Off-Model: Difference between revisions

{{quote|''"I wish the art was good throughout the whole series, not just in the final episode."''

''"These days, anime has [[Animation Bump|good art]] in the first and last episodes, never in the middle."''

 

Animation is expensive. ''Really'' expensive. An average 22-minute episode of an anime costs around $123,000, when American shows tend to be about $300,000.<ref>It should be noted that most of this is not spent on the actual animation (depending on the show, some shows will have a separate budget just for the animation, like with Disney's and [[Warner Bros]]' works in the 80's and 90's), however. Considering it's done overseas (mostly for western shows), for the most part.</ref>

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqpJqq9U_ZA Every single one of the Pakistan Happy Meal ads]. All of the [[Sonic the Hedgehog|Sonic]] characters are missing defining traits and ending up looking butt-ugly, [[Crash Bandicoot|Neo Cortex]] looking like a creepy terrorist (and missing the N on his forehead), [[Hello Kitty]] looking fat and '''having a mouth''', and so on.

** And then notice how the [[McDonald's]] mascots keep changing their looks throughout each commercial.

* This commercial for [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdwB6LikUes a Korean Nintendo ad]. Not only does it manage to make this the video game commercial equivalent of [[Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue]], the animation studio ([[Dai Won]]) manages to screw up [[Street Fighter|Ryu, Chun-Li]], [[Super Mario Brothers|Bowser]], [[Dragon Ball|Krillin, Goku]], [[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1987|Raphael]]... Pretty much everyone except Mario and Buster.

* As if the show, comics and toys were not enough, the commercials of Transformers G1 also end up falling into this trope. Two in particular stand out; [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9-7RjhFzpM the very first one], using entirely different models for The Ark, Megatron and the Seekers. And [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OEEncGeu8s this one], which truly showcases how much of an [[Expy]] [[Super Dimension Fortress Macross|Jetfire]] was. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGj8B5xNEno&#t=0m29s This Chile commercial] also contains a grutatious amount of this trope, though this is because neither Toei or AKOM provided the animation.

** Mugen's sword would change in length, width, and curvature, sometimes it'd almost be a [[BFS]], other times it'd look like a scimitar.

** ''[[Ergo Proxy]]'', also a Studio [[Manglobe]] project, suffers from this same problem.

** Incidentally, the entire second half of episode 9 was animated in a different art style from the rest of the show (Compare Shinobu's eyes, chin, and hair from the first half). Incidentally, the artwork was actually somewhat ''better''. It might have been done to simply see if anyone noticed.

* ''[[Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water|Nadia]]'''s infamous "Island/Africa" arc resulted from a decision to extend the show. Like most filler, it fell victim to a slipping animation budget and rather bizarre "cartoony" visuals in [[Mushroom Samba|certain episodes.]]

** Sadly, after the success of the Ala Alba OVAs, the animation (and quality in general) went severely downhill in the second ''Mo Hitotsu No Sekai'' OVA. The third one was definitely better.

** For examples see [https://web.archive.org/web/20140913010232/http://bluemist.animeblogger.net/archives/negima-sakuga-tracker-asuna-version/] and [https://web.archive.org/web/20140928060323/http://bluemist.animeblogger.net/archives/negima-sakuga-tracker-yue-version/], as well as the infamous six-fingered Makie pictured above.

* The DVD sales for the second season of [[Minami-ke]] got cut in half by the power of QUALITY among other things.

* ''[[Dragonball Z]]'' had extremely varied animation quality. During the Saiyan Saga and most of the Frieza Saga, animation was high quality up until around the point Goku goes Super Saiyan. After that the animation style and quality begins to vary significantly and is most noticeable during closeups of Trunks upon his first arrival and throughout most of the Cell Saga. The quality of animation continued to vary throughout the the rest of the series (going from pretty bad to very good) but was less varied in the Buu Saga and ''[[Dragon Ball GT]]''.

** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieQDLa8pxMg The opening for Dragon Ball Kai somehow manages to forget the spots that appear on Krilin's forehead 22-27 seconds in] Also, since this is the third opening, the same mistake happens again towards the end. Some [[Sarcasm Mode|animation upgrade huh Toei?]]

* The first ''[[Hellsing (anime)|Hellsing]]'' TV series was notorious for this. Despite only being 13 episodes long, any episode that wasn't an excuse for awesome vampire battles was done pretty shoddily.

* The Greed Island Final [[OVA]] of ''[[Hunter X Hunter]]'' is noticeably Off Model, with lots of still frames and scaling of static "sprites" replacing actual animation.

* ''[[Moetan]]'' lampshades this in its first episode's ending segment, when Pastel Ink teaches the viewer how to say "[[Surprisingly Good English|It's great that the animation staff go all out with the quality of an anime's first episode.]]"

* ''[[Weiss Kreuz]]'' suffered terribly from Off-Model animation.<ref>This is the result of having a series co-produced by [[TMS]] and [[Studio DEEN]]</ref> Not only do the characters' faces and hair length change from show to show, a character's sunglasses are at one point drawn off-model and subtly shift back to a more accurate design as the scene progresses. Characters wearing single earrings frequently have them switching from one ear to the other - or even to ''both''. The show seems to take a demented delight in going off-model to the extent it becomes distracting, and not only does the art quality vary wildly from episode to episode, it randomly degenerates ''in the middle of episodes'' as well.

