The Best Worst Anime Studio

[00:02] show hurt to watch, you know they don't mean it literally. Of course, they're talking about psychic damage, stuff that made them cringe out of their skin, question the basic humanity of the people who made it, or just gaze into

[00:14] the abyss until it gazed back a little. The idea that, say, an anime could physically harm someone is obviously ridiculous. Unless of course that anime is made by Gohans, the planet's premier purveyor of audiovisisual epiackac. If

[00:30] you've got food poisoning or a pressing need to come down with a migraine for some reason, their unique in-house blend of traditional and digital animation techniques will doubtless do the trick. And for what it's worth, they're pretty

[00:42] good at the whole skin cringing thing, too. Gohands has long been infamous among hardcore otaku, but with them now dipping their suspiciously overan animated toes into isekai and those [ __ ] things via the exiled heavy

[00:56] knight knows how to game the system, many more casual anime enjoyers are finally getting their first taste of this distinctive style along with their second taste of whatever they had for lunch that day. Which means the time is

[01:10] finally right for me to look back at their entire animeography and figure out exactly where and how it all went wrong for a studio once hailed as one of the industry's most promising innovators. First though, this video is brought to

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[02:49] the world of Rodinia today. Gohands was founded in 2008 by staff of the Osaka branch of Studio Satellite, so named to embody those artists collective desire embody those artists collective desire to quote, "put rice or Gohan on the

[03:04] table by making anime." In pursuit of that goal, they immediately snapped up the rights to adapt Princess Lover, a brand new arrow from a then brand new developer called Ricotta. And less than one year later, they had that anime

[03:17] ready to air. an impressive turnaround time even back then. But could the show itself be anywhere near that impressive? Actually, yeah.

[03:51] mostly damp unsalted crackers, Princess Lover kicked itself off with a bang by assassinating its badass kendo master hero's humble noodle shop owning parents and getting him caught up in an attempted stage coach robbery with guns

[04:06] and motorcycles in its first 5 minutes. A bold setup for a modern-day tale of medieval chivalry about a young man who finds himself thrust into the strange new world of high society after discovering that his mom was the secret

[04:21] ays to one of Japan's biggest corporations. caught not just between the competing affections of the big titty princess he rescued from that robbery and the badonadon toteen fencing baddy that is his new surprise fiance

[04:34] baddy that is his new surprise fiance but also a burning desire for revenge also also he's got a new maid who really reminds him of his mommy and that's a whole other thing and you know what I was absolutely here for that thing

[04:48] coming off episode 1 I honestly thought I'd found a proper hidden gem of an action Harum here with a deaf balance of thrills, laughs, and highquality fan service. Not to mention a whole separate official H OVA for anyone who wants to

[05:04] see that Harum go all the way. What more could a trash goblin ask for? More than one good episode would have been a start. The second one does have a little more sword fighting in it, which is pretty cool. But that aside, it's

[05:18] business as usual for a normal guy's first day at the Fancy Rich School romcom episode. A lucky perve moment here, a misunderstanding there, an annoying guy who unilaterally decides he's Protag's best friend and won't

[05:32] leave him alone, seemingly everywhere. You know the drill. And then we get into the first major arc in which Teepe must fight to prove to some Sundere [ __ ] that he belongs in the school's social club by learning how to waltz and host a

[05:48] tea party. So yeah, it it pretty much completely lost me there. To be fair though, that is more on the game's writers than on Gohans, who did a more than admirable job with this adaptation. The character designs are solid. The

[06:03] animation is great, especially the jiggle physics. And stylistically speaking, it looks downright normal. There are still a few over ambitious shots that in retrospect foreshadow what's to come. But its use of CGI is

[06:16] sparing. What little it has is acceptable for the time. Everyone has a mostly normal amount of hair, and the clouds just hang there in the sky instead of being blown around by hurricane force winds all the time. If I

[06:30] didn't know I was looking at a Gohan's anime, I would never suspect a thing. And the same goes for their next two works. Chbarashka Ar, a short anime with a distinctly charming cell-shaded style based on a popular series of Soviet

[06:45] based on a popular series of Soviet children's books, and Satkai Yakuo.

