User blog comment:B214/High School DxD Hero Discussion/@comment-29963364-20180411014330

I love the new art style and character design (if those aren't the same thing).

What I don't love is the stiff and awkward animation. The character's movements are clunky, their expressions hardly change (if ever).

Seriously, everyone's expressions and reactions are bland or non-existant. Shalba's face when he's about to be blasted with [Longinus Smasher] is actually very good.

Issei's reaction to Shalba saying Asia's "dead" was inferior to how BorN did it.


 * When he's walking over to Shalba, his eyes weren't shadowed over, they were completely visible.

What makes my displeasure for this episodes' animation quality worse is because 1) the JD transformation sequence was actually very good (better than BorN), and the explosions & lasers were excellent. 2) I saw the previews for this series, and they were actually good, which means that Studio Passion can actually do better than this, yet they didn't. I can forgive this episode's poor animation (art, music & sound were actually good) if Passion makes future episodes at least as good as the previews. But if they don't, then they should've just stuck with the original studio. Although, if their saving their best for the ecchi scenes and the fights, then I can tolerate the rest being like this (since this part of the series is 70% ecchi and 25% action, that leaves just 5% to be bad).
 * His eyes still had "light in them." They should've had them glazed over (like Akeno's eyes in her vol.12 illustration). The whole thing should've felt like "oh shit, something in him just broke."
 * When Issei raises his head and begins the JD transformation, his eyes flashing green were good, but at least give him an "I'm gonna tear you apart" expression.