luffy gear 4 reminded me of kumadori from cp-9 (one that fought chopper)
after transform made me laugh alongside doflamingo
726: ''Gear Fourth! The Amazing Bound Man!''
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THe more amazing something is, the harder it's to animate… In the end there is nothing but disappointment. Animations of the Boundman looks nothing like bouncy rubber.
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But we are discussing the episode. There's no need to compare with the manga. You just need to look at the other fight scenes Toei has done well in the past like Luffy vs Blueno, or recently, like Vergo vs Smoker, compare with this episode and you'll see why some us of think most of the fight was underwhelming. This episode was supposed to highlight Gear Fourth's destructive impact, power and blinding speed, but much of what was shown here left me wanting more, so much more.
Honestly I'm supposed at the negativity.
I'm not a fan of the anime so I rarely ever watch it sans fights and Bellamy scenes.
But I've been pretty dissapointed with the art and fight choreography in the OP manga lately, so while in literally every other fight including the ones you listed I preferred the manga, but I'm loving this, it's enhancing the fight for me and might make it one of my favorites.
The art was wonky here and there but the sound effects, voice work, added fight filler, and how they displayed the rubber was all great to me.
As well as the music.
Kong gun lacked a little impact though, imo. -
This one seemed to have real inconsistency in its animation. The A-unit stuff was rather mediocre, while the B-unit stuff (almost exclusively Bound-Man moves) looked great. Pacing was tolerable, though not as good as I'd like and the beginning sagged. Also the direction was pretty bland overall, aside from the Shida scenes. A better director could have punched this up to another level. Though it wasn't bad
Also, moreso in the anime, Luffy's arm seems to have stretched longer than it ever has in the entire series during his Python move. Like it could have reached the other side of the island. Guess I'll chalk that up to the perspective.
Oh, also Luffy's Kabuki-like announcement of his Gear and the beach ball sound effect were a nice touch
THe more amazing something is, the harder it's to animate… In the end there is nothing but disappointment. Animations of the Boundman looks nothing like bouncy rubber.
The bouncing animation did seem fairly lacking. At least when Luffy wasn't attacking. Though it was a typical Toei budget element that I wasn't too bothered with.
And Luffy apparently took the time to find his sandals and put them back on just to kick DD in the face. Lol.
The greatest manga plot-hole…finally answered!! Soon we will get an extra flashback showing just how important those sandals are
Seriously…what the hell happened with the "Blueno vs Luffy"/"Lucci vs Luffy" quality?
You've been away from the series a looong time, haven't you? These days, his is considered above average.
Though to be fair, there were some earlier episodes of Dressrosa that were more impressive (and others that were far, far worse…).
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I don´t know how much time they will be showing us the birdcage shrinking in the next couple of episodes, but iam afraid.
Bouncingman was amazing, worth every second of animation(at least when you were still be screaming in joy after those attacks and not checking the animation in between thse moments) :wub: -
@Mr.:
This one seemed to have real inconsistency in its animation. The A-unit stuff was rather mediocre, while the B-unit stuff (almost exclusively Bound-Man moves) looked great. Pacing was alright, though the beginning kinda sagged. Also the direction was pretty bland overall, aside from the Shida scenes. A better director could have punched this up to another level. Though it wasn't bad
Fukazawa is the current Series Director of One Piece anime. In other words, he can be considered as the top among all episode directors. And the Fukazawa will become the director of Movie 13 or Movie 14 for sure.
You've been away from the series a looong time, haven't you? These days, his is considered above average.
Though to be fair, there were some earlier episodes of Dressrosa that were more impressive (and others that were far, far worse…).
I'm afraid this episode can be considered above average among the whole series.
In 2006, Fuji TV nearly chose to cancel the anime, and indeed the anime staff suffered a really bad time during time that they even couldn't do what they want to do. For example, if you re-watch #264, you may find that the animation in the last few minutes were just incredibly awful, although it's such an important episode that directed by the SD himself.
Many people think W7/EL Arc was done very well mainly because they hadn't become manga readers when they were watching those episodes. Though this may sounds unbelievable, there were also some negative attitudes towards the Gear 2nd animation 10 years ago, just like how some people complain Gear 4th animation.:wassat:
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the impact of of luffy kong gunning doflamingo flying from the palace to the street was a bit slower than i thought as well. when i saw that in the manga i Always imagined that happened in the blink of an eye, around a second! also the way he flew of was also different that i thought!
