The Third Episode Curse
- Categories: Anime, News
- Date: Jan 4, 2009 06:00 JST
- Tags: Animation, Comparison, Marketing, Production Controversy, TV
An example of what happens when quality control and animation direction (or perhaps just budget) is not what it could be, showing episodes one to three.
The anime illustrated here, which I need not name, could be any one of hundreds which unfortunately succumb to the realisation that concentrating production resources on the first, second and last episodes, along with perhaps the onsen episode, and maybe the OP or transformation scene, can go a long way to improving the overall perceived quality of the title even if the actual average quality is depressingly low…
Definitely disappointing when animation quality goes down like this. :(
OMG, thought they were three different anime 0_o
It’s a real disappointment when the anime producers resort to things like this. They take a gem and turn it into glass. The fuckwads…
Sorry for my ignorance or something, but what anime is this?
I think another classic example of production decay is “ichigo 100%” tv series…The only thing I enjoyed was the opening.
Yoake Mae Yori Ruri Iro Na -Crescent Love- (translated into: Brighter than dawning blue -Crescent Love-)
This was an eroge by August, and the name has the “crescent love” extension for its anime adaptation.
Note that this series has been nicknamed as “CABBAGE LOVE” for its infamous and ridiculous quality for the said cabbage scene.
Yeah, this specific example is one of those classic “fix it on the DVDs” cases. IIRC, you could basically track the quality of the TV-airing episodes to the name of the studio that got outsourced to do the keyframing in that particular episode. In some cases, they divided the episode in half (so one contractor got the first half, another got the second), and the difference in quality was obvious. Normally the Overall Animation Director is supposed to mitigate problems like this, but yeah… I’d assume “no budget” was a big problem here.
I’d be sort of curious to see a side-by-side of those three frames next to the DVD versions of the same to see how much they improved it. In some cases, I noticed that the keyframing was completely redone (and obviously for good reason).
Gunslinger girl Il Teatrino Syndrome
Gurren Lagann ep 4
Haha. Was just about to mention that.
HA! I knew that episode looked weird! >=3.
Ahhh! The horrible quality is melting meee! Help meeeeee! HELP MEEEEEEEEE! D:
Low quality is low XD
only 3 eps and its already that bad?
haha..theres a secen her face look like kagamin…
macross frontier is guilty of this as well. especially episode 8. but still an epic anime nevertheless.
good thing code geass R1 and R2 are able to maintain its level of quality.
Macross Frontier episode 8… those grossly deformed faces still hunt me in my nightmares -_-
Perfect example for the fact that most studios are apparently lacking a proper QA department (or any Quality Assurance at all).
lol almost looks like a pic drawn from a child reffering to ep3.I kinda drawed it like that once in school and the teacher put my pic up for example.So the wgole school could see it.
But my drawings are kinda bad.Well they can be good but they gooten worse in time wonder why??
OMG, never thought this kind of anime would really exist. o_O!!
Kanazuki no miko always looked like 2-3.
DVD version should’ve improved overall quality.
Or so I heard.
uugh . .mabushii~~~ LOL
*refer to musashi gundoh anime quote about quality
The 3rd picture look weird
cabbage anyone?
Looks like the same thing that happened to Akane-iro ni Somaru Saka.
probably different director or something like what happened to NHK ni youkoso
Oh god… this is the reason I’m so picky with my anime. I always get the whole “What’s so bad about bad animation?” shebang. Well, now it’s been proven. I mean, heck, even with a low budget, if companies just budget wisely and put the same amount of effort into each episode, it’ll look fine. There seem to be only a few studios who don’t do this anymore… -points to Gainax-
Isn’t this normal for anime
so this is Gunslinger Girls 2, Crescent Love, and Gurren Lagann? Those are the three anime? Or am I wrong, cause this confuses me so much…
Horrid I say..horrid.
Now i gotta appreciate how animes like Naruto, Bleach, One Piece and Gintama keep going for hundreds of episodes without any serious drops like this.
I mean if Gintama for example dropped at that rate by episodes 70 it would have turned into incomprehensible children scribbles XD
Actually, they’ve been like that for a while i believe, quality i mean.
Gintama would poke fun at it.
Naruto & Bleach have it, but it goes in quick frames so its harder to notice.
yea remember that episode in gintama when they woke up and they were just mere sketches xD
What was with the drastic art changes in Noein? They had the very odd stylistic art to start with, then switched to a HQ polished art for like ep2 and a random ep in the teens.