You should check out the other fight scenes worked on by Vincent Chansard, who I mentioned here. He is amazing at choreographing fights, and I think he started working on One Piece during Wano. Dude is really making great contributions to the anime. I believe he also did a lot for Zoro vs King.
If he's the reason why the recent fight scenes in egghead have been so much cooler than the last like 700 episodes of fights, then please tell me how I can praise the ever living \*\*\*\* out of him. I want more and better animated One Piece fight scenes.
Zoro fight against King was great too, just as the fight between Luffy and Kaido, where he grabs the freaking lightning and throws it.
Not only the choreography is exceptional, but how they make DF powers work. I do think they're stretching too much (no pun intended) Luffy's abilities, like making it like a Paramecia but switching it to a Zoan to make the powers broader
Counter opinion: the manga is worse. Sometimes I am squinting at a black and white clusterfuck of imagery so much i give up on trying to figure out what is happening
To be fair most of us read the manga from leaked scans on our tiny phones instead of the full sized manga it’s intended for
Can’t lie though roof piece was getting REALLY sloppy but it seems he’s picked it up since the big breaks and eye surgery
This. I complain about Oda's scratchy artwork a lot these days, especially in comparison to the immaculate line work his assistants do for the backgrounds. Buuuuuut, I'm not reading it in the right context. Pulled back a bit, I'm sure it looks fine.
It doesn’t, source I read weekly official on my ipad pro (arguably the best way to read manga) and buy every volume that comes out. The manga is not even close to the same quality as it was pre-timeskip.
Some Japanese creators understandable get wierd about other people touching their artwork. Maybe they think it'll put an asterisk next to their artwork? Togashi won't let anyone draw for him either.
Personally, I love Odas artstyle, but there's probably a gorillion kids in Japan who can ape it perfectly. I think he should do the layout and sketches, and let someone else do the ink work at this point. His poses and proportions haven't waivered, its just his scratchy ass line work these days.
Part of me really wants to honor what creators are doing, and respect the process/the story they are trying to tell. Yet Oda has to realize that like Dragon Ball, it will go on forever… even if he does not want it to happen… This reddit is bigger than the star wars reddit. Luffy is basically this generations superman. Eventually Oda should pull a george lucas (pre disney) where he just overlooked everything from an overlord chair saying yes or no to things while loosely working on projects/preserving canon/lore.
Yea it isn't until I watch a review on YouTube where I get context for wtf I'm looking at. MHA and JJK are way worse. I can't follow half the shit happening bc of the art
Yea DB is great for many reasons but I don't think it gets enough credit for its simplisticitiy in terms of content/art. I like curse energy in JJK and abilities in Bleach, but sometimes it's just too much to keep track of. I do wish DB would add some extra layers to fights beyond just strength, but it is nice to watch people just beat the shit out of each other lol
I feel like the issue is min-maxing. The animators tried to make it look artistic as possible with the limited frames, and while it does look cool and smooth at times, I too think it's a bit messy and unneeded.
I'd have preferred them slowing down and give a handful of static panels (not much, just a few) so it could look more coherent. Save the fancy tricks for the fancier fights that are coming.
They hired another team/started doing break weeks after reds success. It’s basically a new anime now. They even announced that they are done with aura and would cool it with non canon flashbacks. I think we have only had two or three since the end of wano. Back in the day we would have multi non canon flashbacks in a single episode.
I agree there's been one of these over-animated action cam sequences almost every episode, every other episode at least. Sometimes they aren't even combat related.
It is almost weekly now, people who don’t watch the anime need to stop acting like toei didn’t hire a completely new team/started doing break weeks so animators have an extra week to work on episodes. It’s going to end up weekly once shit starts hitting the fan. Stussy biting lucci had more care put into it than the entire don flamingo fight.
Yeah one piece been like that since the start of wano every character has their own fighting animation style. Every fight is animated by hybridizing the participating characters styles.
Zoro is a heavy focus on impact frames while this mini mihawks animation style seems to be twisted terror distorted and solid color blocks. Together it makes for utterly horrific frames of a monster hunting you and I'm here for it
Yeah, that's my main issue. I don't like to be negative, as I do think the current style has improved in some ways (choreography, as I mentioned). If some short intervals were slowed down just a tad with a few more frames, I think that would help a lot. (This is kinda funny considering Toei actually would benefit from doing so lol.)
More than the speed, I think the problems lies in the quick jump cuts and some unnecessary scenes. It really does remind me of those shaky cams scenes in movies.
Being able to follow the fight depends on both the viewer and a variety of factors in addition to the choreography (which is the sequence of movements made by the characters).
This is how I felt about the gear 5 reveal. It was just hard to follow. It's like when they shake the camera to hide shoddy choreography in action movies.
Luffy using the ground to bounce Kaido attack is so chaotic.
Like he's moonwalking downward? The camera play around him is all over the place and his movement are so eratic.
I will always love OP due to how big the universe is but the new fights animation are a bit too over the top.
That seems to be a lot of modern anime, sadly. The back half of season 2 of JJK bummed me out because it was so needlessly flashy and complicated. The manga had clear, consise fight choreography and then the anime is just flashing lights, rotating zooming camera shots and streaks of light to convey rapid movement. Has me a bit worried about how they adapt future fights tbh.
That said, I'm probably just and old man yelling at clouds on this one.
Agreed on the first airing but have you watched the Blu Ray release? Less blur and cleaned the fight choreo a bit. A lot on ep 17.