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Could it have been better? Yes, Yes, and Yes.
Was it an epic episode? Yes, Yes, and Yes.
Why there were dislikes? Because their expectations were way toooooooooooooooooo high. -
! I kinda figure that Luffy would eventually. I don't want to know how. LOL.
! He punches really hard.You know , like he always does.
Also loved the first punch and dropkick to the face.Culverin was just a tad bit too long tho.They should have kept it a bit shorter.
But that dropkick was just soooooo satisfying -
That was pretty good! The dragged out beginning showing the destruction of the town from the birdcage aside. Even still, that part had a piece of music I hadn't heard before, and really liked.
The part where Doflamingo was punched down to the town didn't have as much impact as the manga, IMO, but I still enjoyed it!
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Could it have been better? Yes, Yes, and Yes.
Was it an epic episode? Yes, Yes, and Yes.
Why there were dislikes? Because their expectations were way toooooooooooooooooo high.Yes 8.0/10 for me
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Fantastic animation but I still have a problem with Shida. He doesn't insert enough frames into his looping animation (you can tell instantly when the fire appears moving too fast), it's all messy looped animation at a rapid pace, sure it looks more detailed and fast than the rest of the animation seen in One Piece, however there's a lot more you can do to give the illusion of speed rather than drawing fast flailing lines everywhere. The sound effects during the transformation have been heard so much already, it didn't sync with Shida's animation, especially the looped mouth movement when Luffy says 'Gear Forth'. They really overdid the Kabuki feel, hell it was like Kumadori made a comeback.
If this was pre-timeskip Luffy's hair would be as black as his Haki, it really does feel like all the colors are washed out now in One Piece but Gear Forth is one of those rare times it works because of contrasting colors. Still inconsistent because sometimes you see shots of his hair appearing just as the same black as the Haki.
Luffy wasn't the only one with a visual transformation….
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Could it have been better? Yes, Yes, and Yes.
Was it an epic episode? Yes, Yes, and Yes.
Why there were dislikes? Because their expectations were way toooooooooooooooooo high.I disagree. My problem isn't that it's less than expected, but that Gear 4 animations looks clunky and fake to boot. Watching the crap just makes my brain to keep signalling to me that it's fake, can't shallow any bite of it.
It doesn't take a big budget to make a credible and fluid animation. There are no 2 ways around it, the animators drawing it just lacks neccesary qualities or had little to no time to do it properly. But since it's main one of main character's attacks then the animator crew don't have excuse to fail this when they'll can expect to have need for reusing them many times in future, but now they'll either repeat same crappy animations or have to redraw everything from scratch.
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Was kind of hoping they would use the OST from Luffy vs Blueno for the moment Kong Gun smashed Doflamingo
The hits could've been snappier and the pace could've been pushed faster to give the feel that Doflamingo was overwhelmed IMO, but overall it was good.
Really enjoyed the transformation animation.
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I disagree. My problem isn't that it's less than expected, but that Gear 4 animations looks clunky and fake to boot. Watching the crap just makes my brain to keep signalling to me that it's fake, can't shallow any bite of it.
It doesn't take a big budget to make a credible and fluid animation. There are no 2 ways around it, the animators drawing it just lacks neccesary qualities or had little to no time to do it properly. But since it's main one of main character's attacks then the animator crew don't have excuse to fail this when they'll can expect to have need for reusing them many times in future, but now they'll either repeat same crappy animations or have to redraw everything from scratch.
Okay, okay, it was crap. I was stupid enough to like this crap.
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interesting, Luffy does indeed has his sandals back on during Rhino Schneider.
manga chapter 785 also has Luffy wearing them again during the first panel of page 7 (using mangareader)
also wearing sandals chapter 786 page 11…
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Awful. Too much exaggeration and added stuff. When he blows air into his muscles there none of that trembling, the impact of the first kong gun is lacking, he flies by kicking the air in intervals of 2 sec or so, not as in this episode where its almost instantaneous and he shouldn´t be standing in mid air like he could hover as an helicopter. His culverin and python don´t extend that much either. They are messing up Oda's work IMO
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Speaking of budget, all what I can say is that this episode was a high budget one. So was the last episode, but #725 was heavily suffered because of the tight schedule.
And… No matter like this episode or not, please never call it crap or shit. One of my friends involved in this episode and he even couldn't have a good sleep because of the heavy work. Neither could other staff even Mr. Fukazawa. All the staff wanted was to make an episode that people could be satisfied with. I believe it's not polite to abuse others' work.
