Anime Fall Season 2009 preview

 

My season ‘preview’ of sorts is not so much about simply copying the synopsis and other trivial data, but about my expectations on the upcoming titles, I’ll leave out all series which are mass-produced low-quality anime in my eyes. And sadly that applies to many titles of the fall line-up, though there are also some promising anime by the usual suspects like Bones and Production I.G. around. But overall it seems to be one of the weakest fall seasons for years, a lot of cheap sequels and a lack of original projects show the uncertain condition of the current Japanese animation industry.

 

High Expectations

 

♦ Kuchu Buranko

It’s the ‘noitaminA’ series of the season and further by the same team who were responsible for Mononoke, namely director Kenji Nakamura and character designer/animation director Takashi Hashimoto working with studio Toei. If you’ll find anywhere creativity this season then it’s certainly in Kuchu Buranko, I expect refreshing and inventive visuals in the same vein as Mononoke. But not only the presentation will be great as the synopsis reads very interesting, too. The original material is Hideo Okuda’s Naoki award-winning-novel, it’s great to see acclaimed and more serious literature turned into anime besides the usual superficial light-novel stuff.

 

♦ Darker than Black: Twins of the Shooting Star

One of the few original projects of the upcoming season and sequel to the first DtB by talented director Tensai Okamura. It’s very rare these days that the original creator and the director of a TV series are one person, but that can lead to very interesting results as there are lower restrictions to the creative process. The animation is produced by Bones (respectively the team of season 1), so I’ve no doubts that the quality will exceed most other series.

 

 

Medium Expectations

 

♦ To Aru Kagaku no Railgun

I didn’t watch “To Aru Majutsu no Index” as it’s a typical light-novel adaption in every aspect and far from being anything special with the usual poor directing and trite script, but there’s one thing that makes me confindent that this spin-off will be more than a typical unimaginative bishoujo series. To be exact, it’s the participation of Tatsuyuki Nagai (Toradora!, Idolm@ster Xenoglossia, Honey & Clover 2) who happens to be one of my favorite directors for this kind of material. His sharp approach on directing and his emphasis on character animation to make the characters lively through multifaceted animation makes the comedy so much funnier and the drama much more engaging than in the usual bishoujo/moe stuff, especially the episodes he directs himself have a wonderful sense for gags and interesting character acting. I only hope that the material proves to be worthy of this skilled director…

 

♦ Seiken no Blacksmith

Don’t know why manglobe chose to do an adaption of a generic light-novel instead of doing another interesting original project, but that has probably economic reasons as it’s easier to get a project with successful source material funded. Studio manglobe projects are always highly interesting since staff from all over the industry comes together. The PV shows decent animation quality, though as usual ups and downs are to be expected, depending on where the episode is produced and who is the episode/animation director. Director Masamitsu Hidaka has a decent record of works to some extent, but the generic source material sorf of limits the potential.

 

♦ Kobato.

Another Madhouse Clamp manga adaption supervised by Mori Asaka (Card Captor Sakura, Chobits, NANA, etc.) and directed by Mitsuyuki Masuhara. Latter has still to prove his skills, but the rest of the project staff is certainly promising with character designer Hiromi Kato of “Clamp in Wonderland 2” fame and the experienced scriptwriters Nanase Ohkawa (Clamp member) and Michiko Yokote. The animation quality will probably be not too high as manga adaptions are usually of secondary importance to them, but middling Madhouse quality is still better than most of the other stuff out there.

 

♦ Kimi ni Todoke

Manga adaption by Production I.G. It’s the first job as series director for Hiro Kaburaki who did some decent work on “Welcome to the NHK” and “Le Chevalier d’Eon”, but nothing too outstanding. Apparently it’s not a high priority anime for I.G. in the vein of their original projects, though the quality of their works never disappoints anyway.

 

♦ Anyamal Tantei Kirumins

Despite having a weird premise, this one could be a surprise. It’s an original project by Shoji Kawamori (Macross, Basquash!, etc.) and directed by talented director Soichi Masuo (Scrapped Princess), produced by Satelight, Hal Fim Maker and JM Animation. They seem to go with the current trend of ‘uber moe’ little girls in cute costumes, but the execution could be pretty good due to the promising project staff. Director Soichi Masuo is someone who did a lot of interesting work in the past, and Hideaki Anno even invited him to do storyboarding for “Evangelion 2.0”.