[07:11] [singing] >> With its unassuming English title of the student council staff members, this anime tells you exactly what you're in for right out of the gate. A zany high school sitcom about a very serious

[07:24] student council president who's secretly anommaniac. The Ara council secretary who's not so secretly anommaniac. The sundere treasurer who looks like she's 12 and will beat the [ __ ] out of anyone who points that out. And the random guy

[07:39] they recruited to represent all the male students at their school after the all girls private academy converted to being co-ed who is now the vice president for some reason that not even he understands. If you enjoy for coma style

[07:53] comedies, almost nothing in this one's going to surprise you, but you'll still probably appreciate just how well it nails the fundamentals. The cast is just the right level of psychotic with each main and supporting character bringing

[08:05] their own distinct brand of ziness to the table. The vocal performances are great across the board, and the gags are animated with all the insane effort you'd expect from Gohands with almost none of the nonsense. There is a little

[08:19] more CGI this goround, enabling the first of many unnecessarily nauseiating fly-through shots you're going to see in this video. But this one does at least serve a narrative purpose by introducing that big, wacky cast of characters and

[08:34] giving the school they inhabit a cohesive sense of space. And ironically, cohesive sense of space. And ironically, this rougher, flatter early CGI looks better and blends more seamlessly with the 2D animation than almost anything

[08:48] else they've made since, including all of the sequels to this show, which suddenly look like they're set in a PS3 game. Though at least they did have the good sense to keep the 2D animation style consistent and not throw on that

[09:03] disgusting purple green gradient filter that they put on everything they make for some reason. Now, a reason that I finally learned by watching their next finally learned by watching their next anime

[09:25] Gohan's first feature film, Mardok Scramble, is where they first really started pushing the stylistic envelope to develop their signature look. And the interesting thing about it is you can actually see what they were going for

[09:39] here. The washed out lighting, crazy camera movement, and sickly green power that hangs over almost every shot all speak to an animation team that recently watched the Matrix and thought, "Dang, we should make an anime look like that."

[09:54] And hey, the Matrix started with the Wowskis showing some WB execs Ghost in the Shell and saying, "We want to do that in live action." And so it's kind of fitting for a Ghost in the Shell clone to turn that around on them.

[10:07] Though that does actually kind of undersell just how unhinged Marduk Scramble really is. Based on a series of novels from Toe Ubukata, the madman novels from Toe Ubukata, the madman behind Bye-Bye Earth and Lioalier Deon.

[10:21] This film trilogy follows a teenage prostitute named Rune Belalow who is brought back from the brink of death with a whole mess of experimental cyborg implants so she can stand as the star witness in her own murder trial and also

[10:35] defend herself against the various cyborg assassins sent to make her drop the charges with a little help from a friendly talking mouse who turns into a gun. After hearing all that, it might surprise you to learn that this film

[10:48] offers a rather nuanced and sensitive portrayal of the kind of hell that justice systems put women through when they go after rapists and abusers with a consistent thematic focus on the importance of consent. And that's even

[11:02] The Thing with all its gratuitous sex scenes and the crazy action climax in which Rune fends off a gang of women's body part grafting psychopaths, including a muscle man covered in liveaction eyeballs, a fat guy who's

[11:17] mostly made out of stolen boobs, and their leader, well done the [ __ ] hand, who, let's just say, he enjoys hand massages a little more than your average Joe. Out of all the Gohans anime, this is probably the one I'm most likely to

[11:33] continue. And not just because I can finish the rest in 2 hours. This blend of cyberpunk philosophizing and batshit anime insanity is exactly my jam. And the art direction and color design do actually suit the plot and setting here,

[11:49] even if they are laying the groundwork for all the horrors we're about to witness. Before we get to those though, Gohans did actually make one more normall looking anime, at least if you can ignore the clouds.