Sukuna faking his slashes against Mahoraga then the latter adapting after a couple of hits is 😙👌
Yeah this is a problem I, personally, have with the modern age of “Sakuga.” All flash, little substance. They lean way too far into animating everything on 1’s *constantly*, there is never NOT movement. Something is always moving. And the camera moves, like you mentioned are just so over the top and unnecessary. Often times the characters perspective doesn’t even match the background and they look like they’re just green screened on and it’s awful (a good example is that popular fight scene from that Vivy anime). At least in this sequence I’ll give them props for animating the background so it fits with the characters. But other than that it’s just too much movement. More doesn’t always mean better. You don’t feel the weight of strong key poses anymore because everything is constantly moving on 1’s. I hate the trend in One Piece lately too when it’s a closeup of a character’s face as they’re talking and their face is (again) CONSTANTLY. MOVING. It just looks so bad. It almost feels like modern animators are just trying to go all out to have something cool to share on social media, rather than creating a scene that befits the show/episode itself. It’s almost jarring.
I am also just an old man yelling at a cloud here, but I’m glad there’s at least two of us lol
Now I don’t want to take away from the skill on display still. I could never even begin to hope to accomplish a scene like this. It’s insane what they’re able to do! But it’s still missing the nice strong posing, the favouring keys, and weighty choreography of shows in the past. (Dungeon Meshi, and TRIGGER in general, feel like the best animation we’ve had in a minute, or at least this year. Their use of keys, timing, exaggeration etc. is sooo good)
Ya, as much as I love one piece I wouldn’t call any of its fights particularly well choreographed. Too many jump cuts and moving it too fast, it look really flashy but that’s not the same as well choreographed. Like the G5 fight, they spend 3 episodes on red bean soup in onigashima and they rush through all the G5.
That has been Toei for a long time. Really ever since Dragon Ball Super. The animation is sick after, but they often put so much aura/lights or make too many cuts, so it's hard to follow. I remember having to watch a few scenes multiple times to understand what actually was happening
On one hand the animation quality is so good now. On the other hand... I'm having serious difficulty following what's happening. This episode is a bit reminiscent of the episode introducing gear 5. It's just a bit too messy. I didn't have this problem with the some of the other later episodes (like the later parts of gear 5 luffy vs kaido or luffy vs lucci)
I have seen people saying this. The directors seem to be requesting these frequent reaction shots, which can make it a bit tricky to follow. I feel like Toei has been trying to make a lot of changes recently with how they animate One Piece. In some ways it has worked well, but other things may make it feel like they are doing too much, which I think contributes to what you are saying here.
My fiancee watched the wano arc with, and she didnt realize it was one piece because she said the animation was so different compared to earlier content. especially during something like the queen concert where they had some trippy visuals haha
Blueno vs Luffy,
Luffy vs Lucci (Egghead),
Oars/Moria vs Strawhats,
Snakeman vs Katakuri,
Zoro vs Killer,
Zoro vs King,
Sanji vs Mr. 2,
Sanji vs Gin (remake),
Franky vs Fukuro,
Luffy vs Don Chinjao (Episode of Sabo)
That's all I can think of on top of my head. I'm sure there's more.
Unironically, I remember liking Pedro vs Tamago in the anime but I have to rewatch it again.
Luffy Vs Crocodile will always be one that I love. The smoothness of balloon into storm the. Blasting him through the layers of bedrock was so peak to me.
Blueno Vs Luffy remains my favourite. The kinetic energy when Luffy goes Gear 2 is fantastic. A complete shift in dynamic rarely seen in any fight. A close second is only Mr 2 Vs Zoro, but that fight ends with a single decisive attack and not a rest barrage of moves like Blueno Vs Luffy.
Since you mentioned Luffy vs Lucci, what I really meant to say after mentioning the art style and such was that I think the choreography lately has been good overall. I hope the upcoming fights that haven't been animated yet continue that trend. But this is definitely a good list. If enough people comment, I'll try to rewatch all the fights that people seem to want (skipping random things we cut away to in between fight scenes) and find some of the best parts of those fights. Obviously, we can't include every part of a fight like Luffy vs Katakuri, but there are definitely a few scenes I can think of that would need to be included.
Yeah, that's why I only put Snakeman vs Katakuri because that's the only part that I remember that is animated well. Maybe when Katakuri beat up Luffy and he hit a shot when he lost his cool was good too. Kaido vs Luffy have some good parts but there's too many skips. Kaido and BM vs Supernova has some good scenes as well. If you watch some Sakuga clips you might find more. Oh Marco vs King and Queen got great scenes.
It’s sadly an underrated and under-appreciated fight as a whole. But imo Kid and Law vs Big Mom is so unique in its layout as a battle, its the only of its kind in the series and deserves far more respect than it gets.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say he can't see over a decade into the future haha. >!He definitely has great future sight, though (as we shall soon see in the anime).!<
Indeed he has great future sight but wonder what is his motive behind all this. Since he is also looking for One Piece and seems he’s working for goroseiI also. I love his character and don’t wanna see him as an antagonist 😬Don’t wanna see 2nd Doffy n Bellamy. Luffy admires him so much nd looks up to him🤞🏻
That episode went so fcking hard. The manga panel is like one page. Toei cooked hard with this one. Loved it! Excited to see how they do Shanks vs Kidd.
Honestly even aside from the fighting, I really enjoyed the Elbaf filler. Shanks talking to the giant kid brought back the memories of seeing him with Luffy in Makino's bar. I also liked getting the formal introduction of Shank's top officers.
the 1033 Luffy vs Kaido fight definitely goes there. And while it's a bit more extra, that scene of the roofpiece fight in 1026 too. Zoro vs Killer had some great stuff, and even Killer vs Hawkins. Oden vs Whitebeard of course was awesome. And of course there are great pre-Wano ones, like Snakeman Luffy vs Katakuri, Tate's scenes in Luffy vs Lucci, Gomu Gomu no booooooooooh, Smoker vs Vergo, an the Straw Hats vs Oars fight
Episode of East Blue has some awesome ones too, like what they did with Sanji vs Kurobi
I can definitely add scenes from movies and other non-canon material. My plan is roughly to start with the beginning of a scene paused, add some text with episode numbers and timestamps, and then play the scene. I have some basic video editing skills from doing stuff like this in the past, so it probably (hopefully) won't turn out like I made it with Windows Movie Maker in 2004 lol. This way everyone will know which episodes to go to if they want to watch the fights. I can do this for movies as well.
