Pain getting bonked over the head with a slab, and later on shouting, "ikuzo!" Then proceeding to run like he's out of an old Hanna Barbera cartoon definitely wasn't doing it any favors. Particularly so, if they were doing something as serious as having one of the bigger edge lords and a literal demon fox go at it.
Exactly my problem with it. Even with Crocodile or Enel, it was goofy in the beginning but after a point it gets serious. Crocodile getting punched through the ceiling or Luffy's declaration of the bell being in the sky were nothing close to goofy. G5 just went and shit all over the possibility of getting such fights in the future, unless Oda makes it Luffy's will vs Joyboy's will.
Honestly, while I think its good animation in a technical sense, it feels really mismatched with the vibe of the fight. Naruto and Pain simply looked too cartoony for how high the stakes were. Pain turning into the road runner always comes to mind. Even if you dont pause at all, it still looks funny.
Does it mean that the director deserved to be blacklisted by the industry for more than a decade? No.
> Honestly, while I think its good animation in a technical sense, it feels really mismatched with the vibe of the fight.
Because it is. This sequence is the perfect example of having the technique without knowing how to use it.
Like, if you isolate it down to the purely technical level the animation ranges from serviceable to actually pretty good...
... but the scene looks like dogshit. It's *horrifying* to watch it if you were looking forward to it because it's so *off*.
It's goofy and silly in a way that would fit a Saturday morning Warner Brothers cartoon, not a serious, emotional, high stakes, do or die, "boss fight" type deal it's meant to be. I remember someone dubbed this scene with cartoon sounds at the time and it fits perfectly.
I'm with you that it shouldn't get someone functionally blacklisted for a decade, but it is genuinely awful.
Guy got smashed thrice on the head and just kept sinking straight as a steel beam into the ground. If that's not straight out of a Looney Tunes gag, Imma eat my dick off.
On top of that, nothing feels like it has weight, there's no momentum in the moves. As you said, it's all technique but nothing makes sense. Like Pain just ran on the water, got blown away, rolled on the side and just lied there, on his belly to block incoming chakra artillery in one single sequence, without any speed fluctuation.. Just why... No one does that.
Yep. This was just goofy. You watch this and then you watch something like the Obito vs Kakashi episode and you can really see the difference in the quality of directing work.
Not only did it fail to match the vibe of this specific fight it failed to match the series vibe as a whole imo and really stands out in a bad way because of that. Like of course we all get it's fantasy and a work of fiction but inside that fiction there is an understanding of laws of nature and what is/isn't possible and what should and shouldn't happen and this sequence broke that in a bad way with your post highlighting a perfect example. We know the paths are corpses but we also know they can be "killed" by things that would destroy normal bodies such as a rasengan or a brutal taijutsu hit. Yet this one just takes a half dozen smashes to the head from a 2 ton rock and doesn't even have a scrape? He gets exploded by basically mini biju bombs and dozens of them yet is unfazed? It's all just so unbelievable in world that it takes you out of it which makes it really stand out that this is a cartoon instead of an anime. The guy for sure deserved flak for this but not to be destroyed. Talent is there just applied to the wrong medium and it's a lesson most of us have experienced.. he just happened to be on the biggest stage given it was the climax of one of the biggest fights in the biggest shows on the planet.
Totally agree. I’ve noticed in other fights too that the animators would expand on the taijutsu and have characters tank a lot more hits than they normally would (such as the first Sasuke vs. Orochimaru fight or the whole episode after Naruto used Kurama’s chakra to heal from Sasuke’s Chidori). And normally I really appreciate these moments as extra treats, even if the fights start looking more like a video game. But here the difference in scale was just way too much.
I still enjoyed the sequence enough, because of how crazy and frenetic it was, but it also took me out of the show for a moment.
> We know the paths are corpses but we also know they can be "killed" by things that would destroy normal bodies such as a rasengan or a brutal taijutsu hit.
Yep, and if one path goes down, he has the Naraka path that can just resurrect it using that gate thing like he did when Kakashi killed the Asura Path, or he'll just turn another corpse into that path like he did with the Animal path Jiraya killed. Deva Path was far too durable compared to the other 5, Tailed Beast Cloak Naruto killed that path like, at least 3 or 4 times.
Yeah. While I kinda like the fluidity in the show, large parts of the fight do not make sense in the Naruto universe.
We know the pains have basically the same damage tolerance as a normal ninja, the other pains were killed by way less, and even this pain will be destroyed by a Rasengan that has less damage potential than this attack.
Then, the complete water situation doesn't make much sense. Pain can only use gravitational jutsu, so we have to assume, the water is not summoned, but he punches ground water out of the ground. But why there is water in floating stone elements?
It kinda looks cool, but it simply doesn't fit the world nor the system.
The fight felt like it was taking place in a completely different location than the center of the now destroyed Hidden Leaf village, especially when the water was added to the arena.
Kinda nailed it. My simple short takeaway is that he's trying to show "planetary levels of destruction" but fails to do it in a meaningful way cause everything, like you said, feels weightless.
Also some of the frames are lacking detail and are really cartoony. Like too drastic of a change in quality to not be taken out of the scene for a second.
Unfortunately rather than a blacklist what it would more likely be is that giving him a second opportunity will come at the expense of another animator's first opportunity or at the expense of an animator who has consistently good results - you can't just fundamentally alter/break the fighting choreography animation in a series that is the best in the world at its fighting choreography during what is arguably known as it's best/most impactful arc's climax and then expect more opportunities when many animators never even get that opportunity in the first place.
Yep. This is just job opportunities reflecting job performance, the same as anyone else. When you get demoted at work, it's not a blacklisting if it takes you a long time to earn that trust back.
Yeah, a black listing actually takes a lot of effort. The studios would have to get together and maintain a list of DNH ((do not hire) folks.
There ARE documents times when this has happened in Hollywood, and its definitely happened in the Japanese entertainment industry.
But the reasons why studios create a blacklist never have anything to do with artistic quality or fans. An actor or director who defies the studio, or embarrassed the studio through some kind of scandal, or does something politically unacceptable, etc--these are reasons that a Studio would go through the trouble of making sure someone "never works in the industry again."
And generally, that person will just disappear--not continue to get their old roles,
This is just a case where people looked at the end product and decided he wasn't the best candidate for episode director again, and many people who saw this came to the same conclusion.
I did watch all Naruto/Naruto Shippuden recently and there were fights before with similar wacky animation and sound. So I definitely loved it on my recent watch.
But y'all right, it was too jarring at the time due to the stakes and all the heartbreak related to the fight.
Pain for the entirety of the manga: emotionless, and stoic. a true bad ass!
Pain in the anime, up until this fight: same character.
Pain in the anime, as soon as this fight starts: cracked out Looney Tunes character.
As bad as it looked on Pain I maintain most of the animation of the nine tales is genuinely great. It gets across that the nine tails is an evil chakra calamity more than an actual animal so incredibly well. The scene where it's trapped in rock and bloats each of its arms with chakra to tear its way out at the start of the fight says so much just though the animation alone. The ending scenes in Naruto's mind contrasted with the absolute apocalypse that is the Nine Tails gaining its 8th tail and breaking out of planetary devastation is just so good.
The episode's animation has some abysmal lows but it's highs were just high, if not higher, and the director definitely deserved more than what he got.
The guy is genuinely super good at animating fluids and shapeless things. The chakra feels like something that pulse and move and ebbs, it's truly skillful.
The issue is, Pain ain't made of liquid, so it looks utterly awful on him, and ruin the entire mood of the scene. Bro should only have been in charge of animating the Nine Tails.
I'm going to spoiler this whole comment because apparently I don't know how to use the spoiler tag, sorry for the 4!! replies FlareEXE.
[Naruto, Pain fight] >!Yes, Naruto's body being so overflowing with chakra it can no longer maintain its shape is definitely close to peak, if not the peak of, Naruto. It gives the scene such a sense of dread, like you said it feels like a calamity.!<
[Naruto, Pain fight] >!But I'm also a fan of Pain's animation. I think it was a good idea to switch animation styles, and you can argue that this style was the wrong choice, to show just how large the power gap between Naruto and Pain vs literally anything else we've seen prior is. I can understand why some people consider it goofy but they play it pretty straight so I think it's effective at what it sets out to do.!<
[Naruto, Pain fight] >!I'm also okay with it lore-wise because Pain's bodies are essentially puppets so the inhuman way the Deva path body moves makes sense. And it's not unimaginable that his bodies are in someway sturdier than a regular human.!<
Plus I'm a simp for trying new things. Sometimes it doesn't work but when it does it's usually pretty cool
>Does it mean that the director deserved to be blacklisted by the industry for more than a decade? No.
He isn't blacklisted. It's just that he is no longer getting any opportunity to do any high profile work and there's no way of telling whether that's his own choice or because his reputation has gone down to a point where no studio is willing to give him that opportunity.
