I just re-watched the preview of 481 in HD. The first scene with Ace and Luffy falling is probably Kenji Kuroyanagi. Looks like his style, I guess we will get to see great scenes next week. Now I'm extremely interested which animator will do the final scene of 482, I hope it's Tomita or Ishigami.
@o-chan:
I have NEVER known an anime series as long as One Piece have consistently good animation throughout. Actually, I feel that Studio Pierrot (Yu Yu Hakusho, Bleach, Naruto) has a far better record for having great animation for long running series.
One Piece didn't even have good animation in the first 200 ep that makes you go WOW, or even worth re-watching. It was lifeless, flat and average. Skypea the final arc of the old style, is a good example of One Piece's lack of good animation.
@o-chan:
Still, they've run into the same problems One Piece has but I'm not sure if the near theatrical/OAV quality that Naruto reaches ,at times, fits One Piece.
Great Animation doesn't fit One Piece? This doesn't make sense, and doesn't justify Toei cheapness.
But on the other hand, I believe that Toei won't produce such an episode like 167 of Shippuuden, cause there haven't been a continuous fight that lasted a couple of chapters without any interruptions. But there is always the awesome filler fights that One Piece lacks. Anyway, I'm not asking for a 167, cause that would never happen. But I would appreciate it if Toei brings talented people to work on One Piece.
@o-chan:
What Toei does do right is they may be cheap, but I've never seen them drop the ball on any key scenes or episodes on any of their long running shows.
Luffy Vs. Garp sucked, IMO. And that's just one example. I'm sure we all agree that it was important.
@o-chan:
The problem with One Piece is that it has run into "Shonen Lag" where the series becomes a serial of drawn out episodes where the fans (especially those who read the manga) are waiting for key "moments". Naruto and Bleach balanced this out by having half year (13-26 episodes) and year long (usually around 40) filler arcs to place all the mediocre animators. Toei decided that One Piece can't go more than three months with filler so they have to use the lesser animators in canon episodes.
I agree with the first sentence. We know now how important it is to have filler, and One Piece doesn't even need as much amount of filler as Naruto and Bleach, since it's chapters are rich with content. It's just that the war arc had less content in each chapter, and Toei made a bad decision by not making any long filler before Shabondy. And I'm sure Toei wants to get to the strawhats re-union as soon as possible, hence why we didn't get any filler during Amazon Lilly-War arc.
@o-chan:
Still, One Piece's animation quality seems to teeter a fine line between "okay" animation and great animation and that's mostly because of the newer style. In the older style during the Koizumi era the animation may have been simpler but it knew how to use its effect well. That was kind of lost when the animation upgraded but gradually the animators refined their style and in the end we see stuff like the eye candy moments at the end of the last episode. I do kind of wish the balance from the early Water Seven episodes was maintained but once again, all long running series have their hills and valleys.
Not because of the newer style, more like because there are some talented animators that are currently working on the show, even though they are few compared to the rest of the normal animators.
A good example is ep 197, it have an awesome scene at the end with Zoro falling to the sea. And that's the old style, and it looked awesome cause the animator was talented and is one of the big animators. Makes me wonder why would they use him on a filler ep when the canon scenes needs animation as good as that. But that's Toei.
In Koizumi era One Piece didn't have anything worth mentioning, save for some Maniwa episodes. Makes you wonder if One Piece started as a low budget series.
Eye candy moments last for few minutes, then we are back to average animation. Cause there are only few good animators working on One Piece.
@o-chan:
I'm going to be honest here, I have never thought Sabaody was the best animated arc. I think all the key episodes (Luffy punching Charlos, episodes 400 and 405) were animated decently enough but overall the arc was kind of average in terms of the series. It wasn't bad but nothing about the arc screamed out to me. The Oars fight in Thriller Bark was the peak to me and Marineford seems to getting there without quite hitting that epic ceiling. But after the first few episodes Marineford has had a LOT of eye candy moments. It's stuff like that that makes it easier to sell (not literally) One Piece to friends who are into stuff like FMA and whatever new hotness in anime is out there.
Still, ultimately, I don't think its the animation team that's hurting Marineford I just think its the direction and the "one chapter an episode" format that's making things a little harder to endure.
O-chan
I would like to see something on the level of 404 or 405, even though half of 405 sucked. The other half is some of the best animation One Piece ever had.
Thriller Bark had many great episodes, and a good example how the big guys like Inoue and Tate gets many good animators to work with them. But I can't say TB was the best cause, more than half of it looked like shit.
Overhead the Bakhahtross hangs motionless upon the air
