I was already losing interest in the anime after seeing Engoku Tengu and the Character PV didn’t really help. I don’t know if I’m gonna bother watching it. If even the first episode is this unpolished, I can’t imagine what the rest of the series looks like. That MAD was a more effective trailer than either of the two PVs so far.
I know in animation a character’s appearance will vary depending on who is drawing them and the animation director, but Musashi looks kinda off depending on the shot and most of these should be in the same episode as well. Pretty much all the shots in the first PV were fine imo, but in the character PV some shots look weird like the middle left one (4), his crossing hair bangs are way too low. His eyes are even incorrectly coloured purple in the bottom left shot, the level of detail in Musashi’s hair compared to his miner friends makes them look like they come from different shows, bottom middle using that cursed Musashi from that “fight” scene might be a bit unfair but it doesn’t look any better in motion.
The anime appears to love placing the characters in backgroundless voids, I don’t mind using this to highlight poignant moments but they’re really overusing it going by the trailers.
The first PV 0:13, 0:19, 0:21 this one even appears in the character PV with different colouring, 0:24, 0:28, 0:36, 0:38
The character PV 0:09, 0:20, 0:25, 0:27, 0:33
0:25 and 0:27 are probably the worse, that garish Red does not help the already poor animation.
Also, smaller complaints, like I mentioned before the lost of the terrified Demon face and Musashi’s insane face, changing the colour of Tsugumi’s weapons to something more boring looking, Kojiro not smoking. I believe there’s some law about showing underage characters smoking or something? I remember David Production having to black out Jotaro’s face when he smoked in Stardust Crusaders. In the new character reveals, Shirou’s crucifix necklace looks pretty weird.
https://orient-anime.jp/character/detail/?chara=05
I don’t think it’s a matter of Kodansha/Avex being cheap or having no faith in Orient, it’s just manga with large scale battles like Orient are difficult to adapt and tend to get middling adaptations like Kingdom, Berserk 2016/17, Altair: A Record of Battles, The Heroic Legend of Arslan, Souten Kouro. Vinland Saga is probably the best attempt so far at animating large scale battles.
Altair was even done by everyone’s new favourite studio Mappa because of JJK and the CSM PV, but it still ended up being a poor adaptation despite having a good director Kazuhiro Furuhashi. He worked on Hunter x Hunter 1999, Dororo 2019, the Rurouni Kenshin TV series and the Trust & Betrayal OVA.
Mappa was juggling too many projects at once Altair, Kakegurui, Shingeki no Bahamut Virgin Soul, Inuyashiki and Garo Vanishing Line. I believe the director was also working on a movie around the same time as well. So Altair suffered in terms of animation, it also rushed through the source material to the point even animeonly people noticed and skipped a pretty important navel battle to avoid animating it.
Orient not only has large scale battles, but ones where most of the soldiers are capable of flight, detailed monster designs, those crystal constructs when people use their powers. There are also crazy set pieces like a bunch of demons banding together to form a tsunami on land that proceeds to destroy a castle while the main characters ride their motorcycle through that madness to save someone in the nick of time, imagine trying to animate all this.
I got these screenshots from someone that saw that Crunchyroll expo thing, and the producer does mention that they talked with various companies so it’s not like A.C.G.T was their first choice.
Most studios and directors probably figured it would be a daunting task trying to adapt this manga and passed on it, this probably kept on happening until it reached A.C.G.T a studio way too small, who hadn’t headed the production of an anime in years and even the anime they had worked on in the past were no where near the scale of Orient.
Unfortunately, this studio chose to accept this task despite it being way beyond their capabilities. Similar to how most studios turned down doing the Final Season of Attack on Titan because of the insane schedule and having to live up to Wit Studio’s amazing work on the series until Mappa a studio known for taking on too many projects at once and burdening their animators chose to pick it up.
Berserk is a hugely successful and influential series yet with its most recent anime adaptation it got a studio that had never been in charge of a full anime production before (GEMBA) and one that only worked on a gag series with limited animation (Millepensee). I guess some manga are just not meant to be animated.
not the voice i imagined, but then again Shiro is batshit crazy and kinda sadistic mofo, kinda like Dabi (but not as mental and gone) from MHA, who is voiced by the same actor, so its an interesting choice.
)