He recently storyboarded Bleach Tybw cour 2 episode 5 which was one of the best ep in cour 2. Really hope he gets more chances like that in future.
Jesus Christ guys, maybe check his credits first before saying shit? He was the guy who animated Sasuke vs Naruto fight, arguably one of the best in the series. They wouldn't let a random guy animate the whole episode without history of solid work.
Also, he is not blacklisted anywhere, the whole idea is braindead. He is a world class animator. Not only he still works, he did storyboards for a dozen boruto episodes and did animation work for new bleach.
Also is it just me or do some of the hits lack... impact? I don't know if it's animation or the music or SFX or whatever, but even Pain's big punch into the ground feels... weak?
Back then I never really thought that badly about it because of how much I anticipated it, I was a lot younger and less critical of this stuff. Compared to literally ALL the other fights, even the older ones, it is quite comedic for the most serious anger fueled onslaught this show had.
But what I always wondered is why terrain always turns to cube blocks when shit gets serious. This is a trend I have seen in so many shows where fights get this heated. Im not asking for super realistic ground crumbling and shattering but it always feels like the character is flexing their geometry skills everytime they want something to explode.
The more I watch this scene the more I like it and its been a while since Ive read or watched Naruto so maybe my memories of the lore/story aren't perfect. I find the cartoonish moves emblematic of a puppet running around almost haphazardly at some moments but still looking perfectly controlled most of the time on the battlefield to represent that this is just a piloted body. You could even say some of the more embellished movements are the piloted body being pushed beyond typical physical means. I also really appreciate something as mainstream and established as Naruto for still taking chances with both art style and animation, when they could have gone safer.
It's some very impressive animation ... that doesn't capture the vibe of the scene from the manga *at all*. Rewatching the clip now I feel the same way as I did back when it originally aired.
Truly unfortunate, if this were Luffy vs Kaido people would be shouting his name from the roofs.
I agree with you. This is the kind of art style that would work wonders in a show like Flip Flappers (highly experimental on visuals). But on a mainstream show like Naruto, on the high point of an arc, it ended up being to jarring for most of the audience.
>main stream show like Naruto
Wouldn’t even say that. It would work perfectly for One piece, because it’s goofy and cartoonish
It just doesn’t work here
Animation doesn't work in such a straightfoward line that it's as simple as better technology equals better animation. You can still find plenty of animation both in and out of Japan that aged incredibly well.
The manga was like 6 pages of fighting. Honestly the manga fight for this particular scene sucked. So i didn’t really care whether it adapted it faithfully. Do agree that the art style didn’t fit
You can expand the fight while still staying true to the vibe/atmosphere (whatever you want to call it) though.
Other adaptations (or even just Naruto itself in other fights) managed to, this one's just an extremely unfortunate exception.
When I watched the episode for the first time, I had no idea what made good animation. And I think it just looked weird. The tone of the fight was completely gone. Pain used abilities that he shouldn't have and they are suddenly in an area that didn't exist before. Like remember the fight is supposedly still happening in Konoha for the most part. You wouldn't know.
Nowadays I can appreciate the work that was put into, but I still say the scene as a whole was bad. And I think, this is what is always important. People often look for their "Sakuga" moments which they can share. And of course, those moments can be jaw dropping. But only if they work with the rest of the scene. It's a good example of the fact that animation alone can NOT carry a scene, nor a story. Animation is an important tool to tell the story, but if you ONLY focus on animation and forget EVERYTHING else, then it doesn't matter in the end for the reception.
It's sad to hear that this was apparently his last scene. I think this is a bit dumb. They should just use his talents in other ways and also make sure that they are not only focusing on the animation. That's not the fault of one person imo.
Probably bcoz the production only had 3 man team to animate the entirety of the episode. Some of the most important staff members of Naruto staff were busy working on the Naruto movie and could not help out for pain arc.
Director Wakabayashi gave the animators 100% freedom. Those 3 animators were Kenichi kutsuna, Shingo yamashita and Norio Matsumoto. Shingo Yamashita animated first 5 and half minutes of the episode where he completely sacrificed the drawings to have highest possible fluidity during that fight. Kutsuna did the same too, stretching and morphing characters to it's absolute limit. Whether the scenes as a result looked goofy or not was not even a question came to their mind, they were just doing the best job that they could at that time.
These episodes do have other staff members btw like 2nd key animators like Shingo Natsume and Gosei oda and Wakabayashi himself. But most of the bulk of the episode was animated by these 3 animators.
You can blame producers for that. They could've just not made a movie during that arc's production. That arc needed all of their best directors and animators. Sadly producers don't care.
This is the same issue with My hero academia too.
The movie hurted the arc, not this episode, it's the episode with more cuts ever on Naruto and was like 6 months on production.
Those 3 names are literally legends on the world of animation, hell people are salivating everytime Shingo Yamashita makes an Opening these days.
yeah even back then I felt Pierrot was weird about how much they valued their filler content. Liked the first couple of filler seasons in Shippuden, but then it became all about flashbacks and alternate realities. Then they’d show a few weeks of the great ninja war just to then spend half a year on more filler episodes.
They did this even when the manga was done! Just to buy time for their next big investment, Boruto, which could arguably be considered *completely* filler.
The answer is deleted so I'll give the answer again:
The technique is called ["Yutapon Cubes"](https://sakugabooru.com/wiki/show?title=yutapon_cubes) made famous by the great Yutaka Nakamura
Yes, this was the unfortunate turning point of Atsushi Wakabayashi's career. Imagine spending like half a year on the most high profile and the most important episode of the entire franchise, you're carrying the hopes and dreams of the series director, fans and the entire production. All of those resources to put out an episode that is widely regarded as a "Bad episode".
Im not saying that he is not working now. No, he is still storyboarding episodes but one of the most talented directors who tried to push the boundaries of animation and gave animators 100% creative freedom, now only gets to work on "low priority episodes" with minimal resources. Wakabayashi has done storyboards for 29 Boruto episodes, I didn't even know they existed until I looked them up. It's just that he is no longer getting any opportunity to do any high profile work and there's no way of telling whether that's his own choice or because his reputation has gone down to a point where no studio is willing to give him that opportunity. Its just a sad situation overall.
He did storyboarded Bleach Tybw cour 2 episode 5 and here you were able to see hints of his greatness. Its still nothing compared to what he did 10-20 years back. I really hope he gets more chances like that in future and gets a chance to make a major comeback.
I believe it was the awkward animations regarding the movements which people still make fun of, I didn't really notice the 'drop' in quality until I saw some memes regarding it.
Fan animation doesn't have THIS level of high fluidity and background animation. This ep alone probably had more sakuga than more than 80% of the 12 cour action anime in last 10 years.
Awkward frames, not awkward animation. Animation quality is some of the highest at that time for a tv anime. But ppl paused the animation and picked up goofy looking frames and said "look how bad the animation is".
You are not supposed to pause the frame in the first place.
No the set pieces just didn't work, Pain getting bonked in the head and then his eyes rolling forward is a whole goofy segment that have absolutely no place bring in a fight this intense
You didn't have to pause it though. It still looked goofy in motion. This is what dislike about the discussion. Yes, there were some who made that mistake, but not all of them. Because remember, most people just WATCHED the episode and got away with this feeling. It wasn't like people enjoyed the episode, THEN some paused frames appeared, and then suddenly the reception shifted. The reception was ALWAYS more bad than good.
I think the problem is a bit deeper and we all need to understand that at the end of the day, people are usually criticising things they didn't like and praise things (react opposite to criticism) if they liked something. However, most people don't have a background in animation or cinema to be able to point exactly to what didn't work. Mostly because it's often also a combination of things. However, with the internet in particular, people just saying "they disliked this scene" is often just seen as someone hating on it without any reason (or because it's popular). There is a reason, but it's hard to articulate often times.
What this has lead to is that people often look for simple things they can spot. You might have seen this as well. When people tear down a movie or a series for its plotholes, this is often a result of this inability to properly explain what didn't work. Because every series will always have plotholes. Of course, there are examples where they can truly break a narrative, but they are often irrelevant (one of my favourite examples is the whole asteroid worm in Star Wars V which would be shredded to tears if it was in the sequel trilogy for example but isn't even talked about and for good reason, because the movie is good so we don't focus on it).
The point is that pointing out plotholes or even pausing frames for a quick shot is a result of the envoirenment we created by telling people they need to have a proper explanation for why they dislike a movie/series/scene, otherwise they are hating. People who know more about the whole aspect should understand that when someone says they "disliked the animation" in this part, then this obviously doesn't mean, they just want there to be "less animation", but that they are dissatisfied with the overall look and feel. Trying to understand what it truly was someone disliked even if they are unable to properly express it is important, because otherwise we are just circle jerking each other pointing how bad the other side is with their arguments.
