Super Animation Catalogue 2.0

[ehh123]

I watched Ajay's video on the first four episodes of Super. I'm kind of disappointed he didn't go into direction and storyboards for the first episode.

I like to look up the staff for upcoming anime I'm interested in. One of those is GeGeGe no Kitarō, the anime replacing Super. The series director is one Kōji Ogawa, a Toei regular who has mostly been an episode director and storyboard artist whose biggest credit before Kitarō was directing the second Precure All Stars New Stage movie. I noticed he did direction and storyboards on episode 1 and just storyboards on episode 8. Was his contributions any good on those two episodes?

[KameNinja45]

It's not besides the point. YOU brought it up to begin with.

That Resurrection F was the most successful within it's own series. Not when comparing different series like 50 Shades of Grey or Transformers. Just from it's own series alone, that one was more successful than the rest.

Perhaps you should stop stating your opinions as if they're facts?

Most of what I said was fact. Lets see.

1. It has a 7.4/10 rating on IMDB. It is second only to Fusion Reborn which has half the votes.

2. Battle of Gods was a short movie at only 85 minutes and that includes credits.

Resurrection F was the longer movie at 94 minutes.

3. There were 10 minutes spent on the Pilaf Gang in succession that amounted to absolutely nothing. That doesn't include the few minutes spent with the Great Saiyaman afterwards either. It led to nothing, it was not the reason why Beerus snapped nor the reason Gohan found out Videl was pregnant. In what was already a short movie, this was a sizable chunk of it that added nothing.

Resurrection F did not have any wasted screen time like that. There was no filler.

4. The movie did have a huge cast and the party was used as an excuse to bring them altogether. Most of these characters did next to nothing. Krillin had a few lines but otherwise did nothing. Tien may have had a line or two of dialogue and attacked Beerus for a couple seconds. Yamcha may have a couple lines in the theatrical version only. Piccolo didn't have many lines, he fought Beerus for a mere 7 seconds and was shown singing but did nothing else aside from that. Gohan's only significance came from being drunk in the Great Saiyaman scene and aside from that he fought Beerus for about 20 seconds. Master Roshi may have had a few lines but otherwise did nothing. Then that's true for almost all of the others like Chi-Chi, Dr Brief, Panchy, Puar, Ox King, Mr Satan etc.

Resurrection F had a much smaller cast but they all got to do something. Krillin, Gohan, Piccolo, Roshi and Tien were all involved in a long action sequence which aside from Gohan was the most significant fight scene they had been in for many many years. Vegeta had a much bigger role and unlike Battle of Gods was not reduced to a comic relief wimp.

5. Resurrection F did have a vast amount more action. Battle of Gods had a total of 18 minutes of action and Resurrection F had a total of 32 minutes of action.

6. Battle of Gods was not violent, nobody died in the movie and nobody was severely injured in anyway. In Resurrection F, Tagoma died, Frieza blew up an entire city full of people, Frieza killed all of his 1,000 henchmen, he punched Gohan so hard it stopped his heart and almost killed him, he blew a hole straight through Goku and stomped on the wound, the entire Earth was destroyed and then Frieza was killed. So the latter is much more like what would happen in the series, like the Buu saga.

How is RoF being successful relevant to its quality? It was only so successful because it brought back an iconic villain.

1. IMDB isn't fact. Not at all.

2. Length is irrelevant.

3. There was a bunch of time spent on the Z-Fighters beating up the Frieza soldiers in RoF, that led to nothing. And downtime in a BoG was perfectly acceptable, considering we hadn't had any DBZ content aside from video games since the 2008 special.

4. Yeah they all did something, but it was all fanservice. They were irrelevant to the plot. Vegeta had more importance, sure, but he was still shafted for Goku yet again.

5. More action doesn't mean a better movie.

6. RoF had no tension at all. Anytime anyone was defeated, they were just brought back with a senzu bean. And there was no tension in the Goku vs. Frieza fight, since we all knew Vegeta had SSJB too. Even if RoF was more violent, that doesn't make it better.

