So, the production fell monumentally hard, no?

Reference-kun said:
just read the manga

Kockorzo said:
If you felt something— you were looking for something, to be expected from an upbraiding eye. The only thing which dropped after those first 2 episodes was the ‘tournament arc atmosphere’. Perhaps all you cared about was the dopamine hit of beholding a being of great and anomalous power dominate everyone and everything around him— subverting all precedents and expectations.

There is nothing abnormal about the 3rd and 4th episodes, rather these were exactly what the first two were building up to. If you don’t like it, you never liked it in the first place. I am no advocate for this show and consider it to be yet another interesting and enjoyable premise ruined by the scruples of Shounen publication guidelines; however, you are blaming your failing on someone else over here and that is most irksome. ‘The OP MC achieves the impossible by command of his sheer omnipotence’ is just not what this show was all about. The world does not revolve around the protagonist and that is where your judgment fails.

Kockorzo said:
If you felt something— you were looking for something, to be expected from an upbraiding eye. The only thing which dropped after those first 2 episodes was the ‘tournament arc atmosphere’. Perhaps all you cared about was the dopamine hit of beholding a being of great and anomalous power dominate everyone and everything around him— subverting all precedents and expectations.

There is nothing abnormal about the 3rd and 4th episodes, rather these were exactly what the first two were building up to. If you don’t like it, you never liked it in the first place. I am no advocate for this show and consider it to be yet another interesting and enjoyable premise ruined by the scruples of Shounen publication guidelines; however, you are blaming your failing on someone else over here and that is most irksome. ‘The OP MC achieves the impossible by command of his sheer omnipotence’ is just not what this show was all about. The world does not revolve around the protagonist and that is where your judgment fails.

justhuman22 said:
Posts like this make me appreciate that I have almost no grasp of animation and production quality. I can’t tell when something is mediocre or slightly bad. I can tell when something is awful. But it’s gotta be really bad. I like being able to enjoy shows when others claim that the quality is dropping off. Though. I think some artistic choices might bother me. And CGI has more of a chance to make me dislike something. But I personally haven’t noticed anything “bad” animation wise in this show yet.

justhuman22 said:
Posts like this make me appreciate that I have almost no grasp of animation and production quality. I can’t tell when something is mediocre or slightly bad. I can tell when something is awful. But it’s gotta be really bad. I like being able to enjoy shows when others claim that the quality is dropping off. Though. I think some artistic choices might bother me. And CGI has more of a chance to make me dislike something. But I personally haven’t noticed anything “bad” animation wise in this show yet.

CrunchyCrobat said:

Great words my fellow less animation more story enjoyer, it's the same for me, Idk what some people complain about sometimes, and on cgi I have to takes, cgi in the middle of a 2d anime is almost surely gonna look bad, but a anime which is basically just cgi is not gonna be that much bother

justhuman22 said:
Posts like this make me appreciate that I have almost no grasp of animation and production quality. I can’t tell when something is mediocre or slightly bad. I can tell when something is awful. But it’s gotta be really bad. I like being able to enjoy shows when others claim that the quality is dropping off. Though. I think some artistic choices might bother me. And CGI has more of a chance to make me dislike something. But I personally haven’t noticed anything “bad” animation wise in this show yet.

LordKirkis said:



You likely aren't noticing much because there really isn't much that's bad. In episode 3 and 4 you might notice some funny looking distant faces of supporting characters. In some case of Helck's face for the sake of humor. Interestingly Vermilia sees little to no compromisation to her drawing or animation.

I think the studio must really love Vermilia as a character. My personal favorites so far are Vermilia and Rococo!

Ravenclaw690 said:

^^^^^ well said, more people need to have a similar mindset when it comes to entertaintment, like if you're enjoying it then cool if not then it's just not for you

Kimurah said:



There's definitely a lack of production values (animation and direction along with art) in episodes 3 & 4. It goes beyond just funny distant faces and it's pretty bland when it comes to choices of animation what should've been a more heated battle that had been foreseen since episode 2 & 3. There's for instance the weird choice of animating the big guy who casts barriers from behind when he's hitting one of the angels, like for real, you can't see anything from that pov. There's also the tons of exposition in order to pad up time with little to no animation. A good director would have worked around it in order to make it more fit for an animated medium rather than copy word per word what was meant to be read in long panels in a static medium like manga.

LordKirkis said:

So you want better animation.. don't we all? I know I do. I love great animation.. in fact it's one of my favorite things about anime.

LordKirkis said:

That aside we are getting 26 episodes right off the bat right? Do we have any idea what the budget is for this production? Hmm. I don't think so.. that is unless you work for the production company. Or maybe your uncle works there! Yeah?

LordKirkis said:

Well what about the tons of exposition you say? Helck is a Battle Shonen of sorts. Well more specifically its a parody of Battle Shonen's. Hey what a surprise.. maybe that director is good after all!