[12:08] single episode OVA adaptation of a four- volume sane and horror manga about a scholarship student at an elite private school who accidentally gets assigned to the girl's dorm because his home room teacher is too dumb to put on a bra. So

[12:21] now he has to pretend to be a girl. And also the teacher is his roommate. And also she handcuffs herself to him at night to stop him from sleep molesting anyone outside their room. Though notably that doesn't stop her. It's not

[12:35] quite hentai, but only in the sense that they cover stuff up with pansu instead of digital mosaics, which frankly lets them show more. Whether or not it's good is a matter of personal kink, but for what it's worth, which is quite a lot

[12:49] since I am a globally recognized expert in such things, it is one of the best animated etchy anime I have personally seen. Though, you will have to take my let me post some of these clips in even the Patreon cut of this video. Together,

[13:05] these four anime paints a pretty clear picture of what early Gohands was all about. being cinematically ambitious, artistically experimental, and concerningly horny. Three traits that reached their apex in 2012's K Project.

[13:39] seven secret kings with mighty superpowers that they can share with their clansmen, the K franchise puts a fun shownen battle spin on color-coded gang warfare that a 15-year-old Jeff would have absolutely with and

[13:53] 34year-old Jeff still quite enjoyed. Our hero Yashiro finds himself unexpectedly thrust into that secret world of kings and clans when a video surfaces of a guy who looks exactly like him brutally murdering a beloved member of the Red

[14:08] Clan, Hanma, causing them and a bunch of other power users to want to brutally murder him in turn, which is a bit of an issue since he doesn't have any powers of his own that he knows of or any recollection of having killed that guy

[14:22] for that matter. meaning his only hope of surviving long enough to either prove his innocence or remember why he did it are the mysterious magic powers of his pet cat who can turn into a beautiful naked girl for some reason. Actually, I

[14:35] know the reason. See, Kay is bursting out the gills with homoerotic tension. Multiple gangs worth of bishy boys who all want a piece of each other yowi baiting each other at levels that can only be described with the infinite bait

[14:49] works meme. We're talking [ __ ] that makes JJK and HighQ fick writers look makes JJK and HighQ fick writers look like they're reaching,

[15:11] ploy. Fujo's are the economic cornerstone of any healthy, handsome battle boy fandom after all. However, by being this overt about it, there is some risk of turning away the shownen chuds you need for that sweet crossdemographic

[15:26] appeal. The solution? Just jangle some keys, I mean, catgirl ass all up in their faces for a couple minutes an episode and also through the entire ED and just kind of hope they don't notice how gay everything around that is. Not

[15:40] every studio can pull that off, but Gohans does employ some of the most talented ass artisans in the entire industry. So with that genius strategy, they were able to turn Kay into their biggest hit yet. a juggernaut of a

[15:54] franchise by original anime standards spanning two seasons, six movies, four light novels, nearly a dozen manga, and one Otoé game whose success bought the studio years of financial independence in which they could develop new IP and

[16:10] hone their signature style. And if you look at K from the perspective of someone in 2012 who doesn't know the horrors that are coming, that style does show a lot of potential. They are still mostly working with 2D background assets

[16:24] rather than ugly ass 3D, but this time they're spiced up with digital effects and animation that give the world a distinctive, sophistic.

[16:39] a bit too harsh and leave scenes looking muddy or washed out, but otherwise do a solid job of emulating mood lighting, and they are used fairly sparingly alongside plenty of scenes that still have actual color design. Sure, there is

[16:54] some jank that needs ironing out. We're already pushing up against the limits of how many hair strands one human can reasonably animate. And the clouds keep getting faster and faster with each new anime to a point that is already kind of

[17:07] distracting. But overall, it feels like a promising step in the evolution of early digital animation. I can see why after this anime, a lot of folks thought that Gohan's future was looking bright. But sadly with their next release, it

[17:22] suddenly started looking a whole lot dimmer and very very green.