[Ajay]

The success vs. quality of Resurrection 'F' discussion going on here really has absolutely nothing to do with the purpose of this thread, so let's put an end to that immediately. Thanks.

[ehh123]

The success vs. quality of Resurrection 'F' discussion going on here really has absolutely nothing to do with the purpose of this thread, so let's put an end to that immediately. Thanks.

Thanks, Ajay. So, think you can give me you thoughts on Kōji Ogawa?

[cuartas]

Budget isn't the issue. The issue is time. The more lines the harder it is to animate and draw. Simple designs with more pleasing shapes is the best way to go for character designs because they're more easy to animate quickly and nicely while also being easy to draw promotional art for. Additionally, it's easier for fans to replicate.

C'mon, it's a movie, not a weekly anime, I can't believe they have to think about animator friendly designs in a movie where quality is absolutely expected, that's actually retarded on their part.

Why don't we have more shidas and takahashis that can adapt to any style and yet do great animation with detailed art instead of animators crying about shading and some extra muscle lines? I can perfectly understand it in a totally messed up schedule we have in DBS, in a movie, it's just stupid

[JulieYBM]

Budget isn't the issue. The issue is time. The more lines the harder it is to animate and draw. Simple designs with more pleasing shapes is the best way to go for character designs because they're more easy to animate quickly and nicely while also being easy to draw promotional art for. Additionally, it's easier for fans to replicate.

C'mon, it's a movie, not a weekly anime, I can't believe they have to think about animator friendly designs in a movie where quality is absolutely expected, that's actually retarded on their part.

Why don't we have more shidas and takahashis that can adapt to any style and yet do great animation with detailed art instead of animators crying about shading and some extra muscle lines? I can perfectly understand it in a totally messed up schedule we have in DBS, in a movie, it's just stupid

Shida and Takahashi don't grow on trees. Not everybody wants to work on Dragon Ball, either.

More lines in the designs doesn't mean more quality or efgort. Simple designs mean that effort can be redirected to more drawings.

[GTx10]

I guess I fail to see how Yamamuro is not liked at the moment. His work is on model, which is something everyone's complained about which Super was lacking. BoG and F (movie versions) had fluid movement and looked perfectly in line with typical Dragon Ball Z fight choreography. Does this new picture of Son Goku look good? Yes it does, but I also see nothing wrong with Yamamuro's "flat" "basic" art style because it makes Dragon Ball characters look like how they are supposed to look like.
I don't want this to come off as personal attack because it is not, but are people happy about this simply because Ajay likes this new "blood" animators? I've noticed ever since he's done his animation videos everybody's opinions on art styles has changed. Yes, people commented on Super's art before Ajay's rise to prominence but I get different vibes. Maybe it's merely me?
Yamamuro probably has the best grasp of Dragon Ball animation because he has done it so long. Yes "new blood" can and should take a crack at it once and while but at the end of the day you should always return to the master. Because the old way may be boring and tedious but it delivers results that are in line with what most precive Dragon Ball should look like.

[emperior]

Budget isn't the issue. The issue is time. The more lines the harder it is to animate and draw. Simple designs with more pleasing shapes is the best way to go for character designs because they're more easy to animate quickly and nicely while also being easy to draw promotional art for. Additionally, it's easier for fans to replicate.

C'mon, it's a movie, not a weekly anime, I can't believe they have to think about animator friendly designs in a movie where quality is absolutely expected, that's actually retarded on their part.

Why don't we have more shidas and takahashis that can adapt to any style and yet do great animation with detailed art instead of animators crying about shading and some extra muscle lines? I can perfectly understand it in a totally messed up schedule we have in DBS, in a movie, it's just stupid

Simple designs mean more movement. The fact this is a movie doesn't mean it can have both extremely detailed art and awesome movement, unless you want to have a lot less action and overall less animation.

