August 12th: PM2019 121 - The Climax Begins: Satoshi's Masters Tournament Experience

[Kazuniya]

The animation is the least of Journey's problems. I could tolerate less than stellar animation if the writing was strong enough to make up for it.

 

[MetaMantis]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1550448560478769152

Unpopular opinion but I don't like this. This is too fast and hard to follow.

 

[GLTSRY]

I mean, what are you expecting? The nature of this show is that it's a long-running commercial toyetic series to promote a series of monster-catching games running concurrently with a manga, trading card game and video game that do the same. Compared to the likes of One Piece or other long-running series Pokemon has managed to hold up well enough. It's just hairy out here when you come on these forums to see a page non-researched rant on how the show runners and staff are just so bad because they didn't churn out a pretty-looking product week-after-week rather than an explanation grounded in reality? I can make all the speculation in the world about something but know nothing about because at the end of the day I simply don't have access to how that thing works.

Why are those on these forums so obsessed with villifying the staff? Animation discourse is very cursed because 90% of time are just people who don’t have any idea how the medium they consume works. You can be disappointed about the state of the show's animation without fueling silly misinformation wars and lashes out at the staff. Half the time when people complain about animated TV series or video games, they don’t know what actually goes into producing these and don’t seem liable to learn. But no. People can just go on complaining about the quality of something while also complaining about how long it’s taking to release and how they want it now and do not see the irony in that. Japan can pay animators nothing and it’s expected for them to overwork.

This seems more like something you wanted to say regardless rather than something that is an actual answer to what I’ve written. However, the Pokémon anime gets already a free-pass from most (rational) fans for being essentially a glorified commercial. People aren’t expecting much. Most people expect from this three year long series only 5-10 good episodes, which is mostly the league arc. If this isn’t delivered, which is what’s happening right now, people will naturally be upset. Expecting 10 good episodes out of 130 isn’t unreasonable, it’s less than 10%. Imagine going to a restaurant and only a tenth of what you eat tastes decent. You’d be pretty upset.

I thought we were speaking with in the context of the show's animation work (a time-consuming and already stressful job to maintain without the already dysmal staffing issues.)

No. You replied to my comments, which were explicitly criticizing the entire production of JN instead of focusing solely on the animators.

Well that's obviously a whole different ballgame from this industry and medium, you can't just expect an already stressful, understaffed, underpaid field to just get back up and be A+ material. Almost every company works their animators like mules, just churn and burnout. The only company I've heard of (you're speaking to a non-specialist on this subject) actually not treating their staff like trash is KyoAni who salaries them and doesn't take on too many projects a year. I work in IT and even quite a few tech companies are suffering on finding good talent as well as layoffs despite adapting very well to the pandemic with remote work and the like. I really feel like you're underestimating the ripple effect this has had on the world.

You’re still talking about the animators while I’ve been criticizing the entire production. Everyone knows about the working conditions for animators, on the other hand, no one expects them to be A+ material, at least not for Pokémon. They expect that at least the Ash battles are animated decently - because Lord forbids that there are standards that have ti be kept.

Obviously there will be ripple effects of a pandemic. But there is a difference between small(ish) problems caused by ripple effects and being entirely affected by a pandemic. You say that you’re working in IT - I’m sure there are certain standards that you have to reach. Finishing a project 2 days too late due to the lack of staff or small mistakes would be caused by a ripple effect. But I bet you can’t keep delaying projects over and over again or fall way down beyond standards “because of the pandemic” - because frankly, at this point this would be a lame excuse.

I work in a pretty stressful field myself. Did the pandemic cause problems? Of course! But they are getting less and less, and there is a service we have to offer and there is a standard that has to be kept no matter what.

The Masters 8 is a bunch of badly written and sub-par animated battles that keep getting interrupted by breaks, fillers or scheduling issues. If at least the writing of the episodes would be good, then I could say “Ok, the production is troubled, but there is a silver lining, they do care and try to offer us an interesting end product”. But then things like the Ash vs Steven battle happen, which lacked BGM for the first half and was an absolute disappointment in all areas when it really should have been that saving grace of the anime so far.

 

[janejane6178]

Is it confirmed to be a recap?

