No but it affects the outsourced animators from Chinese studios.

 

Is Promare any good i was thinking of seeing it.

 

I've got a rather specific question: anyone know any relatively recent shows with a visual style similar to Mysterious Girlfriend X (Nazo no Kanojo X)? I love how that show looks, but I can't really get past the whole... spit-centric premise.

 

I've heard a lot of great things about it... that being said, I really need to check out that movie

 

Why are Japanese studios outsourcing to China in the first place? Did their talent fall off?

 

Everybody outsources to China or South Korea. Labour is somehow still cheaper that way. Stuff like keyframes will probably still be done in-house in Japan. Maybe even the tweening frames, depending on how arsed the production/director is over quality control. But there's still a lot of rote tasks like colouring that can probably be shipped off.

 

I could have sworn though that anime studios prided themselves on being solely Japanese based. I guess I'm starting to see why the animation quality has taken a massive nose dive in the last decade now.

 

@mx-01 archon Doesn't the animation outsourcing (like coloring and laboring) apply for non-anime cartoons as well? (yeah, I know it's kinda off-topic)

 

As if the old days didn't have their share of "quality" days.

 

I never said it was perfect, but the animation was far more detailed with shading and highlights than what we are currently getting. Eyes look so much better then. These days, everything looks like it is the initial draft.

For example, look at this picture someone did of MHA as if it were drawn in the 90s compared to how it is today:



I would be more inclined to actually give the show a chance if it looked like it did on the right side.

Another example is Boogiepop Phantom to Boogiepop and Others. Phantom had grain and a distortion filter over the animation to make it look creepy. And Others, on the other hand, is very clean, very smooth, and doesn't have even half the amount of detail on the character models. Boogiepop doesn't even have the ribbon thing around her cape.

 

That's a style thing, not an animation/quality control thing.

And of all things to use as an example of lesser animation quality, you pick a Bones series.

Your old fogey is showing again, Kain.

 

I finished the 1st season of Strike Witches and I found it so much fun to watch. Sakamoto Mio is my favorite character.

 

A lot of Japanese animation projects have been outsourcing to Korea (and Vietnam) for a long time now, probably at least 10 years if not much more than that. Chinese outsourcing is probably more recent, but not surprising given the number of joint productions now.

 

If you actually read the credits scroll in any anime series or movie, you'll probably happen upon a long list of Korean names by some point. Even great animation will still have employed Korean studios at one point or another. It's just the nature of the business at this point.

I'd actually say that by nature of digital animation allowing productions to become much more advanced, they've probably necessitated the use of a lot more labour positions to keep up.

 

Re-watched/binged all episodes of Fate/Stay night from back in 2006 since my brother wanted to get into the series, we had an overall great time going through 4 to 6 episodes a day. Some of the soundtracks were wonderful, now that I had watched more anime compared to back then I recognized the style of music from kenji kawai instantly.

We are now at episode 6 of Fate Zero, the start is very interesting especially seeing how the different magus get themselves into the holy grail war and appearance from little Rin, Illya & poor Sakura is a nice bonus.

 

Nice! Onwards to season 2 then  

Started watching K-on. 3 eps in, fun show so far. ED and OP are earworm material.

 

I love Fate/Zero. My husband doesn't believe me that it was produced after the Fate/Stay Night and Unlimited Blade Works. Iskandar/Alexander/Rider is my favorite servant, but that creep Caster/Gilles de Rais was pretty awesome, too.

 

I am already well into season 2. I just can't stop watching it. Every time I want to watch something else I am right back to Strike Witches.

 

Why didn't he believe it came after Stay Night, the sudden animation jump should tell?
We just plow through episode 15 last night, enjoyed the interactions between Master/Servant throughout.
One thing that I really like this series does is how morally grey most of the characters feel, none of them are outright bad guys ( except two for obvious reasons) to me.

 

I think the mistake comes from the fact that Fate/Zero made its way to streaming services in the west first as well as its events occurring earlier, chronologically, than the events of Fate/Stay Night.

I know I was almost wholly unfamiliar with the series ahead of Fate/Zero save for a comic I'd come across featuring Rider/Medusa.