I ran through the game again quickly* to see if the gear stayed if I didn't mess up the save by trying to load after beating the arch mage, but not only does it happen when I select new game without loading my old save, I also got the bug where the camera is focused outside of the map. But apparently that bug can be gotten out of simply by opening and closing the menu.
Regarding the animations, I think what happened is that you're using the idle sprite as one of the two frames of walking sideways, and that logic got carried over to walking up and down as well.
Also disregard my comment about "starting gear"; I'd missed the dagger myself and didn't see the streamer pick it up, so I assumed he'd started with it as a spellsword.
*shield+turtle+slam kinda OP