 

[Blue Saturday]

This seems more like something you wanted to say regardless rather than something that is an actual answer to what I’ve written. However, the Pokémon anime gets already a free-pass from most (rational) fans for being essentially a glorified commercial. People aren’t expecting much. Most people expect from this three year long series only 5-10 good episodes, which is mostly the league arc. If this isn’t delivered, which is what’s happening right now, people will naturally be upset. Expecting 10 good episodes out of 130 isn’t unreasonable, it’s less than 10%. Imagine going to a restaurant and only a tenth of what you eat tastes decent. You’d be pretty upset.

No. You replied to my comments, which were explicitly criticizing the entire production of JN instead of focusing solely on the animators.

Okay, I thought the potshots were being taken at the actual animation team and members (given a certain popular poketuber brought out some discourse siccing a lot of fans (many younger ones unaware) on the animation team members. I can understand having creative hang-ups with the show’s writing direction but the technical aspects always felt more overstated and less in reach in terms of controllability. You can write anything you want how you want but you can’t necessarily just have good animation all the time.

You’re still talking about the animators while I’ve been criticizing the entire production. Everyone knows about the working conditions for animators, on the other hand, no one expects them to be A+ material, at least not for Pokémon. They expect that at least the Ash battles are animated decently - because Lord forbids that there are standards that have ti be kept.

The “breaks and fillers” are probably to give production support and efforts to making the final matches (probably six on six round 2) more appealing and better to look at. They weren’t originally going to show off non-Satoshi matches after all so this is already them putting in more effort than they had to. Did they really need to use time on inconsequential characters unattached to the story or Satoshi like Carne or show Dande destroying Alan when they could have skimmed these fights in a few frames showing the end result winner like in a Dragon Ball tournament (which would have been the least path of resistance) That in itself was doing more than necessary. The show already is a celebratory shoutout to the 25 years of its existence and they chose to give gradios to that by showing off old rivals and Champion’s selves outside of Satoshi. I’ll take breaks/clip shows for good content later in this instance than needing them to rapid fire shoot through M8 in a boss rush while ignoring the others and by proxy making the competition feel so small. [But then again I’m okay with good/decent animation for more interesting story element than incredible aesthetics and unengaging narratives/characters.] Not like Satoshi’s rivalries on a character level in the M8 are very interesting.

 

[Vagrantwade]

A lot of whining for an episode with zero leaked information about it lol.

Watch them have May and Serena in it and the fan base declaring it the next Citizen Kane.

 

[lemoncatpower]

A lot of whining for an episode with zero leaked information about it lol.

Watch them have May and Serena in it and the fan base declaring it the next Citizen Kane.

lol ya, dephender could delete the first four to five pages of this thread and it'd probably be better after

 

[Dephender]

What TV guide are you even using?

This lists the episodes airing the 29th and 5th, without titles, but with summaries (they say nothing new, they're just shorter versions of those we already have). The July 29th one is unnumbered, the Augut 5th one is numbered 119.

This lists the TV Tokyo schedules for August 12th, 19th and 26th. Episodes are listed with titles at best (the August 19th one doesn't have one), no summaries or numbers. We know this schedule is incorrect because the Sonic movie is airing in Paw Patrol, Yokai Watch and Pokemon's timeslots that day, yet the schedule lists all three as airing.

 

[Sham]

Y’all what is going on in this thread

 

[Gryphon4tw]

What TV guide are you even using?

Monthly The Television (月刊ザテレビジョン)
is its name.

 

[FatBigachu]

I feel like they don't know what they're doing.

 

[Kazuniya]

A lot of whining for an episode with zero leaked information about it lol.

I dunno about you, but an episode titled 'Satoshi's Masters Tournament Experience' reeks of a recap episode.

 

[deliaketchum]

Hey, when are semifinals starting?

 

[deliaketchum]

Maybe it is one of pokemon gets lost at tournament type episode or leon gets lost somewhere.

 

[Yuugis Black Magician]

Stop using the pandemic as an excuse on why the tournament is a disaster.

The entire production of Journeys is a mess, and they’re probably glad that the pandemic happened, as they now have a scapegoat.

At this point, I’d rather watch a documentary about the making of JN than an actual episode of JN.