>But ppl paused the animation and picked up goofy looking frames and said "look how bad the animation is".
Bullshit.
Go run the 'my pain is greater than yours' speech, it clocks on 4 seconds, you don't need pausing to say it is bad. There is plenty of 'bad' animation in there where you only notice if you pause it. Those are simply in-betweens and they did it quite well there.
The problem is there are key-frames on several parts of animations where people *are* supposed to notice it.
I don't have to pause to see the goofy frames. The damage and deformation is happening way too slowly. Those frames shouldn't be this noticeable when watching.
Awkward animation.
It's not the technical quality or the individual frames. It's just bad animation. Because regardless of the technical skill it's horribly mismatched with the scene.
This would be good animation on an episode of road runner or Tom and Jerry... here it's fucking mismatched and awful.
I agree, it's one of my favorites because of the intensity. The fight itself had a lot of cool creative moments that I think the style really showcased well.
To be fully honest, the fight is EPIC.
However the artstyle they chose for animation is so cartoonish and so goofy, it's hard to take the fight for how serious it should have been
I guess that I’m one of the few people that enjoyed this extremely stylized interpretation of one of the most important battles in the series. So much so that I thought the ending battles were somewhat boring and muted. I don’t know this to be true but I suspect the animator wanted to depict a battle that was impossible to comprehend in its sheer size, scope, and power. By stretching and stylizing the forms of Naruto and pain in various states of distress, pressure, and physicality, it really points the viewer in a direction where you feel the impossibility of their abilities. While true that some of the still may look “funny” at no point in the sequence did I miss what the animator was trying to get across. Someone here mentioned the “roadrunner” pose that pain morphs into when running in water and sure it may look “weird”, but I’ll tell you what. I definitely felt that m’fer pain was going fast af. Sht like this is why I’m horny for the animation of this sequence.
Well yeah. Even though it’s hype it feels like I’m watching Looney Tunes. It would be fine IF that was the intention like Luffy with Gear 5. This was not that lol some of the frames in this fight are cringe
I'm honestly glad I enjoyed Naruto to its fullest without ever stepping a foot into online communities.
I don't remember anything about this episode other than that I had fun watching it.
The only times I ever remember about thinking about animation was when I first started watching it, and the first episodes felt a bit dated to me at the time. But soon that stopped being an issue and I never thought about production values in any way ever again.
I didn't watch Naruto until it had finished airing, and it was one of my first anime I watched. Was nice being able to watch it all while forming my own opinions of it and not having an outside influence saying otherwise.
Yeah this. When I watched this it was ages ago when I was barely young to remember. I saw this post and I was like, "other than probably the memed panels, I dont get it"
I too, thoroughly enjoyed this episode and it's take on the fight. I am not sweating what the community thinks the tone should've been because Nine Tails was cartoonishly overpowered and Pain was cartoonishly hard to kill. Both were exemplified here and it was fun to watch.
I loved the episode back then. It was a true showcase of peoples love for art and trying to push the medium and we wont ever get something like that again. The circumstances in how it was made and why is pretty special imo.
Is there actually any actual backlash from Japanese fan? I can only find a few yahoo answer post about the episode, I don't think they care about opinion of western fan back in 2010 enough to blacklist the director.
I didn't watch Naruto . So , maybe I lack context .
But , I cannot tell if this is supposed to be serious fight or not . They speak like very edgy stuff , but the animation is so boinky (When he gets hit on the head , or when the rock he smashes into leaves his perfect silhouet) , very cartoonish , that I can't take it 100% seriously .
It feels fluid and well drawn if a bit flat, but what with the atmosphere .
Like the other commenter said, this was meant to be the darkest, most serious episode in the whole series to that point.
The main character had his home-village vaporized in a large-scale terror attack. Countless citizens died, including Naruto's second mentor and father-figure. His other father-figure died before this by the hands of the same villain. Then, Naruto also had witnessed the presumed death of the childhood friend who always supported him and just confessed her love to him, minutes before this scene in the video above plays out.
It literally couldn't be any more dark and serious in that moment, the stakes couldn't be higher.
I remember watching this as it came out, and I was so conflicted. I understood how big this fight was and how it needed to be directed differently, but it was such a left field thing. I remember many people in the industry praised it because how difficult it was but online everyone was just so against it and I remember feeling that the series was just not the same for a lot of people.
To this day I disagree with people's critiques. I thought it was awesome and amazing when I first saw it. I loved that it felt different. I don't care that the style "didn't have the right vibe". I still feel like it's the snowballing nature of internet complaining that's influenced opinion, and then people clinging to it after all these years.
Planetary Devastation is one of the coolest moments in all three parts of Naruto, I don’t think anyone argues that. It’s just that the fight beforehand is some Looney Tunes shit.
I am in the camp that absolutely loves that episode.
The insanity of everything made me feel like I shouldn't be anywhere near that place. That if I was there, I'd die before I can react by the speed of these characters cutting wind. It gave me the feeling of thrill that I got when watching something like Godzilla. Monsters, they were monsters.
Definitely. I feel like people got too hung up on how this doesn't capture the seriousness of a Naruto vs Pain fight. This portion isn't Naruto vs Pain, it's the Nine-Tails vs Pain. It's just that pure untamed rage thats in control here, and he was already shown fighting kinda goofy in the Orochimaru fight prior, it can't really control its power much at all.
The power level of this fight is so much higher than anything we've seen in the series before and the whole village is basically witnessing two monsters duke it out. The movements were inhumane and you could really feel the extremes Pain was getting into to lure Naruto closer to the main body. The second it needs to be serious again when the seal is nearly broken it does. But Pain had to subdue a force of nature and this fight captured that well.
1:06 and 2:24 in particular where the animation looks real sloppy. Too many frames dedicated to motions that when you're stretching things for impact is supposed to be quick so you can't see the stretching so clearly in real time. As a result, it instead looks really bad, when. If they used 1/2 or 1/4 of the frames used, it might look a lot better (even if paused frames still look weird, that's fine).
Even outside of those, a lot of the moments feel weird and disjointed. They don't always quite connect in a way that I full understand why and wtf is going on.
But then from 2:30 onwards it's easy to follow as it's one continuation of action. Even as camera angles change here, you have a firmer grasp of what's going on, and the animation is paced better therefore also looks better than a lot of what came before it.
This is actually the scene that made me want to go back and watch Naruto Shippuden. I know it looks wacky but something about the wackiness just clicks for me.
Like the powers on both ends are so above and beyond everything else that it ends up weird, in the same way that physics starts getting real wacky whenever we up or lower the scale of things massively, i.e. black holes, quantum mechanics, or the different states of matter at extreme temperatures and pressure that exist outside of the 3-4\~ we're taught.
Its like we're looking at the fight from the perspective of a regular villager, the powers are so fantastic we're having trouble processing it.
I like it.
Just watched the scene for the first time and I loved the animation! It flows really nice and is somewhat unique for a shounen. But I agree that it doesn't fit a standard shounen like Naruto
Yes the animation was different and maybe could have been done a little better but I thought the style did a great job of showcasing the sheer speed and brutality of not only each others attacks but the uncontrollable amount of “pain” and rage both characters possessed for each other. People just bitch moan and complain about everything. To me this deviation in animation is much better than some DBZ episodes where the animation suddenly turned to shit at crucial points. At least there was fluidity in the action.
I watched the hell out of this episode and saw so many Amv’s created from this, I can’t believe there was backlash from it 🥲 thanks for the fun fact. If Kaido vs G5 Luffy came out at the same time they would probably would have compared the animation style.
Still think it's the best animated episode in Anime Ever (Some episodes from Space Dandy might sway me) I can't even think of what would be second, Cause this was Sakuga from beginning to end.
Too many people don't know what art is and too many people that don't know nothing get to voice their opinions. This was a godly crafted episode. Too bad we may never get another like it pertaining to the naruto series. And no, the still images are not badly drawn. They purposefully drew them that way to create expression and the illusion of action. I have to point that out because I still see comments saying this.
Personally this was the first animated fight that absolutely blew me away. I had never seen this style of fluid animation, so that on top of the climax of the arc made for an episode that was incredibly impactful and one that I’ll never forget.
I absolutely loved it. Me and my friends watched it over and over again. Up until then I'd never seen anything like it. It's probably top five Naruto episodes ever for me. (Excluding the movies)
It’s crazy Naruto gets panned for using this style during the pain vs naruto fight but jujutsu kaisan gets praised for using during the Sakuna vs Mahoraga fight
Cause the animation here didn’t match the vibe of the fight at all. The animators for the Sukuna vs Mahoraga went off the rails with the animation while keeping the direction in line with the feel of the series. This animation would’ve worked amazingly for a show like One Piece, but NOT Naruto, and not Naruto vs Pain of all things.
