Why did Dragon Ball characters look different between episodes?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 19 ก.ย. 2021
- In the past, we've discussed as to why the general art style changed over the course of its decade-long run. However, why could there be a drastic shift between a single episode? Well unlike now Toei Animation use to sub-contract multiple studios such as Studio Junio, Studio Cockpit, Studio Last House and Studio Seigasha, to handle the bulk of animation within an episode.
However, how does having multiple studios contribute to an art style change? Well, join me today as we delve into all that and more!
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These are the discussions I wanted to have with my friends about dbz when I was a kid, but everyone looked at me crazy. Thank goodness for these types of videos and communities!
tell me about it lmao me asking why characters looked different in episodes and i just got weird looks lol "like wut?" lol
@@jjg1818 you too huh
Imagine having friends to talk ;-;
Hahahah
Dude if we were friends back then, I'd undoubtedly have this conversation with you lmao. Of course, I probably wasn't even a sperm cell yet so even if I wanted to, I couldn't lmao
Well the fact that styles were different each episode made watching dragon ball more interesting because of the different takes. And considering that each frame was done on cels every episode looked very unique in some way.
Agreed!
i remember reading somewhere they actually hated doing the design of Cell because it was alot of work to animate, which is the reason they never made Cell have a comeback in the later series or movies.
Im pretty sure literally every artist hates drawing cell lol
I remember being super disappointed as a kid whenever an episode was animated by Uchiyama lol. It was especially jarring in the Buu arc totally bugged me out watching Z
Funny enough I never noticed backed then although I certainly do now haha
@@forgottenrelics1197 when I was a kid I just noticed that on certain scenes characters had bigger hands and ears
@SolidSnake19984 Same
Yeah bro, this used to ruin the whole day lol
Yup, 100%. I was always "oh, this is a cheap one."
i know that the inconsistency did bother some people, and even myself to some extent, but i actually really like all the different styles and talents to be honest. although naturally i have my favorites and ones i liked less
Sometimes inconsistency can be good. You could have mutiple animators who have their own unique styles that still manage to produce a really good product, thus allowing for more unique artistic interpretations of the series and giving the show more life and creativity to it.
Only bothered me when there was a bad animator...I used to think why did they even hire lackluster animation studios for such a dope show
@@VRXconnect because it is a dope show, they can get away with hiring cheaper studious. The mass gonna watch it anyways so who cares about quality.
@@annedrieck7316 I know😢 My ass was there for every episode lol. I hope that era is over though. Whatever studio is doing One Piece right now is killing it. I hope all studios follow that example
@@VRXconnect Toei animation largely handles the animation in One Piece if you're wondering👍
That's what I always concluded myself. Akira Toryamas artstyle and design is one of the hardest to replicate and one of the most difficult to draw as maeda says. Its very easy to assume when you look at his drawings that they are simple and easy but that's the genius behind it, that he makes the artwork and style look cartoony but at the same time with a hyper realistic design. But you wouldn't know that unless you try to draw it yourself. That's one of the reason why DB has the best flow of all manga to this day and still captivates readers. Its genius in that regard.
The most drastic shift in quality & style in DBZ for me was the episode when Vegeta first went Ascended Saiyan, only to have the the next episode have perhaps the WORST animation in DBZ history. Seriously, that fight between Vegeta and 2nd Form Cell was hideous to look at 🤮
As a kid, I always wondered why the characters looked different in each episode. This video made me understand now. I like seeing the different styles of each animation studio. It keeps the show visually fresh. :)
I'd rather a show that's conisistently good like demon slayer or jujutsu kaisen
@@khaledm.1476 what do you mean by good?
Is Dbz that unbearable to watch because of the inconsistencies?
@@annedrieck7316 I mean a show that every episode's animation is a banger is better than show that has some episodes a flop while others are great.
You brought the words "unbearable" which I didn't even use. I prefer consistent quality animation as opposed to opposing artstyles that ruin some episodes. Can you disagree that the show wouldn't have been much better if Uchiyama wasn't a part of the team..
