Why Dragon Ball Daima looked so GOOD

Hey, my favourite Fortnite character got a show. Dragon Ball Diamond from the millisecond the rough storyline on this series was leaked, already had the scorn of half the fanbase. But visually, I think this is the most appealing Dragon Ball has ever looked in a TV series. Now it's hard to find a place to start, because everyone knocks it out of the park. Colour design, perfect. Animation, excellent. Seeing our favourite green man in the style of the 23rd Tenkaichi Budokai, 10 out of 10. Thank you Kubota. And so yeah, first up is the star of the episode, a big reason as to why the drawing quality looks so good, Chikashi Kubota, who is the chief animation director aka supervisor for this episode. So it's his nostalgic art style that defines a lot of it. If you've watched my videos before, you know I love this man with a passion. I mean even before it was an anime and was only available in manga form, he was drawing the little monkey boy. And he's been described as a By the way, that's Toshiyuki Inoue, the same guy who animated a large part of the classic bike chase scene in Akira and the opening scene for Ghost in the Shell, and now works for Studio Ghibli. Like when one of the most respected animators in Japan is pointing out how much of a Dragon Ball fanboy Kubota is, that's saying something. He's also been a big advocate for 2D animation in Dragon Ball. He's the reason there was a 2D intro at all in the last movie, and really showed how skilled he was channeling the various eras of Dragon Ball's art style with that flashback section, whether the Red Ribbon Army Arc or Cell Arc. He also has a ton of experience from One Punch Man, Naruto, Gurren Lagann, Space Tandy, FLCL, so many series that have been known for crazy good animation. Like he's the prime choice for flashbacks, he understands Dragon Ball's design language, whether bulky defined Ziz era, or chubby boy Goku era. And that's pretty obvious when looking at these drawings, Kubota just doesn't miss. Like it's so cool to see the art style from the 23rd Tenkaichi Budokai replicated so well, and not look… sterile. I've mentioned this pet peeve in older videos that whenever previous arcs are redrawn, they're usually done in whatever is the current style. A quick look at Z or GT proves that, and it's a valid approach. But when it came to the era of Shine and Lego hair with the late 2000s and early 2010s, that's debatable. Switching back to the first cut, it's very well animated. And it might seem random because… it is. But there's really good attention paid to the physics of the hair. Like here, after a fast action it will like flop down, settle, fall back, then Kubota kinda squashes the front and has the rest all go to the back. Goku does have quite chunky hair so by drawing it like that, it better emphasises the weight of it. And when he kicks you've got other animation principles like follow through and overlap. So after the primary action, Goku kicking, the hair of course being much lighter keeps moving after. There's that small delay. It's pretty impressive as well because highlights can stiffen up a soft object like hair, so for Kubota to make it feel not like Lego bricks, does take skill. And yeah, when you put it all together you have this really nice and loose motion. That's also definitely helped by the well placed smears, a good understanding of fundamentals like spacing and timing. But also the strong posing. These look so cool. And the next section is really beautiful in it's own right as well. Clever transition. I also love the directional choice to lean into the Chinese watercolour style background art that you saw early on in the manga and anime. But the colour design is what brings it together. You've got some basic colour theory, warm vs blue. A common way to create depth and contrast between the subject and background. Very rich hues as well. Good hair animation by Kubota again. You can see it actually like comes out then settles in. Same with the tail. Again the drawings are so nice. Then quick Raditz cut. That's appreciated. Do find it lowkey interesting how Kubota didn't draw him in the art style of the arc he comes from like the previous section. Definitely a bit of a hybrid approach here. So like the eyes are rounded more like the Saiyan arc but then it's more closer to the Cell and Buu arc for the anatomy with the blocky shapes. That does seem to be his favourite era going off fan art he's drawn so I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. Now next up is an example when every department locks in. Pete Kubota art. The Cell one in particular draws heavy from those classic Toriyama illustrations. It's fun to see his shading style make it into the anime. Probably my favourite Cell drawing I've seen since Z. The compositing also is super nice. Definitely adds that extra layer of depth. Then the idea to light up every character in their respective colours isn't groundbreaking but man it's an effective directional choice. And yeah that's just the intro. How much of this episode is left to cover? Again it's not just the animation that makes this look great. The way light is portrayed is so on point. As the various flashback scenes play there's soft rim lighting around the character's head that subtly changes colour depending what's on screen. And at the same pace the various scenes appear. You can see it so well in the next cut. There's this colour shift in his hair and it's like timed perfectly to the centre of these two images. The staff even pay attention to the roof colour. It goes orange and then back to white when the walls appear in front. Same with his boots as well. Like it's such a small detail 99% would never notice but it's so good. And the characters are lit this way the whole time. It's a great eye to detail. So shout out to the photography director now Yuki Wada. Yeah so many of these little details everywhere. Like pulling characters in and out of focus. It's such a contrast to Super which was just very flat in this area for the longest time. It's a prime example what staff can do when they're actually given the time to do it. Now for the animation side for those interested. Kubota obviously