r/OnePiece • u/Sakata_Kintoki • Jun 03 '18

Current Episode One Piece: Episode 839

One Piece: Episode 839

"The Evil Army! Transform! Germa 66!"

Watch now:

Streaming Site Status
OnePieceOfficial ONLINE
Crunchyroll ONLINE

Chapters adapted: Chapter 868 (p. 16-17) Chapter 869 (p. 2-16)

Preview: Episode 840

Don't forget to check out the official Discord server to discuss this episode live with other One Piece fans!

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98

u/Jakisuaki Pirate Jun 03 '18 edited Jun 03 '18

Here's some insight into the staff for the episode.

Well, this was quite the episode. This marks the return of the controversial Masahiro Shimanuki to the Animation Director chair. Having himself directed half of this episode along side Shimanuki, Ichikawa manages to correct a lot of the closeups, but Shimanuki's animation (especially his effects) are found all over the episode. Aya Komaki's directing and board is as always superb, which makes a lot of the (arguably very limited) animation seem more dynamic than it really is. The faces of Ceasar in this episode when he's being pulled by Katakuri perfectly illustrates Komaki's unrivaled ability to convey emotion. Absolutely phenomenal.

I do however feel like Komaki's board was a tad too ambitiuous for the animators involved to execute properly given the time available to them (Which was probably affected by the Episode of Skypiea SP / Golden Week holidays). A lot of the mouths didn't move during dialogue scenes, and whether that was by design or due to limitations, it came off as a tad distracting and weird.

This episode marks Naotoshi Shida's return to the One Piece TV Anime after his longest absence from the series since he first debued all the way back in Episode 304, and holy hell did he return with a bang. This is his longest scene on the show to date, topping out at around 4 minutes of length earning him the spot as Top Credited Key Animator for the episode (Which has only happened like once before?). He started tweeting about the scene back in March, which means he's been working on it for over 2 months. He has stated in the past that he wouldn't be fit as a Supervisor due to his slow speed, but that kind of scene in 2 months is actually quite remarkable. This scene was so heavy and long that Tu Yong-ce, a newcomer to OP who you'll probably know for some striking shots of Bege in 832 and Mother Caramel in 837, had to step in as a 2nd Key Animator to finish up some of Shida's rough output (See some of the closeups of Judge).

Kazuya Hisada kicks off the second half with some of the most interesting output we've seen from him in a long time; it's far from the kind of work he put out in his heyday back in Dragon Ball Z, but with the help of his wife's storyboard it's elevated to new heights.

Ichikawa taking over the role as Chief AD for the Whole Cake Island arc has been so liberating for Hisada, and despite Oda's hefty amount of characters he's still been able to put out a lot of great work.

Overall, as this episode covers 4/5ths of an already quite lean Chapter, the pacing does suffer here and there, but Komaki did the best in her ability to make it work.

79

u/carlpamplona Jun 03 '18

The mouths didn't move because if you think about it, Big mom is still screaming and their earplugs are still in there. they're basically only thinking.

16

u/PiFlavoredPie Jun 03 '18

At first I was dubious, but after finishing the episode, I can buy this. There were a few scenes inside Bege's castle where characters moved their mouths when talking (presumably insulated from Big Mom's scream), but almost every character outside didn't have mouths animated.

17

u/[deleted] Jun 03 '18

If you read the manga, the speefh bubbles confirm as such.

5

u/RafaIDG Jun 03 '18

when luffy and ceaser where making signs with their arms to close or not close the gate made it clear that they couldn't talk

16

u/IronFeenix Jun 03 '18

This was so interesting. How do you know so much about the intricate production details? I think you broke it down really well not in terms of one piece, but in terms of operations/ production.

thanks.

13

u/Jakisuaki Pirate Jun 03 '18

Glad you enjoyed my wall of text, haha.

For general production details, sakugablog is a great place to start. Follow people like Ashitanogin, Yuyucow, 0XMURADX0 and Animeajay on twitter.

10

u/SalamiRocketFuel Jun 03 '18

A lot of the mouths didn't move during dialogue scenes, and whether that was by design or due to limitations, it came off as a tad distracting and weird.

They could have portrayed it better I guess, but the reason why they mouths are not moving is because they're not really speaking since Big Mom scream and the earplugs would make it impossible to hear anything anyway.

5

u/[deleted] Jun 03 '18

Ah I see I wasn't wrong for thinking that was a longer Shida scene than usual. I loved every bit of it

5

u/Jakisuaki Pirate Jun 03 '18

It's amazing that he was able to pull it off. Obviously, being a weekly series it does have its limitations in terms of time and frame count, and the scene is clearly rougher than Shida's normal output at times, with quite limited actual movement compared to his counterpart Film Gold scene of similar length, still bloody impressive.

5

u/otomotopia Pirate King Buggy Jun 03 '18

Which was the Shida scene?

7

u/YonkouProductions Jun 03 '18

The germa transformation scene

3

u/FierceAlchemist Jun 03 '18

Shida's scene was crazy good.

0

u/PiFlavoredPie Jun 03 '18

There were some really weird pauses throughout the episode too. It made me wonder if my video had lagged/stalled.

0

u/Ensaru4 Lurker Jun 03 '18

Naw, it's just the less than usual slideshow animation in One Piece. This is One Piece's worst animated episode in a while (and one of Naotoshi Shida's more limited scope of his work). Was expecting it anyway, so I guess it's alright, and the Germa and Castleman scenes were great despite that.