Oshi no Ko

[Buffalobiian]

His calmness and everything is mostly to do with him being an adult who had a decent education, but not specifically about him having medical knowledge. Ruby's a kid who had an illness that meant she stayed in a hospital all day watching videos.

Aqua could have been an engineer, banker or a programmer at a firm prior to dying and it wouldn't have made a difference so far. Being an adult with a prior education helped Aqua. People skills in medical professionals are a bit of a hit or miss, even though we're technically taught it. (Even then it's basically "Listen to people" and "be empathetic")

[neflight86]

Aqua's biggest 'cheat skill' in his reincarnation is his seasoned professionalism and life experience combined with and tempering his cynicism paired with his outward experience; that specific combination is unforeseeable and catches everyone off guard so far. Kids don't talk like that, no matter how edgy they want to be.

[Buffalobiian]

Episode 8 is being delayed by a week. Sad news.

[Kraco]

Episode 8 is being delayed by a week. Sad news.

Damn, that's evil.

[DarthEnderX]

I'm surprised there haven't been at least 3 delays, since they opened with a 4x long episode.

[MFauli]

Anyone seen this episode 7.5?

[Kraco]

Anyone seen this episode 7.5?

I watched it with a lot of skipping. It's a recap with some superficial interviews with Ruby and Aqua's voice actors. The episode was obviously thrown together very quickly. If it had had a lot more interviews with all the essential VAs, it might be worth something, but as it is, I can hardly recommend it. A waste of time.

[Death BOO Z]

skimmed through it.

a clipshow / plot summary with some "commentry" by the main duo voice actors.

I don't think it's worth the time.

[Death BOO Z]

maybe they had to do some last minute editing and record new lines for episode 8?

[Ryllharu]

maybe they had to do some last minute editing and record new lines for episode 8?

Universal issues across the anime industry more like. There's more series than ever each season, and the industry as a whole is struggling to keep up. Recaps are back in a big way to allow for some flexibility in the schedules. Or still reeling from the occasional covid delay.

That said, if this was a normal series, we'd actually be at episode 10.5 as of last week, since we got an 85 minute episode "1".

[shinta|hikari]

What's the news on anime industry in general? Any risk of a downturn in quantity and/or quality any time soon?

[Kraco]

What's the news on anime industry in general? Any risk of a downturn in quantity and/or quality any time soon?

Anime industry could actually turn up the technical quality with generative AI, if they wanted to do it. VAs are famous (within the fandom), so it could be risky to try to replace them, apart from some single line background characters, but it would help a whole lot with the graphical side of the work, I reckon. Maybe they are already doing it.

[Ryllharu]

They could probably cut out the in-betweeners with AI, but that also kills their pool of potential future key frame animators.

The abomination that Corridor attempted to shill saying they "made their own anime with AI" when they were actually overlaying live action shots with shitty anime AI filters makes enough of a point that it is a shit idea. There's plenty of funny AI Anime memes out there, but the anime industry should be smart enough not to squeeze out their future workforce.

Topics like this are things that Oshi no Ko likes to cover, but we'll see if they ever do.

[shinta|hikari]

AI is far too immature for the uses a lot of people imagine for it. Eventually we will get there, but not just yet.

[Kraco]

AI is far too immature for the uses a lot of people imagine for it. Eventually we will get there, but not just yet.

From the current point of view, automotive and mass production technologies were far too immature when Ford launched his factory, but somehow he still made history and changed the transportation world.

I don't know if you have been browsing imageboards of late, but AI generated anime style images are getting quite convincing. They would be very convincing in anime where the quality requirements aren't as high as in individual drawings. It would, potentially, allow lower budget shows to have decent action scenes, instead of the typical ones where all the opponents are "politely" standing still until the hero has beaten all of them. That being said, I do see Ryll's point as well, but in a budget-constrained world, you might not have a choice.

[Death BOO Z]

.... It would, potentially, allow lower budget shows to have decent action scenes, instead of the typical ones where all the opponents are "politely" standing still until the hero has beaten all of them.

I'm not sure it's a bad thing.
it also happens in dialogs (in [oshi no ko]) and it's a bit jarring that all the other characters freeze when someone is talking.

but it might be a good thing. or at least better than the alternative.

if the other characters moved during the dialogs, it would just be distracting, imagine them visibly breathing, what's the point? it doesn't add anything to the story, it's bussiwork for nothing. if there was a point to show the other characters reacting to it, the storyboard would have included a reaction shot.

same thing with fight scenes, the goal shouldn't be realism, it should be telling us something (or showing use something cool), so if the actions of the other opponents isn't relevant to that, then it's not worth the effort animating them - the active parts of the picture tells us what's important to look at, more actions is sometimes just a visual mess.

[Buffalobiian]

AI pictures need a fair bit of checking currently. I've seen pics of people with extra boobs or legs that go nowhere etc.

[Kraco]

AI pictures need a fair bit of checking currently. I've seen pics of people with extra boobs or legs that go nowhere etc.

You see that even in traditionally animated cheap shows, haha.

[shinta|hikari]

I am very familiar with AI art and generative AI in general. The vast majority of people tend to overestimate what they can do partly because they don't understand how they work.

[Ryllharu]

The tech behind them also does not replace proper basic composition and basic scene framing skills.

EX-ARM's anime is a good example of when all the required skillsets aren't present.

The author of Oshi no Ko (Akasaka Aka) is pretty upfront that the artist of the series (Yokoyari Mengo) is the main influence on the end result each chapter. She's very good at the overall scene composition to the degree that it influences the story beats back.