redraws like the majority of the Z stuff so I'm a bit conflicted on who animates what. Like for Goma this cut lowkey reminds me of Isamu Takara who is credited on this episode did a lot of animation on Dragon Ball Super Broly and has a very loose style to movement along with simplified drawings. But just a guess. Again Kubota corrects so much in this first section so it does make it hard to tell what's his own animation or just a redraw. Even on big names like Yuya Takahashi. And it's a bit surprising in his case because he of course loves drawing everything in the Buu arc art style as well. Even if it means ditching the character sheets. But yet he's still really heavily corrected. But when the drawing quality is this good I have no complaints. And I mean what's there to say that I haven't. It's so on point. Nice variation in width for the lines. The sharp touch to it gives an aggressive feel to the art. But drawings aside it's exciting to see a more animated take on these scenes. The zoom out and background animation adds more dynamism and depth. Super nice inky Nakamura-esque impact frames. Takahashi's effects seem to have been left untouched. And the Marge and Vegeta fight section which was originally done by Master Hero Shimanuki is a much more animated and looser take on the fight. Love both though. Moving forward peak Piccolo art. Then to Vegeta's sacrifice animated by none other than Shun Sawaii. Which I love. I was racking my peanut brain wondering why that name sounded so familiar when I first heard it. And then I realised that he was the guy I talked about in the MAPPA's Dragon Ball animation is crazy video. Yes the guy who drew that Z parody scene in a MAPPA baseball anime made it onto the official thing. And thanks to an invite by none other than Kubota. Curious as to who else he might invite on in the future. He does have a lot of connections. It also makes me curious as to how much of Sawaii's own art made it in. Like he's really skilled in his own right when it comes to replicating Toriyama's style. And not just this arc as well. The guy is very underrated. He also did some fan art to celebrate the airing of this episode and it's crazy on point. I also do prefer the slimmer manga-esque faces compared to the chunky look that the animator behind the original Z scene Toshiyuki Kano loved to draw on everyone. Even kids. But out of all the flashbacks this is the one that's a bit less animated compared to the original. Like with Sawaii's there's sort of a simple pull away instead of all the cool background animation Kano did. And the nice swirly effects animation around the explosion is instead just a glowing lightbulb here. Framing in the layout is a little flatter as well but minor stuff. Both are good in their own way. Then there's some really smooth boo animation. This is done through a heavy emphasis on tight spacing and uniform timing. Which requires a lot more drawings and work but you also really have to pay extra attention to volume consistency. But it does look nice when it comes together. There's also other animation principles like squash and stretch. Which you don't really see that much in Dragon Ball or TV anime in general. It's definitely more so a technique used a lot more by western animators. But for a boo it couldn't be more appropriate. It helps in giving that very bouncy energy to the motion. Probably the most animated boo has ever been. It's currently presumed to be by Takumi Yamamoto. Happy he's back. He animated Vardock's death in the Broly movie. He was also a regular on Dragon Quest Die so guessing he'll be a regular on Diamond. But yeah it's so great seeing these moments reanimated. Some of this stuff is 1 to 1 with the original panels. Could talk about it all but I kind of want to avoid this video being an hour long. So back to the current day stuff and there's a lot of attention paid to character animation. The staff are so good at articulating each character's personality. Like when Dr. Arisu walks in. The walk cycle is slow. The posing and facial expressions are relaxed. The shoulders, a feature that can communicate a lot about a character, have this exaggeration to them. Notice how they're moving like right back and forth but also again at this slow pace. She instantly comes off as a very confident character, perhaps even slightly arrogant. It's something that a still drawing bouncing up and down just doesn't really convey. And it continues on. Throughout this section she's always striking these confident poses. Hands on her hip, then the head is tilted up, eyes looking down, raised eyebrows or arms wide out. And very specific posing to the hands, often with two fingers against the palm. She's always changing expressions, nothing's ever static and honestly that goes for everyone else here as well. Like you could mute this whole scene and you would still get a good understanding of each character's personality just through animation alone. This scene's presumed to be by Miyako Tsuji as of recording and if it is, I think this is some of her best work yet. Even outside that scene everything's very animated. Like when Degasu gets up there's strong arcs to the movement. Or the goofy run they do when they're surprised. There's this smooth movement and smoke animation. It's so good. This is why despite this section being dialogue heavy, it never feels boring to me and consistently remains engaging. And yeah that's only part A. And I feel like the second half, switching back to the art side of things now, is where you can notice the style of Takeo Ide a bit more. After reading this tweet, that explains why. Now he's the animation director for this episode but sits under Kubota in the production pipeline. So that means you sorta get a mix of styles because after the animators submit their work to him, it's then rechecked by Kubota who might add additional adjustments to the first correction. Now Ide's a big old school name that's been around since the original Dragon Ball series and I don't personally have much to say about him. I love the expressivity to the episodes he supervised on Z. There's few supervisors that could match it. Honestly a tragedy he didn't supervise more often. But his work