The Absurd Story Behind Black Clover's Animation

the wonderful world of Black Clover filled with magic action and cartoonishly bad production issues you know this is one of those topics that I would have loved to talk about back when the show was actually airing unfortunately I wasn't making content back then however it is fun to look back at some of these interesting Productions I did the same thing for Naruto black Lover's production was rough that much is obvious and in this video I'll talk about this collapsing production of course I can't make animation breakdowns for 170 episodes the only episode I'll talk about in detail is episode 63 for obvious reasons Black Clover was a long-running show and some ups and downs in the overall quality is to be expected however the drastically different Peaks and throws across the episodes more trolls than Peaks to be honest was really noticeable why well there's one major reason Studio Piero did not care about Black Clover and I know that sounds a bit childish but that is the truth of course Black Clover had very little production time all shows do at this point but that's not all Black Clover did not have a dedicated stable animation producer the animation producer wasn't mentally ill the position was just left vacant for a while and if some of you don't understand how absurd that is the job of an animation producer involves managing schedules getting Talent on board and maintaining communication between the creative team and the studio higher-ups an animation producer is a crucial element of a smoothly functioning production and as you might know Black Clover did not have a smoothly functioning production so then how did so many young Freelancers get involved with this project how did names like kayakarashi get on board well you can thank the juggling production assistants as well as director tatsuya yoshihara and his personal connections that's why yoshihara was easily the most important part of the Black Clover team well of course he is the series director at least he was up until episode 153 he was the executive director past that point but it's not just directorial work as I said he pretty much did what an anime producer should have done contacting talent and using his own personal connections to help this disaster of a production here are some of his tweets from back in the day the series director had to publicly ask people professionals or amateurs to join the project here's another tweet where he talks about not being able to find animators animation directors and storyboard artists it's depressing really so a poor schedule coupled with the absence of an animation producer led to so many production issues it can't possibly get any worse can it oh yes it can yes it can let me introduce you to Black lovers in between crisis animation is done in two broad phases key animation and in between animation the key animator draws keyframes which are the pivotal moments within the movement while the in-between animator draws the frames in between these keyframes key animation requires a lot more skill and in between animation is generally a way of gaining experience well there's this stretch of episodes between episode 8 and episode 66 where every bit of in-between animation had to be out sourced Piero did not assign any in-house in between animators for 58 episodes straight some of the in between animation was done by City's director tatsuya yoshihara himself the series director shouldn't have to juggle between directions storyboards production work and in between animation for 16 episodes that is absurd of course Outsourcing was a major issue throughout staff from Studio Mouse handled second key animation for 24 episodes and two openings they also helped out with key animation and handled production cooperation for another 22 Episodes in fact assistant and later series director ayata katanimura was originally from Studio Mouse jivo Productions had to handle second key animation for 18 episodes their in-house staff handled the animation direction for 25 episodes and chief animation direction for 13 episodes they also handled the in-between animation for a whopping 29 different episodes and key animation for 26 episodes there are many more of these subcontracted Studios that were involved out sourcing isn't a foreign Concept in the anime industry but this degree of Outsourcing isn't healthy whatsoever Studio ammo and Studio drop two of these subcontracted Studios had to file for bankruptcy of course that's not because of Black Clover but these Studios dropping out no pun intended forced the team to find replacement Studios which only made everything more complicated so now you have a solid understanding of the issues faced by the production team there might have been more issues that we don't know of but it's safe to say everything about this show was a mess and that brings us to episode 63. I remember watching this episode for the first time I didn't know much about anime visuals back then but even I knew something was different about this episode as Kevin so appropriately described it it's a memorable [ __ ] you to the industry directed and storyboarded by tatsuya yoshihara himself this is one of the most visually interesting episodes that I've ever seen it opens up with this incredible sequence the bright red background the ominous Devil with perfect compositing the abstract visuals it's Flawless this entire sequence is animated by istanmeister a name that shows up a lot throughout this show but unfortunately a lot of his Works don't look as good as they should given his talent simply because of bad schedules leading to rushed work bad outsourced animation Direction and second key animation however this sequence is different it's 2 minutes and 12 seconds of flawless animation the drawings especially the close-ups are really strong and this entire sequence is kaginashi or shadowless which just makes the line work pop out so much more the simple background also helps with that cut to the real world we get some lovely effects and character acting animated by Kai shibata and Hiro takayonemori who also did some possible background animation up until this point this was a normal good looking episode from this point on oh boy the next 71 seconds are animated by Shota go shazono a name you might be familiar with is the new director of Jiu Jitsu kaisen he does a lot of blender based 3D work in his skirts and I can hit you with the you don't understand the Brilliance of these backgrounds but I won't they look bad they look really bad the trees in particular look awful they have no texture they look like Play-Doh this is not a good 3D Background by any stretch of the imagination but this bad background allows the scene to move properly of