The fifth episode of the second season of Jujutsu Kaisen served as the conclusion of the " Hidden Inventory/Untimely Death Arc ", leading up to the beginning of the " Shibuya Incident Arc ". Although this fifth episode surprised with a dramatic development that culminated in the breakdown of the friendship between Satoru Gojo and Suguru Geto, it seems that many were not impressed and noticed something quite particular in this episode: the animation and the style were different .
Many fans have refused to believe this, perhaps blinded by their fanaticism towards the franchise, but others have been able to observe and just by comparing the most recent episode with the previous one, you can tell a pretty obvious difference . We can even review some comments about it:
- « Is it just me or do I feel like this episode had a very different animation? ».
- " I really loved the direction of this episode, and while the animation was poor at times, the story certainly covered the visual gaps ."
- « The animation and art style seems to change pretty much every episode, personally I'm the biggest fan of the animation and art style of episode 4 of this season. Season 1 also had some art style changes every few episodes ."
- Considering the amount of money they invested in making the first four absolutely stellar episodes, it makes sense that they made this one through another studio . The animation looks a lot rushed and less detailed, for sure ."
- « Jujutsu Kaisen fanboys downvote any criticism, but it was definitely worse anime than previous episodes. I don't think it took away from it really, the good scenes had fine to good animation ."
- « Have they already run out of budget? My goodness, the animation quality has gone down a lot ».
- « Although I really liked this episode, I understand the criticism. I have seen somewhere that this episode was mostly drawn over 3DCGI and outsourced to save the budget. The animation was the same as always, but I think you're referring to the inconsistency of the pencil art and designs, which also seemed rushed and a little cheap at times to me, and it was very obvious. But I loved the direction this week, which can be a hit or miss for people, so the art part wasn't really a big deal for me ."
- « Now the whole episode looked pretty bad a meh in the character animation. Is admitting this fact (you can literally watch any other episode and notice it) so hard? I just said that the episode is still great, but they shouldn't lower the animation quality of the other episodes ."
Anyway, we're not meeting today to talk about the quality of the latest episode of Jujutsu Kaisen, but a situation involving Takuya Niinuma, a freelancer who was in charge of animation direction for this episode . In case you're wondering, the criticism was not exclusive to the West, but the comment forums in Japan also made mention of this, and much more on social networks.
It seems that the animation director was on the lookout for criticism, as netizens discovered that he had shared a post from another person who wrote, " Occasionally I notice that many people use their love of a franchise to defend their attacks on the people who work." in them, but I think that is wrong ».
It was certainly a hint to the Jujutsu Kaisen fans who were criticizing his work in the fifth episode of the second season. Others went further and checked even the people he followed, discovering that he was a follower of much of the Chainsaw Man production team, which became another fuel for criticism. It should be remembered that no matter how popular a franchise is anywhere in the world, there will always be a group of anti-fans present.
It seems that the pressure on the animator director was enough to make him delete his account and wait for the bullying to stop. As of this writing he has already reactivated his account, but it seems he has deleted a lot of recent posts and unliked a lot of things. While it's understandable that animation doesn't suit the tastes of all viewers, it's reprehensible to harass production staff in this way.
Source: Yaraon!
