"Dragon Ball Super" Series Official Announcement & Discussion Thread

[fadeddreams5]

I wouldn't say essential. They didn't go through Gohan's childhood and he turned out... a real mess. But he didnt turn out a mess because they didnt go over his childhood.

But his training is important and shouldn't be skipped like GT, however.

I didn't mean go over his childhood and life story. lol. Nobody cares about that. I mean shift the perspective towards him during those relevant events. Basically, introduce him to the audience. They did a great job with that for Gohan, both as a kid and during the Saiyaman saga.

The very brief retelling is a great way of reminding the audience about him in a fresh new way. Then, they can skip to the training and his integration to their lives, including interactions with old and new characters, fleshing them out as well in the process. Finally, they shift away to the major plot, which doesn't need to center all around him. Basically, what you wrote is important. GT just skipped over everything and sent him straight to the sidelines before the audience got to know the guy. =P

[Lord Beerus]

Toei are more than capable of producing solidly animated shows, they just require adequate planning and staff. Even World Trigger, a show that has some truly awful looking animation, manages to get some great looking action scenes. I just hope Super is popular enough to become Toei's new baby in place of PreCure. That show gets some stunning work! It's far more consistent than any other Toei show I've seen, but even that has some bad moments.

We're probably going to go the route of One Piece, though. Some episodes will look just terrible, while the bigger moments will be respected with some decent animation. It's what I expected, and I'm pretty content with that.

It's going to be a mixed bag just like the last three series were. The jump to digital colouring and post processing doesn't alter the actual animation process established since the dawn of time. The same animators drawing on paper back then are still the basis of your shows nowadays. Again, it all requires adequate time and a talented pool of animators. There's no magic button that popped up in the past few years that turns garbage animation into gold.

I thought people were used to animation sucking in anime by now.

This makes absolutely zero sense. Anime is an all encompassing term for hundreds of thousands of works, all varying in animation quality. You can get cuts that are as fluid as any western cartoon, action as intense as can be, and scenery that is unlike anything usually found in animated media.

It varies from show to show, so there's nothing to get used to. You can certainly guess a level of quality based on a few factors; history of the studio, time between announcement and the air date, and the amount of promotional material, for example, but that's still not indicative of the quality of an entire form of media. I have no idea why you would even think that way.

Garden of Words, Shigatsu wa Kimi no Osu, Hibike! Euphonium, and so many more are just a few examples of anime that are consistently beautiful, and all made in the past few years. There's plenty of stinkers out there, but let's not throw utterly absurd comments around.

AjayLikesGaming, which animators underneath Toei's umbrella would like to see animate bits and pieces of Super? I mean, personally what I've seen so far animation from Super hasn't been bad, but it certainly could be much better.

[SMKirbyZX]

Geez people, the animation is not that bad. While I will admit that it isn't the highest of quality, it certainly isn't what some of you guys make it out to be.

[TheGmGoken]

Geez people, the animation is not that bad. While I will admit that it isn't the highest of quality, it certainly isn't what some of you guys make it out to be.

I don't care about animation. But Beerus vs that Bull Monster is damn right.. Bad. Beerus doesn't even look like he's apart of the animation but ratherrrather Photoshop or copy-paste onto an already existing animation.

[Araki]

It varies from show to show, so there's nothing to get used to. You can certainly guess a level of quality based on a few factors; history of the studio, time between announcement and the air date, and the amount of promotional material, for example, but that's still not indicative of the quality of an entire form of media. I have no idea why you would even think that way.

Garden of Words, Shigatsu wa Kimi no Osu, Hibike! Euphonium, and so many more are just a few examples of anime that are consistently beautiful, and all made in the past few years. There's plenty of stinkers out there, but let's not throw utterly absurd comments around.

You said things that actually aren't very indicative and forgot the main element there: series' length.
You mentioned a short film and two very short shows. Most studios doing those couldn't pull off a long running series like Toei or Studio Pierrot do, they would colapse after 50 episodes. In the end, those titles are actually much, much cheaper productions than a Naruto or One Piece.

Funny how you've mentioned Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso, done by the same A-1 Pictures responsible for Fairy Tail and its absolutely atrocious art/animation. That's a perfect example of how length matters more than "history of the studio" or whatever.

