It's only dumb if you accept the limitations. If LC's correct, the people making the show are raking in cash. There is no reason episodes couldn't be ongoing (bi-weekly, for example) and made well in advance provided that they expanded the team and whatnot.

Except that it is impossible without some sort of hiatus. What Super desperately needs is better scheduling. Your average anime episode is usually working with about 6 weeks to complete. The ideal is 8-10. Spending more money on "more animators" isn't going to make the show look any better. There are only so many talented animators in the business and even less that are willing to work under the Series Director and Character Artist, Tadayoshi Yamamuro. And if you account for the animators that will be primarily working on the film that are currently busy with DBS (all the good ones including, but not limited to: Tate, Shida, Takahashi, and Karasawa), there's even less. Don't even get me started on the storyboarding staff and directors that would be split up, too. Doing bi-weekly episodes isn't feasible either, because Super needs to maintain that airtime on Japanese television or it loses it. It's still a kids show overseas and that Sunday morning timeslot is great.

This isn't an either X or Y kind of deal. Of course I want quality over quantity, but that doesn't mean you can't want both and wish there wouldn't be a long hiatus when there is a theoretical alternative.

Your alternative isn't really feasible. The only way to get Super back on track is to take that time off and fill Super's timeslot with another Toei anime, which is exactly what they are doing.

Quote from: Snake on January 08, 2018, 02:59:50 PM

You're kind of missing the whole "I wasn't really being serious" part.

Because you are being serious. At the risk of sounding more harsh than I mean, you know you have very little idea what you're talking about. If you weren't serious you wouldn't have challenged me after my first reply and would have just been like "Nah I was joking, I realise it's ultimately a good thing."

This was about whether you or I want there to be a hiatus in the show. I don't, because I'm enjoying it and just want it to keep going at the same rate and in the same quality. It's like saying "fuck that" to the next Star Wars movie not coming out for another 2 years, even though you well know that there's no actual way they can release it today as shooting hasn't even started yet. You can realize something is for the better and still wish it wasn't so.

That analogy sort of falls apart under scrutiny, though. Star Wars 9 hasn't come across any production issues and doesn't suffer from the essential limited staff that an anime does. Dragon Ball Super is a product that could be put together by 30 people, given enough time. But all 30 of those people are essential. Star Wars isn't like that. So when the studio has to make 2 Star Wars films over the course of 3 years, it's not that big of a deal. On the reverse, when the Super team has to make a full-fledged movie, within a year, and a weekly anime, something has to give. In this case, the anime will suffer. If the rumours turn out to be true, Toei is not willing to sacrifice quality in their show this time around.

https://twitter.com/Herms98/status/950467312141791232

"So Animedia says DBS ep.126 will air February 4th, the traditional Sunday morning (in Japan) time slot, while Animage says Wednesday, February 7th.  While odds are the Animage listing is simply a typo, theoretically it's not impossible that they might change Super's time slot."

So what is the difference between the animation here? I haven't really noticed any big drops in quality or whatever.

So essentially Yamamuro was the big-time animator on DBZ back in its hayday. He did the KA for Goku SSJ2 Vs. Majin Vegeta and SSJ3 Goku Vs. Kid Buu. He also provided the character art (the basis for how all characters will look in any given product) for several movies, including the best one: Fusion Reborn. He's responsible for all of the promo art during this period, and I would dare say he was better at drawing Dragon Ball than Toriyama was. He's responsible for stuff like this:













Notice the long jaws, curved and expressive eyes, attention to detail and very contemporary shading that really accentuate the cheekbones. Notice the lack of any real highlights alongside the faces. It's all very angular and just gorgeous. This was the golden era of Dragon Ball, and likely what everyone's new favourite animator, Yuya Takahashi, grew up on.

Over time, Yamamuro's skill as an artist really deteriorated. While a lot of the staff that worked on DBZ moved over to other Toei products like One Piece, Yamamuro never stopped "working" on Dragon Ball. And when GT finished and Dragon Ball very literally died, he just... stopped working pretty much altogether. After a few stunts here or there, Battle of Gods came out. And this is what we have now:















Look at some of these. Really look at them. There are some incredibly amateur construction issues with these poses. The expressions are lifeless, and everything lacks any sort of momentum. It's just so stiff. Look at the hair. It looks like lego. This new style is incredibly difficult for even Yamamuro himself to pull off, so you can imagine some what happens when other animators try their hand at it. Some of these next pieces are directly influenced by the original art he did for their movies, and when directly comparing them, the results... well, speak for themselves. Look at this shot he created for Movie 13 back in the day:



Now, let's compare it to the redone art for the American DVD releases:



Yeah. The list continues. Original artwork on the left, redone artwork using Yamamuro's new designs on the right:











And his current promotional art painfully contains the same pose, over and over again:







These don't have the constructural issues the others had, but that's probably because he's memorised the posing off-by-heart. Hell, take that ending shot found in the new ED of Super:



Look at the awkwardness of the pose. Goku's shoulders are way too small and the legs just don't make sense on either side of these characters. Vegeta's neck is a joke. The perspective is way, way off. Actually...



