Welcome back to another Animation Breakdown.
We are so close to the end of Super now, it's kind of hard to believe.
After a few shaky weeks as far as animation goes, last week brought us back around to
the good stuff, with fan-favourite Shuuichiro Manabe making a brief appearance to round
things off.
This week we're continuing the trend of well-animated episodes, and while the high
points aren't quite as high as what Manabe brought us last week, the overall average
is significantly higher thanks to a nice array of talented animators.
Not too surprising considering Yashima solo'd last week, but worth keeping in mind.
The first half comes to us supervised by Tsutomo Ono.
Who, despite being on the series since episode 60, has been a bit of a mystery, with the
two animators on his team that were familiar to me - Taiichiro Ohara and Shin Young-soon
– not taking part in this episode.
Thankfully that's not quite the end of the world as far as this video goes.
Miyako Tsuji, the chief animation supervisor, is all over this episode correcting huge chunks
of artwork, and I have to say I'm seriously impressed by her output here.
The edge to her drawings that seemed to be missing from previous episodes is back, and
it's doing wonders for Vegeta in this episode.
It's maybe not quite as good as some of my favourite Vegeta shots of hers from the
Future Trunks arc, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't all about what she's doing
this week.
A great showing from her that means I don't have to rack my brain trying to work out what
the other supervisor, Yasuhiro Namtame, looks like either.
On to the animation then, this first half is a little bit inconsistent.
It opens up with Toppo vs #17, which is reasonably well done – there's a great sequence of
17 running away from Toppo's blasts which I think might be my favourite cut in the episode.
It's got some absolutely gorgeous effects work, and I think what's sort of bittersweet
about it is that Toei's compositing team forgot to blur one plume of smoke, so the
lovely detailed effects are on full display for a split second.
Comparing it to the other shots that weren't quite so lucky to escape the blur, and I'm
sure you can see why I'm so vehemently against the practise.
It really destroys the detail, and you'll see this with one scene in the second half
especially.
While that scene was great in spite on that, I can't say the same for what follows.
There's a lengthy period of action here that's really poorly done.
Toppo firing his blasts is really just a still with some screenshake added, and when you
stabilise the shot, you can see it's a pretty big corner-cut.
I'd normally waive this away because it's pretty inconsequential on the whole, but it
really is pretty extensive – it carries right through to where Freeza chimes in with
the same thing.
When combined with the reused scenes and the digital effects work, it's an unfortunate
blemish in the middle of this quality sandwich.
And I call it that because right afterwards, the effects god Kenji Miuma's turn rolls
around, as he animates the tail end of this section, leading into Goku and Vegeta vs Jiren.
I really can't understate just how beautiful his smoke is.
Effects work often goes undervalued in anime, but interesting shapes and dynamic smoke behaviour
isn't easy to animate, but he does so effortlessly.
I love this section where the beam is whipping against the smoke.
It's not super complex, but it feels really premium thanks to those great shapes.
Moving on, Goku and Vegeta against Jiren is yet another example of what I spoke about
last week with Nikaido's contribution.
Looped or limited animation is not bad animation, it's entirely down to how it's executed,
and I think Miuma's done a wonderful job here.
Although it's looped and although it's not animated with many frames, you get this
feeling that the two characters are stylishly rotating around Jiren thanks to the way he
poses and moves the characters between each frame.
It's very effective conservative animation, and with little moments like Jiren throwing
his beam breaking up the loop, it comes together nicely without making the limited approach
stand out in any meaningful way.
Again, it's like I said with Nikaido last week, and again with Shida's work in 110
and 95.
It can be frustrating when good animators don't have the time to deliver scenes with
stacks of movement, but their abilities will always allow them to excel over others, regardless.
That might sound obvious – good animators are always better than mediocre animators
– but I've seen unfortunate trends of people devaluing strong limited work because
they know they're capable of doing better.
That might be the case, but a scene being limited does not make it bad, in the same
way a scene with lots of movement isn't always more competently executed than a limited
approach.
I think the anime Hand Shakers sure proved that one for us.
If you value your eyes, I'd suggest avoiding it.
Anyway, with that tangent out of the way, I wanna touch on the storyboarding in this
episode.
The first half's board comes to us from Yoshitaka Yashima.
If you've been watching my videos for a while now, you'll know I'm usually a big
fan of Yashima's storyboards.