 

♦ Fairy Tail

Fairy Tail has certainly a lot of potential, not only due to the nice source material, but because of Shinji Ishihara who really knows how to direct action stuff. Recently he did a lot of outstanding work on “Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood”, particularly on the fight scenes which have a great sense of perspective and staging. Recently both Satelight and A-1 Pictures delivered pretty mediocre works (especially animation-wise), so I hope they make good for that with Fairy Tail.

 

♦ Tatakau Shisho: The Book of Bantorra

The trailer is pretty promising with lots of nice animation / backgounds and clearly shows Toshiya Shinohara‘s (Kuroshitsuji, Gunparade Orchestra) directing style. The studio david productions is pretty young and consists mainly of ex-Gonzo people. Quality-wise I don’t expect that the quality of the trailer will be uphold over the entire series as their former works are rather weak in terms of animation, although the synopsis sounds more interesting than in most other upcoming anime and I have faith in Shinohara’s skills as director.

 

♦ Jungle Taitei: Yuuki ga Mirai wo Kaeru

Adaption of Osamu Tezuka’s classic “Kimba the White lion” with some very interesting staff members like Goro Taniguchi (Code Geass, Planetes) and screenwriter Osamu Suzuki.

 

 

Low Expectations

 

♦ White Album 2

I haven’t come around to finish season 1 yet, but the episodes I’ve seen were decent and much better than any other anime by Seven Arcs. The presence of Kou Yoshinari (character designer) and his animation is one of the reasons for this, so I hope we’ll see more of his work in season 2.

 

♦ Natsu no Arashi! Akinaichuu

Another unnecessary sequel, I wouldn’t mention it here if it weren’t for Shinbou‘s directing.

 

♦ Winter Sonata

A joint production of Japanese and Korean companies so I don’t expect too much quality-wise, though it could be a welcome change at least regarding story and content.

 

 

The rest of the upcoming series are of little interest to me since they are either cheaply produced and/or the 100th incarnation of the same garbage.

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Must-watch animated game openings: Part 1

 

Animated game openings are one of the fields in commercial Japanese animation that offer regularly remarkable works thanks to the usually higher budget and lower time restrictions compared to TV animation. In many cases, game openings have also been a chance to give great animation artists more freedom in creating their work, therefore I want to highlight some exceptional game openings in this entry.

 

Let’s begin with a great animator and illustrator who has worked on many game intros and created some of the finest examples of this kind, namely Kou Yoshinari. He’s one of the most famous and skilled active animators nowadays and the twin brother of You Yoshinari, another great animator usually working on Gainax projects.

 

Akiiro Renka Opening (2005)
The opening for Purplesoft’s eroge “Akiiro Renka” is a good showcase of Kou Yoshinari‘s style and work procedure as he tends to do the digital processing of his shots himself to give the animation some kind of three-dimensional CG look. That’s a great way to enrich the visuals with the additional substance of CG works without loosing the advantages of hand-drawn animation (in particular the more refined movements). His animation is always very dense and fuller than in most other Japanese productions which makes his work very distinctly looking and often mistaken for CG work. This opening is certainly not his best work as there’s little movement in the first half, but as I said it’s primarily a showcase for his style and besides there are some bits of very good animation in the second half as the two other animators are his twin-brother You Yoshinari and Noriyuki Matsutake.

 

Director / Animation Supervisor: Kou Yoshinari
Key Animation: Kou Yoshinrai, You Yoshinari, Noriyuki Matsutake

 

 

 

Flower Album Opening (2001)
It’s basically the same here: Kou Yoshinari‘s usual fluid animation and the digital processing gives the characters a strong three-dimensional feel and there’s also some shaky camera motion to get a stronger sense of realism, he did something similiar in his running sequence in Nanoha #1.

 

Opening Animation: Kou Yoshinari, Hironori Yamamoto

 

 

Muv-Luv Alternative Opening (2006)
This one is very interesting animation-wise, there are many sequences that are well worth seeing. I don’t know if Kou Yoshinari did also animation work himself as he’s only credited for “mechanical designs”, but some parts are so well-made that I’m pretty sure that he animated some scenes single-handedly. I really love the digitally processed explosions, they look the same way as in his stunning piece in Eureka Seven #49. One of my favorite parts is the projectile flying through the clouds and deforming them, it feels so real in every possible way.

