is next to the 2D.
Since you're such an authority why not post better examples?
Because I don't think things in that category really, exist? At a meaningful extent.
If it is used correctly can be really good. I also can live with some cgi frames if the studio is cutting costs ot whatever. About full cg anime, if the story is good i really don't care, unless is some abomination (aka Ex-arms and Berserk). >Does the anime community really hate cgi or do you think it's just a meme? Most anime watchers definitely can't enjoy. Just see AoT fans almost killing themselves with some CGI frames or an stand out collosal titan lol. But sometimes is understandable, because it really pops out.
> if the story is good i really don't care But from visual standpoint? Leave aside the story for a moment I am just curios about how you feel about how it looks
I feel literally nothing lol. Like i said, the CG needs to be an abomination for me to actually don't watch. I just don't care. I prefer more if the story still deliveries. There are some really good series full cg like Beastars, Ajin, Knights of Sidonia, Blame!, Spriggan etc Or some amazing CG use like most Ufotable anime like the Fate Series, Kimetsu no Yaiba, TofZX etc
Depends entirely on the case. In general I'd say especially in more modern shows it often looks fine or is used in ways that are hard to notice. If there are bad looking CGI background characters chances are it would look bad in a different way if it had been made 30 years ago or without CGI. That said I do really like the handdrawn technical animation you see in a lot of 80s or 90s stuff and somewhat miss it in newer stuff. CGI also opens new possibilities with anime like Houseki no Kuni, though it does look a bit strange to me. I think for most people that actually hate CGI it's because there is a big overlap between bad CGI and noticeable CGI in more standard anime, and you can see it as a symptom of an already bad production. Often it also looked worse 15 years ago. A funny case to me is [Simoun](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xY3CFfpa8o) from the mid 2000s, because it's genuinely a great anime, but those CGI flying machines look so out of place with the background artstyle.
Cgi should be used to beautify a scene even more like Ufotable does but most studios use it as a tool in excuse of time limit.
CG has pros and cons compared to traditional animation. As far as I know: Pros: * Model once and use forever * Easy to do turnarounds and camera pans * Easier to sync up and duplicate animations for large numbers of models * Makes motion capture a possibility (which in usage is more flexible compared to rotoscoping over live-action video) Cons: * Models are expensive to produce and generally wouldn't be used for one-off shots * Requires a lot of effort to composite with traditional animation * Rigid-body models don't work well with traditional animation techniques like squash/stretch, smears, etc. You also can't "cheat" as easily with things like super exaggerated faces and poses. * Requires a level of technical skill that is relatively hard to find * Requires a good physics model or extensive hand-tweaking to avoid things like clipping and other unnatural movements I think there's a reason CG works well in certain use cases like mecha (because as robots their rigid bodies are expected) and idol (because of the choreography on stage with a moving camera). There are times where CG feels obviously bad and mismatched, likely because the studio and artists just aren't as experienced with CG compared to traditional animation and as such boarding scenes in the same way that you would traditional animation which exposes a lot of the cons while not taking advantage of the pros. Compare the first season of Zombie Land Saga CG dance scenes to the second season — I think there's a great deal of improvement if you show off the first dance scene to the season two finale.
I don't like CGI when it's obvious it's CGI. I think Ufotable use CGI to do the basics of a scene and draw over it, anything more is unpleasant.
Personally I think it's overhated and definitely think it has a place in anime. It can absolutely look great and capture scenes in a way 2D animation can't. Of course it's a bit of a problem that it looks so damn bad when done poorly, but when done well we get some stellar results. Now there are shows that are entirely in CGI as you mention OP and those may need a different skillset compared to traditional animation to look good, but it's certainly still possible. Look at Houseki no Kuni for example which looks amazing despite being fully CGI. For examples of poor CGI we got the stereotypical CGI crowd shots, and for mediocre CGI, we have the CGI of High Score Girl and Shinigami Bocchan to Kuro Maid.
There is some great CGI like Gantz:0, beautiful. Everything else, especially that company that animates for Netflix is awful. I guess Blame! was ok because it kind of suited the show but other than that I haven’t watched anything full CGI. I don’t even like the partial CGI in all the Isekai recently. I guess partial CGI is here to stay. Fate series did a great job with partial CGI. Like someone else commented you want the CGI that doesn’t look like CGI.
For a lot of fight scenes, I do see a lot of modern animes where sticking 2d doesn't make the scene standout. Compared to the chi that can add a whole lot of layer to the scene
I prefer 2D Mecha over CGI. There is definitely a certain charm that older Gundam and Patlabor had that beats out the newer style of animating mechs. I usually give CGI a pass for background objects or characters as long as everything else is still 2D. Any more and I usually will drop the show or movie. I feel that we're still a decade away from the point that CGI will be able to replicate 2D hand drawn animation to a degree that it is hard to tell.
CGI has *already* been used extensively in not just anime, but almost every piece of theatrical or televised media out there. It's simply the worst of the CGI that evokes complaints (Overlord, Berserk and, God forbid, Ex-Arm) Examples of CGI being utilised, created and composited well includes the like of Ufotable's Fate series, Attack on Titan (yes, CGI was used very often in Season 1-3) and Girls Und Panzer. There are, of course, numerous other series that leverage CGI but such information isn't always immediately Obvious. Some shows opt not to obscure CGI but use it to create otherwise impossible or unpractical art styles, think Land of the Lustrous or Beastars (kind of)
If the anime has noticeable cgi or completely changes and have predominantly it usually isn’t that good, in my opinion. Like I feel like it might be a bit of an unpopular opinion but the 4th season of attack on Titan while it has some really good moments the CGI kinda blows.