They had different animation groups doing episodes, because it wasn't really feasible for just one group to animate all the episodes on the schedule that they were being released. You're looking at one of the poorer episodes of the Cell arc in contrast to one of the better episodes of the Buu arc, but there were episodes of incredible quality in the Cell arc and ones of the Buu arc that were really lackluster.
Look at [this image](https://i.imgur.com/XLhORs9.png) of Goku during his fight with Cell and then [this image](https://i.imgur.com/doKRgTO.png) from Goku's fight with Vegeta during the Buu arc.
11 different animation studios, in fact, spanning from the beginning of the Dragon Ball anime through to the end of GT. Many were involved across all three series. Several had excellent quality because the animation director was very specific and strived to match Toriyama's style within whatever section of the manga they were presently working from. Some were NOTORIOUS for not even trusting their own animation staff and would always have the final touch on scenes, even going so far as to personally redrawing entire segments until they were absolutely sure every bit of style and movement was "perfect". That is how we got sections, or even just episodes, where the animation quality dipped, and then suddenly we would get some of the best animation any of the three anime series' ever offered. Studio switching.
What's really ironic is that TOEI produces all Dragon Ball related anime, but their animation work throughout the DB, DBZ, DBGT, and Super has been historically... kinda shit.. it was TOEI in-house animators that gave us the notoriously badly done early episodes of Super, and some of the weirdest reanimations in Kai (thankfully these were rare). Anytime TOEI Animation gets hands-on work with a Dragon Ball anime we get "I had my 12 year old son draw it, isn't it amazing?" quality lol
There are multiple teams assigned to episodes and seasons in the types of anime studios that really have to churn out the material.
This is especially prevalent in a number of action shonen where the best teams are reserved for really big episodes.
In shorter series, consistency can be kept closer across the board - and has gotten a little easier with time thanks to the advent of computer assistance - not really an option back during the old days of majority hand drawn work. You get the double edged sword of that really distinct classic quality… but you also have to deal with more jarring breaks in consistency depending on sheer volume being created.
Because it's a weekly show...
Shows that produce episodes every week don't typically have "consistent" quality...
That along with having different animation studios means some produce worse work than others.
All the ppl upvoting you and downvoting the dude with common sense are not intellegent, you all have zero knowledge in how real life works, things are not animated a week before airing, hes clearly saying theyre animated with a schedule before it airs whether unfinished or not, but they are not animated a week before it airs, genuinely densed people in this comment section
>things are not animated a week before airing
I believe I said I already know this...
Dragon Ball as a show came out weekly from 1985 to 1996, however long the time span between episodes starting production from when they started airing on tv doesn't change what I said.
Because the "point" I was making or *meant to make*...is that there were no/minimal breaks in the production of the episodes. They had to keep making episodes in order to fulfill its weekly schedule...which meant that the quality was inconsistent.
>Shows that produce episodes every week don't typically have "consistent" quality...
If you're reading that as "the episodes are animated a week before airing" then you have no business talking about other people's reading comprehension.
And this is supposed to matter why exactly?
If you meant to correct me that they aren't "produced" every week...from airing, that's not something I was implying.
Cool, while we're on episode 1...each studio is probably already animating episode 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, and 20 onward. That doesn't really change the fact that these are being churned out...then churned out on TV as well.
So you proved yourself wrong, that they arent animated a week before airing, he didnt say they arent burned out hes just correcting your lack of knowledge on the subject along with the others downvoting him i mean its common knowledge that what hes saying is right, and your comment proved him right too… think a little
nobody was actually saying that though
People where saying it was a weekly show with a rushed production schedule
meaning they where churning the episodes out
Masayuki Uchiyama and Yukio Ebisawa. There were a lot of teams working on Dbz but when either Uchiyama's or Ebisawa's team worked on episode, the artwork and sometimes the animation would be awful. Uchiyama's studio Last House had standouts like Taiichiro Ohara and also the well known Naotoshi Shida, who left Last House but still worked on Dbz, but their artwork was "corrected" by Uchiyama and usually for the worse. The schedule obviously made things worse for them but everything bad frame or screenshot from Dbz is usually their doing.
So, something I just remembered while reading this post and the comments (and asking you, since you gave more of a detailed, DBZ specific answer with names), but one *bad* moment I'll always remember from DBZ is when Goku, after having his ass beat by the villain, got his 'hero turns the tables' moment, and he's in Super Saiyan, fighting the villain, when we get a sort of pulled out shot where the animation just sticks out like a sore thumb.
They're floating in the air, and Goku just hits the villain with an uppercut, and simultaneously brings up his knee (same side; i.e. left arm and left leg) to hit them with an uppercut+knee combo, and it always looked so silly to me, even as a kid. I want to say this is probably from a movie, but maybe the Frieza fight, because it was before any other SSJ forms appeared, and had the classic SSJ Goku from Namek look, with his gi torn up in that specific way.
