One Piece Animator Breaks Down The Show’s Best Animated Sequences
Unlike most popular anime, which produce their episodes in bulk over the course of seasons, One Piece animators are faced with the daunting task of creating and airing a new episode every week. Needless to say, animation is a time-consuming process, and with such tight deadlines it is hard to blame these animators for padding their episodes with recap, filler and of course low-quality animation. But while One Piece is home to some of the most lackluster in all of anime, it has also seen some of the best as, every now and again, animation supervisors are given the time and resources necessary to craft a particular scene or sequence to perfection.
In a recent video, Crunchyroll’s YouTube channel sat down with Henry Thurlow, one of the few American animators working on the Wano Country arc over in Japan, to break down some of the show’s most memorable and masterful moments. The first of these moments that Thurlow discusses is Luffy’s fight with Rob Lucci during the Enies Lobby arc. As Thurlow points out, the punches of Luffy’s Gatling Gun are so fast, his arms and hands are neither seen nor drawn. Instead, the animators created an illusion. Substituting his limbs for simplistic gusts of wind, they chose to rapidly alternate between a small set of key frames. The result was simple, quick and highly effective without feeling cheap or sloppy.
Another sequence that Thurlow discusses is the finale of the Sabaody Archipelago arc, in which Bartholomew Kuma separates the Straw Hats using his overwhelmingly powerful Devil Fruit ability. As One Piece fans can recall, this was one of the most gut-wrenching sequences in the entire series. As such, animators had to bring their A-game and produce animation capable of shouldering the emotional baggage of the story. One of the ways they did this was through Sakuga U.T. or animated zoom-in. Usually, Thurlow explains, a zoom-in involves pushing the camera onto a static drawing. This saves time, but the result is less evocative.
For the Kuma fight, though, the animation supervisor decided to use animated zoom-ins, meaning that for every frame that the camera zoomed in on a character, an entirely new drawing of that character was made. On paper, this additional work doesn’t sound like much. However, the added effect of animated zoom-ins is tremendous. In short, they make the movement in the sequence feel smoother and the characters more alive. As far as the Sabaody Arc is concerned, this method helped communicate feelings of despair and claustrophobia that the Straw Hats were experiencing as they stood face to face with an enemy they could neither defeat nor run from.
Crunchyroll’s interview with Thurlow provides a rare look into how Japanese animation is made. Like the crew of a live-action film, animators tend to disappear behind their drawings, never receiving the credit they deserve. The same, by the way, could be said about the show in general. With over 931 episodes and counting, One Piece contains many more stellar sequences than Thurlow was able to cover in the video. Take, for instance, the fight between Trafalgar Law and Donquixote Doflamingo on the bridge outside Dressrosa. Though not as superbly animated as some other sequences, it does contain something that One Piece often lacks: action.
Most One Piece fights are slow. Characters take more time announcing their attacks than they do delivering them, and many an amazing fight in the series has been bogged down by unnecessarily long reaction shots. The fight between Law and Doflamingo contains none of these things. Moving at breakneck speed, the two combatants launch one assault after the other and continuously find creative ways to circumvent their opponents’ Devil Fruit abilities. Animation aside, Crunchyroll might also want to consider making a video about One Piece‘s constantly changing art style. Wano Country, the anime’s most recent arc, provides what may be the starkest contrast in the series to date.
Seeing how the island had been teased for several hundreds of chapters and set up to be the site for Luffy’s confrontation with both Emperors Big Mom and Kaido, it makes sense that this location would be given a distinct look. Distinct, of course, would be putting it mildly. Although the Straw Hats have set foot on many a fantastical island over the course of their journey through the Grand Line, Wano Country may yet take the cake. One of the few if not the only island in the One Piece world to be directly inspired by Japan itself, mangaka Eiichiro Oda chose to incorporate various Japanese art styles into the design of this fictional land.
Clothing is just one example. Naturally, the Straw Hats change outfits in virtually every arc. However, where they usually don a different color short or shorts, this time they are fitted into elaborate kimonos and other ceremonial garb. Then there’s the environment, which makes for one of the most spectacular sights the series has yet delivered. Even before the Straw Hats docked on Wano’s shores, they traversed its surrounding waters. In what may be Oda’s boldest design choice to date, he chose to draw these waters in the same style as Hokusai’s The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, a famous Japanese woodblock print from the early nineteenth century. Taking the ground work laid by the manga, One Piece animators took the aesthetic of this classic print and made it move. Their result can be admired in the sequence where Big Mom and her crew ascend the waterfalls into Kaido’s territory, and it’s glorious.
While the airtight production schedule of the One Piece anime allows its animators little freedom to experiment, the past few years have granted them brief opportunities to show their worth. As the best-selling manga and most-watched anime of all-time, One Piece has employed the services of some of the best animators in the business. Their full potential may not often realized, but when it does it blows fans away.
Just cancel this bird already. The chicken is beyond cooked. It's burnt to a crisp.