Dragon Ball fans and the prejudice against Digital Animation

[Cure Dragon 255]

This topic is one that sparked my interest just now: Digital Animation is much maligned in circles of Dragon Ball fandom, but ever since listening to several of Mr Jacob YBM and many Sakuga articles on the topic, I decided to share this article discussing this prejudice and the true potential of Digital Animation.

https://washiblog.wordpress.com/2015/04 ... -movement/

[Neo-Makaiōshin]

This topic is one that sparked my interest just now: Digital Animation is much maligned in circles of Dragon Ball fandom, but ever since listening to several of Mr Jacob YBM and many Sakuga articles on the topic, I decided to share this article discussing this prejudice and the true potential of Digital Animation.

https://washiblog.wordpress.com/2015/04 ... -movement/

Great article, worth reading to all anime fans.

[Ajay]

There's a wonderful article on Makoto Shinkai that I always like to link regarding digital animation. If anyone's a perfect example of why you shouldn't scoff at digital animation, it's him.

As I like to remind people, these are all just tools; the look and style that comes as a result is down to the person behind them. This goes for anything -- CGI included. You wouldn't even notice the CG animation in KILL la KILL; it's that well done and that seamless.

A lot of fans like to oversimplify these things to the point where they just condemn an entire medium over a few bad examples. I guess that goes for anything, really.

[Kunzait_83]

I think a lot of the issue with digital animation is that while there are some really, really excellent examples of it being used well, there's just far, far too many more contrasting examples of it being used poorly and as a crutch that overwhelm and overshadow the better examples. It gets to a point after awhile where instances of digital animation being used well and properly start to seem like the oddball exceptions rather than the rule.

I think a lot of the reason for this boils down to how cheap and easy digital can make the animating process: it can instill a certain degree of laziness on a fairly widespread scale. Which is all the more compounded by the shitty economy (in both Japan and in the West) making the whole "cheap/easy/good, pick just two out of the three" dynamic that much more heavily tilted towards "cheap/easy".

When its used with care and skill, digital can certainly be breathtaking: but those instances tend to be much too few and far between. I don't blame people very much for developing a bias against it when you have to REALLY dig and carefully cherry pick to find the comparatively fewer genuinely artful uses of the tech that are out there.

Plus on top of that, there's just something to be said for the more "organic" feel of handcrafted art in general. No matter how far digital technology goes, I don't think hand drawn and painted art should ever TOTALLY become extinct entirely. Ideally, both should be able to co-exist side by side.

I'm not very fond of the "baby with the bathwater/scorched earth" attitude that a lot of tech heads tend to have about this stuff. An attitude in more tech-oriented circles of "Well we have digital, so now all this other old stuff that came before it is worthless garbage and doesn't need to exist anymore!" seemed pretty prevalent about ten years ago or so, though there's thankfully been some sensible pushback against that kind of thinking in more recent years.

Me personally, I don't think I have an inherent, fundamental dislike for digital in itself. I just think that, as has been said, it should just be thought of and used as simply another tool in the kit and nothing more. But for a long while now its been provoking a lot of extreme uses and reactions towards it, where some people wield it like a sledgehammer rather than a scalpel and over rely on it with an "Ooh! Shiny new toy!" zealotry: and the often crappy results of that kind of misuse pushes a lot of other people into scapegoating the technology itself, coming down against it entirely in favor of arguing that only hand-drawn animation is good and proper 100% of the time. This very same idea also goes for the whole "CGI vs Practical Effects" dichotomy in live action film.

As I said, in an ideal world we'd be using both together with care and with proper regard to where they both seem appropriate.

[Bansho64]

I agree with what Kunzait said above. I don't think fans are upset about digital animation, but how it's been used currently with Dragon Ball media. When you analyze Dragon Ball digital animation, there is a lot of bad along with some good. Also, forgive me if I'm wrong but I was under the assumption that this is the process of animating nowadays https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MdzjqOuO_Ig

[kei17]

The problem with DB's digital animation is that Toei doesn't use appropriate filters and effects that can add atmospheres to footage.