Just hire one quality studio for the entire show and be done with it
@@khaledm.1476 Let me ask u how many episodes did jujutsu kaisen and dragon slayers have? 100? 200? Did it ever occured to u that they could'nt simply just hired one studio due to some circumstances that they never reveal to the public. U cant just treat dragon ball like u treat seasonal anime. There had certain expectation that they need to meet in order to produce this long running shows. It kinda naive to think they could solve "Muh InConsistencies" with one studio.
As a kid, I honestly thought they just got bigger, stronger and older. But the art styles are a perfectly good reason on why they look different too 😉👌🏽
This is a result of multiple studios doing a project. As a kid, I saw this many times with G1 Transformers as Call of the Primatives is still a standout episode compared to many others in the entire franchise. Still a great discussion and makes certain scenes memorable and beautiful!
Yea but why not hire that one good studio instead, consistent quality animation instead of 1 good episode in a shitshow
@@khaledm.1476 Money. Sunbow and Marvel cut budgets and animation wasn't cheap...sadly.
Pretty sure there are just multiple animators, not multiple studios. Toei animation animated all of dbz, but different lead animators would do different episodes to balance work flow.
@@khaledm.1476 Because episodes take months to produce and in order to put out new episodes every week it required multiple studios.
@@commenter8121 Toei's own animator's did barely any animation, as I mentioned in the video there were multiple studios that were subcontracted on the show, you can see that in the chart as well at 0:32 if you're wondering which ones. Although yes, Toei did have their own chief animation supervisor pair up if a new studio began working on the show, episode 174 for example, but this only began in Dragon Ball Z :)
And you can check out the episode credits for yourself if you want a more in-depth look.
-www.kanzenshuu.com/animation-production/database/
I personally love seeing all the different styles, though not all of them are winners and i can see why people would prefer consistency.
You should do more of these types of videos
Uh he did
The most jarring transition will always be episode 120>121 for me. You go from one of the best looking episodes in the series to one of the absolute worst. It distracted me as a kid and it still distracts me now 20 years later.
Also, video on Hisahi Eguchi when? He's my absolute favorite key animator in the whole series.
I wasn't sure what episode you were talking about from the number but I assumed it had to do with Trunks and Frieza. Yup, best example of this.
Yeah I was going to chuck that in as an example haha. And with Eguchi I did a breakdown on his scene in the "Piccolo's Sacrifice Breakdown (Z vs Remake)" video if you haven't seen it. Honestly tho I have no idea as to when I'll make a dedicated video on him again😅
i like how neither image of Goku in the thumbnail doesn't even look bad. Its just a difference in art style.
Its like sticking Dragon Ball and DBZ next to each other.
Dude i love you. This is what I thought every time.
I like when they went off model like in super’s top to elevate the show.
Japanese studios outsourcing to other Japanese studios is a surprisingly common occurrence. I was surprised that even higher-budget studios like TMS would outsource to other studios (although the first three Lupin series definitely went through drastic stylistic changes from episode to episode).
My favorite studio out of the ones that worked on Dragon Ball is probably Studio Junio, for no other reason than that they're the studio that animated the cutscenes for Sonic CD. Although their version of Sonic definitely looks a lot like Kid Goku (not that I think that's a bad thing though).
Idk why,but these types of videos that you do,are satifying to watch,love your content
Great to hear man thank you!
The best animation in the entire of “Z” was goku and Majin Vegeta fight, it was a scene were it just shows Vegeta and Goku going at it and it was so detailed it was one of the only time you could see the souls of vegetas boots drawn out…I don’t think they ever did that in “Z” up to that point
The broly movie had insane animation
@@RayBooM_ It's not Z
The 1st Goku VS Vegeta had also some of the best animation. The Genkidama of Krillin is one of the best sequence of the entire series
@@RayBooM_ Broly movie was a little too hectic for me. It felt like a mess at times.
Pretty sure the best animation was in the The fusion reborn movie
I love your work as always, keep doing your best man. And sometimes I wonder if we could see another anime, that would be cool.
I always did question that as a kid, especially the remakes of the last scene in the following episodes, like Trunks killing Freeza.