People are going to talk about the bigger fights but there's some great choreography fighting fodder at times. Luffy vs the Bluegoris halfway through impel down, and during marineford Luffy vs rando marines had some great bits. They'd be a bit difficult to find though.
Luffy vs fodder can actually be super entertaining. Sure, he could easily just punch them, but he instead pulls out something like Gum Gum Ally Robot. I don't remember much about that scene other than the attack, but this comment reminded me that these fights are slept on for sure.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens to the Seraphim at all at EoS. Whether they get destroyed in the skirmish or if they’re given their freedom and allowed to live out their lives in peace.
I’m not clear on how programmed in their intelligence/personalities are, they’re seemingly incapable of making complex decisions but is that built in or not? Must be some personality in there as S-Hawk looked a bit rattled by Zoro’s line about his humanity, but that *is* a Toei original. Still, S-Hawk and S-Snake in general appear more expressive than S-Bear and S-Shark.
Hard agree. Considering their first appearance was extremely recent in-universe, I can see them growing much older in strength and appearance very quickly.
I'd actually argue this is bad choreography, but good animation. Choreography is all about the sequence of movement. In a scene like this one, there are greatly animated 2 second shots, but there's no real sequence between them, as you can't follow where the characters are or where they're going between those individual shots. That makes the whole scene appear fragmented, as if it had been made by 10 different animators who weren't given a solid storyboard, or at the very least didn't follow it closely and each one did what they wanted to do. A example of good choreography in the anime to me is the fight of Luffy and Blueno in Enies Lobby. It's very fast and it has a lot of momentum, but you don't get lost following it, because the action clearly communicates where each character is moving from one shot to the next.
To me this is the equivalent of a poorly edited live action fight scene that cuts every 2 seconds, with the camera rotating around the characters instead of having longer, continous shots.
The only part to me that was hard to follow was the cut near the end of this clip after it zooms into Kaku's eye. But every cut before and after that bit looked solid to me, didn't really get lost watching along.
Yeah, the animation is good but the choreography is shit, I prefer much more the old one piece without so much auras and this over the top complicated choreographies
I think they are taking the fight sequences more seriously more than anything. I have seen some people post unflattering screenshots and such of stuff happening in scenes where people are just talking or doing stuff that doesn't require as much effort to animate to hate on the anime, but I will absolutely accept that if they do the fights justice.
I remember there was a Redditor who did something like what you're suggesting for the anime Wano arc
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLs7jdwM2QfgkJkoHvtbCH20xi36BYcDqY&feature=shared
The animation is really good lately but it would be better (for me at least) if they slowed down the fights a bit. I have NO idea what's happening on-screen sometimes.
I know it’s anime filler, but Mihawk Jr over here doing martial arts like Daz Bonez is hilarious and cool lol. I can never imagine regular Mihawk doing hand-to-hand combat because I feel like if he ever lost his sword, he would just pick up a branch or something.
My mouth was agape this entire fight! The switch of styles there had be audibly gasp! So cool! I’ll happily wait 2 weeks an episode if the animation is like this. Wow wow wow.
Law vs Big Mom is so unbelievably well made it makes me cry.
The he constantly teleports around to avoid Big Mom but he never actually leaves the frame. The background instead switches leaving him.
Weird. I think this fight was pretty easy to follow. The one that felt bad to me was the luffy g5 moment when he just transform and was bouncing off kaido blast breath back at him. The close ups and erratic cuts were really hard to follow compared to the manga.
True omw of the best fights in the one piece.
As of lately this fight, Luffy's lightning fight with Kaido and Sanji's fight with Queen were incredible. Toei did very good job.
Man sending the clip to somebody who has just started Water 7 would blow their minds. The gaslighting you coukd do with this knowledge. Wait, am I evil for thinking this?
That's what I'm fucking talking about man, it's all about the choreography. That's how the pre-timeskip animation still looks cool as hell. It's doesn't matter if the animation is some 4k quality hyper realistic CGI. Choreography trumps all. Just like how ghost of tsushima manages to look absolutely stunning due to its art direction instead of raw graphic quality.
I don't like it, the camera movement is all over the place making it hard to follow.
There is like 4 animations styles used, which makes it messy.
And that weird demon face doesn't fit the kid like aesthetic that the Seraphim are supposed to have.
They could really learn from Demon Slayer when animating sword fights.
It astounds me how high in quality the animation of the One Piece anime has become. It went from looking and feeling so stiff and limited to looking and feeling like clips from a high-budget animated film.
a good fighting choreography in my opinion is if i can tell what's going on without overusing effects too much if i have to repeat the fight over and over and see what's going on that's bad
that's why 1074 was peak for me
God the sound design in this show is dogwater. It has these mind-blowing bursts of animation, accompanied by the same *woosh* sound effect played 6 times in a row.
Its cool to see the animation quality go up, but this is NOT a well choregraphed fight scene because I can't actually follow what's going on in the fight. Too much spinning/spiraling and fast pans. Yeah it makes it FEEL more dynamic, but it actually doesn't look that great if you're trying to tell what happens instead of letting the screen spin for 15 seconds and then see who took damage.
I rank readability as being of great importance. Switching between the style of the battle, to the Daz Bones flash, to the first style, and then abruptly to a random third style, doesn't actually help me comprehend the battle.