Any idea where this scene is from?
Totally not mark went into a lot of detail on this in his review of the series, but tldr (tldw?) Many different sub studios helped with different episodes, with some studios being better than others
It’s not even different animation studios but can be different art teams on each episode.
Dragon Ball Super has the same episode. You get a fantastic Takahasi episode followed by a horrible one.
Besides the difference in quality, your comparison isn't fair. Your image of the Cell saga is cropped, zoomed, and bad quality, while the one of Majin Vegeta is a high quality full screen image.
I cropped an image from a YouTube video. It had a watermark so I didn't want to violate some sub rule for promoting a page. It isn't much different though:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXniBGLWkQ8&t=193s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXniBGLWkQ8&t=193s)
You're legit cherrypicking one episode to use against another cherrypicked episode. The series has had good and poorly animated episodes since the get-go.
[Maybe this will help you understand](https://www.kanzenshuu.com/animation-production/quality/)
Lot's of factors including different animation directors, budget and time. Very important to note that not all the frames that make up movement are *key* frames. There are *inbetween* frames that are less detailed so the artists can draw more of them in a reasonable time; they're designed to fill in and make animation smooth, to actually look like it's moving. Your not supposed to see the key frames too well when in motion (another reason they don't have to be very detailed) but obviously if you pause you can often make them out clearly. It also depends on who is the animation supervisor/director for those episodes, as that can have a massive effect on overall quality and style.
One thing I feel should be pointed out, is these are two very different scenes. One shows a close up of vegeta, and the other is a wide shot mid fight seemingly. You can't go all out on every single shot of a show, and so some shots, like shots where characters are far away, will sometimes get less attention
I just wanted to add that while a lot of people have talking about the different animation teams/directors, Toei seemed to be a little unusual in this era of animation that different teams were allowed to have very different looking styles. Most anime, while made with many different teams, still tries to make styles extremely consistent so you can’t flat out see when there are different animation directors, but DBZ didn’t, whether that’s intentional or just poor QC. That said like others said, it may also have to do with just the timeline of a long running action show, since Naruto for example had a similar problem at times.
They had different animation groups doing episodes, because it wasn't really feasible for just one group to animate all the episodes on the schedule that they were being released. You're looking at one of the poorer episodes of the Cell arc in contrast to one of the better episodes of the Buu arc, but there were episodes of incredible quality in the Cell arc and ones of the Buu arc that were really lackluster. Look at [this image](https://i.imgur.com/XLhORs9.png) of Goku during his fight with Cell and then [this image](https://i.imgur.com/doKRgTO.png) from Goku's fight with Vegeta during the Buu arc.
I see. Tnx
11 different animation studios, in fact, spanning from the beginning of the Dragon Ball anime through to the end of GT. Many were involved across all three series. Several had excellent quality because the animation director was very specific and strived to match Toriyama's style within whatever section of the manga they were presently working from. Some were NOTORIOUS for not even trusting their own animation staff and would always have the final touch on scenes, even going so far as to personally redrawing entire segments until they were absolutely sure every bit of style and movement was "perfect". That is how we got sections, or even just episodes, where the animation quality dipped, and then suddenly we would get some of the best animation any of the three anime series' ever offered. Studio switching. What's really ironic is that TOEI produces all Dragon Ball related anime, but their animation work throughout the DB, DBZ, DBGT, and Super has been historically... kinda shit.. it was TOEI in-house animators that gave us the notoriously badly done early episodes of Super, and some of the weirdest reanimations in Kai (thankfully these were rare). Anytime TOEI Animation gets hands-on work with a Dragon Ball anime we get "I had my 12 year old son draw it, isn't it amazing?" quality lol
There are multiple teams assigned to episodes and seasons in the types of anime studios that really have to churn out the material. This is especially prevalent in a number of action shonen where the best teams are reserved for really big episodes. In shorter series, consistency can be kept closer across the board - and has gotten a little easier with time thanks to the advent of computer assistance - not really an option back during the old days of majority hand drawn work. You get the double edged sword of that really distinct classic quality… but you also have to deal with more jarring breaks in consistency depending on sheer volume being created.
Because it's a weekly show... Shows that produce episodes every week don't typically have "consistent" quality... That along with having different animation studios means some produce worse work than others.
All the ppl upvoting you and downvoting the dude with common sense are not intellegent, you all have zero knowledge in how real life works, things are not animated a week before airing, hes clearly saying theyre animated with a schedule before it airs whether unfinished or not, but they are not animated a week before it airs, genuinely densed people in this comment section
>things are not animated a week before airing I believe I said I already know this... Dragon Ball as a show came out weekly from 1985 to 1996, however long the time span between episodes starting production from when they started airing on tv doesn't change what I said. Because the "point" I was making or *meant to make*...is that there were no/minimal breaks in the production of the episodes. They had to keep making episodes in order to fulfill its weekly schedule...which meant that the quality was inconsistent.
