Shit I Need Written Down

Stillness and Style in Neon Genesis Evangelion

Animation and motivation

This paper is about the way in which stillness is used in the unusual and popular animated television series, Neon
Genesis Evangelion (Shin seiki evangelion; Hideaki Anno, 1995-96). It also refers to an earlier and quite different
animated series, Record of Lodoss War (Lodoss do senki; various, 1989-91) to suggest how stillness has been
deployed in more conventional Japanese animated narratives. The paper concentrates on images of stillness in these
series. By images of stillness I mean those images without figure movement, not images referring to photographs or
paintings. In thinking about the deployment of stillness in these series I have been aided by David Bordwell's work on
film narration and Tsvetan Todorov's work on reading and genre in literature . The paper is underpinned with certain
ideas about animation, motivation, the cinema, and stillness which should be made explicit at the outset.

"Animation" comes to us via the Latin anima, which the Oxford English Dictionary glosses as "air, breath, life, soul,
mind". But that is not all—for anima is symbiotically related to a gendered partner, animus (a relation metaphorically
exploited in Jungian psychology). The feminine form, anima, moves from air to mind as the OED indicates; while the
masculine, animus, traces a line from soul to mind to reason to feeling to willing. These various senses of anima and
animus all have to do with motivation in one sense or another. The most fundamental test of life (a notoriously
inaccurate one) is whether things seem to move of themselves or not. This is motivation in its crudest form. It is also
life represented, life observed - animation in the sense of movie cartoons. In the cinema, motion occurs because of the
inadequacy of human perception. It is an observer dependent phenomenon: it does not occur when film images are
projected on a screen, but only when such images are observed by human beings during their projection. Thus we can
say that in the cinema, animation is a necessary product of film viewing. The viewers are the animators of animated
films.

A more common understanding of motivation is a psychological one: living things are motivated by thoughts, feelings,
desires. In the cinema, where images or figures or fictional entities are in question rather than living things, this kind of
motivation is also supplied by viewers, inferred or deduced from information supplied by the film. We believe that
characters act in the way that they do because we think we know what is going on inside their heads. Attributing
psychological motivation is, as I have described it, very like the simpler kind of animation involved in perceiving
movement on a film screen. Both are actions of imparting life, ways of making nonliving things live. In this case,
however, the activity of animating something psychologically is not specific to film viewing. It occurs in seeing, in
hearing, and especially in reading.

David Bordwell says that psychological motivation is the armature of the classical story in the cinema. By this he
means that when we see figures doing things in films, we assume that the reasons for those actions come from inside
the characters. Neon Genesis Evangelion is about a group of fourteen-year-old children who are uniquely able to
control the giant robots (EVAs) which have been created to resist a series of devastating attacks launched at earth by
beings with mysterious powers, called Angels. On a very simple level then, the actions of the EVAs, are explicitly
motivated by the children seated inside them. But, in their turn, each of the children is given a personal history and a
set of desires and insecurities to explain why he or she would particularly want to be an EVA pilot. In this way, their
actions throughout Neon Genesis Evangelion are assumed to be motivated psychologically.

In assigning such significance to psychological motivation, Bordwell explicitly aligns himself with such narratologists as
Tsvetan Todorov, who also describes a subspecies of classical narrative in which causality is primarily psychological.
Todorov also argues that causal chains can be as much, or more, strategies of reading as they are of writing. As in the
case of the cinema, certain signs have been put together in such a way that they invite or demand interpretation in a
certain way. That is, the child pilots of the EVAs do not have real thoughts or feelings, but we attribute thoughts and
feelings to their actions: words, expressions, gestures, intonation and the like.

Motivation in a broader sense plays a crucial role in narration as Bordwell describes it. Building on the work of Boris
Thomashevsky in literature, he describes compositional, realistic, intertextual, and artistic motivation in the cinema.
Viewers understand a number of reasons for this or that narrative element's presence in a film. Many episodes of Neon
Genesis Evangelion begin with characters getting up and having breakfast: the same music, the same actions and
even a continuing character (a pet penguin) cue a formal or compositional reading for the motivation of these
sequences. The actions and feelings of the child pilots of the EVAs in many ways resemble the actions of real
fourteen-year-old children: they are realistically motivated in that way. Child pilots of giant robots are an expected part
of a certain genre of Japanese anime: the children of Neon Genesis Evangelion are thus intertextually motivated.
Many shots in the series are strikingly composed and colored, drawing attention to their specifically artistic motivation.
As Bordwell discusses the various ways in which an element of film narration can be motivated, it is made clear that he
too is referring as much, or more, to reading, to viewing activity triggered by narrational cues - albeit a viewing activity
of which most viewers are hardly aware.

So, if one kind of animating viewing imparts motion to what is seen on the screen and another kind of animating
viewing imparts psychology to screen images, then a third kind of animating viewing imparts life to the viewed object
as a whole by motivating each element of it artistically, compositionally, intertextually, realistically. This tends to
motivate what we see as a message, an enunciation, an artwork: the visible effect of an unseen cause. In this case,
viewers often attribute the ultimate motivation for each element to an individual or institutional author: they make the
films themselves alive, living productions of some consciousness.

Stillness
At first glance, it might seem that still images would be the antithesis of animation in film: death to the cinema's life. Yet
the ideas I have just outlined suggest that there is, on the contrary, a definite living place for still images, for stillness in
general, within the idea of cinema as animation.
Historically, of course, this has been so. Without really thinking much I can recall at least two art cinema films based on
still imagery: La Planète Sauvage and La Jetée. In these cases, the films were intended to be animated by motivations
which the viewer attributed to a succession of still images.

Moreover, there is a tradition of recognising and writing about still imagery in art cinema, especially in the films of
Yasujiro Ozu. Here too, the stillness of the images is motivated, and even animated with a kind of life, by those who
observe them and then write about the reasons (authorial, stylistic, cultural) for what they have observed. Commonly
accepted accounts of art cinema narration, like those of Steve Neale and Bordwell, stress that art cinema differs from
Hollywood cinema precisely in the way in which the former downplays action in favour of other kinds of image
motivation (psychological, artistic). These ideas imply that art cinema emphasizes inference over direct perception and
cultural knowledge over common sense.

At the same time, there is another, less ethereal, motivation for still images within an animated film, and that is
stinginess. Frame-for-frame, stillness costs less than motion. Limited animation, which in this paper is called near-still
imagery, is one of the distinctive elements of the cheap made-for-television cartoons of the fifties and sixties, a period
when it seemed as though the commonest animated image was one in which only a mouth moved (sometimes, as in
the series Space Angel, a photographed human mouth). Neon Genesis Evangelion and Record of Lodoss War were
also made-for-television and were also subject to financial constraints, which is one reason that they make extensive
use of still images. Much of the cheap television animation of speech had the indirect and probably unintended effect
of making the spoken word more of a significant source of the animation of the image than it had been in the kind of
cartoons viewers had been used to seeing in movie theaters. The only animated part of the face, the mouth, was
motivated by the words the character spoke. Everything around the mouth was still. In such shots it was as though the
voice animated the entire character through its effect on the motions of the mouth. As we shall see, this effect has
been extended and amplified in the series under consideration here.

Rick Thompson has pointed out to me that one of the principal intertextual motivator of much of the imagery in
Japanese anime has been printed manga. The strong relation between these media is one of the ways in which
Japanese animation has been until recently quite different from its American counterpart. Manga cartoon styles are
imitated and adopted in virtually all anime, not just the ones based on previously published Japanese comic books.
Anime also regularly engender manga. Manga, which almost always feature extreme and exaggerated emotions, may
also be a principle source of the intensity of character's feelings in anime—that is, of anime's parallel emphasis on
psychological motivation. In a certain sense, manga images also motivate the stillness of still images in anime. Still
anime images act as cues for viewers to recognize a manga heritage in what they are watching.

Still imagery in classical Japanese animation

When I first saw Japanese television animation, some years ago, I was impressed by the way in which overtly still
imagery had been incorporated into an action-oriented narrative style that now in most ways seems to conform to
David Bordwell's well-known account of classical narration. The narratives of these programs are organized according
to what Todorov calls the mythological principal in which the reader's interest is ... driven by the question What
happens next?. Actions, shots, characters seem designed exclusively to propel the narrative forward to the resolution
of some dilemma proposed at the outset. This also seems to be the case with their use of still and near-still imagery.
One example of this kind of series is Record of Lodoss War, which follows a group of adventurers in a fantasy world as
they battle to save their land from the forces of chaos.

Arguably, the most interesting use of still imagery in Record of Lodoss War and other classically narrated series occurs
in action sequencesDwhere one might least expect it, and where its use most clearly distinguishes animated action
from the live action of other films. The stillness in these action images depends first of all upon the stillness of the
figure or figures in the image: combatants frozen in mid act. In one variation, the film frame (the camera) is moved over
or around the still figure(s). A still figure may appear to move diagonally simply through the motion of the film frame
over the figure, for example. In another variant, an abstracted background appears to move while the figures remain
still. Figures charge and jump in this way, with the background blurred in their implied movement. Another kind of still
figure in action is animated by lighting effects (strobing and flashing, for example) and other processes which affect the
whole image (a moving abstract design layered over a still image, for example). The result, of course, is a moving
image in all cases, not a still one. Yet at the same time, it is clear to any viewer that a different kind or level of
animation is being applied to these images from the standard animation of moving figures, and that a key element of
this level of animation is to be found precisely in the stillness of the figures upon and around which these animating
techniques can be observed.

In many cases, it seems to me, the near still images used in action sequences are intended to evoke another
dimension, a space time distinct from that of the mundane diegetic world. Thus in fantasy settings they are often
associated with magic; but in other settings still action imagery seems to suggest the experience of power beyond
normal understanding. Perhaps this is the reason that these images are so often sensationalized with overlain effects
in the way I have described. The combination of overlaid sensation with underlying stillness, neither corresponding to
the filmos construction of everyday reality, gives rise to a feeling of disturbance, a sense of being in the presence of a
state that defies familiar explanations.

Although this kind of ostentatious animation of stillness is applied in action sequences in a classically narrated series
like Record of Lodoss War, stillness is also noticeably used in that series, and others, for transitions and to underline
significant moments within the narrative action, very much in the way that near still imagery is used in the films of Ozu
and other postwar art cinema directors. Although other usages of still imagery occur with great frequency in classically
narrated Japanese anime, these types of still image stand out because they are noticeably still. Their stillness is
foregrounded in the narration.

The story of Record of Lodoss War is a Tolkien like quest in which an alliance of disparate races (humans, elves,
dwarves) and occupation groups (fighters, clerics, magic users, thieves) must overcome numerous perils and setbacks
in order to defeat many powerful and cunning enemies before the entire land is overrun with corruption. Behind the
spread of chaos are forces our heroes can only dimly comprehend, including the beautiful and manipulative Grey
Witch, whose poisonous counsel has seemingly influenced all sides in the struggle.

The very frequent still images of transition in Record of Lodoss War correspond neatly to what Todorov calls iterative
discourse, those written passages that are used to express continuity, the ways things have been and will be. Still
images of landscape or cityscape over which the film frame moves often begin and/or end a sequence or an episode.
Transitional imagery of this sort reinstates narrative; that is, it figures a location as a state which is to be (or has been)
transformed by action. Although I am describing what happens like a cognitive reading, affect suffuses these images.
Their static stillness is felt rather than interpreted.

The still images associated with significant moments of the story suggest something portentous happening or about to
happen; a still or near still image may be displayed just before a character utters a particularly important speech, for
example. Such images also suspend the action, stretching out the passage of time; and, like the other images of
stillness discussed in this section, they are often marked by the absence of dialogue on the soundtrack. These images
are sometimes revelatory - as is true of the other still images I have described - their stillness apparently intended to
incise the moment of revelation. In a still or near still image, we may be made aware that a hidden character is
watching a scene, for example. Tension and emphasis is produced by this kind of stillness.
The categories of action, transition and narrative significance by no means exhaust the usage of still imagery in
classical Japanese anime. Indeed, all of the categories I am about to describe as occurring in Neon Genesis
Evangelion also occur in Record of Lodoss War and, presumably, in other classical anime. However, in Record of
Lodoss War and in other classically narrated series that I am aware of, like Bubblegum Crisis (Baburugamu kuraishisu;
Katsuhito Akiyama, Hiroaki Goda, 1985) and Mobile Suit Gundam (Kido senshi Gandamu; Ryoji Fujiwara, Yoshiyuki
Tomino, 1979), these other still images seem somewhat glossed over, camouflaged by the logic of succession and the
forward impetus of the story. Neon Genesis foregrounds its still imagery and by so doing makes such images a much
more telling aspect of its narrational style.

Still imagery in Neon Genesis Evangelion

Still images are used in action sequences, in transitions and to underline significant narrative moments in Neon
Genesis Evangelion, just as they are in classical Japanese animation. However, In Neon Genesis, these usages are
overshadowed by other ways that stillness is deployed in the series. The narrational style of Neon Genesis Evangelion
seems to be founded in stillness; and stillness is not unconnected to the underlying thematics of the series, as we shall
see.

It is quite difficult to retell the story of any television series lasting for 13 hours, but Neon Genesis Evangelion poses
particular problems in this regard. On one level, for most of its length the same narrative pattern is repeated: an Angel
attacks and the child-piloted EVAs defeat it. At the same time, we are also following a more or less traditional story
about children growing up and learning about responsibility, centred on the figures of Shinji Ikari, who becomes an EVA
pilot in the first episode, Misato Katsuragi a young military officer who takes on the role of a big sister to Shinji, and
Commander Ikari, Shinji's father, who heads the operation to save the world from the destructive Angel attacks.
However, as the destruction wrought by the Angels increases, complicated secret agendas involving the alien
technology used in the EVAs and the special abilities of their pilots are gradually revealed. Just as we are on the verge
of fully understanding how and to what ends Commander Ikari and members of his scientific team have been
clandestinely using and abusing this technology and their own children, the focus abruptly switches to an examination
of the motives of Shinji and, to a lesser extent, another of the child pilots, Asuka. In the last episodes, the reality of
much of what we have seen earlier is put into question and the emphasis of the narrative shifts to haranguing Shinji
and Asuka into finding ways to overcome their personal problems and relate fully to the world around them.

The images of stillness that produce the strongest impression in the series are almost always accompanied by voice-
over dialogue. Thus these more sophisticated images are directly related to the economically-motivated animated
mouths of earlier television series. Yet in Neon Genesis Evangelion there appear to be a great many more images of
stillness in which there are no moving mouths than is the case in more classically narrated series. In such images
nothing moves at all. At the same time, in a kind of extension of the way in which voices take on added importance
when only mouth are moving, the words heard over the stilled images in Neon Genesis Evangelion are usually loaded
with significance and affect. On another level, perhaps these Neon Genesis Evangelion images can be understood as
variants of the (often silent) images of stillness intended to underline or draw attention to significant moments in the
narrative, described in the previous section. Certainly, as we shall see, the Neon Genesis Evangelion images are like
those others in that they seem intended to carry a lot of narrative weight.

One type of these voice-over still images actually shows the characters who are speaking the lines we hear. Perhaps
the most noticeable subgroup of such images shows CUs of Commander Ikari, Shinji's father, speaking with his hands
folded in front of his mouth so that nothing around his face moves at all. Ikari is represented as an cold person. He
never gives any of his plans away and keeps his emotions inside. Shinji is constantly asking him for affection which he
never displays. The still image, then, bears a metaphoric relation to the character's fictional being which is first of all
felt rather than cognitively perceived. It also places a remarkable image of stillness at the apex of the series' diegetic
power hierarchy, for Ikari always seems to know more and to command more power even than those who are
supposed to be his masters.

But there are also quite a number of images of stillness associated with the character of Shinji himself, who is the
narrative focus of the series. Two remarkable instances of still and near-still imagery with voice-over dialogue occur
during and after a celebratory party in the episode called The Value of a Miracle is .... During the party at several points
we are shown CUs of Shinji's still face and, once, a CU of the back of his seated body. These images focus attention
on the dialogue spoken at the party, and they are intuitively understood as cues to think or feel Shinji's reactions to
what is being said (not exactly the party type ... really cool-looking guy who never shaves ... what a real man is like ...
I'm just not used to being around so many people. Why do they have to be so noisy? ... You don't look very happy at all
... I'm happy, but that's not the reason I do what I do). Shinji's invisible reactions, in turn, are partly related to his/our
memories of previous incidents in the series (his not being a man; his discomfort in groups; his inability to find a
personal motive for being an EVA pilot).

The party has been held to celebrate Misato's promotion to major, an event Shinji had not noticed although he lives in
the same apartment. Somewhat later in the same episode, as he is being loaded into his EVA to go out and destroy
another attacking Angel, Shinji recalls a follow-up conversation with Misato. In a sequence composed mainly of still
and limited animation images, he remembers Misato's telling him about her motivation for joining the fight against the
Angels and her relationship with her father. During this remembered sequence another sub-sequence of strikingly
composed and colored still images represents Shinji's other, less coherent but much more emotionally significant,
memories of his own relationship with his father, Commander Ikari.

Shinji's memory of the conversation in which the memory of his memories is embedded begins with a CU of his near-
still face inside the living symbiotic machinery of the EVA. In this case too, stillness cues viewers to feel what is inside
Shinji, that is, what is (at least initially) neither seen nor heard. Moreover, Shinji's continual association with stillness
reiterates the relation of the animation of his figure with a set of invisible relations that the narrative is ultimately
directed towards making visible in the final episodes.

All of these still images surrounding Shinji seem on one level to be primarily tied to that character's psychological
motivation. Narratively, the final (deepest) layer is also an explicit visual reference back to earlier episodes (it contains
images that occur in the first episode and several later ones) and a forerunner of the series' notorious psycho-
therapeutic ending, in which many, many still and near-still images are deployed. Thus viewers are enabled to
motivate, or animate, this particular subsequence psychologically, compositionally, and even artistically through the
ways in which the images call attention to themselves as images.

A contrasting category of still imagery in Neon Genesis Evangelion shows groups of speaking characters rather than
single individuals. These are usually XLSs or otherwise so angled that no mouth motion would be perceptible, were
there mouths to move. Such images most often occur in live action films as establishing shots, although high-angled
dialogue XL panels are not uncommon in printed comics and manga. They are extremely common in all anime and are
by no means unique to Neon Genesis Evangelion. But, as I will suggest, they are especially conspicuous in this series.

In Neon Genesis these kinds of still images are sometimes used classically to establish a scene or a setting; but they
may also recur during a sequence as one of a number of shot-choices varied, at least partly, for rhythmic or decorative
reasons (that is, artistically motivated). Overall, their stillness contributes to the sense of the isolation of the special
military and scientific team involved in combatting the Angels (since most of the speaking groups consist of members
of that team: officers, scientists, technicians and child pilots) and, perhaps more importantly, to the sense of the portent
of what they are doing.
But perhaps the strongest effect of these more distanced images of stillness is derived from their ostentation. These
still images draw the viewer's attention. They separate themselves from the flow of moving images around them. On
one level then, they are very clear markers of stylization: they point to what Bordwell would call a parametric dimension
of this anime's narration. And they do so partly because of their stillness and partly because that quality is repeated
over many different groups. The effect is Here is another still image of a group, and another, and another. Ultimately, I
think they may suggest the static and repeated nature of the narrative's activity, its futility, its sense of getting nowhere
(an idea to which I will return in a bit).

A subspecies of the still and near-still images involving groups often are deployed in sequences illustrating the team's
discovery of an Angel attack and the preparations for combatting the menace. These stills, inserted in sequences
dominated by urgent group dialogue, often do not show moving characters at all. Indeed, quite a number are
diagrammatic: simulating computer maps and other grids (and not unconnected with the flat modernist look of the later
Angels). This usage is at least partly connected with the creation and maintenance of suspense. In such sequences
viewers become conscious of the passing of time almost to the degree that movement is suspended. A certain kind of
highly-charged life is imparted to the image in exchange for the motion missing from it.

In all of these images of stillness, melodramatic speech provides a key layer of animation. It is not too much to say that
our perception of the voice-over dialogue animates these images, taking over the function of the perception of motion
in traditional figure animation. But in many instances in Neon Genesis Evangelion, the perceived relation of dialogue to
images is somewhat indirect (we see Shinji listening but the words are not directly about him; we see a diagrammatic
image but the words may not seem to refer to anything directly in that image). The lack of an immediate, direct relation
contributes to the difficulty of the series' narration.

In the party sequence referred to earlier, we have to interpret the effects of the dialogue on Shinji on the basis of what
we have inferred about him—not a tough job for most people who watch films and television programs. But then, a bit
later, we have to recognize that the still images of Shinji and Misato in conversation denote a short-term memory
connected to the previous directly-imaged exchange. And another level of understanding is necessary to recognize
that the montaged and recycled still imagery within the later conversation not only provides clues for retroactively
understanding Shinji's reaction to what Misato said at the party, but also functions as an unvoiced basis for perceiving
that his relations with his father resemble what she is telling him about her relations with her father.

In the case of the still images used as the team prepares for an attack, although there surely is a tendency to treat the
diagrammatic visuals as functionally meaningless wall-paper and to devote full attention to the narrative and affective
functions of the dialogue, the abstract stillness of the imagery points to places that are not quite human. They suggest
machined and mathematical realms that seem to belie whatever the characters want and do. In the series, the team's
own MAGI computers and the EVA robots slowly seem to gain conscious control of their own actions and to manipulate
the humans around them. Thus, in the terms that the series ultimately poses, such images may depict the fateful
circuitry of the psyche that stands between the children's desires and their fulfilment. If you will, the suspense in the
diagrammatic images is metaphysical and psychological as well as the product of narrative action.

In Todorov's terms, one principle of the narrative of Neon Genesis is, like that of many anime narratives, gnoseological:
like a classical detective story, it is one of those narratives in which the event itself is less important than our perception
of it, and degree of knowledge we have of it. The series continually uses stills of Shinji and his surroundings to direct
attention to his state of mind and to his memories, constantly reminding viewers that what is going on inside his head
warrants our attention—and in this way predicting its own psychological denouement.
However, the climax of the series also suggests something more than this. By suppressing the Angel attacks almost
entirely, the final episodes strongly imply that those attacks may have existed only as manifestations of what was going
on inside Shinji (or the world soul). The visible mythological story, then, may appear in the end to be nothing more than
the effects of those stalled invisible and interior relations the series has mapped as stillness. This would mean that
another principle governs this narrative—an ideological principle in Todorov's terms. What happens is the result of the
application of an abstract rule, an idea ... One no longer moves from a negative to a positive version, or from ignorance
to knowledge. Instead, actions are linked through the intermediary of an abstract formula. In this reading, the actions of
Neon Genesis are animated by inaction (for a rule is not an action), its frenetic and repeated movement is motivated
by—and expresses—an underlying stasis in much the same way that entropy is manifested in chaotic motion.

Thus, the stillness of these images leads viewers in two related directions. They are cues for a psychologized reading,
for understanding and animating virtually everything that one sees as expressions of a character's psyche. In this way,
they can be understood within what Bordwell calls the norms of art cinema. And at the same time, they signal the overt
presence of style: they repeatedly and obviously call attention to the considerable artifice of the series' narration. That
is, they can be read within parametric norms. (For example, the still of Shinji's back during the conversation at the
party, mentioned above, is echoed at the end of that episode in an image of the backs of Shinji, Misato and the other
EVA pilots while they eat noodles and chat after having defeated the thirteenth wave of Angels). Both of these readings
complicate and conflict with any simple classical or mythological understanding of the series and both of these
readings animate their images primarily through affect and sensation at the expense of cognition and our knowledge of
the ordinary conventions of storytelling.

In the end, however, what distinguishes Neon Genesis from other contemporary anime series such as the
extraordinary Revolutionary Girl Utena (Shojo kakumei Utena; Kunihiko Ikuhara, 1997) is not its use of art cinema and
parametric narration, but the weight such styles are given through the series' extensive and ostentatious deployment of
still imagery. Other popular and apparently conventional series may be narrated in equally complex and unclassical
ways, but do not call attention to the means of their narration in such a heavy-handed way. Neon Genesis seems
anxious to make sure that viewers recognize that it is an example of what the cultural theorist, Simon During, has
called heavy culture, and one of the principal means it uses to effect that recognition is the still image.

Gainax and the Neo-Kanada Renaissance

1998 was one of the most important years in the history of the Kanada school. On the one hand, it was when Yoshinori
Kanada himself left Japan—and, with it, the anime industry proper—for Hawaii and games development. In the context
of the general decline, if not total disappearance, of the creativity of Kanada-style animation in most productions, it felt
like the ground had been given up to newer generations. But another thing happened in 1998: the broadcast of a TV
series produced by studio Gainax, His and Her Circumstances .Just as Kanada-style animation was withering all over,
KareKano became a formidable space for experimentation, bringing to the fore a new generation of animators from
Gainax. These would go on to be called the “Neo-Kanada” school. Its foremost members form the trio now strongly
associated with studio Trigger: Yô Yoshinari, Hiroyuki Imaishi, and Sushio (https://animatorswiki.blitedesu.net/Sushio).

Gainax’s New Generation

The oldest of the bunch is Yoshinari, and he also appears to be the least inspired by Kanada. He had always had more
of a liking for Masahito Yamashita, but one of his specificities is his openness to new things: his influences had always
been diverse, as he very closely followed the new creative boom around Mitsuo Iso, Shin’ya Ohira and Masaaki Yuasa
in the early-mid 90’s. His career began as an assistant to his elder brother Kô; then he officially started out as in-
betweener for studio Madhouse in 1992, but quickly transferred to Gainax, where he began to make his mark as one of
the studio’s rising stars. Even though he was just out of animation school, he took an important role in the pre-
production stage of the never-completed Uru in Blue project in 1993. After that, his first key animation works were on
five of the episodes Gainax animated on Victory Gundam. There, he showed his talent in what would become his
speciality: effects animation, especially smoke and explosions.

