Why is the animation quality not upto the mark?

@deg That was not his debut, Park directed Garo: Vanishing Line a few years prior.

The problem is not that the animation isn't good....the animation needs to be god tier. That's the era we're approaching with anime now to really stand out it has to be god tier...

Why? Because with better technology, good animation has become the new average animation. There's just a lot of good animation now, so much that it becomes the new average. To really stand out you need god tier animation. And then eventually if every anime is god tier animation that will be the new average yet again and then the difference will only be in art styles and then 3D animation / CGI taking over from then on and becoming more and more realistic.

Oh, this again... the animation is great, you people have no idea what you are talking about. Seeing comparisons with JJK and Demon Slayer is ridiculous - those are signature-type animations, done by those specific studios, is not something any studio can achieve, especially within an acceptable budget. First of all, this season is basically the prologue. Is 12 episodes, is gonna end before Jiwoon is even gets his actual powers, and gets to the point where you have all that pretty stuff.






And what did people expect? Animation with an art style on the level of a compilation of still images done by an entire Studio? If we count the panels of a weekly SL webcoming episode, to animation frames, that is like 5 seconds of animation my dude - and that only if is not a fight scene.



@AnimeDownUnder

What a pale of utter nonsense... we had god tier animation tough out every era. Do you have any idea how much Bakemonogatari stood out among it's peers when it came in 2009? Everything that Shaft was doing in fact between 2009 and 2013 was in a league of it's own. Fate Zero also came up in 2011, same year with Madoka. So, Ufotable has been doing this quality of work for 13 years. Do you think that stopped people from enjoying or loving SAO or Fairy Tail even more? Animation evolves, but if you think that now if something is not like JJK it won't stand out or people won't enjoy it, you are out of your bloody mind.

@kronopy Lol I know that good animation existed in every era...but that's not my point. My point is that those anime didn't become the standard, the animation was only "amazing" because there was a very "few" rare anime with animation that good. God tier animation is kinda everywhere now, it's become almost very common and now it's become the actual standard. It's not like there's 1 or 2 shows such as fate or monogatari with god tier animation....it's literally everything mappa and ufo come out with now, it's bones studio, kyoto animation, etc... it's become the new standard so if an anime can't really keep up with this new standard of god tier animation, then it's not going to surpass the god tier animation either. Those shows will be seen as average, or below average.... Also another thing is the god tier animation got even better now compared to 10 years ago. Look at demon slayer vs fate zero and there's a clear huge different in animation. UFO table are even better now than 10 years ago. Not to say that fate zero doesn't still hold up, it's still the same studio they were ahead of their time back then but it's not nearly as impressive anymore when you see an anime like for example demon slayer season 2 or something like JJK season 2.

What was considered god tier animation back then, probably isn't god tier anymore it's probably moved down 1 category to either "good animation" or "slightly above average"..... I know something like FLCL which in the year 2000 was impressive, it's relatively average in todays standard

I have no problem with this adaptation at all. Story progression, Ost are great and animation is great too but not amazing like DS animation.
only problem I nitpicking is some characters and SJW's chin are so sharp that it look like typical japanese Isekai MC or Anos Voldigoad and doesn't feel like SJW at all.

Oh, this again... the animation is great, you people have no idea what you are talking about. Seeing comparisons with JJK and Demon Slayer is ridiculous - those are signature-type animations, done by those specific studios, is not something any studio can achieve, especially within an acceptable budget. First of all, this season is basically the prologue. Is 12 episodes, is gonna end before Jiwoon is even gets his actual powers, and gets to the point where you have all that pretty stuff.






And what did people expect? Animation with an art style on the level of a compilation of still images done by an entire Studio? If we count the panels of a weekly SL webcoming episode, to animation frames, that is like 5 seconds of animation my dude - and that only if is not a fight scene.



@AnimeDownUnder

What a pale of utter nonsense... we had god tier animation tough out every era. Do you have any idea how much Bakemonogatari stood out among it's peers when it came in 2009? Everything that Shaft was doing in fact between 2009 and 2013 was in a league of it's own. Fate Zero also came up in 2011, same year with Madoka. So, Ufotable has been doing this quality of work for 13 years. Do you think that stopped people from enjoying or loving SAO or Fairy Tail even more? Animation evolves, but if you think that now if something is not like JJK it won't stand out or people won't enjoy it, you are out of your bloody mind.