after that like in GT, Super, the Heroes anime, it's just in the middle for me. Don't really love it, certainly don't hate it. And that's the same here, like the drawing quality is totally fine, but just nothing to kinda go in depth on. So let's skip to the training between Goku and Vegeta. This is animated by Toru Iwazawa, a webgen animator who I did not expect to be on Dragon Ball. Iwazawa is an action specialist and works with big names like Tatsuya Yoshihara, he was recently the action director on Chainsaw Man, and Shun Enokido. Coincidentally two people who I was just talking about in the last video. But yeah he's been a regular on Free Ran by Studio Madhouse, which I'm sure everyone knows by now how beautifully well drawn and animated that show was. And actually storyboarded some of the most popular bits of action there, and where you literally had anime's biggest action animators all together. Keiichiro Watanabe, Hironori Tanaka, Shingo Yamashita, Tatsuya Yoshihara, and the absolute GOAT, Yutaka Nakamura. And what's even crazier is he was the one responsible for bringing some of those names onto that episode, which you might guess makes me pretty excited for Diamond's future. Like I know it's a long shot, but if he did happen to like storyboard a future episode, and brought on someone like Yutaka Nakamura onto Dragon Ball, I would be like recreating that scene of when Speed was in the Philippines. Chicken in hand, standing on table, yelling at nothing, all of it in that order. I mean I guess it would be his second time on the franchise after that random appearance on Z Movie 5, but a modern Nakamura debut is definitely deserved. Anyways, fantasies aside, yeah the guy is an action specialist, which of course suits pretty well for Dragon Ball. And because of that you get a mix of old and new to this fight. Like the storyboarding is very traditional Z stuff, where there's these big tight close ups for whenever a character lands a hit, then it's medium and long shots for when they're either going in or just after they've landed something. Which makes sense since the storyboard was sketched out by Yoshitaka Yashima, who's from that era. But at the same time you've got that modern flavour like with the effects work. It's very Webgen-esque with the kutsuna lightning, very flat shape design with a simplified look, circular shockwave effects and Nakamura inspired impact frames. He actually said himself that he added this beam struggle with these two classic attacks because he wanted to see it in the style of this era. Which as an animation fan makes me happy, it instantly stood out to me in the trailers, so happy to know now who did it. For the rest of the action, punches are weighty, some interesting approaches to impacts, like with intense chalky lines for blows, that's pretty different. A little similar to Takahashi in Super Broly but way more intense, and lots of little neat effects when fists clash, the blue sparks and the multiple shockwaves are cool, and speaking of cool, the posing again, ticks that box. There's still other solid cuts of animation in this second half, but this section by Iwazawa is the most noteworthy. There is also Ken Otsuka doing a small slice of animation, he worked on Super a bit and has been on many big mecha and shounen titles, so curious if he'll be around for future episodes or if this was a once off. In general this episode had a very interesting mix of animators and in different positions, like this Toei animator Hideki Nagashima, what he actually animated I don't know, but he worked on like one episode of Z and never touched the series again until now, he started all the way back in the mid 80s on Fist of the North Star, so definitely an older name, but then you have guys like Iwazawa and Sawaii who both started around 2015-2016, then positioning wise like Tsuji and Ide who were chief ADs on Super, very high up, but then you switch over to this production and the majority of Tsuji's focus on this episode was animation, there was a little bit of assistant AD work, but nothing major, and with Ide he's just a regular AD this time. Tadayoshi Yamamuro, the highest up on Super out of anyone, being the show's character designer and supervising director of animation, all he did on this episode was second key animation and for like one cut. Meanwhile Takahashi and Kubota who didn't really do that much work on Super until near the end, are very involved this time and now as chief animation directors, now I'm sure Tsuji and Ide will be a chief AD on future episodes, but still interesting. Also while we're talking about directors, I may as well summarise my thoughts up on this episode's one, Aya Kamaki. I like her use of strong colours, there's a lot of atmosphere to the various locations we travel to, my only minor nitpick is the music placement at the end, like you have this super upbeat cheering music, meanwhile there's all these dramatic visuals, the darker shading, the wave glass filter, the slo-mo effects, even the drawings, Krillin's like screaming out, it looks painful but then it's just… I guess for Goku and Vegeta it's fitting in their case, in comparison it's much more cartoony in direction, their bodies are layered with heaps of bright colours, the drawings are more rounded and exaggerated, it's very different in tone, but guess they had to play the ending sometime. Now the final person of mention is Yoshima, I kinda like his art on Z, Super, not so much, but his story bores I'm pretty happy with, he really gave a good sense of scale and with that grandeur to the Demon King's crib, the throne room and especially Kami's lookout, it feels much more majestic than how it's usually presented, being further away from the camera, showing the horizon line and adding a layer of clouds below. Overall it's a great episode on all fronts, I mean yeah first episodes of any series are usually very polished, even Dragon Ball Super's first one was fine, before crumbling a few episodes later, but of course knowing how many great staff have been gathered for this and the time they've had, I'm sure we'll have many more amazing looking episodes up ahead, but with that, thank you for watching and I'll see you later.