Gintama.: Shirogane no Tamashii-hen Episode 8 Discussion

GoldenDevilGamer said:
THIS IS AN ANIME ONLY DISCUSSION POST. DO NOT DISCUSS THE MANGA BEYOND THIS EPISODE.
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Continuing off from last episode, Gintoki’s been hit by the Kabukicho members themselves. “Walking Violence Woman”, lol. LMAO, one of Gintoki’s testicles has fell, initiate breakdancing please. I love how the Yorozuya has a higher risk of dying by the hands of the Kabukicho residents, rather than the Liberation Army that’s attacking them. Meanwhile Gintoki’s just chasing after his ball. Lol, Kagura’s already taken control of the Host Clubs and forced the Okama to dress up as hosts. And Kozenigata’s just leading Gintoki and Shinpachi to some weird, hard-boiled S&M place.

Meanwhile, it seems that Ougai’s making his attack on Kabukicho. The gates have been broken in one hit. Well, the Dakini are ridiculously strong, and Ougai’s supposed to be one of the most experienced fighter in the tribe. Whoa, things are starting to get a bit brutal. But Kyuubei’s here to help! Same goes for the rest of the Yagyuu family. It’s pretty funny seeing Toujou all serious when he’s treated as a joke for 99% of the series. Ah, no, never mind, he took out his camera… again. It’s cool seeing the Yagyuu family in action, but now it’s time for the real problem they have in their hands now, Ougai.

His movements are slow, but the rate in which he can attack is quite high. Not t mention that he’s absurdly strong. It seems like Ougai feels insulted by the fact that he has to fight against women and children. But the fight’s pretty fun and we get to see a good chunk of people fighting a bigger antagonist at the same time. And we haven’t seen Kyuubei in action since forever, so it’s nice that she’s getting some spotlight. Tsukuyo even helped a bit at the end too. It seems like the women and children of Kabukicho were able to prove to Ougai that they were stronger than him. Also, Gintoki with that log attack. Seems like he needed a bigger wooden sword, haha.

Definitely the most action-packed episode of the season, but it was a lot of fun. There was still a good chunk of comedy at the beginning though. 5 Chapters were adapted in this episode (Chapters 615-619). But luckily it doesn't feel rushed. I think they skipped a couple of dialogues during the fight, but it's nothing too bad. Actually, that made the fight flow better imo. Though I'll probably need to compare it with the manga to see which exact dialogues were skipped. Next episode will adapt 4 chapters at the very least.

5/5

GoldenDevilGamer said:
It was pretty good. The real action didn't kick in until the last third, and that chunk was done really well. Very little uses of still shots and it actually seems like the episode was trying its best not to feel static. For example, when Gin and Saigou were back-to-back, there was a slight camera rotation to show another angle, rather than cutting to another episode. Though, maybe Gintoki chasing after his balls might've had the best animation, not sure :P

SenpaiJay98 said:
Technically this episode was 4 and 1/2 chapters(because they only had 11 pages to adapt from 615)

SenpaiJay98 said:
This episode had too much animators on it(I wonder what happened since last weeks episode only had 1 Key Animator on it, so the production was good) https://twitter.com/kiirobon/status/967864787634917377

SenpaiJay98 said:
I feel like people are way to harsh on the animation, like it's nowhere near Episode 303, first 40 episodes Gintama, or 306(2nd half) level

it was very inconsistent though(like looking great with Ougai himself, then trash with the comedy, and looking ok with the fodder)

GoldenDevilGamer said:
Honestly, Episode 346's first 2/3 probably looked worse than this episode. The real issue this episode has was its pacing. And the faster pace did let the episode end on a more entertaining note. Imagine if Ougai's fight happened next episode. All that buildup for a villain that loses very quickly is more underwhelming than him getting less buildup and then losing. Ougai's fight wasn't anything too great in the manga, but the faster pace in the anime keeps it less stale. I wish some dialogues weren't skipped though :/

GoldenDevilGamer said:
Honestly, Episode 346's first 2/3 probably looked worse than this episode. The real issue this episode has was its pacing. And the faster pace did let the episode end on a more entertaining note. Imagine if Ougai's fight happened next episode. All that buildup for a villain that loses very quickly is more underwhelming than him getting less buildup and then losing. Ougai's fight wasn't anything too great in the manga, but the faster pace in the anime keeps it less stale. I wish some dialogues weren't skipped though :/