The animation is not bad but average/good with some better moments here and there. Honestly the ECHO MUSIC VIDEO has a better style and it's a music video (don't watch it if you didn't read the manwha, it's full of spoilers)
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Said that, even with this level of animation the series would be enjoyable if not for the pace which is quite crazy. Sometimes they rush a lot (like the last ep9) and in others is very slow with useless scenes. The director is the real problem here which is turning a possible 10/10 anime into an 8/10 or 7/10. What a waste

This is the problem with forums. You have people with no understanding of the subject they're talking about critiquing it like they know something. "According to me" headass. The animation is objectively very good and it's not a matter of opinion. You may choose to like or dislike the style of animation but you're just lying if you say it's bad without providing a technical analysis. If you wanna be bad animation go watch Bleach.

This is the problem with forums. You have people with no understanding of the subject they're talking about critiquing it like they know something. "According to me" headass. The animation is objectively very good and it's not a matter of opinion. You may choose to like or dislike the style of animation but you're just lying if you say it's bad without providing a technical analysis. If you wanna be bad animation go watch Bleach.

@phantom346 finally someone with braincells.

I have experience with 2D animation but not in the anime area, and after watching an animation breakdown video on yt, I appreciate the animation quality in SL even more.

People only want to see big and flashy movements, but SL animation style seems to get its quality from things like perspective heavy and full body shots, it's more subtle.
But people can only comprehend things that are practically pushed into their faces it seems.

I still don't get why people think solo levelling has bad animation, when its been so consistently good throughout. You then got people praising the fuck out of JJK S2 animation, when it clearly, objectively had some inconsistent badly animated episodes. This world is delusional.

@Zimmu Because it's so rigid that it seems like studio Deen made it... look for example at the battle between Jin woo and the 6 hunters in episode 6, there wasn't a single well animated movement, they were all power point combined with compositing which did seemed to have animations, same thing for other fights like in episode 7 against Cerberos which was an alternation between decently animated moments and really poorly animated moments... JJK2 had some drops but at least the quality was there, perhaps the only one really bad episode of jjk2 was the 18th, but otherwise although it changed animation style a few times, jjk2 did a good job in bringing us the anime (it could have done better but even so it was fine), Solo leveling instead seems to watch Hell's Paradise for how poorly animated it is

@Vedrun So for you, someone who insults has brain cells? haha it's already funny that you have to see a youtuber praising who knows what to convince you that Solo leveling has good animation when it doesn't. The animation is quite disgusting and if we want to be really picky an animation worthy of the name it should have 24 frames per second which makes the movement as natural and fluid as possible... Leveling alone is already a lot if it has 2 or 3 frames per second to make you understand how much the animation sucks

@Leon888
Tbh I think I kind of see why people have differences in opinions on animation. I think you must care about solo leveling a lot, so you took your time to rewatch the fighting scenes and spot the mistakes. I praise you for this. Me on the other hand rewatched JJK S2 countless times. I mean not to argue or anything, but I think JJK S2 has far worse episodes than 18th (Itadori vs Mahito). For example, the grasshopper fight and Dagon domain vs. Zenin class, in which the animation is a lot stiffer than Solo Levelling. (Ep8 and ep14 btw). They are so bad, to the point I question if MAPPA really animated them. We also have many fights ruined by slow motion, like Megumi Itadori vs Grandson, and Ino vs Toji. The fact that they put so many slow motion shots in an action sequence still piss me off.

Not to turn this into a JJK discussion, but I think you see that many people have difference in opinion because of how much we care about something. Someone like me who don't really care about SL might see them as good because I only watch it one time. You might not care enough to watch JJKS2 numerous times so you think JJKS2 has great animation.

But still, I think you should lower your standard on SL lol. To me it looks great enough already and I can tell you its way better than JJKS2's overall animation in my perspective.

@Leon888 He didn't insult anyone?


Uuuuh, ever heard of something called education? I'm not familiar with animation regarding anime, of course I'm gonna learn about it first before I give my opinion on the matter. I know what makes a general animation look good, I've animated 2D before, just not for anime. Do you know how much time it takes to animate 24 frames? The faster the scene plays out and the more chaotic it is, the less frames you need to make it look smooth, it would just be a lot of wasted effort.

The things that had been made evident through the video, is that they use a lot of full-body shots and perspective changes during motion, which not a lot of shows do and looks really complicated. It's not something you really notice and keep in mind while watching, so it was interesting to see broken down, and should be taken into account when judging the animation quality.

Yes, the animation doesn't look perfect 100% of the time, but it's definitely not as bad as you make it out to be.

The animation is an 8/10 which is great but not a masterpiece and the action scenes are good too I think you are expecting "SAKUGA" in an opening season.You are expecting Entertainment district and Shibuya Incident in a show that's just beginning. Wait till hype moments to see breathtaking animations, I mean even Chainsaw Man didn't have SAKUGA and the level of the animation is no different from Chainsaw Man. The only major difference is the Hype. SL is still at 500k members 🥲

@Zimmu interesting message, but no, I have not watched only leveling several times as I find the product disappointing even after watching it only once, I am well aware of the errors in episodes 8 and 14 in fact the most criticized ones together with episode 18, but I find the ep 18 the worst since you really noticed the lack of animations there, take for example the scene of itadori vs mahito in the elevator, there was Itadori teleporting from one place to another without any animated scene that made it clear how he got to certain places places, or even the horrible blood splatter when they both got out of that giant caterpillar, or some annoying camera angles while Itadori and mahito fought inside the giant caterpillar (at least they did Nanami's part decently).