By the way, I still didn't know why many people here didn't like this episode, though it gained a lot of praises in Japan. Talking about culture gaps.
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Speaking of budget, all what I can say is that this episode was a high budget one. So was the last episode, but #725 was heavily suffered because of the tight schedule.
And… No matter like this episode or not, please never call it crap or shit. One of my friends involved in this episode and he even couldn't have a good sleep because of the heavy work. Neither could other staff even Mr. Fukazawa. All the staff wanted was to make an episode that people could be satisfied with.
By the way, I still didn't know why many people here didn't like this episode, though it gained a lot of praises in Japan. Talking about culture gaps.
I actually don't watch anime because it's been long since I've reached point where I've grown tired from noticing all of quirks and limitations common in longer serialized anime. Sometimes I go back to see how the great scenes are animated, but it just seems that awesomeness of the scene is directly tied to how well it's animated, the better it is in manga the less likely it'll be decent in anime. Well, maybe I shouldn't have complained since I already was expectining to see bad animations before starting to watch the episode, but generally my experience is that setting my expectations low results me in getting pleasently suprised when I get proven wrong. Or maybe the problem is that my expectations just weren't low but plain negative.
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interesting, Luffy does indeed has his sandals back on during Rhino Schneider.
manga chapter 785 also has Luffy wearing them again during the first panel of page 7 (using mangareader)
also wearing sandals chapter 786 page 11…
You can also see him wearing sandals when he attacks Doflamingo on the final page of 785. And he clearly has his sandals back for the remainder of the Doflamingo fight (particularly evident in chapter 790). So, in the manga, Luffy kicks off his sandals, chases down Doflaming without them, and then his sandals magically reappear on his feet after chapter 784.
Pretty notable mistake on Oda's part; at least in the anime it seems like he put his sandals back on after using Kong Gun
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Wow I forgot how much I loved Tomita's key animation. I don't know what people are talking about, that was my favorite part of the episode. Shida's stuff was cool, but idk how I feel about some of the more over exaggerated character movements he uses. The beginning of the episode definitely dragged for way too long when we were all waiting for the big reveal, but overall the episode was pretty freakin good.
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Fukazawa is the current Series Director of One Piece anime. In other words, he can be considered as the top among all episode directors. And the Fukazawa will become the director of Movie 13 or Movie 14 for sure.
I'm afraid this episode can be considered above average among the whole series.
In 2006, Fuji TV nearly chose to cancel the anime, and indeed the anime staff suffered a really bad time during time that they even couldn't do what they want to do. For example, if you re-watch #264, you may find that the animation in the last few minutes were just incredibly awful, although it's such an important episode that directed by the SD himself.
Many people think W7/EL Arc was done very well mainly because they hadn't become manga readers when they were watching those episodes. Though this may sounds unbelievable, there were also some negative attitudes towards the Gear 2nd animation 10 years ago, just like how some people complain Gear 4th animation.:wassat:
Thank you. manga readers you get to nitpick on everything the anime does ,because most of you have your perspective how should this scene looked. I swear the water7/enies lobby stuff was no different, I rewached it some time ago and its so dragged out and the pacing and quality of the anime became really bad at that time. Most of you didnt notice that cuz u weren't manga reader yet and u didnt notice those things.
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Must say I'm pretty impressed with Toei. Gear 4th looks AMAZING in motion.
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WTF the animation was nothing short of amazing, kazuya hisda,shida,tomita ,urta and Some mysterious dude that did the flying scene where all fantastic.
Naotoshi shida
Kazuya hisada
No clue who this is yet but my god the flying scene is awesome
Yoshikazu Tomita at his bestthe epsiode was full of even more great animated scenes (way too much to make gifs out of all of them), Toei did an amazing job but sadly even if they but out 11 out of 10 episodes, the crazy fanbase will find something to complain about.
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You can also see him wearing sandals when he attacks Doflamingo on the final page of 785. And he clearly has his sandals back for the remainder of the Doflamingo fight (particularly evident in chapter 790). So, in the manga, Luffy kicks off his sandals, chases down Doflaming without them, and then his sandals magically reappear on his feet after chapter 784.
