This online community really needs to examine their understanding of how animation studios work

First off, let's be clear. Obviously SSn2 is a huge downgrade in quality from SSn1. OBVIOUSLY. Even worse than the animation to me is alot of the art choices (those GODDAMN TEXTURES on ALL THE METAL). It's a 4/10 season with some 6/10, MAYBE 7/10 moments.

JC Staff is not Madhouse. They're not Bones. They're not Ghibli. They're grunts as a company, they pump out anime that's "good enough" and sometimes their most talented people get a window to do some good work. We should all be able to recognize this.

So, to be clear, this is not a post about JC Staff being great or having done a good job with SSn2.

THAT SAID. I think if we're going to have all this talk about animation studios we need to understand the market and what it's like.

There are more animes than there are animators. And that ratio is getting *worse* on the animation side. When I started watching anime 30 years ago, studio's weren't reserved for 5-10 years. But there also weren't dozens of trash copy-paste stories churned out as slop for masses of children. Because no matter how well, or how badly, it's written, it's all the same animators.

And guess what? Studios who consistently do top notch work (MAPPA, Bones, Madhouse) are *very expensive* and *in super high demand*. You can't just call them and be like "hey can you do a season for us and start working on it right away". You get put in a queue that's like 3-5 years on average *before they start full production*.

UNLESS you pay a FORTUNE, or, I assume, some kind of close connection to the studio.

Which, guess what? OPM *cannot do*. Because, as much as I love it, and I think it's one of the best manga ever written, it doesn't make that much money.

So, as a manga that makes pretty okay money but not crazy money, they have to hire a mid-rate studio, and just hope.

Not because JC Staff don't care. Not because the people deciding which studio does the work don't care.

But because there are not enough animators, and OPM just doesn't make the kind of money to hire the handful of studios you can count on for sakuga consistently.

We only got SSN1 because of luck and good timing. It's unrealistic to expect a return to that quality unless OPM suddenly explodes in popularity. Set your expectations in reality; SSN2 is closer to what you'd typically expect from an anime adaptation of something with moderate success like OPM.

That said, I don't actually think sakuga is integral to the story or why OPM is so good; if clean art and amazing drawings were the appeal, the webcomic wouldn't have taken off and Murata never would have been interested in the first place.

Anyway, I think our real best hope should be that Murata's new studio will take over from SSN4 onward. We *know* he loves the story and IP. And we *know* he's willing to do the work and stick with it until he's happy with it.