I hope everyone understands the situation by now, but just in case someone is unaware, I'll recap.
>WIT leaves the show due to the harsh schedule given for S04, and because they weren't actually making much of anything from it due to not being on the production committee.
>MAPPA picks it up, fully aware of the difficult schedule.
>Harsh schedule, haphazardly put together staff, situation made worse by COVID. Staff is talented, but there's no action animators, the designs are very complicated, and in general it's a really difficult show to make, especially when it's your first time working on it.
>The result is a decent looking show, the only reason it doesn't break down is due to the action being largely CG, carried by good 2D effects. Character art is good in early episodes but has melty moments starting from episode 6. Overall not much movement, both in 2D and CG.
>There is intense backlash from a portion of the fanbase. It is understandable, as the show doesn't look nearly as appealing as before. Apart from the change in designs (subjective), action being largely CG, and no amazing 2D cuts, the compositing is also often off-puttingly blurry/hard to see.
>The blame is put on the production committee for not allowing enough time (their reasoning is to make the show coincide with the manga ending, so it remains as relevant as possible and makes the maximum profit). The blame is also put on MAPPA in general for accepting a show while fully knowing its complexity, and also not preparing the appropriate staff to handle it.
>The question then comes to, if not MAPPA, then who? Would the production committee have increased the time and WIT would've accepted it? Or would they have given it off to any random studio? This is the point where any discussion just straight up devolves into speculations and insults, because there is no way to know the answer.
Coming to part 2, the schedule is a better than part 1 due to the year long gap, the staff is more experienced, and a better schedule is usually more inviting to freelancers who might want to do some scenes. The CG is also now mostly in-house instead of being outsourced to V-Sign. As it is evident from the first episode, you can expect the CG models to move a lot more, a shit ton of great 2D effects work, and perhaps some good 2D character acting.
Do not expect any nutty 2D action scenes, either with Titan battles or with ODM. The quality should be similar to episode 1 for these next few eps, then for the final few episodes where things get really intense, the quality will depend on the state of the production, which we will get to know more about as the season progresses. |