Persona 4: The Animation Forum

@Hailinel said:

@Babylonian said:

@Hailinel said:

You guys spend a total of about five paragraphs talking about the animation quality that seriously isn't that bad. It just makes me want to rush through and skim what you have to say more than anything else. Make your point, don't belabor it. And you can complain about it all you like, but it's still not bad; spotty at points? Yes. But a slideshow? No. In fact, you two spend more time talking about the animation and the system of Japanese honorifics than you do the content of the episode.

If you want a moment-to-moment rundown of the events that happened in the episode you just watched: bad news! You're not gonna get that from us! This is an opinion column.

That Junes scene was barely not a slideshow. Calling it "not bad" is kind of insane! Moving on!

Like hell it was. There was at least some animation. I've seen shows that were 95% still image per episode, if not more. Compared to that, the animation issues in Persona 4 are nothing.

Was Nick's comparison incredibly hyperbolic?  Yeah.  But that scene really was that bad.  A defense based on a "bottom of the barrel" evidence simply does not work.  If it did, no one would criticize Gundam Seed Destiny's over use of stock footage because Macross 7 was far worse about it.
 
The issue with that scene isn't about the amount of animation in the end anyways.  It's about how poorly they masked it.  Conversations between characters with still faces and moving mouths are common in anime.  (That is why when we have long conversations with constantly shifting animation, we get incredibly excited about it.)  But the fixed faces are disguised with many changes in camera angle to display each specific speaker.  What makes the Junes scene poor is that they placed Kanji, Chie, and Yosuke in the same still frame, resulting in both Kanji and Yosuke staring at Chie non-stop even as different characters spoke.  Even simply cutting Yosuke out of the frame and having his dialogue lead to a close up of his face would have resulted in a far better scene.  That is criticism that can indeed be placed squarely on the shoulders of the production team, and not any lack of budgets.
 
By the way Nick, are you planning on continuing your series on Bakemonogatari still?

@Turambar said:

The issue with that scene isn't about the amount of animation in the end anyways. It's about how poorly they masked it. Conversations between characters with still faces and moving mouths are common in anime. (That is why when we have long conversations with constantly shifting animation, we get incredibly excited about it.) But the fixed faces are disguised with many changes in camera angle to display each specific speaker. What makes the Junes scene poor is that they placed Kanji, Chie, and Yosuke in the same still frame, resulting in both Kanji and Yosuke staring at Chie non-stop even as different characters spoke. Even simply cutting Yosuke out of the frame and having his dialogue lead to a close up of his face would have resulted in a far better scene. That is criticism that can indeed be placed squarely on the shoulders of the production team, and not any lack of budgets. By the way Nick, are you planning on continuing your series on Bakemonogatari still?

I'd love to! I was really enjoying that show, and then P4A kind of creeped up and all of the sudden it was on Hulu and OH GOD I NEED TO WRITE ABOUT THIS. But yeah, ideally, when this show ends, I'll finish up Bakemonogatari, then maybe move on to Madoka Magica. It feels like there's a deficit of coverage of weird, Shaft-produced Tumblrcore anime on AV, and I'd love to fill that gap!

The animation was noticeably bad like you guys were saying, though personally it doesn't bother me too much. Its pretty common as they need to save the budget for the big moments.
Not sure if this was covered in your previous editions, but there's one episode earlier on where the investigation team are discussing things at Junes. Yosuke is the one talking and in certain shots they either really mess up the perspective or just forget to draw him all together, its pretty hillarious and terrible at the same time.