[17:42] Capellon is an ugly ass anime. There are things that I do really like about its visual design. The thick outlines around the characters look great, and the background art is full of messy, decaying detail that really sells the

[17:55] post-apocalyptic setting. In particular, its use of multi-layered parallax effects over pure 3D CG looks really good and is something that I would like to see Gohans do more of. There are also some genuinely impressive action set

[18:09] pieces with rather complex animation and some good character acting throughout, but all of that is overshadowed quite literally by the peinted baby vomit that's been smeared over almost every shot. There is a reason for that. The

[18:24] series is set in post-nuclear Tokyo following a squad of genetically engineered radiationimmune school girls as they search the ruins for survivors. So, it doesn't have the color palette of an early Xbox 360 game by accident. It

[18:38] is very intentionally trying to evoke Fallout 3. The only issue is it totally [ __ ] sucks at doing that. Even at its greenest and griiest, you can look at a given screenshot of Fallout 3 and generally tell what color people's hair

[18:54] and clothes are supposed to be. But that simply is not the case with this anime. Quite a few shots look like clumsy attempts to colorize black and white footage. The story is also not particularly great, at least as far as I

[19:08] got into it. I did like the show don't tell approach to world building until they just kind of like explained half of the setting in a news broadcast, which possibly do. But the episodic plot lines are just really boring and try way too

[19:23] hard to make you cry in the cheapest, most manipulative way possible. And the girls are so keen to trust random strangers who just pointed guns at them and random stray dogs in abandoned cities that I genuinely started

[19:37] wondering how much of their genetic engineering process involved cousins. Maybe the manga is better. I'd be willing to bet that it is, but uh I have zero reason to ever find out. Still, any

[19:50] experimental studio is bound to fail an experiment from time to time. Capellion was just one anime. And as they kept chugging along with new installments of Kay and Student Council that mostly avoided making those same mistakes, it

[20:05] seemed like Gohans was back on track, leading the charge into the future of digital animation. Then Handshakers happened. And I really wish I could just jump right from that into a clip for style points. But I do feel the need to

[20:18] warn anyone who's susceptible to motion sickness that you will want to either look away from the screen or cut this video to half speed for the next clip because when people say this show makes them nauseous, that is not hyperbole.

[20:52] anime from a production standpoint. Story-wise, it's just kind of boring. Surprisingly so for a thing where the first villain fights with BDSM orgasms and the first supporting character we meet is secretly her brother. Most of

[21:06] the show is just people sitting around yapping about where they're going to go yap next. But on a technical level, it does so much wrong. I could shave 5 minutes off this video just by listing everything it does right instead. There,

[21:21] I just did. Now, here's all the problems. The 2D and 3D elements move at it feel like you're watching two different shows layered on top of each other. They've completely abandoned the concept of color design in the animation

[21:34] stage of production. instead opting to handle it all in post with these garish rainbow gradient filters that somehow look even worse than they did in Capellion. And those filters seem to be the only compositing tool that the show

[21:47] has to try to make its extremely flat characters fit next to its extremely bumpy and shiny 3D objects, which is already a losing battle with the big-headed bugeyed moa blob art style that is the worst possible fit they

[22:01] could have picked for this anime in the real world. aesthetic that I think they're going for. And that's only further ruined by the awful quality of the 3D models themselves, whose higher level of detail only highlights just how

[22:16] little of the background geometry makes any kind of physical sense. Now, you'd think there'd be some kind of tradeoff for all those drawbacks, right? that these experimental elements, as broken as they are, at least allow for more

[22:30] ambitious action scenes or a new level of cinematic storytelling that's just not possible in traditional 2D. But somehow it's the opposite of that.

[22:53] an animator can employ is the ability to draw the eye with isolated motion. This technique is incredibly useful in character-driven moments where it can highlight a subtle shift in body language or a single meaningful glance.