Hilariously bad.

This next image conveys the problems Yamamuro's stiff character designs have on other animators. Look at the difference between Takahashi's work (that completely throws away the current character art in favour of the older stuff that Yamamuro did in his prime) to everyone else:



Now, let's directly compare Yamamuro's Key Animation to Takahashi's:

Yamamuro:



Takahashi:



Yamamuro (top) Vs. Takahashi (Bottom):


Any complaints you see about DBS's animation are usually the fault of the character designs Yamamuro is responsible for. This is why people cream their shorts over Takahashi's art. There's a lot more to it but that's the gist. Ever since the start of the Goku Black Arc, the animation hasn't had too many dips in overall quality of animation, but the art (what the layman considers to be "animation) has been pretty shitty regardless of animation skill. The character designs are just that bad.

Ok wow that put things into perspective

If this kind of thing interests you I recommend AnimeAjay's channel. He's a really level-headed animation guru that focuses on Dragon Ball exclusively. He's not overly critical and pessimistic like your typical anime fan, but he's not a monkey mouth-breather like your typical Dragon Ball Z fan. His channel really helped me grow as an animation enthusiast. This video in particular I think you'll love:

Did Vegeta just destroy his own leg?

He does yoga. It's in one of the filler episodes and explains everything.

the thing is i'm not just comparing their anime here, i'm also throwing their OVAs and movies into the mix. I could compare toei movies to ufotable movies and you'd still see a similar disparity.

fair enough, and i'd agree with you. but i'm not sure if you're still talking about character art or actual animation at this point. the character art isn't really toei's fault at all, the animation though? absolutely. i still maintain that given the ideal work scenario, the team at Super could produce something of equal quality to the studios you suggested. there's just too much raw talent there not to. but toei just isn't as well organised as these newer/smarter studios, so we'd never see something like that.

i agree that dragonball would be much better if it were seasonal. toei should produce maybe 2 seasons a year and allow their teams to plan for the next one in between seasons. i feel like that would be better not only for the consumer, but also for their staff working on the project.

i don't even mind the weekly anime format, just give the animators enough time. Pokemon SM looks phenomenal due to their 20 week schedule. i wouldn't even necessarily ask for that, just like, 10 weeks at least would be great.

I don’t understand why Yammamoro has deteriorated so much

his old art was just so much better

i think under Nakatsuru he had to perform better but once he became the defacto head of Dragon Ball behind Toriyama he just sort of let himself go and stopped looking at his work critically. also the fact that he didn't really do anything after GT didn't help. an artist's skills can deteriorate quickly if they dom't maintain.

I wish we lived in the Dragon World and Takahashi and Tate fused into one godly animator being. Tate's nice and fluid style is good for the fast paced fight scenes while Takahashi is... well, Takahashi.

I wish we lived in the Dragon World and Takahashi and Tate fused into one godly animator being. Tate's nice and fluid style is good for the fast paced fight scenes while Takahashi is... well, Takahashi.

Takahashi is discount Shida in terms of animation. His real skill is understanding what makes Dragon Ball Z look good. If he was in charge of the character sheets it would only fascilitate Tate's animation because there would be less of a chasm between Yammy's ridgid designs and Tate's fluid motion.

It's not a fantastic comparison (because Tate didn't really come into his own until his One Piece career took off) but he did some good work on DBZ.





Oldschool commercial.

Wow the models looked pretty bad this episode, I guess they're saving their budget for the good bits

noooooo

budget has virtually no bearing on animation quality and super's episodes actually cost more money to produce than its contemporaries because of the poor scheduling

noooooo

this episode was far better than 122. wish takahashi had been put on this one instead.

surprising how good the models look all things considered. some nice motion even outside of tate. vegeta's limit breaker is a bit of an ass pull though. next episode should be interesting.

I'm bored of Jiren. He has a flat design and so far they've done nothing to make me interested in his character at all. I don't think even a plot reveal about his motivations later on could save him.