[00:00] Imagine this, you're watching an anime and it looks not good. The staff is clearly cutting corners, there's barely any movement, the drawings are falling apart, it's a mess. You finish the episode, digest it, but don't lose hope.
[00:12] Maybe it'll get better in the future, you say to yourself. Maybe they are saving the budget for the more important scenes. With that optimistic stance, you continue to watch the show, but weeks go by and nothing changes, it's more of the same.
[00:24] The same lack of animation, the same corner cutting, the whole nine yards, and ultimately you come to the conclusion that there's just no hope. The show just simply doesn't look good, but right then, out of nowhere, pops up an episode that actually looks amazing.
[00:38] The animation is smooth, the drawings look gorgeous, it's perfect, it's everything you hoped for. What the f**k just happened? You think they were lured by the sudden quality jump scare and why couldn't the entire season look like that? Well, that's what this video is all about, about both what the f**k just happened and why couldn't the entire season look like that.
[00:55] Now yes, the example I just provided was an extreme one, there usually isn't that big of a quality gap between episodes, but the phenomena itself is universal when it comes to TV anime. Not all episodes are the same, some look better than others and here's a video about how
[01:10] and why. Make sure to subscribe, according to an ancient scroll dated back to 3200 BC discovered off the coast of Nile, he who does not subscribe shall be inflicted with the ancient curse of the sun god Ra. I don't know how real that is, but I would interest it if I were you.
[01:24] You can also become a member of this channel. Members get at least two exclusive videos per month, custom badges and emojis, shoutouts and more. Just go down there and press the join button. So, here's the thing about TV anime. It's an extremely economical format, and by economical
[01:39] I mean movement conscious, not money conscious. The entire format is built around what they can get away with not animating, not what they can animate, not exactly a surprise given the large quantity of footage teams have to produce and the lack of time. Funny thing
[01:53] is anime is actually a colloquialism of the word animation but despite that tv anime is rarely animated that's why some self-absorbed pretentious animation professor somewhere thinks anime isn't real animation because it doesn't move constantly by the way if you
[02:07] know any such professor please hit them over the head with a blunt object and tell them to grow up anyway point is constant ambitious animation is rarely seen in tv anime that stuff is reserved for movies and usually well ideally there's a clear distinction between
[02:21] TV quality and movie quality, I say ideally because the term movie quality animation is rapidly losing meaning by the second. Ideally, movies can afford to go that extra mile, visually speaking. A TV show might animate dialogue using mouth flaps, but a movie might
[02:35] feature character acting. A TV show might rely on standard compositions, but a movie might feature complex framing You get the idea Despite that however there are countless examples of extremely well TV episodes out there episodes that look better than both other shows and other episodes from the same show
[02:51] You've seen it happen, you know what I'm talking about. Shows that don't look particularly good might suddenly look good, shows that do look good might suddenly look better, stuff like that is known to happen, and the reason behind it and the subject of this video can be summed up in one word, priority.
[03:06] Like I said near the start, not all episodes are the same, the limitations of the TV anime format doesn't allow every episode to have the same level of polish and to deal with that, teams divide them into low and high priority ones. How do they do
[03:18] that? Well, that's what this video is all about. Let's go over the various things that make an episode high priority and the various types of these episodes. Before I go all technical, animation nerd, I haven't touched grass in half a decade on you though, let me just say this,
[03:32] all shows have low and high priority episodes regardless of how high the base level of quality Even shows like Chainsaw Man and Mob Psycho have them, it's not something exclusive to weak and or average looking shows.
[03:44] Of course, in case of a Jirutsu Kaisen or a Chainsaw Man, even the low priority episodes will look better than the industry average, while in case of your typical, I got reincarnated as my sister's love stalking and now I'm being dry-humped by her dog, even the high priority episodes will struggle to look good, that's true.
[03:59] But the point is, priority itself is a universal concept that applies to all shows, it's just that the definition of it is relative. Broadly speaking, there are three things that make an episode high priority. Time, talent and ambition and no, money isn't truly a factor.
[04:14] Believe it or not, they actually don't save the budgets for the high quality scenes. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm sure good looking episodes cost more to make, but the difference in prices is not significant enough to be a factor, if that makes sense.
[04:26] Basically, budgets tend to skyrocket when 1 the quantity of footage increases and 2 the overall production duration increases, neither of which is the case here. they said. High-priority episodes are part of the overall predetermined episode count,
[04:39] and they are produced inside of the overall production window. Like I said, the secret lies in the amount of time, talent, and ambition the team has to work with, and the lack of any one of these three resources can lead to visual cracks. More about those later.
[04:52] Under ideal circumstances, when all three of those aforementioned resources are available, high-priority episodes tend to have small, well-organized teams. If you look into them, you'll often see a small group of people handling multiple roles.
[05:05] B.H. Shuto and Omoto handling the storyboards, animation direction, and a chunk of the key animation for Dandaran Episode 6. B.H. Nakaya Onsen and Sou Miyazaki handling several minutes of action animation each on Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2 Episode 16.
