Fifth episode of the second season of Jujutsu Kaisen served as the conclusion of the arc of Hidden Inventory/Premature Death Arc“, before the beginning of the “Shibuya Incident Arc“. Although this fifth episode surprised with a dramatic development that culminated in the breakdown of the friendship between Satoru Gojo and Suguru Geto, it seems that many were not impressed and noticed something quite particular in this episode: the animation and style were different.

Many fans refused to believe this, perhaps blinded by their fanaticism for the franchise, but others were able to observe and simply compare the most recent episode to the previous one, you can notice a pretty obvious difference.. We can even review some comments about it:

• «Is it just me or do I feel like this episode had very different animation?».
• «I really loved the direction of this episode, and while the animation was poor at times, the story certainly made up for the visual shortcomings.».
• «The animation and art style seems to change pretty much every episode, I'm personally the biggest fan of the animation and art style in episode 4 of this season. Season 1 also had some art style changes every few episodes.».
• «Considering how much money they invested into making the first four absolutely stellar episodes, it makes sense that they would have this one done through another studio. The animation looks a lot more rushed and less detailed, that's for sure.».
• «Jujutsu Kaisen fanboys will dismiss any criticism, but it was definitely a worse anime than the previous episodes. I don't think that really took away from it, the good scenes had fair to good animation».
• «Have they run out of budget yet? OMG the animation quality has dropped so much».
• «While I really enjoyed this episode, I understand the criticism. I saw somewhere that this episode was drawn mostly in 3DCGI and outsourced to save money. The animation was the same as always, but I think you're referring to the inconsistent art and pencil drawings, which also felt rushed and a bit cheap at times, and it was very obvious. But I loved the direction this week, which can make or break people, so the art part wasn't really a big deal to me.».
• «Now, the whole episode had a really bad look at the character animation. Is admitting this fact (you can literally watch any other episode and notice it) so hard? I just said that the episode is still great, but they shouldn't downgrade the animation quality of the other episodes.».

Anyway, we're not gathered today to talk about the quality of the latest episode of Jujutsu Kaisen, but a situation that involved Takuya Niinuma, a freelancer who was in charge of the animation direction of this episode.. In case you're wondering, the criticism wasn't exclusive to the West, but comment forums in Japan also made mention of this and more on social media.

It seems the animation director was aware of the criticism, as netizens discovered that he had shared a post from someone else who wrote: “Occasionally I notice that many people use their love for a franchise to defend their attacks on the people who work for them, but I think that's wrong.».

It was definitely a tip of the hat to Jujutsu Kaisen fans who were criticizing his work in the fifth episode of the second season. Others went further and even checked the people he followed, discovering that he was a fan of much of the Chainsaw Man production team, which became further fuel for the criticism. It is worth remembering that no matter how popular a franchise is anywhere in the world, there will always be a group of anti-fans present.

It seems the pressure on the animation director was enough to make him delete his account and hope the bullying stops. As of this writing, he has already reactivated his account, but it appears he has deleted a lot of recent posts and disliked a lot of things. While it is understandable that animation may not suit the tastes of all viewers, it is reprehensible to harass the production team in this way.

Source: Yaraon!