What’s most interesting here is the sharp contrast between, on the one hand, beams, lighting and fire animation and,
on the other, explosions and smoke. The first group still appear to be under Kanada’s influence: this is especially
visible in the first seconds, when the fire behind the missiles seems to be almost copied from Kanada’s own missile
animation in his famous airship battle from Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. But as soon as the missiles hit, the
angular shapes give way to much more curved lines. Especially in the second shot, the orange smoke has a very solid
feeling to it, most probably thanks to the shading and the slow movement it adopts: this is one of the very first
instances of the now-iconic “Yoshinari explosion”. Yoshinari was only twenty, but he had already found his own style.

Victory was a major step for him, and for Gainax as a whole: under the lead of two of the greatest effects animators of
all time, Hideaki Anno and Shôichi Masuo, it seemed like the transition in the studio was assured. It was therefore no
surprise that, one year after Victory, Yoshinari became the pillar of Neon Genesis Evangelion’s production: he was key
animator on eleven of the twenty-six episodes (without accounting for uncredited work elsewhere), and also
mechanical animation director on some of them. This was an amazing amount of work for just one man to handle, but
he pulled it off superbly, giving the show some of its most iconic moments.

The other important thing about Evangelion is that it’s there that Yoshinari could meet his future closest colleagues,
who debuted as in-betweeners on the show: Imaishi and Sushio (https://animatorswiki.blitedesu.net/Sushio). It seems
that Sushio (https://animatorswiki.blitedesu.net/Sushio) didn’t exhibit much talent at first, but Imaishi’s rise was
meteoric. He in-betweened on eleven episodes of the original TV version, but when the show was released on video
with corrected footage, he had risen up to key animation on episode 23, which probably indicates that he had the
opportunity to entirely redo one of the scenes he had in-betweened (or done uncredited key animation) on previously.
Unlike Yoshinari, who only did minor work on OVAs here and there after Evangelion, Imaishi then began working
frantically all over the industry: between 1996 and 1998, he did key animation on shows as diverse as the 1997 version
of Speed Racer, the Slayers series, King of Braves GaoGaiGar, and Lupin III Walther P38. By the last one of those, in
1997, his work had become distinctly recognizable.

What might seem surprising to people used to Imaishi’s later output is that at this stage Kanada’s influence is far less
obvious than one might expect. You do see elements of it, mostly in the speedlines. But in this sequence in particular,
Imaishi seems closer to early 90’s flow animation as represented by Norio Matsumoto and Atsushi Wakabayashi: the
movement is overall very detailed and fluid, and the intense snapping in the most climactic action moments is closer to
what Wakabayashi had done on Yû Yû Hakusho than Kanada’s own use of the technique. What is especially definitive
is the approach to shapes, as you find here two techniques that Kanada, especially in the 90’s, very seldom used:
smears on the outlines of bodies, and a general distortion of shapes. It was probably through Yoshinari, who
prominently used smears in his own Evangelion cuts, that these aspects of flow animation were transmitted to Imaishi.

Top: Imaishi; bottom left: Wakabayashi; bottom right: Yoshinari

During the same years, it seems that Imaishi got very close to Hideaki Anno: there’s no other way to explain his
extremely prominent role on the latter’s KareKano in 1998. Indeed, Imaishi could be considered Anno’s right-hand man
on the series: he storyboarded three episodes, was animation director on three more and key animator on six total.
Besides all that, he was given complete freedom over what can be considered his first masterpiece: episode 19 of the
series, on which he was director, writer, storyboarder, animation director, key animator and seems to have handled
some other, more technical aspects.

This episode can legitimately be held up as one of the most experimental moments in commercial TV anime history. It
imitated the look of paper animation (even though it seems to have been made using normal cels), integrated live-
action footage and photographs instead of background or character art, and exclusively relied on intensely limited
animation: there were only four in-betweeners for seven key animators, which indicates how little work was probably
required from the former. Even in a series as creative as KareKano, episode 19 stood out for its completely different
look and absurd atmosphere.

This time, Imaishi showed all that he owed to Kanada. It was already visible in one of the episode’s earliest easter
eggs, a guest appearance of Rasa from Birth. But what made it most obvious was the animation itself, very close to
what Kanada had been doing in the late 90’s, especially with his Luckyman OPs: extremely modulated animation, stark
lines and curves, simple colour work, a renewed use of cycles and, of course, a completely crazy kind of energy.

If this particular episode of KareKano was Imaishi’s first major creative platform, the show in general enabled many
new talents to emerge: whereas Yoshinari was little involved, animating on only two episodes, Sushio
(https://animatorswiki.blitedesu.net/Sushio) was the real star of the series, key animating on ten. At this point, he was
still very much under Imaishi’s influence and didn’t really stand out yet. They were very close, and worked together on
many occasions for the following years, most notably on Microman #26 and Medarots #14, Imaishi was animation
director on both of these, and also episode director and storyboarder for Medarots. Once again, Imaishi’s idiosyncratic
style stood out, but it was not until the turn of the millennium that he and the group of students and followers he was
quickly gathering would show the full measure of their talent.

FLCL and the fundamentals of the Neo-Kanada style

The next major project for the new Gainax animators was the studio’s new OVA, FLCL. It is no overstatement to say
that FLCL had one of the greatest animator lineups in anime history and ended up being one of the greatest artistic
achievements of Japanese animation for its quality, diversity and creativity. Although their time in TV animation had
already enabled them to make contacts, it’s where Imaishi and company could work side by side with such living
legends as Shin’ya Ohira, Tetsuya Nishio, Shinji Otsuka and Mitsuo Iso. What’s interesting there is that all of these
names are associated either with the realist or flow animation schools, which had been dominant for the previous ten
years. In contrast, the Neo-Kanada animation would clearly have stood out.

Imaishi played a major part in FLCL, storyboarding three episodes, doing animation direction for two, setting on two,
and key animation on almost every one of them. His most iconic work is probably episode five, on which he was
storyboarder, animation director and key animator, most notably for the fight scene between Haruko and Amarao and
his henchmen. This extremely famous sequence is probably one of the most representative of Imaishi’s style and,
more generally, of the Neo-Kanada aesthetic.

The first and most obvious element is, of course, the Kanada influence. But there’s one thing that’s rarely asked when
we mention Kanada’s influence on Imaishi: which Kanada is it? By 2000, Kanada had gone through all of the styles
and changes you could imagine, and Imaishi could have selected freely among all of those. And that is, in fact, what
makes him so important: whereas Kanada went through an evolution, Imaishi freely picked different elements from
Kanada’s career and mixed them together. He therefore united in one place many features that had never existed
together in Kanada’s own animation.

(https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/d61587f1dcb23565056ce91120969cb1.mp4)
The first point to start with is the close relationship between Imaishi’s animation and Kanada’s late style: they were,
after all, contemporary. The most visible aspect of this link is the overabundance of speedlines, which had been
making a triumphant return in Kanada’s drawings and were everywhere in Imaishi’s. The general approach to simple
shapes and rhythm (stark slow-in/slow-outs) was also the same. But to that, Imaishi added some other elements. First,
there is the Masahito Yamashita influence that comes out most clearly in the impact frames: by the 90’s, Kanada had
almost completely stopped using these, but they had been one of the most important elements of the Yamashita-
inspired 80’s animation style. Unlike early Kanada impact frames, they were not outlines of the objects, but abstract
compositions made up of lines and circles with stark colors such as red, blue and yellow.

Finally, one of the most important things about Imaishi’s style that’s seldom noted is that the influences go much
deeper: this expert on 70’s animation also took from Kanada’s early style, not just the most recent work. Indeed, the
use of rough lines both in motion and character outlines, such as the ones used in the beginning of this sequence, had
all but disappeared by the 2000’s. This was a result of both artistic and technical evolution, as the shift to digital
animation and compositing didn’t favor such linework. But Imaishi brought it back, most probably inspired by 70’s
gekiga animation.

There are also non-Kanada influences at play: I already mentioned the role of flow animation, but Imaishi’s general
approach to bodies and shapes can also be understood through the lens of one of the greatest animators of the 60’s,
Daizô Takeuchi. In series such as Fight! Pyûta and Gutsy Frog, Takeuchi had been one of the first to reveal the
potential of limited framerates when backed up by a strong imaginative power. Imaishi’s imagination surely rivaled
Takeuchi’s, and he took every occasion he could to slip in silly expressions and to deform every object in the frame.
Kanada’s late animation had a very rigid approach to bodies, but Imaishi, under the double influence of flow animation
and of Takeuchi, took a radically different direction, which led to unexpectedly creative moments, such as, not long
after FLCL, Cutie Honey turning into spaghetti.

For this reason, Imaishi’s animation was not just a revival of Kanada’s animation. It was a complete reworking of it, and
I venture to say, a more creative one. Indeed, it must be said that Kanada’s late work seems very repetitive and
despite its undeniable power, it sometimes lacks creativity: perhaps left uninterested by the work he was adapting,
Kanada often relied on motifs and techniques he had already used before. Imaishi brought some new blood and
influences into this, and truly renovated the Kanada style. In that, one of the most original aspects of Neo-Kanada
animation is that, especially in Imaishi’s case, it is first and foremost centered on character and action animation, in
contrast with the work of the previous generation of Kanada’s followers, who focused more on mecha or effects.
Because its influences are more diverse, the “Neo-Kanada” category also covers a wider range of animators: its most
famous representative is Imaishi’s hyper-limited and expressive animation, but it also includes the rounder, more fluid
work of people like Sushio (https://animatorswiki.blitedesu.net/Sushio) and Yoshinari, who had less direct contact with
Kanada.

Imaishi’s followers, from Higurashi to Gurren Lagann

Despite his importance, Imaishi was seldom an animation director: he very quickly turned to direction, and it’s from
there that he has exerted creative control. In that sense, he has had few direct students, meaning people that truly
animated under his corrections and teaching. But his work did inspire many animators who would become his
associates first in Studio Gainax, and then around Trigger.

Going chronologically, the first figure that needs to be highlighted is Jun Arai. What makes Arai so interesting is that he
started at the same time as Imaishi, but in a different studio, and it is only in the mid-2000’s, on Gurren Lagann, that
they met. Arai therefore represents another branch of the Neo-Kanada school, and this shows that it could have
emerged anywhere else outside Gainax: many animators that had grown up during the apex of the Kanada style in the
late 80’s were beginning to enter the industry and wanted to replicate what they had loved as children.

As for Arai, what had marked him the most were the works of studio Anime R (such as in Votoms) and the animator
Masayuki. It was to follow in Masayuki’s footsteps that Arai joined Studio Giants in 1997: he didn’t know that the former
had long since transferred to Gainax. As Arai says it, it was upon seeing Imaishi’s work that he left Giants to go
freelance, around 1999–2000. He recounted the experience in an interview: “On Microman, there was a Gainax
episode where Imaishi’s wild drawings were at the forefront. I thought ‘This is it! I can’t stay in Giants anymore!’”

Over the 2000’s, Arai developed his skills and his animation came closer to the heavily stylized work of the second-
generation Kanada school: rather than the cartoony intensity of Imaishi, he was going for jerky timings, heavy shadings
and creative effects shapes. One of his most representative works from that era is on the 2006 version of Higurashi:
When They Cry. The character animation here is already very idiosyncratic, especially with the unexpected 2-second
hold at 0:06, but what really stands out is of course the effects. In terms of effects, the Gainax animators were either
going in the round, Yoshinari-inspired direction, or, like Imaishi, adopting simpler monochrome effects of the kind that
Kanada himself had used in Lucky Man.

Arai, however, went back to the late 80’s, putting all of his effort in the shading, which has since then received a name
of its own: “wakame shadows”, from the color of Japanese wakame seaweed. Arai’s originality is therefore completely
different from that of Imaishi: whereas Imaishi’s work could be considered an essentially modern take on the Kanada
style, Arai single-mindedly looked towards the past and sought to push further the already radical work of people like
Shin’ya Ohira, rather than reinvent it from the ground up.

Higurashi is also important because it’s where Arai met another rising star of Neo-Kanada animation: Seiya Numata.
Numata started as an in-betweener in 2000, and by 2002 he had become animation director and key animator on
many episodes of TV series. His first important work was on the series Zoids: Genesis in 2005, where he met
character designer and animation director Kyûta Sakai, who enabled him to take on a capital role in Higurashi: Numata
was animation director on nine episodes of the series. One of his most famous works was on the show’s finale, with an
impressive fight scene. The light flares make sure that the Kanada influence stays obvious, but what makes Numata
stand out is the looseness of his drawings. The combination of simple shapes, highly off-model characters and
extremely jerky motion was simply explosive.

By then, it was only a question of time until all the Kanada-inspired animators would meet and work together. The
occasion for that came in 2007, when Imaishi had the opportunity to direct his first TV series for Gainax: Tengen Toppa
Gurren Lagann. Besides Imaishi, Yoshinari, Sushio (https://animatorswiki.blitedesu.net/Sushio), Arai and Numata, this
show offered a chance for many others to make their marks. From Gainax proper, the three most notable figures in the
new Imaishi school that was forming were Akira Amemiya, Atsushi Nishigori and Chikashi Kubota. Besides them, there
were many Kanada fans from other studios, such as Takeshi Mukôda, Osamu Kobayashi or Shin Itagaki. With them
and many, many other great names of 2000’s animation, Gurren Lagann was an animation powerhouse and a
magnificent tribute to the mecha shows to which Kanada and so many of his students had contributed.

Covering the entirety of Gurren Lagann’s animation lies beyond the scope of this article, but it’s worth taking a look at a
few sequences by some of the most important animators I’ve mentioned: one by Sushio
(https://animatorswiki.blitedesu.net/Sushio), one by Amemiya, and one by Arai.

(https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/e7d35f63f193d92bcce651f8d02f90cc.webm)
By 2007, Sushio had developed his own style and was no longer in the shadow of his peers Yoshinari and Imaishi. In
this scene in particular, you can see how he kept in the fundamentals of the Neo-Kanada style: lots of modulation,
strong posing, speed lines, and most importantly complex layouts. Indeed, while late Kanada had privileged flat
compositions, with Imaishi and the others the three-dimensional space that had made Kanada stand out in the first
place had made a strong comeback. It’s very visible in the beginning of this sequence, until 0:11. Both robots move
towards and away from the camera with ease. The moment when the beastman mecha gets hit between 0:07 and 0:10
is classic Kanada style, with the timing wildly oscillating between 1s, 2s and 3s, frenetic action, and the robot jumping
away from the camera in strong poses accompanied by speed lines.
Where Sushio (https://animatorswiki.blitedesu.net/Sushio) stands out is, first, in the more modern use of smears on the
outline, now a classic post-Gosenzosama Banbanzai technique that he most probably got from Yoshinari. Here, the
smears are very fitting and contribute to the impressive sense of speed the entire sequence has. Another characteristic
aspect of Sushio (https://animatorswiki.blitedesu.net/Sushio)’s work on Gurren Lagann is the linework. I mentioned
above that Imaishi sometimes used rough linework, but in his work in general such rough linework quickly
disappeared, and the neat lines of modern anime triumphed. It was very probably a deliberate decision on the part of
the staff of Gurren Lagann to use the thicker lines characteristic of 70’s series, and Sushio
(https://animatorswiki.blitedesu.net/Sushio) is arguably the one who mastered them best. Combined with the smears
and contrasting against the vivid and clear colors of the flames, they feel very powerful when the Gurren jumps, all
drills forward. Then, at the end of the sequence, they become the core of a slightly more abstract moment, as the
animation seems to dissolve down to a sketch expressing the strength of the punch.

Compared to Sushio (https://animatorswiki.blitedesu.net/Sushio), Amemiya’s work then feels more conservative. But
this apparent conservatism is not a concerning problem, as it nails everything down and invokes the same feelings of
euphoria and power. The most impressive part in this sequence is no doubt the first five seconds, the ones with the
most motion, which also feature the most complex layouts of the entire scene. We begin with a bit of background
animation, supported by the speedlines and the smoke animation; the shading and colors of it all make the Birth
inspiration really evident. The Gurren follows a curved trajectory which contrasts against the straight speedlines and
makes us feel the depth of the movement; just as Simon comes into the center of the frame, the camera suddenly cuts
to Kamina. His own movement as he rises is opposite to Simon’s, as he goes away from the camera rather than
towards it. But then he suddenly retracts and jumps, in a classical Kanada-style technique accompanied by the
mandatory speedlines and light flares. Then, we have quite complex choreography as the Gurren jumps behind him,
away from the camera, at the same time as the background rotates, creating an impression of camera movement
which makes it all that much more dynamic.

Around 0:14, the focus is put on the smoke animation. It’s strongly inspired by Imaishi’s own effects animation, but in
turn shows how much Imaishi’s effects work owes to Yoshinari: the outline of the smoke is more angular and irregular,
following the classical Kanada-style aesthetic, but the shadows are round and manage to create the sense of volume
characteristic of Yoshinari-style smoke. The animation is in cycle, but the irregularity of the shapes keeps it from
becoming boring. In the next few shots, we again find one of the recurring techniques of Neo-Kanada animation: the
combination of speed lines and smears, that is, the combination of a distinctly retro and a distinctly modern technique.
This combination is what makes the Neo-Kanada style so special, and Gurren Lagann exemplifies it well: it’s all about
reproducing the look and feel of cel animation with modern, digital techniques.

Finally, the most radical of Neo-Kanada school animators, even on the series, was no doubt Arai. He only worked on
one episode, 22, but his sequence became iconic and he would go on to work with Imaishi on some projects following
Gurren Lagann, especially a crazy Transformers parody in Panty and Stocking. Here too the mashup of old and new is
visible, as the Anti-Spiral ship is in 3DCG and yet interacts seamlessly with the flashy 2D effects. In fact, Arai just gives
a rundown of all the most iconic techniques of the late 80’s Kanada style. The green effects that surround the Gurren
Lagann take on a variety of incredibly original and diverse shapes, based on irregular linework and curves. Then, in the
third shot, the circles of energy provoked by the punch contrast against straighter lines, which flicker irregularly as yet
more effects flash by on a different layer on top. All of it is in cycles, but in a classical Kanada fashion these cycles are
irregular, with some of the frames taken out to make the rhythm uneven and engaging.

Arai’s work, more than any other’s, has a strong illustrative quality, thanks to the incredible density of his frames: the
effects appear to be spread across different layers, the shading is always very stark… In this particular sequence, you
can add the split-screen and ornate impact frames which add yet more information. Even though the Obari punch in
this sequence is rather long, with a lot of anticipation, it doesn’t feel slow thanks to all of these elements.

The School of Kanada

The History of the Kanada School
Yoshinori Kanada is widely considered to be the most influential animator in Japan, if not one of the most important in
the whole world. Something rare for anime staff, his influence even extends beyond the world of animation, as some,
like contemporary artist Takashi Murakami, consider him one of the most important artistic figures of postwar Japan.
But these claims resonate strangely overseas. Indeed, if anime’s influence on world animation and illustration has
grown in the last 20 years, and Kanada’s with it, his name and influence still remain unknown or underestimated by
most non-Japanese scholars and animation fans.

Part of the project of this series is to correct this. The first step in highlighting Kanada’s role is to estimate what,
exactly, was the real extent of his influence, who were his students, and what did he change. This will be the
investigative part. But at the same time, I will take Kanada’s influence as granted, which means that I won’t try to show
that it exists at all, but that I will follow how it spread and grew in importance. Indeed, a thorough research on Kanada
quickly showed me that retracing his influence entailed retracing the history of most of anime starting from the late
1970’s. This is a bit too ambitious a scope, but I will consider the Kanada style as a central thread to understand the
evolution of anime, that influenced it either positively (as some adopted it) or negatively (as others sought to make
something different from it).

This is a major assumption, however. It will not be possible to justify it entirely, but there are at least two necessary
steps to go through before it can be properly understood.

The first one is the most basic of questions: what is the Kanada style? And does it even exist? To be clear, I will not
answer these directly, not because they are not important, but because answering them would lead me further to my
historical interests than I’d like. But even then, I don’t think it would be that easy or more importantly that interesting to
give a definite answer for the simple reason that there isn’t one singular “Kanada style” that can be reduced to a list of
definite characteristics. My perspective would rather consist in approaching it as an evolution.

First, an evolution of Kanada himself. One of the reasons I find him as an individual artist so challenging is that he
never stopped changing and integrating new elements to his own animation. It might be possible to uncover some
fundamental elements behind all of his different stylistic shifts, but I find it more interesting to focus on those shifts and
the plurality of aspects Kanada shows us. In that regard, his artistic evolution could be broken down in 4 “periods”, but
those divisions are largely arbitrary and could be discussed.

From 1972 to 1977, Kanada developed as a mechanical animator first and foremost, a student of Shingo Araki’s
gekiga style and of Takuo Noda. His own personality as an animator quickly emerged, until his second period, between
1977 and 1984, which was probably his peak in terms of creativity. It is when he truly expanded his range of
techniques to master effects and character animation and to provide an apparently ceaseless flow of aesthetic
innovations. Then, after 1984, Kanada seems to have quieted down somewhat, mostly on his collaborations with
Hayao Miyazaki, until approximately 1992-1994. These years mark the start of his so-called late period, until his death
in 2009, where he experimented with a more radical and simple approach to movement and shapes, as well as new
technologies such as 3DCG and motion capture.

Just as Kanada himself evolved and changed throughout his career, the “Kanada school” isn’t a singular object: it
would be more accurate to speak of Kanada schools that themselves generated new schools and styles of their own.
For the purpose of this series, I will mostly adopt a chronological division in three different generations, which is itself
open to debate. The first generation emerged between 1978 and 1982, was largely composed of Kanada’s direct
students. Its members had many occasions to work with him throughout their careers. These, most notably its most
important member Masahito Yamashita, in turn influenced a second generation that developed in the second half of
the 1980’s, mostly between 1984 and 1988. After 1988, however, the Kanada style went through a decline in popularity
and creativity until the sudden rise of a “Neo-Kanada” school between 1996 and 2000, that centered around the works
of Hiroyuki Imaishi and took inspiration from Kanada’s late period. But it’s not like those three historical stages exist in
isolation from each other: Kanada himself was active until the 2000’s, and all of those artists found themselves working
together.

Understanding that things are not fixed but in evolution is the first aim of my historical approach. This doesn’t mean
either that history, especially history of art, is pure continuity. Instead, what I’d like to focus on are the turning points,
the moments when something new emerges, when new forms and ways of expression within the medium have
appeared. They didn’t come out of nothing, and it’s to show it that I wrote this history; but they did not simply repeat
what had been done before either. This is why this series will be as much history as analysis: only a close look at the
work of the animators themselves will allow us to understand what was new in their creations.

Another related objective will be to go past Kanada’s influence to reach Kanada himself. This will take shape in two
aspects. The first one will be to try and understand Kanada’s role as a teacher, to understand the general question
“how does a school of animation emerge?” and, more specifically, how did Kanada take on the role of leader of a new
generation and style of animators? The other perspective will be a radical opposite, as I will try to take Kanada by
himself and study the internal dynamics of his style.

Indeed, it is my belief that our vision of Kanada is at least partly influenced or clouded by the popularity of his two most
famous students that I already cited: Masahito Yamashita and Hiroyuki Imaishi. Without diminishing their works and
contributions to anime, I think that they only took some elements from Kanada’s animation and set them without
necessarily being as innovative and bold as their master. It will therefore be necessary to understand both what is
properly Kanada’s and what belongs to Yamashita, Imaishi, and all the others. It will be, in a way, a search for what
made Kanada Kanada, what was the core of his inventivity and creative power.

The Kanada style in context

It is tempting, as is always the case with great artists, to imagine Yoshinori Kanada as a solitary shooting star who
appeared and revolutionized Japanese animation from nowhere, a pure genius whose inscription in a historical context
is almost irrelevant to understanding his work. The very nature of this project goes against such a vision, as it aims for
two things: 1) not just evoking Kanada, but all those he met and inspired, and their own careers, and 2) a history that
takes into account not just the artists, but the evolution of their styles and their relationships with the general context of
the animation industry at the time.

Moreover, as anyone at all versed in 60s and 70s animation will quickly tell you, the aesthetic revolution of the Kanada
style did not come out of nowhere, nor was it a sudden and unexpected event. Understanding the early years of
Kanada’s career is therefore necessary for three reasons: 1) answering the following question: if Kanada
revolutionized anime, which visual trends did he overturn? 2) understanding how Kanada took influence from these
preexisting trends and how he slowly developed his own style through, rather than against, them, and finally 3)
retracing the slow rise of Kanada from an unknown in-betweener to the leader of a studio and then the most important
and influential living animator in Japan.

For that purpose, it is important to remember that Kanada, born in 1953, was a member of the first generation who
really grew up with animation, both in theaters and on TV: he was 5 when The White Serpent, the first Japanese colour
animated feature film came out, and 10 when Astro Boy started airing. He reportedly found his calling for animation at
16, after watching a scene of Tôei’s Flying Phantom Ship, animated by Hayao Miyazaki—a moment of urban
destruction (https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/4d0af6c0638a415173b7de6676660cbd.mp4) of the type that would
become one of Kanada’s most enduring motifs. In other words, from the outset, Kanada’s work cannot be divorced
from the rest of Japanese animation.

This article will follow 10 years of anime history, from 1967 to 1977; since I have already covered them, with a different
perspective, in my previous series on TMS, it will serve not only as an introduction to Kanada, but also as a transition
between the two series. The starting and ending dates are significant, and I must explain them. 1967–1968 are two
decisive years in the early history of anime, as they saw the emergence of two key figures in TV animation (Keiichirô
Kimura and Shingo Araki), and the coming out of a revolutionary film, Hols, Prince of the Sun which was accompanied
and followed by a mass exile of the staff of Tôei Animation, the most important animation studio of the time. On the
other hand, 1977 is instrumental in Kanada’s career: it marks a break in his early association with Tôei, and the start of
his collaboration with a major director, Yoshiyuki Tomino, as well as his recognition as a major animator and as the
(unofficial) leader of studio Z2.