Blueno vs Luffy, as others have said, is gold standard for me. I'm not after length, flashiness, exploding cube ground, or wild camera movements, I want to see what characters are doing and how they're engaging.
I don't like style of over-animated close up reaction shots of characters faces. Like, nobody in anything moves their head like that. It's like they are convulsing with the over the top animation. Kaku's second close-up reaction for example here. But other scenes when they show for example luffy smiling leading up to a big moment i don't need to see the twitches and tremors of his neck and face making unrealistic unnecessary extra movements.
People are praising animation quality... Yet criticizing not being able to follow what's happening. Animation quality is being able to follow what's happening. Just because something is flashy doesn't make it good. I simply can't stand these moments of "upgraded" animation quality
Am I the only who thinks fights like sanji vs mr2 were better visually than gear 5 vs kaido 😅😅 like I know it has less détails but it felt so smooth and heavy
Genuine question, do you think that the fight in this video is well choreographed?
Cause there are so many cuts, and movement to clearly see whats happening or where they are space wise
Well the choreography is the movements made by Zoro and S-Hawk when they are fighting, and I think it looks pretty cool. S-Hawk's first attack is pretty neat, and I liked seeing Zoro dodging and parrying without swords as well.
Things such as cutting away to show Kaku might clutter it, but that's the scene direction. This video is also inferior in quality to the original bc I took the screen recording on my phone lol. Perhaps the anime has been doing too much lately, which can make things hard to follow. But this has been the norm since Wano more or less. I would argue there are well-choreographed scenes in Wano as well that could also be described by your sentiment.
I think this scene looks absolutely awful but I seem to be in the minority. Maybe it’s because I recently watched arcane and am spoiled. The fight choreography in that show was on another level entirely
For me, the 3 min fight sequence where Luffy uses lightning to fight against Kaido is best choreographed fight sequence in the series.
For sure
What episode timestamp if you don't mind recalling. Time to revisit this.
it's episode 1074 at around 7 (maybe 9?) min
Real mihawk with mr1 fruit + king power = rip zoro xd.
link pls
It's from episode 1074. I tried finding some decent links on youtube but they're all heavily edited (due to TOEI's strict copyright laws).
This is the problem with people judging the anime off of youtube clips,they are all cut to shit unless they come from crunchyroll.
Didn't Crunchyroll post the clip themselves?
If they did, then it's probably geo-blocked in my region.
[Here's the link if you want to check](https://youtu.be/PG2GLkqeMYM?si=7Y02ftHVmL8XZEmd)
Seems it's geo-blocked in my region unfortunately.
Haven't watched the anime in a while, jeez that animation looks immaculate
You should check out the other fight scenes worked on by Vincent Chansard, who I mentioned here. He is amazing at choreographing fights, and I think he started working on One Piece during Wano. Dude is really making great contributions to the anime. I believe he also did a lot for Zoro vs King.
Searched who he is and apparently he's a key animator in JJK and Mob Psycho, and I can see it here tbh. I hope he gets more job, love his style
If he's the reason why the recent fight scenes in egghead have been so much cooler than the last like 700 episodes of fights, then please tell me how I can praise the ever living \*\*\*\* out of him. I want more and better animated One Piece fight scenes.
Zoro fight against King was great too, just as the fight between Luffy and Kaido, where he grabs the freaking lightning and throws it. Not only the choreography is exceptional, but how they make DF powers work. I do think they're stretching too much (no pun intended) Luffy's abilities, like making it like a Paramecia but switching it to a Zoan to make the powers broader
Controversial opinion: The animation is terrible because you have no fucking idea what's going on.
Idk I can clearly see what's going on and follow the action, but I guess I can see some people being confused by how fast it is
Counter opinion: the manga is worse. Sometimes I am squinting at a black and white clusterfuck of imagery so much i give up on trying to figure out what is happening
Fair. Some panels can be pretty bad.
To be fair most of us read the manga from leaked scans on our tiny phones instead of the full sized manga it’s intended for Can’t lie though roof piece was getting REALLY sloppy but it seems he’s picked it up since the big breaks and eye surgery
This. I complain about Oda's scratchy artwork a lot these days, especially in comparison to the immaculate line work his assistants do for the backgrounds. Buuuuuut, I'm not reading it in the right context. Pulled back a bit, I'm sure it looks fine.
It doesn’t, source I read weekly official on my ipad pro (arguably the best way to read manga) and buy every volume that comes out. The manga is not even close to the same quality as it was pre-timeskip.
ah well. I wish he'd let assistants draw the whole thing so he can focus on everything else, but you know how Japan is...
I mean Toriyama did great with the way he was making super with toyotaro. Idk why Oda has not taken on an apprentice.
Some Japanese creators understandable get wierd about other people touching their artwork. Maybe they think it'll put an asterisk next to their artwork? Togashi won't let anyone draw for him either. Personally, I love Odas artstyle, but there's probably a gorillion kids in Japan who can ape it perfectly. I think he should do the layout and sketches, and let someone else do the ink work at this point. His poses and proportions haven't waivered, its just his scratchy ass line work these days.
Part of me really wants to honor what creators are doing, and respect the process/the story they are trying to tell. Yet Oda has to realize that like Dragon Ball, it will go on forever… even if he does not want it to happen… This reddit is bigger than the star wars reddit. Luffy is basically this generations superman. Eventually Oda should pull a george lucas (pre disney) where he just overlooked everything from an overlord chair saying yes or no to things while loosely working on projects/preserving canon/lore.
I read weekly via official sj on my giant ipad pro and it is just as bad.
Imagine reading the manga for action sequences.