LordKirkis said:

Did I mention how we don't know the budget for this show or any show for that matter? Well then I guess we're both clueless on the matter. Cool meme though!

LordKirkis said:

Ill reiterate.. I really enjoy great animation and high production value, but that is not always possible with every production. And besides.. animation is only one aspect of anime; there is plenty more to appreciate and seep value from. When talking about Helck specifically I don't believe its lazy.. my guess is its firmly budgeted, but its still plenty enjoyable!

Kockorzo said:
If you felt something— you were looking for something, to be expected from an upbraiding eye. The only thing which dropped after those first 2 episodes was the ‘tournament arc atmosphere’. Perhaps all you cared about was the dopamine hit of beholding a being of great and anomalous power dominate everyone and everything around him— subverting all precedents and expectations.

There is nothing abnormal about the 3rd and 4th episodes, rather these were exactly what the first two were building up to. If you don’t like it, you never liked it in the first place. I am no advocate for this show and consider it to be yet another interesting and enjoyable premise ruined by the scruples of Shounen publication guidelines; however, you are blaming your failing on someone else over here and that is most irksome. ‘The OP MC achieves the impossible by command of his sheer omnipotence’ is just not what this show was all about. The world does not revolve around the protagonist and that is where your judgment fails.

Isekai-Enjoyer said:

Dunno why you’re talking about the plot, though?

I’m talking exclusively about animation and direction. The plot itself has nothing to do with it.

Edit: Just noticed I already answered you some weeks prior to now. Don’t mind me.

Kockorzo said:

Is this what you meant by ‘off your meds’? Expected of a lowlife to have the comprehension skills of a mutated monkey.

LordKirkis said:
Interestingly Vermilia sees little to no compromisation to her drawing or animation.

I think the studio must really love Vermilia as a character. My personal favorites so far are Vermilia and Rococo!

SAMOAK said:
That is actually a carryover from the manga. Not to discredit the work the animators are putting in to bring it to life, but for the first arc of the story Vermilia would sometimes look like the mangaka was pulling her from an entirely different manga and pasting her on the page when compared with the other characters due to the complexity and attention to detail each rendition would get.

Kockorzo said:

Yet another primitive response as you defend your fragile ball of emotion by veil of reason and disparagement.
\\\\

You’re making a fool of your already inferior self by overriding that reality with an unknown possibility of your corrector being flawed and wrong.

Kimurah said:


Better animation is definitely a big plus for most shows, but it's no always the only right answer for a good adaptation (I'm looking at you God of Highschool)



People that know jack shit about how the animation industry works always pull out "the budget" fallacy argument. Most anime productions are on roughly the same budget. It's the production time slot and the skill of the animation staff that makes the big difference between something looking great and something looking deficient like Helck does. Making the call out for 2 consecutive cours was already a death sentence for the staff that are obviously struggling to even make the most "average" production.



The word parody is also some level buzzword that people love to throw around when they don't undertand comedy. Nothing in this show qualifies so far as a parody of battle shonen, as in making a huge reference or framing in an indoubtfully thematic satire. If shows with random META gags where the benchmark to attain satire status, DragonBall, FairyTail, and any super common battle and adventure shonen would be instantly recognized as parodies. This show is just painted by the numbers of the most average battle shonen book.



Yes, you did mention it already and repeating it with nothing else to add just gives me the impression that you have absolutely nothing to stand on to defend this piss poor animation project.



And if you read correctly my original post, it wasn't just the animation, it was everything about it. The direction choices, the storyboard, the presentation for the character's background, the poor and lazy choices to translate word per word long soliloquis to an animated medium and such.

LordKirkis said:
Thats a lot to unpack. Of course you understand animation isn’t everything. I don’t need to explain that to you.

There is no fallacy in budget, its reality. But your mental gymnastics would have you convince yourself its the same budget across the board for all animations. I think that is unrealistic and oversimplification on the matter. The other things you mention are valid factors, but Im not seeing it in this show. Not yet at least.

LordKirkis said:

To produce comedy requires understanding of the subject matter and comedy itself. To enjoy a comedy on the other hand is dependent on the individual. Similarly you may have the thought that Helck does not qualify as a parody.. thats an interesting thought, but I won’t argue it as I just explained its subjectivity.

LordKirkis said:

As for piss poor animation.. given the amount of anime you’ve watched I’m positive you’ve watched much worse.. and enjoyed it too!

LordKirkis said:

Lastly I think its far too early to have any strong negative opinions on this show as we are only 4 in out of 26 episodes. You are making far too many assumptions. Yes I assume as well, but I do think with some certainty that you are wrong about Helck’s current showing.

Kimurah said:


Alright then. Taking your side, then you must certainly know the averages on budget for just a standard 12 episode series, you should tell us what's the magic number of dollars or yen between a really well animated series, lets say Chainsaw Man and something like this sham of a show called Helck.

