Shounen Orient by Shinobu Ohtaka

[Vortigern]

It's nice to finally get some news about the anime. The studio choice came out of nowhere, but I don't know enough about them or the industry as a whole to really conclude anything based on that. If some of the key staff members are good then the series should have at least some hope, but I'll keep my expectations fairly low for now.

The key visual looks alright to me. The designs don't match the manga's style as closely as the designs in the Magi anime did, but that could also be a good thing since it serves to make the two adaptations visually distinct. It looks like the studio is probably going to be utilizing 3DCG for things like the flying castles and the motorcycles. I kinda expected there to be some 3D elements considering how complicated the designs of the Kishin are, so it's not that surprising they would pop up in other areas as well. As long as the characters are animated by hand I don't really mind it that much even though I'm not a huge fan of 3DCG.

I was watching the crunchyroll stage and the series compositor - Mariko Kunisawa - was pretty much saying how she had to cut/rearrange a lot of the material. She could be talking about the slow pacing it had with the earlier arcs (which is good since the pacing could use a lot of work) or they have to cram a lot of stuff into 1 cour (which is worst case scenario). Like I said before, this studio hasn't done 2 cours in well over a decade...

The fact that she's saying she had to cut a lot of material gives me hope that the anime might be a 2 cour adapting the entirety of the Awaji Island arc. There are really only 2 reasonable stopping points for the adaptation: the end of the Daito Mine arc(chapter 42) and the end of the Awaji Island arc(chapter 112). A 1 cour anime covering 42 chapters would have a pacing of ~3.5 chapters per episode which doesn't really sound fast enough to require significant cuts to the story. Fire Force is the closest comparison to that at a ratio of 3.7:1. Kimetsu no Yaiba and Hero Academia are at the lower end for shounen manga adaptations at a ratio of 2:1 while Magi and the early seasons of Nanatsu no Taizai had a ratio above 4:1 when accounting for the special chapters in NNT. A 2 cour anime covering 112 chapters would have a pacing of ~4.5 which definitely would require some cuts and changes, just like what happened with season 1 of Magi which covered 109 chapters in 25 episodes. That seems like the more probable scenario to me if there were enough cuts that the director felt the need to mention them. The studio not having much experience with 2 cour shows is worrying, but it's possible that they've compensated for this with a longer production time or perhaps by splitting the season into two parts.

It's not ideal for the anime to make changes to the source material, but I'll take it if it means that the anime will cover the arc where the series really gets going. I think that's ultimately better for attracting new readers, unless the cuts are so significant that they ruin the flow of the story. Covering the Awaji Island arc in season 1 also means that season 2 can start off from the point where the series went monthly, which involved a kind of re-introduction of the cast and key concepts as well as a slight restructuring of future chapters because of the increase length. It's the perfect intro for season 2 especially if there's a long break between it and season 1. Of course it's also possible that the people involved in the production want to take their time with Orient and will instead opt for a slower pacing similar to some of the recent WSJ manga adaptations.

The Magi adaptation did this and it turned out bad imo also I hear that the Ascendance of a Bookworm adaptation (which she worked on), removed important details from the LN. The only section I can see being cut without losing much is chapter 18. Orient is monthly now so it will take a while before it can accumulate more chapters for a potential season 2, so them burning through 100 plus chapters on a single cour seems unlikely.

112 chapters in a single cour is completely out of the question. I don't think I've ever seen an adaptation that comes even close to that. That's almost 10 chapters per episode which leaves like 2 minutes for each chapter after you account for the opening and the ending. Even the most out of touch business executives should realize that would be completely unwatchable.

 

[Tamil]

@Vortigern

You'd be surprised at how bad adaptations can be, they can always skip volumes out entirely and have anime original endings. Never underestimate poor decision making, the fact that we got a dead studio is pretty much proof of that. I can't really think of some off the top of my head as I'm quite tired but I remember looking into UQ Holder anime (bessatsu magazine) & something similar happened to it's adaptation where it was a mess

I'm not saying cramming everything into 1 cour will happen but considering how the studio hasn't done a 2 cour anime in well over a decade it shouldn't be surprising IF it does happen. As I've said many times, keep your expectations low.

