Bleach TYBW Animation Breakdown — Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:05] nowhere near as good looking as people made it out to be. The movement was somewhat off model at times, and the compositing occasionally felt a bit off.

[00:21] disappointing. Sadly, the action animation department was lacking. A lot of the action was limited, aka it consisted of the same few frames being looped over instead of uniquely animated movement.

[00:39] Quincy powers. I've never been a fan, and the more I look at it, the less I and the more I look at it, the less I like it. problems. It also has a lot of positives, but it's far from perfect,

[00:54] and some of those problems are significant. Here's a video about all of it. Dramatic intro start. Online animation discourse surrounding Bleach TYBW is pretty much the ninth circle of hell. On one hand, you have people who

[01:06] to acknowledge any of the show's strengths, and on the other, you have fanboys who simply refuse to say anything bad about their beloved show. as such, I decided to make a level-headed fair and honest-to-god

[01:19] unbiased review of the animation. Let's get into it. Make sure to subscribe. That would be a very level-headed fair and honest-to-god unbiased thing to do. It helps out a lot. Just do it. You can also become a channel member. Members

[01:31] get two exclusive videos per month, custom badges and emojis, shout-outs, the join button. So, as always, let's start with the Thousand-Year Blood War in detail before, but I've never really gone over

[01:44] the staff list, so let's change that. The show is directed by Tomohisa Taguchi. Kinda. Well, it was up until season 2, but then Taguchi got promoted to chief director, and Hikaru Murata filled in as the new series director. Of

[01:57] involved anymore. I'm pretty sure he's still fairly hands-on as the chief director. Plus, a lot of this show's visual identity is crafted around his Taguchi-centered production, just that Murata is now at the helm. More about

[02:12] tremendous amount of experience under his belt in addition to the plethora of gigs. He's also known for directing major shows like Twin Star Exorcists and Akudama Drive, the latter being particularly fun to look at. In

[02:26] Hikaru Murata doesn't have that many major projects to his name. In fact, Bleach TYBW is actually his first series direction gig, but he has already proven production of this caliber, so it's not an issue. The directorial end is strong.

[02:41] Moving on, the character designer of the show is the one and only Masashi Kudo, nearly three decades of experience, and the original Bleach anime. Although he hasn't done much to reinforce his TYBW

[02:54] only episode he took on the chief animation direction duties for was the very first one all the way back in 2022. there, but that was the main bulk of his output.

[03:07] In other words, character designer Kudo is not the main chief animation director or CAD for this show. That role is handled by the trio of Yukio Hasegawa, Kiyoshi Komatsubara, and Kumiko Takayanagi. These three collectively

[03:20] handled CAD work for, I'd like to say around 95% of this show, meaning yes, they are largely responsible for the gorgeous drawings this arc is known for. recurring major names, action and

[03:33] Sakai, Takashi Hashimoto, and Atsushi Wakabayashi, animators like Yuki Sato, Yamashita, episode directors and storyboard artists like Dali Shen, and many more. I'll talk about some of them in a few minutes.

[03:47] And with all that out of the way, I think we can finally start talking about breaking down the visuals. Let's not waste time and jump right into it. and storyboards. We are going through this aspect by aspect instead of episode

[04:01] the direction and storyboards, which previous seasons. Maybe ever so slightly less visually striking, but not noticeably different. It's [music] fine. There is, however, one very interesting

[04:15] thing about the storyboarding, that being those 3D background aided dynamic camera shots. Much like the rest of the show this season, especially the Tite Kubo directed and storyboarded episode 1 makes heavy use of 3D backgrounds to

[04:27] create these high-speed ultra dynamic shots, and let's talk about them for a So, first off, I think those 3D aided dynamic shots look really cool. I think they're visually striking and give the show a much-needed larger-than-life

[04:40] they're watching a high-profile production, which they are, and I genuinely believe the show looks better with them than without. The problem, extremely difficult and complicated to execute. They come with their own sets

[04:53] of challenges, and I don't think the team is handling them well. I'll explain. Don't click off. I'll explain. The most important component of those 3D background aided shots is the 3D. It's the foundational element, and I don't

[05:05] think the 3D backgrounds in Bleach look particularly good. Don't get me wrong, scenes like certain folks over on Twitter will seem to think, but they aren't exactly the most stellar display of 3D modeling and texturing, either.

[05:18] The textures look a bit low-res. Models are a bit clunky and awkward, especially is a certain outdated video game-like feel to the 3D backgrounds, if you know unfortunate. Not the end of the world, but certainly something that cheapens

[05:32] The other major challenge animators face when attempting shots like these is the 2D component. Dynamic camera movement characters in the 3D backdrops and animating them as per the camera

[05:45] movement. A ridiculously difficult task, one that the team behind Bleach is Here's a basic explanation of the issue. In the world of 2D animation, there's a term known as melt which by the way isn't something us nerds came up with.

[05:58] Actual production people use the term as well. Melt or melting is basically a phenomena with the form and the physical volume of a 2D object or character keeps shifting between frames. It's a form of inconsistency caused by lack of time or

[06:10] excessive complexity that makes the 2D object look like it's physically With that in mind, look at those 3D background added shots from Bleach and focus on the characters. I don't know how many of you will notice it, but the

[06:22] characters melt a lot like to a noticeable borderline comedic degree. Moving on, besides those viewable light shots, the direction and storyboards thing in the world, but they have a few cool ideas sprinkled in here and there.

