Ufotable's animation quality keeps going downhill

[BeastSlayer]

The 2D anime cutscene quality is so bad compares to the mo-capped game engine cutscene. The animation quality is about as good as a low budget TV anime this days. Thankfully they are few and far between.

I remember tales series used to have great anime cutscene, even the last main entry ToB had much bettter anime cutscene. Not to mention Ufotable produced top of the line animation. I also noticed the other recent Banco game Scarlet Nexus had pretty meh anime as well.

I have not watched many new Anime this days, but I feel like the animation quality of traditional 2D anime as a whole has been going downhill for a long time in Japan. More and more animes are using 3D model. Fortunately Banco has enough budget to use mocap and make the motion and face animation looks really good. It looks like 2D anime are becoming a thing of the past. What do you think?

[Stormy Dawn]

I don't really think it's a matter of Ufotoable's animation quality taking a dip, but rather it hasn't evolved at all. It's the same style they've used for years.

When you compare their animation to the ever changing and generally better looking in-game graphics it starts to become a bit of a startling juxtaposition.

Like Tales of Xillia was nice looking and all, but you can tell it was an early 2010s game and the anime custcenes almost seemed to compliment the somewhat less sophisticated graphical style, but now as in-game rendering and graphics continue to improve animation looks a big jarring in comparison.

Honestly I feel like the days of in-game animation in JRPGs needs to go away. Or at least when mixed with in-game rendering. You can have a game that basically almost solely relies on animation, but sprinkling animation inside of titles like the Tales games should probably become a thing of the past, but that's just my two cents.

[Asakura Shinichi]

Pandemic + them having to put in a ton of extra work towards Kinmetsu no Yaiba S2, Ufotable is not the only anime studio heavily hit by the pandemic, have you seen other top studios animation level going down? Take a look at Kyoani, Bones and Madhouse.

[BeastSlayer]

Originally posted by Shineek:

Pandemic + them having to put in a ton of extra work towards Kinmetsu no Yaiba S2, Ufotable is not the only anime studio heavily hit by the pandemic, have you seen other top studios animation level going down? Take a look at Kyoani, Bones and Madhouse.

I feel like the animation quality of Japanese Anime has gradually gone done hill even before the pandemic hits. But you got a point.

Ufotable used to be one of the few studios that can put out consistently high quality animation, especially action scenes. Even Veteran studios like Bones has made meh quality animation in the past. It really does not good for traditional 2D animation these days, especially when 3D animes are getting cheaper and faster to make.

I think 3D anime cannot fully replace 2D hand drawn anime. However, if most Japanese 3D Anime can reach the quality of ToA cutscene level, I would not mind 3D at all.

[BeastSlayer]

Originally posted by Tsurayu:

I don't really think it's a matter of Ufotoable's animation quality taking a dip, but rather it hasn't evolved at all. It's the same style they've used for years.

When you compare their animation to the ever changing and generally better looking in-game graphics it starts to become a bit of a startling juxtaposition.

Like Tales of Xillia was nice looking and all, but you can tell it was an early 2010s game and the anime custcenes almost seemed to compliment the somewhat less sophisticated graphical style, but now as in-game rendering and graphics continue to improve animation looks a big jarring in comparison.

Honestly I feel like the days of in-game animation in JRPGs needs to go away. Or at least when mixed with in-game rendering. You can have a game that basically almost solely relies on animation, but sprinkling animation inside of titles like the Tales games should probably become a thing of the past, but that's just my two cents.

I feel like Ufotable has done better opening and cutscene for ToZ and ToB when compares to ToA. Or maybe it's the difference of art style, ToA's anime cutscene characters looks way too different than the in game model. Overall it just looks cheap by Ufotable standard when compares to any of the TypeMoon stuff.

But enough whining. I am really impressed by the cutscene's face animation in ToA. I don't often see this much effort put into face animation in an anime game. I agree if they can make high quality game cutscene, then we don't really need anime cutscene.

[Stormy Dawn]

Originally posted by BeastSlayer:

I feel like Ufotable has done better opening and cutscene for ToZ and ToB when compares to ToA. Or maybe it's the difference of art style, ToA's anime cutscene characters looks way too different than the in game model. Overall it just looks cheap by Ufotable standard when compares to any of the TypeMoon stuff.

You could be right. I'm not really a connoisseur of animation or anything, so it may have honestly just slipped my untrained, amateur eyes. As others have said, it could simply be result of lacking manpower or budget cuts related to Covid.

[Fallensoul]

Originally posted by BeastSlayer:

Originally posted by Shineek:

Pandemic + them having to put in a ton of extra work towards Kinmetsu no Yaiba S2, Ufotable is not the only anime studio heavily hit by the pandemic, have you seen other top studios animation level going down? Take a look at Kyoani, Bones and Madhouse.

