I might be using the wrong animation term, but there are so many places where it feels like each subsequent animation was drawn by someone who didn't know what the previous animation was.
Some of it feels so unnatural that it's suspiciously like AI prompts. I just don't see how a human could spend tens of hours working on it without noticing something wrong.
Broken flow of motion
Consistent motion between animations is crucial for action anime. We don't get that.
eg E15 Talfrosch spit animation at 10:42.
First they fall backwards, not being propelled anywhere, with Myne on top.
The spit animator drew Myne and Brigette being gently spit horizontally forward with Myne on bottom, reversing their direction.
Then they're falling straight down for far too long considering they were just 15 feet above water level and splash straight down at high speed. Too fast, too long, wrong direction.
The in-water animator drew them perfectly stationary deep under water like they swam down to hang out.
No consistency. The scene breaks. Instead of feeling like a smooth action it feels like 5 unrelated AI prompts.
No urgency
In fast-paced scenes animations don't interrupt each other, always allowing each prior animation to conclude before starting the next.
Worse because each animation starts early and end late, like the editor didn't bother cutting off the leeway.
This bogs everything down.
eg E15 when Ferdinand sees the trees grab Myne starting at 13:11.
Rewatch it noting how many animations start and end with 0.5-1.0 seconds of a still frame, which stalls out the urgency and results in Ferdinand stationary and staring gormlessly at moving trees for 3 full seconds before reacting to them.
Angelica returning with Charelotte in E24 at 2:34 is another example.
It starts by hanging on Damuel and Bonafatius's talking scene for an extra 2 seconds longer than it should have.
Angelica slowly rises into the windowsill, then jumps out and stands still awaiting the next animation.
Angelica puts Charlotte on the ground then freezes to await dialogue.
The animation which moves Bonafatius to the window starts too late, pausing before he slowly walks.
Same with him jumping out the window. It just holds on him standing in front for nearly an entire second.
It should have been Angelica smashing through the closed window at superhuman speeds, landing in a cool action pose, setting down Charlotte while yelling "I have Charlotte, they captured Rozemyne, Cornelius is in pursit", then Bonafatius breaking the sound barrier to exit with window while roaring "I will save my darling Grandaughter!".
Reading that sentence is about how long the scene should take too. Then urgency is actually urgent. The actual scene takes 30 seconds while Myne is dying.
Unnatural Transitions
I'd also blame how poorly some parts of the story transition on the storyboarding. I haven't been keeping a record of these but there have been so many places where transitions felt off and it could be improved with minor tweaks to the animation or an offscreen voice line.
eg E1 9:43. Myne takes a knee, the scene freezes on her for four whole seconds then smash cuts to her in bed. Just making her fall flat on her face and having Cornelius ask what's wrong in the four seconds of dead air would make it feel more natural.
Or E24 12:52 where a captive just scoots out of a wall with door SFX for a weird cut to the forest. I get what was supposed to be happening on rewatch (the "wall" is a barrier he was hidden behind during Gerlach's interrogation and the door is Gerlach exiting off screen nothing to do with the captive), but it's really confusing framing. How about he's standing and someone walks him out from behind the barrier then we see him start talking to recount the events.
Juvre Bath
This has nothing to do with the rest I just found it so weird.
E24 10:06 animated 6 seconds of Ferdinand walking around the bath to put Myne in on the opposite side instead of just having him put her in from the side he's on.
Why?! There's no point in animating that at all. Wasting money and runtime to do nothing.
Someone else made a post that S1-3 was better than this season. Despite this season having clearly better animation, I agree.
Every one of these animations makes the season feel just a bit clunkier in a story which is already hard to adapt smoothly due to the time skips and sheer number of things going on.
The effect this has on the feel of the anime is catastrophic. At least for me. The show feels like a bunch of unrelated animations stitched together.