Say what you want about the awkward frames.
Direction, music and animation were god tier.
The 9 tails shooting those fire balls were probably the best 5 seconds I’ve seen in anime.
Parts of animation are top-tier. Directing is not god-tier if the purpose of directing is to bring all the elements together cohesively. Music is probably same track they've used countless times before, so not like they get any credit for manifesting that track specifically for this scene.
I’m totally fine with them getting weird with it, I actually love that shit in certain shows. I just don’t necessarily think that “a living corpse vs a raging monster” should look so *goofy*, I feel like it should be a lot more horrific
This will be one of the highest examples of how out-of-touch anime fans can be in regards to how animation works, even the basics such as squash and stretch
I loved it too, it's sad that the fans want always the same shit and leave no room for creativity, who knows how good his next directed episode could have been if people didnt gate keep anime "It looks too cartoony for me ". go watch the same effects over and over in mecha fights loosers
I remember when this episode released..I expected epic fight,full of awesome moments with some drama,and got ridiculous Tom and Jerry parody.I still remember how disappointed i was!
This ep was phenomenal and so was the animation.
People get so caught up in something that’s too stylized or looks different than what they’re used to and automatically assume it’s bad. The same thing happens with Mob Psycho 100. The art is very stylized and can be construed as ‘bad animation’ when actually is an artistic choice and some of the best the industry has
For good reason. This was in many ways the series peak and homie decided to change the formula. He gambled on something far too high stake. That was foolish. It changed the whole vibe, and made what should have been a intense and painful moment, into a silly cartoon..
I mean come on, using pain as a nail and hammering him down.. The entire fight was unwatchable to many viewers. This isn’t Gear 5..
Pain doesn’t look human. And in hindsight, if you equate the way he interacts with the world as if the body was a living puppet being controlled, the animation makes a lot of sense. It’s unnatural to look at because it’s supposed to be feel unnatural to look at.
That said, the bashing into the ground like a nail and hammer, and the whirly legs weren’t great additions to convey that “off-ness”. Edit those out and I can see a credible depiction of a puppet master using a puppet.
I never got the vibe of this fight at all even now. I still like it, it's just that I laughed a bit in a few of the scenes rather than getting goosebumps.
I remember watching this and being blindsided by the backlash I found online. I had no idea. I thought it was good. It was the Pain fight. Everything about this arc is spectacular.
I probably haven't seen this clip in a decade. In retrospect, yeah, it doesn't match the tone. The criticism probably was justified.
It's still not bad though. Definitely not worth hate.
I liked the animation because it was stuck in reality, they are moving at insane speeds, their faces are gonna like deformed. Look at the video of fighter pilots pulling turns at high speeds, they literally age before your eyes because of the GeForces being exerted on them and their in an enclosed space, now have them doing that with the full force of the wind pressure on thier face hell you have videos of people's faces deforming from a vacuum blowing in their face now imagine people moving nearly the speed of sound if not faster their faces are gonna look goofy as hell so the animation was spot on if not perfect
I wasn't around for it in the discussion when it was aired but it does makes me laugh and impressed at the same time at how cool some parts look while Pain being hit like nail in Looney Tunes style
I remember loving the memes that spawn from this episode at the time. Looking back however, I regret hating the animation in this scene.
Atsushi Wakabayashi really didn't deserve the hate.
He should have directed on the FLCL sequels, his experimental flow styled animation would be right at home in that franchise and a massive step up compared to the underwhelming animation we got in progressive/alternative
Funny thing is i think it wasn't even so much about the animation style (which, don't get me wrong, was still very controversial), but a whole lot of other creative decisions. The fight didn't fit Naruto at all. They were going through some nonexisting locations, they were shooting lasers at eachother, at one point Naruto straight up repeatedly nails Pain into the ground with a tree, wich i'm pretty shure is a slapstick gag from old Hanna-Barbera cartoons. The whole thing was just off.
Honestly, about 80% of this is really beautifully animated and dynamic, but 20% is the weirdest, ugliest decisions I've ever seen on an animated product.
Whether in the past or now, most people do not understand the difference between good and bad animation and art style.
The situation is really ridiculous now. It is enough to pause second by second, and take screenshots frame by frame... to tell yourself that you are an expert in the field of animation!!! (I believe that no group has hit animators and animations as much as Sakuga fanatics!)
Like or dislike is a matter of taste, but hating and making fun of it is a sign of stupidity... in the anime community, there are too many people/accounts like this.- It's not my taste- it's not good work- they are two completely different sentences.
+++ My favourite style in Naruto is something like (Let it out boy episode)
I liked it and still remember it fondly. I didn't even know people disliked it that much. It's one of those things where staying away from the online community of the thing you like is the best thing to do.
I adored this animation and fight. This was probably one of the highest points of excitement that I felt during the arc as a whole. Although on a technical level, a lot of the animation does not make sense. Where are they fighting exactly? Because this can't be in Konoha anymore because of how outlandish it gets. Nonetheless, I loved it.
I remember downloading this from dattebayo as a 13 year old after school, being blown away then going on /a/ to see all the hype threads only to realize in horror it was being dunked on mercilessly. There was no room at all to defend it cause you’d just get spammed by pain smear faces. What a day!
It sure would've worked in current one piece tho
Yeah lol that’s what I was thinking.
Or even on Devilman Crybaby. He would be considered good if he was at Science SARU or Trigger studio.
He was born too soon.
Well yeah one piece is goofy this fight was supposed to be serious if I remember correctly
Pain getting bonked over the head with a slab, and later on shouting, "ikuzo!" Then proceeding to run like he's out of an old Hanna Barbera cartoon definitely wasn't doing it any favors. Particularly so, if they were doing something as serious as having one of the bigger edge lords and a literal demon fox go at it.
Calling pain edge lord is kinda true, but goddamn he's probably the best written villain in the whole big 3.
I mean up till luffy goes gear 5, his fight against kaido was also pretty serious.
Not that I have a problem with one piece being goofy it's fun it's nice but that fight was supposed to be emotionally heavy and serious
Exactly my problem with it. Even with Crocodile or Enel, it was goofy in the beginning but after a point it gets serious. Crocodile getting punched through the ceiling or Luffy's declaration of the bell being in the sky were nothing close to goofy. G5 just went and shit all over the possibility of getting such fights in the future, unless Oda makes it Luffy's will vs Joyboy's will.
Honestly, while I think its good animation in a technical sense, it feels really mismatched with the vibe of the fight. Naruto and Pain simply looked too cartoony for how high the stakes were. Pain turning into the road runner always comes to mind. Even if you dont pause at all, it still looks funny. Does it mean that the director deserved to be blacklisted by the industry for more than a decade? No.
> Honestly, while I think its good animation in a technical sense, it feels really mismatched with the vibe of the fight. Because it is. This sequence is the perfect example of having the technique without knowing how to use it. Like, if you isolate it down to the purely technical level the animation ranges from serviceable to actually pretty good... ... but the scene looks like dogshit. It's *horrifying* to watch it if you were looking forward to it because it's so *off*. It's goofy and silly in a way that would fit a Saturday morning Warner Brothers cartoon, not a serious, emotional, high stakes, do or die, "boss fight" type deal it's meant to be. I remember someone dubbed this scene with cartoon sounds at the time and it fits perfectly. I'm with you that it shouldn't get someone functionally blacklisted for a decade, but it is genuinely awful.
Yeah. Animate Gear 5 in this style and it'd fit perfectly, but it was so off for this fight.
Oh my god, I see your vision. He legit would've gotten a completely different reception if this had been Luffy v Kaido.
Thank goodness TOEI animation actually put effort in animation for the Wano Arc.
Guy got smashed thrice on the head and just kept sinking straight as a steel beam into the ground. If that's not straight out of a Looney Tunes gag, Imma eat my dick off. On top of that, nothing feels like it has weight, there's no momentum in the moves. As you said, it's all technique but nothing makes sense. Like Pain just ran on the water, got blown away, rolled on the side and just lied there, on his belly to block incoming chakra artillery in one single sequence, without any speed fluctuation.. Just why... No one does that.
Yep. This was just goofy. You watch this and then you watch something like the Obito vs Kakashi episode and you can really see the difference in the quality of directing work.
Kakashi vs Obito is so fucking peak.