Analog cel animation has "details" then regarded as noise which arise through film shooting processes, such as film grain, frame jitter, uneven colors, cel shadows, directly carbon copied pencil lines, etc. Digital animation does not naturally have such extra details, so it can look very artificial and lifeless without additional effects such as color gradation, camera shake, texture and whatnot. Toei is very cheap that normally they don't bother to use these effects for non-theatrical anime, so the DB fans have a bad impression of digital animation and they tend to miss the "detailed" look of cel animation on film. Digital animation can have rich atmospheric details and we did see it in the opening to Ultimate Tenkaichi. It's just a matter of Toei's cheapness.

Also, less detailed and off-model drawings in the digital era, especially Yamamuro's, doesn't help. Art styles and skills have almost nothing to do with animation technologies, but when it comes to the DB franchise, the drop in animation quality happened at the same time as the analog-to-digital shift, so people tend to inappropriately associate these essentially separate occurrences with each other.

[JulieYBM]

I think a lot of the issue with digital animation is that while there are some really, really excellent examples of it being used well, there's just far, far too many more contrasting examples of it being used poorly and as a crutch that overwhelm and overshadow the better examples. It gets to a point after awhile where instances of digital animation being used well and properly start to seem like the oddball exceptions rather than the rule.

I think a lot of the reason for this boils down to how cheap and easy digital can make the animating process: it can instill a certain degree of laziness on a fairly widespread scale. Which is all the more compounded by the shitty economy (in both Japan and in the West) making the whole "cheap/easy/good, pick just two out of the three" dynamic that much more heavily tilted towards "cheap/easy".

When its used with care and skill, digital can certainly be breathtaking: but those instances tend to be much too few and far between. I don't blame people very much for developing a bias against it when you have to REALLY dig and carefully cherry pick to find the comparatively fewer genuinely artful uses of the tech that are out there.

Darned near all of the old techniques used with cel-painted animation were ported over to the digital age. The ones that were not are obviously the ones that rely on physical film stock or the like. Even then a lot of that stuff can be replicated via post-processing.

Plus on top of that, there's just something to be said for the more "organic" feel of handcrafted art in general. No matter how far digital technology goes, I don't think hand drawn and painted art should ever TOTALLY become extinct entirely. Ideally, both should be able to co-exist side by side.

I'm not very fond of the "baby with the bathwater/scorched earth" attitude that a lot of tech heads tend to have about this stuff. An attitude in more tech-oriented circles of "Well we have digital, so now all this other old stuff that came before it is worthless garbage and doesn't need to exist anymore!" seemed pretty prevalent about ten years ago or so, though there's thankfully been some sensible pushback against that kind of thinking in more recent years.

Me personally, I don't think I have an inherent, fundamental dislike for digital in itself. I just think that, as has been said, it should just be thought of and used as simply another tool in the kit and nothing more. But for a long while now its been provoking a lot of extreme uses and reactions towards it, where some people wield it like a sledgehammer rather than a scalpel and over rely on it with an "Ooh! Shiny new toy!" zealotry: and the often crappy results of that kind of misuse pushes a lot of other people into scapegoating the technology itself, coming down against it entirely in favor of arguing that only hand-drawn animation is good and proper 100% of the time. This very same idea also goes for the whole "CGI vs Practical Effects" dichotomy in live action film.

As I said, in an ideal world we'd be using both together with care and with proper regard to where they both seem appropriate.

Japanese animation is still hand-drawn. Only one or two outliers actually use automated tweens, like Yuasa Masa'aki's Ping Pong series. Most animators still draw on paper, but even those that use tablets and pens to draw in programs like Flash still do it by hand, like Ryo-Chimo.

Japan has been extremely delicate in their use of digital post-production. Series like Noein or Shinbou Akiyuki's The Soul Taker are a great example of both the birthing pains of early digital and the beginning of the new generation of animators. Directors especially have been improving their understanding and application of post-processing, especially Shinkai Makoto. The one-off animated commercial Crossroad features incredible use of post-processing to simulate sunlight and camera lens dust. Suzuki Hirofumi did similar for a shot in his Naruto Shippuuden Opening #15.


