Episodes 926-929 + COVID-19 Hiatus

Crossword

Figured I might as well make a thread for all the episodes that passed during the downtime.

926: ''A Desperate Situation - The Menace of Orochi's Oniwabanshu''
Episode Director: Ryosuke Tanaka (new)
Animation Director: Shuuichi Ito (***1/2)

927: ''Pandemonium! Shogun Orochi the Furious Great Snake!''
Episode Director: Satoshi Ito (1/2)
Animation Director: Shigefumi Shingaki (1/2) and Keiichi Ichikawa ()

928: ''Falling Flowers - The Last Moments of Wano's Most Beautiful Woman''
Episode Director: Katsumi Tokoro (****)
Animation Director: Kazuya Hisada (***1/2)

929: ''The Bind Between Prisoners - Luffy and Old Hyo!''
Episode Director: Yasunori Koyama (*)
Animation Director: Eisaku Inoue () and Hirotaka Ito (***1/2)

Plus as I'm sure many of you have already seen, the One Piece anime (+ most other currently-airing anime for that matter) is going on hiatus starting next week due to coronavirus safety concerns. When will it come back, we don't know. While the actual drawing can obviously be done remotely all of the coordination that needs to be done between all the moving parts is a lot more tricky. Toei does have a better digital workflow than many other studios in part because they have an outsource studio in the Philippines but everything's up in the air right now. I'm not as in the loop ATM as others are but the anime does have a buffer of a couple episodes and of course an extended break for a perpetual weekly anime is a good thing for the animators themselves, assuming they're still able to work and get paid to some degree or other.

Sano

I really the enjoy the last several episodes. I like that the anime been expanding on some of the stuff that were mention off screen during the act 2 episodes. On the most recent episode, the scene with Big Mom's crew made me laugh.

! I like that the anime is showing some of the hints about Kanjuro's heel turn.

MythicalDragon

926: Very solid episode overall. Ryosuke Tanaka made a very good first impression and Yutaka Nakashima's provided his most impressive storyboard yet on this episode. I'll always welcome talented fresh young blood to the rotation which the series has lacked for a very considerable amount of time.

927: Clearly a B-tier episode with pretty bare bones and uninteresting content. Satoshi Ito did the best to make the episode as serviceable as possible with his typical colorful direction, but the episode still turned out average despite his efforts. Ito is such a talented episode director and it's kind of a shame that he has to be the one to do the grunt work, I would like him to handle a more important episode in the future. On the other hand, Idk what's going on with Shingaki but his output as an animation supervisor has been really poor lately. The chief animation supervisor Keiichi Ichikawa even had to jump in and supervise the last 5 minutes of the episode all by himself.

928: An overall alright episode. The highlight of the episode was clearly Katsumi Ishizuka's contribution when Kyoshiro cut Komurasaki, but the entire scene was spliced very weirdly between the commercial break. The rest was pretty okay.

929: Pretty good episode. Kouhei Kureta's storyboard was very illustrative and as expected, packed with many cool angles. Yasunori Koyama's direction towards the end was just stunning. The Udon part wasn't the most interesting part in Wano for many so props to them for trying to make the Udon part as visually appealing as possible.
I've noticed that the usage of color has been a common denominator across many episode, which tells me that the series directors' creative outputs have set a new standard and them being heavily involved in the production helps even more.

Caution, major spoiler:

! With the recent events in the manga, I like how we now see Kanjuro and Kyoshiro scenes from a very different perspective.

–- Update From New Post Merge ---

With the anime being on hiatus for an indefinite amount of time, I'm surely gonna miss my weekly Sunday anime rendez-vous. But it is what it is, the safety of the staff comes first.

Skippy

Apologies for the spam

RoboBlue

@Sano:

! I like that the anime is showing some of the hints about Kanjuro's heel turn.

! His facial expressions definitely have an extra layer of meaning now. When he was shocked by Robin's information gathering skills it came across as more "oh crap they're more dangerous than I expected!"

thaihoa91

One Piece Episode 930 Preview - Suspended due to COVID-19

Zephray

New episode was fun. Fast pacing (four whole scenes!) and a ton of character acting that made all the talky scenes way more cute and fun. 926 was great, too. Really disliked 927 and thought 928 felt halfassed (long recap and repeating scene in the middle) but serviceable otherwise.