SenpaiJay98 said:
I think people wanted this Episode to end on 617, and for Episode 350 to be chapters 618-621, and I see how that could but I could also see it fail with it dragging it's feet

but BNP did do a bad idea with replaying that 348 scene(like that extra minute could have helped with them stabbing Ougai )

but any who, I think 350 is going to be something else

SenpaiJay98 said:
This episode had too much animators on it(I wonder what happened since last weeks episode only had 1 Key Animator on it, so the production was good) https://twitter.com/kiirobon/status/967864787634917377

GoldenDevilGamer said:
Yeah, roughly 1 min 20 seconds was re-shown when that time could've been spent on the things they've rushed. I get that starting off the episode with Gintoki being injured wouldn't flow well, but the episode should've at least started at when they fire the catapults. That's still a little more than a minute saved for everything else.

Next episode has an impressive staff working on it, so expectations are kinda high.
Episode Director: Ikeno Shōji (Episode 305, 335) <--- Definitely great
Screenplay: Kishimoto Taku (Episode 304-305, 308-311, 319-323) <--- Top-tier
Nothing's confirmed about the animation director (which will decide how good the animations will actually be), but I'm expecting great pacing and directing in the next episode

For this episode:
Episode Director and Storyboarder: Minami Yasuhiro (306, 312, 320, 326, 331, 336, 342) <--- He did some of the worst episodes of SA and FS arc. But he did the best episodes of Rakuyo.
Animation Directors: Gintama has never had anything more than 7 ADs. This episode has 9... which either means that this episode was heavily behind schedule, or it's productions were cut short. Even though the ADs are actually really talented, too many ADs leads to conflicts and they probably cut things short because of their schedule.

Also, Episode 259 was much better than this episode. 259 has a couple of still-shots during the early fodder fights, but it's has a lot of impressive moments. Gintoki dodging Oboro's attacks is still one of the more impressive cuts from this series.

SenpaiJay98 said:
The only scene I thought with Oboro that impressive was the xcene where he was slashing a lot at Gintoki, but the rooftop scene in 260 was godly

GoldenDevilGamer said:
259 has some other impressive moments. Prior to the Yorozura, Tsukuyo and Nobume having their backs faced against each other, there was a fairly lengthy fodder fight that was really well animated. Plus those bafuku soldiers running in was fully animated and there were a lot of them on screen. Plus there's this too: https://www.sakugabooru.com/post/show/20766

But the episode did have some still-shot moments.

SenpaiJay98 said:
that scene was great, but those sakuga scenes only add up to like a minute, and when i compared it to 349 I said 349 was almost 259 level...but nobody really complained about 259(maybe because the artwork was more consistent?)

GoldenDevilGamer said:
Yeah, the art was consistent, and the still-shots were done in a less-distracting manner. For example, when Gintoki pieces Oboro's "mask" after his short range moment, the side angles were basically still-shots, but the camera pans quickly to create the allusion of movement, even if no real movement is actually present in the scene.

YGP said:
The problem with static images is how they are worked. In this episode, much of the image is just placed on the screen.
The Oboro mask scene is a good example of angle use.

JizzyHitler said:
animation was simply unforgivably bad

Uchiha_Shadow said:

That's way too over-exaggerating man, lots of episodes were worse than this and the animation in this episode was OK.

Salamak said:

you're right bu none of the serious or semi serious arcs have bad action animation. but then again this arc is too long..

Uchiha_Shadow said:

SA, FS and RDB arcs all had animation on this level or worse in some of the episodes, and the previous arcs weren't that impressive except in 1 or 2 episodes, and even then not the whole thing.
It's already been proven that the same people have been working on Gintama ever since the beginning, and people think old Gintama looked top tier all the time when that is just simply false, the series has always been like this, but of course it's gonna be more apparent when it's 17 episodes(SA and FS), 12 episodes(RDB) or 2-cours+ of action(SS) in comparison to just 4 or 5 episodes.

Salamak said:

give me an example on these 3 recent arcs