Super Animation Catalogue 2.0

[dhaval_dongre]

Super could definitely benefit from better art direction on the whole. I totally understand the complaints about the show being "too bright". Nobody's asking for gloom and doom, especially during happy scenes, but something less garish would be nice. They've been absolutely nailing the future scenes' tone, so that's nice, at least!

But the reason behind the lighter tone and no blood and gore in Super is also probably down to its Sunday 9am slot. Though I really like the tone in this arc, hope it gets more darker from here on. I wonder will they ever change the slot, to add more blood and gore to the series.

[cuartas]

If this is the case, why there's no 10 min length youtube videos showing the best Uchiyama shots in DBZ just like Tate? as far as I know Uchiyama was described as a "fluid, dynamic and fast paced animation but lack of detail" just like Tate is described, the difference here is that uchiyama is not praised but criticised for his cheap animation and tate is placed on the top of animators in DBS.

Uchiyama was never described in that manner because he wasn't a good animator. Any praise levied at Uchiyama-lead episodes would have been directed at the likes of key animators under him: Tai'ichirou Ohara, for example, who actually does have 10-minute YouTube videos dedicated to his work. Uchiyama is heavily criticised because of his proportionally-off and unappealing art style, which much like Ebisawa's, was more of a detriment to the talents underneath him than it was a benefit. Look at how good Ebisawa episodes started looking once he let Toshiyuki Kan’no do his thing uncorrected. There isn't any hypocrisy going on here as you seem to be implying.

Being honest, animation wise, DBS is kinda mediocre, I mean if we reached a point where "we" praise Tate work due the "fluid animation and the thing with the camera angles" but the art have off model moments, weird face expressions and a far different style from akira (don't forget ep 5), welp, there's something wrong here.

Super's animation is mediocre, and I don't think anyone here is going to push you on that, but pretending that we're somehow lowering our expectations because we enjoy Tate's Hosoda-inspired work, as rushed as it may be, shows a lack of understanding about what makes Tate so good in the first place. There's nothing "wrong" there, and bringing up episode 5 is asinine at this point. We know what happened there, we know it was an isolated case, so let's not waste anyone's time by pretending it's at all relevant at this point.

Claims that Tate is somehow drawing a world away from Yamamuro's models boil down to pure hyperbole, or fans are going by his action scenes that are rushed thanks to Super's silly schedule. As I said, Tate is hugely inspired by the likes of Mamoru Hosoda, Sushio, and Hiroyuki Imaishi -- if you aren't familiar with their work and their philosophy, you're probably not going to get Tate. His work when given the proper time and effort is above and beyond the large majority of animators out there. There's a reason he's a love child at Toei and why he's given hugely important episodes in Super. It's because he's good. Really good. And ultimately a large majority of people within the industry or with an understanding of animation genuinely get that. Fans after rigidly on-model work aren't ever going to appreciate him, and that's a shame, but to pretend he lacks talent because he doesn't embody the creatively-void soul of Yamamuro is silly.

44's reputation with the fandom is based on the fact it's pristinely on-model and has a couple of okay action scenes. It's a good episode and Karasawa is one of my favourite supervisors on the show, but you're comparing cheese and chocolate here. Karasawa and Tate aren't after the same end results, and if you're going to ask any serious animation fan which is the more interesting episode to look at, they're going to pick Tate every single time. That's not to say Karasawa hasn't done interesting work -- he most certainly has -- but we have yet to see him flourish in the same way Tate has week by week.

I'm not going to pretend Tate's animation on Super is perfect. It's not. It's rough and often scribbled out quickly in an attempt to provide interesting animation on a horrific schedule. But man, he's doing more for the series than anyone else. Comparing him to Uchiyama is so unbelievably disingenuous, and to imply that we're somehow settling for less shows a fundamental lack of understanding.

Welcome to the forum, by the way.

thanks for the welcome.
But really, you're not saying anything that convince me Tate is the top.
was this isolated too?
and this was a cheap way to make goku spin
these hands
as I said before, the weird face and mouth expressions, here, here, here
and the weird side faces, and here.

Not to mention he's not consistent, one scene with shadows and hair brightness, and 2 seconds later, all gone

You dropped a lot of statements of "Tate is good, inspired by x,y,z..., far from your understanding, fans choose Tate every single time", etc, etc and a bunch of one piece clips (not relevant for this discussion), 2 of DBS, not necessarily enough to praise his work, I think it makes the opposite.
You never told me a why, why is good? why his art style (even his best shots) far away from akira toriyama (not yamamuro, I've never mentioned it) is better than karasawa style in 44 (if you take off plastic face brightness inspired by yamamuro, that's closer to akira style) and why comparing to Uchiyama is so unbelievably disingenuous? of course they don't have the same art, proportions, etc but they share the lack of detail and somehow a fluid animation aspects.