The A Pro school and Yoshiyuki Momose

Before Kanada emerged, TV anime had already developed its own aesthetic; at the core of this was the studio Tôkyô
Movie, and most importantly its main subcontractor, A Production. A Pro was created in 1965 by one of Tôei’s most
talented men, Daikichirô Kusube, and immediately set to work on such Tôkyô Movie TV series as Obake no Q-Tarô
and Umeboshi Denka. In 1968, following the end of Hols’ production, Kusube was joined by his closest friend from his
Tôei days, Yasuo Otsuka.

Otsuka’s arrival in A Pro was one of the small turning points of anime history: from there, he quickly started to train a
new generation of animators who would be remembered alternatively as the “Otsuka School” or the “A Pro School”.
Among the most important figures of this school, the first group fully to use the expressive potential of limited
animation, we can find Osamu Kobayashi, Tsutomu Shibayama, Yoshifumi Kondô, and Yuzô Aoki. Before examining
their style in earnest, it’s important to note that Kanada could be considered one of their students: it’s on (partly) A Pro
shows like Akado Suzunosuke (1972-1974), Dokonjô Gaeru (1972-1974) and Kôya no Shônen Isamu (1973-1974) that
he did some of his first in-betweening work, and even some key animation.

Dokonjô Gaeru is considered the first masterpiece of A Pro animation, and seems like a good place to start: it’s where
Kondô delivered some of his first outstanding work as key animator, while the more senior Osamu Kobayashi also
played the role of character designer with his friend Tsutomu Shibayama as animation director. Whereas Tôei movies
specialized in realistic and detailed animation, what Otsuka brought to TV animation were rather energy and liveliness.
He and his students were masters of character animation, and accordingly they mostly worked on comedies, which
they enlivened with their knack for cartoony movement and vivid acting.

Concretely, this meant an emphasis on exaggeration, spacing, and strong key poses. In that regard, I think the most
important animator was Yoshiyuki Momose. He was not from A Pro proper, but from Keiichirô Kimura’s Neo Media.
However, he was close to A Pro, especially on Donkonjô Gaeru. His style had the same qualities as the A Pro one, but
he brought to it the rough energy and more complex layouts that he had learnt from Kimura. While I have no direct
proof, I think Momose’s work was a direct influence on Kanada, as well as the strongest in 70’s comical character
animation.

There are multiple more or less direct links between Kanada and Momose, besides the stylistical resemblances I am
going to highlight. As I mentioned, Kanada himself worked on Dokonjô Gaeru; but there are two other possible ways of
communication. The first one is that Momose was a student of Keiichirô Kimura, who was, as I will show, another direct
influence on Kanada. There would therefore be something like a triangular relationship of influence from Kimura and
Momose to Kanada. The other is Masayuki Uchiyama, an animator from Neo Media who worked alongside Momose
for every episode—and who would become one of Kanada’s close collaborators as a founding member of studio Z2 in
1977. It’s very possible that they met precisely on Dokonjô Gaeru.

Now, let’s look at the animation itself. First, in this sequence, the movements of both characters are very wide, as the
right arm of the girl makes a massive slap towards the right of the screen, sending Hiroshi down in the same direction,
while her other arm makes a circle from the back to the front of the frame to take the torn piece of her dress.
Each phase of the movement is very clear and makes the whole motion readable. But this cut also exhibits an
attention towards anticipatory and secondary action that’s generally associated with Kanada. Consider this frame-by-
frame decomposition of the slap: in the second pose, the girl’s arm adopts an impossible angle, before straightening up
and hitting the boy, the hit itself being emphasized by an afterimage in thick black lines.

Another example of a Momose technique that Kanada would later be associated with is in the cycles. Because of the
lack of time given to animators in TV schedules, anime has often reused frames, whether through bank sequences and
cels, or repetitions of a same motion in cycle. These cycles quickly become boring, and Kanada sought to make them
more dynamic by adding or removing in-betweens, effectively speeding up or slowing down the movement at an
irregular rhythm. But it so happens that this is something Momose used a lot in Dokonjô Gaeru, such as in the cycle at
the beginning of this sequence (https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/ca976a2e252b5fa07961d538def93b01.mp4).
Momose did all he could to make the motion dynamic, unexpected and attractive by creating strange rhythms and
strong poses.
This is precisely the kind of motion with which Kanada would later become associated, as well as the unique “Kanada
poses” of which we already see some premonition in Momose’s work
(https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/abe85bbdcc2130302c49453de0f80f0a.mp4): the extended arms and legs which
freely retract and contract as characters fall, jump, and fly all around. These create a strong sense of dynamism while
being relatively easy work for the animator. But most importantly, in a historical and aesthetic sense, it brings out the
full potential of one of the consequences of limited animation: an unprecedented focus on the keyframes, that is, on
the steps of the motion rather than on the movement itself.

More superficially, Dokonjô Gaeru seems to have left a very strong mark on Kanada. His comedic acting scenes from
the 70s wouldn’t have been out of place in this series: Kobayashi’s designs share the same wide mouths and round,
simple body shapes as Kanada’s, and in consequence, the facial expressions are often very similar. If you look close
enough, you’ll also find references to it, and especially its titular frog, in many early Kanada sequences; as this one
from Daiku Maryuu Daiking seems to show, it’s from there that the famous blobs which would become a key part of
Birth and Kanada’s inner world would evolve.

After Dokonjô Gaeru, the A Pro style would continue to develop, and gave anime two other masterpieces in 1975:
Gamba no Bôken and Ganso Tensai Bakabon. Both were the best the 70’s had to offer, with Osamu Dezaki and
Madhouse’s animators on the one hand, and A Pro’s most talented staff on the other. The simple character designs
and the freedom allowed by the directors and animation directors of each show let the animators do as they pleased
and express all their talent. Osamu Kobayashi would go in the direction of fluidity
(https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/fc29cc36b76d66c1062bedf625bb9037.mp4), often using 1s and smears, and not
hesitating to go off-model to favor a flowing movement. Yoshifumi Kondô would stay closer to Otsuka’s TV style, with
snappier timings and the prioritization of energy
(https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/331dac014877d73a981d34ca3a46f95e.mp4) above all else.

Dokonjô Gaeru was Momose’s only major collaboration with A Pro before him and its members would meet again on
Ghibli movies. It was therefore also the only place where, in the 70’s, Kanada could have met him and taken influence
from him. But that influence seems to be major: in many ways, Momose’s animation can be read as a pre-Kanada form
of character acting. Momose took many fundamentals of the A Pro style, but added to it a systematical use of rougher
lines and after images, the kind of techniques he had learned at Neo Media. It gave his work just a bit more strength
and intensity, the two factors that, as we will see, formed the core of Kanada’s breakthrough.

Gekiga anime: Keiichirô Kimura and Shingo Araki

In contrast with A Pro’s early specialization in kids’ shows and comedy anime, another trend started developing in the
late 60s: that of what is called by some “gekiga anime”, that is, animation no longer for children, but for an older
audience of male teenagers, with more mature themes and visuals to match. This “genre” or trend mostly developed in
sports anime, and gave birth to three masterpieces, each produced by one of the three great studios of the time: Star
of the Giants by Tôkyô Movie in 1968, Tiger Mask by Tôei in 1969, and Ashita no Joe by Mushi Productions in 1970.
Aside from their formal and narrative contributions to the budding anime world, these shows worked as the
consecration of the two foremost TV animators of the time: Keiichirô Kimura and Shingo Araki.

There are two main differences between them and the A Pro school animators. First, Kimura and Araki were first and
foremost TV animators, unlike Otsuka’s students whose roots can be traced back to Tôei’s movie output. Kimura did
start as an in-betweener on those, where he received the teachings of Daikichirô Kusube, but quickly moved on to
work on the studio’s TV series even after he left in 1968 to establish his own place, Neo Media. On the other hand,
Araki was the typical Mushi Pro member, with a profile initially very similar to Osamu Dezaki’s or Akio Sugino’s. He
started as a manga artist for rental libraries, was invited to Mushi in 1964 by Masaki Mori and started working there on
Jungle Taitei, after which he contributed to establish studio Jaggard in 1966, and then his own Studio Z around 1971.

Both Araki and Kimura had therefore always worked on “limited” animation and were more individualistic, both in their
careers, personalities, and styles. It is certainly from them that Kanada got what would become his “charisma
animator” mindset.

The second difference is purely artistic: it is the opposition between the “neat” A Pro style and the “rough” gekiga style.
Indeed, while they occasionally used smears and after-images, the A Pro linework was very clean most of the time,
hiding any asperities and idiosyncrasies in the drawing. What made the animators stand out was their way of handling
movement, not the pen itself. That was a clear leftover from Otsuka and the modernist Toei aesthetic. On the other
hand, Kimura and Araki’s style was all about showing the drawing at work, with simple shapes, speed lines, and black,
thick strokes (https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/71dd50d7e71f57c8d32307355dea0e74.mp4) instead of color
shading. This was not without consequences, both technical and artistic.Technically, this approach meant ignoring the
cleaning and tracing process, during which staff members would draw the animator’s work on the cels, while taking
away all superfluous lines. Until the late 60s, all this was done by hand, but the introduction of a new technology
revolutionized it: the Xerox printer. This new machine allowed for the tracing process to be entirely automatic, in what
is called “xerography”. Xerography was a revolution because without the intermediary cleaning staff, the animator
could directly apply his drafts onto the cel. The technique was first introduced in Star of the Giants, where Araki (albeit
under the animation direction of A Pro creator Daikichirô Kusube) and the rest of the team used it to its full potential
and made some of the most legendary cuts in anime history.
Kimura, for whom roughness was already a trademark, only followed suit in what is considered his masterpiece, his
solo animation of the Tiger Mask opening
(https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/82c3358698abee8090ff91489b4175bb.mp4), for a series on which he also
shouldered key animation and animation direction. (https://www.sakugabooru.com/post/show/8800)In a sort of race for
who would get the sketchiest lines, Araki went even further in Ashita no Joe
(https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/7eda4636f46f8b10c2e58e7ceb39c573.mp4) where shapes and colors seem to
give in to the black lines, and the felt intensity of each punch is stronger than it had ever been before.

But these sequences aren’t only interesting for that rough look, which Kanada would very purposefully make his own.
Another future characteristically Kanadaesque technique is the absolute mastery of three-dimensional movement.
While most A Pro animators had to rely on talented directors and their sense of space to express their full potential
(Dezaki and Miyazaki—see Lupin III and Gamba), Araki’s and especially Kimura’s layouts are already full of energy
and motion. In the Tiger Mask opening, the camera is almost never still. Rather, it’s always moving towards or away
from the characters, who jump and fly to and fro. This is of course an open display of mastery from the animator, who
has to maintain the proportions of the objects despite all the movement.

Finally, the general approach of bodies is very different, and it can be argued that the gekiga style is one of the
birthpoints of realism in Japanese TV animation. Indeed, as the Tiger Mask opening exemplifies, Kimura was always
very aware of the bodies’ center of gravity and used this awareness to convey their volume and weight. This is
strikingly different from the A Pro animators, who seldom cared for the physical properties of bodies that they’d rather
twist in creative ways.

The influence of Kimura and Araki on Kanada makes little doubt, if only because some later Kanada drawings look like
they were made by Kimura. But, more notably, it’s interesting to note that many techniques associated with Kanada—
namely the “Kanada beam” and the “Kanada flare”—had already been developed by Kimura or Araki and were already
common in 70’s anime. Even the famous Kanada poses and perspectives owe as much to the two men’s affection for
camera movement and wide motions as they do to A Pro’s sense for strong poses.

A “proto Kanada” lightning/beam effect from 1967’s Cyborg 009: War with the Monster,
on which Kimura was animation director
Most importantly, it was under Araki that Kanada started animating. After dropping out of animation school, he entered
Tôei in 1970, working as an in-betweener and more exceptionally key animator on magical girl or comedy shows like
Mahô no Mako-chan and Sarutobi Ecchan. Upon watching Tôkyô Movie’s Attack No. 1 (on which Yoshiyuki Momose
also worked), he fell in love with Kôichi Murata’s drawings and the heroine Kozue, who would become the prototype of
all his female characters. He therefore tried to join Murata’s studio, Oh Production—but he was rejected and, in 1972,
joined Araki’s Studio Z. It was from there that he in-betweened on Tôkyô Movie/A Pro shows, and that, along with his
old time friend from their student days Shin’ya Sadamitsu, he met someone who would become his closest associate
until the mid-80s: Kazuo Tomizawa. The group of friends would only stay there for two years: in 1974, Araki disbanded
Studio Z to create another studio, Araki Productions. If Kanada didn’t follow him, it’s probably because Araki didn’t see
any immediate potential in him, and would have kept him in-betweening for some more time.

These four years as an in-betweener seem to have been a hard experience for Kanada, even though they were
determining. In a later interview, he recalled his frustration with his work back then: “When I was doing in-betweens I
wondered, ‘Why am I supposed to draw the same drawings one-after-another?’, and I got exhausted from it”. More
generally, he either didn’t stand out, or stood out for the wrong reasons: Takuo Noda describes him as “a real beginner
[without] any outstanding skill”—though we’ll see below how much we should trust this testimony. He also refused to
follow his superiors’ perfectionism and did things his own way: most notably, he used what were considered rookie
tools like a set of standardized rulers. “They told me I wouldn’t become a real animator if I couldn’t draw a circle
without a ruler”, he later remembered. “I didn’t pay attention to them, I just continued to use a ruler.”

The rulers used by Kanada

Kanada’s boredom with in-betweening certainly had a determining impact on his style. Not wanting to put anyone
through work that he had hated, he started using very jerky timings, precisely those that would require little in-
betweening work. His use of rulers can also be understood in this light: with them, he not only saved himself time, but
also made it easier for in-betweeners to follow up on his key frames, because the lines were already regular and neatly
traced. Kanada’s intention to take more work upon himself thus played a decisive part in his future “charisma animator”
status.

The emergence of the Kanada style

I just quoted Takuo Noda commenting on Kanada’s slow progress and apparent lack of skill in the first few months. But
a close examination of Kanada’s very first works as key animator inclines me to take this with suspicion: what he says
might be true of the unremarkable key animation Kanada had done before 1974. But when the two men met around
late 1973, Kanada had already started growing his own individuality and very quickly developed his skill.

The exact chronology of Kanada’s career between late 1973 and late 1974 is extremely difficult to make out; I have
laid out the information and suppositions I have in the Annex to this piece. Here, I will start on Kanada’s first confirmed
key animation work outside of Studio Z: part B of episode 25 of Cutie Honey. While it was the norm back then for a
single person to handle an entire half-episode by themselves, this showed that Kanada had been truly acknowledged
as an animator: he did not animate just any moment, but the climax of the final episode of the series, a highly
prestigious position. Moreover, this particular episode of Cutie Honey was already pretty experimental, and so the staff
had to make sure that the animators were talented enough to follow up on the direction.

The only explanation for such a sudden rise is Kanada’s connections: Araki was character designer and animation
director for the series, and I believe he had also formed a close relationship with the animation director of the finale,
Satoshi Jingû. What’s particularly unique about this debut is that Kanada is already completely recognizable
(https://www.sakugabooru.com/post?tags=cutey_honey+yoshinori_kanada+), even though his style is still far from its
maturity. The timing is characteristically nervous, the lines rough and thick, the key poses strong and marked, and
there are lightning effects everywhere. The final destruction of Panther Claw’s base already lays the template for
Kanada’s famous urban destruction scenes, from Daitarn 3 to Galaxy Express 999.
 Kanadaisms in Honey 25: strong poses, lightning effects, strong lights, rough lines and
flares

Cutie Honey tied Kanada and Tôei together: studio N°1, which he soon joined, was one of Tôei’s most regular
subcontractors. Like most of the studios I’ve mentioned so far, N°1 was created by ex-Tôei artists that decided to leave
between 1968 and 1973 because of the backlash they had faced following the strikes that had hit the studio in those
years. It’s possible that Kanada himself left Tôei because of this difficult context, when working conditions in the studio
quickly deteriorated. Be that as it may, in 1974, he started making regular (although uncredited) contributions to the
Space Battleship Yamato franchise. This was the beginning of his long association with the series, and was probably
where he met the other genius of his generation, his friend and rival Kazuhide Tomonaga. It is in this period,
somewhere in 1974, that he entered Takuo Noda’s studio N°1, accompanied by Sadamitsu and Tomizawa—that is,
unless they had entered before him and made him join them and stop freelancing. Much more than Araki, Noda was
Kanada’s real teacher, as well as his friend: Kanada called him his senpai, and they would work as a regular duo
(Kanada as key animator and Noda as animation director) until the early 80’s.

From left to right: Yoshinori Kanada, Kazuhide Tomonaga, and Shin’ya Sadamitsu in
1980

Kanada’s first confirmed work under Noda and N°1 was on Getter Robo, in 1974–1975. In retrospect, this work makes
Cutie Honey #25 seem even more exceptional, because even though you can see signs here and there, Kanada’s
individuality doesn’t stand out as much as it had at his debut. Blame this on Noda, who probably tried to curb the
young man’s impatience and make sure he mastered the basics before doing his own thing. But by the next year, in
Getter Robo G (https://www.sakugabooru.com/post?tags=getter_robo_g+), the two men seem to have found their
balance, and the Kanada style was born in earnest.

Rather than go over every one of Kanada’s cuts from that time, which would be long and tedious, I will now proceed to
analyze the characteristics of that new style. I’ve already covered his influences, and shown that Kanada’s trademark
techniques did not come out of nowhere. So the question we must now ask is: what was new in Kanada’s animation?

First, there was the simple fact that it synthesized the A Pro and gekiga styles. We can go even further—justified by the
rest of Kanada’s career—and say that his animation was the meeting point of the Tôei and the Mushi aesthetics, of two
traditions of animation, one oriented towards full, the other towards limited, that were (wrongly) believed to be
antithetical. If the Kanada style became the dominant style of anime for nearly a decade, it wasn’t just because of its
inherent power or expressivity; it was in part because the Kanada style was completely an anime aesthetic, tying
together in a singular movement what had been mutually exclusive approaches of the medium, approaches which can
be summed up, in directorial terms, as a Miyazaki/Dezaki opposition.

The Kimura-Araki style was powerful, but too serious and anything but polyvalent; to it, Kanada brought the A Pro
style’s playfulness and life, which made him able to animate both tense fight scenes and light-hearted comic relief
moments. On the other hand, the A Pro style lacked depth and its inventiveness could not make up for its absence of
intensity. Kanada’s sense of spatiality and the rough lines he took from Araki gave it the concreteness and strength it
needed—something that Yûzô Aoki, Hayao Miyazaki, and Kazuhide Tomonaga were all also trying to do at the same
time, and that they would accomplish in The Mystery of Mamo and The Castle of Cagliostro.

Beyond this, and the list of patented “Kanada techniques” (beams, flares, perspectives, poses, etc.), the real, personal
innovation brought in by Kanada was probably in the timing. The thing Kanada is most well-known for in that regard is
his mastery of framerate modulation, that is, varying the timing of a given motion in both a frequent and irregular
fashion. Modulation between 1s and 2s had always existed, whether in Disney or Tôei movies, but the generally
accepted moment of its “invention”—really its systematization—is Yasuo Otsuka’s work on Hols, Prince of the Sun (in
this sequence (https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/e095da5b1692cb0379e36f3b86823d65.mp4), the giant
alternatively moves on 3s and 4s, while Hols is on 1s and 2s). After that, animators both inside and outside the A Pro
school quickly started using it, but in moderate doses. It was Kanada who brought the technique to its full expressive
potential by doing two things: making modulation highly irregular, and associating it with a better understanding of
spacing.

A good example would be this cut, and especially the first four shots. In the first shot, there’s a hold that lasts 6 frames,
after which the man at the right of the image suddenly stands up—there’s no in-between, and the distance between the
two frames is as wide as possible. Then, the man starts aiming—two poses on 3s, one on 4s as he settles— lowers his
gun and shoots on 2s. The fire coming out of the gun is on 1s and takes up two frames, and, after four more frames,
the camera cuts to a reverse shot of the snake.

As the snake starts moving, it’s animated alternately on 1s and 3s as it contracts, and then 2s and 4s when it retracts
and jumps—Kanada plays on the speed differences to make the jump more sudden. In the fourth shot, as the man
gets bitten by the snake, the spaces are once again extreme and clearly express the attack’s speed. The left-right
movement of the beast, into the depth of the image, is sustained by the numerous speedlines as well as by the
contrast with the man’s circular motion; the contrast is strengthened by the fact that, in the next shot, the snake now
enters from the right of the image and goes towards the left.

A good example would be this cut, and especially the first four shots. In the first shot, there’s a hold that lasts 6 frames,
after which the man at the right of the image suddenly stands up—there’s no in-between, and the distance between the
two frames is as wide as possible. Then, the man starts aiming—two poses on 3s, one on 4s as he settles— lowers his
gun and shoots on 2s. The fire coming out of the gun is on 1s and takes up two frames, and, after four more frames,
the camera cuts to a reverse shot of the snake.

As the snake starts moving, it’s animated alternately on 1s and 3s as it contracts, and then 2s and 4s when it retracts
and jumps—Kanada plays on the speed differences to make the jump more sudden. In the fourth shot, as the man
gets bitten by the snake, the spaces are once again extreme and clearly express the attack’s speed. The left-right
movement of the beast, into the depth of the image, is sustained by the numerous speedlines as well as by the
contrast with the man’s circular motion; the contrast is strengthened by the fact that, in the next shot, the snake now
enters from the right of the image and goes towards the left.
All this happens very fast, much too fast for the viewer to register it all in just one sitting. While all the details certainly
make the action very interesting, all that’s left is an impressive sense of energy. This comes from the irregularity of the
motion, and the distance between each pose, but also the excellent layouts and cinematography, which manage to feel
both crowded and readable—the speed lines play a key part here, because they represent something more to register,
and at the same time support the movement and create a sense of perspective and depth.

Kanada also animated many, many robot fight scenes, and because of that most of his trademark techniques are
associated with effects animation. But what this kind of sequence demonstrates is that he was first and foremost a
character animator, just like all the A Pro animators, as well as Kimura and Araki. It actually took much more time for
his effects to become unique than for his character animation. Moreover, if we take for example the “Kanada beams”,
I’ve shown that this particular shape of effect already existed in the late 60s and was very frequent in giant robot
anime; what made Kanada’s effects special was not, at first, their shape, but their motion, and more specifically their
timing.

If, instead, there is just one effects innovation for which we must remember early Kanada, it should undoubtedly be
impact frames. He did not by any means invent the technique: US cartoons already had colored frames that happened
at the moment of a shock to create (most of the time) comic relief, and anime borrowed them. In other words, the
purpose of impact frames was not to support the impact, but to hide it and create another effect: laughter. Kanada
reversed the terms of the equation by radically changing impact frames’ look and purpose: they would no longer be
colored, but black or/and white; they would not hide the impact, but rather support it. The meaning of the impact frame
would no longer be “let’s hide the violence of the shock to make it funny instead”, but rather “the shock is so great that
it can no longer be represented”.
 The best example of this is still probably the very first black and white impact frame used
by Kanada, on Getter Robo G #39
(https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/d9e8569dfcfccd3b4a2a463e9e7680a1.mp4). As the
flickering of those impact frames indicates, they probably didn’t appear as a development
of colored impact frames, but rather must have come out from the white, stroboscopic
flashes used to indicate explosions at the time.

Instead of this headache-inducing and not very creative technique, Kanada used color to his advantage, moving this
responsibility from the photography to the painting department. (In the same way, the Kanada light flares are not just
any effect: instead of leaving lighting purely to the photography staff, it is drawn light, handled by the animator.) It is
only much later, in Wakusei Robo Danguard Ace, that Kanada started systematically using impact frames for
explosions. By then, he had already realized the technique’s full potential, adding onomatopoeia in or between the
impacts.

Kanada’s career is anything but monolithic, and his style cannot be reduced to a simple addition of techniques that go
from light flares to fire dragons. The best way to see that is the first ten years of his career, from his start as key
animator in 1974, to Birth in 1984. I’ve only covered half of that period here, but that first half has already showcased
his immense creativity. Indeed, what strikes me the most about the start of Kanada’s work, more than anything else, is
its diversity. You can still see him take inspiration from everywhere, trying new things and experimenting at every turn.
Watching his early years, you don’t just get the (already rewarding) sight of an artist developing before your eyes; even
better, what you discover along with Kanada himself is the limitless potential of the animated medium. And that, more
than anything else, is probably why he inspired so many others.

Kanada between 1973 and 1974

One of the most difficult periods to retrace in Kanada’s career is his early days. His first credit dates from late 1970, as
an in-betweener on the Tôei series Mahô no Mako-chan. He then did in-betweening and maybe key animation until his
first credited key animation on Akado Suzunosuke #41 and #48 in late 1972 (the episodes aired in early 1973).
Kanada had already joined Studio Z, and it’s around then that the chronology gets blurry.

Many thanks to retrosofa and dragonhunteriv for their help and information. This text also
owes a lot to two Twitter conversations, one with Shinsaku Kôzuma, and the other
between Jun Arai, Numidameleagris and myself.

Tôei’s Cutie Honey started airing in November 1973. However, it seems that Shingo Araki, who did the character
designs and animation direction, left Studio Z months before that to prepare the production of the show in Tôei proper.
Because of that, Studio Z divided in multiple sections before disbanding in early 1974. Kanada seems to have been
working in two sections at the same time.

On the one hand, he worked as an in-betweener directly under Araki on Kôya no Shônen Isamu between August-
October 1973 and January 1974. On the other, he was alternatively in-betweener and key animator with Masami Abe
on The Gutsy Frog, from late 1972 to March 1974.