[23:07] But it's utterly essential in big crazy sakuga scenes where restricting motion to carefully plotted lines of action can make choreography that is otherwise way too chaotic and fast to follow perfectly legible. Handshakers throws all that out

[23:23] the window. In theory, it is a heck of a flex to put out a TV anime where your background extras are doing more character acting than the hero of your average slop tier isekai. But in practice, it just makes it hard to know

[23:37] where you're supposed to be looking in any given crowd scene. By the same token, it takes a lot of technical skill to animate like 50 independent strands of hair in the middle of an action scene. But when you actually do, all it

[23:50] does is add a bunch of visual noise that distracts from whatever the person with all that hair is doing with the big off sword in their hands. And all these clarity issues are only exacerbated by having the camera constantly flying all

[24:05] the over and sometimes under the place. A lot of people who don't know what the phrase overan animation around lately, but this is what it actually looks like. And while future Gohan's

[24:19] projects starting with Wise, the sequel to Handshakers that absolutely no one asked for, have mostly ironed out the frame rate ups and other objective technical flaws with this anime. They have done nothing to address that

[24:35] fundamental problem. But before we can get to those, we got to talk about the anime they didn't make. On November 20th, 2020, Gohans and King Records dropped the very first trailer for Tokyo Babylon 2021. An adaptation of a classic

[24:50] clamp manga that fans have been clamoring for over three decades in counting. The, shall we say, esoteric art style did leave quite a few of those Clamp afficionados with very reasonable concerns, spoiled as they've been over

[25:05] the years with all their Madhouse and production IG anime. But overall, the fandom was filled with a sense of cautious optimism for exactly one day until the allegations dropped. Turns out someone on staff yked a whole bunch of

[25:19] costume designs from K-pop artists, doll manufacturers, and some other very copyrighted sources that would come to light in an internal investigation, causing the show to be delayed while corrections were made and not long after

[25:31] that cancelled altogether, leaving Gohans holding the bag for the 13 episodes they'd already finished. and the other eight that were still in production. A bag that was worth reportedly over $4 million, which

[25:45] they're still trying to get back from King Records through an ongoing lawsuit. It's an unfortunate and messy situation that leaves us with one glaring question. Why would a manga circle as prestigious as Clamp ever entrust one of

[26:00] their oldest and most beloved properties to the chuckle who just made Handshakers? Because by all accounts, they're some of the most reliable and easy to work with chuckle in the entire industry. I mean, they had 13 episodes

[26:16] of Tokyo Babylon finished by the time they dropped the announcement trailer. Whatever your personal favorite anime studio is, they probably couldn't pull that off. At a time when animator turnover has never been higher and more

[26:31] episodes are outsourced and beset by production problems than not, Gohans is one of the few studios that can consistently produce full seasons on time in budget and entirely in-house. Almost all of the employees who left

[26:46] Satellite to found the company are still working there, including their fully in-house CGI team, without whom it simply would not be possible for them to consistently pump out animation this ugly. The only other studios who could

[27:02] do what Gohans does, if anyone ever wanted to, are the likes of EUO Table, wanted to, are the likes of EUO Table, Kyoto Animation, Bones, Sunrise, Science Saru, and maybe Mappa. It's no exaggeration to call them one of the

[27:16] bestrun companies in the entire business. But of course, the horrifying implication of that is that none of this is an accident. It's the vision. They are doing this on purpose because they like it. They just think that a really

[27:32] good anime should make you puke in your mouth a little, I guess. And with credentials like that, who are we to say they're wrong? With Tokyo Babylon cancelled, Gohan's next anime would end up being another original project.

[27:47] Though you'd be forgiven if you failed to realize it was. Scar on the Ptor is basically just K without the sauce. Another tale of shownen superpowered gang warfare in the streets of Tokyo, except this time it's in a special

[28:02] economic zone that pretty much looks exactly like New York. Maybe there's a lore reason for that that I didn't get to or missed because I was falling asleep watching it. Maybe they just bought a New York themed 3D asset pack

[28:15] to get it out the door as fast as possible. Who can say? Certainly, it doesn't seem like much thought went into the environmental design from the actual people at the studio. Like our introduction to this world has our main