Pretty notable mistake on Oda's part; at least in the anime it seems like he put his sandals back on after using Kong Gun
Yeah, the sandals. I wanted to talk about this sometime ago, but I preferred not to. In the chapter of G4 we see Luffy throwing his sandals before inflating himself, and in that entire chapter there were no sandals whatsoever on his feet; however, as soon as the next chapter begins, we see the sandals back on his feet, and the sandals remained on his feet until after he completely knocked out Doflamingo and nullified the birdcage. It made me wonder what the point of throwing the sandals even was if he was just going to inflate himself again while wearing the sandals before using King Kong Gun on Doflamigo.
! ![](http://read.powermanga.org/content/comics/one_piece_5251c1a821656/790_0_heaven_and_earth_55be8c46dd7b8/12 copy.png)
I saw someone on another forum justifying this by saying that Law gave the sandals to him in midair, but this idea is replete with inconsistencies.–
Concerning the animation in this episode, I must be candid and say that it could have been done much better. If you guys feel satisfied with it, that's completely fine. It's just that there are people who can make a distinction between greatly animated animations and this episode, & they find the gap between the two to be very noticeable. Compare just the animation of Fate Zero or maybe One Piece Film Z with this, & I think you'll see that difference too. Honestly, sometimes I prefer to not be able to notice these kinds of things in order to enjoy the episodes. With that being said, the sound effects, the music, and Luffy's glare were pretty cool. There were also some other scenes I really enjoyed: for instance, the moment when Luffy was bouncing. It may not be much to some people, but I liked that. There was also the moment when Luffy was flying down from the palace. I enjoyed that as well.
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Thanks Machineman! I assumed Shida did all of the sakuga in the episode. But the other major highlights were Hisata, Tomita, and another mystery animator who did the best sequence in the whole episode (Doflamingo's sunglasses reflecting Luffy flying right towards him)
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Luffy standing still in mid-air was ridiculous. I don't think that's how a geppou-like move is supposed to work. You're supposed to keep bouncing in the air, not stand absolutely still. Also, that Culverin scene was way too long. Everything in the anime is always way too long. Terrible… terrible...
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I think people are overreacting a little. It could've been done better but it doesn't change the fact that it was pretty solid animation wise. It wasn't terrible by any means.
If i could change anything i would've given Shida's part to Tomita. I think Tomita handles transformations better. Shida is a little bit over the top for those things.
Shida would've worked better in the Kong Gun. He would've given the scene the impact it lacked with his crazy camera angles and over the top details and reactions.
Finally, i think Hisada would've done great with the Culverin (Not that Tomita did a bad job or anything). -
I hated it. I don't want to go in to detail why, as to not rouse any argument.
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The animation of G4 will be satisfactory when it is shown in one of One-Piece films. I hope G4 will be included in this upcoming movie.
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My opinions about the episode vague from good to fucking fantastic! I think this is the first time that Toei Animation knew that people wanted to see what Gear 4th Luffy looks like in color? And they did not disappoint (for the most of you in the comments?) people with this epicness of Gear 4. Long before we had an idea of what Gear 4 looks like in color. Outside of the black limbs that we expected in One Piece. We didn't know if the Ora around Luffy was gonna be either black, blue, or I guess red. (Cause Gear 2th had that red steamy color.) But never thought that it'll be a combination of both. (Plus a black fire tattoo with a little bit of frames in the end of the tips.) They knew that we were expecting this moment and I hope whenever we get an Broadcast dub of this show. I hope it'll probably be after Dressrosa. (Before we ended up in filler arc of course?) I'll give this episode a 10 outta 10.
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Speaking of budget, all what I can say is that this episode was a high budget one. So was the last episode, but #725 was heavily suffered because of the tight schedule.
And… No matter like this episode or not, please never call it crap or shit. One of my friends involved in this episode and he even couldn't have a good sleep because of the heavy work. Neither could other staff even Mr. Fukazawa. All the staff wanted was to make an episode that people could be satisfied with. I believe it's not polite to abuse others' work.
By the way, I still didn't know why many people here didn't like this episode, though it gained a lot of praises in Japan. Talking about culture gaps.
In the end,the majority of people here and everywhere else isn't actually blaming the guys directly responsible for these episodes.Nope.
In the end,we're actually blaming the "gorousei" at the top that always force these artists behind each episode to build rocket launchers with a bunch of paper clips and a ball-point pen every single week.
We deeply execrate their whole mentality about the animes that they possess(One Piece,Sailor Moon Crystal,Dragon Ball Super,etc) and we also known very well that they vehemently refuse to accept the mere possibility of spending any cent without receiving the triple of the investment at the end. -
Seriously…what the hell happened with the "Blueno vs Luffy"/"Lucci vs Luffy" quality?It's gone to some desolated unknown place as if Kuma pushed it away from One Piece with his Paw-Paw Fruit or what?