The 'prejudice' against digital animation comes from Dragon Ball fans not being fans of animation, let alone other series in general. Dragon Ball is cheap, disposable trash that gets no favor from its main studio and has had nowhere in the way of proper directing or animation supervision in its recent history. Fans see Dragon Ball and think it is reflective of 'digital animation', knowing nothing more and willing even less to learn.

[ParkerAL]

As much I love the grainy texture of a good ole' hand-painted cel, it is pretty silly to knock digital animation as inferior.

Heck, the French cartoon Wakfu is largely animated in Flash, and it looks pretty great, all things considered.

[jjgp1112]

It's exclusively a Dragon Ball fan thing and a misguided attempt at finding the follies of the modern style. DBZ promo art in the early-mid 00s were all done digitally as well, but still drawn in the '90s art style, and so there weren't any complaints back then.

[gogeta97]

It's exclusively a Dragon Ball fan thing

I sincerely hope you aren't suggesting that only Dragon Ball fans complain about digital animation. Because if so, trust me you're very wrong.


As a pretty big animation fan in general I've never had a problem with digital(although I've seen it used quite poorly and lazily in American and especially Canadian shows)because in my eyes as long as it's keeping 2D animation alive I won't object too much. However I honestly think that Toriyama's style really just doesn't translate well into digital. Even in Battle Of Gods and Fukkatsu No F it just looks very...fake and plastic to me.

[Wezenheim]

However I honestly think that Toriyama's style really just doesn't translate well into digital. Even in Battle Of Gods and Fukkatsu No F it just looks very...fake and plastic to me.

That's due to a lot of things not necessarily a result of the movies being produced digitally, like Yamamuro's new lackluster character designs. You can make Dragon Ball look good or feel like the classic series in digital if you really wanted to. The 2008 special, for example, looks pretty pleasant to me. Not perfect (especially the Super Saiyan hair color) , but a step up from the movies and Super in my opinion.

[Theophrastus]

I wonder if people would still have nearly as many issues with digital coloring in DB if the modern character designs weren't so damn shiny-looking.

[Kunzait_83]

I wonder if people would still have nearly as many issues with digital coloring in DB if the modern character designs weren't so damn shiny-looking.

That's been an issue even going back to GT (which wasn't done digitally). Since around then there's been a tendency for Toei animators to go for this "wrapped in cellophane" or "plastic people" texture to the characters' skin tones. Its been there since the tail-most end of the pre-digital era (GT mainly, along with some small few bits of very, very late-Boo era promo art), but digital has certainly not helped it and if anything has exacerbated the aesthetics' ugliness that much more, with the "film grain" look of GT helping to at least partially mask or minimize it up to a point. Its pretty hideous looking in general though, and modern digital technology only worsens it (but isn't the root cause of it).

I'd say it really first became a thing with DB around maybe early 1996 or so?

The 10th Anniversary movie is the only thing off the top of my head where those "hardcandy coated" skin tones were still there but managed to not really be too much of a distraction or a factor that lessened the look of the animation to any substantial degree (largely because the animation there was otherwise so incredibly at the top of its game above and beyond the norm).

Overall though it looks awful and only looks less awful when there's some other factor in the animation that's working to help mitigate it. Digital on the other hand has a similar effect on it that fluorescent public restroom lights have on a real person's skin: it makes every flaw clear as day and readily apparent.

It's exclusively a Dragon Ball fan thing and a misguided attempt at finding the follies of the modern style. DBZ promo art in the early-mid 00s were all done digitally as well, but still drawn in the '90s art style, and so there weren't any complaints back then.

1) Finding fault in digital animation is FAR from exclusive to Dragon Ball fandom. Its been an ongoing debate that's raged across just about all of animation fandom, both Western and Japanese. This is just on-its-face incorrect.

The fan controversy/debate surrounding digital animation has only now found its way to Dragon Ball since DB in animation was over and done with since 1997 and has largely sat out the vast lion's share of the digital era until relatively recently. Fans have been living for a VERY long time on animation largely ranging from the mid 80s to the mid 90s for the better part of over 15 years until more newer stuff started getting made on the regular not too long ago.