I wouldn't go that far, Naruto Sage mode and 4 Giant Frog vs 6 Path Pain or Naruto vs Yahiko is definitely much better than four tail vs yahiko
Not only did it fail to match the vibe of this specific fight it failed to match the series vibe as a whole imo and really stands out in a bad way because of that. Like of course we all get it's fantasy and a work of fiction but inside that fiction there is an understanding of laws of nature and what is/isn't possible and what should and shouldn't happen and this sequence broke that in a bad way with your post highlighting a perfect example. We know the paths are corpses but we also know they can be "killed" by things that would destroy normal bodies such as a rasengan or a brutal taijutsu hit. Yet this one just takes a half dozen smashes to the head from a 2 ton rock and doesn't even have a scrape? He gets exploded by basically mini biju bombs and dozens of them yet is unfazed? It's all just so unbelievable in world that it takes you out of it which makes it really stand out that this is a cartoon instead of an anime. The guy for sure deserved flak for this but not to be destroyed. Talent is there just applied to the wrong medium and it's a lesson most of us have experienced.. he just happened to be on the biggest stage given it was the climax of one of the biggest fights in the biggest shows on the planet.
Totally agree. I’ve noticed in other fights too that the animators would expand on the taijutsu and have characters tank a lot more hits than they normally would (such as the first Sasuke vs. Orochimaru fight or the whole episode after Naruto used Kurama’s chakra to heal from Sasuke’s Chidori). And normally I really appreciate these moments as extra treats, even if the fights start looking more like a video game. But here the difference in scale was just way too much. I still enjoyed the sequence enough, because of how crazy and frenetic it was, but it also took me out of the show for a moment.
> We know the paths are corpses but we also know they can be "killed" by things that would destroy normal bodies such as a rasengan or a brutal taijutsu hit. Yep, and if one path goes down, he has the Naraka path that can just resurrect it using that gate thing like he did when Kakashi killed the Asura Path, or he'll just turn another corpse into that path like he did with the Animal path Jiraya killed. Deva Path was far too durable compared to the other 5, Tailed Beast Cloak Naruto killed that path like, at least 3 or 4 times.
Yeah. While I kinda like the fluidity in the show, large parts of the fight do not make sense in the Naruto universe. We know the pains have basically the same damage tolerance as a normal ninja, the other pains were killed by way less, and even this pain will be destroyed by a Rasengan that has less damage potential than this attack. Then, the complete water situation doesn't make much sense. Pain can only use gravitational jutsu, so we have to assume, the water is not summoned, but he punches ground water out of the ground. But why there is water in floating stone elements? It kinda looks cool, but it simply doesn't fit the world nor the system.
The fight felt like it was taking place in a completely different location than the center of the now destroyed Hidden Leaf village, especially when the water was added to the arena.
Kinda nailed it. My simple short takeaway is that he's trying to show "planetary levels of destruction" but fails to do it in a meaningful way cause everything, like you said, feels weightless. Also some of the frames are lacking detail and are really cartoony. Like too drastic of a change in quality to not be taken out of the scene for a second.
Unfortunately rather than a blacklist what it would more likely be is that giving him a second opportunity will come at the expense of another animator's first opportunity or at the expense of an animator who has consistently good results - you can't just fundamentally alter/break the fighting choreography animation in a series that is the best in the world at its fighting choreography during what is arguably known as it's best/most impactful arc's climax and then expect more opportunities when many animators never even get that opportunity in the first place.
Yep. This is just job opportunities reflecting job performance, the same as anyone else. When you get demoted at work, it's not a blacklisting if it takes you a long time to earn that trust back.
Yeah, a black listing actually takes a lot of effort. The studios would have to get together and maintain a list of DNH ((do not hire) folks. There ARE documents times when this has happened in Hollywood, and its definitely happened in the Japanese entertainment industry. But the reasons why studios create a blacklist never have anything to do with artistic quality or fans. An actor or director who defies the studio, or embarrassed the studio through some kind of scandal, or does something politically unacceptable, etc--these are reasons that a Studio would go through the trouble of making sure someone "never works in the industry again." And generally, that person will just disappear--not continue to get their old roles, This is just a case where people looked at the end product and decided he wasn't the best candidate for episode director again, and many people who saw this came to the same conclusion.
This is basically Naruto hitting Gear 5 lol. Needs the drums of liberation in the background.
I did watch all Naruto/Naruto Shippuden recently and there were fights before with similar wacky animation and sound. So I definitely loved it on my recent watch. But y'all right, it was too jarring at the time due to the stakes and all the heartbreak related to the fight.
Pain for the entirety of the manga: emotionless, and stoic. a true bad ass! Pain in the anime, up until this fight: same character. Pain in the anime, as soon as this fight starts: cracked out Looney Tunes character.
As bad as it looked on Pain I maintain most of the animation of the nine tales is genuinely great. It gets across that the nine tails is an evil chakra calamity more than an actual animal so incredibly well. The scene where it's trapped in rock and bloats each of its arms with chakra to tear its way out at the start of the fight says so much just though the animation alone. The ending scenes in Naruto's mind contrasted with the absolute apocalypse that is the Nine Tails gaining its 8th tail and breaking out of planetary devastation is just so good. The episode's animation has some abysmal lows but it's highs were just high, if not higher, and the director definitely deserved more than what he got.
The guy is genuinely super good at animating fluids and shapeless things. The chakra feels like something that pulse and move and ebbs, it's truly skillful. The issue is, Pain ain't made of liquid, so it looks utterly awful on him, and ruin the entire mood of the scene. Bro should only have been in charge of animating the Nine Tails.
I'm going to spoiler this whole comment because apparently I don't know how to use the spoiler tag, sorry for the 4!! replies FlareEXE. [Naruto, Pain fight] >!Yes, Naruto's body being so overflowing with chakra it can no longer maintain its shape is definitely close to peak, if not the peak of, Naruto. It gives the scene such a sense of dread, like you said it feels like a calamity.!< [Naruto, Pain fight] >!But I'm also a fan of Pain's animation. I think it was a good idea to switch animation styles, and you can argue that this style was the wrong choice, to show just how large the power gap between Naruto and Pain vs literally anything else we've seen prior is. I can understand why some people consider it goofy but they play it pretty straight so I think it's effective at what it sets out to do.!< [Naruto, Pain fight] >!I'm also okay with it lore-wise because Pain's bodies are essentially puppets so the inhuman way the Deva path body moves makes sense. And it's not unimaginable that his bodies are in someway sturdier than a regular human.!< Plus I'm a simp for trying new things. Sometimes it doesn't work but when it does it's usually pretty cool
>Does it mean that the director deserved to be blacklisted by the industry for more than a decade? No. He isn't blacklisted. It's just that he is no longer getting any opportunity to do any high profile work and there's no way of telling whether that's his own choice or because his reputation has gone down to a point where no studio is willing to give him that opportunity. He recently storyboarded Bleach Tybw cour 2 episode 5 which was one of the best ep in cour 2. Really hope he gets more chances like that in future.
> He isn’t blacklisted. Proceeds to give an example of being blacklisted in the industry.
No, it's two possible reasons. Either he's blacklisted, or he chose not to do a high-stakes show because it was too stressful.
Is it blacklisting if the reason they don't hire you is because they are judging your past work as something they don't want to pay for?
Jesus Christ guys, maybe check his credits first before saying shit? He was the guy who animated Sasuke vs Naruto fight, arguably one of the best in the series. They wouldn't let a random guy animate the whole episode without history of solid work. Also, he is not blacklisted anywhere, the whole idea is braindead. He is a world class animator. Not only he still works, he did storyboards for a dozen boruto episodes and did animation work for new bleach.
You're a champ for this comment. Misinfo really do spread like a plague.
Thank god... Despite people hate this scene arguably this is better than the manga which is just short.
Yea ty for this. 90 percent of the people in here seem brain dead
Yeah this is so stupid. "How dare the industry he works in judge him on the merits of his body of work??"
Is Daniel Radcliffe blacklisted or he just doesn't feel the need to star in the major blockbusters?
Also is it just me or do some of the hits lack... impact? I don't know if it's animation or the music or SFX or whatever, but even Pain's big punch into the ground feels... weak?
As a avid fan of this fight... Yeah, you're right.
Back then I never really thought that badly about it because of how much I anticipated it, I was a lot younger and less critical of this stuff. Compared to literally ALL the other fights, even the older ones, it is quite comedic for the most serious anger fueled onslaught this show had. But what I always wondered is why terrain always turns to cube blocks when shit gets serious. This is a trend I have seen in so many shows where fights get this heated. Im not asking for super realistic ground crumbling and shattering but it always feels like the character is flexing their geometry skills everytime they want something to explode.
The more I watch this scene the more I like it and its been a while since Ive read or watched Naruto so maybe my memories of the lore/story aren't perfect. I find the cartoonish moves emblematic of a puppet running around almost haphazardly at some moments but still looking perfectly controlled most of the time on the battlefield to represent that this is just a piloted body. You could even say some of the more embellished movements are the piloted body being pushed beyond typical physical means. I also really appreciate something as mainstream and established as Naruto for still taking chances with both art style and animation, when they could have gone safer.
It's some very impressive animation ... that doesn't capture the vibe of the scene from the manga *at all*. Rewatching the clip now I feel the same way as I did back when it originally aired. Truly unfortunate, if this were Luffy vs Kaido people would be shouting his name from the roofs.