So, enlighten me, tell me why Tate is better for more than just a coreography thing and why this is in his best clips...

[Super Saiyan Swagger]

Naoki Tate sacrifices good art for fluid animation. You can't expect him to have decent art when he's creating animation as fluid as that with the time constraints that he has upon him.

[Ajay]

thanks for the welcome.
But really, you're not saying anything that convince me Tate is the top.
was this isolated too?
and this was a cheap way to make goku spin
these hands
as I said before, the weird face and mouth expressions, here, here, here
and the weird side faces, and here.
Not to mention he's not consistent, one scene with shadows and hair brightness, and 2 seconds later, all gone
You dropped a lot of statements of "Tate is good, inspired by x,y,z..., far from your understanding, fans choose Tate every single time", etc, etc and a bunch of one piece clips (not relevant for this discussion), 2 of DBS, not necessarily enough to praise his work, I think it makes the opposite.
You never told me a why, why is good? why his art style (even his best shots) far away from akira toriyama (not yamamuro, I've never mentioned it) is better than karasawa style in 44 (if you take off plastic face brightness inspired by yamamuro, that's closer to akira style) and why comparing to Uchiyama is so unbelievably disingenuous? of course they don't have the same art, proportions, etc but they share the lack of detail and somehow a fluid animation aspects.
So, enlighten me, tell me why Tate is better for more than just a coreography thing and why this is in his best clips...

If you think I was vague, it was because I expected you to go away and do your own research. Maybe that was a bit unfair, so here's a reasonably concise breakdown.

Picking at an off-looking still in an otherwise great cut makes me wonder if you perhaps aren't aware of the circumstances surrounding either that episode or the series in general. If you haven't watched my video regarding the state of Super's production, I'd strongly recommend you do so. Episode 26 is unbelievable if you take into account what Tate did. As you may know, animators are designated cuts within an episode, and this generally only adds up to a few minutes of animation at the most. Naoki Tate animated the entire first half of 26 by himself, with the rest of the episode left up to his other staff (a large majority of which were awful out-sourced Chinese animators). Taking that into account alongside Super's schedule, is it really surprising to you that a key frame was scribbled out in an otherwise excellent cut? You're looking at things in bite-sized chunks instead of the full picture, and that's not fair on anyone.

Your example of a "cheap spin" isn't cheap at all, it's actually a fundamental part of animation. It's called a smear. It's an essential part of showcasing speed within a piece of work. You can find that in just about every anime under the sun. Another part of animation is squash and stretch; these are all essential ways of drawing to convey movement. They're not out of the ordinary, and they're certainly not "bad". They're just... a fundamental basic part of the animation process. There's a lot of different techniques out there, and this is just another one of them -- a pretty basic one, at that.

The rest of your examples aren't bad at all (and this is an inbetween). They're simply art styles that you dislike, and they're the reason I brought up Mamoru Hosoda, Sushio, and Hiroyuki Imaishi. You have to understand that an anime adaptation's responsibility isn't always to be faithful to the source material's style. That's why you have the character designer role whose job is to come up with interesting designs for the anime. In One Piece, you have Masayuki Sato's character designs, which are very much like Oda's own work. At the same time, you also have Sushio's designs, which were used in One Piece Movie 6. They could not be more different, but both they're great in their own ways. You saw similar things in Z, where Studio Cockpit's episodes were absolutely nothing like what the show's designs looked like usually.

One Piece movie 6 inspired an entire generation of animators -- Tate included. It helped launch Mamoru Hosoda into legendary status -- he's now world-famous for his films such as Wolf Children and Summer Wars. They all have this lovely loose low-detail look to them, animated with exaggerated movement and expression. It's a style you see all over the place these days, and Naoki Tate is bringing it into Dragon Ball Super in his own way. I acknowledge that it often isn't perfect, but I'm also aware of the production hell that Super is, and so I cut him some slack there. He is creating genuinely great animation where others simply aren't or can't in the same time frame.