Simple designs give more freedom to the animators, as they will be able to animate more movement making the whole movie look much more lively. When action comes, having more movement means more fluidity and potentially longer cuts, and I also believe that animators will be able to put more details in their drawings if they want to: for example, someone like Shida will still do his trademark shading, if he will want to of course.

The question is: do you prefer more animation or more detailed art? I prefer more animation, as I will be watching an ANIMATED movie and not a slide show. If you prefer the latter, then that's your opinion and although I completely disagree with you, I respect it so please do the same with me.
Calling TOEI workers "retarded" for choosing more-animation friendly designs is not a good way to express your disappointment with them. This is not a stupid choice, even if you disagree with it, so calling their choice stupid and saying the animators should stop crying about detailed designs just goes to show your ignorance in the whole matter, so I suggest you to first go make some more research before writing such non-sense.

[cuartas]

Simple designs mean more movement. The fact this is a movie doesn't mean it can have both extremely detailed art and awesome movement, unless you want to have a lot less action and overall less animation.

Simple designs give more freedom to the animators, as they will be able to animate more movement making the whole movie look much more lively. When action comes, having more movement means more fluidity and potentially longer cuts, and I also believe that animators will be able to put more details in their drawings if they want to: for example, someone like Shida will still do his trademark shading, if he will want to of course.

The question is: do you prefer more animation or more detailed art? I prefer more animation, as I will be watching an ANIMATED movie and not a slide show. If you prefer the latter, then that's your opinion and although I completely disagree with you, I respect it so please do the same with me.
Calling TOEI workers "retarded" for choosing more-animation friendly designs is not a good way to express your disappointment with them. This is not a stupid choice, even if you disagree with it, so calling their choice stupid and saying the animators should stop crying about detailed designs just goes to show your ignorance in the whole matter, so I suggest you to first go make some more research before writing such non-sense.

I prefer both, in a movie even more, this is not a binary decision.

I did my research months ago, I know how animators are moving to a looser animation and impose radical changes to manga creators to make their characters easier to draw, the predominance of skinnier characters lately is seemingly a result of that wave of thinking. In fact, DB is that special case where you get the opposite, more detail from the anime designs than the original manga designs.
My point still stands for me though, this being a movie with higher budget, more animators and more talent than in a regular weekly show can't even think about saving up quality.

I mentioned Shida and Takahashi as the prime examples in DBS where we get both sides at once yet still you make it look like this is a red or blue pill choice, sorry but no

[Ajay]

I guess I fail to see how Yamamuro is not liked at the moment. His work is on model, which is something everyone's complained about which Super was lacking. BoG and F (movie versions) had fluid movement and looked perfectly in line with typical Dragon Ball Z fight choreography. Does this new picture of Son Goku look good? Yes it does, but I also see nothing wrong with Yamamuro's "flat" "basic" art style because it makes Dragon Ball characters look like how they are supposed to look like.
I don't want this to come off as personal attack because it is not, but are people happy about this simply because Ajay likes this new "blood" animators? I've noticed ever since he's done his animation videos everybody's opinions on art styles has changed. Yes, people commented on Super's art before Ajay's rise to prominence but I get different vibes. Maybe it's merely me?
Yamamuro probably has the best grasp of Dragon Ball animation because he has done it so long. Yes "new blood" can and should take a crack at it once and while but at the end of the day you should always return to the master. Because the old way may be boring and tedious but it delivers results that are in line with what most precive Dragon Ball should look like.

Lot of stuff to break down here. I guess first of all, "on-model" just refers to how closely something resembles the model sheets; the issue with many of Super's early episodes is that they were simply not drawn well by any artistic standard. That's a totally separate conversation from whether Yamamuro's model sheets are actually particularly pleasant. Super's episodes regularly look great without any adherence to those sheets - I think Yuya Takahashi's episodes are probably the clearest example of that.

