Back in THE DAY, I used to make Sailor Moon GIFs for my Geocities website with the primitive tools I could find for free/pirate and this attack was one of my favorites to go through frame by frame. It’s some really awesome animation. Just… THAT FORESHORTENING! Yowza. Not to mention the harpsichord music at the very beginning of this attack is one of my favorite compositions from the soundtrack.
My GIFs never looked as good as they nowadays though. All I had for source video was MOVs and AVIs ripped from (often taped from TV) video and sometimes laserdisc if I was really lucky. You kids and your broadband and HD MP4s… *shakes cane*
Apart from it being a masterpiece of montage, this scene is so emotionally disturbing. Yes, he’s stunning, absolutely beautiful, showed in the middle of the rawness of the process of deducing. His uniqueness, being special, above everything ordinary, above average human potential shows here. You can’t look away – it’s hypnotising, but at the same time you want to because it’s so distressing to see him like possessed by this genius, by his brain, by this monster inside him. Living beast, feeding on all these tiniest associations, subtle hints, directions, words, slogans, images, tiniest bits of the whole wide universe ever surrounding him until these scraps form final solution. But before it comes to this the whole “ritual” looks almost painfully ecstatic, like he’s on high, beside himself, barely managing, being on the edge, and at the same time nothing could tear him away he’s exactly where he wants to be, belonging, complete, ABSOLUTE. It’s like one step too far and he snaps – done, swallowed by madness, turned into machine on the loop until he burns and turns into ashes along with his brain. You can feel that burden of his MIND, how his brain is a separate living being, forcing him to feed it all the time, taking control, driving away everything else but the purest intellect. Devouring him as a person, as a human entity, while fed. This scene shows so intensely the genius, Sherlock’s greatest asset that is his greatest tragedy. This scene shows how this blessing of his is also his curse threatening his humanity, stability, emotional well-being. It shows how he stands on the edge of abyss  all the time and one step too far and he’s falling.