I agree with you. This is the kind of art style that would work wonders in a show like Flip Flappers (highly experimental on visuals). But on a mainstream show like Naruto, on the high point of an arc, it ended up being to jarring for most of the audience.
>main stream show like Naruto Wouldn’t even say that. It would work perfectly for One piece, because it’s goofy and cartoonish It just doesn’t work here
Holy shit you're right, this animation with Gear 5 debut would've been pure orgasmic.
Gear 5 was clearly better animated than this. The animation is impressive, but gear 5 was done so much better.
well gear 5 had a decade of advancement so of course it looks better
Animation doesn't work in such a straightfoward line that it's as simple as better technology equals better animation. You can still find plenty of animation both in and out of Japan that aged incredibly well.
The manga was like 6 pages of fighting. Honestly the manga fight for this particular scene sucked. So i didn’t really care whether it adapted it faithfully. Do agree that the art style didn’t fit
You can expand the fight while still staying true to the vibe/atmosphere (whatever you want to call it) though. Other adaptations (or even just Naruto itself in other fights) managed to, this one's just an extremely unfortunate exception.
Case in point, Hinata's fight right before this scene was like 1 page yet the anime outright improved the atmosphere.
Tbf that's a good portion of Naruto's manga fights.
[удалено]
MY PAIN IS FAR GREATER THAN YOURS
When I watched the episode for the first time, I had no idea what made good animation. And I think it just looked weird. The tone of the fight was completely gone. Pain used abilities that he shouldn't have and they are suddenly in an area that didn't exist before. Like remember the fight is supposedly still happening in Konoha for the most part. You wouldn't know. Nowadays I can appreciate the work that was put into, but I still say the scene as a whole was bad. And I think, this is what is always important. People often look for their "Sakuga" moments which they can share. And of course, those moments can be jaw dropping. But only if they work with the rest of the scene. It's a good example of the fact that animation alone can NOT carry a scene, nor a story. Animation is an important tool to tell the story, but if you ONLY focus on animation and forget EVERYTHING else, then it doesn't matter in the end for the reception. It's sad to hear that this was apparently his last scene. I think this is a bit dumb. They should just use his talents in other ways and also make sure that they are not only focusing on the animation. That's not the fault of one person imo.
It wasn't his last scene, that's made up nonsense. He did Naruto vs Sasuke even. Is doing current work for Bleach.
Oh fr? Thats much better.
You've pretty much explained how I feel about this episode back then and how I feel about it now.
Animation would have been fine for any other moment. Why the fuck did they choose pain vs Naruto I have no idea.
Probably bcoz the production only had 3 man team to animate the entirety of the episode. Some of the most important staff members of Naruto staff were busy working on the Naruto movie and could not help out for pain arc. Director Wakabayashi gave the animators 100% freedom. Those 3 animators were Kenichi kutsuna, Shingo yamashita and Norio Matsumoto. Shingo Yamashita animated first 5 and half minutes of the episode where he completely sacrificed the drawings to have highest possible fluidity during that fight. Kutsuna did the same too, stretching and morphing characters to it's absolute limit. Whether the scenes as a result looked goofy or not was not even a question came to their mind, they were just doing the best job that they could at that time. These episodes do have other staff members btw like 2nd key animators like Shingo Natsume and Gosei oda and Wakabayashi himself. But most of the bulk of the episode was animated by these 3 animators.
why in the world would they prioritize a movie when animating one of the best arcs of the series. it wasn't even a canon one.
Movies make money. And it’s Naruto. Of course they would prioritize the movie.
You can blame producers for that. They could've just not made a movie during that arc's production. That arc needed all of their best directors and animators. Sadly producers don't care. This is the same issue with My hero academia too.
The movie hurted the arc, not this episode, it's the episode with more cuts ever on Naruto and was like 6 months on production. Those 3 names are literally legends on the world of animation, hell people are salivating everytime Shingo Yamashita makes an Opening these days.
That man can’t miss when it comes to OPs nowadays. He has a distinctive style of lighting and cinematography that’s instantly recognizable.
yeah even back then I felt Pierrot was weird about how much they valued their filler content. Liked the first couple of filler seasons in Shippuden, but then it became all about flashbacks and alternate realities. Then they’d show a few weeks of the great ninja war just to then spend half a year on more filler episodes. They did this even when the manga was done! Just to buy time for their next big investment, Boruto, which could arguably be considered *completely* filler.
the blocks of rock flying about look like cardboard boxes lol
What’s the technique for the cubic blocks again? I forgor
Yutapon cubes
Wow, TIL there's a name for it. I see it *all the time* in Hero Aca and a bunch of other shows.
It's called that mostly cause it's the signature of a specific animator called Yutaka Nakamura. He did the same thing in Hero Aca.
The answer is deleted so I'll give the answer again: The technique is called ["Yutapon Cubes"](https://sakugabooru.com/wiki/show?title=yutapon_cubes) made famous by the great Yutaka Nakamura
Yes, this was the unfortunate turning point of Atsushi Wakabayashi's career. Imagine spending like half a year on the most high profile and the most important episode of the entire franchise, you're carrying the hopes and dreams of the series director, fans and the entire production. All of those resources to put out an episode that is widely regarded as a "Bad episode". Im not saying that he is not working now. No, he is still storyboarding episodes but one of the most talented directors who tried to push the boundaries of animation and gave animators 100% creative freedom, now only gets to work on "low priority episodes" with minimal resources. Wakabayashi has done storyboards for 29 Boruto episodes, I didn't even know they existed until I looked them up. It's just that he is no longer getting any opportunity to do any high profile work and there's no way of telling whether that's his own choice or because his reputation has gone down to a point where no studio is willing to give him that opportunity. Its just a sad situation overall. He did storyboarded Bleach Tybw cour 2 episode 5 and here you were able to see hints of his greatness. Its still nothing compared to what he did 10-20 years back. I really hope he gets more chances like that in future and gets a chance to make a major comeback.
14 years ago? I watched this as it was coming out weekly the fuck Everyone was so pissed about it
I believe it was the awkward animations regarding the movements which people still make fun of, I didn't really notice the 'drop' in quality until I saw some memes regarding it.
I thought I was watching fanmade stuff when it first came out. It was jarring.
Fan animation doesn't have THIS level of high fluidity and background animation. This ep alone probably had more sakuga than more than 80% of the 12 cour action anime in last 10 years.
Some fan animation does. Not for the ~20 minutes, but it does.
What fuckin high quality fan animations have you been watching?? By "some" I'm gonna assume you mean like 1 or 2
Awkward frames, not awkward animation. Animation quality is some of the highest at that time for a tv anime. But ppl paused the animation and picked up goofy looking frames and said "look how bad the animation is". You are not supposed to pause the frame in the first place.
No the set pieces just didn't work, Pain getting bonked in the head and then his eyes rolling forward is a whole goofy segment that have absolutely no place bring in a fight this intense
You didn't have to pause it though. It still looked goofy in motion. This is what dislike about the discussion. Yes, there were some who made that mistake, but not all of them. Because remember, most people just WATCHED the episode and got away with this feeling. It wasn't like people enjoyed the episode, THEN some paused frames appeared, and then suddenly the reception shifted. The reception was ALWAYS more bad than good.
Thank you, it is incredible how this excuse has been used for over a decade now and people think they can get away with it.
I think the problem is a bit deeper and we all need to understand that at the end of the day, people are usually criticising things they didn't like and praise things (react opposite to criticism) if they liked something. However, most people don't have a background in animation or cinema to be able to point exactly to what didn't work. Mostly because it's often also a combination of things. However, with the internet in particular, people just saying "they disliked this scene" is often just seen as someone hating on it without any reason (or because it's popular). There is a reason, but it's hard to articulate often times. What this has lead to is that people often look for simple things they can spot. You might have seen this as well. When people tear down a movie or a series for its plotholes, this is often a result of this inability to properly explain what didn't work. Because every series will always have plotholes. Of course, there are examples where they can truly break a narrative, but they are often irrelevant (one of my favourite examples is the whole asteroid worm in Star Wars V which would be shredded to tears if it was in the sequel trilogy for example but isn't even talked about and for good reason, because the movie is good so we don't focus on it). The point is that pointing out plotholes or even pausing frames for a quick shot is a result of the envoirenment we created by telling people they need to have a proper explanation for why they dislike a movie/series/scene, otherwise they are hating. People who know more about the whole aspect should understand that when someone says they "disliked the animation" in this part, then this obviously doesn't mean, they just want there to be "less animation", but that they are dissatisfied with the overall look and feel. Trying to understand what it truly was someone disliked even if they are unable to properly express it is important, because otherwise we are just circle jerking each other pointing how bad the other side is with their arguments.