Then, in October 1973, two things happened. The first is that Takuo Noda, from the newly-formed Studio N°1, made up
of former Tôei staff, contacted Kanada and Shin’ya Sadamitsu to ask them to help out and make in-betweens on
Dororon Enma-Kun. They probably knew each other from Tôei, but that was their first real and recorded contact, and
probably the moment when Kanada left Z, probably to go freelance at first. The other event is that Cutie Honey started
airing. Some information contends that Kanada worked, uncredited, on episodes 6, 13, 16 and 24 of the show.

Chronologically, it would seem to fit, as both the Yoshinori Kanada Special and Great books indicate that Kanada
started working on Honey in October 1973, that is around the time episode 6 was in production. He was most probably
invited there by Satoshi Jingû, a former Studio Z animator who had left for Anime Room around late 1973, probably to
join Honey’s production. Jingû was key animator on episode 6, and animation director on all the episodes Kanada is
presumed to have animated on, as well as the confirmed episode 25. But since Jingû was himself from Z, it’s possible
that the early Kanada-isms we see in those episodes are just stylistical traits taken from the Z style.

This is further clouded by the fact that Masami Abe claimed that Kanada, along with Shin’ya Sadamitsu and Kazuo
Tomizawa, didn’t work for Anime Room after they left Z, but as in-betweeners for Dôga Kobo. The problem is, there is
no more information than this and we do not know what show they might have worked on. [Edit: I got confirmation that
at least Tomizawa had joined Dôga Kobo: in 1975, he worked with the studio’s creator Megumu Ishiguro as key
animators on some episodes of Ganso Tensai Bakabon.] Abe had joined Anime Room when Z disbanded, and in the
same interview (that I sadly haven’t been able to track down), he claimed that Kanada worked on Honey thanks to his
connection with Anime Room member and ex-Tatsunoko animator Kazuhiko Udagawa, who was animation director on
episode 6. It’s also probably him that invited Kanada to work on Yamato, and the link between the two men seems to
have been close. These claims are further confirmed by Shingo Araki himself, who mentions that, at the time of
Honey‘s production, Kanada was “helping out” at Udagawa’s place – which means he had probably not joined Anime
Room proper but was certainly working with them, explaining why he may have gone uncredited.

Whatever happened, in June-August 1974, that is 4 months after Cutie Honey #25, Kanada worked as key animator
on Majokko Megu-chan #16, once again with Jingû as animation director. All sources claim that Kanada did this work
from Studio N°1. If this is true, it may mean that Jingû had joined N°1. But then it means that, just like Z and many
other subcontracting studios, N°1 had divided into two sections, one led by Jingû and the other by Noda since, at this
point, Jingû disappears from Kanada’s career, which becomes associated with Takuo Noda for the 3 years to come.

Unless new testimonies and documents come out (which is very unlikely), we probably never will have a complete and
accurate timeline of all that happened. The biggest question remains the uncredited Cutie Honey episodes. There is a
strong possibility Kanada worked on them, but no certainty. There is one sure thing, however: it’s that Kanada himself
didn’t care much about Cutie Honey: he never mentioned it in any interview, and the only comment he left on the
illustration I used as a cover for this annex was “I don’t remember much, but there she is”.

Kanada and Tomonaga, 1978-1979

1979 was no doubt a busy year in the anime industry, and especially so in the careers of Yoshinori Kanada and
Kazuhide Tomonaga. From 1978 to 1979, the two men delivered some of their greatest work: for Kanada, it was on
Daitarn 3, Cyborg 009 and Galaxy Express 999; for Tomonaga, it was on Future Boy Conan, Anne of Green Gables,
Lupin III, The Castle of Cagliostro and Galaxy Express 999 as well. These were also important years because both
men changed their studio affiliations: Tomonaga went from Oh Production to Telecom Animation, whereas Kanada left
studio Z3 for studio N°1. Trying to establish a somewhat definitive chronology of this period is therefore important to
understand both men’s careers.

Higher resolution image here

(https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/732640690869108841/851769142276784128/chrono

To get a grasp of everything that happened in that time, it’s necessary to go back a little to late 1977, with the start of
two TV shows Kazuhide Tomonaga was closely associated with: Lupin III Part II and Future Boy Conan. Lupin started
airing in October 1977 and Tomonaga quickly started working on it from studio Oh Production. At the exact same time,
Hayao Miyazaki and his team were starting production for Future Boy Conan, which would start airing in April 1978. In
an interview published in Starting Point, Miyazaki stated that Conan’s production started as early as October 1977, and
that in the meantime, they managed to make the first 8 episodes in advance.

There’s no reason to completely doubt Miyazaki’s testimony, however I do think that something happened between
episodes 7 and 8, and that 8 is where the production schedule of Conan started getting rushed. There are three
arguments to this. First, the 7 first episodes were animated on a rotation: one episode would be done by Nippon
Animation staff, and the other by people from Oh Pro. But from episode 8 onwards, the rotation system disappears,
with both studios animating on the same episodes (Nippon Animation doing the A part and Oh Pro the B part until
episode 12, and then it’s the opposite until the end of the show). This would mean that, when the production of episode
8 started, just 4 to 6 animators weren’t able to deliver the episode in time and that they needed to double these
numbers. The second element is that Miyazaki himself gave up on doing all storyboards and layouts himself after
episode 8, sharing the responsibilities of the storyboards with Isao Takahata, Yoshiyuki Tomino and Keiji Hayakawa,
and the layouts with the animators. This, too, would indicate that schedules got tighter and work more intense between
episodes 7 and 9. Finally, after episode 7 of Conan, Yoshifumi Kondô disappears from the show – he would come back
on episodes 14 and 15, but this time uncredited.

Although this doesn’t seem to be very indicative about Conan’s production schedule, it’s telling about other
contemporary or parallel productions. Around the time when Conan #07 might have been completed, that is February-
March 1978, Isao Takahata left the production of Perrine Monogatari, a World Masterpiece Theater series for which he
had directed some episodes. Although, as I just mentioned, Takahata would quickly go on storyboarding and directing
some episodes of Conan, Takahata and Kondô leaving their respective productions at around the same time is
important, because they were just about to collaborate on Takahata’s next series, Anne of Green Gables, on which
Kondô was character designer and animation director. Although it only started airing in January 1979, it’s possible that
it started pre-production as early as March-April 1978.

Spring 1978 brings us back to Tomonaga. It is indeed around that time that the last episode of his first Lupin batch
came out – #31, aired in May 1978. Just a month after that, in June, he did his first (uncredited) work in Conan #10.
The fact that he was uncredited at first might mean that he was still supposed to be on Lupin then – the animation work
was therefore probably done around May, when that episode of Lupin came out. From then on, Tomonaga would be
animating on every episode of Conan until the end of the show in November.

This is when the chronology starts getting blurry around Nippon Animation. All of the Conan staff also worked on Anne
of Green Gables, with most notably Hayao Miyazaki doing the layouts of episodes 1 to 15 and Tomonaga animation on
episodes 1 to 12. We don’t know when precisely they got on Anne, but if it had been in production almost a year before
it actually started airing, it’s most probable that the early Anne episodes were produced at the same time as the late
Conan ones. It’s probable that Anne kept Tomonaga busy until early 1979.

Compared to Tomonaga, Kanada is much harder to track down for the year 1978. That’s because Kanada was working
on many more productions at the same time, and that most of them aren’t as well documented as Conan or Anne. The
geist of it is basically that most of the things Kanada would have worked on in 1978 actually came out in March 1979:
that’s the case of his last Daitarn 3 episode (#37), the Cyborg 009 opening, Josephina the Whale #03 and Mobile Suit
Gundam #01.

The easiest production to track down among all of those is Gundam. We know that the pre-production stage had
started around a year before the show actually started coming out. But for the actual animation, information is harder
to come by. What I did was following a member of Kanada’s studio Z3 who also worked on Gundam #01: Shigenobu
Nagasaki. Nagasaki is an interesting case, because he was a member of studio Oh Productions, and working under
Kazuo Komatsubara on Space Pirate Captain Harlock, of which I’ll talk in more detail shortly. Nagasaki, who was
already trying to replicate Kanada’s style from Oh Pro, finally left for Z3 after the production of Harlock #13, which aired
in June 1978. His first works in Z3 were in-betweens on Daitarn 3, but he rose up to be a key animator on Gundam.
Although it’s anything but an accurate estimate, I think it’d be fair to estimate that the animation of Gundam started
somewhere after Nagasaki’s first in-betweening work on Daitarn #13 – that is around August-September 1978.

As is well known, Kanada only contributed very little to Gundam. The two reasons he himself cited were conflicts with
the animation director Yoshikazu Yasuhiko and the fact that he had received the offer to work on the much more
prestigious Galaxy Express 999 movie just as he was working on the show, that would be in the summer or fall of
1978. Which then brings us to the main topic of this piece: the production calendar of Galaxy Express 999.
Galaxy Express’ director and animation director, Rintarô and Kazuo Komatsubara, had first met on the production of
Space Pirate Captain Harlock, which aired from March 1978 to February 1979. In an interview, Rintarô stated that it
took him between 6 months and a year to fully complete the storyboards of Galaxy Express – which basically means
that said storyboard was made just as Harlock was airing, since the movie came out in August 1979 and would have
finished production by mid-July at the latest. Komatsubara himself doesn’t seem to have left Harlock for any notable
span of time, as his episodes as animation director on the show are evenly spaced. However, that’s not the case for
Rintarô, who didn’t direct any episode between #13 and #31, that is during 5 months. It is most probably during these 5
months that he started working on Galaxy Express – based on the airing date of Harlock #13, it would have been in
May or June of 1978 at the earliest.

As I mentioned, Kanada would have received the offer to work on the movie a few months after that. But he most
probably didn’t join until early 1979 (February-March), when he had finished working on all he had piled up. Kazuhide
Tomonaga probably joined at around the same time. The last episode of Anne he worked on aired in March 1979, so if
Tomonaga had completed his work on it a month before and if we assume that he joined the movie’s production early
on, the beginning of Galaxy Express’ animation would be in the very first months of 1979 – which coincides with the
end of Harlock and Komatsubara being free to switch from one work to the other.

Komatsubara was central for the movie, in that it was probably him who brought in its two most important animators.
Tomonaga was his direct student, and although Yasuo Otsuka had started to take him under his wing on Conan, it was
normal for him and Komatsubara to work together on what promised to be one of the most ambitious anime movies of
the decade. But Galaxy Express 999 would end up being Tomonaga’s last work from studio Oh Production and, in my
mind, the last really great work of his career. As for Kanada, there are many ways he might have been brought on the
production. One is that Komatsubara contacted him directly – they had never worked together before, but most
probably knew each other from Anidô screenings and many animators meet-up around the Tôei shows they both
worked on. The other possibility is that this happened through one of Komatsubara’s students – either Shigenobu
Nagasaki, who had just left Komatsubara’s studio, or Tomonaga himself. It would make complete sense for Tomonaga
to join Galaxy Express, noticing that his friend Kanada was free, and inviting him over. If this is what happened, he
would regret that decision, as he was reportedly bitter about being completely overshadowed by Kanada on the finale
of the movie.

In any case, considering the fact that Kanada and Tomonaga’s name almost doesn’t appear in any credits between
March and July 1979, it’s most probably during that time that the movie was made. For a movie that’s more than 2
hours long to be entirely completed in the span of 7 months is a tight schedule; it’s even more the case for Kanada and
Tomonaga when you consider that the two of them put together animated around 40 minutes of runtime.

Both men may have been tired from so much work, but that didn’t mean they would stop being busy, on the contrary.
Kanada did his last work from Z3 on episode 20 of Josephina the Whale, again storyboarding and animating it. He
probably started working on it at the same time as Galaxy Express’s production. The same applies to Tomonaga, who
probably did his last Oh Pro Lupin episodes (#92 and #98) during lapses in the movie’s production.

Even after all that, neither of them got the chance to catch a rest. Let’s start with Tomonaga, and the turning point of
his career: The Castle of Cagliostro. At the time, the Lupin franchise was bursting with dynamism and gained more and
more success. Which is why, once the first movie The Mystery of Mamo had come out, the producers from TMS
immediately began planning for a second one. After many negotiations behind the scenes, Yasuo Otsuka managed to
secure Hayao Miyazaki to direct the movie: taking any opportunity to leave Anne of Green Gables, Miyazaki joined
what was to become Cagliostro in May 1979, and presented his script on June 10. Then, the animation proper
happened between July and November 1979, another very tight schedule.
It was to work on Cagliostro, and at Otsuka’s demand, that Tomonaga left Oh Production and joined Telecom
Animation, the ones who were doing Cagliostro’s animation. The exact way Tomonaga entered the movie’s production
is open to speculation. Indeed, the very famous chase scene that Tomonaga contributed to was initially supposed to be
animated by Yûzô Aoki, one of Otsuka’s most talented students, a veteran contributor to the Lupin franchise and one of
the most important artists behind Mamo. But, for whatever reason, it is Tomonaga who ended up animating this scene,
and Aoki wasn’t involved at all in Cagliostro.

It’s very hard to think that Aoki would have left any entry of the Lupin franchise on his own volition, especially
considering that he was only working on the concurrently airing TV series at that time. Put bluntly, it’s possible that
Miyazaki wanted Tomonaga to do that scene, and pushed to get Aoki away from the movie in a way or another.

Kanada, too, left his studio shortly after he was done with Galaxy Express. The movie was, along with Josephina the
Whale #20, his last work from Z3. Once he was done with it (by July-August 1979, just when Galaxy Express came
out), he probably found himself with nothing to do, as most of the members of Z3 were still busy on Gundam. But then
two things happened: Kanada probably received an offer from his teacher Takuo Noda to join the production of Entaku
no Kishi Monogatari: Moero Arthur, which the latter was character designer and animation director for; and, with
Gundam’s length suddenly shortened by a dozen episodes, Z3 found itself at the end of its scheduled rotation on the
show by #32, that would be around October 1979. Kanada seized the opportunity, and took with him most of Z3’s staff
members to join Noda’s Studio N°1.

All this chronology might be a bit hard to follow, but the one thing to remember is that, for animators such as Tomonaga
and Kanada, things never stopped. They did to the point that, not long after the events I retraced, in 1980, Kanada
suddenly left the production of Be Forever Yamato after he had collapsed from exhaustion. Kanada’s early death in
2009 might very well be the result of decades of such labour, in often less than optimal conditions. I don’t know of
Tomonaga ever collapsing in a similar fashion, but he must have found himself as exhausted once the production of
Lupin III Part II finally wrapped up in late 1980.

Directing Kanada
One of the most notable aspects of Kanada’s career is that, while he never directed anything by himself, he was
closely associated with major directors: first Yoshiyuki Tomino, and then Rintarô and Hayao Miyazaki. His relationship
with the latter two is what I’m going to research here. More precisely, I’d like to see how animator and directors worked
together and reciprocally pushed each other in new directions. The goal will be to explore Kanada’s animation in detail,
to investigate and try to uncover what was his, what were his innovations, and what must be credited to other people:
directors, animation directors, and other animators.

Cover image: a layout from Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, by Yoshinori Kanada

The period I’m going to study is quite long and extremely dense: it goes from 1979, with Galaxy Express 999 to 1992,
with Porco Rosso and Download: Namu Amida Butsu wa Ai no Uta. In these 13 years, Kanada went through major
stylistic shifts, and produced some of his most important works even aside from his collaborations with Rintarô and
Miyazaki. Therefore, this piece will not attempt to give a full account of Kanada’s career during the 1980’s. I will only
focus on 6 works, 3 by director: for Rintarô, the two Galaxy Express movies in 1979 and 1981, and Download in 1992;
for Miyazaki, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind in 1984, Laputa Castle in the Sky in 1986, and Porco Rosso in 1992.

Galaxy Express: Rintarô and Komatsubara

Let’s begin by putting Kanada’s collaboration with Rintarô back into context. Galaxy Express 999 was the first time
they worked together, and it was an important step in both men’s careers. For Rintarô, it marked the peak of his time in
Tôei Animation and the beginning of his career as a movie director. For Kanada, the year 1979 was complex and
difficult to read. It was mostly marked by the change between studios: it was when he left the place he had created,
studio Z3, to rejoin his mentor Takuo Noda in studio N°1.

The exact chronology is hard to follow. Kanada’s most infamous work for the year was on episode 1 of Mobile Suit
Gundam, something quite normal since Z3 had become a regular subcontractor for Sunrise. However, Kanada’s
contribution to the episode was notably small, and he never worked on the other episodes that Z3 did on Gundam.
According to his own testimony, although he was attracted to the world and characters, Kanada felt that Yoshikazu
Yasuhiko’s control over him was a bit too heavy: indeed, the animation director did by himself all the layouts and some
key animation for the opening episode. It’s possible that there had already been some disagreements between the two
men on Zambot 3 two years earlier and, even though it’s hard to tell, Gundam was probably the point when they
realized they weren’t made to work together.

It’s around the same time that Kanada received the offer to work on Galaxy Express 999, and this apparently
motivated him even more to leave Gundam’s production. Kanada and Rintarô didn’t know each other yet, and my
guess is that Kanada was invited by the movie’s character designer and animation director, Kazuo Komatsubara.

Alongside his friend and comrade Shingo Araki (Kanada’s first teacher), Komatsubara is probably one of the most
important figures of 70’s animation, and most notably one of the pillars of Tôei Animation’s TV shows during the
decade. He was the co-founder of one of the most important subcontracting studios in the history of anime, Oh!
Production, and started animating on Tôei’s TV series around 1965. He quickly rose to prominence in 1969, on Tiger
Mask, for which he was animation director on 17 episodes, and did his first character designs on Genshi Shônen Ryû
in 1971. From then on, he had many opportunities to meet Kanada, as he was animation director and/or character
designer on the Tôei series the latter did his first key animation on: Cutie Honey, Getter Robo, and Getter Robo G.
More generally, they were in the exact same circles throughout the 1970’s. As for Rintarô, Komatsubara met him as the
character designer and animation director of Captain Harlock, that the former directed.
Komatsubara stood out at the time for his unique approach to animation direction. Since the number of animators per
episode on TV series was very low (between 2 and 6), the animation director always had a very important role and it
was often their style that prevailed the most. It is this context which allowed for the emergence of very controlling
animation directors in the 70’s, like Yoshikazu Yasuhiko and Hayao Miyazaki. But Komatsubara seems to have
adopted the opposite philosophy: it would be him adapting his own style to that of the animators rather than the
opposite. It has therefore been said that there is no “Komatsubara style”, while animator Atsuko Ishida has said of him
that he is representative of an approach centered around “attraction”: his greatest skill was to attract talented
animators and to offer them the best opportunities to express their respective styles rather than impose his own.

This is certainly visible in both Galaxy Express movies, and especially in the second one, which I’ll cover below. On the
first movie, there were 15 key animators. Many of them were Tôei veterans, but there were also charismatic figures
that Komatsubara had worked with previously: besides Kanada, there was Kazuhide Tomonaga, who had joined Oh
Pro a few years prior (Galaxy Express 999 would be his last work in the studio). The other major names were the three
members of Studio Bird, Yoshinori Kanemori, Hiroshi Oikawa, and Yoshinobu Inano. All three had come from
Tatsunoko and were experts in character animation – they were probably the ones behind some of the most delightful
moments of acting in the movie. Inano, most notably, was in charge of the entire opening and ending scenes of the
movie.

As the low number of key animators might indicate, each artist was given a large chunk of the movie, as would be a
constant in many Rintarô films. These are but rough estimates, but I believe that Kanada animated between 15 and 20
minutes, Tomonaga around 15, and Inano 7. It is with this in mind that we must approach the animation of the movie: it
was a lot of work, especially for Kanada who handled very complex scenes, most notably the apocalyptic finale, one of
his most famous and important works.

To fully appreciate it and Kanada’s level of invention, it’s interesting to see what the movie’s storyboards have to tell us.
First, let’s look at the beginning scene of the movie: the station sequence, presumably animated by Inano. As the
animation itself shows, it’s very complex business, with many characters running in all directions, background
animation, the pendant being thrown from one kid to the other… This scene exhibits the two aspects Rintarô seems to
have put the most focus on: camera movement and layouts. This is very clear in the storyboard of this scene: they are
full of arrows to indicate the trajectories of the running characters, and the different kids have letters to avoid any
confusion between them.

To put it into more general terms, Rintarô seems to have been mostly interested in choreography and movement;
however, motion, that is the way objects move rather than the directions they move in, was entirely left to the
animators. This is visible when we look at two scenes animated by Kanada, taken from the collapse of Planet Maetel.
As for the rhythm, the timing is key for giving the fall a feeling both of surprise and fluidity. We begin mostly on 2s, as
Maetel suddenly loses her footing. But then as she really falls down, her head turns from left to right; this is a sudden
move, conveyed by a shift to 3s and a much wider spacing between the two frames. After that, the timing gets much
more erratic: it oscillates between 1s, 2s, 3s and 4s without any regularity, to give the viewer time to take in each pose
but also to keep it dynamic.
The second moment I want to analyze is Kanada’s most famous on the movie, the final destruction of the planet.
What’s very striking is that the storyboard contains very little detail, even though this is such an important moment.
There are a lot of annotations, but Kanada’s animation is so baroque and inventive here that he was probably
improvisating and animating on his own ideas. Since the storyboard was most probably made before each animator
was given (or chose) his cuts, it’s not like Rintarô specifically left everything in the hands of Kanada; it’s more probable
that he simply wasn’t interested in the detail of the effects. Though it must also be noted that everything isn’t in the
storyboard: the key animation was checked by both the director and animation director, and they might have given
suggestions.

The storyboard for the collapse of Planet Maetel. Translation of the annotations: “Giant
mass of flames rises up like a solar flare / Falls down and scatters / Planet Maetel /
Large explosions keep going off one after another / Balls of fire get scattered around like
garbage / Light slowly expands from the center (penetrating white light) / Use waving
glass / Shining Planet Maetel / Rain of light scatters through space / Use waving glass /
Light slowly fades out

As things stand, however, I consider that this scene can be considered as one of the most representative instances of
Kanada’s creative power. In the first step of the destruction, he added red lines to the core of the planet, adding a great
amount of texture. Then, in the second shot, there is obviously a lot of care put into the color, as we shift from black
and white to purple, then a sudden explosion with yellows and reds, and then an abstract composition made of straight
red lines and a white circle. The work on lighting and photography is very important here. Some of it is already in the
storyboards (such as the white light and the use of glass to make reflections), but it would certainly be interesting to
have access to the original drawings to see how much of the coloring decisions were taken by Kanada himself.

Galaxy Express 999 is no doubt one of Kanada’s most important and influential works. It’s probably what made him
known beyond the circle of animation maniacs and super-robot fans: it was the highest-grossing film in the Japanese
box office for the year 1979, and one of the major successes of animation in Japanese theaters. In the context of the
history of the Kanada school, it is the style Kanada used in this movie that would be the most associated with him and
copied by his first students: the peculiar body shapes and “liquid-fire” effects of Masahito Yamashita, Kazuhiro Ochi
and Kôji Itô’s early work all come from here.

All these elements would be even more pronounced two years l ater, when Tôei tried to bank on the success of the first
movie by producing a sequel, Farewell Galaxy Express 999. The top team was the same, with Rintarô reluctantly being
brought back to direct and Komatsubara as animation director. However, the animation team was completely different.
Many of the most important animators of the first movie, like Kazuhide Tomonaga or Yoshinobu Inano, had left for other
projects: Tomonaga was in Telecom, working with Hayao Miyazaki and Yasuo Otsuka, while Inano had become a
Sunrise subcontractor and a central animator on Space Runaway Ideon.

To replace them, Komatsubara made full use of his contacts: most of the animators on the movie were from his studio,
Oh Production. As for Kanada, he brought with him the two other aces of Studio N°1: his teacher Takuo Noda, and his
first student, Osamu Nabeshima. Their presence was central, as Kanada-style effects would be recurrent throughout
the entire movie.
Kanada himself probably did much less work on Farewell than on the first movie; however, what he did was even more
idiosyncratic: the film probably represents the peak of his liquid-fire
(https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/55007506a70091dc05254c621597773f.mp4) effects style, and contains some of
his most iconic moments (https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/be7672fa4f45f70a2cffea8769b4543e.mp4). In terms of
effects, it therefore represents one of the major steps of the evolution of Kanada’s style, and the point where his
experimentation with colors becomes more and more distinctive: after the abstraction reached in the first movie, the
effects start to be used for figuration and start prefiguring the fire dragons of Genma Taisen.

In terms of character animation, what’s the most striking is how little corrections Komatsubara made on Kanada’s
scenes; to put it bluntly, it looks like he didn’t make any, and gave him total freedom. In this sequence
(https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/ce4b844363314eb5d3314bb91df53f14.mp4), all characters are wildly off-model
and their look has nothing in common with the rest of the movie. Later, on the climax, Kanada felt free to include
multiple easter eggs, most notably one of his mascot characters, Kabonen from episode 6 of Zukkoke Knight: Don de
la Mancha, and none of them was taken away. It therefore seems like Kanada was given almost complete creative
control over his own scenes, making them some of his most powerful and creative work.

Meeting Miyazaki: Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

The early 80’s is when Kanada started his meteoric rise in the anime industry: he got more and more work as
animation director on Tôei movies such as Queen Millennia and Future War 198X in 1982, and then made one of his
most iconic works on Genma Taisen in 1983. It’s of course hard to tell, but had it not been for the failure of Birth,
Kanada might have risen even higher and maybe would have directed something of his own. But what interests me
here is the other prestigious project he worked on in 1984: Hayao Miyazaki’s second feature film, Nausicaä of the
Valley of the Wind.