This is a really inappropriate comment to make. The pandemic has killed hundreds of thousands of people and disrupted the entire world. You do realize that this is going to affect people's ability to commit to productions, right? Especially if the people dying are animators who already was severely underpaid (thus having no incentive to stay in the industry as it is) and overworked (less animators now spready across a greater number of projects being produced across the entire industry).

The Japanese animation industry was already in bad shape before the pandemic and the pandemic has only made it worse. The Pokemon team has to compete with OLM producing multiple projects outside of Pokemon, animators wanting to move on to other projects (either for creative or financial reasons), executives not planning ahead of schedule and ordering projects on short notice, hundreds of thousands of people having died and much more.

There are many reasons the series is falling a part and saying "they're probably glad a pandemic happened" does nothing but paint you as a scumbag.

If you don't like the series, fine, but all means, don't like it, but also stop wasting your time and our time by watching the goddamned thing and then coming to a message board to complain as if anyone values your opinion.

Pretty sure western cartoons' production is different and has a looser schedule than anime. I mean IIRC the joke post-finale storyboard for Amphibia was dated 2021 (and tbh Amphibia's animation is fairly standard aside from the longer episodes, it's mostly direction carrying its visuals). Not to mention that Pokemon is a weekly long-runner. The only series I've seen that would be a good comparison is One Piece and well.......yeah JN still doesn't hold a candle to OP's current state (which tbh is surprising since Toei is handling a ton of stuff currently). So yeah, there's definitely something going on in OLM or at least whatever division of it is assigned to Pokemon that's causing these issues. Maybe due to budget they can't hire as many animators and/or drawings per episode?

Japanese cartoons are notoriously produced on short notice. Pokemon used to a shining example of a good production schedule during Diamond & Pearl when episodes used to have finished key animation five months before broadcast, for example. Of course, Diamond & Pearl also have decidedly less strenuous storyboards and really only relied on Iwane and Tamagawa to handle complex animation. You'd be surprised if you looked at some of those older fights and saw just how much they were BANK animation strung together by still frames. Nowadays the series tries to be more ambitious but the staff aren't able to locate enough animators good and fast enough to meet those standards.

 

[lemoncatpower]

This lists the TV Tokyo schedules for August 12th, 19th and 26th. Episodes are listed with titles at best (the August 19th one doesn't have one), no summaries or numbers. We know this schedule is incorrect because the Sonic movie is airing in Paw Patrol, Yokai Watch and Pokemon's timeslots that day, yet the schedule lists all three as airing.

even japan has been infected with paw patrol? oh god...

jk aside. this is my bday yay, so I hope the episode, as "climax" suggests, will be hopefully an interesting episode. Even if it is just Ash reflecting on his journey and the tournament or whatever and starts the set up for the next battle, I am happy. The title actually has some potential to be some different scenarios instead of just a recap.

 

[Aryash Bajaj]

Animation isn't even the top 5 problems with this series and woudn't fix any of the major problems. Considering how COVID screwed industries it's the most justiable flaw.

 

[Gingertail24]

I mean isn’t that exactly what you’re saying?

How can anyone ever critique them if after any kind of critique you say their situation is ‘different’ that apparently others ‘hasn’t been affected’ by covid while they alone have and therefore the critique and comparison is invalid. I’m genuinely curious about you think is even a valid critique at that point, when the exceptions are so all encompassing?

No. All I said is that the whole " covid didn't affect amphibia or one piece so it shouldn't affect pokemon" is silly. As if all animated shows have the same kind of work environment. Yeah the writing can suck, battles lackluster, animation mid. You can say all that. But to say it has nothing to do with covid because random cartoon in the west or some other anime show is weird. As if one show is fine during covid so all animated shows should be fine during covid. Like I said, that's lazy.

You can hate the choices the show made while understanding why those choices were probably made (covid).

If someone made a bad show because they were rushed. It's still a bad show, but I understand why it was bad. THATS what I'm saying

 

[GLTSRY]

Very sorry you decided to be an annoying creep on a message board and then got told you're an annoying creep. Must be harder for you than working in the Japanese animation industry.

I don’t think that you know what a creep is. And yeah, I actually do think I have a harder job than them. Anyways, you’re going on my ignore list, so don’t bother replying

 

[IcySealeo]

This show is totally out of control. I guess I'll just be back when the semi finals really begin.