Battle of Gods and Resurrection 'F' have nicely animated scenes, but that's because animation is (mostly) independent from the models that are actually moving. One of the most common complaints with those movies, which only grew larger with Super's popularity, is that "the characters look like action figures", "they're too shiny", "this doesn't look like Z". What a lot of people failed to recognise is that those issues are down to Yamamuro's character sheets - he's changed a lot over the past few decades. The likes of Kei17 and JulieYBM, who were in tune with the production pipeline long before I ever was, were always very vocal about their distaste for his work, and that extended back as far as 10 years ago now! Heck, even fellow industry veterans have been very vocal about how little they like his modern output. All I've done with my rise in popularity is put that knowledge into the mainstream, and now fans who weren't able to articulate their issues with modern Dragon Ball can do so by naming names.

I'm so excited by Naohiro Shintani's involvement, not because it's "new blood", but because this is someone who's incredibly talented, and well respected by some of the industry's biggest animators. The first bit of promo art, though not necessarily perfect, is so much more in line with Toriyama's current output, which is something I don't think Yamamuro has successfully captured in a very, very long time. The design is very sleek, very loose, minimalist and modern, and that's the type of animation-friendly design that attracts big talents. We've already had Koudai Watanabe and Yuki Hayashi praise his design, not to mention many supportive RTs from other industry stars. This is a big deal! The buzz around the film's staff is pretty insane.

Dragon Ball has been many things over the years; it has evolved with Toriyama's style, so I can't say I agree that there's something 'Dragon Ball should look like'. Yamamuro has been on nothing but a strong decline for the past 10+ years, so I totally disagree with the assessment that he's a master at this point. His legacy is great, and it should be respected, but that look he's plastered Dragon Ball with for the last decade is very heavily disliked, whether many people realise he's the reason or not. This isn't about shaking things up for the sake of shaking things up, it's about bringing in someone who is almost certainly going to do a better job.

[Teffo]

Simple designs mean more movement. The fact this is a movie doesn't mean it can have both extremely detailed art and awesome movement, unless you want to have a lot less action and overall less animation.

Simple designs give more freedom to the animators, as they will be able to animate more movement making the whole movie look much more lively. When action comes, having more movement means more fluidity and potentially longer cuts, and I also believe that animators will be able to put more details in their drawings if they want to: for example, someone like Shida will still do his trademark shading, if he will want to of course.

The question is: do you prefer more animation or more detailed art? I prefer more animation, as I will be watching an ANIMATED movie and not a slide show. If you prefer the latter, then that's your opinion and although I completely disagree with you, I respect it so please do the same with me.
Calling TOEI workers "retarded" for choosing more-animation friendly designs is not a good way to express your disappointment with them. This is not a stupid choice, even if you disagree with it, so calling their choice stupid and saying the animators should stop crying about detailed designs just goes to show your ignorance in the whole matter, so I suggest you to first go make some more research before writing such non-sense.

I prefer both, in a movie even more, this is not a binary decision.

I did my research months ago, I know how animators are moving to a looser animation and impose radical changes to manga creators to make their characters easier to draw, the predominance of skinnier characters lately is seemingly a result of that wave of thinking. In fact, DB is that special case where you get the opposite, more detail from the anime designs than the original manga designs.
My point still stands for me though, this being a movie with higher budget, more animators and more talent than in a regular weekly show can't even think about saving up quality.

I mentioned Shida and Takahashi as the prime examples in DBS where we get both sides at once yet still you make it look like this is a red or blue pill choice, sorry but no

Even after being proved wrong you still hold this budget thing high up, you've got my congratulations for keeping your ignorance for so long, if you're not willing to argue with these people without resorting to think of budgets and stuff that don't apply to this case, you should really leave this place for good. You're just going to continue to be overlooked as a joke.

[JazzMazz]

Simple designs mean more movement. The fact this is a movie doesn't mean it can have both extremely detailed art and awesome movement, unless you want to have a lot less action and overall less animation.

Simple designs give more freedom to the animators, as they will be able to animate more movement making the whole movie look much more lively. When action comes, having more movement means more fluidity and potentially longer cuts, and I also believe that animators will be able to put more details in their drawings if they want to: for example, someone like Shida will still do his trademark shading, if he will want to of course.

