Shenmue The Animation Announced

Shenmue anime production update / insight:

This is the Japanese account for Telecom / the studio producing the Shenmue anime. It appears as though they are urgently hiring a new animation director as of yesterday.

Not much I can pull from this other than the anime seems to be of top priority at Telecom, which is good to see. The only thing that concerns me (and I saw mentioned in some rt's) is: what does it say for the project that they are having to urgently hire a new animation director at this stage? Regardless, hoping for more info soon!

If you don't follow this account go and follow - looking at their feed it seems this will be the place for any progress info from the team themselves.

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Shenmue anime production update / insight:

This is the Japanese account for Telecom / the studio producing the Shenmue anime. It appears as though they are urgently hiring a new animation director as of yesterday.

Not much I can pull from this other than the anime seems to be of top priority at Telecom, which is good to see. The only thing that concerns me (and I saw mentioned in some rt's) is: what does it say for the project that they are having to urgently hire a new animation director at this stage? Regardless, hoping for more info soon!

If you don't follow this account go and follow - looking at their feed it seems this will be the place for any progress info from the team themselves.

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'Urgent': We're looking for someone who can supervise the production of Shenmue, which at this time, we are currently working on.

We have about 60 cuts that haven't been worked on yet, but I'm willing to discuss the number of cuts that can be worked on from 10 cuts.

I would be happy to discuss the sum of money (I assume salary?) with you in good faith, so please feel free to contact me directly via Direct Message.


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Not sure if I got that second sentence correct. I put it up on my Facebook to see if I was missing something so I'll update if one of my Japanese friends lets me know otherwise. But the first and last part are easy enough to work out.

I'll let you know if I get an answer from one of my Japanese friends on Facebook pointing out something I missed.

From what I read, it sounds like they're willing to negotiate with willing applicants as to the workload. 60 cuts that haven't been worked on. Which I'm not sure what that means in terms of the production or Anime terms in general.
 
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"Urgent": We're looking for someone who can supervise the production of Shenmue, which at this time, we are currently working on.

We have about 60 cuts that haven't been worked on yet, but I'm willing to discuss the number of cuts we can work on from 10 cuts.

If you have any questions regarding the sum of money (I assume salary?), then please feel free to contact me directly via Direct Message.


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Not sure if I got that second sentence correct. I put it up on my Facebook to see if I was missing something so I'll update if one of my Japanese friends lets me know otherwise. But the first and last part are easy enough to work out.

I'll let you know if I get an answer from one of my Japanese friends on Facebook pointing out something I missed.

From what I read, it sounds like they're willing to negotiate with willing applicants as to the workload. 60 cuts that haven't been worked on. Which I'm not sure what that means in terms of the production.
Thanks for this! Provides a little clearer context.

Can we assume..there are 70 cuts to be done in total then? From my knowledge a 'cut' is basically the last stage of a piece of animation before the digitizing/coloring/post production work is done. The animation director approves cuts and coordinates the work needed to finalize them. I guess we could assume they are about 15% way through production then? Pure speculation of course.
 
Thanks for this! Provides a little clearer context.

Can we assume..there are 70 cuts to be done in total then? From my knowledge a 'cut' is basically the last stage of a piece of animation before the digitizing/coloring/post production work is done. The animation director approves cuts and coordinates the work needed to finalize them. I guess we could assume they are about 15% way through production then? Pure speculation of course.
I'm still trying to work out what this means exactly:

未振り // I got nothing when I looked it up on Jisho.org...but got "Non-swing" when I looked it up on Weblio.

When I looked that sentence up on Weblio translate out of curiosity, it gave me this:

"There is a non-swing at 60 cut, and let me talk about a workable cut number even with 10 cut."

Which both makes some and little sense to me. If I had to guess, there are 10 cuts done out of a total 70 cuts but are they talking about possibly cutting further as they do use カット (the kana borrowed word for "cut") in that sentence too.

Or it's just as simple as he is talking about working out a negotiable number of cuts for potential applicant to work on?

Too many "cuts" make it confusing :D

If I were a betting man, I would assume that yes, there are 60 cuts not yet done and you're probably right that it's only about 15% done (which would make sense considering we haven't seen a single frame from it), but at the same time, I don't want to say this definitively because someone like @Switch will probably come along and correct me and say "no, it actually means this" :D :D

But seriously, I think I'm reading that right and I think it is saying there are 60 cuts not yet done, so I would assume you're 15% done guess may be correct.

I'm just not sure about a few aspects of that sentence. Namely the use of カット
 
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カット is also unfamiliar terminology to me... this page explains it as: "Cuts refer to a single shot of the camera and an average TV-anime episode will usually contain around 300 cuts."

Or it's just as simple as he is talking about working out a negotiable number of cuts for potential applicant to work on?
Yes I think that's it, they have 60 cuts to be worked on but they'll consider applications from people who can help work on at least 10+.
 
カット is also unfamiliar terminology to me... this page explains it as: "Cuts refer to a single shot of the camera and an average TV-anime episode will usually contain around 300 cuts."


Yes I think that's it, they have 60 cuts to be worked on but they'll consider applications from people who can help work on at least 10+.
Yeah. My wife suggested something similar when I asked her about it earlier. What remains a little unclear though is whether they have only prepared 60 cuts so far or whether they have completed all but sixty of those required. If it’s the latter then the anime might not be too far away. If it’s the former, however, we will likely have to wait quite some time before the show is ready to air. 13 episodes will likely end up requiring around 4,550 cuts which is considerably more than the 60 mentioned in the Tweet. Whichever it is, that they’re hiring a new animation director mid production seems a little ominous to me.
 
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"The Anime is also cursed !"
 
Perhaps they are looking for help because new guy wasn't cutting it or something personal may have happened. Either way, I am excited for this anime, and the fact it's even being considered is dope. What I don't want is this to be the way we conclude the series in any form of fashion. Though I am curious how involved Yu is and YSnet and if it can be a burden upon Shenmue 4 at any point.
 
Yeah. My wife suggested something similar when I asked her about it earlier. What remains a little unclear though is whether they have only prepared 60 cuts so far or whether they have completed all but sixty of those required. If it’s the latter then the anime might not be too far away. If it’s the former, however, we will likely have to wait quite some time before the show is ready to air. 13 episodes will likely end up requiring around 4,550 cuts which is considerably more than the 60 mentioned in the Tweet. Whichever it is, that they’re hiring a new animation director mid production seems a little ominous to me.
Unfortunately I tend to agree. Let’s hope for the best but a little worrying nonetheless.
 
I'm not start anything but wasn't this anime being worked on when Shenmue 3 was being developed? Corona Virus is throwing everything off.
 
Cool. If there are usually ~300 cuts per anime episode, getting someone in to finish 60 doesn't seem like a lot in the context of an entire series. Unless I'm missing something.
 
Sorry if I’m missing something obvious, but where exactly in all of that say they don’t have a director? I see they’re looking for help, but did they say they needed a DIRECTOR?
 
Something like "production supervision" might be a good fit for the type of work mentioned in the tweet ("作監作業"). In this anime-related interview, it is explained as involving checking & correction:

"There are many people who draw the master drawings, so the art styles are all different. Production supervision is the process of checking and making corrections".

Also relevant is that there may be multiple people carrying out this work on a project:

"Q: It's common nowadays to have several production supervisors, right?

A: In the past, it was normal for one person to be the director, but nowadays, there are a lot of production supervisors working on a single project, so it is the job of the chief animation director to ensure consistency."
 
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I hope the anime covers some of the lost chapters. I'd love for it to cover the events of third game and flesh the story out more but I don't think it will go further than the events of the second game.
 
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