Still, these days even one cour shows aren't a guarantee of good animation: Wit Studio, known by Shingeki no Kyojin, struggled to make Owari no Seraph (12 episodes) half decent, and lots of action scenes were a bunch of stills. I won't even touch stuff like Gunslinger Stratos.

So yes, consistently great stuff in tv shows? That's a rarity.

Geez people, the animation is not that bad. While I will admit that it isn't the highest of quality, it certainly isn't what some of you guys make it out to be.

Maybe some of those cuts aren't even finished yet, which isn't unusual. I think some people were just eager to say that.

[Ajay]

AjayLikesGaming, which animators underneath Toei's umbrella would like to see animate bits and pieces of Super? I mean, personally what I've seen so far animation from Super hasn't been bad, but it certainly could be much better.

I think everyone (with the exception of Kei17) would absolutely love Naotoshi Shida to have a really strong presence in Super's production. His work just blows my mind, though I think it sometimes strays from what makes Dragon Ball unique. His work is very fluid, where the beams and characters move loosely, almost like water. Personally, I really love that, but I know it's not to everyone's tastes.

Other than Shida, I really enjoyed what Takeo Ide and Masahiro Shimanuki did in the latest film. In fact, most of the staff who worked on that seemed pretty talented, even if the storyboarding was pretty poor. Likewise, Yuuichi Hamano has done some great work on PreCure, also working on Battle of Gods, too. Yuki Hayashi is solid, though I have absolutely no idea what they're doing now. Last thing I saw was their work on Kekkai Sensen. Would be great if they were involved!

Either way, I have faith in Kimitoshi Chioka to work wonders! Taking a look at the parts of Battle of Gods that he storyboarded, his touch is clear as day. Nothing is really being animated other than mouth flaps, but the compositions look beautiful. Really creative angles, mixed with slight motion seems to be a favourite technique of his. It makes the most mundane scenes feel dynamic.

Geez people, the animation is not that bad. While I will admit that it isn't the highest of quality, it certainly isn't what some of you guys make it out to be.

I don't think anyone's really eternally damned it, have they? We're all picking on a second long clip of poor animation. We still have the promising Super Saiyan transformation, Trunks' okay looking punches, and some pretty consistently on-model characters. Nothing has quite screamed Sailor Moon Crystal yet! It probably seems like some people are being overly negative, but remember we have pretty much nothing else to pick at, so it's only natural that we focus on what news we're given. Sadly, the new parts aren't particularly great. Give it time, positivity will return when the topic merits it.

You said things that actually aren't very indicative and forgot the main element there: series' length.

I really don't like your tone, especially when you seem to have missed that I was simply saying anime as a whole isn't all bad. That had nothing to do with anything you've just thrown at me, but thanks, I guess?

I actually don't disagree with much of what you've said, but that really wasn't the point of my post. Bullza's implication seemed to be that anime as a medium was bad on the whole. I was merely pointing out there are plenty of shows that look great. Of course there are exceptions, and of course lengthy series are going to be inconsistent. To think otherwise would be ridiculous, but that has nothing to do with the point I was making. He was generalising, and I was proving otherwise.

Your comparisons of shows under the same studio don't really hold any weight, though. Different directors, different staff, different animators, different budgets. As I said, so many details to go by. You don't just judge by the studio's name alone. That hardly negates anything I said. If anything, that strengthens the argument that it's the details you pay attention to.

Heading to bed now. Will tackle any replies in the morning.

[Doctor.]

Well FMA BH and HXH looked consistently good and those were long shows.

[bleed0range]

I don't think th animation looks bad. DBZ had some really awful episodes. Like the one that follow Trunks slicing Freeza in half or Vegeta fighting 18 on the truck. This is higher quality then the standard episode of DBZ was.

My concern is that the best looking episodes won't look as good as the best looking episodes of DBZ, like when Gohan defeats Cell or Goku fights Kid Buu as a SSJ and so on. When you get right down to it, nothing they do these days looks as good as the old animation cel art. It had a comic feel to it and digital animation seems to have a lifeless feel to it. Lack of feeling like a physical drawing come to life. Not much can be done about that I guess.

I don't think this will be a straight up retelling of BOG btw. I think it will gloss over the events of the movie since people have seen it but it won't literally retell it. They'll probably just fill in the holes around it.

