TOEI ANIMATION is one of the most recognized animation studios in Japan, it was the studio that was in charge of adapting Dragon Ball, Digimon and One Piece, which is the anime I will talk about today. Everyone who has seen the One Piece anime knows very well that it has always been very irregular with respect to the quality of animation. Many times the animation is very bad, to the point of being too flat and aesthetic, or with totally deformed drawings, but also, when TOEI manages to do a good job, it can get to make spectacular adaptations.
Many people complain about this kind of mishaps and irregularities regarding One Piece's animation, without taking into account one of the most important aspects regarding animation and that very special and important aspect is TIME. Time is necessary to be able to make something of optimum quality, not so much money, although it is quite important too, but TIME is still the most important thing in this aspect. Especially because One Piece is a weekly anime, that is to say, a chapter comes out every week and that is why the workers in charge of animating each chapter of One Piece work against the clock.
Making a single chapter of One Piece can take months, even those chapters of dubious quality, it takes a long time to make, but even more those chapters in which you can notice an increase in quality of animation, color and character design. Another important thing in this aspect is the direction. In One Piece, as well as in other anime, there are several directors in charge of adapting the chapters and each one of them has a very different vision on how to show the manga scenes in animation. This is also a very important role in any kind of adaptation, the vision of the director and how he works with his animators, is very important when it comes to doing a bad or a good job.
Many times TOEI hires smaller animation studios to do certain aspects of a chapter, so that they can take some of the work off the main group of animators, and they can do better things.
But TOEI, since the beginning of the current One Piece saga, which is "Wano", finally opted to use other types of resources, which has totally changed the animation formula in One Piece, bringing us what is possibly the best One Piece arc, with respect to animation, in recent years.
TOEI is now working on the One Piece chapters digitally, since until just 1 year ago, they used the conventional animation style, that is to say, on paper and sheets, now they do everything digitally. Saving more time and making better results. But in addition, TOEI is now hiring freelance animators from all over the world who make spectacular animations, never seen before in One Piece, so it has greatly improved the style and quality of this wonderful anime. Of course, sometimes there are chapters with certain moments in which the quality drops a lot, but it's still pretty good, plus, as I said, One Piece is a weekly anime, which gives their animators much less TIME to make the chapters with the quality they would like, but still manage to do an admirable job.
I may have been an infrequent viewer of One Piece, but the legacy it has left in terms of story and character development is the stuff of legends.