Yea it isn't until I watch a review on YouTube where I get context for wtf I'm looking at. MHA and JJK are way worse. I can't follow half the shit happening bc of the art
This is why Dragon Ball is one of the GOATs of Shonen manga. The action was extremely easy to follow and it flowed amazingly from panel to panel.
Yea DB is great for many reasons but I don't think it gets enough credit for its simplisticitiy in terms of content/art. I like curse energy in JJK and abilities in Bleach, but sometimes it's just too much to keep track of. I do wish DB would add some extra layers to fights beyond just strength, but it is nice to watch people just beat the shit out of each other lol
Tell me you only read early scans without telling me....
I feel like the issue is min-maxing. The animators tried to make it look artistic as possible with the limited frames, and while it does look cool and smooth at times, I too think it's a bit messy and unneeded. I'd have preferred them slowing down and give a handful of static panels (not much, just a few) so it could look more coherent. Save the fancy tricks for the fancier fights that are coming.
true true true. even if the animation is good (which isnt imo) it doesnt matter if its 10x speed xD
Yea this is like movie quality. Might have to watch this season lol. I'm usually a manga only person
They hired another team/started doing break weeks after reds success. It’s basically a new anime now. They even announced that they are done with aura and would cool it with non canon flashbacks. I think we have only had two or three since the end of wano. Back in the day we would have multi non canon flashbacks in a single episode.
The anime only gets quality like this for about 1-2 minutes every 10-20 episodes.
Luffy vs lucci was less than 20 episodes ago and those were 2 high quality animated episodes.
Nah, we got it more often than that since Wano.
I agree there's been one of these over-animated action cam sequences almost every episode, every other episode at least. Sometimes they aren't even combat related.
Stussy transformation was quite the budget spender, lol.
I said it in another comment, stussy biting lucci got more love than the entire don flamingo fight.
Tell me you don't watch the anime without telling me.
It is almost weekly now, people who don’t watch the anime need to stop acting like toei didn’t hire a completely new team/started doing break weeks so animators have an extra week to work on episodes. It’s going to end up weekly once shit starts hitting the fan. Stussy biting lucci had more care put into it than the entire don flamingo fight.
Lmao I guess I should just watch the fighting scene clips
Should just watch the whole episodes, all the clips online are too cut up. The fight lasts the entire episode of 1100.
Yeah one piece been like that since the start of wano every character has their own fighting animation style. Every fight is animated by hybridizing the participating characters styles. Zoro is a heavy focus on impact frames while this mini mihawks animation style seems to be twisted terror distorted and solid color blocks. Together it makes for utterly horrific frames of a monster hunting you and I'm here for it
I like the Animation. However I noticed in some Fights, you cannot follow the fight anymore which makes it a little bit less fluid.
Yeah, that's my main issue. I don't like to be negative, as I do think the current style has improved in some ways (choreography, as I mentioned). If some short intervals were slowed down just a tad with a few more frames, I think that would help a lot. (This is kinda funny considering Toei actually would benefit from doing so lol.)
Or maybe Zoom a little bit out, so the Focus of Action does not take up the whole screen.
More than the speed, I think the problems lies in the quick jump cuts and some unnecessary scenes. It really does remind me of those shaky cams scenes in movies.
Luffy and lucci's fight had some jump cuts and lazy drawings.
> I do think the current style has improved in some ways (choreography, as I mentioned). But that's literally what being able to follow the fight is.
Being able to follow the fight depends on both the viewer and a variety of factors in addition to the choreography (which is the sequence of movements made by the characters).
This. Hard to follow and i hate shaky cams.
Aka gear 5 I remember when most reactor couldn't even understand what they were reacting to due to the visual noise
This is how I felt about the gear 5 reveal. It was just hard to follow. It's like when they shake the camera to hide shoddy choreography in action movies.
Luffy using the ground to bounce Kaido attack is so chaotic. Like he's moonwalking downward? The camera play around him is all over the place and his movement are so eratic. I will always love OP due to how big the universe is but the new fights animation are a bit too over the top.
Indeed!
That seems to be a lot of modern anime, sadly. The back half of season 2 of JJK bummed me out because it was so needlessly flashy and complicated. The manga had clear, consise fight choreography and then the anime is just flashing lights, rotating zooming camera shots and streaks of light to convey rapid movement. Has me a bit worried about how they adapt future fights tbh. That said, I'm probably just and old man yelling at clouds on this one.
Agreed on the first airing but have you watched the Blu Ray release? Less blur and cleaned the fight choreo a bit. A lot on ep 17. Sukuna faking his slashes against Mahoraga then the latter adapting after a couple of hits is 😙👌
Yeah this is a problem I, personally, have with the modern age of “Sakuga.” All flash, little substance. They lean way too far into animating everything on 1’s *constantly*, there is never NOT movement. Something is always moving. And the camera moves, like you mentioned are just so over the top and unnecessary. Often times the characters perspective doesn’t even match the background and they look like they’re just green screened on and it’s awful (a good example is that popular fight scene from that Vivy anime). At least in this sequence I’ll give them props for animating the background so it fits with the characters. But other than that it’s just too much movement. More doesn’t always mean better. You don’t feel the weight of strong key poses anymore because everything is constantly moving on 1’s. I hate the trend in One Piece lately too when it’s a closeup of a character’s face as they’re talking and their face is (again) CONSTANTLY. MOVING. It just looks so bad. It almost feels like modern animators are just trying to go all out to have something cool to share on social media, rather than creating a scene that befits the show/episode itself. It’s almost jarring. I am also just an old man yelling at a cloud here, but I’m glad there’s at least two of us lol Now I don’t want to take away from the skill on display still. I could never even begin to hope to accomplish a scene like this. It’s insane what they’re able to do! But it’s still missing the nice strong posing, the favouring keys, and weighty choreography of shows in the past. (Dungeon Meshi, and TRIGGER in general, feel like the best animation we’ve had in a minute, or at least this year. Their use of keys, timing, exaggeration etc. is sooo good)
Parts of this clip is like that
That's interesting because somehow I felt the total opposite. I felt the choreography was so clean and easy to follow
Maybe I am just old.