I wonder is Champa a villain? I don't think so.

[Hellspawn28]

I'm surprise no one thinks that the red oni looking monster could be a main villain? Could he be the one that Toei has been teasing about if Champa is not our first main villain.

[Retan]

I'm surprise no one thinks that the red oni looking monster could be a main villain? Could he be the one that Toei has been teasing about if Champa is not our first main villain.

I don't think it is, I think it's one of the world Beerus destroys monsters, and Beerus is toying with it before he destroys the world.

[SSJGBGoku]

Anime isn't that bad animation. We will still get a better / HD version of trailer after Kai ends on Sunday. (And animation level of movie will always be better because of more frames.)

We should be happy that we're getting a new series after 18 years.

[GokuRules987]

You guys have to understand that making anime is very hard especially if you ever tried to make one yourself. You have to literally draw like 24 pages of the characters constantly moving and 24 pages would equal to being 1 second of the entire show now multiply that by 60 seconds and you get 1440 pages in one minute and then multiply it by 22 minutes which is an average amount of time the anime runs not including opening and endings and that adds up to 31680 pages that you need to scan thru computer and animate it thru a special software just to make one episode. Dont forget that SX artists have to create sound effects of kamehameha's, explosions and foot steps of people walking and that's not even over. You also have to sink all the lip animations with what the voice actors are saying so it definitely a pretty hard job to do.

Anyway since its going to be a pretty long running show Toei needs to manage its budget and time in order to be able to release DBS weekly and be able to have it running for 100+ episodes without becoming bankrupt.

[Ajay]

That's not how any of that works. If shows were animated at 24fps, I'd be in heaven. Anime is very different to film.

[JulieYBM]

Toei Animation allows their television animation to have only 3,000 drawings per episode (other studios sometimes allow up to 4,000 for their average episodes). In-between animators 200-300 yen per drawing and can typically do fifteen drawings per day. A high number of drawings isn't necessarily necessary, though. Timing is the most important part of animation, if you can time well enough then you can really make the most out of each drawing. Iso Mitsuo developed a style of animation where he can create full animation by using only 2s, 3s, and 4s. Iso used this technique for Evangelion.

Uh, I made that gif, it's not edited. The trailer ripped from the official website is literally on the front page of Kanzenshuu, and the scene is exactly the same there as it is in the gif.

It's just bad animation. He's meant to be punching with one hand, and what you're looking at is an animator's terrible sense of perspective.

Not to mention bad compositing. The series is so rushed that the digital compositor probably didn't have any time to put the preview's shots together.

I don't know, I remember DBZ having some pretty crappy animation and even artwork. The problem with that scene is Beerus isn't moving his body and there supposed to be flying. But like I said DBZ Had some pretty crappy animation, besides RoF had a year to prepare this time they had even less time.

Um, that was 1989. This is 2015. It's been 25+ years since then. We should be able to expect them to step up their game. It's sad when certain animation from the old series from the early 90s is better than brand new animation from this year.

Improved technology doesn't necessarily improve the quality of the work. Toei has a higher output then ever before so it makes sense that the quality is going to suffer. Less time, less available talent and less available money, although the money is due to funding from sponsors more so than anything else.

It's also important to remember that few animators are all that good, anyway. Having few animation supervisors to help clean up doesn't help, either.

[GokuRules987]

Toei Animation allows their television animation to have only 3,000 drawings per episode (other studios sometimes allow up to 4,000 for their average episodes). In-between animators 200-300 yen per drawing and can typically do fifteen drawings per day. A high number of drawings isn't necessarily necessary, though. Timing is the most important part of animation, if you can time well enough then you can really make the most out of each drawing. Iso Mitsuo developed a style of animation where he can create full animation by using only 2s, 3s, and 4s. Iso used this technique for Evangelion.

yeah they basically try to put a lot of content in that single background image and maybe add some minor effects without having constantly create new one. I guess it isnt that hard if you know how transparent layers work. So does that mean animators make 36 dollars per day assuming they made 15 drawing and each of them was worth 300 yen?

[JulieYBM]

It's a shame nobody at Toei Animation seems to have any contacts with Nakazawa Kazuto. I would really like to see him do something cool for Dragon Ball. The way he draws muscles is really nice, to say nothing of his sense of timing.