Now that Miyazaki being a central figure of world animation is something we’re used to, it’s hard to go back in 1984
and picture how much of an event Nausicaä was. Miyazaki had already been something of a star in the industry since
the moment he had left Tôei, and the success he got with his first TV series, Future Boy Conan, and movie, The Castle
of Cagliostro, made him known to a wider audience. And now, he was to direct an adaptation of his own work, an
already popular science-fiction manga. His reputation preceded him, to the point that all the animators who first
collaborated with him on the movie confess having been intimidated at first.

It wasn’t the same on the producers’ side, though. The movie was given a small budget and, through some curious
alleyways of pre-production, its animation was largely handled by the small and unknown studio Topcraft, that had
been created in 1972 by ex-Tôei producer Tôru Hara. It was a curious decision because Topcraft specialized in
subcontracting for American studios, most notably Rankin Bass. Their approach to animation was wildly different to
that of other Japanese animators, and it seems that most of their work on Nausicaä was heavily corrected. As
Benjamin Ettinger points out, “it must have been a real eye-opener to the studio’s animators to work on that film with
figures whose approach was much more individualistic and focused on creating movement that felt good.”

The other specificity of the movie is that the animation director wasn’t Miyazaki himself, but someone he had never
personally worked with previously: Kazuo Komatsubara. It is most probably Komatsubara who brought on board many
“charisma animators” whose philosophy was very different from Miyazaki’s: the rising star of effects animation Takashi
Nakamura, the ex-Oh Pro alumnus and studio Z3 member Osamu Nabeshima, and of course Kanada himself. Kanada
and Miyazaki had already met a few times by then, and Kanada had even done some of his first in-betweening work
on a Miyazaki episode back in the 70’s. But it’s on Nausicaä that began a relationship that would last for a decade.

With Komatsubara as animation director, the movie’s animation is probably the most diverse among all of Miyazaki’s
catalogue: it’s much easier than in his other movies to spot the different animators and their sensibilities. The level at
which Miyazaki exerted his control was therefore not the animation itself, but the storyboards. Especially compared to
Rintarô’s, they are very detailed and sequential: every movement and expression is recorded. To put it in raw numbers,
Nausicaä’s storyboard is as long as Galaxy Express’ (around 550 pages for each) even though the first one is shorter
by 30 minutes and Galaxy Express’s storyboard is already notably long. Stylistically, one of the most striking elements
in Nausicaä compared to other Miyazaki movies is the use of impact frames. You would think these were implemented
by Kanada himself, since they were one of his frequent techniques. But in fact, the way explosions are drawn in the
storyboard seems to indicate that they were planned at that level.

Kanada animated many sequences of the movie, but let’s just focus on the most famous one, the air battle scene. As
can be expected from Miyazaki, the layouts are fairly complex, as the airships chasing each other move in all
directions across the screen. Most of it is already present in the storyboard, so even though it’s perfectly fair to credit
Kanada for being able to pull the scene off, it’s not his own inventivity that’s behind it. The only place where he could
really do things his own way was in the actual drawing style, and especially in the shapes.

Indeed, all the effects are very easy to recognize: they’re characteristically angular and the color work is fairly unique.
What interests me the most in this sequence is the missile part, from 0:14 to 0:17. The storyboard details the
movement, but the actual motion is quite striking. First, it must be noted that the animation is entirely on 1s and 2s with
close spacings – the kind of combination that’s usually used to convey detailed, nuanced and realistic motion, one
seldom used by Kanada. The amazing sense of action therefore doesn’t come from the timing but from the rhythm of
the motion itself: in the first shot, each missile is launched in sequence, and they then enter in the next shot one by
one, something that doesn’t seem to be clearly indicated in the storyboard.
Then, there’s the characteristic motion of the missiles. In the storyboard, their trajectory is relatively straight and
simple, but Kanada privileged something more oblique and irregular: the first missile starts relatively straight, but then
suddenly moves left just before it hits the airship. The other missiles follow close behind, and the smoke trails they
leave behind occupy all the frame, almost to the point of crowding it. You see Kanada’s unique approach to
compositing here as the missiles are on a different cel as the airship, making their interaction when a missile hits all the
more striking.

Kanada in Ghibli
1984 was a turning point in Kanada’s career both because of Birth and Nausicaä. The failure of the former and the
success of the latter profoundly changed the kind of work Kanada would do. Except for the Tôei movie Odin: Kôshi
Hansen Starlight in 1985, for which he had probably already been recruited before Birth or during its production, he did
almost no animation direction until the end of his career, and only some storyboards here and there. Most of his work
outside Ghibli was minor, and can be boiled down to him helping out some of his friends and students on the shows or
OVAs they directed or animated on.

It’s hard to tell what was the precise status of Kanada in Ghibli. He participated in every Miyazaki movie, and had his
own desk in the studio until 1992. However, in all the lists of Kanada’s works, he is still credited as a freelancer. Even
from there, he doesn’t seem to have had an exclusivity contract with Ghibli: Kanada kept his strongly independent
spirit. After Takuo Noda had joined Madhouse in 1983 and N°1 was dissolved, Kanada might have joined or become
strongly associated with Kaname Pro; but Birth put an end to that. Then, in those years, besides Ghibli, one would
often meet Kanada in studios One Pattern (the successor of Masahito Yamashita and Shinsaku Kôzuma’s studio OZ)
or Z5 (created by ex-Shingo Araki students who were close to Kanada).

The Miyazaki-Kanada collaboration is often considered paradoxical, and it’s widely thought that the latter was
somewhat on the losing end of the partnership: his idiosyncratic style didn’t really fit in with Miyazaki’s, and he was
corrected to the point of being almost invisible. My analysis of Nausicaä should already have nuanced this idea, but I’d
like to go further and show that it misses some important facts: Kanada’s stylistical evolution cannot be understood
without his works on Ghibli movies. If you just think of them as a strange parenthesis between his extremely fluid
liquid-fire style effects of the early 80’s and the very snappy, angular animation of the 90’s, there’s no way of making
sense of that transition. But this transition partly happened in the Ghibli period.

Nausicaä is already a first sign of this: the fire effects are remarkably more angular than anything Kanada had done
before. This would go on to become even more remarkable on Laputa. The first example of that is Kanada’s most
famous contribution of the movie, the storm when lightning transforms into dragons
(https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/c8e495a0b340155b773a985838724246.mp4). Because it’s a case of figurative
effects and features dragons, this scene tends to be read in the continuity of Genma Taisen’s finale. But, without
denying the similarities, I’d relativize that, because there’s a central element missing: the use of color to create motion.
In this sequence, the dragons are monochrome, and the motion is only created using lines. In that sense, Kanada’s
effects work must be understood in relation to two things: first, Masahito Yamashita’s effects
(https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/e671745140b02f7f0aab4ca7fe1f7f6e.mp4) at roughly the same time which use
lines in a similar, although more baroque, way, and Kanada’s previous work on beam shapes
(https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/65849440ef8fea2c64aa48d1993e66bc.mp4), which had featured this angularity
for a long time.

The same applies to character animation. The other standout moment that Kanada did in Laputa is the encounter/fight
between the inhabitants of the mining town and the pirates in the first part of the movie. What’s striking in this scene is
the rhythm: we get long moments of anticipation and then sudden, very fast motion on the hits. The spacings suddenly
get very wide at some moments, and the limbs are always extended or making stark angles. What this looks like is, in
fact, less Kanada than early Yoshiyuki Momose or Yoshifumi Kondô. In other words, this is a return to Kanada’s 70’s
inspirations, probably spurred by Miyazaki who had been close to the A Pro school. This is absolutely essential
because, as I will show in a later article, Kanada’s late style in the 90’s can in fact be read as a return to the A Pro
fundamentals. And this sequence from Laputa shows that this had already started in 1986, under Miyazaki’s
supervision.
It seems that Kanada tried out his new philosophy of character acting in My Neighbour Totoro. Testimonies from the
movie production seem to indicate that the animation of the bath scene
(https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/ad1963476d2d40ed5d4abe326b292220.mp4) was extremely striking and
idiosyncratic. Maybe it went a bit too far – although the finished product retains a great sense of liveliness and fun, it’s
not as bold as you’d expect. In fact, Shinsaku Kôzuma told that, on Totoro, Miyazaki flat-out rejected some of Kanada’s
layouts and had him use an enlarged version of the storyboard instead. A clue that supports this is the fact that after
Totoro, Kanada was seldom given pure acting cuts – Miyazaki might have been afraid of him going too much off-
model. Off-model was something Kanada was an expert in, and his Ghibli layouts, most notably from Laputa, seem to
indicate how playful and free-spirited he was with his work and Miyazaki’s characters.

One of Kanada’s idiosyncratic layouts from Laputa. In a mysteriously obscure remark, Shinsaku Kôzuma commented
on Kanada’s Ghibli layouts, saying that “Miyazaki didn’t want to admit to himself that he couldn’t understand them”

Despite all that, Kanada was no doubt a central figure in Ghibli. On Laputa, he was credited as “head key animator” (原
画頭). Some accounts claim that this honorific title is a relic of a new kind of organization Miyazaki wanted to try out:
like it had been the case in Tôei Animation in the 60’s, it would have been a two-tier system with head key animators
doing first key animation having a series of assistants doing the second key animation. However, this experiment was
soon abandoned, and Kanada’s credit was mostly an in-joke within the Ghibli staff, who called Kanada “chief” (頭)
because of his prestige and prominence. On all Ghibli movies, he was generally given the most complex scenes on the
movies: on Totoro, he had to animate one of the most impressive Catbus sequences
(https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/6bab08ba810497e4fe51cf81af0df546.mp4), with the very intricate movement of
all the legs and a long moment of background animation. On Kiki, it was a lot of flying scenes, most notably the one
when Kiki is attacked by a pack of crows, and the finale of the movie. Finally, it was on Porco Rosso that Kanada had
the most opportunity to showcase the range of his talent.
I’ve argued previously that Kanada’s animation in the 70’s represented a key step in the development of realism, and
that under the influence of Kazuhide Tomonaga, he slowly turned towards a realistic approach of mechanical
animation. Porco Rosso probably represents the apex and conclusion of that evolution: in charge of many flying
scenes, Kanada revealed his ability to convey the volume and weight of machines. In this sequence, the hardest would
have been to make the movement of the plane believable, and to convey both the danger and speed. He established
the second through amazing bits of background animation, but he also managed to make the plane evolve naturally in
such a quickly-evolving environment.

The machine is animated on 2’s, often on 1’s, and there’s something impressive about its consistency. Even with such
uniform timing, Kanada created a sense of rhythm, mostly through the bursting water splashes. An especially
impressive moment is around 1:11, when the plane just rebounds on the water. It enters the frame on 2’s, but after the
first bounce, it goes on 1’s until the end of the shot. But as it goes further away from a camera and bounces again, the
spacings get closer and closer, creating both the feelings of distance and speed. Everything is carefully studied, and
Kanada’s work on the movie deserves to be counted among the masterpieces of mechanical animation.

A new shift: Download

I tend to consider that Porco Rosso is Kanada’s last work in Ghibli. He did do some animation on Princess Mononoke
in 1997, but his contribution was notably short. The movie’s production report indicates that Kanada wasn’t meant to
work on the movie in the first place, and that he ended up on it because Ghibli was understaffed. I believe that Kanada
distanced himself from the studio on Porco Rosso following its internal reform: during the production of the movie,
Miyazaki and the rest of the studio’s management decided to raise the salaries of the employees and made a mass
series of recruits. Following this, Ghibli started to rely less and less on the services of freelancers such as Kanada.
There might also have been some personal disagreement between him and Miyazaki; but most importantly, there was
the fact that Kanada’s style was taking a new, major turn, that absolutely didn’t fit the Ghibli aesthetic anymore. This
turn took notably shape in Rintarô’s 1992 OVA, Download: Namu Amida Butsu wa Ai no Uta.

The OVA must be understood in context. It is one of the many works Rintarô directed in his OVA period, which roughly
goes from 1987 to 1994, during which he tried out, with uneven levels of success, very different works and styles.
Download was, as strange as that might sound, a cyberpunk comedy. It was one of the late meeting places of the
oldest members of the Kanada school: Takuo Noda, who had been Kanada’s master, had become one of Rintarô’s
closest associates since Genma Taisen in 1983, and he invited not only Kanada, but also Kazuhiro Ochi and Masahito
Yamashita.

Kanada was therefore in a comfortable environment, and had the opportunity to do the character designs himself. It
might seem strange that he didn’t also do the animation direction; it’s possible that it was offered to him. But he was
likely already busy on other projects (Porco Rosso was in production at the same time) and handed the position down
to Noda. It had been a long time since the golden days of their collaboration, but Noda and Kanada were old friends:
it’s not like the animation direction was given to entirely foreign hands.

In concrete terms, this meant three things: a prioritization of motion above all else, a disregard for staying on-model,
and a liquid approach to shapes. These are the characteristics of what I call “flow animation” which would become
more and more important in the 90’s and triumph in the 2000’s. All this was already present in Birth, and would be
pushed further by two artists throughout the 80’s. The first is Kanada himself, notably on The Chocolate Panic Picture
Show (https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/0ee8114d9caa7c99af6a1060bd91ec3e.mp4) in 1985 which, just in-between
Birth and Laputa, features both a flowing, deformed kind of animation, and snappier timings and cycles. The other is
Shinsaku Kôzuma, one of the few students of Kanada who didn’t completely turn to effects animation in the second
half of the 80’s. His work (https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/88686e6fe8c1c2b4f5f6d44a0643db3a.mp4) made a
heavy use of shape deformation, squash and stretch and stark slow-in/slow-outs, creatin a yet unprecedented feeling
of rhythm.
Download featured Kanada’s first character designs since Birth, and it’s hard not to see the two in continuity. The
design of the female characters is very similar in both OVAs, although Download went even further in exaggerating
their curves. All the characters were simple and animation friendly, and expressed a constant feeling of energy and joy.
In that, they were probably the perfected realization of what had been tried out in Birth’s character animation: the
possibility of a Kanada-style character animation that would put aside any form of rigidity in favor of liberated,
spontaneous movement – in other words, expand to character animation what Kanada had done to effects.

It is therefore no surprise if two of Download’s foremost animators, Kazuyoshi Yaginuma and Tatsuyuki Tanaka, were
pure products of the realist school. The two men were intimate friends and had both started their career in studio
Telecom. Close friends with Takashi Nakamura and Shin’ya Ohira, they were at the center of the realist circle, and
Tanaka even made his debut as key animator on Akira, before working on Gosenzosama Banbanzai where he met Iso.
Tanaka’s animation is probably one of the highlights of Download. It is highly modulated, switching freely between 1s
and 4s, close and wide spacings. This creates a sense of frenesy, furthered by the multiplication of movements of all
parts of the body, clearly inspired by Iso. The other Iso inspiration is probably in the smears: whereas Kanada school
animators like Shinsaku Kôzuma used wide, deformed smears that exaggerated the motion, following Gosenzosama,
Iso pioneered smaller smears that would only distort the outlines of objects, most notably of the hands: they were in
the service of dynamism rather than deformation for its own sake. All in all, there’s a very fun and cartoony aspect to it,
that’s the perfect crossing point between Gosenzosama’s expressive animation and Kanada’s crass, body-centered
kind of humor.
 A comparison between Download and Gosenzosama Banbanzai. Upper left is Mitsuo
Iso, upper right is Shin’ya Ohira, the lower frames are by Tatsuyuki Tanaka.

But it was Download that really showed what this approach to animation meant. This was partly due to the generally
better production conditions compared to Birth, Kanada’s even more perfected character designs and a new
philosophy he had probably agreed on with Noda. But there’s also a determining element: Gosenzosama Banbanzai.
This 1990 OVA was one of the masterpieces of realistic animation, but it was also, through the pioneering work of
Satoru Utsunomiya, Shin’ya Ohira and Mitsuo Iso, one of the major steps in the development of flow animation and the
new philosophy of character acting.

What makes this animation so unique in Download is its contrast with the more angular Kanada-style effects, and
Kanada’s own animation. He animated by himself the long and impressive final scene. What little acting there is here is
as energetic as Tanaka’s, but the shapes are still more rigid. The thing that really stands out, however, is the effects
animation. The star-shaped beams are directly taken from Kanada’s work on the Odin movie from 1985, and the
simplicity of the fire and smoke effects is clearly descended from the smoke and fire of Nausicaä. But what changes is
the return of speed lines, which had totally disappeared from Kanada’s animation in the 80’s, and the intensive use of
straight and geometrical shapes. Kanada’s use of a ruler had never been more obvious, and what you see here are all
the elements of his later style that would become so iconic in the 90’s and 2000’s.
There would still be a lot to be said about Kanada’s work in the 80’s. But this article had a somewhat reduced scope,
and its goal was not to be a complete retrospective. What I wanted to explore were two things: one, what was the
relationship between Kanada and the directors he worked with, and where exactly were the places of innovation and
invention. And, two, how did the transition from his apparently realistic style of the late 80’s to his heavily stylized
animation to the 90’s happened. In fact, I think it is a conclusion of the research I made here that there was no
transition – Kanada held the two concurrently, and there was never any contradiction between them. This period is so
interesting precisely because Kanada’s style isn’t fixed, and in 1992-1993, Kanada’s character animation could clearly
have gone in two directions: the liquid, free-flowing style tried out in Birth and Download on one hand; and, on the
other, the solid, rigid, A-Pro inspired animation that he began to use on Laputa.

The Kanada style now

Although the Kanada style has certainly known a rebirth in the 2000s, it seems that, in the 2010’s, it has gone through
a new phase of decline. It’s not that it has totally disappeared: it is still thriving around specific studios (like Trigger) or
artists (the most important among them being Yoshimichi Kameda). However, outside of those circles, the presence of
the Kanada style is mostly visible through citations (Kanada dragons, very angular effects) and a generally snappier
approach to timing. Overall, there is little formal innovation. But this doesn’t mean that the Kanada style is dead or
dying; it has just acquired a new, more secondary, place in the field of anime aesthetics. This situation is what I call the
“post-Kanada” era; not just because it has been long now since the golden age of the 80’s, but also because most
Kanada-school animators emerging today have done so after the death of Yoshinori Kanada himself. They have
therefore never directly experienced his work, and their influences might be more diverse than that of previous artists.
The goal of this article will be to understand this new context, and to highlight some promising artists in the Kanada
lineage.

Modern action animation: Shingo Yamashita and Yutaka Nakamura

It makes little doubt that, in the last 20 years, action animation has grown in prestige and importance. In that, it is the
direct result of the evolutions of the late 80’s, with the successive rise of the realist and flow animation schools. Both
were focused on character animation, with little interest for either effects or mecha, which had been the domains in
which 80’s Kanada-style animation had bloomed the most. This was only accentuated by the fact that many flow
animators, chief among them Norio Matsumoto, approached fight scenes with an increasing attention to choreography,
thereby integrating their character animation roots into a new way of making fight scenes.

In the 2000’s, what was missing from the early works of the flow animators finally developed: a distinct philosophy of
effects animation, that would be able to fully integrate it into sequences and not just use it as an ornament. With this,
the simpler effects style of the 90’s that had succeeded to the dense Kanada style would be thoroughly replaced, while
action animation could now develop as a hybrid form of characters and effects animation, just like mecha had been.
Although there were probably many reasons for this evolution, one of them was probably the emergence of the so-
called “web-generation” and its specific approach to animation.

Rather than keep making generalities such as this, which necessarily brush over the details and specific artistic
developments, it is necessary to take a look at the major artists behind this transition, and how their work is in a
fundamental clash with the Kanada style. Many animators could be taken as examples here, but I have chosen two
that can arguably be considered among the most important figures of anime in the last two decades: Shingo Yamashita
and Yutaka Nakamura.

Yamashita, who started as a gif animator, is one of the names most often associated with the “web-generation”,
alongside Ken’ichi Kutsuna and Ryo-timo. Rather than a self-conscious group with a distinct philosophy, the “webgen”
was initially made up of rookie animators with no professional training that had started animation on digital tools such
as Flash. Their approach was based on self-expression and spontaneity; it was therefore no surprise if Ryo-timo
especially was introduced to the industry by Satoru Utsunomiya and Norio Matsumoto: the two pioneers of flow
animation were probably well aware of the complementarity between their own styles and the one that these new
digital animators were developing.

It was in 2008-2009, on the two seasons of Birdy the Mighty: Decode, that the webgen animators, chief among them
Yamashita, got a major opportunity to shine on a big stage. What interests me here is a sequence from episode 12 of
the second season, one of Yamashita’s most famous, that exemplifies the best his approach to animation.

As can be seen in this sequence, Yamashita’s animation can be characterized by three things: an emphasis on fluidity,
the disappearance of clear-cut lines and shapes, and a flat, two dimensional approach to shading and effects. Let’s go
over them one by one. The first aspect, fluidity, is most visible in the extremely uniform timing: most of the sequence is
on 1s, with some parts on 2s and exceptionally 3s on some of the impacts. There is, in other words, almost no
modulation here – the pose-to-pose approach that had been so characteristic of the Kanada style (especially its Neo-
Kanada incarnation) and even of many flow animators totally disappears in favor of constant, uninterrupted movement.
This is reinforced by the breakdown of shapes.

It had already been initiated by the flow animators since Gosenzosama Banbanzai and The Hakkenden, but another
degree was reached here. Flow animation had its rooting in realism, and deformation was therefore a conscious break
with the physical properties of the body; in the case of Yamashita and webgen animators, it was a complete disregard.
Maybe this was partly born out of the fact that they had not received formal artistic training and didn’t have the same
constraints or realistic reflexes when drawing human bodies. In that context, shapes weren’t just deformed, but
reduced to schematic images that are meant to evoke the idea of a body rather than establish it as a real, physical
entity, however deformed it could be.

This is especially visible in the most impressive part of this sequence, from 0:19 to 0:23. As Birdy is sent flying off by
the power of her opponent’s kick, it is not just shapes that dissolve, but also lines: she just becomes a jumble of colors.
Things are then reduced to their most basic elements: the debris of the buildings she crashes into adopt elementary
cubic shapes, Birdy loses her color to merge with the background, unnaturally projects a bright orange shadow… Then
her opponent himself loses all consistency, as if becoming a one-piece smear, as he is running to catch her and end
the fight.

Finally, all this is perfectly complemented by a general approach, one that disregards shading and lines in favor of
simple, monochrome spreads of color: an aesthetic generally referred to as kagenashi, or “without shadows”. The very
dark lightning of this scene maybe doesn’t make it obvious, but it is more visible in other, brighter sequences by
Yamashita such as this one (https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/8f2b4b5a491c2a6559f2d49555780664.webm). While
there are little shadows and darker areas on objects, the coloring work is often very simple, especially on the giant
waves that materialize between 0:34 and 0:39. There is very little sense of texture or volume here, because of the lack
of detail: no nuanced colors or abundance of lines, just the bare minimum of outlines to evoke foam.

At first glance, Yutaka Nakamura’s animation has little in common with Yamashita’s. Despite all the stylistic changes
Nakamura has gone through, his original rooting in realism has stayed consistent and given birth to a much more solid
and steady approach to bodies. However, what he does have in common with Yamashita are the following, more
general, characteristics: fluidity, choreography, and a sense for impressive action.

Although more modulated than Yamashita’s, Nakamura’s animation often relies on high framerates: it is generally on
1’s or 2’s. What sets him apart is his general sense of rhythm and, more generally, of storyboarding (which he does
himself whenever the occasion arises). This is visible in his frequent use of slow-motion
(https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/23924d34b5630bc8d35a465fc68763c1.mp4) and the attention to the space in
which the action takes place. Although no less delicate than that of Kanada-style or flow animators, Nakamura’s
approach is decidedly cinematic: rather than focusing on the little intricacies of the motion, he tends to consider the
movement as a whole – in more abstract terms, he focuses on rhythm rather than timing. No need to say that this sets
Nakamura in a space completely different from that of Kanada, or even Norio Matsumoto: the latter two work in the
details, and their genius comes out most clearly in the little frame-by-frame differences; Nakamura doesn’t break up
things that way and aims instead for a feeling of perfect fluidity. If I called Matsumoto’s style a kind of “flowing”
animation, Nakamura’s might be termed “gliding” animation.

By virtue of being on high framerates and featuring complex choreographies, Nakamura’s work is not easy to pull-off;
however, it creates the contrary impression, precisely because of its fluidity and the natural power his characters seem
to have. This also translates in his effects animation, which is fundamentally simple. Although the use of cubic debris is
completely different from that of Yamashita’s, it achieves the same effect: that of plain, basic shapes. Similarly, his fire
and smoke effects (as visible between 0:40 and 0:47) are made up of simple color spreads, without any elaborate
motion or lines. Combined with the extremely fluid motion, this creates a feeling of molten steel or lava – which is,
however, a world away from Kanada’s own liquid fire style, which was characterized by an organic kind of motion and
irregular shapes nonexistent in Nakamura’s almost minimalist animation. In spite of this, Nakamura’s work feels flashy
and in-your-face; that’s because his cinematic tendency makes him favor not the small details, but an accumulation of
big, powerful impacts.

To sum up, the current philosophy of action animation, which has largely developed from Yamashita and Nakamura,
can be said to consist of 3 principles: fluidity, simplicity, and overload. Fluidity means that, while the animation might
not always be on 1s or 2s, it will seek to convey a feeling of constant and unimpaired movement
(https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/44357984ab180852468b44584bae4d71.mp4), with only short, slowed-down
accents made on particularly impactful moments. Simplicity might vary according to the situation and the animator’s
sensibility, but it entails most often a breakdown or deformations of character models
(https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/e7c11d1c3ad02872751e43a7dd6f24b5.webm) and a reduction in lines and detail
(https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/fa8b509d4f79962ad8aa1e0ef503e5c5.mp4), especially in effects work. Finally, the
overload principle involves that action animation will take characters and effects as a whole, mixing together complex
fight choreographies and extremely intense effects work.
(https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/e99cffec625e753ce6348fc372f02509.mp4)

While the Kanada style could be said to share a similar approach of overload, filling the screen with dense amounts of
information, the way it goes around it is fundamentally different. That is because its core principles are the opposite of
that of current action animation: whereas the latter favors fluidity, the former can only thrive within limited framerates
and intense modulation. In that regard, simplicity in design, shapes and motion is cast aside in favor of intricate, pose-
to-pose animation whose greatest strength lies in its attention to detail.

