The Fall 2026 Anime Preview Guide

The Painted Soul

In a world where a select few are able to bring paintings to life, Yun Hwa is a struggling apprentice. Fearing she'll fail her promotion exam, she sneaks into a restricted area—only to accidentally release the notorious criminal and Spirit Painter Seol Jin from his painted prison. Romance, comedy, and adventure ensue.

The Painted Soul is an original Korean animated series produced by Imaginus and Rakuten Viki. The anime is streaming on Rakuten Viki.

This premiere might've only been roughly half the length of a typical episode of anime, but it felt like an eternity. The Painted Soul is not a show and even as I sit here writing this minutes after finishing episode one, I can't even bring myself to fully believe that it is real. But it is and I get to tell you in excruciating detail exactly what transpired from what I was able to garble together. This is a story about a young girl who wants to make it as a master painter in a world where paintings can manifest themselves to life. She is loved by many, but still struggles in order to accomplish her goals before she ends up having a chance encounter.

On paper (see what I did there), that's not a terrible setup for an interesting story that relies on literal and figurative manifestations of art in order to move the plot along. The problem stems from the fact that this show violates almost every conventional rule of artistic understanding. I am someone who can barely draw to save my soul, but I can confidently say that I have a better understanding of what makes a cohesive animated outing than the “staff” that put this mess together because it quite literally violates almost every single rule. The main character has a face in an art style that is different from every other character. Shots do not last for more than two seconds at a time, and every other scene is riddled with continuity errors as if this was a series of gifs that were just slapped together in sequence. The animation of all the characters looks wonky and unnatural due to all of the exaggerated motion tweening.

There is not a single moment of quiet in these sixteen minutes as characters will either talk over each other, repeat themselves within the same sentence or will immediately speak after another person finishes their sentence. Almost everything I was listening and hearing felt like a distraction from something else that the episode was doing wrong. The very nature of this show's production and how it goes about telling its story negates the very idea of the story that it is trying to tell. I can't believe it, but I found it, one of the worst things that I think I have ever had the displeasure of watching in the years that I have worked for Anime News Network.

Now that the inciting incident has passed, it's time for the show to really establish a bit more of the story's foundation. This episode actually makes the attempts to give scenes more specific intentions. I say attempt because once again, the show fails fundamentally to actually apply any of the tools or knowledge that it is trying to utilize for the sake of telling something cohesive. In fact, while this episode didn't feel as long or drawn out as the first one did, I think it fails to accomplish a lot more.

There are a lot of scenes here meant to establish a bond between Yun Hwa and her new master as dual protagonists. There are attempted training sessions and attempts at comedy that completely fall short due to how sporadic the episode cuts between moments. I either can't get a firm grip on what the characters are looking for in each other or the show will overplay a trope repeatedly for the sake of beating its intended effect over my head. There's a lot of talk about flow and trying to feel things out, but every other minute, I'm not really sure where the characters literally are. By the halfway point, once it transitioned to a completely different area to showcase other characters who are, once again, in a completely different art style, I thought I had blinked and missed something. But it was just a really awkward scene transition that cuts back-and-forth to the main characters at the most poorly communicated times.

All of this, and I still barely understand what the goal actually is. I know that Yun Hwa needs to use this man in order to be a skilled painter, but I don't know why she wants to do it or even what exactly it is she needs to do. The show is both trying to throw all of these scenes and moments at me without actually giving me a reason to care. This show is the equivalent of random noise or dangling keys in my face. Yes, I am technically watching something moving and hearing sounds, but my brain can't register any of it because there's no consistent flow that everything is following. If episode two was supposed to convince me that this wasn't one of the worst things I've ever seen, then it did a bad job of that.

For the myriad technological, environmental, ethical, and moral problems this technology represents, it must also never be forgotten that “artificial intelligence” (at least as we currently understand the technology) is fundamentally incompatible with the concept of art. Generative A.I. models are, even when operating at maximum capacity and effectiveness, only ever capable of stealing and regurgitating the work of actual human creators without any perspective or semblance of true intent. By definition, art must be an expression of thought, emotion, or communication that is being transferred from one living being to another. A computer can only produce an inchoate slurry of meaningless words and images that will never cohere into a genuine vision. The product only exists to fill the troughs of ignorant content consumers while corporate fat cats get to line their pockets even more. That's why we call it “slop.”

It is impossible to review The Painted Soul without first acknowledging that it is, on a fundamental level, insulting slop. One does not even need to know that the team behind the series has proudly flaunted their “A.I. assisted” production model to understand this. To merely watch a few consecutive minutes of this drivel is to understand on an instinctual level that one is looking at soulless nonsense. Every single pixel of the screen is stuffed with too much detail, almost as if a robot without the capacity for judgement or taste was responsible for compositing the picture. Every single character, including our heroine, emotes with an uncanny robotic smoothness that truly becomes disturbing to look at. With their overdrawn eyes and freaky mouths, it looks as if the entire world were populated with the monsters from those Smile flicks.

The editing and framing of the shots are perhaps the worst of all, though. At the beginning of the episode there is the simplest sequence in the world, where heroine Yun Hwa walks through a bustling market, and literally every single cut is just wrong. Fundamental cinematographic principles like the 180-degree rule are just ignored, not because the creators of the show wanted to try something experimental, but because the thing that produced this nonsense has no sense of the consistency and spatial reasoning required to trick the human brain into thinking that these moving drawings are actually real. Later on, when Yun Hwa is rambling on, and we have to watch the camera cut incoherently between her and the little bird-thing that's hanging around, she stuffs the bird into her pocket, and the show can't even keep straight which arm she is using and what angle she is holding the damned creature.