Sengokusgoat

@thaihoa91:

One Piece Episode 930 Preview - Suspended due to COVID-19

How ironic that a pandemic would delay Queen's episode.

ryuplaneswalker

@Sengokusgoat:

How ironic that a pandemic would delay Queen's episode.

Covid killed the Dinosaurs.

SuburbanErrorist

While there are many bad things revolving this, one good thing is that it will further away from the Manga itself, hopefully allowing for a bit more quality.

RoboBlue

@SuburbanErrorist:

While there are many bad things revolving this, one good thing is that it will further away from the Manga itself, hopefully allowing for a bit more quality.

Maybe it'll finally motivate them to release One Piece in properly paced seasons while filling the gaps with a much cheaper to produce "One Piece Kai".

Skippy

Keep dreaming lmao

SuburbanErrorist

@Skippy:

Keep dreaming lmao

Considering all I can do is Uni assessments and sleep in these times, I may as well :)

JazzMazz

I'm hoping this gives the anime staff an opportunity to sort of get ahead of the production a little bit. By the sounds of it, they may have an expanded number of episodes produced before they start re-airing, which could mean the bigger episodes could end up more polished.

Zephray

Well, I guess they’re still animating episodes and are a good bit ahead of releases.

Skippy

Tu's been animating still for weeks so this isn't too new or surprising tbh

LightningAce

Japan are starting to ease lockdown in some places from Monday from what I'm seeing on the news. Hopefully that means the anime can start up again.

dropper

@LightningAce:

Japan are starting to ease lockdown in some places from Monday from what I'm seeing on the news. Hopefully that means the anime can start up again.

Considering the vast amount of outsourced work Toei utilize from the Philippines, is that still possible?

Kizuchan

What's the take on the anime these days? I hear it's gone through a massive improvement and I certainly like the new style I've seen around.

Dropped with early Dressrosa.

Skippy

@dropper:

Considering the vast amount of outsourced work Toei utilize from the Philippines, is that still possible?

Yes cause the production is still ongoing in Japan despite this and if Phils employees can't work from home, there are several other outsourcing studios in Japan to turn to

Sengokusgoat

Wasn't the main issue the voice acting?

Crossword

Magazine schedules indicate that Pretty Cure's coming back on-air in June sothere's a chance that One Piece could too. But I would urge caution since Toei hasn't said anything themselves yet and they don't air on the same TV channel.

MythicalDragon

@Kizuchan:

What's the take on the anime these days? I hear it's gone through a massive improvement and I certainly like the new style I've seen
Dropped with early Dressrosa.

Visually, the One Piece anime really improved since Dressrosa without a doubt. From the WCI onwards the anime has gained an incredible chief animation supervisor who did wonders for the overall art quality and art consistency. The WCI arc also houses imo the best animated episode of the entire series in form of the Luffy Gear 4 Snakeman vs Katakuri fight, which I highly suggest you go watch from beginning to end.

Now starting from Wano things got even better. One of Toei's best directors has become the new series director, we gained a new young character designer, the color palette has been updated and the show's compositing is now being handled by a new department of photography, a crucial component in the overall improvement of the show's aesthetic. In fact, the previous one has been in charge of the compositing since the alabasta arc, which kinda explains why the series' look became sterile and outdated overtime compared to other shows.

The anime now also has animation highlights more frequently than ever before thanks to a better schedule and the studio allowing more freelance animators to take part on the series more easily. Even a quite renowned animator in the japanese animation industry participated on an episode. However that doesn't mean that the anime looks like a high end seasonal show like Mob Psycho 100. It's a weekly long running show, such expectations are therefore unrealistic.

RoboBlue

@Kizuchan:

What's the take on the anime these days? I hear it's gone through a massive improvement and I certainly like the new style I've seen around.

Dropped with early Dressrosa.

I'd recommend watching the One Pace cut of Wano Act 1.

If you like it and can tolerate slower pacing, then watch the original Toei version as it airs.

Kizuchan

Alright. I'll keep all that in mind.

Clips I've seen certainly look excellent.

From what I get Toei seems to be getting their shit together in general (new Digimon is good too so far to me).

ScotchInformer

Kappei announce that anime recording are back. So The anime will continue soon!!