Dragon Ball's character designer has been Tadayoshi Yamamuro for many many years now, and it's why I brought him up. Fans are used to looking at art like this; they've never had to sit back and appreciate the different takes that animators can bring to the table. Dragon Ball's a creativity stagnant franchise, so it's no surprise that this is the case. The thing is, Naoki Tate isn't trying to rock the boat in every episode -- far from it. It's why I think reactions towards his work are severely overblown. While he certainly does his best to bring in his Imaishi-inspired work during the action sequences, which might make fans not used to this style uncomfortable, the large majority of his episodes are pretty on-model with only a few stylistic differences. If you're seeing inconsistencies between scenes, it's because you're seeing a different animator within an episode, they ran out of time to polish, or you're seeing Tate swap over into "action mode".

The philosophy behind this type of work is expression. It's about extremes. It's about taking away excess detail so that you force yourself to bring about expression through beautifully animated movement. In the same way you have your realistic Da Vinci portraits up in galleries, you've also got Gustav Klimt's wildly exaggerated sketches. It's important to remember that animation is an art form too, and there are going to be many styles that either work for you or don't. Nobody's going to ask you to enjoy them all, but it's important to understand where the artist is coming from, so that you can evaluate their work properly. There's no use calling something bad by a certain standard if that wasn't the standard they were trying to reach in the first place, right? You want Tate to give you a pizza the same way Yamamuro makes it, well that's not happening, cause Tate's making cake. See what I mean?

The common counterpoint to this is that many people believe that Dragon Ball has to be animated in a certain way. It doesn't. I've said this several times before, but the wonderful thing about a manga is that it's still. The movement can be implied to an extent, but ultimately, it's up to the reader to visualise how the characters move. That's what makes animation so interesting since not every animator is going to have the same picture in their head. While repeated punches and kicks make up the large bulk of Dragon Ball Z (and many other shows) for conservative reasons, you can see a huge difference in the way different animators put together fights when given the opportunity. That's wonderful and shouldn't ever be discouraged. You never want to homogenise animation.

I gave you a link to Tate's wealth of work so that you could see what he produces on a good schedule. As I said, I'm not going to pretend that Tate's work on Super is perfect. It can't be. Nobody's can. But it's so important to understand what each animator is about. Tate is good because he produces animation that is identifiable from the get-go; it's unique, it's stylish, it's modern, and it's expressive. It conveys movement in ways that only animation can achieve. It's a style that can't be compared to Uchiyama because that style didn't even exist when he was working. Obara's work under Uchiyama was nice, but there's nothing unique about it, either. Tate's a huge name at Toei and a respected animator because his work is wonderfully progressive, and shows other animators what's possible when you break conventions and push the boat out. It's not particularly different from the likes of Yutaka Nakamura who just recently turned a basic technique like an impact frame (a split second minimalist frames that emphasises impact) into moving pieces of animation.

You can't look at him in a bubble or criticise his work against your own preconceptions of what Dragon Ball animation is. If it's not to your tastes that's absolutely fine, but to pick at his work in the way that you've been doing is precisely why I said it shows a lack of understanding. That's not meant to be an offensive comment, so please don't take it that way. I just hope this helps you better understand Tate as an animator, so that instead of going, "Tate sucks, you're settling for less, and being hypocritical", you can think, "Okay, I see what he's going for here, I don't personally like this style, it's not visually appealing to me, but I respect the intent". That's how I think about the likes of Toma Seizo and Yoshitaka Yashima these days. They've both developed styles that I can appreciate and understand, but man, they just do nothing for me at all.

Hope this helps! I'm not sure what else I can really say here. If this doesn't change your perspective in some way, that's a bit of a shame, but hopefully we can just agree to disagree and not dredge in negativity over his work for pages upon pages.

[ParkerAL]

It's a stark comparison to the 1999 version that not only establishes the tone in Togashi's manga right from the start, it also amplifies it with some darker twists in the story, alongside much more atmospheric art direction.

Eh, I personally feel Director Kazuhiro Furuhashi's style shone through more often than Togashi's in the 1999 anime. It's moody and atmospheric, but excessively so, especially when you consider the manga it's adapting didn't lack a playful side to balance its darker impulses.

And some of its color choices are painfully drab! Really, Killua - a maroon turtleneck matched with a faded-pink T-shirt? Really? And would it have killed them to color Gon's clothing a shade of green that doesn't remind me of barf?

As much as Dragon Ball fans miss the more subdued look seen in the cel-animatated episodes, Hunter x Hunter definitely benefited from brighter digital colors. They help lull you into a false sense of security, thinking the story is all lighthearted and charming, and then BAM! - it hits you over the head with emotional trauma.

Of course, the 1999 series definately had amazing direction. I can't deny that. Its version of Hanzo vs Gon blows the 2011 one out of the water. Look at that motion distortion! Look at those fighting contortions! (begins drooling)

...