Part of what helps muddies this, at least on the Western end of things, is also because its become very, VERY easy for dub-era and later U.S. fans to reflexively/instinctively/subconsciously post-date Dragon Ball in their minds as being relatively newer and later than it actually is: still viewing it on a primal gut-level as a late 90s/early 2000s series rather than a late 80s/early 90s series, sometimes even after intellectually/consciously knowing better.

2) Can't speak for anyone else, but I certainly am not as partial to the early/mid 00s promo art on a level of pure personal preference. That's another reason, apart from general rarity and preservation of the older artwork, that the tumblr blog in my sig is "80s90sdragonballart" and not "2000sdragonballart" or just "dragonballart". I'm sure I can't be the ONLY person who was never too terribly wild about a lot of the 00s artwork (which to me often ranged from inoffensive and somewhat passable at best to gaudy, tacky, and chintzy at worst).

[Akira]

Some excellent insights from you, Kunzait_83. Right on the mark, and quite the way I feel about most of what is being discussed. I had a bit of a speed bump getting into the newer animation styles, but I have accepted that it has become the norm. A "compromise" on my part, if you will, because the other alternative would truly turn me off completely. By this, I must point to Disney, who only recently have started using some 2D animation again in their products. Be it digital or otherwise, yet they still have a love affair with all things related to their Pixar studios, which in and of itself is a great asset to them, when used where it makes sense. Toy Story, and other, newer IPs benefit from the full 3D looking all digital animation.

Where do I draw the line? When I watch children's programming with my nephew, and see these 3D rendered Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck characters that look lifeless, and robotic. This is probably due to the smaller budget for a child's edutainment show, but I still can't help but hate the side view of Mickey in these programs where his character just doesn't translate as well in a 3D space. In 2D animation, there is one ear forward, and one ear a bit further back, and it just looks fluid and full of life. When you think about it, Goku's hair works much the same way as Mickey's ears, and always looks "off" in video game scenes that use pre-rendered 3D models when he faces to the right.

So, I accept that digital 2D animation is still a relatively newer concept, and quite a change from the older hand drawn frames of yesteryear. It is different, but acceptable, as it is probably cheaper to animate this way in the 21st century. I don't love it yet, but I will allow it to grow on me, because when I think of the possibility of 3D models with these characters, I don't think I'd be able to consume the new content at all.

I agree that the older artwork was hands down better, but, times have changed, and at least what we're getting is still 2D. I'm not defending the new style, but I am saying that it could definitely be much worse had they gone a different direction with it. As was pointed out by others, this is the manner in which the newer generation of animators operate. Given time and practice, maybe it will continue to improve, much in the way hand drawn did over the years. Look at some of the newer Warner Brothers DC Universe movies that are all digital 2D, some of those newer animated Batman movies are superbly done. I think the medium has some potential, at the very least. The newest arc of Super looks to be harnessing some of the strengths of this style as well.

[Hero]

I love all animation and art, as long it's done well. I love the animation in 2D movies like The Lion King, and the animation in 3D movies like Zootopia. I also love the art in Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z, and love the art and animation in One Punch Man which is more modern. Just wow me with it, and I'll like it. Most people are this way. If the art in Super was more consistently good and the fights had the energy and impact they had in DBZ, then there'd be a lot less complaints.

[SingleFringe&Sparks]

I don't hate Digital animation. I actually do prefer it over cels when its actually done to emphasize the technology's strengths, because of how clean can look. which most non-Toei related anime within the last few days has done. The only thing I hate with Toei's animation is that they cut way too many corners and prioritize bright colours, over detail and very rarely ever capture the multi-toned shading style used in the older movies where the cel animation was at its peak. Most of the modern DB animated things lack so much detail, and volume the old characters had because of it. As well as actual animation. I'm no expert but its blatantly obvious when they use less frames for movement of the characters or their body parts which in the end makes them look stiff and robotic. Super only made this obvious from how bad it looks. With Cel animations, you kind of had to make sure you used multiple frames just for fluidity of motion at all.