The question is: do you prefer more animation or more detailed art? I prefer more animation, as I will be watching an ANIMATED movie and not a slide show. If you prefer the latter, then that's your opinion and although I completely disagree with you, I respect it so please do the same with me.
Calling TOEI workers "retarded" for choosing more-animation friendly designs is not a good way to express your disappointment with them. This is not a stupid choice, even if you disagree with it, so calling their choice stupid and saying the animators should stop crying about detailed designs just goes to show your ignorance in the whole matter, so I suggest you to first go make some more research before writing such non-sense.

I prefer both, in a movie even more, this is not a binary decision.

I did my research months ago, I know how animators are moving to a looser animation and impose radical changes to manga creators to make their characters easier to draw, the predominance of skinnier characters lately is seemingly a result of that wave of thinking. In fact, DB is that special case where you get the opposite, more detail from the anime designs than the original manga designs.
My point still stands for me though, this being a movie with higher budget, more animators and more talent than in a regular weekly show can't even think about saving up quality.

I mentioned Shida and Takahashi as the prime examples in DBS where we get both sides at once yet still you make it look like this is a red or blue pill choice, sorry but no

The problem with this line of thinking, is that not every animator is a Yuya Takahashi or Naotoshi Shida. Most animators, especially those who are most highly prominent and respected, employ far looser means of drawing characters as a general rule in order to best facilitate movement.

That kind of softer and looser designs is what appeals more to animators in the industry these days. Though I think your already well aware of this.

I think its important to note that having more detailed character art doesn't necessarily equate to quality for a lot of people(especially if the detail on your character art makes the image feel flat, like many people have said about Yamamuro). In todays industry, I've noticed that a far greater emphasis has been placed on movement than nice though fairly static character art. That's why the usual base designs for the characters are easier to draw. In order to facilitate the movement which is associated with a quality production.

I think its also worth noting, that beyond a single promo piece, we still haven't anything else relating to the designs or shading sheets of the characters, so I think its a good idea to with-hold full judgement until we've actually seen those things.

EDIT: I guess the big thing I have to ask you, is what's the problem with Dragon ball updating itself visually to exist in a new modern age?

[cuartas]

Even after being proved wrong you still hold this budget thing high up, you've got my congratulations for keeping your ignorance for so long, if you're not willing to argue with these people without resorting to think of budgets and stuff that don't apply to this case, you should really leave this place for good. You're just going to continue to be overlooked as a joke.

You are the ignorant since you are unable to read "more animators and more talent" after a comma in-the-same-line, can't argue with that

I guess the big thing I have to ask you, is what's the problem with Dragon ball updating itself visually to exist in a new modern age?

Technically Dragon Ball updated itself in a new modern age, because current Yamamuro designs are nothing like his 90's.
Now, I've never said his modern designs were the best, and that opinion was confirmed when I saw ajay post long time ago, the point here is that I always preferred his designs over tate's all the way, that was the discussion, but after watching Takahashi, those perfect characters reminiscent of early Yamamuro I can't change my mind, I haven't seen anything more fitting for Dragon Ball than what he has achieved.

Idk if you see Takahashi as dragon ball updating itself or simply coming back to better times (which apparently is not what you want), if it's the latter, in that sense, yes, I'd have a problem with dragon ball updating itself, it would be a missed chance to not exploit his talent, just like Yamamuro was chosen taking Maeda's place long time ago.

I know a lot of you want dragon ball to make a drastic transition like pokemon sun & moon to fullfill your wet animation dreams, I don't, I wan't a perfect balance between those two aspects, sorry for not thinking like you

[Saikyo no Senshi]

Was his contributions any good on those two episodes?

Standard work and just like most he wasn't able to show his full capabilities. #8 was kind of dreadful. Dragged a 30 sec joke to almost an entire half. The episode director is also to be blamed though. Poorly paced and had some iffy layouts iirc. Shimanuki was AD and his work was uh bad like really bad. So, yeah not a good time for Ogawa.