[28:27] character walking down this horribly dilapidated street, expositing about how he and his brother live in the slumiest part of the most dangerous neighborhood in all of Japan, followed immediately by a cut to him walking into one of the

[28:41] cleanest, fanciest sitcom apartments you have ever laid eyes on. I don't know what vibe they were going for here. I don't even know if they know, but they did not get there. The biggest problem though is just how gosh darn drab the

[28:56] cast and story are. K worked because it had fun with its premise and didn't take itself too seriously. Like, yeah, the guys were all badass anime pretty boys. Of course they were. But they were also kind of goofballs with memorable quirks

[29:11] and fun interactions with each other. Scar has this one guy whose whole thing is asking his definitely not platonic life partner if he knows a bunch of random phrases. And they put him in every episode preview because they know

[29:26] that's the only remotely funny or entertaining character gimmick in the entire cast. Do not count one chicken before they >> It's a joyless slog to get through. every bit as boring and yappy as the

[29:42] worst bits of Handshakers without any of the insane nonsense that keeps you watching to see who's going to their little brother or groom a teenager next. Thankfully though, Gohan's tolerators were given a reprieve from both our

[29:55] boredom and our nausea in summer of 2023 when the studio released two new anime simultaneously. both helmed by the same two directors who were clearly kept a little too busy between those back-to-back projects to ever really get

[30:10] on their go hands [ __ ] The girl I like forgot her glasses is mostly watchable after you make it past the one bit at the start where a guy walking to class is filmed like he's doing skateboard tricks.

[30:39] watching if you don't think the girl who forgot her glasses is particularly cute, which I don't. But it is watchable. And the masterful cat is depressed again today is just downright good actually. The camera is mostly content to just

[30:54] point itself where the story is and stay there. sometimes even in cinematically interesting ways. Its goh handsiest moments are pretty rare and almost exclusively used to sell jokes. And it turns out when they don't have to

[31:07] constantly adjust their work to accommodate totally unhinged cinematography, a lot of these animators are pretty darn good at character acting. Even better, the actual story about an absolute [ __ ] mess of a

[31:20] woman who's only able to function with the help of her sentient pet cat the size of a bear strikes that perfect balance between the surreal and mundane where all the best slice of life comedies live. My only real complaint is

[31:34] the ED low-key makes me sad because it offers such a tantalizing taste of what this studio could be doing if they were just [ __ ] normal. Neither show is backgrounds still look like they were

[31:48] pulled straight out of PlayStation Home, but overall the storyboarding is sensible and motivated. The colors you see are mostly the ones the artists actually used, and you'll only need maybe one gravel to make it through both

[32:01] series. All things considered, it finally seemed like Gohans was back on track, leading the charge into the future of Wait, why am I reading this future of Wait, why am I reading this sentence again?

[32:39] humanity has been hunted to near extinction by an army of killer alien robots. Momentary Lily has a built-in immunity to the over complicated crowdshot problem that plagues the rest of these shows, and the studio used the

[32:53] resulting wiggle room in their frame budget to quadruple down on everything else that is wrong with them. The hair and boob physics have gone from a little my graphics card. And the camera operator seems to have moved up from

[33:08] cocaine to meth. But there is a silver lining to that. Whatever was left in his old stash seems to have made its way into the writing room. So for the first time since K Gohans has managed to craft an original anime story that is every

[33:23] bit as batshit insane as the animation that tells it. That story follows a squad of six cute girls who've been mysteriously granted mighty magical weapons that let them fight the robot menace. So naturally, the climax of

[33:37] every single episode is a 3minute cooking tutorial segment for easy meals that anyone can make at home. Also, sometimes they fight the robots. And when they do, boy howdy, do they ever do their darnest to make you spit those

[33:51] easy meals right back up. But it is the writing that really makes this one of the most fun shows the studio has ever put out. Please note, I said fun, not good. The character writing is some piping hot dog [ __ ] Basically, every

[34:06] one of these waifuss can be boiled down to a single character gimmick, like comparing literally everything that happens to video games, constantly quoting an angsty emo light novel, or having huge boobs. The scripts also have