An episode of this caliber simply shouldn't have bad drawings...at all.I mean...that Culverin part in the end...what the hell were they thinking there?Some parts really made me cringe.
Also:where's the crazy power and epic impact that were supposed to exist in each G4's successful hit?Just to ilustrate:when I saw gear second animated for the first time I almost could feel Blueno's pain there when Luffy landed a hit on him.That fight was wonderfully done and really made me feel the urge to rewatch the whole scene over and over and over again.But here?Man...when Luffy hits Doflamingo with his punches... it just looks.... so...meh?It was almost sad.
I'm truly asking myself what is hapenning with Toei.The whole G4 battle should have the same quality of Luffy's G4 transformation scene. PERIOD.Also,their decision of making one chapter per episode is really killing the pace too.The Rhino Schneider part and all the rest of the episode should be more frenetic,in my point of view...inserting scenes with Bartolomeo fangirling and Violet doing comments after each hit really took away a bit of the dynamism of the fight.
Frankly,as it stands right now,I dare to say that Sai vs Lao G seems more epic than this by a mile.So yeah...that's it.I 100% agree, I still watch the luffy vs blueno fight from time to time. I also thought if this was animated 10 years prior it would have been much better
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I quite enjoyed this episode to be honest.
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Shida my man you have outdone yourself. Well done.
A beautiful moment that wasn't screwed over due to budget and I loved it.
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Speaking of budget, all what I can say is that this episode was a high budget one. So was the last episode, but #725 was heavily suffered because of the tight schedule.
And… No matter like this episode or not, please never call it crap or shit. One of my friends involved in this episode and he even couldn't have a good sleep because of the heavy work. Neither could other staff even Mr. Fukazawa. All the staff wanted was to make an episode that people could be satisfied with. I believe it's not polite to abuse others' work.
By the way, I still didn't know why many people here didn't like this episode, though it gained a lot of praises in Japan. Talking about culture gaps.
It was a solid episode. The intensity the previous episode built up had to be rekindled due to the long recap but it was enjoyable, funny and had good animation. No complaints from me because they did good where it counts. I don't think AP should be/is representative of the entire English OP fandom reactions but there's quite a bit of an echo-chamber so I thought I'd chime in as a different opinion.
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Speaking of budget, all what I can say is that this episode was a high budget one. So was the last episode, but #725 was heavily suffered because of the tight schedule.
And… No matter like this episode or not, please never call it crap or shit. One of my friends involved in this episode and he even couldn't have a good sleep because of the heavy work. Neither could other staff even Mr. Fukazawa. All the staff wanted was to make an episode that people could be satisfied with. I believe it's not polite to abuse others' work.
By the way, I still didn't know why many people here didn't like this episode, though it gained a lot of praises in Japan. Talking about culture gaps.
Most western fans, outside this thread, who usually complain about the anime loved this episode from what I've seen in different communities
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I'm afraid this episode can be considered above average among the whole series.
In 2006, Fuji TV nearly chose to cancel the anime, and indeed the anime staff suffered a really bad time during time that they even couldn't do what they want to do. For example, if you re-watch #264, you may find that the animation in the last few minutes were just incredibly awful, although it's such an important episode that directed by the SD himself.
Many people think W7/EL Arc was done very well mainly because they hadn't become manga readers when they were watching those episodes. Though this may sounds unbelievable, there were also some negative attitudes towards the Gear 2nd animation 10 years ago, just like how some people complain Gear 4th animation.:wassat:
Yeah, i was around 10 years ago, and i remember very, VERY well how people complained about the anime all the time back then. So i find it hilariously amusing when someone refers to Enies Lobby episodes like bastions of quality or something. There were manga readers trashing it exactly like they do now.
Like someone said, the fights in the manga these days aren't as good as they used to be. The choreography is generally very poor. Luffy vs Lucci had better action and was a lot more to the point than the neverending Luffy vs DoFlamingo. So let's take a look at the manga, too, when we make this kind of comparison.
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Honestly, it felt inconsistent. The Kong Gun lacked the instantaneous and devastating impact from the manga, in fact, it would've saved a ton of money for them to just have Doflamingo just snap from point A to point B, similar to a jet pistol animation. (I was expecting them to just slow down time on impact then mingo goes off like a bullet.) This is really weird since they basically use that very animation for when Luffy launches himself. Toei is a gigantic enigma when it comes to why they do what they do animation-wise.
