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!
Episode 4 really felt like they didn’t have the time and/or resources to do what they wanted, so they had to dial the animation back a lot. I only watched it once but some of the big offeders I remember is
All of these existed to run down the clock without taxing the animation resources.
I’ve seen a lot of praise for the climactic fight scene because it was “true to the comics” in that it utilized lots of still frames reminiscent of comic panels. I think this was the one instance where they were able to use the constraints they were under somewhat effectively. I would have much prefered an animated fight since I’m watching an animated show, but it at least felt like it worked stylistically as opposed to the rest of the episode which was lots of frustrating filler.
Donald noticed that the point of the blade was bent after stabbing himself. The implication is he’s a cyborg or something