He is not among Toei's best, but he can do some good stuff. Kitaro is kind of fitting for him so he should be able to do well there. He went away from DBS to become SD of Applimon btw.

[emperior]

Even after being proved wrong you still hold this budget thing high up, you've got my congratulations for keeping your ignorance for so long, if you're not willing to argue with these people without resorting to think of budgets and stuff that don't apply to this case, you should really leave this place for good. You're just going to continue to be overlooked as a joke.

You are the ignorant since you are unable to read "more animators and more talent" after a comma in-the-same-line, can't argue with that

I guess the big thing I have to ask you, is what's the problem with Dragon ball updating itself visually to exist in a new modern age?

Technically Dragon Ball updated itself in a new modern age, because current Yamamuro designs are nothing like his 90's.
Now, I've never said his modern designs were the best, and that opinion was confirmed when I saw ajay post long time ago, the point here is that I always preferred his designs over tate's all the way, that was the discussion, but after watching Takahashi, those perfect characters reminiscent of early Yamamuro I can't change my mind, I haven't seen anything more fitting for Dragon Ball than what he has achieved.

Idk if you see Takahashi as dragon ball updating itself or simply coming back to better times (which apparently is not what you want), if it's the latter, in that sense, yes, I'd have a problem with dragon ball updating itself, it would be a missed chance to not exploit his talent, just like Yamamuro was chosen taking Maeda's place long time ago.

I know a lot of you want dragon ball to make a drastic transition like pokemon sun & moon to fullfill your wet animation dreams, I don't, I wan't a perfect balance between those two aspects, sorry for not thinking like you

But Shintani's design is actually a perfect balance. It's in no way extremely loose and minimalistic like Pokemon Sun and Moon design, hell it's not even as simple as Maeda's design, yet it's quite similar to it:



Is your problem with the new design just the fact Takahashi isn't the one in charge of them?

[cuartas]

Is your problem with the new design just the fact Takahashi isn't the one in charge of them?

It's really obvious I'm meaning the buu arc designs, I thought that was even more clarified when I said "just like Yamamuro was chosen taking Maeda's place long time ago".
Even the cell arc designs, but I'm not sure Yamamuro was 100% in charge of that.
Could it be Takahashi, could it be Shida, hell, could it be kitano, I don't care. I'm talking about the designs we saw recently, and happened to be Takahashi designs, it's not a preference over an animator, it's a preference over a style

[FortuneSSJ]

Assuming the little surprise we get after episode 131 turns out to be a little teaser about the Movie, even though it may have nothing to do with the plot, it will be interesting to see more of this Goku's design and color scheme.

[GTx10]

While I can admit that Yamamuro's work has aged (much like Toriyama's work) I like the "action figure and shiny" look to the characters. Take the S.H. Figuarts Super Sentai and Kamen Riders for example, those figures are immaculate in scuplt and that doesn't seem like a bad translation for Dragon Ball. Ajay can you give me a example of Yamamuro's character sheets/design/style not translating well onto the screen? If I am not mistaken, he recently drew UI Goku's grand appearance in episode 129 and it looks good.
So while New animators can indeed give new breath to our beloved series it is not Yamamuro who is giving us bad work as of right now.

[ehh123]

Was his contributions any good on those two episodes?

Standard work and just like most he wasn't able to show his full capabilities. #8 was kind of dreadful. Dragged a 30 sec joke to almost an entire half. The episode director is also to be blamed though. Poorly paced and had some iffy layouts iirc. Shimanuki was AD and his work was uh bad like really bad. So, yeah not a good time for Ogawa.

He is not among Toei's best, but he can do some good stuff. Kitaro is kind of fitting for him so he should be able to do well there. He went away from DBS to become SD of Applimon btw.

I think you mean the second World Trigger series. He was just a episode director on Applimon.

[Saikyo no Senshi]

I think you mean the second World Trigger series. He was just a episode director on Applimon.

Yeah. My bad. I meant ED.