Anyway, what were we talking about? Oh yeah, Dragon Ball Super. I actually marathoned the available Trunks episodes yesterday. Catching up on the new arc was a fun ride. Even if moments like Trunks vs. Dabura reminded me I was still watchign a show with a muddled production schedule, Goku Black's impressive displays definately made up for them.

Dragon Ball Super has burned us before with episodes that hint at long-sought-after improvement (like Bulma and Jaco's wonderful adventure in space that preceded the hit-and-miss Champa arc), but I think there's reason to hope the recent string of decent episodes represent some form of abnormal stability.


EDIT: Great post, Ajay. If a viewer can't appreciate Tate's contributions to not just Dragon Ball Super, but the art of animation itself, after reading that, I don't think they'll ever be able to make peace with his style.

[Ajay]

Eh, I personally feel Director Kazuhiro Furuhashi's style shone through more often than Togashi's in the 1999 anime. It's moody and atmospheric, but excessively so, especially when you consider the manga it's adapting didn't lack a playful side to balance its darker impulses.

I agree to an extent. While the changes to the story such as Tonpa leading the group into a terrifying hallucination-inducing tunnel instead of simply offering them laxatives is a pretty extreme twist on things, I think the overall tone during its darker moments does a much better job on the whole of accurately bringing the manga to the screen. While Togashi's manga isn't 100% dark from the get-go, it's certainly nothing like the 2011 version makes it out to be in those early sections. Characters are having breakdowns, Hisoka's murdering people, the Hunter exam is brutal; there are a lot of awful things going on, and the 2011 version doesn't convey that properly because it's trying to keep up its super happy shonen appearance.

The 1999 version isn't all dark, and all the humour that's in the manga is still there. Both versions nail that just fine, but I do think 1999 provides better consistency in tone in the same way that the manga does. 2011's tone changes so drastically to the point that it feels jarring -- and not in a subverting expectations kinda way. As soon as they shifted their target audience to an older bracket, the story felt like it was being told far more faithfully, but man, it was a sharp turn.

Anyway, I think both have their good and bad points. 2011 has the benefit of having a better soundtrack, better sound effects, better animation later down the line, and actually being far more complete. That said, I do genuinely believe 1999 handles the early arcs far better, and I would have been interested to see how the Ant arc would have turned up under the same team.

EDIT: Great post, Ajay. If a viewer can't appreciate Tate's contributions to not just Dragon Ball Super, but the art of animation itself, after reading that, I don't think they'll ever be able to make peace with his style.

Also thanks!

[A Man named RJ]

[spoiler]

If this is the case, why there's no 10 min length youtube videos showing the best Uchiyama shots in DBZ just like Tate? as far as I know Uchiyama was described as a "fluid, dynamic and fast paced animation but lack of detail" just like Tate is described, the difference here is that uchiyama is not praised but criticised for his cheap animation and tate is placed on the top of animators in DBS.

Uchiyama was never described in that manner because he wasn't a good animator. Any praise levied at Uchiyama-lead episodes would have been directed at the likes of key animators under him: Tai'ichirou Ohara, for example, who actually does have 10-minute YouTube videos dedicated to his work. Uchiyama is heavily criticised because of his proportionally-off and unappealing art style, which much like Ebisawa's, was more of a detriment to the talents underneath him than it was a benefit. Look at how good Ebisawa episodes started looking once he let Toshiyuki Kan’no do his thing uncorrected. There isn't any hypocrisy going on here as you seem to be implying.

Being honest, animation wise, DBS is kinda mediocre, I mean if we reached a point where "we" praise Tate work due the "fluid animation and the thing with the camera angles" but the art have off model moments, weird face expressions and a far different style from akira (don't forget ep 5), welp, there's something wrong here.

Super's animation is mediocre, and I don't think anyone here is going to push you on that, but pretending that we're somehow lowering our expectations because we enjoy Tate's Hosoda-inspired work, as rushed as it may be, shows a lack of understanding about what makes Tate so good in the first place. There's nothing "wrong" there, and bringing up episode 5 is asinine at this point. We know what happened there, we know it was an isolated case, so let's not waste anyone's time by pretending it's at all relevant at this point.

