Unironically what was already speculated years ago in /padt/:
>Staff was overloaded, Tomioka calculated that only Assh's battles were feasible to be made with the quality they wanted to make, the rest were to be shown in still-sketches
>Producers said:"Fuck no, show all matches or gtfo"
>Production imploded to meet their demands, got aggressively outsourced to chinks, stuffed with recaps and breaks
>Semi-finals was where the producers caved in because the anime studio just can't meet the deadline and made a compromise with Tomioka's original plan to make 4/6 of the fight still frames