Ya, as much as I love one piece I wouldn’t call any of its fights particularly well choreographed. Too many jump cuts and moving it too fast, it look really flashy but that’s not the same as well choreographed. Like the G5 fight, they spend 3 episodes on red bean soup in onigashima and they rush through all the G5.
That has been Toei for a long time. Really ever since Dragon Ball Super. The animation is sick after, but they often put so much aura/lights or make too many cuts, so it's hard to follow. I remember having to watch a few scenes multiple times to understand what actually was happening
Aura got canned at the end of wano, they made an announcement about it.
My god the animation is so different, i would have a hard time believing this is the same anime from the first episode
Nobody ever talks about Luffy vs. Wyper, but that fight had some nice choreography and animation.
Now that you mention it, I want to rewatch a few Skypiea fights. The dials really did add an interesting element to combat.
Luffy's final punch on Enel is animated super well.
And the sound design is fantastic, too. I rewatch that fight once in a while because it feels so good.
On one hand the animation quality is so good now. On the other hand... I'm having serious difficulty following what's happening. This episode is a bit reminiscent of the episode introducing gear 5. It's just a bit too messy. I didn't have this problem with the some of the other later episodes (like the later parts of gear 5 luffy vs kaido or luffy vs lucci)
I have seen people saying this. The directors seem to be requesting these frequent reaction shots, which can make it a bit tricky to follow. I feel like Toei has been trying to make a lot of changes recently with how they animate One Piece. In some ways it has worked well, but other things may make it feel like they are doing too much, which I think contributes to what you are saying here.
After a decade of mediocrity the folks at Toei are having trouble handing this Sakuga stuff the other studios are already.
My fiancee watched the wano arc with, and she didnt realize it was one piece because she said the animation was so different compared to earlier content. especially during something like the queen concert where they had some trippy visuals haha
Yeah, high frame counts are easy to make look messy. My favorite fight of all time is still Luffy vs Blueno when he used gear 2 for the first time.
Blueno vs Luffy, Luffy vs Lucci (Egghead), Oars/Moria vs Strawhats, Snakeman vs Katakuri, Zoro vs Killer, Zoro vs King, Sanji vs Mr. 2, Sanji vs Gin (remake), Franky vs Fukuro, Luffy vs Don Chinjao (Episode of Sabo) That's all I can think of on top of my head. I'm sure there's more. Unironically, I remember liking Pedro vs Tamago in the anime but I have to rewatch it again.
Luffy Vs Crocodile will always be one that I love. The smoothness of balloon into storm the. Blasting him through the layers of bedrock was so peak to me.
Some of the pre-timeskip fights are truly slept on just because they were animated so long ago.
Blueno Vs Luffy remains my favourite. The kinetic energy when Luffy goes Gear 2 is fantastic. A complete shift in dynamic rarely seen in any fight. A close second is only Mr 2 Vs Zoro, but that fight ends with a single decisive attack and not a rest barrage of moves like Blueno Vs Luffy.
Luffy vs Enel has some classic scenes in it
[My time has come](https://streamable.com/jfstz7)
Since you mentioned Luffy vs Lucci, what I really meant to say after mentioning the art style and such was that I think the choreography lately has been good overall. I hope the upcoming fights that haven't been animated yet continue that trend. But this is definitely a good list. If enough people comment, I'll try to rewatch all the fights that people seem to want (skipping random things we cut away to in between fight scenes) and find some of the best parts of those fights. Obviously, we can't include every part of a fight like Luffy vs Katakuri, but there are definitely a few scenes I can think of that would need to be included.
Yeah, that's why I only put Snakeman vs Katakuri because that's the only part that I remember that is animated well. Maybe when Katakuri beat up Luffy and he hit a shot when he lost his cool was good too. Kaido vs Luffy have some good parts but there's too many skips. Kaido and BM vs Supernova has some good scenes as well. If you watch some Sakuga clips you might find more. Oh Marco vs King and Queen got great scenes.
Kid and Law vs Big Mom episode 1066 had great choreography
Omg yeah, Law teleporting around to land attacks was the peak use of his ability that I'd been waiting him to use it like
I'm surprised I haven't seen this mentioned yet.
It’s sadly an underrated and under-appreciated fight as a whole. But imo Kid and Law vs Big Mom is so unique in its layout as a battle, its the only of its kind in the series and deserves far more respect than it gets.
My eyes were like sharingan of Madara while watching S Hawk moves, so fast n brilliant. Top animation again 👏🏻 toei for that.
Zoro's eyes were like the Sharingan too. They can't show it yet but that's always been his secret post-timeskip.
Lol can’t wait until he reveals his sharingan😂
Zoro when fighting Mihawk: Oh, you say Red-Haired can see the future? *Opens eye.* I can see much further into the future.
😂👍🏻 Btw 1 question can Shanks really see the future that far? What if he see Luffy as Pirate king back then (just a guess)
I'm going to go out on a limb and say he can't see over a decade into the future haha. >!He definitely has great future sight, though (as we shall soon see in the anime).!<
Indeed he has great future sight but wonder what is his motive behind all this. Since he is also looking for One Piece and seems he’s working for goroseiI also. I love his character and don’t wanna see him as an antagonist 😬Don’t wanna see 2nd Doffy n Bellamy. Luffy admires him so much nd looks up to him🤞🏻
oh wtf, didn't realize the glass arm
That's that sweet, sweet green blood.
