Season 1’s animation was never groundbreaking, but they were pretty creative with character movement and fight scenes always felt well choreographed with fairly liberal frame use. After watching episode 4, I feel like it’s pretty safe to say that this season is a step down in animation quality when compared directly to the first.

Characters are often stiff in all scenarios, fight scenes don’t have the intensity or weight they used to, weird pacing artificially lengthens action scenes that I would otherwise just like to watch uninterrupted. There were some glimpses of decent fight choreography when Mark finally started going all out in e4, but it felt like a sparse exception instead of the rule.

Anyway, my question is just: What happened? Is this a result of the strikes? Did the first season not do as well as we thought it did? Were talented people laid off for whatever reason? I hope future seasons are at least on par with S1!