Towards a web Kanada style?

In such a context, the Kanada style’s greatest value lies in its contrast: the way it favors more angular shapes and
snappier, unpredictable movement stands out more easily. But this doesn’t necessarily favor innovation: animators
inspired by Hiroyuki Imaishi and Yoshimichi Kameda seldom seem to feel the need to go further than their models and
mostly reuse and recontextualize the techniques of their forerunners. On the other hand, it does create interesting
collaborations, when the two webgen and Neo-Kanada styles interact and give birth to unexpected and sometimes
original combinations.

The first example of this new wave of animators would be Kôsuke Katô, a 26 years old artist whose style appears
strongly influenced by Yoshimichi Kameda. The sequence above, from That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime is
among his best, and the most representative of his work. First, it’s important to note that this is a simple swordfight,
without any showdown of magical powers – and therefore, no avalanche of effects. Moreover, the show’s simple,
angular character designs are perhaps a perfect fit for Kanada-style animation, especially in the kind that Katô
develops here: not rough, cartoony motion, but a very controlled pose-to-pose approach.
What characterizes this sequence, then, is its specific pace created through movement. Rimuru jumps to and fro and
his body contracts and retracts in an unpredictable manner, a kind of extremely dynamic motion that’s perfectly
accompanied by speedlines. What’s remarkable here is the economy of means: the choreography is simple and the
action extremely easy to follow; but it remains dynamic precisely because the animation relies so much on strong
poses. It must however be noted that Katô also follows the general trends of action animation in other ways: this is
most visible here in his use of slow-motion. It might be inspired by Kameda’s own impressive slow-in/slow-out
technique, but the way the characters evolve around the camera is also reminiscent of Yutaka Nakamura’s output.

Another rising figure is Ken’ichirô Aoki, who started his career in 2013, just 2 years before Katô, and quickly became
the ace of studio JC staff, carrying the difficult production of shows like One Punch Man season 2 on his shoulders.
Aoki’s range of inspiration is much more diverse: in his approach to timing and shapes, you sometimes
(https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/4bd81043c3b65a733f58c8abe24487ad.mp4) see more of Hironori Tanaka than
Yoshimichi Kameda, for example. But in other instances
(https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/f5c4859aab7613c0f3ef46e6a70e1f4e.mp4), Kameda’s influence is obvious,
notably in the thicker, rougher lines and slight deformations of the designs. In any case, Aoki has started to develop his
own way of doing things, relying on a contrast between very fluid, now classical, movement, and extremely irregular
motion.

This is visible in this sequence (https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/e25897ca8f0a389878cf614de64cbcdd.mp4),

where the disparity between the first and the third shot is as wide as possible. In that third shot, the sense of rhythm is
created through extremely erratic timing (the character stays in the same pose for 12 frames, before going back on
1s!), very wide spacings, and the use of smears. This produces a strange feeling, and it’s sometimes hard to tell if
Aoki’s timing is that idiosyncratic or if it’s just that the in-betweeners weren’t able to properly do their job – in any case,
it’s a kind of motion that you can’t miss.

Finally, my last example will be a web animator proper, Finnish artist Lzyboost, who’s been making their way into the
Japanese industry in the last few years. Like that of many current Kanada-style animators, their work appears to be
mostly influenced by Hiroyuki Imaishi (as in the simple, geometrical impact frames here
(https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/4d04039ff9d382109d4df05eb5dd719d.mp4) seem to indicate) and Yoshimichi
Kameda. It therefore relies on the classical repertoire of Kanada-style techniques: straight speedlines, light flares, and
minimalistic impact frames – minimalistic in comparison to the more baroque outburst of impact frames that has taken
over action animation in the last few years. There is a sense of simplicity in Lzyboost’s animation, which manages to
complement very well complex layouts and choreographies
(https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/0dac5309bc5bbf1e0d57f621e8e9fd25.mp4). Although their style is still very much
in its infancy, the idea of a non-Japanese, completely web-based, Kanada-style animator is certainly a challenging and
attractive one.

The new Kanada-style generation

However promising the work of artists like Katô, Aoki and Lzyboost might be, it’s still very limited in two aspects: as I
mentioned, it doesn’t really innovate yet, and if it doesn’t, it is most probably because these artists are still in the early
phase of their careers. Their presence in the current anime landscape shows that the Kanada style isn’t dead, but it
doesn’t fully showcase yet what its possibilities are. For that, it is necessary to turn towards slightly older artists that
have imposed themselves as two of the major figures of what may very well be a new wave of Kanada-school
animators.

The first and youngest is Takeshi Maenami, an animator strongly influenced by Yoshimichi Kameda who started
making waves on Pokemon Sun & Moon. His style, which relies on strong posing and timings
(https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/eaa745fb2a26453f14137a96c8f17f2e.mp4), is a perfect complement to the wide
camera movements, full of zoom-in and zoom-outs, that the Pokemon series seems to favor, resulting in a dynamic
sense of action. His most striking characteristic, directly descended from Kameda, is however the conjunction of
speedlines and outline smears to give the impression of speed. In the end, what sets Maenami apart is his sense of
rhythm, and his ability to not just align citations of already-used Kanada-style techniques. This is most visible in the
following sequence from the 2020 Monster Strike music video.
What’s most striking here, besides the impressive feeling of power that’s conveyed, is how seamlessly Maenami
combines renewed takes on classical Kanada-style tropes and elements directly borrowed from the webgen style. The
two most visible things in that regard are the posing and the smears. The timings are very irregular and the spacings
very wide, in a typical Kanada-inspired fashion. In the first shot especially, the way the character suddenly approaches
the camera without anticipation and swings her cat is quite impressive and unexpected. This is perfectly
complemented, in the same action, by the thicker but distorted outlines on the cat. But it is when it settles down and
transforms that all hell breaks loose and that the animal’s shape completely dissolves into abstract, geometrical
smears.

However, the most creative aspect of Maenami’s animation here is probably the effects proper, and more specifically
the lightning. It manages to alternate, with perfect ease, between the two major styles of lightning effects: Kanada and
Kutsuna lightning. The two might be believed to be as antithetical as the Kanada and webgen styles of action: Kanada-
style lightning (https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/c8e495a0b340155b773a985838724246.mp4) relies on straight
lines, stark angles, and irregular timings, while Kustuna lightning
(https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/e5057c3f5410b168443c1029d99954a2.mp4) prominently uses curves and
zigzags in a much more fluid kind of motion. Maenami reaches a place just between these two philosophies,
sometimes smearing the effects themselves, and some other times creating original shapes of Kanada light flares.

Maenami’s career is just starting, but already stands out for his ability to innovate. There’s no denying that his
influences are very obvious, but he seems like he is starting to grow past them and to be creating his own style. His
position might be very similar to that of Yoshimichi Kameda just a decade ago: someone that might be able to bridge
the gap between the Kanada and the webgen-inspired styles.

The same can’t quite be said of the other star of the new generation of the Kanada school. That is because in terms of
sensibility, career, and even skill, they are on a very different level: Yû Yoshiyama is no doubt one of the most
remarkable artists to have emerged in anime in the last 5 years. Initially from Osaka’s studio Mu, Yoshiyama has
become a regular on Tôei series, and a regular contributor to the Precure franchise. The first element that stands out
about Yoshiyama’s animation is what could be termed its exotism in the current anime landscape: the contrast value of
their take on the Kanada style is much stronger than any other animator today, because their inspiration doesn’t come
from Imaishi or Kameda, two animators who more or less adopted the evolutions of action animation in the second half
of the 90’s. On the contrary, Yoshiyama looks back before the Neo-Kanada style, to the late 80’s and the most glorious
days of Yamashita-style decadent effects animation.

In an interview, Yoshiyama mentioned that their major inspiration was Masami Obari, especially his work on Dangaiô.
While it might be the work that pushed Yoshiyama to pursue a career in animation, I don’t quite think it’s the one whose
influence is the most visible over their style. Indeed, in the mid 80’s, after the radicalization of Kanada style animation
initiated by Masahito Yamashita, two distinct lineages developed. The first one, initiated by Masami Obari, centered
around mecha and the idea of extremely complex and fast action: Obari’s work would be pursued by action animators
like Imaishi and Kameda. The other was championed by Shin’ya Ohira in his early period, mostly developed in effects,
and went for stylization rather than movement itself. I conceive this as a much more radical approach, and it has
tellingly gathered less followers over the years: after Ohira moved on, it would not be until Jun Arai that this aesthetic
resurfaced; and now that Arai has all but disappeared from commercial TV animation, it is Yoshiyama’s turn to take up
the mantle.

In simple terms, what this means is that Yoshiyama is essentially an effects animator, for whom every frame is a new
work altogether. The result is an extremely impressive and dense kind of animation, with idiosyncratic shapes and
stark spacings. Especially today when the general philosophy of animation has changed so much, this return to past
techniques feels very innovative. This is also the case because, in traditional Kanada-style fashion, Yoshiyama adopts
a total approach to animation, leaving no single bit of the frame unexploited.The first thing to note is how they
managed to bring back figurative effects, without just citing to death Kanada’s most famous moments, like so many
Neo-Kanada artists have done. This is probably helped by their status as a franchise animator on Precure, and the
formulaic, personality-based kind of work that a magical girl show is: the effects aren’t just decorative, they express
character. The completely liberated approach to effects that Yoshiyama adopts also means that there is no gap
between exciting action and cute expression: this is how you end up with effects taking the shapes of cats or stars in
an otherwise very tense fight scene.

The other way in which Yoshiyama manages to look both back and forward is in their use of impact frames. Current
action animation, strongly influenced by both Yoshimichi Kameda and Yutaka Nakamura, has experienced an
incredible boom in impact frames, a technique that had all but disappeared since the early 90’s. As one of Nakamura’s
most famous sequences (https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/db79d4312f9260946b6a3ce9ab3bccdb.mp4)
showcases, modern impact frames tend to completely blend into the action: they’re often figurative, showing the
outlines of the characters, use few colors, and are themselves animated rather than just a few still frames. On many of
their sequences (https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/439bae091930a03ba6ba79c3cba3e3be.mp4), Yoshiyama
brought back the ancient use of the impact frame: a few still, often abstract, heavily stylized images that sort of blank
out the action rather than build it. Once again, this is not just a look to the past: this apparently conservative take on
the technique is what enables the animator to get creative, notably inserting figurative patterns and easter eggs among
the abstract frames.

Finally, the last and most typical Kanada-style technique Yoshiyama uses is how the compositing and the animation
often seem to work together. In the cel era, that meant, as Kanada and Yamashita often did, playing on the relationship
between different cels to create the sense of a multilayered and complex image. With digital compositing, this isn’t
really possible anymore, but Yoshiyama instead fully exploits the possibilities opened by digital lighting and
photography. In sequences like the one above, the glow and the slight variation in colors give life and texture to the
effects. They’re probably very difficult to handle, but work in perfect complementarity with the extremely stylized
shapes. Such a relationship between animation and compositing might sound obvious, but it’s simply revolutionary in
Kanada-style animation: its way of approaching light had long gone in only one of two directions. Either light up the
effects themselves (https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/62bfbe81b72520edeedfa7621879c389.mp4), but with the risk
of losing the subtlety of the lines and therefore of the motion; or instead put the lines inside the effects
(https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/e41e7c54f2d39118f0bbefdd7fcfd367.mp4), giving rise since the mid-80’s to the
so-called “wakame shadows” technique. Through the compositing, Yoshiyama effectively merges these two aesthetics
in an animation that makes perfect use of digital tools to go beyond the possibilities of what had already been achieved
in the cel era.

Yoshiyama is still very much an exception in the contemporary anime landscape: while it doesn’t reject Kanada-style
animation as such, its trends have largely moved away from it. Creativity and dynamism are therefore hard to come by,
and Kanada-school animators may today just be small islands in the ocean of anime. But these artists are there, and
they are still developing. The Kanada style hasn’t died with its creator and, while it might not know a general rebirth
before long, it looks like it has some bright years ahead of it. Witnessing those, and the new directions the style might
take, can only be an enriching experience for the times to come.
Kanada, the first realist?

Cover image: an in-between by Yoshinori Kanada (?) from one of his sequences on
Zambot 3 episode 22, in 1978

Today, especially in the Western side of the fandom, Yoshinori Kanada’s animation is associated with flashy, angular
effects and very stylized and exaggerated motion, of the sort in which Hiroyuki Imaishi and his peers have become
experts. However, if this is a valid description of the neo-Kanada style and of Kanada himself at one point, it misses a
major aspect of the latter’s animation and why it was so important. Nobody would think of him as a realist, and yet…
You need to look no further than the influence he had on such important members of the realist school as Shin’ya
Ohira and Mitsuo Iso, or the realist shift of many of his direct students, like Masahito Yamashita, to see that there is
something at play. In fact, the hypothesis of this entire article is that, from the late 70s to the early 80’s, Kanada was a
major actor in the emergence of a realist kind of animation in anime.

But before starting, a definition of realism is necessary. Disney and Tôei’s animation had already created an aesthetic
that can be called ‘realist’, but it had very little to do with Kanada’s and TV anime’s realism. Indeed, it was based on
full, very detailed, animation, and made use of a technique anime quickly discarded: squash and stretch. It was largely
that which enabled it to convey a sense of presence and of the physicality of characters. Thanks to Yasuo Otsuka’s
departure from Tôei and strategic position at A Productions, the character animation in 70s anime managed to remain
detailed in spite of limited framerates, although it lost its nuance in favor of comical exaggeration. On the other hand,
the concurrent gekiga style had brought in anatomical detail and complex three-dimensional movement, but its focus
on a visceral kind of expressivity often took it very far from any kind of photorealism.

Photorealism would, however, find its place in mechanical animation, partly thanks to Otsuka but not only, as we shall
see. In the case of Kanada and his synthesis of the two aforementioned styles, he would endeavour to go further in the
directions of nuanced acting and volume, but that was not all. He would largely contribute to what is considered one of
the main aspects of realist animation today: the sense of weight and presence. In that, his role was vital, and it is yet
another thing that lets one say that, without Kanada, anime would be very, very different today.

The birth of mechanical animation: the early years of Kazuhide Tomonaga

Before going into Kanada, it is necessary to evoke one of his contemporaries, probably the only member of this
generation that could rival Kanada and who did, in multiple instances: Kazuhide Tomonaga. While his role has been
somewhat forgotten with time, Tomonaga could be considered to be, along with Otsuka and studio Tatsunoko’s
Masami Suda, one of the inventors of mechanical animation in Japan.

Tomonaga was born in 1952 and, at 20, he joined a small outsourcing studio, Tiger Production. From there, he
immediately started in-betweening on Tôei series and did his first key animation on Devilman in 1972. Although they
worked on different episodes, he might have had the chance to meet a young Kanada, who was from another studio,
on Cutie Honey and Getter Robo. But it was in 1974, on Space Battleship Yamato, that they would acknowledge each
other and that Tomonaga cemented his place as a rising star. Kanada did uncredited work on two episodes (episodes
2 and 26), and these seem to have been a turning point in his career. Indeed, a few months after his pioneering work
on Cutie Honey, it’s on Yamato that Kanada’s style started to blossom in a personal and unique way. The same could
be said of Tomonaga, who held a much more important position in the production, animating on seven episodes.
(https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/ad5b4037690d2c10240ea9499a7bda1f.mp4)

On the second episode, he animated one of the most important and impactful scenes of the series: the flashback that
recounts the sinking of the Yamato during World War II. Being the recounting of historical events, the sequence
naturally used real-life models. This doesn’t seem like much, but it was almost unheard of at the time: the only ones to
have relied prominently on real-life machines in anime before were Yasuo Otsuka and his team on Lupin III in 1971.
Besides this, the sequence was astounding on many levels. First, it was animated entirely on 2s—something very
time-consuming, and therefore rare on TV anime. Just by doing that, Tomonaga established himself as a hardworking,
demanding animator. With such timing he managed to create fluid motion and a sense of volume unprecedented for
TV animation. In the first shot, the way the planes slightly oscillate before going down indicates the probable use of
real-life footage for reference and instantly places the machines in a real-seeming, three-dimensional space.
Throughout the scene, they are drawn in painstaking detail. This becomes very apparent at the moment when one of
the planes explodes: all its parts go flying away, and you can still see the shape of the pilot in his cockpit. Yamato was
a revolution in effects and mechanical animation, and Tomonaga played a large part in it.

Tomonaga’s next major contribution on Yamato would be on the impressive episode 22—the most ambitious episode
of the series by far, and one of the most ambitious undertakings of TV anime’s first 11 years of existence—on which he
is supposed to have animated most of part A. There, Tomonaga again demonstrated his ability for three-dimensional
movement in impressive cuts where the ships fly, turn around, come closer and then away from the camera. If I call
him one of the inventors of mechanical animation, it is because he was one of the first animators to pay attention to the
material details of the objects he was animating, and to make their movement feel convincing. In other words, these
weren’t toys, but real planes and spaceships that were fighting each other. He used background animation to the same
effect and was, in this respect, far ahead of his time. In crafting such impressive scenes, Tomonaga was no doubt
indirectly inspired by Yasuo Otsuka, just as Kanada had been: by that, I mean one of the first great scenes of
mechanical animation in anime from 1969’s Flying Phantom Ship, by none other than Hayao Miyazaki, the sequence
that reportedly inspired Kanada to become an animator in the first place.

(https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/4d0af6c0638a415173b7de6676660cbd.mp4)
In the final episode, Tomonaga also showed that his skills went beyond mechanical animation, and that he could
handle characters. In the second shot of this sequence, the Yamato crew are animated on 2s and 3s, and the slight
irregularity of the timing emphasizes the key frames and the fact that they have to settle on their feet to avoid falling
down. This is an attention to the weight and volume of subjects that you find later in the same sequence, as the two
sides start shooting: you can see the effort on Kodai’s face, as he’s aiming for the enemy, and feel the recoil of the gun
after he has shot. Each Gamilus soldier makes a different movement as he falls, and extra attention is put on the last
one who turns around while shooting before going down.

After such a strong start, Tomonaga was quickly scouted by the two leaders of the foremost animation studios of the
time: Yasuo Otsuka, who was still the unofficial leader of A Productions, and Kazuo Komatsubara, from Oh Production.
In 1975, Tomonaga first joined Oh Pro—which made Kanada say that if he didn’t join it in the 1970’s (probably after he
left studio N°1, in 1977), it was precisely because Tomonaga was there and he felt he couldn’t compare. This is
understandable when you look at Komatsubara and Tomonaga’s work on UFO Robot Grendizer, as it combines very
realistic and three-dimensional mechanical animation and effects that seem more inspired by Kanada. From Oh Pro,
Tomonaga then worked on Lupin the Third: Part II, where he met Otsuka in person. He was convinced to join Otsuka’s
new place, Telecom, in 1978, just after the production of Future Boy Conan. He would stay in Telecom for the rest of
his career, but the connection with Komatsubara is probably what allowed him to work on the Galaxy Express 999
movie in 1979 and contribute to one of the most famous collaborations in anime history, which I analyze in more detail
below.

Robots have feelings, too: Kanada as a mechanical animator

In the same years (1974-1979) Kanada, too, mostly worked on super robot shows, first for Tôei and then for Sunrise.
His approach, however, was the complete opposite of Tomonaga’s, thereby creating another different kind of
mechanical animation. Whereas Tomonaga (like Otsuka and Suda) made machines move as real machines would
move, Kanada animated them like people. If Tomonaga, Suda and Otsuka are “pure” mechanical animators, Kanada
drew robots like a character animator—which is precisely what made him so unique.
The best example of this is Kanada’s “late” mecha animation from this period and some of his greatest masterpieces,
on Zambot 3 and Daitarn 3, in 1977. The characteristic of these two shows is that they have a very carefree
protagonist and sometimes have (especially Daitarn, more of a comedy) a very light-hearted tone. This was a great
opportunity, since it meant that the robots weren’t just toys, but they also weren’t (yet) war machines either. It was the
perfect fit for Kanada’s playful animation, and no doubt a challenge for him: the problem he faced was, how do you
make robots fun?

The first answer Kanada found was in the timing. One of the consistent principles of his style until the late 80s is that to
make something funnier you have to make it jerkier. The idea is that the movement is so irregular, unnatural and
mechanical, it will become funny. In other words, it’s not just the drawings that are fun, but the motion itself—something
that’s absolutely not intuitive or easy to pull off. For example, in this sequence
(https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/ac0dafde3cc2d23015d1226725286728.mp4), there are a lot of holds and still
frames, which emphasize the silly faces the characters are making. But when they move, it’s in sudden bursts of
strange, irregular and unexpected poses. Kanada just had to do the same thing with robots to reach the same
expected effects.But just that on its own wouldn’t always be enough to sell it. The second innovation Kanada brought
in was at the same time much bolder and much more natural: it was to give the robots expressions. What he did was
just bring to its logical conclusion the idea that the mecha is a symbolic extension of the pilot’s body. With this in mind,
why not give the mecha the same expressions as the pilot, especially when you can’t see the latter because they’re
inside their cockpit? The best instance of this is the following sequence from Daitarn 3: as the enemy robot gets beaten
up, it keeps making sillier faces, transforming the tense fight into complete slapstick.
But this trick wasn’t just meant for comedy. Indeed, Kanada knew very well that you could use the same device for
dramatic purposes. And the best example he gave of that was in one of his greatest works, episode 22 of Zambot 3. In
the most climactic moment of the episode, the main character’s father makes a suicidal attack on the enemy robot.
This is a completely unexpected twist, and the one that expects it the least is the victim of that attack. To show it,
Kanada just added a face to the original design of the robot and gave it a bewildered expression. That was a genius
move: in just a few frames, he transformed a faceless, impassible monster into a conscious being capable of being
taken by surprise.

This is very far from Tomonaga’s very detailed kind of realism, and a completely different approach to mechanical
animation. But that is yet another illustration of all that Kanada owes to the gekiga animation of Araki and Kimura: the
point is not to imitate reality for the sake of it, but instead to make the animation so powerful that the viewer is affected
as if it were real. Blending mechanical and character animation together might seem like a strange move, but it was
precisely what made Kanada’s robots so memorable and influential. You need to look no further than Mitsuo Iso’s work
on Evangelion (https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/8017ca4489894be52a9aeb003dafb69b.webm) to see the power
that animating robots like living creatures can have.

Is nuance possible when you’re on 3s?

If Kanada’s way of animating mechas boiled down to animating them like characters, what was his approach to
animating characters? He tried out different things, with various levels of success, but two things he seems to have
aimed for above all else are complexity and nuance. By that, I mean that he tried as much as he could to have people
express different expressions, as many as possible, in a limited amount of frames. In that, he was clearly taking
inspiration from the A Pro school and, more fundamentally, from the kind of acting you find in full animation, as in Tôei’s
movies. But there was a big difficulty: when animating on 1s or 2s, as long as the animator is good enough, it’s easy to
have the character adopt a variety of expressions in sequence. This isn’t as simple when you’re on much lower
framerates.

Let’s take this sequence from Zambot 3 as an example. Kanada clearly put a lot of care into the boy’s facial
expressions: they are all unique and very strong. This is very rich, and pretty good acting in my book. But it ends up
more comical than dramatic, because the motion is so slow and irregular. This is a direct product of the production
context: as talented as Kanada was, he wasn’t a magician and couldn’t just take all the time he wanted. Animating
entire episodes by himself was enough work, and he couldn’t do much more than animate on 3s. Here, the framerate
is even slower, with many holds and stills that just stop the motion in its tracks.

This limitation meant that, in terms of acting, Kanada would have had difficulties going past comedy. But that didn’t
mean he didn’t refine it to perfection—see, just after Zambot, this moment
(https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/a5a227cf89a55841d279ea9bc6b66e5c.mp4) from Daitarn 3 which is, here, clearly
meant to be funny. What interests me in this one is the third shot, when the boy starts staring and ogling at the young
girl passing by. The animation is much more fluid and detailed, and that’s because, even though it’s still mostly on 3s,
the spacings are much closer and there are far fewer holds. Kanada must have relied more than usual on the help of
an in-betweener to make this possible (although he often did his own in-betweens in that period). He even went as far
as to draw some rare anatomical detail (by his standards) such as the lips and the Adam’s apple bobbing up and down
as the boy swallows greedily.
It would not be until slightly later, when Kanada would have more freedom and time, that he would truly make his
breakthrough in nuanced character acting: in the Yamato and Galaxy Express 999 movies in 1979 and, the same year,
in his Cyborg 009 opening. This was already a very symbolic work, since it was Keiichirô Kimura who had animated
the opening to the original 1968 series, one of his most famous and iconic works. Comparing the two is very telling,
because Kanada doesn’t put the focus on the exciting action, but rather on the team dynamics and especially the
drama of the eponymous character, 009.
(https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/b20ccca5da012b9bb6dc1694a8b17a68.mp4)

(https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/b20ccca5da012b9bb6dc1694a8b17a68.mp4)
The most famous moment is (https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/b20ccca5da012b9bb6dc1694a8b17a68.mp4)the
opening’s central part, (https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/f54438eac724dd4001383d95ea6545a5.mp4)as each of
the cyborgs shows off their abilities and 009 stays in the background. Here, Kanada demonstrated that he didn’t need
to resort to flashy animation, but could instead simply rely on the strong illustrative quality of his drawings. At the
beginning, when 009 turns away from the camera and starts shouting, the slow movement—almost in slow motion—
really emphasizes the melancholy and pensive nature of the character. The same happens at the end, when he bows
down his head, but there it is even slower. The profile shot allows us to completely see his expression and the tears
flowing by. Such a level of detail and nuance would have been completely unexpected if you only knew Kanada’s work
on Zambot and Daitarn, but as he gained fame and was able to contribute to more prestigious works, his leaning
towards fluidity and realism only confirmed itself.