* ''[[Fate/stay night]]'' is generally a very good-looking show, but the animation takes a hit in a few episodes, such as the final confrontation with Caster. And no discussion of "off-model" in the context of anime is complete without [https://web.archive.org/web/20071008195340/http://www.avg-hotgame.net/blogview.asp?logID=185&page=1 this ghastly Chinese figure of Saber], which fans have nicknamed "Sader". Much fun has been had with the idea of Saber encountering this thing. In fact, there's a whole [https://web.archive.org/web/20120224131849/http://www.freewebs.com/aortic/fatekaranokyokai.htm doujin] about it ("Variant Tabi J").

* More than a few scenes in the [[Black★Rock Shooter (band)|Black★Rock Shooter]] OVA suffer from missing details, misshapen faces and stubby limbs being common symptoms.

* In ''[[Tokyo Mew Mew]]'', the ending theme had a problem with Minto's height. This is fixed starting episode 12.

** The animators also have a continuous problem of forgetting that Ichigo's garter is on her right leg and everyone else's garters are on their left.

* ''[[Welcome to The NHK]]'' suffers from this in places.

* The entire thirteenth episode of ''[[The Third: The Girl with the Blue Eye]]'' is incredibly poorly animated compared to the fairly high quality of every other episode.

* The ''[[Higurashi no Naku Koro ni|Higurashi]]'' anime often suffers from off-model. For one, the characters' heads always seem too large in comparison to their bodies. The second season fixes a lot of the mistakes of the first season, but towards the end of the season you can clearly see mistakes (though, in the final episode there aren't many). The third season is on-model, but it ''is'' just five [[OVA]]s. However, there are some errors in the OVA's. The most noticeable is that Mion is missing her tattoo in the first one.

** Some episodes, like 26 of the original series, featured intentionally ugly, psychotic facial drawings and animation courtesy of popular animator Seiya Numata which, like most popular examples of "bad animation" in anime, were mistaken for animation errors due to their loose nature despite the fact that [[Fan Dumb|they were completely fitting within the context in which they were used]] (literally characters going insane).

** The Umineko manga also has some really strange artwork in places.

* ''[[Mai-Otome]]'' had some QUALITY issues starting with episode 10, where some characters' faces would be drawn out of alignment (particularly noticeable during Shizuru's battle against Midori, and especially bad in one scene during episode 16, where one minor character's facial features are almost non-existent). Episode 20 (the one with the {{spoiler|Tomoe/Shizuru bedroom kiss}}) was a mess across the board, though some of the issues were fixed for the DVD releases.

* Just about every single Disney deleted scene ever made (with the sole exception being the [[Horny Vikings|"Viking prologue"]] from ''[[Atlantis: The Lost Empire]]'', for obvious reasons) will all inevitably suffer from this.

** Speaking of ''Atlantis'', pay very close attention to Kida's bracelet. When she loses it at the very beginning of the film as a result of her mother the Queen pulling it off her wrist so that the Crystal can sacrifice her, the beads are arranged as pink, blue, pink. When she finally retrieves it at the end of the film shortly after saving Atlantis from a lava flow and transforming back from her crystalline form, the beads on her bracelet are now arranged as blue, pink, blue (similar to the feathers attached to the backs of the tiaras worn by the queens). Also, during the finale the patterns on [[The High Queen|Kida's]] dress actually shift just right after the stone face representing her late father flies away in the sky, and the sash hanging down from the front of her dress mysteriously vanishes shortly afterward.

* ''[[The Secret of NIMH]] 2: Timmy to the Rescue'' features a scene where Timmy hugs his mother in a way that would only work if Mrs. Brisby's neck had the ability to be stretched back while her head and body stayed in the same place.

* ''[[An American Tail]]'', of all places, does this briefly during the scene where Fievel finds himself in a bottle. Right after Fievel sees a partially finished Statue of Liberty and before washing up on shore, he doesn't look much like himself and his fingers are bigger.

 

== Toys ==

* ''[[Transformers Generation 1]]'' may have had a reputation of being this trope in both comics and cartoon, but it should also go with saying that the figures themselves are not immune due to their heritage of being from different lines:

** Ironhide and Ratchet for instance, have proper heads in all non-toy related material, but their original action figures don't. This is because the original figures were made in Japan for a different purpose- ''before'' the concept of Transformers came into play. Those figures were meant to be "armor" used by human pilots, but the idea was shelved when the toys were re-worked into transforming robots. In fact, there are even Bot-con and fan surrogate modifications that can be applied to these toys to give them actual heads.

== Web Original ==

* ''[[Neko Sugar Girls]]'' is basically a [[Stealth Parody]] of this trope. ''Everyone'' is off-model, and it's done to an extent (combined with [[Gratuitous Japanese]], hideously annoying voice acting, and nonexistent plot) that the whole video series is obviously a parody.

* If it's not traced, then the animation in [[Elemental Goddess]] is this.

* In ''[[Pre Game Lobby]]'', a question about why the characters armor keep changing between scenes, with armor changing when the local Troll keeps asking when he's ever changed his armor. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etzQ-HR_uVg&feature=PlayList&p=612EC0EB6808E6AD&index=11 Can be seen Here.]

** In [[Non Sequitur Episode|The Mechanic,]] near the end, Batman's mouth suddenly wrenches open and his eyes dilate, going in opposite directions. This lasts a good second or two.

* The ''[[Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog]]'' series was prone to this, especially the "[[And Knowing Is Half the Battle|Sonic Sez]]" segments at the end of each episode.

** The worst episodes, animation-wise, would have to be the first one ("SSSSS Squad") and the second-last one ("Robo-Ninjas"). Their animation was quite grotesque.

** A glaring instance from the episode "Over-the-Hill Hero"; [http://i271.photobucket.com/albums/jj141/1downpoison/w-1.png Sonic's mouth area disappears entirely for one frame].