[06:36] getting scratched at the final old-school opening scene back in episode 1. Good stuff. Let's now talk about the actual 2D animation and it won't take long because there isn't all that much worth talking

[06:49] struggling behind the scenes and failing to create impressive shots, but because the season clearly hasn't kicked into high gear yet. I wouldn't be surprised end up being the weakest when it's all said and done.

[07:02] Still, despite all that, we did have a few highlights. Besides the tremendous four seasons, we did get a few impressive sequences here and there. Be it Masaki Ando's ultra-smooth highly dense effects animation in episode 1, be

[07:16] sequence filled with that trademark snappiness and energy she's known for, be it Yukio Hasegawa's mind-blowing work on episode 3. Mind-blowing because he key animated, corrected, and cleaned up every single drawing all by himself. Not

[07:30] it was solo key animation, solo correction, and solo clean up. Utterly To sum things up, the animation aspect that's a good way of describing season 4. It's not as animation starved as say

[07:44] a season 2, which of course is a good thing. God, season 2 was rough. Like I said earlier, this season clearly hasn't kicked into high gear yet, I readers that the best of is yet to come, and I think the staff is saving their

[07:57] resources accordingly. Will we have an episode comparable in quality to season 1 episode 6? Will Yoshihiro Kano, who worked on both the opening and the ending for this season, show up? Will we see exciting guest animators like we

[08:09] time will tell, but I certainly hope so, really cool stuff. And with all that out of the way, let's now talk about something that will undoubtedly piss some of you off. Let's talk about what I think is the single

[08:22] worst thing about Bleach TYBW from a visual point of view, about what actively ruins scenes and berries animation. Let's talk about the Two quick things. One, this is my opinion. I watch the show with my eyes

[08:35] and my brain processes the information, so this is the way I see the show and what I think of it. And two, I've always been of this opinion. Everything I'm about to say I've believed since the start. I said these exact things all the

[08:47] way back in 2022 when season 1 was airing. I'm not jumping on a bandwagon, quite the opposite actually. Got it? Both points? Great, let's get to it. The Both points? Great, let's get to it. The compositing in Bleach TYBW is cool

[09:00] during the non-action scenes. I think the glossy vibrant look is fun, although most consistent thing in the world. The problem, however, is the action scenes. problem, however, is the action scenes. The photography never looked good

[09:14] worse. What the photography team likes to do is take the 2D effects animation, the 2D cell, turn the exposure and saturation fugly cheap-looking [music] particle effects on top, and slap a bunch of

[09:28] unnecessary textures over the whole thing. It looks overprocessed, it looks needlessly vibrant, it looks cheap, it looks synthetic, it looks ugly. That's unfortunately the best way of describing it, ugly. Of course, this is all

[09:40] personal preferences and all that. One man's ugly is another man's beautiful or I'm genuinely struggling to think of how anyone would look at like this and genuinely don't get it. If you do, please let me know why down in the

[09:55] comments. I'd love to know. I don't get it. How? Do your eyes not physically don't, do you I'll borrow my own words from back in the day, do you also happen [music] a light bulb? Is this not ridiculous?

[10:09] Here's the most unfortunate thing about this whole compositing fiasco. It's not things I can briefly mention and follow up with, but it's not a big deal because it is. It is a big deal. A vast majority of Bleach's animation power is directed

[10:23] those are the scenes butchered the most by the compositing, it is a big deal. It looks cool, but the overblown photography on the lightning makes it so much harder to look at. Similarly, Yukio Kujo's sequence from episode 2 is

[10:38] most unappealing compositing textures you'll ever see, and Hasegawa's action scenes in episode 3 are buried under the layers of digital slop and this poor animation is barely visible. You get my point, right? It's not an isolated

[10:52] thing. It's an issue that brings other good things down with it. Please stop. You're not Ufotable. Please stop. Stop it. And you know what's particularly infuriating? The excuses fans make up. Oh, you don't get it. It's supposed to

[11:05] and so it's supposed to look like Huh? Huh? Nothing in anime is ever difficult to follow, supposed to be one note in terms of color, supposed to be obscure, sure, but not supposed to look bad. That's stupid. I know it's your

[11:19] obligated to defend every single thing about it without exception like zombies, but it's okay to call a spade a spade. Some things are just bad and that's >> Here's the thing. Look, I want this review to be unbiased, right? I want to

[11:33] aspect and I've been doing that. I background aided shots, but I also talked about how cool they are and how mentioned how the animation hasn't kicked into high gear, but also

[11:45] highlighted a few impressive 2D scenes. I'm trying to be rational, but I just I can't come up with anything positive to say about the photography. I just can't. There's nothing good about it. It looks awful. I apologize for the strong

[11:57] wording. It's just bad and that's it. There's no nuance to it. It just looks bad. You know when it struck me, like really struck me when watching the fight reason, so I paused it and when I came back, I looked at the screen and went,

[12:10] "What are we doing? What the are we doing?" This is not what a high profile think they'd get it by now, especially because the best looking scenes from this show are mostly the ones where the photography does the least. In season 4,

[12:23] episode 1, the opening scene from episode 2, and some of Usogui's effects untouched by the compositing. Relatively, the less the photography wonder why. Don't get me wrong, more compositing is

[12:38] not a bad thing. More bad compositing is. It's not the concept, it's the execution. It's simply too sloppy and visually messy and overbearing. I'm not a fan whatsoever. And that's it for now. This was just a

[12:51] a few things off my chest. Hope you enjoyed. I know bigger episodes are on them as I can. I hope there are many of them. And that's it. A special thanks to Nude03, Amir, The Gallus90, Muzikage, Easy Unni, Jazzimus, and Mental

[13:07] Assassin0282 for becoming tier three members. And until next time.