Aside from Takahasi, Hitachi Eguchi is my favorite Dragon Ball animator. Piccolo's death by Nappa, Yamcha's Spirit Ball, even several cuts of the Sonic CD animated intro and ending. Very kinetic camera pans and action.
another pleasant surprise... great video man
Banger!!🔥🔥🔥
Personally my favorite Studio On DB is Junio
Hell yeah, the drawing skills of those key animators were in another level.
This is exactly what I wanted. Thank you!!
Huge thanks for featuring me in your video 👁️👄👁️ ! Keep up the good work ! 🙂
No problem man and thank you!
The Uchiyama ones are plain bad, I can never wrap my head around how they thought that was a satisfying way for an episode to look, when the ones in between range from good to downright excellent.
This is especially noticeable when you watch GT, where the art and animation was at its peak in general and looked beautiful, but then you get an Uchiyama episode and it almost makes it hard to enjoy the show, like you just want the episode to be over and done with so you can get back to quality. Luckily Uchiyama episodes tend to only show up once every 3 or 4 episodes for GT.
I didn’t know this, I always thought it was different animators within toei itself with different art styles. Never knew they outsourced.
Most anime are not drawn in japan.
it cool to see all the art styles! As a kid I never noticed :0
Speaking of animation styles, I prefer the style used on Android 18 during her debut, iconic Vegeta battle, and how her Future Counterpart was animated. She looked so pretty in those!
I find it to be the worst when the quality drops right after a big reveal or transform the like with Buu vs Vegeto up untill they fused the art for Goku and Vegeta looked on point and really detailed particularly with the muscles and then after they fuse Vegeto gets the weird Buble arms that look more consistent with dragon ball than with the style that was just in the previous episode
Yes I noticed this even as a kid and it always bothered me. Other examples are the episode after Goku turns super sayian for the first time vs Frieza and also after Vegeta reaches ascended super sayian vs cell.
I really love your videos.
Also, it's kinda ironic that a mediocre supervisor like Uchiyama supervised the most amount of episodes in the series. Just.... interesting.
He was probably the cheapest.
Thats because he was the cheapest, it's all about the bottom line. You get what you pay for.
i was always asking about the different
and now i get the answer
thank you so much for the video 😍❤️
I already know the reason but imma still watch anyways ,your videos are great :)
thanks haha
That was surprisingly in depth
Watched dragon ball to GT as a kid and then as an adult many times. and I never noticed any of the differences before 😂
This is gonna be great, I can feel it
that drawing of butta at 3:04 has me ded LMAO
that 3:07 drawing of Vegeta (white paper) looks absolutely amazing. The correction is such a trajedy.
FINALLY someone talked about this
Honestly I think the closest series to actually compare to Dragon ball with their art style changes is probably one piece
Its cause both shows are done by Toei Animation
I never noticed it with one piece tbh or at least pre time skip
It's more so that both are simple art styles that are hard to replicate and thus any minor shift is noticeable. Toei's own staff hardly animated anything in Dragon Ball Z.
Very true. Oda and Toriyamas styles are difficult to replicate
Yeah now I'm watching OP and it's kinda like Toriyama style before Z part, like a bit rounded or soft and simple
Was this the same with the super broly movie? Because I noticed that in Z movies, they looked consistent throughout, but there were inconsistencies in super broly
It all makes sense now…thanks!
Keisuke Masunaga made the very best versions of the characters. The Buu saga character sheets are flawless imo. And it's not like those models first appeared there. They were already used in the Frieza saga, just look at 1:15, episode 90 and 91. It's just that these character models became the norm in the Buu saga, and i am very happy for it. They were a perfect blend of detail and expressiveness, enriched yet again by 3 tone shading instead of 2. Genuinely lovely
Good job
Thanks I always wanted to know this answer
killer job! hey if it interests you, i would love to see a breakdown/analysis of the 3D/2D Dragonball Fighter Z. i’m trying to reverse engineer it for my own animations
The Manga is better with more consistent artwork. Inconsistent artwork hurts the anime from a story point of view. Example: during the Android Saga Vegeta was drawn with lean muscle in base mode then drawn with big muscle in base mode after his fight with Cell. It sucks because there is no OFFICAL look for the chacracters.