--- Double Post Merged, Aug 21, 2021, Original Post Date: Aug 7, 2021 ---

Looks like Orient is getting childrens book (aoitori bunko) this October by Shimotchi (Truck Uketome Isekai Tensei!: Nekketsu Butouha Koukousei Wataru!!)

https://books.rakuten.co.jp/rb/16855727/

 

[Samurai Rider]

Any hopes or predictions for the OPs and EDs?

Since Avex are the producers for this, I really hope they get WagakkiBand to do at least one OP or ED. They’re a group that combines modern rock with traditional Japanese musical instruments, so like Japanese folk rock basically. These guys have done anime OPs and EDs for series like Red Mars, Sengoku Musou, Sousei no Onmyouji and Kyoto Teramachi Sanjou no Holmes.

Here’s some of their music, the third one has more of a jazz feel to it.

>Wagakki (Japanese Musical Instrument) Band / "Kishikaisei" Kishikaisei MUSIC VIDEO (Short Ver.)

>Wagakki Band / Sun Wheel

>Wagakki Band / 「Synchronicity」MUSIC VIDEO(Short Ver.)

 

[Tamil]

Any hopes or predictions for the OPs and EDs?

Since Avex are the producers for this, I really hope they get WagakkiBand to do at least one OP or ED. They’re a group that combines modern rock with traditional Japanese musical instruments, so like Japanese folk rock basically. These guys have done anime OPs and EDs for series like Red Mars, Sengoku Musou, Sousei no Onmyouji and Kyoto Teramachi Sanjou no Holmes.

Here’s some of their music, the third one has more of a jazz feel to it.

>Wagakki (Japanese Musical Instrument) Band / "Kishikaisei" Kishikaisei MUSIC VIDEO (Short Ver.)

>Wagakki Band / Sun Wheel

>Wagakki Band / 「Synchronicity」MUSIC VIDEO(Short Ver.)

I'm not too knowledgeable about the producer side for OP/ED's but to my understanding as of now Avex pictures is the producer, not Avex Entertainment (which is for music I believe). Like for example, Noragami's anime producer is Avex pictures but the OP/band is not the from Avex label.

That said WagakkiBand would be a good fit. I was thinking FLOW would be nice but may be wishful thinking lol

 

[Valhalla]

Thoughts ...

 

[Samurai Rider]

As expected Engoku Tengu doesn’t look nearly as impressive as he does in the manga, the close up of its face around 0:07 looked great, but then the full body shot at 0:32 just looks lame and way less distinctive.

Most of the PV was character panning shots, so it didn’t showcase the animation apart from 0:35 which looked good but it seems like they got rid of the terrified look that Demon had when Musashi was about to kill it, unless that’s a different scene they edited together.

Spoiler

0:05 the painted backgrounds look nice.

Apparently it’s coming out in January, so hopefully then Kodansha will finally give Orient a simulpub, if not then they probably never will.

 

[Tamil]

Its a mixed bag for me - looks good/decent in some areas, whereas other areas are struggling. Tbh it's better than what I expected so I could be generous lol. It's obviously not going to live up to the manga but hoping something good comes out of it.

Tsugumi is unbelievably cute in the PV. I like her casting too (Rie Takahashi who played Megumin from Konosuba). Renguko from KnY will be playing Naotora

Since it's airing winter 2022 and considering the studio/director it should be only one cour so up to Daito mine. I did notice that animator Aito Ohashi (big pokemon XYZ/S&M animator) did work on a lot of the animes that Tetsuya Yangisawa directed so hoping to see him.

Edit: Nice, they fixed Kojiro's eyes to purple lol

 

[Samurai Rider]

Since it's airing winter 2022 and considering the studio/director it should be only one cour so up to Daito mine. I did notice that animator Aito Ohashi (big pokemon XYZ/S&M animator) did work on a lot of the animes that Tetsuya Yangisawa directed so hoping to see him.

