08.05
Its Nihongo for "Abandon hope!"
Legend has it that there was once an animation studio called Toei Doga which was the finest in the land of the Rising Sun. Stuffed with funds from the booming Occupation-era bubble economy, they produced such classics as Hakujaden, Animal Treasure Island, and their all-time classic Puss in Boots. Yes it truly was the golden age of Japanese animation.
…yeah we don’t know what happened to that company either.
Since at least 1971, Toei Animation has been the absolute toilet of the industry, applying the sensibility of “faster, cheaper, cheaper, faster” to its overall product (live action doesn’t get it any easier but that’s an article for another website). Much of the blame can be laid at the feet of a major reorganization in 1968 after the elongated production of the film Hols: Prince of the Sun (one of the earliest Seinen anime) chewed up three years of production time. The makers of that film (a rather obscure duo named Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki) were expelled from the company and have since faded from history. We can only imagine what could have been…
1080P-u.
With their feature film ambitions dismantled, Toei plunged head long into television delivering slews of scifi and robot shows in the 70s and 80s. The notable thing about these shows is that they frequently seem like they were made 30 years before the time they actually aired. This is no doubt the result of the very poor quality 16mm stock Toei was using for their shows up until they switched to digital in the early 2ooo’s (even by anime standards, Toei stock is noticeably inferior, so much that they had to DNR Dragon Ball Kai to hell and back just to make the footage look even), and sound that frequently seems as if the microphones used to capture it were stuck in an overflowing bathroom drainpipe. But what’s truly egregious was, and remains to this day, Toei’s lack of quality control when it came to the actual animation itself.
KILL IT WITH FIRE
On average a standard anime series will go off model or suffer some sort of “fatigue” about 7 or 8 times over the course of five or six shows. On average, a typical Toei show might go off model as many as five or six times AN EPISODE. And this isn’t just like some background poorfag from Maduca Meguca being unfinished, this is litterally stuff that could have been caught by any director or editor if they actually bothered to watch what they put out but obviously that’s just not the Toei way is it? No! We have twenty more shows to make this week and every second counts! Now start drying you pathetic worm! WHIP! WHIP! Probably the worst offender in recent memory was last year’s Kyosougiga. A show whose character designs were so awful it seemed like they were done precisely to not to have to be on-model in the first place!
Naota-kun ain't happy.
.Another frequent problem is not so much off-model animation but lack of animation all together. Basically Toei just cuts from one still background to another with some lip flaps to make it seem like you’re trying…yet failing… Now you can apologize all you want on a show like Mononoke where its a “intentional artistic effect”, but I ain’t no fool, and I’ve seen enough Toei in my day to when they’re half-assing this shit. Even worse is their endless recycling of animation. Transformations for magical girl shows like the Sailor Moon and Precure franchises are the chief offenders in this department as they can chew up upwards to 2:30 of screen time that Toei could be spending on other things. But that’s not the worst of it. How many times can you remember Goku having the same damn angry stare at Frieza during the Namek fight? That’s because they simple changed backgrounds and didn’t reanimate the rest. Way to go!
THE NEW SAILOR MOON IS SO EXPRESSIVE MIRITE?!?
So is there an upside to this? Not really… Occasionally the production limitations have their benefits like on Fist of The North Star where the production team literally mangled their cells to get those cool death effects. Now they also make movies as well, but those are basically just glorified tv episodes for the most part and frequently suffer the same problems. Hell even when its NOT a tv show adaptation like the Toei Key Visual Arts movies, they can somehow manage to look even worse for no apparent reason.
I'd say she's Fubar'd but then again its Nagisa...
So basically, the long and short of it is Toei is a terrible studio and they have shown no desire to change that for decades. The name itself is poison and any anticipation nowadays is not generated by the show itself but how the studio will somehow fuck it up. Still… could be worse…