I always saw it in their eyes, it would bug me when sometimes they would have big pupils, then other times they would be tiny.
My fav style is probably whomever did Frieza's "death". The flowing of Goku's hair and the facial animation on them is great.
Then you could tell certain animators were just better at doing fights. There's a stark difference between Vegeta vs Semi-Perfect Cell, and Goku vs Perfect Cell. Vegeta vs Semi-Perfect Cell looks floaty, and at times almost like the hits have no "impact", whereas Goku vs Cell is the opposite I feel like. Kid Buu vs Goku/Vegeta is another one I really like too.
I thought it added to the experience. There was a freshness, even in some of the fillers, to each episode.
gokus face around the beginning of dbz (aswell as picollo) was soo good
I liked the old method. Sure you got some very off model ones, but it really helped to make the vibrantly fluid and sometimes frenzied looking episodes stand out more. The variety helped the shows have their own identity on top of being adaptations of manga
1:06 The lip flaps matches well with what Forgotten Relics is saying about several studios.
Studio Junio also did episodes of Batman the Animated Series. I'm especially pleased to find out they animated the DBZ episode where Goku goes Super Saiyan for the first time. They sure did a great job with that epic moment in anime history. I wonder if any other BTAS animation studios were involved with DB at all, like Spectrum or Tokyo Movie Shinsha.
The best look and animation was the early movies like The Dead Zone, I loved that animation style and wish they would've stuck with that.
Gran información de Yukio evisawa y tadayoshi yamamuro
I’ve always asked this, but I feel like I got the answer from your previous videos
Yeah I've discussed some of this info in the past throughout multiple videos but I thought it deserved it's own one.
As a kid I didn’t really notice this maybe thought a couple episodes were off somehow but it’s funny the huge difference I see now 😭
if you look back a little further, both fist of the north star 1 and 2 from 1986 used the same method of contracting different key animators/studios/artists for different episodes
I didn't even notice this sort of thing as a kid, but watching Super as it aired made me learn all about this sort of thing. You KNOW when a scene is animated by Yuya Takahashi
Late but great video. I have a video idea why don't you review dragon ball legends art/style?
Dude, careful with Alamy, they don't play ⚠️
Great video btw 👌
I have to assume that Uchiyama, Ebisawa stuff was faster and cheaper to save for key episodes. Honestly despite how much I love it if the whole series were animated in Masunaga's off model style it would be exhausting to watch! Can you see them doing the driving episode in that style? It just doesn't fit.
Oh and something that strikes me: Shida does an awesome drawing. It looks great. How dare Yamamuro change it! Except somehow his corrections look EVEN BETTER. The man was unbelievable in his prime. It's a shame SDBH looks so awkward and stiff.
ED: could you do an animation break down on SDBH one day?
I really like the attention given to the studios in this video. We seem to focus on animators and designers we forget they are one part of a team.
As a kid i hated those bad drawn episodes, it was such a let down, i hated Uchiyama and Ebisawa without knowing i hated them 😆😆
Suddenly I started having flashbacks of the UNATCO headquarters...
I never even noticed there were different art styles other than Goku bing skinny to built
The usage of HOME gives me happy
dokkan battle, a dragonball game for mobile, has animations for units that drop, i just realized they used the uncorrect shot of namek super saiyan goku that misumi drew rather than hisada's version, small detail i thought was really neat
That's interesting
When I was a kid, I noticed bad animation on non key scenes and scenarios. Important events are reserved for best quality while fillers are for bad animations. Lol
Most of the time but I was sad that the episode where Trunks goes back to the future looked horrible. That was kind of one of the most important parts in the season/whole show
Yeah, I too noticed the differences in art style. I like Studio Cockpit style a lot better than the others.
Lol The Forehead Thing In The Beginning
I honestly never noticed any differences as a kid, but after watching this I really noticed a difference the biggest jump out is shading styles.
Dragon Ball Super animators: "Guess we're off the hook-"
Me: "SIT YOUR ASS DOWN! We're not done trashing you. YOU TOO, GT!"
I noticed that the characters' mouths became more defined near the end of the Cell arc.