You’re gonna carry that weight

However, if there is one thing that Kanada immediately succeeded in, for both comical and dramatic purposes, it was
in creating a sense of weight, something I believe is vital for believability. There, his use of speedlines was
fundamental, especially in what I call the “Kanada fall”, something that deserves to have a place into the man’s list of
patented techniques. As the name indicates, it implies a character falling, but in a somewhat unique way: the camera
always shoots the characters’ profile, and the fall happens in at least 3 phases. First, the character falls down, then
they bounce off the ground, and finally fall a second time.
 A frame-by-frame decomposition of a “Kanada fall” in Zambot 3. Compare with those
frames by Tatsuyuki Tanaka from one of the masterpieces of realism, Shin’ya Ohira’s
“The Antique Shop”. While the character designs are much more photorealistic and there
is less exaggeration, the approach to the shape and volume of the body is very similar

The mere act of having the character bounce off is a slight exaggeration, but with a clearly intended effect: to have the
viewer feel the weight of the body. And the way Kanada goes around it is also interesting. He does use a bit of squash-
and-stretch on the face, but considering how much he liked the deformation of those, one wonders if squash-and-
stretch really is the word. Moreover, he uses it very sparingly, especially when compared to US cartoons that would
have the falling character flattening out like a pancake, go through the floor or jump through the roof—and not simply
bouncing off. What Kanada exaggerates is the bounce-back, but he sticks very close to the plausible physical
properties of a real body: it is soft enough to be squashed and stretched, but still remains rigid and doesn’t completely
lose its shape. What Kanada uses to really make us feel the impact is not, therefore, deformation, but something else:
the speed lines. They emphasize the speed of the fall in the second frame, and in the third one they’re like an abstract
representation of the shock, as if there were a small explosion. It’s like a midpoint between an after-image and an
impact frame, and a smart repurposing of his iconic rough lines.

The Cyborg 009 opening is also very emblematic of Kanada’s ability to convey weight and the physical presence of
bodies. This is especially visible when 005 appears and shows his superhuman strength by lifting a huge rock.
Kanada’s decision was not to show 005 easily playing with the rock, but on the opposite to highlight the effort he has to
put in. The layout is already very strong, as in all the opening: 005 appears very close from the camera, but as he
settles with the boulder above his head, he moves back, allowing us to see his whole body and the size of the rock.
Also notable, the lines in this short sequence are probably the roughest in the entire opening, as if the effort that is put
in made the shapes more uncertain. And when 005 suddenly raises his arms, small speedlines accompany the
movement.
This is so interesting because Kanada reached for something new (weight and volume) while never giving up two of
the three fundamentals of his early style: strong and complex layouts, and rough lines (the third being, of course, the
timing). In fact, it is precisely through these fundamentals that he attained realism—a realism very different from that of
the 80s and 90s, which put all of its efforts in the animation proper rather than the drawings or layouts. It is not so
much the character animation which conveys weight, but the lines themselves which become expressive. Then the
layouts and camera position play a support role, as the characters move towards or away from the camera, in stark
high or low angles.

Kanada and Tomonaga: the golden combo of the 70’s

Even though he slowly mastered different kinds of character animation, Kanada didn’t stop doing mechanical
animation, on the contrary. It was, in fact, his speciality during the 80’s: he was joint animation director, most often in
charge of mecha and effects, on many Tôei movies during the decade, most notably Be Forever Yamato, Queen
Millennia, Future War 198X and Odin: Photon Sailor Starlight. To understand this part of Kanada’s career, it is
necessary to go back in some detail over his friendship and collaboration with Kazuhide Tomonaga.

After the original Yamato TV series, their second major work together was on the Farewell Space Battleship Yamato
movie, in 1978. This movie would be representative of most of their work together. First, Kanada and Tomonaga often
worked end-to-end: Kanada handled the first part of a battle that Tomonaga finished. But the most interesting is that
both men integrated each other’s style, to the point that it’s easy to mistake them for one another.

For example, to the unwarned viewer, this sequence might look like it’s been animated by Kanada: it’s got the irregular
beam shapes, the very liquid motion of the flames, the background animation and, in the end, silly faces, speed lines
and extended limbs. It’s not totally impossible that this is, in fact, Kanada. But it can also be Tomonaga. Which means
that, if this is the case, he deliberately animated in Kanada’s style—and it’s not the only moment of the movie that’s like
this. On the other hand, Kanada seems to have adopted Tomonaga’s style! Here, the planes’ movement is complex
and three-dimensional, the acting more subdued and the explosions more round. Basically, both animators seem to
have copied each other on the movie, in what was probably something of a playful challenge.

But this goes deeper than this, because Kanada’s sequences on Farewell Yamato are his first to prominently feature
background animation. As I said, this technique was one of Tomonaga’s strongest points. That means Kanada most
probably adopted it and made it his, until it became one of the most recognizable and omnipresent features of Kanada-
style animation and Tomonaga’s role was forgotten.
Something similar happened, although to a lesser degree, on their next and most well-known collaboration, Galaxy
Express 999. Once again, their sequences were end-to-end, and sometimes very close to each other. In the famous
climax of the movie, Kanada and Tomonaga sometimes alternatively animated each shot. This kind of close change
from an animator to another is now common, but it was extremely rare at the time; it probably means that the two men
were working side by side, maybe even exchanging cuts and correcting each other.

The Kanadaisms in Tomonaga’s style don’t seem to have stayed for very long, but Tomonaga’s influence on Kanada
was enduring and obvious. It was most probably what enabled him to go a step further in mechanical animation—a
step that made him closer to realism. This is most visible in his work as animation director on Odin. Although the
effects throughout the movie are visibly Kanada-esque and very stylized, the layouts were often complex and
established the exact same sense of style as Tomonaga had in his early Yamato work. This is also thanks to the talent
of the key animators, most notably Masahito Yamashita, who was also going in the way of more detailed and three-
dimensional mechanical animation.

But this, in a way, further supports my reading, which is that Tomonaga played a large part in Kanada’s and his
school’s approach to layouts and space. This doesn’t mean that Kanada didn’t use interesting and challenging layouts
before he met Tomonaga. But that once he had, they got even more complex—and then, Kanada’s talent and creativity
did the rest. This was essential, because it kept pushing anime’s animation towards three-dimensionality, rather than
the flat spaces and profile perspectives TV animation had mostly used in the 60’s. Creating a sense of space in which
the characters evolve would then go on to become one of the key features of realist animation.
Obviously, Kanada is still a world apart from the hardline realism that would develop in the late 80s, but it’s important to
acknowledge that he probably played an indirect role in its development. A negative one, in that the realists sought to
do something different from him—but also a positive one, since he had laid the groundwork for a greater awareness of
the center of gravity of bodies, space and presence in both character and effects animation. It is there that Tomonaga’s
role, not just as Kanada’s rival but also as one of the greatest animators of the 1970’s, demands to be highlighted.
Similarly, Kanada’s long association with Miyazaki has always been received as somewhat surprising. I will go over it
in more depth in another essay, but such a collaboration is not so unexpected when you understand Kanada’s
relationship with realism. He and Miyazaki had very different approaches to animation, but they shared a demanding
nature and a search for a convincing, powerful kind of animation that makes you believe in the reality of what you see.

Yoshinori Kanada and the nature of animation

Cover image: a key drawing by Yoshinori Kanada from Farewell Galaxy Express 999

Yoshinori Kanada is one of the most important artists in the history of Japanese animation. This was the core
assumption of this series, and the reason why it has tried to trace how Kanada’s influence spread and changed over
the years. However, I have said little in depth about what Kanada and his students brought to the medium of animation
—in other words, why was Kanada important, beyond simply earning so many fans and followers? This is what I’d like
to try and uncover here.

Unlike other artists covered over the course of this series, such as Shin’ya Ohira, I sense no governing principle or
fundamental drive behind Kanada’s work—except a prodigious capacity for experiment and renewal. This might come
from my own limits as critic and analyst, but it might also be taken as an opportunity: it offers a chance to steer away
from the “animator-as-auteur” approach that has been so prevalent in this series, and from the historical perspective
and narrative I have adopted. Instead, I’d like to try and consider Kanada’s work as a series of formal configurations
that evolved and interacted, regardless of biographical or chronological changes. While this might seem counter-
intuitive, in my mind, taking things in historical, chronological order, shows us the evolution of an artist’s vision and
showcases what makes it unique; on the other hand, setting this approach aside lets us analyze the diversity of an
artist’s output. This might sometimes get confusing, but it’s also what allows us to understand every work and aspect of
it as something distinct.

In other words, this article will try to understand Kanada’s production at its most fundamental level, that is as a set of
works of art which challenge the viewer and the medium itself. The artist can then be conceived as a researcher
themselves: someone looking to open new ways for expression and new forms in which their imagination can take
shape. To my mind, Kanada stands out among the animators who have gone furthest in such explorations. His work
can therefore be read through the lens of what I believe are three fundamental concepts of animation, concepts that he
ceaselessly challenged: lines, rhythm, and scene composition.

Generating shapes
Animation is made of drawings, themselves containing shapes with more or less distinct outlines. This is a basic fact,
and a given for any animator: their work is indeed to create movement, but this movement is ultimately made up of a
series of individual drawings. And I would suggest that it is not the drawings that are moved, but rather the shapes that
are drawn – that is, the lines themselves.

Kanada’s drawing style and linework is one of the most distinctive aspects of his art, as his more-or-less off-model
character animation or unique effects show. His particular approach to shapes not only reflected his own artistic
sensibilities, but also emerged from his way of working for, unlike many other animators, he systematically used rulers,
although the way he used them varied over time. The fact that an artist so easily considered an expressionist did not
draw freehand might come as surprising: his ostensibly spontaneous style doesn’t come from a similarly liberated
manner of drawing, but instead a controlled one, relying on standardized tools. This tension between control and
freedom is essential to Kanada’s art. It was first a requirement for him, as for any other animator, to be able to convey
his style under the supervision of animation directors; but it is also at the core of his drawing. This might not always be
most apparent in the finished works; but it is always obvious in the illustrations and rough drawings, as the following
one from episode 6 of Don de la Mancha illustrates.
This picture of Kabonen, the episode’s antagonist and one of Kanada’s favorite personal creations, is full of neatly
traced curves, most or all of which were drawn with an ellipse or circular ruler. This is most obvious on Kabonen’s
head, his helmet and face being covered with red circles that overlap each other. However, there is nothing there that
breaks the spontaneity of the figures; that is because Kanada didn’t just make regular geometrical forms but instead
used the tools themselves to break any sense of regularity.

In this sketch, the almost instinctive nature of the drawing first comes from its density: lines of various colors are drawn
and layered on top of each other, thus obscuring any sense of clearly defined outlines. Without ever (or at latest only
rarely) being crowded, Kanada’s work always feels dense because of this: besides the character or figure themselves,
there are always many little details or seemingly unnecessary lines added on top, which appear to have a purely
decorative purpose; it is there, in those abstract, apparently free but tightly controlled lines, that the artist’s hand is the
most visible.

It is of course impossible to get into the artist’s mind, but this dialectic between freedom and control was probably
central not just to Kanada’s philosophy, but also to the smallest details of his practice. What interests me here is what
might seem a superfluous addition to Kabonen’s drawing: the thin red line that starts from his right shoulder (at the left
of the drawing), goes over his chest and other shoulder and then starts in a completely different direction, ending in a
loop. As always, the line is neatly traced and was most probably not done freehand; and yet it creates that feeling, as
Kanada would suddenly break the curves he himself initiated with his ruler, distorting them to create unexpected
patterns – something that he himself called “skipping”, suddenly interrupting or continuing lines at unexpected
junctions. The loop here is perfectly gratuitous and everything but figurative: it adds nothing to the figure of Kabonen
itself. But it is the natural extension of the line, a fragment of pure drawing coming out less of the artist’s imagination or
mind than directly from his hand and its own feeling for movement. It is to try and keep this feeling that Kanada always
drew as fast as he could, sometimes boasting that a drawing he couldn’t conceive in one minute was no good. It is this
same tendency that suffuses Kanada’s effects animation.

As much as it is characterized by a specific kind of motion, the “liquid fire” style of the late 70’s and early 80’s is first
and foremost notable for the perspective it offers on the interaction between line and color. Liquid fire is perhaps one of
the most important contributions Kanada made to animation, through a progressive evolution that started on Zambot 3,
reached its maturity on Galaxy Express 999 and culminated in Genma Taisen with the famous “fire dragons”. Following
on artist Takashi Murakami’s comments, I have already noted what is specific to Kanada’s liquid fire effects: the
disappearance of clear-cut lines in order to create motion only through the interplay of colors. But there is more to this,
as colors do not only “absorb” outlines, but also shapes, and take on their own generative, sometimes figurative power.

This sequence from Arcadia of my Youth, where two spaceships crash into each other, is perhaps most illustrative. At
first, the ship towards which the Arcadia (on the left) is speeding explodes on its own in a circular blast accompanied
by flashing lights and speedlines. But as the Arcadia seems to enter the explosion, the latter engulfs the former and
makes it disappear in its wake. The last ten seconds of this shot then only represent the flames spreading across the
screen in full glory, and at this point it is uncertain whether the Arcadia is still in one piece, and whether it is the ship
that dictates the direction of the flames or the other way around.

Then, everything is orange, yellow, black or bright white. There is something phoenix-like in the motion of the flames
here, in the way they center around the Arcadia, then adopt a sort of vectorial shape irradiating in every direction and
moving as if they had a will of their own. There are no distinct shapes here anymore, only the internal undulations of
the blaze and its movement across the screen—both across and into it, in fact. Indeed, it is only through the
speedlines and the thinner, arrow-like figure of the conflagration around the end that we understand that it is moving
into depth, following the motion of the intact Arcadia. The general confusion of the shapes is only further accentuated
by the lighting, especially the bright white flash that merges with the rest of the fire.

This sequence is also one of those for which the expression “liquid fire” is the most apt. There are no outlines
distinguishing any of the levels of color which would create any precise or definite forms. The colors are just spreading
and constantly changing at what seems to be their own pace, creating abstract and undulating configurations, just like
waves or running water would. There again, we feel this sense of inner energy that’s being channeled not just through
the drawings themselves, but also through their change, that is, their motion.

In an unexpected development, Kanada progressively redirected this approach to shapes towards character
animation, first by the way of his famous figurative effects of which the fire dragons
(https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/6e26be8d7864e6bd0281572c5e2cd2fd.webm) are an offshoot. This would be one
among Kanada’s most fecund formal inventions, not because it spurred an almost infinite amount of reproduction and
copies, but because it opened the way for a character animation whose approach to shapes would be inspired first and
foremost by effects rather than human bodies. This would mostly take form in the mannerist, liquid and flowing
animation (https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/524b77860505af63d165ba795f968fb6.mp4) of Shinsaku Kôzuma and
Masahito Yamashita, and the thick, smoke-like work
(https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/b4a8cd0434342bbfebe45dd5cdb37fbe.mp4) of Shiny’a Ohira.

Considering all this, it certainly is fascinating that Kanada also developed radically different techniques later on in his
career. In stark opposition with the liquid fire effects, which relied on curves, his late style mostly uses straight lines.
Liquid fire and figurative effects gave the impression of an internal energy coming from within the animation, and of the
instability of forms blurred the line between effects and morphing animation; on the other hand, his late effects are
more often purely decorative or attached to a character. In other words, their energy looks more like it’s being
conveyed by an outside force (the character or the animator himself) rather than being generated by the drawing itself.

In earlier articles I analyzed the personal and historical reasons that can explain such a shift in Kanada’s career, but
what I think is interesting from this particular article’s point of view is how Kanada made this shift while never setting
aside one of his most important tools: rulers. But this time it would be straight ones, something that also explains the
return of straight speed lines in his late work. The characteristic irregularity in the forms and outlines then reappeared,
but in a very different context. Whereas fire defined Kanada’s effects in the late 70’s and 80’s, the dominant figure in
the 90’s and 00’s would be lightning, precisely made up of many angles and rigid lines.

Fire is an expensive element by nature, and that is even more striking in Kanada’s way of animating it: he drew it like a
liquid, another kind of matter that seeks to occupy as much space as possible when it isn’t rigidly bound. By contrast,
while lightning and electricity in general are also in constant motion, making them ideal material for an animator, they
do represent a rigid sort of energy, one that never invades or consumes objects but only covers the surface of things.
Therefore, liquid fire and rigid lightning are not just different stylistic approaches; they entail radically different
philosophies. This is also visible in how each one was complemented by a distinct approach of rhythm.

Harnessing and liberating energies

Perhaps more than any other animator, Kanada and his closest followers understood that animation is all about energy
and its expression, and that rhythm is the medium through which that energy is channeled and liberated. By “energy”, I
don’t just mean either characters’ abilities or capacity to move all around, or the animator’s creative power, or their
ability to express some sort of meaning or emotion. Instead, I mean a unique sort of internal dynamism that gives
objects not only a life, but also an individuality. Energy, through rhythm, is the core of animation, because it’s what
creates actual motion, rather than an indifferent movement through the space of the screen.

Kanada’s late style is perhaps the one in which the energetic nature of his animation comes through best. That is
because the minimalism of rigid lines is complemented by a very simple and straightforward kind of motion. All the
characters are hyperactive, jumping and running everywhere, as if they were about to burst with a force that they can
barely contain.

Besides the return of speedlines, Kanada’s work in the 90’s is also characterized by an abundant use of cycles; in this
sequence in particular, the most obvious one is when the character just seems to quiver, his entire body trembling and
making up and down movements accompanied by lightning and smears. This is the expression of pent-up energy that
seeks to come out—and since the shapes are so fixed and straight, this doesn’t result in bodily metamorphosis, but in
this simple and yet impressive quivering effect. Because the animation is in cycle, the rhythm is essentially
monotonous; but the repetition itself has a value, and the more it goes on, the more the energy seems to accumulate.

If you go to the most inventive moment in Kanada’s art—the late 70’s-early 80’s—you get something very different,
more measured and ambivalent. On the one hand, there’s a remarkable attention to detail through very deliberate
timings and framerate modulation. On the other, the variations in rhythm are always very obvious thanks to a frequent
use of slow-ins and slow-outs. It is these which dictate the motion and energy of a scene. This is why the result is so
different: it is not a feeling of energy coming from the characters, but rather a sort of pressure in the motion itself, made
up of a series of moments of pent-up tension and then sudden release.

The famous beginning of the Galaxy Cyclone Braiger opening is perhaps the clearest illustration of that. The motion is
so unique here because it is so tense: each character jumps, stays up in the air in a contracted pose for a few instants,
and then suddenly untightens, dropping more quickly and suddenly. It is not the characters’ own power which makes
them move like that, but they’re not entirely passive, either. They are not the victims of some kind of transformation that
they can’t control, nor wholly the creatures of an artist who does whatever he wants with them. It is rather like they are
riding on some current or rhythmic melody offered to them by the animator, dancers who have the ability to move by
themselves but whose movement is dictated by an outside influence. The beams of energy that then transform into
small quasi-screens or -scenes into which the characters can settle are like representations of this: as beams, they are
energy itself, but as little scenes they are like the frame to which the figures can go back as the place they belong to.

In the realm of effects, too, the specific sense of rhythm creates a unique relationship between the elements inside and
beyond the frame – the artist and the figure, the drawing and the movement. What characterizes the liquid fire style is
not just its unique shapes but the way they move: the lines gather and disperse around and from points of tension. This
is what creates the unique sense of morphing, and grants effects the capacity to adopt figurative shapes like faces or
dragons: because of their own internal energy, shapes sometimes coalesce and form a distinct figure, but such figures
are fragile and come undone as quickly and unexpectedly as they appeared.
Among Kanada’s students, it is perhaps Masahito Yamashita who best understood this unique aspect of Kanada’s art;
he is probably one of the only animators to have been able to reproduce and further it
(https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/7f65ced93b8e97e2e8644efaf8b94d91.mp4). Indeed, while the framerate
modulation that Kanada mastered so well and systematized from his early days was bound to stay and become one of
anime’s key formal characteristics, the unique sense of rhythm of Kanada’s middle period was rarely replicated with
the same amount of talent. It could even be argued that, following the decline of Yamashita-style animation in the late
80’s, and Kanada’s own turn away from it, animation has moved into the opposite direction: no less modulated, but
either resolutely irregular, as in Kanada’s early period and Hiroyuki Imaishi’s work, or continuous and fluid. In that,
Yutaka Nakamura’s “gliding” animation
(https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/60425cd86e95b9daa9ba6a8bbe20c160.mp4) is perhaps the greatest antithesis
one might conceive to the tension-focused Kanada style.

In any case, and in whatever way it expresses itself, Kanada’s greatest discovery was that animation, as a medium
that produces movement, is inherently about energies. It might just be said to be the energy of the animator who, as
they work, pours themselves out in their drawings. But there is also an energy inherent to the drawings themselves, as
they are set to be put in motion. The work of the animator is, then, not just that of someone who draws, but also that of
a choreographer: that is, to create or locate rhythms, to order and direct them according to points of tension, release
and expression. In other words, creating movement through drawings also entails harnessing energy through motion.

Organizing movements
So far, it could be said that I have focused on two aspects of Kanada’s art: its spatial configurations, through shapes,
and its temporal organizations, through rhythm. But there is a third, perhaps more general and fundamental order that
both underlies and follows from these. That is a constant awareness and foregrounding of the material conditions and
tools behind the animation – in that sense, Kanada’s animation is often both about the movement and the nature of
that movement. That nature is often profoundly organic, made of drawn lines, but also involving bodies and physical
substances.
Earlier in this piece, I mentioned the “decorative” lines that are so present in Kanada’s work. But these are not simply
there to be pretty, or to enrich compositions; they are not just ornamental, but always reveal that the act of drawing is
at play within the animation. In other words, the animation is not only about conveying certain plot events or emotions,
and not only about motion either, but is always a series of sudden drawn developments and flourishes that seem to
develop themselves spontaneously. In a fashion similar to the internal dynamism of the liquid fire, they seem to be
organic outgrowths of the drawings themselves and thereby they enrich the movement as a whole.

In that regard, Kanada’s use of rulers must not solely be understood as a means to reach greater efficiency. As the
abstract or decorative lines I just mentioned illustrate, Kanada’s figures initially came out of an apparent chaos of
spontaneous lines: in other words, forms preceded expression, and the latter was born out of the former in a series of
unexpected inventions.

This famous sequence from Zambot 3 is full of these “discoveries”, little bursts of details and expressions and lines
where new forms and shapes and expressions just appear out of nothing but the animation itself. From 0:02 to 0:05,
nothing really justifies the schematic shapes and the proliferation of speedlines; they are just there, creating
“expression” but not expressing any feeling in particular. The same could be said of the light flares from 0:06 to 0:07.
Although probably meant to figure the blinding energy coming from the mecha and the sword flying by, their abstract
shapes make it impossible to just identify them so literally; they are pure fragments of drawing, drawn light that’s just
there to show that it’s been drawn. What blinds the viewer here is then not the light, but the drawing: the revelation of
the animator’s work, initiative and fantasy expressed in simple geometrical patterns.
The most famous moment of that sequence, its last 5 seconds, must be understood similarly. Light coming out of the
character’s eyes and a face and emotions appearing on a robot are not just expressive devices, although they certainly
are effectively expressive. They are also pure fragments of drawing: moments when the animation itself generates
new, unexpected shapes. The flares suddenly appearing are, once again, drawn light: they are only lines and color,
and it is these that surprise the viewer so much. If we must call Kanada’s animation (especially here) “expressionist”, it
is also fundamentally formalist: it entails not just expression for the sake of intensity, but a close attention to how
drawing and movement work together, and to their constitutive elements.

A core aspect of Kanada’s animation is therefore an attention to both the smallest, material elements of a given action,
and a care to integrate them into the general movement that plays out in said action. In other words, there is often a
strong alliance between animation and storyboarding, but also between animation and coloring and compositing.

The special relationship between animation and compositing in Kanada’s art has often been commented on, in the
wake of artist Takashi Murakami and animation theorist Thomas Lamarre. However, Lamarre’s account in particular
mostly insists on the distinction between the animation work and the compositing: Kanada’s work relies on
multiplanarity, on the widening of the gap between the different layers of the image. This isn’t intrinsically wrong, but it
misses some of the purpose behind Kanada’s use of compositing. Murakami and Lamarre’s line of thought can be best
exemplified by Kanada’s late works (https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/3d4cb652ff5cdddf5233317e20da37e6.mp4),
which heavily rely on the clear distinction between flat, 2D animation and complex, in-depth 3D movement. That way, it
is not the compositing that would adapt to the animation, but rather the opposite: the way of organizing the movement
depends on the production context and techniques.

There is, however, something more fundamental: sometimes, Kanada would go as far as to dissolve the difference
between animation and photography, not only repurposing compositing techniques to support the animation, but also
animating the practice of compositing itself. This is the case in the sequence above from Farewell Galaxy Express 999.
The image here is decidedly multiplanar: there is the planet in the background, covered by spots illuminated in blue;
from these irradiate various effects and explosions and blue streaks of light. But there is also one more layer, which
seems to figure black smoke, covering the uppermost layer of the screen, closest to the camera.