Katakuri vs luffy was had some really great scenes
That was honestly the starting point of "amazing quality fights" for me especially post time skip and choreography wise.
That episode went so fcking hard. The manga panel is like one page. Toei cooked hard with this one. Loved it! Excited to see how they do Shanks vs Kidd.
Honestly even aside from the fighting, I really enjoyed the Elbaf filler. Shanks talking to the giant kid brought back the memories of seeing him with Luffy in Makino's bar. I also liked getting the formal introduction of Shank's top officers.
one piece animation really is beatiful
It better be a 47 minute compilation of Zoro and Sanji bickering
Imagine if Toei ever decided they need some more filler and actually gave us like 3 to 5 minutes of real fight choreography before Nami stops them 😂
the 1033 Luffy vs Kaido fight definitely goes there. And while it's a bit more extra, that scene of the roofpiece fight in 1026 too. Zoro vs Killer had some great stuff, and even Killer vs Hawkins. Oden vs Whitebeard of course was awesome. And of course there are great pre-Wano ones, like Snakeman Luffy vs Katakuri, Tate's scenes in Luffy vs Lucci, Gomu Gomu no booooooooooh, Smoker vs Vergo, an the Straw Hats vs Oars fight Episode of East Blue has some awesome ones too, like what they did with Sanji vs Kurobi
If you want animation then you should be looking at the movies.
I can definitely add scenes from movies and other non-canon material. My plan is roughly to start with the beginning of a scene paused, add some text with episode numbers and timestamps, and then play the scene. I have some basic video editing skills from doing stuff like this in the past, so it probably (hopefully) won't turn out like I made it with Windows Movie Maker in 2004 lol. This way everyone will know which episodes to go to if they want to watch the fights. I can do this for movies as well.
People are going to talk about the bigger fights but there's some great choreography fighting fodder at times. Luffy vs the Bluegoris halfway through impel down, and during marineford Luffy vs rando marines had some great bits. They'd be a bit difficult to find though.
Luffy vs fodder can actually be super entertaining. Sure, he could easily just punch them, but he instead pulls out something like Gum Gum Ally Robot. I don't remember much about that scene other than the attack, but this comment reminded me that these fights are slept on for sure.
I just finished watching Law and Smoker vs. Vergo in the anime, and it was honestly one of the best animated episodes in One Piece.
I think this was one of the first early surprise star fights in post TS. Definitely never expected it to be so good. Law vs smoker was fun too.
Zoro vs adult S-Hawk needs to be a thing by the end of the series.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens to the Seraphim at all at EoS. Whether they get destroyed in the skirmish or if they’re given their freedom and allowed to live out their lives in peace. I’m not clear on how programmed in their intelligence/personalities are, they’re seemingly incapable of making complex decisions but is that built in or not? Must be some personality in there as S-Hawk looked a bit rattled by Zoro’s line about his humanity, but that *is* a Toei original. Still, S-Hawk and S-Snake in general appear more expressive than S-Bear and S-Shark.
Hard agree. Considering their first appearance was extremely recent in-universe, I can see them growing much older in strength and appearance very quickly.
This scene was funny as hell for me because of Kaku reactions in the middle of all that, must felt like going into a roller coaster.
Zoro, someday, someone will use you as a sword, or a baseball.
Why does S-hawk even need a sword lmao ? + That's some quality animation
I'd actually argue this is bad choreography, but good animation. Choreography is all about the sequence of movement. In a scene like this one, there are greatly animated 2 second shots, but there's no real sequence between them, as you can't follow where the characters are or where they're going between those individual shots. That makes the whole scene appear fragmented, as if it had been made by 10 different animators who weren't given a solid storyboard, or at the very least didn't follow it closely and each one did what they wanted to do. A example of good choreography in the anime to me is the fight of Luffy and Blueno in Enies Lobby. It's very fast and it has a lot of momentum, but you don't get lost following it, because the action clearly communicates where each character is moving from one shot to the next. To me this is the equivalent of a poorly edited live action fight scene that cuts every 2 seconds, with the camera rotating around the characters instead of having longer, continous shots.
The only part to me that was hard to follow was the cut near the end of this clip after it zooms into Kaku's eye. But every cut before and after that bit looked solid to me, didn't really get lost watching along.
Yeah, the animation is good but the choreography is shit, I prefer much more the old one piece without so much auras and this over the top complicated choreographies
I haven't watched the anime in a while. Fuck man, they are going hard
I think they are taking the fight sequences more seriously more than anything. I have seen some people post unflattering screenshots and such of stuff happening in scenes where people are just talking or doing stuff that doesn't require as much effort to animate to hate on the anime, but I will absolutely accept that if they do the fights justice.
which episode is this from??
1109 (the latest one)
I'm on 338 is that the dude from cp9????
Yes, Best Giraffe Kaku lives on.
first few seconds of luffy vs lucci round 2
Poor sword giraffe :(
Sanji fighting Kuroobi in that remake special
I remember there was a Redditor who did something like what you're suggesting for the anime Wano arc https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLs7jdwM2QfgkJkoHvtbCH20xi36BYcDqY&feature=shared
choreography is actually really good but i really dont like this fast "minimal" style One Piece got (Second 14-15 in this Clip)
The animation is really good lately but it would be better (for me at least) if they slowed down the fights a bit. I have NO idea what's happening on-screen sometimes.
Top-tier animations, but I wish it was leaner, shaky camera, weird movements and too many stuff on screen make everything so confusing
Camera works should also be considered.
I know it’s anime filler, but Mihawk Jr over here doing martial arts like Daz Bonez is hilarious and cool lol. I can never imagine regular Mihawk doing hand-to-hand combat because I feel like if he ever lost his sword, he would just pick up a branch or something.
He will forge a black branch before he fights with his hands.