I feel like the animation quality of Japanese Anime has gradually gone done hill even before the pandemic hits. But you got a point.

Ufotable used to be one of the few studios that can put out consistently high quality animation, especially action scenes. Even Veteran studios like Bones has made meh quality animation in the past. It really does not good for traditional 2D animation these days, especially when 3D animes are getting cheaper and faster to make.

I think 3D anime cannot fully replace 2D hand drawn anime. However, if most Japanese 3D Anime can reach the quality of ToA cutscene level, I would not mind 3D at all.

On one hand you yourself state you haven't watched much anime these days but on the other hand state the animation has gone downhill. When we had shows like Jujutsu Kaisen, Kimetsu no yaiba, Voilet Evergarden, Vivy, The Ancient Magus bride and many more in recent years just from the top of my head.

As for 3D replacing 2D? That ain't gonna happen anytime soon unless there's gonna be a huge leap in quality in the next years which i doubt's gonna happen. The thing with 3D is that many of the more experienced animators etc. are just simply more used and have more experience with 2D compared to 3D which naturally means they favor doing 2D over 3D which often times turns out ♥♥♥♥. Just look up Berserk or for a more recent example Ex-Arm.

[Asakura Shinichi]

Mate you want to give him eye cancer? EX-ARM? Thats overkill. But yeah, he kinda contradicts himself. Especially since while they took a rather more simple art style for the cinematics, its still quite solid and very good animation. You wanna look what bad animation is? Look for Nanatsu no Taizai season 2 done by Studio Deen, a studio whos been around for 30+ years, and its not a small studio as well its actually bigger then Ufotable and yet the second season of Nanatsu no Taizia is an utter abomination, characters at points look like some scribble drawn by a 3 year old, they look so bad you have trouble recognizing the characters, censorship where they turned blood to white, but its not consistent censorship and some scenes are quite bloody with red blood and some less gory scenes have white blood instead, and to drive the nail harder they did not uncesor anything for the BD release, and neither did they made anything look any better. You can chech this here if you think you can stomach it https://www.cbr.com/seven-deadly-sins-greatest-season-3-bad-animation/ . Picking a simpler art style casue of time constraints and problems to book the animators they want is very common in Japan in normal times, now add pandemic to it, literally the only studio who has no problems with this is Kyoani as they have all the animators in their studio instead hiring animators that work out of their homes as freelancers not being part of any studio. In fact 70% of the animators who work for an anime from any other studio are not even part of that studio. This is quite common knowledge if your actually an anime fan not an anime watcher. And you can easy see this in how some studio make 1-2 anime per year and some other having the same level of animation do 2-3 per season. This all depends on their connections and how well they can book those animators they want before anyone else can.

[BeastSlayer]

Originally posted by Fallensoul:

Originally posted by BeastSlayer:

I feel like the animation quality of Japanese Anime has gradually gone done hill even before the pandemic hits. But you got a point.

Ufotable used to be one of the few studios that can put out consistently high quality animation, especially action scenes. Even Veteran studios like Bones has made meh quality animation in the past. It really does not good for traditional 2D animation these days, especially when 3D animes are getting cheaper and faster to make.

I think 3D anime cannot fully replace 2D hand drawn anime. However, if most Japanese 3D Anime can reach the quality of ToA cutscene level, I would not mind 3D at all.

On one hand you yourself state you haven't watched much anime these days but on the other hand state the animation has gone downhill. When we had shows like Jujutsu Kaisen, Kimetsu no yaiba, Voilet Evergarden, Vivy, The Ancient Magus bride and many more in recent years just from the top of my head.

As for 3D replacing 2D? That ain't gonna happen anytime soon unless there's gonna be a huge leap in quality in the next years which i doubt's gonna happen. The thing with 3D is that many of the more experienced animators etc. are just simply more used and have more experience with 2D compared to 3D which naturally means they favor doing 2D over 3D which often times turns out ♥♥♥♥. Just look up Berserk or for a more recent example Ex-Arm.

I hope you are right, the last anime I watched is Evangelion reboot series which I feel like the animation has keep going down hill since 2.0. Mecha anime these days are just using cheap 3D whenever possible which makes the Gundam series really stands out because it still mostly using 2D.

I feel like Unreal engine 5 could be use to make good quality 3D animation because it has packed a lot of features to make it easier to animate the characters. But I have yet to seen UE5 makes good cel shaded anime style stuff. And I have no clue what tools the Japanese Anime studio use for their 3D stuff.

Thanks for the suggestion btw, will watch the anime you mentioned when I got the time.