Our main characters have been established, the world introduced, and so with season one of Boku no Hero Academia behind us, we can get into the really fun stuff.
With manga readers promising us an upcoming tournament arc, the 26 episode second season of this hit series seems like it'll only get better from here.
However, there's another aspect of this second season that's gotten me even more excited for what's to come.
You see, while the first episode had a good amount of recap, largely serving to get viewers
reacquainted with this story thus far and set up the events that will unfold from here...
It was still a really enjoyable experience, and one of the better episodes of the series up to now.
Because there have been some important changes for season two.
Something that became apparent pretty quickly was how much more expressive the animation is this time around.
While the first season had tons of moments of great hype animation and was often stylish and visually engaging...
There was a decent amount of it that was fairly flat or static, and relatively uninteresting to look at.
The first episode of this new season featured a lot of movement.
But more importantly, the movement featured had personality to it, informed us about the characters doing that moving...
And so served to not only keep things more visually interesting, but also to help us form a deeper connection with them.
From Kyoka playing with her earlobe... headphone jack... things?
To Rikido's body language expressing excitement as if he's warming up for a fight.
To all these other great little visual..... quirks.
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The opportunity to avoid just relying upon panning stills with lip flaps is taken often here.
And of course then there's the most fantastic example of this, the animated delight that is Iida.
A really endearing trade of Iida's is his tendency to have very expressive hands when he speaks.
With rapid, dramatic motions that convey to us his authoritative side, his decisiveness, his excitability, and how overall he's just kind of an adorable dork.
These are present in the first season, but a lot of those hand poses are a bit less dramatic, will sit still for longer periods of time, and in general they're just less common.
They're everywhere in this first episode.
This time around, they also feature tons of smears.
Making the animation bouncier and more fun, and also more specific to Iida personally as a speedy hero.
All of this elicits the question of "Why?"
What's changed between this and the first season to create this step up in quality?
And hint hint, it ain't a budget increase.
One noteworthy change that occurred is that Boku no Hero Academia switched over to a different Broadcast Network.
Which also may be why this first episode was as recap focused as it was.
In order to get potential new viewers tuning in to this more widely watched timeslot caught up.
This likely had at most a very minor effect on the production though.
So it isn't the change we're looking for.
Instead we need to look into the structure of Studio Bones itself.
Bones is actually made up of four sub-studios, A B C and D.
Each of them consisting of a core team that will be working on a specific project their sub-studio has been tasked with at a given time.
When Boku no Hero Academia's first season was announced, three of these sub-studios already had projects announced themselves.
And the fourth one was finishing up the second season of Noragami.
It's that team, sub-studio A, that ended up mostly moving right on to Boku no Hero.
With relatively little time in between.
And it's this tight schedule that ended up creating some difficulties for the series.
Time is actually one if not the most valuable asset an anime can have.
Most anime are produced as the series is airing, so without sufficient time to schedule, plan, and get a head start on production, they can fall behind.
Resulting in anything from somewhat messy, uncorrected animation like we got in Yuri on Ice.
To a lack of polish and details many Shaft productions like Madoka Magica had in their TV runs.
To a delayed episode in the worst case scenario.
Usually with some type of recap episode airing in its place because the team simply wasn't able to get it finished on time.
Superstar character designer, for my money at least, Yoshihiko Mikoshi, performed that role for Boku no Hero.
Adapting the original manga designs for animation.
And also served as animation director.
Meaning he'd go over the completed keyframes to do touch-ups and corrections.
But because of this busy schedule, he didn't get to have much of a presence for a good deal of the series.
Having to shift his focus towards just the big scenes from each episode as the weeks went on.
And it's only in the blu-ray version of the series that we get to see the thick harsh line work that's his trademark really show up in full force.
With its first 13 episode season being a success, the second season was given two cores.
26 episodes.
Putting the series in a position to follow in the footsteps of many of its fellow jump titles and receive a lengthy adaptation.
But that put Bones in a bit of a pickle.
You see, later this year, Kekkai Sensen will also be receiving a second season.
And that's a series that was also produced by Bones sub-studio A.
In a best-case scenario, attempting to produce these one after the other would result in an extremely claustrophobic schedule
that'd have a noteworthy negative impact on the quality of Kekkai Sensen season two.
And in the worst case, it would make that production just plain impossible.
So Boku no Hero was actually moved to a different sub-studio, sub-studio C.
Their most recent project was the two seasons of the Bones original series, Concrete Revolutio.
A series that was not widely viewed in the west, but which featured some absolutely stunning animation.
From, among others, one of if not the most well-known and highly regarded animator in the west, Yutaka Nakamura.
A resident of that sub-studio C, who should be lending his talents to the season of Boku no Hero now and blowing our minds once again.
Concrete Revolutio wrapped up in June of last year.
And while sub-studio C may have helped out on some other projects on the side a bit between then and now,
Li Borek let us know on Twitter just how far ahead of broadcast Boku no Hero Academia's production was.
With its 7th episode getting produced all the way back in January of this year.
Three whole months before the series started broadcasting.
This is the kind of production schedule you want.
This is what will allow Mikoshi to correct all the keyframes he desires.
To break out the sharpie magnum and add that wonderful line work to his heart's content.
Not just for the blu-rays, but for the broadcast version of this season.
A lot of the time bits of character acting like the stuff that impressed me so much from this first episode are things that get put there by the animation directors.
Those people checking over and correcting the keyframes.
To spice it up and add some personality.
And without the concerns of a looming time crunch, the need to just do their best to hold on and make this thing watchable?
This type of creativity and polish is something that people working on the series will now have the chance to add to it.
Manga readers have been telling us to get hyped for this season of Boku no Hero Academia
and let it be known that this anime production geek also gives it his seal of approval.
I've got a good feeling that this one can go Beyond...
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