course a good looking 3D background could accomplish the same thing and look better but shut up goshezono also plays around a lot with the camera Focus I'm not really aware of different camera lenses but that's what he's doing right the ground is mostly a blank single colored flat layer the scene also hides behind very fast movement and effects there's the skirt where the ground turns into cubes that was cool this portion of the episode is incredibly difficult to follow but God damn it it's interesting to look at as I previously mentioned there was no possible way for the staff to polish the final product they were severely handicapped and still they pulled through goshezono managed to get across the scale of this fight really well despite how rough a lot of it looks also the characters are often off model but the animators do a good job of making these off model frames look stylized it's a clever trick there's a solid scene animated by Shota sanomiya even though Asta is really of model he is underwater for some of the sequence naturally his face warps and you don't really notice the weak drawings but the final couple of cuts make it obvious there is this incredible stylized sequence animated and colored by tatsuhidorioshi and his mother the paintbrush aesthetic looks really good yusuke kawakami sequence follows and its incredibly ambitious the background animation goes from quite good to quite bad in the blink of an eye there are some of mortal drawings a recording theme throughout this episode the effects are solid but like an overall polish another recurring theme the CGI is just bad what is this supposed to be you can also see a partially cropped out frame number in the top left corner they forgot to take it out this episode didn't have a good schedule by the way the sequence does get the speed across really well which was the main priority this cut of background animation has so many moving elements including the birds this whole sequence is so unique it almost makes you forget about the CGI nothing that pops up here and there there's a lovely sequence animated by GEM with Incredible effects this episode uses a lot of kutsuna lightning which is this wavy style of lightning commonly used by younger web gen animators animated one of the best sequences in this episode with this hardcore kanada style the snappy timing and the stylized faces allowed him to bypass a lot of the issues this episode otherwise faced gem Pebble until sequence is that textbook modern fast style of action with extremely energetic movements stunning effects and Incredibly fast background animation with this unprocessed thick Line work it's the kind of stuff you see in those YouTube fan animations in the best possible way some good looking shots of Austin is partially demonic State can be seen there are some strong drawings around this part Kai karashi's animation follows and it's the best looking sequence in the entire episode ekarashi's work is only 8 seconds long but he does so much he brings out a proper kannada style of animation with extremely Snappy timing energetic character arcs and incredible background animation effects and debris he even brings out the kanada dragon which is a reference to animator yoshinori kanada who came up with this style ikarashi's work is followed by Todo ibazawa this episode had a lot of handicaps but a lack of talent wasn't one of them it was our work starts off with a good looking walk cycle and this incredible thick outlines on the debris a good chunk of his sequence involves beams flying around but we get this amazing impact frame sequence near the end the background was really well coordinated throughout the aerial parts of this fight the drawings were really strong as well there's some amazing character acting animated by Yuki amashita and uitsuku sakabe the loose drawings and the comedic timing really stands out in a good way this sequence is a lot of fun to look at the episode isn't over yet gem sequence is so cool and the amount of moving elements on screen is really really impressive the close-ups of the crows look absolutely insane in and really ominous the effects on the background animation looks really good and the amazing rotation shot that follows is animated by kaito tomioka also more character acting with a low style can be seen however this one is far from comedic it's the same concept but this time around it looks like Asta is falling apart which is exactly how it's supposed to look a heavily stylized cut follows which looks absolutely incredible lots of kutsuna lightning handled by GEM and more of that loose character acting can be seen there's some good looking liquid animation animated on once and besides the crows in the background hayaton ishimaki sequence looks really good with lots of goodsuna lightning the final sequence is animated by tatsuya yoshihara himself Asta isn't particularly on model but the effects on the character acting is really good yoshihara didn't animate an action scene which is surprising and that brings us to the end of this episode it was bold was it a Flawless episode absolutely not did this episode look consistent oh God no but was this episode interesting you bet it's not exactly the same concept as the Naruto vs Spain episode that was unique on purpose this episode was unique because the staff had no other choice but still I would take this over the safe limited animation with strong drawings approach any day so did this episode change anything well sort of In-House in between animators started showing up again from episode 66 onwards but that was obviously not enough yoshihara had to handle the in-between animation himself for several episodes past this point but every once in a while the team could show off a little especially with episodes 84 100 151 166 167 and 170. episode 151 was probably the most Flawless looking episode in the entire series while the final fight from episodes 166 and 167 were rough looking with some bad digital elements and poor choreography the very final fight did look quite good and that is the story of Black Clover a production team that faced every possible roadblock but still somehow managed to hang in there although just barely the upcoming Black Clover movie will probably look good it has a movie schedule but if the TV anime ever returns as a long-running anime or as a seasonal release I hope it will have the backing it needs that's about it speaking of seasonal releases check out my watch list for the spring season like And subscribe if you enjoyed and until next time

Channel: Probably Pretentious

Views: 56,429

Keywords: pierrot, blackclover, blackclovermovie, astavsdante

Id: AK5NG5UGtec

Length: 12min 22sec (742 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 01 2023