Claims that Tate is somehow drawing a world away from Yamamuro's models boil down to pure hyperbole, or fans are going by his action scenes that are rushed thanks to Super's silly schedule. As I said, Tate is hugely inspired by the likes of Mamoru Hosoda, Sushio, and Hiroyuki Imaishi -- if you aren't familiar with their work and their philosophy, you're probably not going to get Tate. His work when given the proper time and effort is above and beyond the large majority of animators out there. There's a reason he's a love child at Toei and why he's given hugely important episodes in Super. It's because he's good. Really good. And ultimately a large majority of people within the industry or with an understanding of animation genuinely get that. Fans after rigidly on-model work aren't ever going to appreciate him, and that's a shame, but to pretend he lacks talent because he doesn't embody the creatively-void soul of Yamamuro is silly.

44's reputation with the fandom is based on the fact it's pristinely on-model and has a couple of okay action scenes. It's a good episode and Karasawa is one of my favourite supervisors on the show, but you're comparing cheese and chocolate here. Karasawa and Tate aren't after the same end results, and if you're going to ask any serious animation fan which is the more interesting episode to look at, they're going to pick Tate every single time. That's not to say Karasawa hasn't done interesting work -- he most certainly has -- but we have yet to see him flourish in the same way Tate has week by week.

I'm not going to pretend Tate's animation on Super is perfect. It's not. It's rough and often scribbled out quickly in an attempt to provide interesting animation on a horrific schedule. But man, he's doing more for the series than anyone else. Comparing him to Uchiyama is so unbelievably disingenuous, and to imply that we're somehow settling for less shows a fundamental lack of understanding.

Welcome to the forum, by the way.

thanks for the welcome.
But really, you're not saying anything that convince me Tate is the top.
was this isolated too?
and this was a cheap way to make goku spin
these hands
as I said before, the weird face and mouth expressions, here, here, here
and the weird side faces, and here.

Not to mention he's not consistent, one scene with shadows and hair brightness, and 2 seconds later, all gone

You dropped a lot of statements of "Tate is good, inspired by x,y,z..., far from your understanding, fans choose Tate every single time", etc, etc and a bunch of one piece clips (not relevant for this discussion), 2 of DBS, not necessarily enough to praise his work, I think it makes the opposite.
You never told me a why, why is good? why his art style (even his best shots) far away from akira toriyama (not yamamuro, I've never mentioned it) is better than karasawa style in 44 (if you take off plastic face brightness inspired by yamamuro, that's closer to akira style) and why comparing to Uchiyama is so unbelievably disingenuous? of course they don't have the same art, proportions, etc but they share the lack of detail and somehow a fluid animation aspects.

So, enlighten me, tell me why Tate is better for more than just a coreography thing and why this is in his best clips...[/spoiler]

Put it in a spoiler to save space

Rule #1 of debating animation. NEVER use stills as evidence of "bad animation" in Animation bodies break. plain and simple. Wanna Know how weak of an argument that is?
[spoiler]FMAB Way too long jaw on Roy Mustang

https://sakuga.yshi.org/post/show/5314/ ... e-fullmeta

One-Punch Man

https://sakuga.yshi.org/post/show/20726 ... e-one-punc

Or even more fun a recent cut from My Hero Academia. "All Might's not supposed to look like that"



https://sakuga.yshi.org/post/show/23828 ... ects-fight[/spoiler]


See how stupid that is when making an argument? It may not be drawn in the most detailed way, or even on model. but animation isnt designed to be looked at frame-by frame (unless you're breaking it down to take notes - in which case the other frames are equally as important) Animation is movement - the sum collection of said frames that create the illusion of movement.

You're also not factoring in time. at all. Super's schedule is abhorent - or do you think people justy draw and suddenly "poof good animation" Nope? multiple revisions of the same scene are required to get that bit of animation just right.

Speaking of why they're good - simple, they're visually interesting, they convey weight and emotion, they convey proper sense of timing, They excell at buildup, not that difficult. If you're going to say an entire cut of animation is shit because you dont like one of the frames, then you're not yet antiquated with animation, it's fiend, it's varying philosophies, and even it's core principles to even bother attempting explain it. Why is this considered good?
[spoiler][/spoiler]

Tate is a very Loose animator. He sacrifices detail to create a very fluid, almost liquid sense of movement, with an artistic flair that's actually quite difficult to come by. Anybody can draw to a style guide - What makes people like Tate, Shida, and even somebody like Wakabayashi Atsushi stand out is their ability to OWN what they're doing. And it's appreciated because it sets anime apart from Western cartoons in that it feels more like an art, rather than something that was just shit out of an assembly line using Adobe flash. Each animator has their own distinct personality, and style and it's what adds to the appeal of Japanese animation. Not evertything needs to adhere to the style guide entirely. And when something deviates it's not nessicarly "weird"

You failed to mention in those shots WHY the characters were stretched out. In one of them,Vegeta got smacked around by Hit and turned into a visual rag doll - it's way more interesting, and memorable than just showing him be knocked back a little. The faces you showed are inbetweens, they're there to help guide the movement to the next major (key) frame. Tate holds a loose face, which is technically awkward to look at - which is intentional. Whenever something looks awkward for no reason, it's bad art, but in his case that awkward face tells you that the character is either extremely emotional, or being taxed somehow.