Yeah on Sakugabooru I also saw a couple clips from Aito Ohashi on High School DxD and Daimidaler, both directed by Tetsuya Yangisawa. But that was a long time ago and the two don’t appear to follow each other on Twitter. Tetsuya Yangisawa does have mutual follows with other animators like Kazunori Ozawa, Asako Nishida, Takashi Hashimoto, Shinsaku Kozuma etc.

Shinsaku Kozuma did some great creature animation on Shingeki no Bahamut: Virgin Soul, so having him onboard would be amazing.
https://www.sakugabooru.com/post/show/32417

 

[Tamil]

Yeah on Sakugabooru I also saw a couple clips from Aito Ohashi on High School DxD and Daimidaler, both directed by Tetsuya Yangisawa. But that was a long time ago and the two don’t appear to follow each other on Twitter. Tetsuya Yangisawa does have mutual follows with other animators like Kazunori Ozawa, Asako Nishida, Takashi Hashimoto, Shinsaku Kozuma etc.

Shinsaku Kozuma did some great creature animation on Shingeki no Bahamut: Virgin Soul, so having him onboard would be amazing.
https://www.sakugabooru.com/post/show/32417

I think he worked on the vast majority of shows he directed but you're right he worked more extensively on DxD series & Daimidaler. I think there's pretty good odds of seeing him and hopefully it's for most of the episodes. I can't comment on seeing Kozuma in this.

If we're talking potential big animators, then I hope Tetsuya can bring Norimitsu Suzuki to animate/SB/direct the ED for Orient like he did with the first season for DxD

Suzuki did animate EDs for battle shonens like Soul Eater so it's a possibility

I'm curious who is the animation director & background artist for Orient. Maybe we'll see the extended staff when we get the the second PV

 

[Vortigern]

The PV looks pretty good overall. The visuals are decent, the character designs are slightly off, the voice actors are pretty good and I liked the BGM which I assume is going to be the main theme or something along those lines. I'm also genuinely surprised they seemingly animated Engoku Tengu by hand, although that might only apply to some of the scenes. The anime is not going to be on the level of some of these recent WSJ manga adaptations, but that was to be expected given the studio. The only concern I have is the air date. I was really hoping that the anime would adapt the Awaji Island arc since I believe that would be the best way to establish the series and attract new fans, but a winter air date doesn't really bode well for that scenario. Even if they did adapt the arc the quality would probably end up suffering towards the end because of the tight schedule, unless they went for a Fire Force style approach of having two seasons almost back to back.

 

[Tamil]

No confirmation yet but Junji Goto might be the chief animation director for the anime (he was CAD for DxD)

 

[Samurai Rider]

He posted a drawing of Kojiro as well.



I wonder if the Art Director is Hiromasa Ogura, who worked on stuff like Ninja Scroll, Ghost in the Shell 1995, Patlabor, FLCL and JIN-ROH. The grass near Kojiro’s house reminded me of some works by Shichiro Kobayashi and according to Anilist, Ogura used to work at Kobayashi Production and learned under Kobayashi.
https://anilist.co/staff/105312/Hiromasa-Ogura

He was also the Art Director for Sora no Otoshimono, and one of the Art Directors for the movie Sora no Otoshimono: Tokeijikake no Angeloid, the latter of which was directed by Tetsuya Yanagisawa. Whoever the Art Director is they’re doing a great job so far.

I also noticed the Director of the “Sora no Otoshimono” tv series and the Chief Director of the movie (Hisashi Saitou) is a pretty good animator. He worked on the Shaman King anime (the old one), Bleach and one of the Naruto movies. It’d be nice to see him work on Orient.
https://www.sakugabooru.com/post/show/126908

 

[Tamil]

Orient character PV

This honestly looks bad for the most part with only a few areas that are decent at best. It's hardly animated and the fact that they can only show off that in the PV isn't looking good. I do hope at least they do justice to Ohtaka's comedy with using those exaggerated faces she uses. Honestly the comedy in the earlier arcs is pretty underrated imo.

At this point I'm excited to hear the OST's and how they'll structure/pace the story. Fukasawa is an excellent composer

Still curious who's doing OP/ED. I hope they don't cheap out even more and just get Yuma Uchida to do either the OP or ED

 

[Samurai Rider]

Yikes, that looks terrible. If they’re struggling this hard in episode 1, then it’s fucked. The things in the first chapter aren’t even that animation demanding compared to the later stuff.