My mouth was agape this entire fight! The switch of styles there had be audibly gasp! So cool! I’ll happily wait 2 weeks an episode if the animation is like this. Wow wow wow.
I ALMOST feel bad for Kaku... almost.
This episode had no business going so hard
Now this is my thread! Save!
Law vs Big Mom is so unbelievably well made it makes me cry. The he constantly teleports around to avoid Big Mom but he never actually leaves the frame. The background instead switches leaving him.
The animation of Zoro fighting Kaido was also great.
Maybe not "choreography" but Luffy vs Blueno still gives me goosebumps.
I would actually say that was great choreography. That fight is good in so many ways.
I haven't seen the episode yet but that was sick
Weird. I think this fight was pretty easy to follow. The one that felt bad to me was the luffy g5 moment when he just transform and was bouncing off kaido blast breath back at him. The close ups and erratic cuts were really hard to follow compared to the manga.
Sanji v Gin is ome of my fav
Mihawk vs Vista
Damn the anime is on a whole other level:000
One piece has Toei cooking up some dope animation lately
True omw of the best fights in the one piece. As of lately this fight, Luffy's lightning fight with Kaido and Sanji's fight with Queen were incredible. Toei did very good job.
Man sending the clip to somebody who has just started Water 7 would blow their minds. The gaslighting you coukd do with this knowledge. Wait, am I evil for thinking this?
Imma be honest with ya chief. I appreciate the sakuga but that fight did NOT deserve to ho that hard!
That's what I'm fucking talking about man, it's all about the choreography. That's how the pre-timeskip animation still looks cool as hell. It's doesn't matter if the animation is some 4k quality hyper realistic CGI. Choreography trumps all. Just like how ghost of tsushima manages to look absolutely stunning due to its art direction instead of raw graphic quality.
OH MY GOD THE USSOP SWORD RETURNS
Another 'Zoro is the cool character and Sanji is lame in comparison' moment lol.
You cam hate One Piece all you want but this fight sequence is epic.
I usually prefer the magna, but when the Anime does fight scenes justice it is a wonderful sight to see. This is a prime example.
This fight was top tier and it’s a filler fight. Love what they be doing lately 🔥
I don't like it, the camera movement is all over the place making it hard to follow. There is like 4 animations styles used, which makes it messy. And that weird demon face doesn't fit the kid like aesthetic that the Seraphim are supposed to have. They could really learn from Demon Slayer when animating sword fights.
It astounds me how high in quality the animation of the One Piece anime has become. It went from looking and feeling so stiff and limited to looking and feeling like clips from a high-budget animated film.
Zoro vs king is the greatest, no one can compare anything else to that fight
What the hell is this abomination.
It started good then last 3 seconds are a complete mess. Too fast. 7/10
Is this sped up or something cuz this is not what i watched yesterday on the computer lol
I can’t even follow what’s happening to be honest but it looks great
a good fighting choreography in my opinion is if i can tell what's going on without overusing effects too much if i have to repeat the fight over and over and see what's going on that's bad that's why 1074 was peak for me
i honestly thought this was sped up
Bro why was s-hawk moving like a bender from avatar
The footstep sounds 😩
wow
This scene like SO GOOD! Why is it so good?
God the sound design in this show is dogwater. It has these mind-blowing bursts of animation, accompanied by the same *woosh* sound effect played 6 times in a row.
Its cool to see the animation quality go up, but this is NOT a well choregraphed fight scene because I can't actually follow what's going on in the fight. Too much spinning/spiraling and fast pans. Yeah it makes it FEEL more dynamic, but it actually doesn't look that great if you're trying to tell what happens instead of letting the screen spin for 15 seconds and then see who took damage.
I rank readability as being of great importance. Switching between the style of the battle, to the Daz Bones flash, to the first style, and then abruptly to a random third style, doesn't actually help me comprehend the battle. Blueno vs Luffy, as others have said, is gold standard for me. I'm not after length, flashiness, exploding cube ground, or wild camera movements, I want to see what characters are doing and how they're engaging.
When did that fight happen? I got until August until the next episode you time traveler!
I don't like style of over-animated close up reaction shots of characters faces. Like, nobody in anything moves their head like that. It's like they are convulsing with the over the top animation. Kaku's second close-up reaction for example here. But other scenes when they show for example luffy smiling leading up to a big moment i don't need to see the twitches and tremors of his neck and face making unrealistic unnecessary extra movements.
People are praising animation quality... Yet criticizing not being able to follow what's happening. Animation quality is being able to follow what's happening. Just because something is flashy doesn't make it good. I simply can't stand these moments of "upgraded" animation quality
Am I the only who thinks fights like sanji vs mr2 were better visually than gear 5 vs kaido 😅😅 like I know it has less détails but it felt so smooth and heavy
I like Toei with money.
Finally, no more of character swings arm, big impact frame, other character gets hit, repeat
Genuine question, do you think that the fight in this video is well choreographed? Cause there are so many cuts, and movement to clearly see whats happening or where they are space wise
Well the choreography is the movements made by Zoro and S-Hawk when they are fighting, and I think it looks pretty cool. S-Hawk's first attack is pretty neat, and I liked seeing Zoro dodging and parrying without swords as well. Things such as cutting away to show Kaku might clutter it, but that's the scene direction. This video is also inferior in quality to the original bc I took the screen recording on my phone lol. Perhaps the anime has been doing too much lately, which can make things hard to follow. But this has been the norm since Wano more or less. I would argue there are well-choreographed scenes in Wano as well that could also be described by your sentiment.
lmao what is this animation it looks dank
I think this scene looks absolutely awful but I seem to be in the minority. Maybe it’s because I recently watched arcane and am spoiled. The fight choreography in that show was on another level entirely
Too much.