This clear understanding of visual language is what makes him good. The fact that he pulls this off on Super's schedule makes him even better.

It's a style that can't be compared to Uchiyama because that style didn't even exist when he was working.

Also, Ajay. The loose, expressive Animation style was around during the Z era. Nowadays it's digitized but the concept still exists. I wouldnt exactly Say that Tate has crossed over into- say Toshiyuki Sato territiry (That One Punch Man clip above) where action begins to completely loosen to pure absytraction. He does keep his characters together.

Here's Wakabayashi Atsushi.
https://sakuga.yshi.org/post/show/10449 ... hting-yu_y
https://sakuga.yshi.org/post/show/10140 ... hting-runn
https://sakuga.yshi.org/post/show/5837/ ... animation-

Hell even Takaya Hirotoshi comes pretty close to it on a couple of occasions (the booru doesnt have good examples though, which sucks)
https://sakuga.yshi.org/post/show/13584 ... hirotoshi_

[Ajay]

You misunderstand me. I'm well aware of Wakabayashi; he's one of my favourites. Heck, I'm rewatching the 1999 adaptation of Hunter x Hunter right now and Matsumoto is bringing his A-game. I understand that loose animation has existed for a long long time, but the extremes that Tate takes it to didn't really become commonplace until the early 2000s. That's all I was getting at.

I'm talking about Imaishi-esque abstraction. You can see quite a few examples of Tate taking it to extremes during Thriller Bark. He channeled just about every aspect of Movie 6. He's definitely keeping things more grounded in Dragon Ball, though; I don't want to imagine the fan outrage if Goku suddenly turned into an orange and blue blob.

Anyway, thanks for further explaining things to the guy. Bit more aggressive than my approach, but whatever works!

[dhaval_dongre]

You misunderstand me. I'm well aware of Wakabayashi; he's one of my favourites. Heck, I'm rewatching the 1999 adaptation of Hunter x Hunter right now and [url=https://sakuga.yshi.org/post/show/15051 ... unter_x_hu]Matsumoto is bringing his A-game.

That reminded me, HXH is on a hiatus again.

[Hit!!]

If you haven't watched my video regarding the state of Super's production, I'd strongly recommend you do so.

Very informative video and very well done.

But this video just broke my heart. This means we'll have to settle with Toei ruining our most beloved franchise with shitty animations just because another One Piece special and anothe series is on the way. Seriously, I've always hated One Piece, but now i completely despise that series.

But it kind of pisses me off how Toei is treating Dragon Ball though. I understand that One Piece right now is producing more money, but com'on, we're talking about Dragon Ball. As fucking shitty as it is, it's selling a shitload of merchandise and producing a lot of money, imagine if they poured more money and animators into it. Fuck every other series they're working on, they should give Dragon Ball more priority, not treating like a fucking cash cow. At this rate the whole franchise will be affected and everybody will remember super for how mediocre and bad it was. What they're doing with Super is an ENORMOUS waste of potential.

[A Man named RJ]

If you haven't watched my video regarding the state of Super's production, I'd strongly recommend you do so.

Very informative video and very well done.

But this video just broke my heart. This means we'll have to settle with Toei ruining our most beloved franchise with shitty animations just because another One Piece special and anothe series is on the way. Seriously, I've always hated One Piece, but now i completely despise that series.

But it kind of pisses me off how Toei is treating Dragon Ball though. I understand that One Piece right now is producing more money, but com'on, we're talking about Dragon Ball. As fucking shitty as it is, it's selling a shitload of merchandise and producing a lot of money, imagine if they poured more money and animators into it. Fuck every other series they're working on, they should give Dragon Ball more priority, not treating like a fucking cash cow. At this rate the whole franchise will be affected and everybody will remember super for how mediocre and bad it was. What they're doing with Super is an ENORMOUS waste of potential.

:'( One Piece Din' Do nuthun to hurt nobody. Why u gotta hate on it?