Some things you said are right but they also gave us exciting battles like Jogo vs Sukuna ep 16, Maharoga vs Sukuna ep 17, Gojo vs special grade ep 9, Itadori vs Choso ep 13, etc... in Solo leveling I yet to find a battle worthy of the name, not even the much praised battle between jinwoo vs the hunter of grade B ep 9 managed to satisfy me also thanks to a mediocre direction and several parts sped up or cut within the episode, and furthermore if you read the manhwa which has very beautiful drawings, you will understand that this animation does not do justice at all to what Solo leveling should be, there are some really cool battles going further and further and if this is the best they can do, then they better quit

@Leon888
Tbh I think I kind of see why people have differences in opinions on animation. I think you must care about solo leveling a lot, so you took your time to rewatch the fighting scenes and spot the mistakes. I praise you for this. Me on the other hand rewatched JJK S2 countless times. I mean not to argue or anything, but I think JJK S2 has far worse episodes than 18th (Itadori vs Mahito). For example, the grasshopper fight and Dagon domain vs. Zenin class, in which the animation is a lot stiffer than Solo Levelling. (Ep8 and ep14 btw). They are so bad, to the point I question if MAPPA really animated them. We also have many fights ruined by slow motion, like Megumi Itadori vs Grandson, and Ino vs Toji. The fact that they put so many slow motion shots in an action sequence still piss me off.

Not to turn this into a JJK discussion, but I think you see that many people have difference in opinion because of how much we care about something. Someone like me who don't really care about SL might see them as good because I only watch it one time. You might not care enough to watch JJKS2 numerous times so you think JJKS2 has great animation.

But still, I think you should lower your standard on SL lol. To me it looks great enough already and I can tell you its way better than JJKS2's overall animation in my perspective.

@Vedrun ah yes I also noticed the famous shots, the ones that make it look animated when in reality it isn't, in episode 9 there were also some stiff camera movements during the filming of jin woo's battle against the B-rank hunter, if do you want to see high-level animated shows recovered the works of Fate Unlimited blade works, Vivy, One punch man season 1, Jujutsu Kaisen, Fire force or Heavenly delusion... also always in the A1 paintings area there are animated shows better than leveling solo: Licor lecois, Fate apocrhypha, 86, Sword art online, Love is war... this animation isn't even good, I don't understand how people can defend such a poor animation when solo leveling is just battles mostly, so obviously it must have high level animations regardless without counting the spectacular artistic part of the manhwa... if you think this animation is beautiful, try to think that it could be 100 times better than this (and the problems unfortunately are not only in the animation of this show)

Not at all, you're really just forcing this. You can say it has a way better level of consistency, as the difference between the highs and the lows isn't that drastic, but speaking in general sense saying it has better animation than JJK is a stretch and a half.

@Leon888 yes, solo leveling hasn't the best animation there is, but no one said it has.

I just rewatched 86 recently and you can hardly compare animated mechs to human bodies. Can't say much for the others since I either haven't watched them or don't remember. Fate definitely had nice battles.

I haven't watched JJK but I've seen battles of it and yes, they're nicely done but if we're in nitpicking territory already I'd say many are lazy shots especially in angles that don't need much animating, many still images where only the face moves and really bad full body shots and a very inconsistent quality overall from what I've seen.

If anything imo MHA is better animated than what I've seen of JJK so far.


You do realise that even if it's only a camera rotation around the character, it still has to be animated? The character changing perspective relative to the camera IS an animation, I don't know what you're on about.

And what's so bad about making it look animated when in reality it isn't? Does it matter? If that's true then they're using tricks to save workload, a very common thing in game development and you're not seeing people complain how reflections in games aren't actually real reflections, it still does the trick in the end so who tf cares. You're really just complaining about the how instead of the what, which is pointless.

You've clearly been going back and analysing the SL animations frame by frame, just to find things to pick on. If you're looking THAT closely at the animation you're gonna find the exact same problems in literally every show, because they're not gonna put double the frames into an animation just in case someone comes to take it apart frame by frame lmao

Like, I'm picky enough when it comes to fight scenes animation, and yes, the speedlines in ep9 were not cool, but the rest has been really good so far. I never called them beautiful or amazing, but they're good. Bad battle animations would be something like in D.Gray-Man for example, now THAT would be atrocious.