The Animation of Final Fantasy V 

Apologies for the confusing repeat! The first upload had a couple tiny errors I wanted to fix. BUT while, I have you here: let me give a huge shoutout to both Ethan Budzynski and Bryce and Robot for the custom translation hacks featured in this episode's footage!

Fun fact, Bartz's sprite (2:23) was the base for the playable character in Terraria. In the original Terraria beta it was nearly the exact same sprite, but they made it more distinct later on. If you follow this to its logical conclusion, Terraria is anime.

Said it before and I'll say it again: Galuf throwing his amnesia away is a top-tier Final Fantasy moment. So goofy but completely earnest. It rules.

As someone who really appreciates the hard technical work that goes into pixel art (despite not being an artist), I really like this series. Do you think you'll go over the pixel remasters as well? There's some small changes to the sprite work in each of the remasters, especially one scene of FF6 in particular.

Oh nooooo, I get to watch this amazing content again? I get to sit and appreciate the nuances of animation in my favorite gaming franchise by one of my favorite animation channels?? Oh nooooooooooooo

Hey I've seen this one before! It's great!!

Not only is Bartz known as Butz in Japan, he's from the town of Lix.

I've already watched this twice, but I'll gladly watch again :P

Cannot believe I missed this one but I'm here now. Love this series of yours

Final Fantasy V is my favourite Final Fantasy even after playing the majority of the series. The character animations being soo goofy is a part of what makes the game soo charming to me. That and the job system just being fun.

each playable character’s bug eyed surprise pose in the overworld in this game will always be one of the greatest pixel art pieces of all time its so good

Time to watch again, for the analytics.

I keep coming back to these Final Fantasy videos!! I very much hope you tackle Crystal Chronicles at some point in your series, but if you end up not doing it, that’s fine too!

Just putting things into perspective, if each character has 243 battle sprites (and factoring in that Galuf doesn’t have sprites for the Mimic job because of narrative reasons) the total number of battle sprites for the player characters totals up to 1204.

I love this series so much, and I'm glad to see it continue. I binged the whole series up to IV last week during downtime at work, and was really excited to see this come out The use of videogames as a medium to create stories and experiences is one of my favorite subjects, and seeing a series grow like this is super entertaining and informative. Even a little inspiring, seeing how much they can do with such limited resources and simple techniques, and seeing them slowly expand their to improve their story telling capabilities I'm excited to see your video on Final Fantasy VI, considering the reputation of that game. Keep up the great work!

I've never played any FF game and yet I reeeally enjoy this series. Great job!

I swear, I've been waiting for this video for so long. It feels like a blockbuster movie just came out.

you better combine these all into one gigavideo at the end for us to binge! great work so far :]

All rise for the national Danthem!

I know this is not at all what's intended but I find it hilarious that enemies essentially punch you out of your outfit if you get KO'd. Anyway, great video!

Seen all the rest, excited to see this new one!

9:47 he looks like he’s flipping us off.😂😂😂

I just binge watched this entire series and it was incredibly inspiring. As someone working on a pixel art RPG very inspired by early final fantasy games, seeing what they could do even with all these limitations is incredible. Thank you for making this series!

HOW DID I NOT GET INFORMED ABOUT THIS UPLOAD!!!! I've legitimately watched every other video in this series at least 3 times each while I waited for this one to come out. RU-vid be YouTubing, but the bad way.

Making sure that the re-upload gets some traction hopefully

Commenting for a second time, because this video deserves all of the comments.

I just watched this yesterday, but ill rewatch it, just for you

Awesome. FF5 was a hidden gem, and a shame it was never officially localized for the SNES. The PSX port had so many loading breaks that it became a chore to play. Amazing video.

man, i've been looking forward to this one since this series started. v used animations in a way that oozed character and charm.

wonderful video, just as usual! I just... have a small wish. can you do a video like this for Chrono Trigger?

No way, now I get to watch this video twice!

This is the four-job fiesta version of the video where Dan, Dan, Dan, and Carrie all rolled Tamer

A suggestion for an animation to look at: Mario’s wall jump!

I love how everybody is commenting and rewatching it to not let youtube's algorithm bury this video ❤

This request is ahead of time. I'd like to know your feeling on how well Square reinterpreted the pantomime of FF7 when recreating it in a way that less pantomime is needed and if you feel that Square did a good job on re-imaging the character's feelings in a way that makes sense to the retelling. I don't expect to have this answer till you do your FF7 video. Its just some food for thought.

You said you uploaded it for fixing errors, but tbh I don't remember seeing any at all! Nevertheless, I will gladly watch this again :D

I couldn’t be more excited for your take on FFVI now, I can’t wait!

I predict the next episode is going to knock it out of the PARK, because fans know they pulled out ALL the stops before saying farewell to the 16-bit era.

