The episode was definitely slower than usual, but there were some good stuff in it too.
I gotta say that the storyboarding and direction was pretty damn good. Yusuke Suzuki has always been one of the weaker directors of the show who hasn't impressed me this far because of his usually flat storyboarding and unsatisfactory direction. This week was a definite improvement for him on every front. Although because of Nagamine's tendency of correcting storyboards, it's not easy to tell to what extent his storyboarding skills really improved.
But on the whole this is his best showing so far, cool lighting, great angles, creative shots etc. I do think there are still some areas where Suzuki falls back on flat shots, but it'd be wrong for me to not acknowledge that this episode wasn't a noticeable step forward for him compared to everything he put to the table before.
On the animation side, there were a lot of stationary shots I agree, but the boro breath was done masterfully and at the end of the day this is what mattered to me the most. We also got the best look at Inoue's art in this episode and there's definitely some shots that are reminiscent of his prime day. That's really nice to see.
Next week's gonna be absolutely fantastic.
@Oshawott:
The animation when Kaido was flying was so awful I can't even; it's like they used their whole budget for the fire blast scene which was admittedly very well done, but still come on. Next episode looks like it'll feature about 10 minutes of running. Great.
@Zephray:
Though of course I’m really hyped by that ending, so far this is a let-down. I’d rather a full episode of decent dragon movement than one big budget sequence at the end.
"bUdGeT"
It's almost 2020 and with all the effort we've made to debunk these myths about this, I can't believe we still have to say this. No amount of budget will make any drawing look better, it's 2D hand drawn animation, not a video game or a live action movie. Money doesn't alter drawing skills.
What really affects animation quality is the health of the schedule and the talent of the animator working on the particular scene. The reason why the boro breath looked better than anything in this episode is because it was given to Tetsuro Nireki, who's a talented action animator, not because the budget was raised on that section.
Enough with this budget nonsense.
It's really easy to sit here to nitpick every small mistake and criticize the staff for making Kaido in his dragon comprised of stills. But keep in mind that it's an incredibly animation unfriendly design and a pain in the ass to draw. And actual animators working on the show said it themselves, therefore you can deny that animation unfriendly designs exist all you want.
Even Tu Yong-ce, who's an incredibly fast animator, really hates drawing Kaido in his dragon form. Moreover under a long running show's schedule, it's even more grueling to draw something like that. That's why I won't knock this episode off for cutting corners with the dragon form.
If some of you (or myself) had to draw Kaido in his dragon form under the same time constraints and working conditions these animators have to deal with, I'd guarantee you'd likely collapse within the first 3 hours.
Btw calling for animators to be fired is flat out disrespectful.
–- Update From New Post Merge ---
I don't like to have to rant on this forum again, but some of the comments here show that there's still a lot of ignorance about the japanese animation industry and that people are still incapable of discussing animation like reasonable people.
And look, I'm not saying that some of the complaints are unjustified. They're legitimate and you have all the rights to expect a proper product. It's just that the criticism is mostly coming from the wrong place. Instead of putting the blame the string of companies and shareholders who're behind most of the harmful decisions made about the One Piece anime, people decide to target the mostly overworked produciton staff who have to oblige to what the stakeholders have decided and don't have a saying where the show's going.