I've seen a lot of terrible, terrible art in my time writing for Anime News Network. I've seen art that offended me, art that bored me, art that wasted all of its good potential, art that insulted my intelligence, and art that existed only to shill for some misbegotten product or another. This is the first time that I've ever watched a show that I can't even consider “art” to begin with. If any human hands and minds did actually contribute significant work to the writing, animation, music, and performances, that's a damned shame, because it's all been lost to the muck of the slop swamps.

I already wrote several hundred words about why I feel that The Painted Soul is worthless trash that isn't worth the time of any real, living human with functioning eyeballs. This second episode does the show no favors, since all of the overanimated GenAI trash in the world can't compensate for the fact that the show forgets to animate moving mouths for its characters half the time. Characters change locations, positions, and line-of-sight with absolutely no rhyme or reason. It all looks just functional enough to fool a random viewer who might catch ten seconds of the show while scrolling through their TikTok feed, but it is essentially unwatchable for a viewer who is paying even half-attention. Then there is the fact that the incoherent editing and nonsensical framing of most scenes make the act of watching the show feel indistinguishable from experiencing repeated traumatic head injuries.

This is normally where I would go into more detail about the ins and outs of the episode's writing, direction, and so on, but I refuse to engage with this thing as if it is a genuine work of art. Maybe a real human being wrote the poorly acted and scripted lines of dialogue that fill the space during that endless scene of Painter Girl and Pretty Boy screwing around in that wheat field. Maybe genuine, living eyeballs worked on storyboards for the stupid scene where Pretty Boy gets indignant about the inaccuracies of his wanted posters. Maybe an actual person – with, like, a government I.D. and everything – gave the once-over to that final scene where all of the Clutch Cargo looking assholes are flopping around like they were in a tacky ad for the latest gacha game that is already in the process of drafting its end-of-service announcement. To all of this, someone might cry foul and claim that I am being unfair to write off this entire production as soulless trash that I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemies.

To that, I can only respond, “Well, that's just too fucking bad, champ.” Anyone who wants to brown-nose this glorified tech-demo is free to plant their asses right in front of the Good Little Piggies Trough and gobble all the slop up for themselves. Meanwhile, I remain free to call foul on this morally repugnant waste of energy, natural resources, and human dignity. If this is the supposed future that we're all being led to at Silicon Valley's gunpoint, then may God be merciful and just lay me down in the Earth right here and right now.

I'm trying to be fair about this. Really, I am. I imagine myself as a teenager—a kid with stories to tell, absolutely no artistic talent, and even less money. I would have jumped on AI animation fast and hard to bring my ideas to life. I wouldn't have cared about the ethics of how the AI was trained or what it would mean for the anime industry if AI animation became the standard. I'd just be enraptured with the new technology and how it looked better than anything I could ever do on my own. So how can I condemn The Painted Soul knowing that? Well, this series wasn't exactly produced by a lone teenager in their free time.

All other concerns aside, The Painted Soul is simply an inferior piece of animation. Rather than elevate the final product, the use of AI detracts from the story compared to if it had been traditionally animated.

Directorially, it's a complete mess. Because AI animation costs money based on the length of the shot, almost all the shots in the episode are unnaturally short. And because each scene was rendered independently of the others, there is a lack of continuity between each—and that's before getting into the physical impossibility of some of the things we see on screen.

Let's break down a single scene as an example of these problems, starting with physical impossibility. Our heroine, Yun Hwa, is being bitten by her pet bird on her right butt cheek. Then we get a close-up of her left hand, impossibly reaching across and around the front of her body to grab it. Next, as if to showcase the lack of visual continuity, we see a close-up of her turning to her right and putting the bird in her bag—only for her to be leaning straight forward in the next shot. And to cap things off, across this entire scene, no shot lasts for more than 4 seconds—with most being two seconds or less.

Instead of the filmmaker controlling the medium, it is the medium controlling the filmmaker. The limitations of AI animation technology decide how this story is told visually rather than the vision of the creators. Every shot is a compromise on the original idea. With each, the human element is lessened—the “art” removed from what's on screen.

I could go so much more into this episode—talk about how the characters' eyes never seem to be looking at what they should, how AI blurring artifacts are clearly visible in many scenes, how the sub-par English voice acting is probably the best thing about this show—but, unfortunately, I haven't got the time. I have another episode to watch, and I'll be damned if I'll draw this out any longer than I have to.

I wanted to try and say something nice about The Painted Soul—something that it was doing well that most AI animations struggle with. So I looked at consistency across shots—do the characters stay on model? Do the locations retain their details and layouts? And I was let down, as the answer is no on both counts.

When it comes to Yun Hwa, while she does stay recognizable, the length and placement of her hair shifts between shots. Other details, like which shoulder her bag is on (or if it's a backpack) or whether her robes are tied left-over-right or right-over-left, change as well.

For the backgrounds, similar things happen. For example, while the general layout of Yun Hwa's room remains rather constant, the details shift. Sometimes the shelves in her room are empty; sometimes they are not—sometimes they have built-in dividers. This is absolutely a show where the closer you look, the worse things get.

However, I can say at least one positive thing about The Painted Soul—and, unsurprisingly, it has nothing to do with the AI animation. I like the magic system. The idea of being able to paint things into reality—including living things—is a cool one. Learning the ins and outs of what can be done and how is something I would enjoy… if it weren't contained in a package of pure AI slop.

Simply put, no one should watch The Painted Soul. It's a show that showcases all that's bad about AI animation—all the ways it falls short both creatively and technologically. It is my greatest fear that people start watching it just to see how terrible it really is—and the show's investors mistake morbid curiosity for enthusiastic interest. Unless we want more garbage like this in the future, this show should simply be ignored and then quickly forgotten.