Also That's not how that works. Toei is contracted to make these series by the Network Fuji Tv, and Shueisha. Actually as the argument goes, Those 2 and their hasty greed to capitalize off Resurrection F are what caused Super's horrid schedule to begin with. The issue with Super isnt "money and animators" because if you've checked thecredis some episodes have upwards of 10 Key animators and 2 animation directors..... That's a lot of staff for a 20 minute show. The issue is just time. The schedule seems to have begun working itself out better in recent months.

Next up, One Piece isnt even the show you see most of Toei's effort going into. That honor goes to the Precure franchise. The whole Dragon Ball thing is fanservice. It does well in TV slots, but, why would Toei give this project "more money" when they're not even the ones financially backing the project - and even if they were, why would they? at the end of the day, Toei is a huge studio (I believe it's the biggest in Japan), and an expensive one to maintain at that. It's animators are unionized, and The studio has to pay the costs. It's the actual reason they take on so many projects, because without them, they go bankrupt. Over to DBS, It doesnt need a blowout budget, it really just needed more time to work with - and less Yamamuro character designs. Personally, this series needs the "Studio Bones treatment" wanna know what the SBT is?

take a gander over at One-Punch Man - a show that is really a Studio Bones project with MADHOUSE's name on the tin. Not much different of a budget from your typical 1 cour show, but because of the awesome creative freedoms and atmosphere involved you get a visual masterpiece that No incarnation of Dragon ball has ever achieved. I personally believe thats what Dragon ball is lacking - Artistic flair, and it's not as if Toei is incapable of doing it, just look over at Kyousougiga.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7vreY2SYj8

Treating animation as if more money and people are going to make great animation is the definition of treating something like a cash cow. It's not quantity, it's quality. as mentioned above, the thing that sets OPM from other shows isnt it's budget - it's the people who poured their soul into the series. Not the number of people - mind you, just the love they put in - They had fun when making OPM, they had fun making Kyousougiga.

[Sodhi]

Recent precure hasn't been good either. Maybe few interesting cuts here and there but nothing that stood out.

[Lord Beerus]

Recent precure hasn't been good either. Maybe few interesting cuts here and there but nothing that stood out.

Damn. And Precure usually gets the pick of the litter when it comes to animators. The staff must really be stretched thin with Toei.

[A Man named RJ]

Recent precure hasn't been good either. Maybe few interesting cuts here and there but nothing that stood out.

Not fully caught up with precure yet, so it's most recent condition is rather unknown to me,

[SuperSaiyanBatman]

That's sad to hear about Precure, though I've been behind since halfway through HappinessCharge, so...

Just to throw in my two cents to about how Toei is kind of trying to do too many things at once, or at least in a similar situation, at the same time as their animation projects, they've also taken on some extra Tokusatsu productions this year (Kamen Rider Amazons mostly, since well, stuff like the extra Drive stuff has been being done for the past few years) which well, obviously takes more money for them to pour into, and it shows in a similar way as to pour animation in some of the suit quality for things that got the shorter end of the stick on the live action side. I hope that's not too off topic, but everything is all over the place, so hopefully the planning for the future can level things out a bit on all of these fronts.

[MozillaVulpix]

Precure seems to have some internal issues in the entire production process this year, not just the animation. http://precure.livejournal.com/3035489. ... #t50468449. Crystal S3 seems to be the only Toei show to avoid it recently.

[JulieYBM]

Precure seems to have some internal issues in the entire production process this year, not just the animation. http://precure.livejournal.com/3035489. ... #t50468449. Crystal S3 seems to be the only Toei show to avoid it recently.

Mitsuka not having storyboarded past Episode #1 is one of the biggest pieces of damning evidence. After all, Chioka Kimitoshi never storyboarded despite being credited as series director as Episode #1-46 of Dragon Ball Super. Series Director Hatano Morio hasn't storyboarded since Episode #14, either.

Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon Crystal Season III somehow got away with good enough scheduling to be half finished three months before it even began airing.

[Avok]

Toei really needs a reestructuration or better management man.

[BakaManiaHD]

YUKIHIRO KITANO ON THE NEXT EPISODE

[cuartas]

[spoiler]Rule #1 of debating animation. NEVER use stills as evidence of "bad animation" in Animation bodies break. plain and simple. Wanna Know how weak of an argument that is?
[spoiler]FMAB Way too long jaw on Roy Mustang

https://sakuga.yshi.org/post/show/5314/ ... e-fullmeta

One-Punch Man

https://sakuga.yshi.org/post/show/20726 ... e-one-punc

Or even more fun a recent cut from My Hero Academia. "All Might's not supposed to look like that"



https://sakuga.yshi.org/post/show/23828 ... ects-fight[/spoiler]


See how stupid that is when making an argument? It may not be drawn in the most detailed way, or even on model. but animation isnt designed to be looked at frame-by frame (unless you're breaking it down to take notes - in which case the other frames are equally as important) Animation is movement - the sum collection of said frames that create the illusion of movement.

