I loved the first ep of True Tears, and I liked the second ep at least as much. The outstandingly detailed animation of episode one was hardly diminished in episode two. Imagine my surprise when I read the end credits and found that the entire key-animation staff, as well as the animation supervisor and even the director of the episode were all Chinese. Now, I'm not going to go as far as some on 2channel and call this a Chinese anime: the director and writer and much of the other staff are Japanese. And director Nishimura Junji did the storyboard for the episode. But it is promising for consumers, and perhaps threatening for Japanese animators, that both Chinese and Korean animation has risen to the level that outsourcing to either country does not necessarily involve any drop in quality. Now we see how P.A. Works plans to keep up the high level of detail they gave us in episode one. The studio has been around for a while, but always assisting the main production studio. This is the first show they have taken on themselves.They grabbed a good director from Studio Deen, Nishimura Junji, and he brought in a top writer, Okada Mari. They established a high standard in episode one, using Japanese animators. And now they plan to maintain that standard using less expensive Chinese animation staff that they have perhaps developed themselves over years of assisting other companies.
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