It's interesting, while I do notice the quality episodes vs. the ones that weren't as good, the fact that so much of DB and DBZ was animated so faithfully is almost mindboggling, given the obstacles to it being brought to TV.
Man Uchiyama really stopped us from getting some classics
I never noticed these inconsistencies when I was 7 👀
3:30 this is fucking beautiful. Violently poetic.
On the American side one of the most obvious was the studios that did Tiny Toon Adventures on one extreme you had the brightly colored, fluid, fast paced, detailed, and generally on model TMS Entertainment, and the extremely rubbery, stretchy, bouncy, cartoony, and often off model Kennedy Cartoons.
I remember in frieza saga Krillin before leaving the ground wear the roshi uniform after he flew he wore the saiyan suit
Awesome
3:06 oh god this is just sad, the key animator did an amazing job and the supervisor just……. wow
The infamous trunks vs Frieza fight tho lol
Infamous?
I am currently watching dbz once again and i never really noticed sudden changes in art styles, lol
Give them the goods!!!! This was supreme information that so many fans know nothing about. If your q fan of animations.. take the time to learn about the ones who made it.
nice
How dense was I I watched the totality of DBZ yet I never noticed the art change
I was geeking off rip cuz word why they look hella different
Yeah I noticed this I alot now I know the truth thanks to your amazing videos .
Since I always like to draw I always used to pay attention to the different animation styles per episode and Uchiyama Masayuki and Ebisawa Yukio were the ones I was not looking forward to. Ebisawa Yukio especially I used to think how can he get away with drawing the characters like that!? Something I'll never forget is one of the most badass episode with trunks cutting Frieza in half and then the next episode good grief. To me his best episode was Goku versus Majin Vegeta. With Uchiyama Masayuki I had a higher tolerance for his episodes. There were quite a few episodes that I thought were good like when trunks went back to the future and killed the Androids and even when Vegito first appeared but in general I felt like his animation style should have been much more detail.
Gotta say, first episode of Trunks really bangs. Gotta put the best and most polished work when introducing a new character.
If Masunaga do a correction every episode
That'll would've been epic
You mean work on every dragon ball ep? Because he pretty much did correct everything throughout his own episdoes lol
@@forgottenrelics1197 yeah pretty much I think
I also thought about something about the correction
@@forgottenrelics1197 love the video man
Random but this REALLY reminds me of how The Boondocks suddenly looked different. If I’m not mistaken I believe the animation had gotten more stiff or something
i mean the biggest mistake was not having a single guy who made all the correction regardless of what studio made it.its so strange to go from episode to episode to see them change faces all the time.
I'd kill to have the raw images of Nameku at 2:15
I love SSJ Goku from Namek Saga
Finally someone who talks about this (you will not see this in the Spanish speaking community, I am South American), I love that these things are talked about, they are details that most of them go unnoticed, before it used to bother me a lot than in an episode the art looks so good, but the next it's shit hahahaha.
Excellent video, greetings from Paraguay
Could be he’s improving his drawing and animating
TH-cam finds out about different animators with different artstyles for the first time
(2021, colorized)
This is one thing _Dragon Ball Super_ has over OG _Dragon Ball/DBZ/DBGT._ The design styles are more consistent (for the most part).
I only noticed when the voices changed. But it's crazy that dragon Ball z didn't get more quality control or at the very least have the same people working on it
This is the things you only notice when you see the series in streaming services, home media or any other way you could see it sequencially, when I was a kid I never noticed it... When I was a kid you could only see an episode on a weekly basis so it was difficult to notice there was so many art styles. But definetely there's really ugly drawns in any Uchiyama episodes. Yamamuro always the best. Masunaga art is beautiful. In the end when you are seeing the series the story is all what matters and all the studios made a great team work to fullfil such epic amount of work.
How does one become a "featured artist" in the beginning of your vids?
3:06
Ohara's drawing give me wagamama/ultra ego vibes
inconsistencies in DBZ could be fun and interesting.
inconsistencies in Steven Universe pissed me off 😂 That's probably more so to the models being so simple that it stands out more (and often serves no purpose other than the story boarders not sticking to the model)
Definitely an interesting discussion on "can being off model/breaking from it be a good thing" -