I get it! 😛
First, actually these forums won't close, they'll just move to another address outside My Opera probably in a better format.
I bet the lack of GIF animations is linked to the Off-road mode. Currently Off-road works as if it is Opera Mini inside in the stable Opera for Android, what means enabling it will make the browser to not render those animations. So, if you enable it the animations will be gone, but you'll also notice most of JavaScript will too and compatibility problems are likely to appear.
You can use it, but don't take it for granted as they're experimenting with a new compression method in the Opera beta for Android that's possibly replacing the Mini level of compression in the near future, and it's less aggressive in order to maintain more compatibility, better user experience with full JavaScript and other animations in sites so the page isn't reloaded in every click like Mini does, to remove the need to login twice between Off-road on/off, etc...