[05:18] B.H. Shingo Yamashita, Norio Matsumoto, and Kenichi Kotsuna animating the entirety of Naruto vs. Sane, the list goes on. Why does this happen, you may ask? Because when an artist has an ample amount of time at their disposal they are able to be more hands they are able to do more That also the reason why Animation Director and 2ndKAnimate accounts are inversely proportional to the amount of time allotted Basically more time equals more work an artist
[05:42] can do, equals smaller, less fragmented teams, equals a more cohesive final product. More isn't always better, let's put it that way. Of course, priority isn't just limited to the animation aspect. Ideally, a high priority episode should provide ample time to all departments, not just
[05:57] the animation team. That's why many of these episodes see a spike in the quality of in-betweens, background art, compositing, storyboards, etc, etc. Now, you may be wondering what happens if an episode lacks one of these resources. Say, time. What happens if the episode director is
[06:12] ambitious, the staff list is stacked, but the schedule is dogshit? Well, you don't have to wonder. We know exactly what happens. Let me introduce you to Black Clover episode 63 and Jujutsu Kaisen season 2 episode 17. Both episodes featured ambitious characters, both episodes
[06:27] featured high-level talent, and both episodes lacked time, and as a result, both episodes were visually broken, janky, but ultimately interesting. I have gone over both episodes in detail before, so I won't yap on about them here. Basically, like I said, you need both time and talent to
[06:42] create a perfect episode. You can't just hire a bunch of people and brute force your way through. Moving on, to understand this subject better, let's go through the various types of high-crowded episodes, this is definitely not just an excuse for me to talk about some of my favorite episodes,
[06:56] definitely not. The first type of high-credity episode is the first episode, or as I like to call it, the default high-credity episode. Nine times out of ten, the first episode of a show ends up having both the largest production window and the highest level of polish, and this is
[07:10] because of several reasons. Firstly, the first episode of a show is the furthest away from the release date, meaning they can theoretically be worked on for the longest period of time. Plus, first episodes don't usually have to put up with pre-existing delays, it's those pesky lattered episodes that have to deal with that stuff.
[07:26] By the way, just so you know, TV animes produced in parallel, they don't finish episode 1, start episode 2, finish it, start episode 3, and so on. Multiple episodes are worked on at the same time in rotation, I've gone over this topic before.
[07:39] Because of these reasons, it's not uncommon to see extremely polished first episodes with absurdly long production windows. The first episode of Heavenly Delusion, for example, had a production period of close to two years and it looked like it.
[07:51] There's another reason why the first episode of a show tends to look really good and that's because it's ground zero for the series director's vision. Let me explain. The first episode of a show is usually directed and storyboarded by the series director themselves
[08:04] and they are often used to establish the ground rules and get the entire staff on the same page, creatively speaking. Basically first episodes are often the ideal version of an anime The series director static direction in House Pat for unnecessary alliterations coupled with the longer production windows and the absence of production issues leads to first episodes having a lot more polish compared to the rest of the show
[08:26] making them inherently high priority. In some cases, this first episode effect is so strong that the rest of the series visibly struggles to keep up. Ninja Kamui, Uzumaki, Victoria, the detective is already dead, I can go on.
[08:39] The second type of high priority episode is the in-house high priority episode. As you can probably tell, these episodes were produced by the same core team as the rest of the show, meaning their quality is made possible at least to an extent by sacrificing the episodes around them.
[08:53] A recent example of this would be Solo Leveling. High-priority episodes from that show were pretty much entirely handled by the core team. Animation highlights from season 1 episode 11, season 2 episode 6, etc.
[09:05] were animated by the likes of Yoshihiro Kanno, Taka Fumitori, Hajime Nakagawa, and a few others, all of them being recurring core staff members, not one-off guests. The same can be said for projects like My Hero Academia and Demon Slayer,
[09:17] they too rely on the core staff instead of outside talent for the most part. The third type of high priority episode is one that's produced outside of the main production cycle. Basically, these episodes are their own isolated projects and don't really affect the
[09:32] rest of the production. Of course, that doesn't mean no one from the main team will work on these, they very much will, but by and large, it's its own squad. Jujutsu Kaisen season 2 episode 16, Mob Psycho season 3 episode 8, every Haku Yugo and Team episode for that matter, the list goes on.
[09:47] These episodes are specialized projects, they aren't just more of the same show, but better looking, they are their own thing, creatively speaking. By the way, the blue lock example I opened this video with also falls into that category. I don't think the entire episode can be considered high priority, but that particular section of it
[10:03] it definitely fits the criteria. In fact, funny enough, that section had its own credits, which goes to show just how different it was from the rest of the episode. Pretty much the entire section was directed and storyboarded by Hajime Nihira,
[10:15] who also animated a huge chunk of it himself. This was also his only appearance for season 2. Again, the section was treated like its own isolated project and allowed to look different from the rest of the show, both in terms of quality and style.
[10:28] And that's how TV anime works. Some episodes look good, others don't. That's just the way it is. Unfortunately, a good chunk of the modern anime fanbase started watching the medium after Jujutsu Kaisen, so they expect every single episode to look good, not quite understanding just how absurd that expectation is.
[10:44] Of course, Jujutsu Kaisen itself has its ups and downs, it's not flawless all the way through, but they don't quite understand that, to them, it's all equally good animation and everything else sucks. Anyway, that's its own topic, let's not yap on about it for too long here.
[10:58] That's about it. A special thanks to Nood03, Amir and thegalus90 for becoming tier 3 members and until next time.