But since you're not going to come up with an actual number nor real defense that supports your fallacious arguments, I'll give you once again the reality check. Take for instance the legendary fight between Levi and the Beast titan fight from Attack on Titan. That scene alone took 1 whole month in order to create the storyboard and a whole 3 months to animate it by Arafumi Imai and his team. Throwing money at this project would do squat, this was all about having the best of the best to do the job. It comes down to 2 variables, time and skill.

There's another example on a lesser show like Granbelm. In episodes 10 and 11 the whole keyframe task was done by a single animator, and a handful of inbetweeners. Making the main keyframes of a single episode it's a very time consuming task that requires several animators, and top of it all, Granbelm wasn't a cheap action comedy like Helck, it was a pretty heavy mecha action oriented show.

There was an old reddit thread in the r/ama sub a few years ago with one of the main animators from One Punch Man and he mentioned that even though the animation budget numbers are pretty much a secret for the regular audience he said that most of the time they were pretty similar one to another. He also claimed that One Punch Man 2 had a similar budget to One Punch man, but there's an obvious world of difference in terms of animation quality between the two. What's the variable? a skillful staff against a not so skilled one.

The results still validate my argument. Time plus proper skill produces great pieces of animation. Throwing money at it does absolutely nothing.



You previously explained squat and now you're hiding behind the shield of "subjectivity". Labeling a show as a parody isn't really that hard, it's about framing the satire or mocking without reasonable doubt. A gag show with some meta jokes isn't a parody, You claimed that the dialogues in Helck are a parody of long and convoluted dialogues in battle shonen, but in Helck, the dialogues aren't doing anything different than battle shonen does, so it's playing it "straight". You know what would be a good parody for battle shonen dialgues, that the main character would start their long winded rants and immediately say, "fudge it" lets not do this and jump right into action, or just jump into the conclusion of the fight and giving the middle finger to the audience because what they want to see is the actual fight.



You're making a lot of assumptions when you can't even give a well cemented defense on what you've been trying to debate in the first place. And precisely because I've watched a hell lot more shows that you do it's what gives me the experience to separate the wheat from the chaff without ease nor personal attachments.



A series isn't going to become any better after a second cour debutes, what we've seen so far it's pretty much the best of it (heck, the first episode always has the most time consuming scenes to animate in order to hook the audience, and yet this show episode 1 is barely average at best)

But hey, I am petty enough, and I will watch the whole series and come back to this precise thread once it's over to call you out on how you were wrong and the show was always an anime from the dollar store.

Kaikaidou said:
I'm so disappointed in this production. I can't tell if it's because of inexperienced staff, lack of time or lack of funds, maybe all three. For example, for an action anime, every action scene is aggressively slow. And when action isn't happening, the show is just constantly hurting my eyes with drab colors, and dull lighting. In episode 4 they did a closeup of the human angel and it was in such low quality I don't know how it got through the director. But its a bunch of small things like this that make the anime as a whole weaker. The animation is one of a handful of problems. Shot composition is lazy and seems not to have received a lot of foresight. it'll cut from someone fighting to standing still in the span of three seconds without any reason why. Sometimes the background and the foreground don't work well with each other (i.e. every shot from above makes the characters look like they're doing the Michael Jackson lean). The character design is also really bad. You'd think they'd hire someone to fix the designs from the manga but they're still fugly most of the time, especially Helck who looks a different kind of ugly in every shot he's in. And for a character so heavily muscled and shirtless, his body never looks quite right. Maybe they could've made his muscles less defined? I get the sense they didn't have a good artist making the character sheets, or at all. It feels very amateurish. And while not every fault lands on the studio, if they couldn't handle a production this big, then they shouldn't have bothered. 

bastek66 said:
You fucking whiners. You should be glad that adaptation doesn't butcher your favourite manga, just like it happened last year with mine.

KatoWorks said:
The only downright horrible episodes are Episode 3 & 5 which are outsourced to Namu Animation, a korean shack that I bet no one heard of. In the latest episode during the credits, the Animation director role was changed to PeeWee Animation Director, and an additional role was added called, Retake Animation Director done by "Beat" which is obviously an alias for how tired they are. Funny enough Episode 5 managed to not melt as much as episode 3 which is all thanks to the hard work by Oohashi (Previously known for his sub-character design work on other Satelight shows) who was the PeeWee Animation Director for the episode. The previous episode however was actually pretty well-directed imo considering it was a priority episode and wasn't outsourced.

Isekai-Enjoyer said:

That’s interesting to know.

Where do you check this info?

Kimurah said:
A series isn't going to become any better after a second cour debutes

ThatGuyYeah said:
You should watch Garo the Animation season 1 lol. I thought the first court was pretty decent, but sheesh, that second half? Crazy

Kimurah said:
But Garo was animated by MAPPA studios, and even in their early days they had quite the talent. Helck is animated by Satelight that has a big bundle of "dollar store" shows and just a couple of well animated shows.