>But ppl paused the animation and picked up goofy looking frames and said "look how bad the animation is". Bullshit. Go run the 'my pain is greater than yours' speech, it clocks on 4 seconds, you don't need pausing to say it is bad. There is plenty of 'bad' animation in there where you only notice if you pause it. Those are simply in-betweens and they did it quite well there. The problem is there are key-frames on several parts of animations where people *are* supposed to notice it.
I don't have to pause to see the goofy frames. The damage and deformation is happening way too slowly. Those frames shouldn't be this noticeable when watching.
Awkward animation. It's not the technical quality or the individual frames. It's just bad animation. Because regardless of the technical skill it's horribly mismatched with the scene. This would be good animation on an episode of road runner or Tom and Jerry... here it's fucking mismatched and awful.
Exactly. Some people should pause JJK season 2 and see how that goes
I mean, I think JJK S2's animations were a bit too experimental *for my taste* as well. But I know plenty of people who love it, so c’est la vie.
Fuck I thought this was one of the sickest fight scenes in the show the wild unhinged animation matched the energy of rampaging Naruto perfectly.
Same, really felt like it was just two monsters breaking down and throwing anything they could at each other.
Reanimated corpse vs pure rage incarnate
I agree, it's one of my favorites because of the intensity. The fight itself had a lot of cool creative moments that I think the style really showcased well.
the meme is forever eternalized for pain.
Still one of my favorite all time anime episodes regardless. Gave me chills the first time I saw it
To be fully honest, the fight is EPIC. However the artstyle they chose for animation is so cartoonish and so goofy, it's hard to take the fight for how serious it should have been
Whats funny is if it were sped up in certain spots the goofy faces would be much less noticable
I guess that I’m one of the few people that enjoyed this extremely stylized interpretation of one of the most important battles in the series. So much so that I thought the ending battles were somewhat boring and muted. I don’t know this to be true but I suspect the animator wanted to depict a battle that was impossible to comprehend in its sheer size, scope, and power. By stretching and stylizing the forms of Naruto and pain in various states of distress, pressure, and physicality, it really points the viewer in a direction where you feel the impossibility of their abilities. While true that some of the still may look “funny” at no point in the sequence did I miss what the animator was trying to get across. Someone here mentioned the “roadrunner” pose that pain morphs into when running in water and sure it may look “weird”, but I’ll tell you what. I definitely felt that m’fer pain was going fast af. Sht like this is why I’m horny for the animation of this sequence.
This feels like it would have been a perfect style for something like Kill La Kill.
Well yeah. Even though it’s hype it feels like I’m watching Looney Tunes. It would be fine IF that was the intention like Luffy with Gear 5. This was not that lol some of the frames in this fight are cringe
idk man I loved this fight
I'm honestly glad I enjoyed Naruto to its fullest without ever stepping a foot into online communities. I don't remember anything about this episode other than that I had fun watching it. The only times I ever remember about thinking about animation was when I first started watching it, and the first episodes felt a bit dated to me at the time. But soon that stopped being an issue and I never thought about production values in any way ever again.
I didn't watch Naruto until it had finished airing, and it was one of my first anime I watched. Was nice being able to watch it all while forming my own opinions of it and not having an outside influence saying otherwise.
Same here. Didn't even know that fans had an issue with this episode.
Yeah this. When I watched this it was ages ago when I was barely young to remember. I saw this post and I was like, "other than probably the memed panels, I dont get it"
Yeah, I simply loved this episode, I really like this type of animation.
I too, thoroughly enjoyed this episode and it's take on the fight. I am not sweating what the community thinks the tone should've been because Nine Tails was cartoonishly overpowered and Pain was cartoonishly hard to kill. Both were exemplified here and it was fun to watch.
I loved the episode back then. It was a true showcase of peoples love for art and trying to push the medium and we wont ever get something like that again. The circumstances in how it was made and why is pretty special imo.
Is there actually any actual backlash from Japanese fan? I can only find a few yahoo answer post about the episode, I don't think they care about opinion of western fan back in 2010 enough to blacklist the director.
No matter what anyone say, the pain arc is peak anime for me!
I didn't watch Naruto . So , maybe I lack context . But , I cannot tell if this is supposed to be serious fight or not . They speak like very edgy stuff , but the animation is so boinky (When he gets hit on the head , or when the rock he smashes into leaves his perfect silhouet) , very cartoonish , that I can't take it 100% seriously . It feels fluid and well drawn if a bit flat, but what with the atmosphere .
Like the other commenter said, this was meant to be the darkest, most serious episode in the whole series to that point. The main character had his home-village vaporized in a large-scale terror attack. Countless citizens died, including Naruto's second mentor and father-figure. His other father-figure died before this by the hands of the same villain. Then, Naruto also had witnessed the presumed death of the childhood friend who always supported him and just confessed her love to him, minutes before this scene in the video above plays out. It literally couldn't be any more dark and serious in that moment, the stakes couldn't be higher.
Its supposed to be the most serious fight in the entire series As you can see, they failed to get that across.
People keep saying his career was affected by the backlash but I’ve never found or seen any evidence of Japanese fans hating this episode
Idk why people hated it. This was badass
He was ahead of his time, these techniques would have been great in JJK 2 and One Piece.
I remember watching this as it came out, and I was so conflicted. I understood how big this fight was and how it needed to be directed differently, but it was such a left field thing. I remember many people in the industry praised it because how difficult it was but online everyone was just so against it and I remember feeling that the series was just not the same for a lot of people.
How the hell has it been 14 years already. Time sure flies.
That's crazy. Had no idea ppl disliked this so much. This has always been my absolute favorite episode of Shippuden. Planetary Devastation is goated
To this day I disagree with people's critiques. I thought it was awesome and amazing when I first saw it. I loved that it felt different. I don't care that the style "didn't have the right vibe". I still feel like it's the snowballing nature of internet complaining that's influenced opinion, and then people clinging to it after all these years.
Planetary Devastation is one of the coolest moments in all three parts of Naruto, I don’t think anyone argues that. It’s just that the fight beforehand is some Looney Tunes shit.
Really glad I don't actively follow any community while watching an anime. This was peak for me than as it is now.
I am in the camp that absolutely loves that episode. The insanity of everything made me feel like I shouldn't be anywhere near that place. That if I was there, I'd die before I can react by the speed of these characters cutting wind. It gave me the feeling of thrill that I got when watching something like Godzilla. Monsters, they were monsters.
Definitely. I feel like people got too hung up on how this doesn't capture the seriousness of a Naruto vs Pain fight. This portion isn't Naruto vs Pain, it's the Nine-Tails vs Pain. It's just that pure untamed rage thats in control here, and he was already shown fighting kinda goofy in the Orochimaru fight prior, it can't really control its power much at all. The power level of this fight is so much higher than anything we've seen in the series before and the whole village is basically witnessing two monsters duke it out. The movements were inhumane and you could really feel the extremes Pain was getting into to lure Naruto closer to the main body. The second it needs to be serious again when the seal is nearly broken it does. But Pain had to subdue a force of nature and this fight captured that well.
Agreed! I thought it was great. The movement were so erratic in a crazy and inhuman way. It really gave the vibe of a monster vs a hollow corpse.
1:06 and 2:24 in particular where the animation looks real sloppy. Too many frames dedicated to motions that when you're stretching things for impact is supposed to be quick so you can't see the stretching so clearly in real time. As a result, it instead looks really bad, when. If they used 1/2 or 1/4 of the frames used, it might look a lot better (even if paused frames still look weird, that's fine). Even outside of those, a lot of the moments feel weird and disjointed. They don't always quite connect in a way that I full understand why and wtf is going on. But then from 2:30 onwards it's easy to follow as it's one continuation of action. Even as camera angles change here, you have a firmer grasp of what's going on, and the animation is paced better therefore also looks better than a lot of what came before it.
This is actually the scene that made me want to go back and watch Naruto Shippuden. I know it looks wacky but something about the wackiness just clicks for me. Like the powers on both ends are so above and beyond everything else that it ends up weird, in the same way that physics starts getting real wacky whenever we up or lower the scale of things massively, i.e. black holes, quantum mechanics, or the different states of matter at extreme temperatures and pressure that exist outside of the 3-4\~ we're taught. Its like we're looking at the fight from the perspective of a regular villager, the powers are so fantastic we're having trouble processing it. I like it.
Fucking love this fight and really think mob psycho fights took inspiration from this
Maybe it’s because I’m anime only watcher but it was epic
So this is where the infamous Pain's face meme came from.
Just watched the scene for the first time and I loved the animation! It flows really nice and is somewhat unique for a shounen. But I agree that it doesn't fit a standard shounen like Naruto
At that time, this was a peak fight.