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Yeah, i was around 10 years ago, and i remember very, VERY well how people complained about the anime all the time back then. So i find it hilariously amusing when someone refers to Enies Lobby episodes like bastions of quality or something. There were manga readers trashing it exactly like they do now.
Preach. I'd bet all the money in the world that if the Gear Second debut episode aired today for the first time as-is, people here would be braying for blood (it was a well-animated episode, but it was "just" above average, and certainly nowhere near as flashy as the money sequences we get today are).
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This was no Luffy vs Lucci (though close), but I agree that the Gear 2nd debut only worked largely due to how well it was directed. The animation itself was fairly standard (though consistent) compared to the better animated and memorably stylized EL fights. EL by and large was a real mixed bag.
Also, am I wrong or was W7/EL the beginning of Toei putting more effort into second unit Sakuga animation? I recall from then on there were more noticeable quality spikes presumably from an increased budget from episode to episode.
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@Mr.:
This was no Luffy vs Lucci (though close), but I agree that the Blueno debut only worked largely due to how well it was directed. The animation itself was fairly standard (though consistent) compared to the better animated and memorably stylized EL fights. EL by and large was a real mixed bag, and the constant amount of filler episodes from the bridge onward.
Also, am I wrong or was W7/EL the beginning of Toei putting more effort into second unit Sakuga animation? I recall from then on there were more noticeable quality spikes presumably from an increased budget from episode to episode.
Yeah that was around the time the animation quality started increasing. It was more or less pretty consistently average up to that point with a few well animated cuts here and there and then around thriller bark (I think) they started bringing in more freelancers and allocating more frames to better animators. Which led to less consistent art and animation, but more stand out cuts. Or at least, that was the impression I got.
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It's hard arguing with one piece fans who will tell you they want the Anime to be like it was in Enies lobby, some people are very delusional to how bad it was
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Honestly, it felt inconsistent. The Kong Gun lacked the instantaneous and devastating impact from the manga, in fact, it would've saved a ton of money for them to just have Doflamingo just snap from point A to point B, similar to a jet pistol animation. (I was expecting them to just slow down time on impact then mingo goes off like a bullet.) This is really weird since they basically use that very animation for when Luffy launches himself. Toei is a gigantic enigma when it comes to why they do what they do animation-wise.
Totally agree. If they wanted to show details on the attacks, they should have used a slow motion effect on the scenes. The way they did it, it looked like the attacks were actually slow. On the other hand, when Luffy in flying, we don't see his feet popping in and out of his legs, meaning he's doing it super fast, so… it's like you said... inconsistent. And that has nothing to do with budget or anything else people are mentioning here to justify things.
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I really liked this episode, i've been waiting for Dofla to get kicked, the animation was great too, it was a nice episode to watch!
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Is the word "fourth" supposed to sound so similar to "force" ?
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Is the word "fourth" supposed to sound so similar to "force" ?
Just the accent pretty sure
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eh i didn't like the accent and the samurai noises\effects in the background.
I expected him to sound like nightmare luffy (Since he looks like him), he did sort of, but it was a bit off.
as for comparing this to gear 2nd, i think g2 was better, but it also helped to be back when the pacing of the episode was still tolerable. Plus it took way too long to get here, they started fighting like 30 episodes ago.
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Is the word "fourth" supposed to sound so similar to "force" ?
The romanization of Gear Fourth is Gia Fōsu so yeah
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Screw the echo chamber, this was a perfectly fine, even great episode. Yeah, there were some directoral missteps (I think the Culverin sequence would've been better if it hadn't tried to follow the manga panels so closely, and yeah, I didn't care much for the kabuki stuff when the form's based off of an angry wind god instead), everything else was pretty strong. The visual direction for Gear Fourth looked great, and actually seeing Luffy bouncing around, something you don't always get a good sense of with static images, did a great job illustrating Doflamingo's incredulousness.
I especially liked the touch of Luffy's Haki highlights being red as a way to continue the glowing pink skin effect that the anime gave to Gear Second; I've always liked that simple additional touch.
–- Update From New Post Merge ---
By the way, in Japan Tomita is more famous than Shida.
Really? That's rather surprising to me since Shida seems way more prolific than Tomita. Is there a particular reason for that?