 

[Valhalla]

It kinda makes me wish A1 got it in the end lol as bad as it sounds

There are some places where the animation is ok but thats mainly when the chatacters are doing bacis movements. And the close ups do look ok as well, except for Kojiro. I still dont know who that is lol they really twirked his design.

Everything else does look meh sadly. I am still kinda eager to see how its gonna look on release though. How the complete episode is gonna look like.

 

[Tamil]

As bad as the character PV looks, there should be some decent cuts from Aito Ohashi. I'm pretty confident he'll work on it for the reasons I mentioned before but with how messy the production is, it may not be that great (definitely no where near as good his cuts from pkmn lmao). The second PV should come around late Nov or Dec. I noticed highschool dxd's PV also looked lackluster but still dont get your hopes up. I want to see the extended staff (CAD and background artist) for the anime.

On a positive note, I highly recommend listening to Fuksawa's works and I've found his best OST yet imo. I hope we get something similar for Shiro/obsidian eight OST

Tbf the soundtrack will be closer to Katsugeki Touken Ranbu but hope we get something like that ^

--- Double Post Merged, Oct 6, 2021, Original Post Date: Oct 2, 2021 ---

Additional casting for Orient anime:
Shiro Inuaki - Hiro Shimono
Nano Inusaka - Azumi Waki
Hideo Kosameda - Wataru Hatano


Unrelated but nice MAD for Orient (same person who made that incredible one for Jigokuraku)

 

[Valhalla]

Shiro's sword looks rather small compared to the manga, doesnt it?
And voicing him is Zenitsu from Demon Slayer 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.

I am not familiar with Nanao's VA. The only notable thing i see on MAL is Hinata from Tokyo Revengers, but i dont know the character, nor do i watch the series.

 

[Purity of Magi]

A bit unrelated to your current topic, but I saw the trailer of Orient and while I am not quite sure if I will watch it.. the comment section on Youtube, however, was quite a delight to read. Basically all comments where like:

''cool and all, but where is Magi season 3''

Lmao.

 

[Samurai Rider]

A bit unrelated to your current topic, but I saw the trailer of Orient and while I am not quite sure if I will watch it.. the comment section on Youtube, however, was quite a delight to read. Basically all comments where like:

''cool and all, but where is Magi season 3''

Lmao.

Yeah, that was pretty weird, even with huge databases like MAL and Anilist, most anime fans are pretty ignorant. The Orient anime has no bearing on whether the Magi anime returns or not, Orient was published by Kodansha in Weekly Shonen Magazine/Bessatsu Shonen Magazine and Magi was published by Shogakukan in Weekly Shonen Sunday. Even the producers are different, the producers behind Magi were Aniplex while Avex Pictures are the guys behind Orient.

It would be like if people kept crying under Mob Psycho 100 videos asking why OPM season 2 looks worse, just because the source material was created by the same mangaka doesn’t mean the same people are working on the anime.

If people want more Magi they should read the manga, the anime was a mediocre adaptation and since Aniplex are the producers behind it, a potential season 3 might just end up like The Promised Neverland season 2.

 

[Tamil]

A bit unrelated to your current topic, but I saw the trailer of Orient and while I am not quite sure if I will watch it.. the comment section on Youtube, however, was quite a delight to read. Basically all comments where like:

''cool and all, but where is Magi season 3''

Lmao.

There was a similar reaction with the Vanitas anime, a lot of fans were asking for Pandora Hearts reboot instead (prob not as much as Magi S3 since Magi is more popular). When you have a new series that comes right after a very popular one with an incomplete adaptation, you're always going to see fans asking for a sequel.

Shiro's sword looks rather small compared to the manga, doesnt it?
And voicing him is Zenitsu from Demon Slayer 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.

I am not familiar with Nanao's VA. The only notable thing i see on MAL is Hinata from Tokyo Revengers, but i dont know the character, nor do i watch the series.

Same here but his comment on the anime website fills me with hope. Shiro does seem to be innocent/friendly at first before being a lunatic lol. At least that was my first impression of him.