[34:19] a very bad habit of trying to make you cry in the last 2 minutes after an entire episode's worth of wild action scenes and zany comedy, creating a sense of emotional whiplash rivaled only by the physical whiplash of the camera

[34:33] work. But oh sweet Haruhi, does the complete lack of taste and common sense that led to those choices ever have some upsides. From the Ara Ona rolling around

[34:45] in the grass as a robot bears down on her, screaming about how she's too young to die while those boobs try to roll in two completely unrelated directions to the buck wild twist that start stacking up in the back half. This show is a lot

[35:00] of things, but boring ain't one of them. There's this one episode where they're another survivor on social media that they're real people, but obviously they just grab those off of Google. And even if they were to film themselves, I mean,

[35:16] that could just be a deep fake. But then they realize, you know what a killer robot would never post? You know what's the last thing that an AI could ever the last thing that an AI could ever possibly generate? Sexy viral videos of

[35:30] girls in bikinis. That's what. So then they go to a pool to film one of those and that's the whole episode. It's fantastic. Great swimsuits, phenomenal fantastic. Great swimsuits, phenomenal physics, A+ asses, no complaints. In a

[35:44] long line of anime ranging from pretty decent to just so bad they're bad. This is the first Gohans anime that's pushed all the way through into the legendary realm of so bad it's goodness. And for now, it's also their last because their

[35:59] most recent thing is surprisingly kind of good.

[36:24] in that sentence, though. Gohan's unhinged approach to visual storytelling has proven to be an oddly good fit for the paint by numbers plotting of one of those things, providing plenty of spice to offset the inherent blandness of

[36:37] watching yet another guy with a bad class proved to all the mechanically illiterate jerks in his statriven world that the class is good actually by using it to kill a bunch of monsters. But that's not the only thing this anime has

[36:51] going for it. The stat system and his build choices are actually pretty interesting as these things go. The [ __ ] who ruins Protag's life character is one of the hottest women I have ever seen animated. I have never been happier

[37:05] to see these storyboarders push a camera through the floor. And even if you're not a man of culture who'd let her kill you, the main waifu's a clown girl, which is the kind of bold investment strategy I think could pay huge

[37:18] economy. Even without all the gohanssiness, it's got quite a bit of personality for one of these things. Unfortunately though, the animation is still dragging it down. And not just in all the ways we've already talked about

[37:33] with all these other things. On top of being their first isekai, this is also Gohan's first 26 episode series. And it turns out that filling that many episodes with animation this complex is pretty tricky. So, they've taken to

[37:46] reusing quite a bit of it. We're talking One Piece almost dress Rosa levels of pacing problems here where at least half of every new episode is just bits of all

[37:58] the last few episodes or bits of the same episode that they flash back to literally 5 minutes after they happen. like they use one of those crazy ass Gohan shots to introduce the main town and adventurers guild in episode 1 and

[38:12] and adventurers guild in episode 1 and then replay the entire thing completely uninterrupted three episodes later. So even though we're five deep by now, I kind of feel like I've only watched two and I'd like to save the rest of my

[38:26] thoughts about the show for hottest trash in a few weeks when we've got like three episodes worth of content out. So, for now, that is all the Gohans anime I've got to talk about, but I do sincerely hope they keep making more,

[38:40] and not just for the sake of my own content. I think it's reallying cool to have an anime studio out there that runs a tight ship, treats its employees well, and keeps making exactly the kind of anime that they want to make, no matter

[38:55] their mouths and wave at them like, "Please stop. I can't take anymore." In an art world ruled by overstandardized best practices, committee-driven corporate decision-making, and the looming threat of AI slop, this kind of

[39:11] defiant commitment to a very weird creative vision that few understand and creative vision that few understand and even fewer like isn't just badass, it is necessary to the future of humanity. Gohans truly is the best worst anime

[39:27] studio. And no matter what kind of crazy [ __ ] they cook up next, I will be here for it because I'm Jeff Fu and that's what I do.