Speaking of Shida, this is probably his best work on any movie. He'll probably never do something like this on a television series, though.

I don't think th animation looks bad. DBZ had some really awful episodes. Like the one that follow Trunks slicing Freeza in half or Vegeta fighting 18 on the truck. This is higher quality then the standard episode of DBZ was.

My concern is that the best looking episodes won't look as good as the best looking episodes of DBZ, like when Gohan defeats Cell or Goku fights Kid Buu as a SSJ and so on. When you get right down to it, nothing they do these days looks as good as the old animation cel art. It had a comic feel to it and digital animation seems to have a lifeless feel to it. Lack of feeling like a physical drawing come to life. Not much can be done about that I guess.

I don't think this will be a straight up retelling of BOG btw. I think it will gloss over the events of the movie since people have seen it but it won't literally retell it. They'll probably just fill in the holes around it.

I wonder is Champa a villain? I don't think so.

It's not the digital technology, it's the shitty key animators, shitty character designer, and rushed production schedule.

yeah they basically try to put a lot of content in that single background image and maybe add some minor effects without having constantly create new one. I guess it isnt that hard if you know how transparent layers work. So does that mean animators make 36 dollars per day assuming they made 15 drawing and each of them was worth 300 yen?

Backgrounds aren't reused that often, especially outside of series like Pocket Monster which might reuse cuts outside of the attack animation.

In-betweeners at smaller studios (which can't even afford to act as the main studio for a series like Toei Animation or Studio Pierrot) make about $24-25 dollars a day. The bigger studios, of course, pay more. Rookie key animators make 4,000 Japanese yen per cut and can typically complete two cuts in a day. Some animators will rush out bad work to finish more cuts in a single day. This means that the animation supervisor has to correct those drawings even more. Some key animators are just plain fast, like Iwane Masa'aki who can finish an episode episode's worth of cuts (300 cuts) in just six or eight weeks.

When Uchiyama Masayuki worked on Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball GT he personally drew most of the cuts in an episode. Of course, he sped through them because of the short time between the episodes he worked on and typically did really poor looking work.

[Noah]

I don't think th animation looks bad. DBZ had some really awful episodes. Like the one that follow Trunks slicing Freeza in half or Vegeta fighting 18 on the truck. This is higher quality then the standard episode of DBZ was.

Man, you can't just compare 90's with 2010's

I mean, of course we would expect more from animation, it's been 18 years for godness sake

[JulieYBM]

Animation has improved vastly since the 1990s, Dragon Ball simply doesn't receive much of it.

[fadeddreams5]

Has animation in mainstream anime improved since the 90s? I don't know anything about the subject, but I'd imagine with the new technology and CG, they've replaced old techniques to secure a lower cost and time investment (i.e. CG transformations in Sailor Moon, and CG snippets in DBZ movie battles). Shows look sleeker and brighter nowadays, but the movement seems so much stiffer than I remember too.

[JulieYBM]

Has animation in mainstream anime improved since the 90s? I don't know anything about the subject, but I'd imagine with the new technology and CG, they've replaced old techniques to secure a lower cost and time investment (i.e. CG transformations in Sailor Moon, and CG snippets in DBZ movie battles). Shows look sleeker and brighter nowadays, but the movement seems so much stiffer than I remember too.

Depends. Naruto Shippuuden goes through periods of good animation. Pocket Monster has improved vastly, especially the Iwane Masa'aki episodes. Toei Animation's long running series outside of Pretty Cure are the series to suffer most from a lack of good directing and action animation. Even then Happiness Charge! PreCure suffered from staff shortages, too. Shokugeki no Souma and Nisekoi both have incredible directing, but they're two cours series aimed at Otaku.

Japanese animated series actually cost more money now thanks to higher pay for staff, more CG being used, and rushed schedules necessitating more staff. Animation in Japan is made every single day of the year so the process is hugely refined, making the shorter schedules not too big of a burden, though.

CG animation is employed to do things that there is either no time to do by hand or because the director lacks the discipline to do without. Pocket Monster XY has been using a lot of CG, but at the same time this helps allow the series stay ahead of schedule despite its more complex action choreography.