You're also not factoring in time. at all. Super's schedule is abhorent - or do you think people justy draw and suddenly "poof good animation" Nope? multiple revisions of the same scene are required to get that bit of animation just right.

Speaking of why they're good - simple, they're visually interesting, they convey weight and emotion, they convey proper sense of timing, They excell at buildup, not that difficult. If you're going to say an entire cut of animation is shit because you dont like one of the frames, then you're not yet antiquated with animation, it's fiend, it's varying philosophies, and even it's core principles to even bother attempting explain it. Why is this considered good?
[spoiler][/spoiler]

Tate is a very Loose animator. He sacrifices detail to create a very fluid, almost liquid sense of movement, with an artistic flair that's actually quite difficult to come by. Anybody can draw to a style guide - What makes people like Tate, Shida, and even somebody like Wakabayashi Atsushi stand out is their ability to OWN what they're doing. And it's appreciated because it sets anime apart from Western cartoons in that it feels more like an art, rather than something that was just shit out of an assembly line using Adobe flash. Each animator has their own distinct personality, and style and it's what adds to the appeal of Japanese animation. Not evertything needs to adhere to the style guide entirely. And when something deviates it's not nessicarly "weird"

You failed to mention in those shots WHY the characters were stretched out. In one of them,Vegeta got smacked around by Hit and turned into a visual rag doll - it's way more interesting, and memorable than just showing him be knocked back a little. The faces you showed are inbetweens, they're there to help guide the movement to the next major (key) frame. Tate holds a loose face, which is technically awkward to look at - which is intentional. Whenever something looks awkward for no reason, it's bad art, but in his case that awkward face tells you that the character is either extremely emotional, or being taxed somehow.

This clear understanding of visual language is what makes him good. The fact that he pulls this off on Super's schedule makes him even better.

It's a style that can't be compared to Uchiyama because that style didn't even exist when he was working.

Also, Ajay. The loose, expressive Animation style was around during the Z era. Nowadays it's digitized but the concept still exists. I wouldnt exactly Say that Tate has crossed over into- say Toshiyuki Sato territiry (That One Punch Man clip above) where action begins to completely loosen to pure absytraction. He does keep his characters together.

Here's Wakabayashi Atsushi.
https://sakuga.yshi.org/post/show/10449 ... hting-yu_y
https://sakuga.yshi.org/post/show/10140 ... hting-runn
https://sakuga.yshi.org/post/show/5837/ ... animation-

Hell even Takaya Hirotoshi comes pretty close to it on a couple of occasions (the booru doesnt have good examples though, which sucks)
https://sakuga.yshi.org/post/show/13584 ... hirotoshi_[/spoiler]

I'm just gonna say, you mentioned the "unless you're breaking it down to take notes - in which case the other frames are equally as important"
This one lasted 1 entire second it wasn't a millisecond or something to represent fast movement, not even "movement" actually, the only thing moving in that second was goku's clothes, rather than inconsistent, why isn't hair moving as well?
Japanese anime works at 15FPS I guess? welp, 15 frames with a still image of goku and Freeza weird faces, easily noticeable, breaking the immersion of the fight entirely.

I'm a common anime watcher, it seems like this thread requires a 5 year degree in animation, otherwise you're just plain stupid and don't comprehend the greatness of X or Y animator.
But, common people are the mayority you know? and I guess people prefer to see karasawa and yamamuro style than a Tate, for "on model" sake, in fact, I'd like to see another yamamuro episode, I didn't read this entire thread, but probably you criticised ep 13 despite we saw on model characters 100% of the episode and short but nice coreography scenes, No weird faces, no cartoony hands, none of "those" frames.
I saw facebook fanpages, forums and reedit, everyone praised the animation in 13, and let space to talk about the episode itself, Tate episode (and others from shimamuki and the filler episodes except for 44) filled every discussion with complains about the animation, really annoying, but serves as an indicator of the mayority tastes, that's what I meant to say with the "in a level of a show worth to export to europe, north and south america".

So no, you didn't convinced me that Tate new style in DBS is better, especially when it's not well made (and no, for a show like dragon ball the "at least he tries..." is not enough"), If you try wanna try something new, at least do it right (the famous ep 179 supervised by Keisuke Masunaga and his "different" face expressions)

Anyway, I'm gonna get my degree, see ya in 5 years!