 

 

 

Ghost in the Shell Opening (1997)
The opening to the PS1 game “Ghost in the Shell” is certainly one of the most famous game openings since it’s a work of pure brilliance. Many great animators – such as Kou and You Yoshinari, Mitsuo Iso, Toshiyuki Inoue and Koichi Arai – were working on a single project and the result is nothing less than spectacular. The director was no one less than Hiroyuki Kitakubo (Roujin Z, Blood movie, Robot Carnival, etc.) who certainly knew how to use the skilled animators efficiently. I think his approach on this opening had influence on the animators as Kou Yoshinari and Mitsuo Iso began to work in the same vein some time later, in particular doing the digital postprocessing and such of their shots themselves. The animation is also unusually full and every second is filled with amazing movement and details, especially Motoko Kusanagi’s animation is superb in giving the character a distinct feeling of realism.

 

Original Work / Character Design: Shirow Masamune
Movie Supervision / Director / Storyboard: Hiroyuki Kitakubo
Animation Supervisor: Toshihiro Kawamoto
Key Animation: Kouichi Arai, Toshiyuki Inoue, Hisashi Ezura, Toshihisa Kaiya, Toshihiro Kawamoto, Masahiro Koyama, Kazunobu Hoshi, Hiroyuki Horiuchi, Yasushi Muraki, Kou Yoshinari, You Yoshinari, Mitsuo Iso, Kouji Komurakata, Yuriko Ikehara, Kayoko Nabeta, Takayuki Hamana, Shigeki Kuhara, Akiharu Ishii, Masahiro Kurio

 

 

To be continued…

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Zan Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei #8 c-part: Gekidan Inu Curry

 

One of the most interesting things that I’ve come across in Shinbou/Shaft‘s recent work is the c-part of ZSZS #8 which was created by the independent team “Gekidan Inu Curry” (or alternatively Theatrical Company Dog Curry) consisting of the former Gainax animator Ayumi Shiraishi and Tanto Do-GA Studio member Yousuke Anai, but they normally go with their pen names “2shiroinu” [2白犬] and “Doroinu” [泥犬]. They are oriented towards Russian and Czech animation and thus usually focus on art films, but sometimes they also work on commercial productions, for the most part on shows directed by Shinbou who justifies the unusual art style of their work. Apart from some minor work on Bakemonogatari they are also responsible for the ending animation of Maria Holic:

 

 

In the case of ZSZS #8 they used a cut-out style animation combined with some pencil strokes, traditional 2D animation and digital effects, which makes for a very refreshing result for Japanese TV animation. It’s thanks to Shinbou that also more unconventional artists get the opportunity to expose their work to a larger audience. I get the feeling that he uses the SZS franchise meanwhile as a vessel for more bold and experimental work, though the other parts of season 3 I’ve seen (which isn’t much) aren’t that interesting. Actually I dropped the franchise after season 1 since the jokes and visual approach felt boring and reused after a while, but the kind of work shown in ZSZS #8 makes me curious again, so maybe I’ll check out some more of it someday.

 

 

But coming back to “Gekidan Inu Curry“, I’ve still to mention the work which introduced me to this two-artist-team, namely the animated promotion video for Maaya Sakamoto‘s song “Universe“, a stunning piece of animation which was created in cooperation with Production I.G. I really like the fancifully designed world, the nicely choreographed movements and the flow of the imaginative visuals with the music, every single image is really well corresponding to the beautiful song.

 

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Introduction

I finally decided to create a blog to share my thoughts on anime/animation and Japanese visual culture in general. I don’t plan to do any regular blogging on anime series or something as there are enough blogs which focus on that kind of stuff, but I’ll review the occasional outstanding episode and other things catching my attention. I’ll probably take a closer look at Kyoto Animation’s work every now and then and try to provide some insight in it and its creators. If I come along some exceptional animation or unknown shorts or any other things of interest for me, I’ll mention them in a compiled post if there’s not much to say.

So I hope that you’ll enjoy my blog entries and come back regularly.

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