I am guessing those tiny errors are the kind that only you would notice thanks to working on it?

A video so nice I'll like it twice. Good work and I love your stuff!

A video so nice you uploaded it twice ☺️

This video is great. A lot of modern games could benefit from doing this sort of stuff in them.

Already saw the first upload but might as well put this video on mute and let it play until the end And might as well repeat yesterday's comment: great video Dan, thanks

Love your videos!

Great episode, as always! Looking forward to next time, when you cover the best Final Fantasy! (Add me to the list of people curious about what the errors were!)

Yes!

awesome video, the animation of FF series is amazing

vi is next : )

i love the emotes and how they used them in cutscenes in ff5. best scene when they find out that farris is a girl

Floydsoft with the Day 2 patch.

16:37 "Now, if this were Final Fantasy XVI and that were Clive, that style of performance would be cartoonish and completely inappropriate, just the worst kind of overacting." It would also make the game ten times better and would only be topped by having actual Nicholas Cage portraying the character.

Which is gonna happen first, the end of this series or FFXVII? My money is on FFXVII.

Reposting my original comment: yay, finally!

As I said on the original, Final Fantasy V is my favorite of the mainline series.

My favorite one growing up! 4 and 6 had better plots and characters, but my god did 5 win on gameplay. I made SO MANY BUILDS as a kid. This felt like my first major Western RPG from an eastern developer with the massive amounts of expression and customization of the PCs.

See you again in a year. ;)

Seems kinda similar to your previous work

The point of pantomime is very interesting to me because I used to play these kind of games as a kid without understanding English. Not FFV specifically (which I played slightly older, with a TOTALLY LEGIT translation patch), but I played a lot of Chrono Trigger and Super Mario RPG as a kid and, even though I basically couldn't understand anything in the dialogue boxes, I could still follow along with the story and characters despite that. Of course, I missed tons of details and nuances which I only discovered later, but it is now surprising to me how much I understood of those story heavy games even though I couldn't read.

Said it last time, will say it this time - Thanks so much for the love and effort packed into this video. Truly a formative FF for me

Fun Fact: Final Fantasy V also features multiple ending variants. Depending on which characters are alive at the end of the final boss battle you get a slightly different ending.

A bit derivative but I'm here for it

I feel like FFV gets overlooked a lot in the grand scope of the series, but it does so much well and is for my money one of the most fun ones to replay.

"We're in a post-Final Famtasy IV world, and this ship runs on characters now" Truer words have never been spoken about this franchise

FFV is one of my favorite games of all time. The gameplay of the job system, of course, it a major factor. But, for me, it's also the fact that the game is just fun. I never really thought about how much the animation in this game really adds to the fun, but it really does. Everyone is so expressive in that sort of over exaggerated way all over the place. It's just such an always enjoyable ride.

Wow, you pointing out the animation load for one of these characters makes the inclusion of Krile in the story an even more interesting choice, given she's about 4 months extra work; at the very least it's an impressive amount of dedication to making interesting narrative choices even at significant cost.

I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts on the Super Mario RPG remake, and how it translates SNES-style pantomime onto 3D models

The Butz->Bartz name joke is sooooo good. :D So is the rest of the episode, but you know, that bit's probably my favorite.

When that "The Animation of Final Fantasy" title card dropped I got literal chills. Dan knows how to make animated letters look *sexy*

I watched it last night. As I said, I played this one around the mid 2000's and the funny and exaggerated animations is what made the game stick in my memory all these years. Looking forward to replay it down the line.

Copying my comments for the re-upload! Excellent work on the sprite upscaling, everything looks gorgeous! Square should be envious. 😀 Has it really been 15 months?? I'd complain, but the fact Dan has a whole other day job (and a whole other channel !!) and these videos are still so high quality makes them worth waiting for. Plus, it makes them feel like a real treat!

talk about deja vu

Already watched the rest of the playlist a bunch of times this past year, not gonna hurt to watch this one again! 😂

Hoo boy, I love this game. It's so underrated. If you're an RPG fan and you've not made time for Final Fantasy V, please do. It's a super special little game that deserves more love.

A video so nice you gotta watch it twice

Happy to see this one finally make it across the finish line (for reals this time) - and with such a svelte runtime, no wonder it's taken time! Excellent work as always, excited for the eventual dive into FFVI. It's a bit of a shame we won't get to stop by Mystic Quest along the way in this series, but its pretty immediately recognizable how the overworld sprite theatrics of FFV fed into that game's general vibe.

I've loved all of these thus far but, being honest, I'm really charged up for the next one on 6.