MythicalDragon

They were talking about recording songs for a music album.

While it says that the anime is gradually progressing and being planned ahead, there's still no official confirmation of the anime returning.

Kuröwon

So it's confirmed this is recording of songs for a music album ?

ScotchInformer

@MythicalDragon:

They were talking about recording songs for a music album.

While it says that the anime is gradually progressing and being planned ahead, there's still no official confirmation of the anime returning.

Yeah, there is no announcement for anime returning, but the recording resumed.

RoboBlue

@Kizuchan:

Alright. I'll keep all that in mind.

Clips I've seen certainly look excellent.

From what I get Toei seems to be getting their shit together in general (new Digimon is good too so far to me).

You should see the new clips from the new Dai no Daibouken.

!

Kuröwon

From ScotchInformer & Emunopla :

The voice recording for the upcoming One Piece episodes will begin within the next week. The anime is speculated to return during the middle of June. Here's Chopper, Luffy and Usopp's voice actors at the studio!

Skippy

It's already begun or else they wouldn't have been at the studio this week

RoboBlue

I'd expect late June, several other shows are returning then.

Sano

Yeah, I won't be surprised for the anime to return in mid or late June.

Zephray

Will be great to have it finally back. Hopefully the anime staff got ahead on episodes so they can take it a little easier for the next few months. Do we have any leaks or news of how far ahead they’ve gotten? Last I heard, they were working on Zoro versus mystery killer.

Sano

This post is deleted!

Sano

You might want put that in a spoiler tag.

Kizuchan

@RoboBlue:

You should see the new clips from the new Dai no Daibouken.

!

Yeah, it's very pretty.

I'm in the mood for some 90s anime and this hits just the right notes and looks to be making that specific aesthetic modern in just the right way.

I can't wait for Dragon Ball to come back in light of this. It helps that I think Super got much better as it went on, too.

But this might be going a little bit too off topic now.

ScotchInformer

Seems Info will reveal soon. Maybe they will announce before Jump leak on Thursday.

dropper

I know it says SP because it is special anime news…. but now would be a great opportunity for a Wano Act 1 recap. It would save animator resources while making sure the regular viewers are correctly caught up.

Zephray

@dropper:

I know it says SP because it is special anime news…. but now would be a great opportunity for a Wano Act 1 recap. It would save animator resources while making sure the regular viewers are correctly caught up.

I would love it if they did that. …and I would love it even more if Funimation dubbed it.

Crossword

I believe Digimon just recently started reairing from episode one so I'm assuming One Piece will be back by the end of the month.

ScotchInformer

Finally, Recording begun last Thursday with small group.

Zephray

Good! Can’t wait for it to resume. I hope they’ve been working most of this hiatus. Will be cool that they’re ahead.

Crossword

Don't worry, the animation work has still been going ahead. Henry Thurlow, Mitchell Gonzales, and Tu have all indicated that they've still been working on the show over the hiatus (Tu specifically referenced a certain "dive-bombing" attack on twitter the other day) and while I can't find the tweet for the specifics at the moment, Kohei Kureha has said that up to episode 948 is being worked on in some capacity (probably in the pre-animation phase at the time of the tweet).

RevolutionaryOfThe6Paths

@Crossword:

Don't worry, the animation work has still been going ahead. Henry Thurlow, Mitchell Gonzales, and Tu have all indicated that they've still been working on the show over the hiatus (Tu specifically referenced a certain "dive-bombing" attack on twitter the other day) and while I can't find the tweet for the specifics at the moment, Kohei Kureha has said that up to episode 948 is being worked on in some capacity (probably in the pre-animation phase at the time of the tweet).

Thank you for the info. Great to hear that Gonzales is returning so soon. I really liked his cut in the Sanji vs Page1 episode

ScotchInformer

Recording process in going last Thursday with small groups. glad to see them together again and again !

!

–- Update From New Post Merge ---

Seems One Piece Anime will back on 28 June 2020. no official announcement until now.

LightningAce

Finally!!
I've been waiting so long for Queen's official introduction

dropper

@ScotchInformer:

Seems One Piece Anime will back on 28 June 2020. no official announcement until now.

I've only read this here, do you have a reliable source?

badwolf1234