They're typically filled with interesting angles, and do a nice job of showcasing scale.
Unfortunately, that's not quite the case with his board in this first half – it's
a little bit flat, and the action isn't framed in particularly interesting ways, either.
It feels really small and by the numbers, which is so unusual for him.
Although boards are done well in advance of episode animation, I can only imagine his
schedule was probably knocked a little out of whack by this coming so soon after his
own episode, especially considering just how many boards he's done lately.
The second half's board, however, is pretty damn fantastic, and it comes from Tadayoshi
Yamamuro.
I have to say, I'm really surprised and impressed by what he's come up with here.
We all know my thoughts on Resurrection F's very amateur and flat storyboarding, which
was of course his first foray into that field.
His board for the Future Trunks arc special was a significant improvement, but with it
being so heavily referenced from the manga, it was hard to really say whether he'd improved
in any meaningful way.
This definitely confirms it, though.
This is one dynamic board that bests Yashima's efforts in pretty much every way.
He's got some very creative angles going on here, and the scale is definitely realised
very nicely.
I do think there are areas where he falls back on flat compositions, but I'd be lying
if I said this wasn't a significant step up over anything he's shown us before.
I'm now quite curious to see how he evolves in this role in the future – was this a
bit of a luck or is he actively learning?
It'd be interesting to see him transition from an animation role to a directorial one
permanently.
Back to the animation, this second half kicks off with Vegeta vs Toppo, which I think may
come from Jin Inaba.
This guess is based entirely on process of elimination as you'll soon see.
It's several minutes long, Inaba's the top credited key animator on the episode,
and the rest of the scenes seem pretty easy to identify, so I can't imagine who else
this would be from if not him.
Just a guess, but there you go.
At the tail end of his scene, it looks like Tu Yong-ce takes over as Vegeta punches Toppo
into the rocks.
You can see Tu's smoke effects, which look pretty much identical to his scene in 122.
It's a great little cut, actually.
There's a good chunk of well executed movement, with some neat smears, and a nice bit of the
on-model character art we've come to expect from him.
There's a lot of on-model work scattered sporadically throughout this episode actually,
so I do think Yamamuro played a part in tidying things up, particularly since Namatame, the
supervisor of this half, hasn't demonstrated a particularly strong ability on his work
on the series so far.
Next up, as Vegeta starts up his suicide-but-not-suicide attack, Kenta Yokoya steps in.
Yokoya's a superstar freelance animator with great ties to Studio Bones.
We last saw him do a very tiny scene at the end of episode 116, thanks to Ken Otsuka,
and now he's back presumably of his own volition, doing a very similar scene.
It's pretty limited and effects based, but showcases his trademark debris and smoke.
Unfortunately, it's also the scene that suffers the most thanks to the overzealous
blurring I mentioned earlier.
Instead of us enjoying the lovely shapes that fans of his work are used to, we're left
with a bit of an incomprehensible smeary mess.
It still has the impact the scene needs, but as far as respecting the effort put into the
drawings, it's pretty depressing.
But that's about it as far as noteworthy animation goes.
This was a bit of strange episode for me.
It was written by Ayumu Hisao who's a pretty horrible Dragon Ball writer – he last handled
episode 119, which if you remember was the very disconnected one just after Universe
6 was erased.
I think this suffered similar issues, actually.
After Freeza hit the deck last week, having him pop back up again for a split second felt
very strange.
And again, with how few opponents are left, it's bizarre that this is being written
so episodically.
In spite of the animation this week being pretty satisfactory, I will say that I'm
still not 100% optimistic about the state of the production at the moment.
This episode was still filled with a good chunk of BANK animation.
From the recap after the recap at the start, to the Final Flash from last week, and of
course, the overly lengthy flashback of Vegeta's sacrifice.
These are all ways of saving time, and many of them are clearly not there by choice.
I do feel like we're on up part of the curve now, so I expect the episodes to get stronger
and stronger from here on out, but it's probably not going to be smooth sailing.
I just hope this all makes some sort of sense by the time Super ends.
But that's it from me for now.
Let me know down below how you felt about today's episode, and this time, I'd like
to hear about your thoughts in terms of story too.
I know this episode has been pretty divisive, so I'm curious to hear where you guys stand
on it.
As always, be sure to rate the video, subscribe if you're new, and I will see you next time.
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