9:45 I dunno, Faras flipping the bird while spellcasting does feel telling lol

a very bold move to make a video on the original AND the 1997 re-release so close to each other, i respect the hustle

can not wait to see you analyse the masterpiece that ff6 is. That game was pretty much the first time an rpg game made me fall in love with simple sprites and yet, 15 years after it's initial release, i was in tears watching many scenes of that fantastic experience.

As I learn more about early film, I find it really rewarding to compare it to early video games in their progression as a medium, working around technological limitations, storytelling styles, etc. The fascinating thing is that pretty much as soon as you get consistent use of close-up, you start seeing very subtle and naturalistic acting. You see this a lot more by the 1910s ("Shoes" 1916 is an interesting example, and also a counter to the idea that it was all slapstick comedies. Heck, many comedies lacked slapstick). Since film was mostly using human actors (barring animation and animals), I think it jumped over the barrier of relying on pantomime a lot faster than video games could. My favorite thing is that you can often read actors' lips, including for jokes that aren't otherwise indicated. For example, Miss Lulu Bett (1921) has a gag where a bratty little girl is sneaking downstairs to spy on the action, and her blustery dad tells her to go to her room. She starts going up the stairs sideways with her feet in between the rungs, the way kids do, in the background of the scene. A minute later her dad turns to her and you can see him mouth "I told you to go to your room!" with her retorting "I *am* going!" I think Final Fantasy V or Chrono Trigger could probably pantomime this kind of exchange, but I wonder at what point video games reached the animation level where you could read their lips... maybe not until the 2010s.

the note on gestures and pantomimes in acting reminded me of ballet mimicry!! in ballet, since there is no other way to express story other than the dancer’s movement and the music, gestures are really the only way to communicate any exposition needed. there is a defined set of arm movements that communicate specific things-one of my favorites being arms crossed, fists clenched and held lowered in front of you, which means DEATH. they’re pretty silly and not super obviously meaningful without context, but it really adds so much to the storytelling ability of ballet, just as wordless cutscenes in FF games communicate!! these actions are huge and dramatic, often accentuated with giant facial expressions and dramatic blocking changes, but that’s the only way everyone can notice story beats in a wordless medium :)

FFV's animations are really cool. They would've shone even more if the story was actually good.

About those somber or sad moments, I think they work so well even within the cartoonish and generally "funny" looking style, because after spending a few hours watching characters in this style, and although at first glance everything might seem non-serious (especially when you're just coming out of a more realistic looking game), this style becomes the baseline on top of which all other emotions are then "modulated" upon. So, you'll get used to the style and when things turn sad all of a sudden, even though the characters still look funny "from the outside", you're already tuned to another wavelength, and things can seem very sad by contrast. (PS: sorry, horrible grammar :( )

i like how krile's cat ear hoodie in ffxiv is based on her white mage sprite in this game (and how they decided only krile should have cat ears as a white mage lol)

"Butz"? Well, you know what they say - "if something smells, it's usually the Butz". Also, if there was room, I'd name him Laurice.

I was really hoping you'd look at Mystic Quest which came out in between FFIV and FFV.

...Damn, I guess Dan had Doublecast up before hitting publish

I want modern JRPG with this level of expressiveness. Octopath Traveler 1 body acting was kinda bland, which made most cutscenes very dull, and Bravely Default despite it's emotional story, has very little facial animation to convey stuff. (The solemn visual styles of those games also don't help...) Ahh, how much i want the modern JRPG that would convey the bright Final Fantasy V feel, like Slayers anime, the one with Lina Inverse. Classic Shounen JRPG.

Well I guess I am watching this one again today :D

FARIS IS BEST BOY!!! 💖

Another holiday, huzzah

Dan makes a point about character not being expressed in the poses and then chooses as an example the one where Faris is flipping a double bird while prepping a spell.

I am pretty sure I watched this one yesterday.

I really love how much appreciation this series is giving me for every one of those titles. I haven't played all FF games and there is such an honest desire to improve, experiment and grow visible so far and I freaking love it.

I cannot wait for my favorite Final Fantasy, VI, to be discussed! incredible work as always, thank you!!

This series of videos is what got me to play Final Fantasy, haha. I like to put them on in the background while drawing. If I had a nickel for every time a video about a game's animation got me to play that game, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, and quite frankly I'm surprised I wouldn't have more.

Butz

Hey Dan! This series is so compelling and you make these games so interesting that it makes want to play these games. Even though I actually dislike 2D turn-based heavily story-driven games, so I'm actually not going to play them, but you present this in such a way that makes me want to.

I know you worried you were coming across as "the sonic animation guy" for a while, but Dan... Speaking as a guy who followed you from nearly the beginning of EC, this series feels like magnum opus material. Relevant, all-encompassing, and something I will enjoy on both an academic and pure entertainment form. When the full series to the modern day releases, the movie-scale full watch of all episodes will be magnificent.

I feel like I watched this yesterday.