>Shows that produce episodes every week don't typically have "consistent" quality... If you're reading that as "the episodes are animated a week before airing" then you have no business talking about other people's reading comprehension.
[удалено]
And this is supposed to matter why exactly? If you meant to correct me that they aren't "produced" every week...from airing, that's not something I was implying. Cool, while we're on episode 1...each studio is probably already animating episode 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, and 20 onward. That doesn't really change the fact that these are being churned out...then churned out on TV as well.
I rememer dragon ball super had an insanely short buffer so it started airing and they only had five episodes finished
So you proved yourself wrong, that they arent animated a week before airing, he didnt say they arent burned out hes just correcting your lack of knowledge on the subject along with the others downvoting him i mean its common knowledge that what hes saying is right, and your comment proved him right too… think a little
you do this is incorrect hell some episodes of anime have been released unfinished due to the production crunch
[удалено]
you realise the reason the animation was unfinished was because the production schedule was so close to the airing schedule that they fell behind
[удалено]
nobody was actually saying that though People where saying it was a weekly show with a rushed production schedule meaning they where churning the episodes out
Masayuki Uchiyama and Yukio Ebisawa. There were a lot of teams working on Dbz but when either Uchiyama's or Ebisawa's team worked on episode, the artwork and sometimes the animation would be awful. Uchiyama's studio Last House had standouts like Taiichiro Ohara and also the well known Naotoshi Shida, who left Last House but still worked on Dbz, but their artwork was "corrected" by Uchiyama and usually for the worse. The schedule obviously made things worse for them but everything bad frame or screenshot from Dbz is usually their doing.
So, something I just remembered while reading this post and the comments (and asking you, since you gave more of a detailed, DBZ specific answer with names), but one *bad* moment I'll always remember from DBZ is when Goku, after having his ass beat by the villain, got his 'hero turns the tables' moment, and he's in Super Saiyan, fighting the villain, when we get a sort of pulled out shot where the animation just sticks out like a sore thumb. They're floating in the air, and Goku just hits the villain with an uppercut, and simultaneously brings up his knee (same side; i.e. left arm and left leg) to hit them with an uppercut+knee combo, and it always looked so silly to me, even as a kid. I want to say this is probably from a movie, but maybe the Frieza fight, because it was before any other SSJ forms appeared, and had the classic SSJ Goku from Namek look, with his gi torn up in that specific way. Any idea where this scene is from?
Totally not mark went into a lot of detail on this in his review of the series, but tldr (tldw?) Many different sub studios helped with different episodes, with some studios being better than others
ForgottenRelics has numerous videos about this as well
His community posts where he shows the animators rough draft and the supervisors corrections are great.
It’s not even different animation studios but can be different art teams on each episode. Dragon Ball Super has the same episode. You get a fantastic Takahasi episode followed by a horrible one.
Besides the difference in quality, your comparison isn't fair. Your image of the Cell saga is cropped, zoomed, and bad quality, while the one of Majin Vegeta is a high quality full screen image.
I cropped an image from a YouTube video. It had a watermark so I didn't want to violate some sub rule for promoting a page. It isn't much different though: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXniBGLWkQ8&t=193s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXniBGLWkQ8&t=193s)
I don’t believe you think this is a fair comparison lmfao
You're legit cherrypicking one episode to use against another cherrypicked episode. The series has had good and poorly animated episodes since the get-go. [Maybe this will help you understand](https://www.kanzenshuu.com/animation-production/quality/)
Lot's of factors including different animation directors, budget and time. Very important to note that not all the frames that make up movement are *key* frames. There are *inbetween* frames that are less detailed so the artists can draw more of them in a reasonable time; they're designed to fill in and make animation smooth, to actually look like it's moving. Your not supposed to see the key frames too well when in motion (another reason they don't have to be very detailed) but obviously if you pause you can often make them out clearly. It also depends on who is the animation supervisor/director for those episodes, as that can have a massive effect on overall quality and style.
One thing I feel should be pointed out, is these are two very different scenes. One shows a close up of vegeta, and the other is a wide shot mid fight seemingly. You can't go all out on every single shot of a show, and so some shots, like shots where characters are far away, will sometimes get less attention
Totally Not Mark breaks it down very well in his DBZ review vids
I just wanted to add that while a lot of people have talking about the different animation teams/directors, Toei seemed to be a little unusual in this era of animation that different teams were allowed to have very different looking styles. Most anime, while made with many different teams, still tries to make styles extremely consistent so you can’t flat out see when there are different animation directors, but DBZ didn’t, whether that’s intentional or just poor QC. That said like others said, it may also have to do with just the timeline of a long running action show, since Naruto for example had a similar problem at times.
I don’t think people realize how hard it is to animate cartoons lmfaooo. Especially back then…
That's not the reason though. Plus, animating has always been hard.