Yes the animation was different and maybe could have been done a little better but I thought the style did a great job of showcasing the sheer speed and brutality of not only each others attacks but the uncontrollable amount of “pain” and rage both characters possessed for each other. People just bitch moan and complain about everything. To me this deviation in animation is much better than some DBZ episodes where the animation suddenly turned to shit at crucial points. At least there was fluidity in the action.
I watched the hell out of this episode and saw so many Amv’s created from this, I can’t believe there was backlash from it 🥲 thanks for the fun fact. If Kaido vs G5 Luffy came out at the same time they would probably would have compared the animation style.
Still think it's the best animated episode in Anime Ever (Some episodes from Space Dandy might sway me) I can't even think of what would be second, Cause this was Sakuga from beginning to end.
Idk I liked then scene then and I like it now, and I'm not even a Naruto fan.
Too many people don't know what art is and too many people that don't know nothing get to voice their opinions. This was a godly crafted episode. Too bad we may never get another like it pertaining to the naruto series. And no, the still images are not badly drawn. They purposefully drew them that way to create expression and the illusion of action. I have to point that out because I still see comments saying this.
Nah this episode was fucking awesome
Personally this was the first animated fight that absolutely blew me away. I had never seen this style of fluid animation, so that on top of the climax of the arc made for an episode that was incredibly impactful and one that I’ll never forget.
WHAT?!! THIS IS ONE OF MY FAVORITE EPISODES!!
I loved everything about this episode. Some people will think its goofy and garbage and will stand by that, but I enjoyed it.
I absolutely loved it. Me and my friends watched it over and over again. Up until then I'd never seen anything like it. It's probably top five Naruto episodes ever for me. (Excluding the movies)
Damn this is one of my favorite scenes in the show. Everything looks so chaotic and the animation lends to that.
Most gorgeous episode of Naruto
It’s crazy Naruto gets panned for using this style during the pain vs naruto fight but jujutsu kaisan gets praised for using during the Sakuna vs Mahoraga fight
Because JJK managed to keep the tone in check and look a lot less childish from moment to moment
[удалено]
Cause the animation here didn’t match the vibe of the fight at all. The animators for the Sukuna vs Mahoraga went off the rails with the animation while keeping the direction in line with the feel of the series. This animation would’ve worked amazingly for a show like One Piece, but NOT Naruto, and not Naruto vs Pain of all things.
Say what you want about the awkward frames. Direction, music and animation were god tier. The 9 tails shooting those fire balls were probably the best 5 seconds I’ve seen in anime.
Parts of animation are top-tier. Directing is not god-tier if the purpose of directing is to bring all the elements together cohesively. Music is probably same track they've used countless times before, so not like they get any credit for manifesting that track specifically for this scene.
Im finding out now that im the only person who loved this fight. Was a living corpse v a raging monster, fuck it let them get weird with it.
I’m totally fine with them getting weird with it, I actually love that shit in certain shows. I just don’t necessarily think that “a living corpse vs a raging monster” should look so *goofy*, I feel like it should be a lot more horrific
It's definitely the animation. For a high stakes fight the animation was too cartoonish.
This will be one of the highest examples of how out-of-touch anime fans can be in regards to how animation works, even the basics such as squash and stretch
How does everyone not see the brilliance needed to come up with this choreography lol what
Underrated episoded, loved They way It was done, It had Its own charm
I loved it too, it's sad that the fans want always the same shit and leave no room for creativity, who knows how good his next directed episode could have been if people didnt gate keep anime "It looks too cartoony for me ". go watch the same effects over and over in mecha fights loosers
I remember when this episode released..I expected epic fight,full of awesome moments with some drama,and got ridiculous Tom and Jerry parody.I still remember how disappointed i was!
This episode was pure, unfiltered cinema. Few times anime has reached such heights after this
And here I enjoyed the refreshing change in animation style. :'(
I loved this scene.
This ep was phenomenal and so was the animation. People get so caught up in something that’s too stylized or looks different than what they’re used to and automatically assume it’s bad. The same thing happens with Mob Psycho 100. The art is very stylized and can be construed as ‘bad animation’ when actually is an artistic choice and some of the best the industry has
This was my favorite episode in the entire series. Damn shame.
I had no idea this was such a divisive episode, loved it when it aired, love it now.
This is One of the Best Episodes of Naruto Ever Made. Planetary Devastation
One of the best eps of Naruto ever made
For good reason. This was in many ways the series peak and homie decided to change the formula. He gambled on something far too high stake. That was foolish. It changed the whole vibe, and made what should have been a intense and painful moment, into a silly cartoon.. I mean come on, using pain as a nail and hammering him down.. The entire fight was unwatchable to many viewers. This isn’t Gear 5..
Pain doesn’t look human. And in hindsight, if you equate the way he interacts with the world as if the body was a living puppet being controlled, the animation makes a lot of sense. It’s unnatural to look at because it’s supposed to be feel unnatural to look at. That said, the bashing into the ground like a nail and hammer, and the whirly legs weren’t great additions to convey that “off-ness”. Edit those out and I can see a credible depiction of a puppet master using a puppet.
I personally thought this episode and the animation of it were awesome.
just realized I never saw this animated since I just played Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 for this moment lol
I never got the vibe of this fight at all even now. I still like it, it's just that I laughed a bit in a few of the scenes rather than getting goosebumps.
I remember watching this and being blindsided by the backlash I found online. I had no idea. I thought it was good. It was the Pain fight. Everything about this arc is spectacular. I probably haven't seen this clip in a decade. In retrospect, yeah, it doesn't match the tone. The criticism probably was justified. It's still not bad though. Definitely not worth hate.
I liked the animation because it was stuck in reality, they are moving at insane speeds, their faces are gonna like deformed. Look at the video of fighter pilots pulling turns at high speeds, they literally age before your eyes because of the GeForces being exerted on them and their in an enclosed space, now have them doing that with the full force of the wind pressure on thier face hell you have videos of people's faces deforming from a vacuum blowing in their face now imagine people moving nearly the speed of sound if not faster their faces are gonna look goofy as hell so the animation was spot on if not perfect
I wasn't around for it in the discussion when it was aired but it does makes me laugh and impressed at the same time at how cool some parts look while Pain being hit like nail in Looney Tunes style
I remember loving the memes that spawn from this episode at the time. Looking back however, I regret hating the animation in this scene. Atsushi Wakabayashi really didn't deserve the hate.
Still cracks me up after all these years.
He should have directed on the FLCL sequels, his experimental flow styled animation would be right at home in that franchise and a massive step up compared to the underwhelming animation we got in progressive/alternative
Funny thing is i think it wasn't even so much about the animation style (which, don't get me wrong, was still very controversial), but a whole lot of other creative decisions. The fight didn't fit Naruto at all. They were going through some nonexisting locations, they were shooting lasers at eachother, at one point Naruto straight up repeatedly nails Pain into the ground with a tree, wich i'm pretty shure is a slapstick gag from old Hanna-Barbera cartoons. The whole thing was just off.
Honestly, about 80% of this is really beautifully animated and dynamic, but 20% is the weirdest, ugliest decisions I've ever seen on an animated product.
Whether in the past or now, most people do not understand the difference between good and bad animation and art style. The situation is really ridiculous now. It is enough to pause second by second, and take screenshots frame by frame... to tell yourself that you are an expert in the field of animation!!! (I believe that no group has hit animators and animations as much as Sakuga fanatics!) Like or dislike is a matter of taste, but hating and making fun of it is a sign of stupidity... in the anime community, there are too many people/accounts like this.- It's not my taste- it's not good work- they are two completely different sentences. +++ My favourite style in Naruto is something like (Let it out boy episode)
I liked it and still remember it fondly. I didn't even know people disliked it that much. It's one of those things where staying away from the online community of the thing you like is the best thing to do.
I adored this animation and fight. This was probably one of the highest points of excitement that I felt during the arc as a whole. Although on a technical level, a lot of the animation does not make sense. Where are they fighting exactly? Because this can't be in Konoha anymore because of how outlandish it gets. Nonetheless, I loved it.
I was the only one who loved that style of animation, I don't get the hate whatsoever.
This prompt is reminding the world that there are gatekeepers who make anime inaccessible to new people looking to get into it
Wtf? I finished Naruto for the first time last year and this fight was hype as fuck? What made it so controversial?????
The episode itself was honestly pretty good but man it looks so goddamn goofy and weird.
I don't understand how this ever aired. It's not Naruto, it's more like looney tunes
This was art
Looks goofy as hell
I always loved this style to
This might have been the coolest episode of all time
I remember downloading this from dattebayo as a 13 year old after school, being blown away then going on /a/ to see all the hype threads only to realize in horror it was being dunked on mercilessly. There was no room at all to defend it cause you’d just get spammed by pain smear faces. What a day!
Breaking away from the animation, in-world physics, and art style was objectively a dumb idea.