There is a complex play with objects being in and out of focus in this sequence; the photography work is no doubt
exemplary, and would still be without Kanada’s animation being shot. The “smoke” effect, for example, lies out of focus
in the beginning, just a hazy shape that blurs the vision, and then enters focus before covering the entire screen for
what is an abstract explosion meant to figure the apocalyptic end of the planet. It is hard to determine materially what
this black smoke effect is made of—but when it comes into focus one clearly sees that it is, itself, animated. It is not
just an elaborate technique thought up by the photography staff, but an animated performance by Kanada in close
collaboration with the photography team. It is in that sense that I mean that the compositing process itself becomes
animated: what could have been just an optical trick involving cels and a camera was transformed into actual motion,
with a formal coherence and expressivity that photography on its own couldn’t have achieved.

Although it is a less complex example, background animation points towards a similar tendency: a heightened
awareness of the intricacies of animation technique as a whole, and the will to share and make it visible. Kanada’s
most famous piece of background animation
(https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/ce17075cf8b19b1b07cf7b2b162542ea.webm), from Birth, is probably the clearest
indication of this. At the end of the sequence, as Rasa and her pursuers enter a cave, the camera adopts a first-person
perspective. What we then see is the light of the vehicles illuminating the cave. Due to the peculiar coloring and
linework, the walls of the cave have very little texture: they are simply and visibly just lines and colors. More
fundamentally, then, it is not a cave we see and enter: it is the drawing itself, caught up in the self-generating
movement that is the animator’s work. The landscape is being created just right before our eyes. And that is the very
nature of animation: that these are but drawings, but the mere act of witnessing them in succession recreates them
and gives them shape, movement and meaning.

Taken as a whole, Kanada’s body of work explores different, sometimes contradictory, formal options: spontaneity and
rigidity; tension and elasticity; neat and rough, straight lines and curves; complexity and simplicity; depth and flatness.
This ability to go from one extreme to another is perhaps the greatest proof of his genius as an individual, and his
importance as an artist: had he travelled only one of the routes I have highlighted, he might have gathered some
followers around him, but he wouldn’t have made such an important mark. Instead, the diversity of his output ensured
that even artists coming from different backgrounds and with different techniques could, perhaps, follow in his wake
and further the paths he opened.

From all this, it might then be possible to say that there is no single drive to Kanada’s art, and that its variety is
precisely what makes it unique. That is certainly part of the truth; but over the course of this article, I hope to have
uncovered something else: that Kanada was an artist always ready and capable of challenging animation in its most
fundamental aspects. As much as he was an inventor of new forms, he was also a prodigious recreator, with an
unparalleled ability to rearrange all that was taken for granted in the production of motion.

Motion/Movement
Writing about animation isn’t easy.

In my experience, the two pitfalls you’re bound to run into at some point are evaluation and description. Evaluation
means that you have to justify that what you’re writing about is worth writing about: in other words, that it’s good or
interesting in some way. But these are of course very vague concepts and just invoking them makes you run into a
series of unsolvable problems. You can’t just show an animated sequence and say: “wow, that’s good”, unless you and
your interlocutor have already agreed on a series of elements about what is “good”.

To avoid this, there’s the other solution, which is description. Description is objective: you just have to break down the
timing, the drawing style and the choreography, and there, you’re done. But first, this doesn’t get you very far, unless
you’re an artist trying to see how the animation works to be able to replicate it. Description for its own sake isn’t very
interesting. And then, there’s the problem of repetition. You can only recount the timing so many times, and there’s a
point when you have to fall back on the vague terms: expressive, fluid, and so on. And those too, you can only repeat
so much.

Animation analysis, and really of every form of art, will always have to navigate between these two situations. I don’t
think there’s any single good way to go about it, and the talent of every analyst and writer will consist of creating their
own way of doing things in such a framework.

As for myself, I don’t have any good way and I’m just groping around like everyone else. At least, I think that being
aware of it is a good start: your writing is always going to be limited, and you have to come to terms with it. However, in
the course of my meditations on these questions, I’ve come up with two terms that, I hope, should help and clarify the
analysis. These are “movement” and “motion”, a very helpful distinction that exists in English and that comes in handy
when discussing animation.

What do I mean by these two words? Basically, by “movement”, I mean the simple fact that something moves in the
frame – it’s the layout, if you will. Then, by “motion”, I mean the way that this something moves. Let me explain with a
simple example: the Tôei entrance exam that Yasuo Otsuka commented on in the documentary The Joy of Motion. The
exam is simple: you have to animate a boy hitting something with a mallet, in just a few frames of animation.

In this case, the movement is simply what happens: a boy hits something with a mallet, and it takes x frames. The
motion, however, is what makes one instance of that motion different from the other: rather than just using an even
spacing, Otsuka would have put as many frames in the anticipation, that is expressing the difficulty the boy has lifting
the mallet. And then you use as little frames as possible for the mallet falling down: that’s how you express the weight
of the thing, and the feelings of the boy. That’s motion.
In this case, it would be easy to argue that movement and motion aren’t really different, and that I’m just making up
pedantic distinctions. That may be the case. But I’m not saying either that movement and motion are essentially
distinct or that they are absolute properties of any animated sequence. Rather, they’re just tools to help the analysis be
clearer. And I also believe that privileging one over the other will change your analysis.

For instance, in his seminal book The Anime Machine, Thomas Lamarre discusses extensively the notion of
compositing. For him, the most important technique in anime is the pull-cell, that is when a single cell is moved laterally
over the frame by the photography staff during the compositing process. In my mind, the pull-cell is pure movement:
it’s just something going from a point of space to another. This entails that Lamarre almost never discusses motion
proper, and that’s why I think his perspective is so limited, even if it’s still very enriching.

With this example, I don’t mean that motion would be more interesting than movement; or that sakuga, for example, is
looking at animation while prioritizing motion over movement. In fact, I’m saying the exact opposite: I’ve always thought
that the sakuga community had the potential to offer as close to a holistic approach to animation as is possible in the
limits of fan analysis and discussion. For that reason, we need to discuss both movement and motion, and give them
the same level of importance. And that’s just the formal aspect: if we want to go even further, we have to integrate plot,
music, cinematography, etc.

I think it would be possible to develop many other such distinctions and concepts. I hope it is, and that other people
will. In the end, it might seem overly rigid, and surely won’t abolish the difficulties inherent to writing about art. But I’d
be glad if it could further, even by a little bit, our understanding of the medium we love so much.

Animation and subjectivity : towards a theory of framerate modulation

In my previous essay dedicated to Thomas Lamarre’s concept of animetism

(https://animetudes.wordpress.com/2020/04/08/on-animetism-or-the-importance-of-sakuga-to-theory/) I argued that
when studying animation, we shouldn’t just take into consideration space (how objects are distributed and move
across the frame), but also time, which I believe is key to understanding the essence of movement. Indeed, movement
is not just motion through space, but also takes place in time : it is something dynamic. Here, I’d like to follow up on
that statement and offer an account of how time is created and used in animation. To give my arguments more weight,
I’ll use a comparative approach : I will show that the way animation presents time is radically different from that of live-
action cinema, and that it is a determining factor in the difference between the two mediums.

Basically, my point will be this : in cinema, time only follows from the mechanical operations of the technical apparatus
; in other words, time is but recorded data. On the contrary, in animation, time is created, both by the animator and the
viewer. To establish it, I will focus on two techniques of animation : timing and framerate modulation.

As you may know, film is made of a series of still images that are projected at a certain speed that fools the brain into
thinking there’s movement : that speed is 24 frames per second. This is the standard rate of projection in both cinema
and animation. However, animators soon discovered that you could get away with shooting the same drawings twice
and still convey pretty much the same impression of movement : that means that there are only 12 new frames in a
second, what’s called animating “on twos”. The twelve other frames are what I’ll be calling “leftover frames”, that are
just a repetition of the previous image. With the development of limited animation, animation got away with using less
and less new frames : the framerate would often drop to 8 (animating “on threes”) or 6 (“on fours”) new frames per
second. The film is still projected at the same speed (thanks to the leftover frames), but the movement isn’t. This
capacity of animation to use less drawings is what gave birth to timing and modulation.

Timing refers to the fact that it is the individual animator who decides what number of frames he will use for a given
movement. For example, if you want to animate someone raising his arms, you may just use three movements : one
with the arms down, one with the arms in the middle, and one with the arms raised. This’ll probably be jerky, but you’ll
have movement nevertheless. But you may want your movement to be more detailed : instead of just 3 positions, you
may add 3 more, intermediate ones, to make it more smooth. In the end, it’s the animator who chooses what positions
will be the most important ones (the key frames) and how many intermediate drawings there are between each (the in-
betweens). That kind of calculation is timing.

Modulation is closely linked to timing but operates on a slightly different scale. For one movement, the animator may
choose to use different timings : for example, from the first key position (the arms down) to the second (the arms in the
middle), it will be animated on twos ; but from the second to the third position (the arms raised), it will be animated on
threes. In Western animation, this is called “spacing”, because the animator determines the “space” between each new
pose. But what’s really important with modulation are the ideas of variation and irregularity : in a second of animation,
the framerate may sometimes change two or three times.

What’s important to remember for now is that, in both cases, it’s the individual animator’s decision (1). This is even
more important when considering Japanese animation, as the specific production process of anime leaves a lot of
freedom to the individual animator. As I will show, this contrasts not only with certain kinds of Western animation, but
with cinema, in which such variations are much harder to obtain and create.

Objective time : cinema

In 1907, not long after the development of cinema, French philosopher Henri Bergson published his major book, The
Creative Evolution. This was and still is one of philosophy’s major attempts to understand the darwinian theory of
evolution, but the subjects it treats are far more diverse. Among other things, Bergson makes a strong critique of
cinema, and what he calls the “cinematic leaning of thought” : we believe that cinema gives us real movement,
because we see it move. But in fact, cinema creates movement from immobility : projection of still images at a rapid
pace. For Bergson, that’s not real movement : that is but an “indirect image” of movement that translates our inability to
see things for themselves, in order to break them down to their parts and see movement as just a series of still
positions.
Bergson didn’t target cinema in order to condemn it, but he did give the name “cinematic” to a philosophical tendency
he sought to suppress, and his account is one of the first philosophical theories of cinema. That’s why many cinema
theorists, directly or indirectly, answered Bergson when they tried to justify the status of cinema as art and as a real
representation of reality – that is, movement. Among them, one of the most influential and famous is without a doubt
that of one of Bergson’s disciples, Gilles Deleuze, in his monumental 2-volume Cinema.

It is in the very first and introductory chapter that Deleuze confronts Bergson and masterfully shows that, despite his
master’s claims, real, direct movement does exist in cinema. In cinema, there is representation of movement : what
Deleuze calls the “movement-image”. The argument can be summed up as follows : when we watch a film, we don’t
see the individual still frames. We see the movement they produce, and this thanks to the technical apparatus of
cinema, which projects these frames at a regular and identical rhythm. As Deleuze says,

“But what [cinema] gives us, as has often been noted, isn’t the frame, it’s an average
image to which movement isn’t added from the outside : the movement is a part of the
average image as immediate data. […] To sum up, cinema doesn’t give an image to
which it adds movement, it immediately gives us a movement-image.” [Deleuze, 1983,
p.11] (2)

In other words, cinema isn’t the film on which are inscribed the individual still frames : if this were the case, Bergson
would be right. Cinema is the film, and the projection apparatus of which time is an essential attribute : the projector
projects images at a certain speed. And that also becomes visible in the materiality of the film : film reels have holes on
the side, placed at equidistant intervals, and it is by grabbing through these holes that the projector makes the film
move. It is because the holes (and the frames) all have the same size and are placed at regular intervals that the
projection can also happen at a regular pace – in other words, that the rhythm of projection stays the same, and that
time in cinema can be something objective, that doesn’t change whatever happens. This technical characteristic is
what motivates Deleuze’s definition of cinema :

“Cinema is the system that reproduces movement as in any indifferent moment, i.e.
according to equidistant instants chosen to give an impression of continuity. Any other
system that would reproduce movement by an arrangement of poses projected as to flow
in one another or to “transform”, is not part of cinema.” [Deleuze, 1983, p.14]

While this definition might seem very abstract, it’s in fact very simple ; what matters to my point is mostly the need to
“give an impression of continuity” : the very nature of cinema is to convey a regular impression of movement. The
movement on screen might be fast or slow, it might even be slow-motion, but from the technological standpoint, all
these movements represent the same thing : they share the same “data”, the same number of frames and in the end
all happen at the same speed. This means that, as Deleuze says, there are no singularities or exceptions in cinema,
because its movement is created from “any indifferent moment” : the single frame taken by itself doesn’t matter,
because it’s just an indifferent moment taken from a continuity and will never stand out nor need to.

From this point of view, there are no variations of intensity in cinema : every image could be replaced by any other. The
creation of intensity does not therefore happen at this level, that of the individual frames, but at successive larger ones
: shot composition and framing, camera movement, editing, etc. But all of these relate to direction, or what I would call
cinematography (literally, writing with cinema, that is with movement), and not to the essence of cinema itself.
To sum up my argument here, I would say that it relies on two ideas. First, that in cinema, movement is real : it’s not
just an addition of still frames. Considering that animation relies on the same projection apparatus (including film), we
could say that here, animation and cinema are the same. But then, in cinema, movement is also objective. By
objective, I mean that it is an essential attribute of cinema, that never changes, and that cannot be manipulated by any
subjective agency (in the case of cinema : the director, the actors, etc.) (3). As I will now show, this is where the main
difference between animation and cinema lies.

Subjective time : animation

It’s common practice among animation scholars [cf. Sifianos, 2012] to note that, even though Deleuze was so
influential to cinema theory, he barely talked about animation, and what he said was mostly wrong. My stance is
slightly more complex, but before detailing it, we must see what Deleuze really says about animation. In the roughly
650 pages of Cinema, Deleuze mentions animation twice : once in an unimportant footnote, and once in the
introductory chapter, just after the definition I quoted. Deleuze’s position is clear : for him, animation is cinema.

“This becomes visible when one tries to define cartoons : if they are fully a part of
cinema, it’s because the drawing isn’t a pose or an accomplished shape. It is the
description of a shape that’s constantly in the making or coming undone thanks to the
movement of lines and dots taken at indifferent moments of their trajectory. […] Cartoons
do not present the description of a shape taken at a unique moment, but the continuity of
the movement that describes the shape.” [Deleuze, 1983, p.14]

Here, what Deleuze does is folding animation back on cinema by arguing that, just like in cinema, the frame-by-frame
movement doesn’t really matter, as if each frame had just as much intensity and importance as all the others. That
doesn’t mean that all frames are interchangeable ; but that in terms of expressivity and importance to the overall
movement, all cuts are worth the same. I believe it does hold for certain kinds of animation : some hand-drawn full-
animation works, where each projected image corresponds to one new drawing (but most of the time, it’s just one in
two : full animation is mostly drawn in 12 frames per second). But most importantly, I believe it applies to techniques
that didn’t exist yet when Deleuze wrote : those that rely on automatic inbetweening, like Flash or 3D animation (4). So
Deleuze isn’t entirely wrong.

However, this definition doesn’t apply to all techniques that use, in some sort or other, timing and modulation. Which
means a very large part of animation, and most importantly in our case, anime. Indeed, because of the dominant use
of limited animation, the individual frame took a new importance : each drawing is no more an indifferent part of the
movement, but a precious resource. When you’re animating on 3’s or 4’s, the movement will very probably look jerky ;
so you can’t afford to just take a drawing away or make it look bad. Which means that, in contrast to the monotonous
intensity of cinema’s frames, limited animation clearly sets up a hierarchy : there are all the leftover frames (if you’re
animating on 3’s, the anime standard, that’s 16 frames in a second), whose intensity can be equated to 1. It’s not 0,
because they’re still taken up in the regular movement of projection ; but it never changes, never goes beyond or
below this value. On the other hand, you have all the new frames, and most importantly the key frames, whose
intensity would be 1+x, where “x” represents the impact and importance of the frame in the overall movement.

The most obvious example of this would be the Kanada school of animation, and especially its arguably most radical
member, Hiroyuki Imaishi. The principle of Kanada-style animation is to raise the value of x as high as possible by
having each key frame represent as striking a pose as possible. As it developed over time, and as most visible in this
cut (https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/ef3413f8f3e54ae331ad36d895f518ac.mp4) by Imaishi, it went so far as to
suppress in-betweens : that’s a practice known as “snapping”. Snapping is interesting, because by omitting the in-
betweens (5), it basically reduces their intensity to as close to 0 as possible : the value of each image is therefore not
1+x, but just x. But that doesn’t make the movement weaker in any way, because x’s value is very high from the start,
and because of a phenomenon known as “closure”, which I’ll explain later on.

But even if we go out of the Kanada-style and its radically innovative use of omissions, my point is that timing dictates
the intensity of each frame, and therefore that the intensity varies : one could say that it modulates, or rather that it is
modulated by the animator which decides of the timing of his cuts. Modulation is in fact the key phenomenon here : if
we imagine a cut entirely animated on 4’s, but which stays on 4’s during all its duration, the rhythm will be very regular
and its intensity pretty low. In other words, it’ll be boring. However, if the rhythm modulates, the movement itself
becomes unpredictable : the viewer can’t actually know what’s going to happen next or, more accurately, how it will
happen next.

The following scene (https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/1b11a7a80652c8ebc5199ef127a48204.mp4), a cut by Yasuo

Otsuka, is among the most famous examples of modulation in the history of Japanese animation because it is one of
the first prominent uses of the technique (6). It’s relevant here because it shows that modulation isn’t just a specificity
of limited animation : this comes from Hols, Prince of the Sun, which is almost entirely in full animation. But it’s also a
good example of the unpredictability and irregularity created by modulation. Most of the scene, like the rest of the
movie, is animated on 2’s, but Otsuka uses modulation to create certain effects. For example, just after it’s been hit by
Hols’ harpoon, the fish sinks : this is on 3’s, which conveys how slowly the monster goes down. But when it suddenly
comes back out of the water, it’s on 2’s : the fish moves faster, and the animation follows and picks up the pace. This
sudden change of rhythm is as striking as the fish’s sudden attack. To create an even stronger sense of surprise, in the
next shot, a close-up of Hols’ surprised face, the boy is animated on 1’s : his shock comes through the animation itself,
and not just his expression.

A few seconds later, Otsuka uses another technique that’s not quite modulation, but which is related to it : as the fish
suddenly swims from the right to the left of the frame, taking Hols along with him, the animation is on 2’s. However,
there’s movement in each frame, as if it was animated on 1’s : on the first frame, the fish moves ; on the second, the
background moves. This pattern gives an impression of constant movement, even though the animation is on 2’s.
Then, in the end of the sequence, as the hurt fish frantically swims and writhes in pain, it’s animated on 1’s, which
makes its speed and movement even more striking ; in contrast, the next shot, where we see rocks detaching from the
cliff, is on 3’s, which helps us realize the weight of the rocks that are about to fall down.

So now we can understand why, in animation, time is “subjective” : first, it’s not steady, just like subjective time isn’t, in
opposition to the objective time of clocks : when I’m impatient or bored, time seems to flow faster or slower That means
that, while time is as much an essential quality of animation as it is to cinema, it isn’t in the same sense, because
there’s a gap between the rate of projection and the rate of animation. To make the difference even clearer, I’d say that
in cinema, there’s only time, whereas in animation, there exist both time and rhythm. The other reason is that rhythm
is, as I’ve said about timing, determined by the individual animator : he’s the one who has the say on how things will
move. Therefore, time is subjective, because it depends on individuals and not an objective technical apparatus.

Closure, and the different kinds of modulation

There is one last subjective aspect in animation that I have not yet explored in detail : that is the role of the viewer. As
I’ve already said, the viewer is already a key component of film : it’s thanks to the phenomenon known as “persistence
of vision” that we can see movement where there is only a projection of 24 frames per second. At surface level, there
should be no difference here between cinema and animation, because the projection apparatus is the same in both
cases. But as I’ve just shown, modulation creates, in animation, a gap between the number of frames projected and
the number of frames drawn. That also changes the role of the spectator.
To get an idea of what’s going on, let’s take a step back from the brain-eye-projector apparatus and try to understand
what’s going in more general terms. The phenomenon at play has been analyzed by comic book artist and theorist
Scott McCloud [1994] : he calls it “closure”, and describes it as “mentally completing that which is incomplete based on
past experience” [McCloud, 1994, p.63]. A very clear example of it is how, with just a few drawn lines, we are able to
infer that there is a drawing of a human face. Persistence of vision is, according to McCloud, an instance of closure.

Following this theory, comics differ from cinema in that closure is not mechanically provoked by a technical apparatus –
in other words, it’s not imposed on the viewer. McCloud describes comics as a participatory medium where “the
audience is a willing and conscious collaborator and closure is the agent of change, time and motion.” [McCloud, 1994,
p.65]

The place where closure happens in comics is called the “gutter” : that’s the white space between panels. There are no
panels, and therefore no gutters, in animation, but I believe that closure happens in much the same way – in other
words, from the point of view of closure (that is, of the spectator), animation is closer to comics than to cinema. First,
let’s notice that the two simplest forms of transitions in comics according to McCloud closely resemble animation,
without the projection apparatus : most notably in the case of the baseball player, it’s like we just had two key frames
without the in-betweens.

But, as much as in animation as in comics, we don’t need the in-betweens that much here : the key poses are enough,
and our mind does the rest – it does closure and creates movement. The reason this applies to animation only, and not
to cinema, is because of the projected/drawn frames gap I mentioned : wherever the animation is not on ones, there
will be at least one still frame between each new frame. This means that there is a part of movement that’s not put into
motion by the projector, but that depends on the viewer to make the link between old and new frames (7).

What does modulation have to do with all this ? As I’ve already said, modulation is a factor of irregularity in movement.
Closure is what makes this irregularity acceptable, and even enjoyable : first, it’s what maintains continuity when the
movement is not continuous ; moreover, modulation and timing play on closure itself. For example, in the Imaishi cut I
gave as an example earlier, there are only key frames and barely any in-betweens : the viewer’s role is here very
important, because he has to do all the in-betweening himself. But in full animation, the viewer has much less work to
do, since there are much more in-betweens and new frames in the animation itself. In this context, my 1+x model can
be reconsidered in more detail : the constant value 1, that of the leftover frame, is produced by the spectator itself – by
closure. The variable x represents as much the intensity of the frame as the amount of work needed by the viewer to
make closure. In Kanada-style animation, x is very high, because the key poses are very different from each other,
which makes them striking, but also continuity and closure harder to achieve.

This being said, I think it’s possible to try a list of different kinds of modulation, and the different kinds of closure and
intensity they involve. I will once again rely on McCloud, who gives a catalog of the 6 types of transitions effects one
can find in comics. Since the two mediums are very different, I believe there are only 3 kinds of modulation effects, but
I will keep McCloud’s concepts.

Action to action. McCloud defines it as follows : “transitions featuring a single subject in distinct action-to-action
progressions” [1994, p.70]. The example of the baseball player I gave earlier is an instance of action to action. In
animation, action to action modulation would be a single movement, animated at different timings.

For example, let’s take a look at the second shot of this cut
(https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/5a3a5a9850bdbe1dc006ddc2b8a1c82c.mp4) by Hayao Miyazaki. As the pitcher
prepares to throw his ball and stretches upward, the animation follows a 3-4 rythm : the movement is slow and
deliberate, and we can see it in every detail. But then, when he raises his leg, the rhythm gets faster and oscillates
between 3’s and 2’s until the end of the shot, following the sudden acceleration of motion.

This kind of modulation is the most simple, because it’s simple timing, and it’s the most unnoticeable by the viewer :
taken by the continuity of movement, he will not consciously notice the change unless it’s very obvious (from 2’s to 4’s,
for example) or he is very seasoned. Its general value is therefore not too strong, but the simplicity of this technique
musn’t be mistaken for a lack of importance : on the contrary, action to action modulation is what gives the movement
its individuality and most of its texture. A cut can work or fail just because of its timing. What I call action to action, just
a category of a larger technique, is what “framerate modulation” generally means in animation circles : the other types
of modulation I list may not be considered as such by some. But since they involve a variation in the timing – which
was my definition of modulation – I believe the word still applies to them.

Subject to subject. McCloud’s definition is : “[a transition that] takes us from subject-to-subject while staying within a
same scene or idea.” [1994, p.71] In cinematographical terms, what he means by that is basically a cut to a new shot :
an image of a different object or movement, and not just another phase in the same movement. However, considering
that in animation, movement and intensity variation take place within the frame, and not from frame to frame, by
subject to subject modulation, I here mean two or more characters or objects sharing the same frame but that do not
share the same timing. To show in concrete terms what this means, let’s take this cut
(https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/c26caf5f8d2beea816b1baecb324b568.mp4) by Hisashi Mori.

During the entire cut, the fireball moves on 1’s ; in the penultimate shot, the giant bird moves on 2’s : for an instant, the
two objects aren’t animated at the same pace. As the fireball hits the bird, action to action and subject to subject
happen at the same time : writhing in pain, the bird switches to 1’s, while the fireball, which has lost some of its energy
from the hit, is now animated on 3’s. Another famous examp’e would be Yoshihiko Umakoshi’s Mushishi, where the
fantastical Mushi creatures are systematically animated on 1’s, which emphasizes their otherness. Subject to subject
modulation is more complex, because the animator has to take account of various timings at the same time. However,
it’s also very expressive, since having two objects moving at different speeds helps the viewer appreciate their
difference. That’s a variation on the well-known principle “if you want to show the difference between two characters,
animate them doing the same thing” : the way they will each move in a different way will tell us a lot about them. The
same can be said of timing.

Scene to scene. According to McCloud, these kinds of transitions are the ones that “transport us across significant
distances of time and space” [1994, p.71]. Since, as I said, the movement in animation takes place in the space and
time of a single frame, the “significant distances” that McCloud refers to can here simply mean a cut, the passage from
a shot to another. This kind of modulation is therefore when, from one shot to the other, the timing changes. In the
Otsuka scene I analyzed, the animator used it quite often : Hols rising in surprise was animated on 1’s, which created
contrast with the previous and next shot on 2’s. For another, even more striking example, we can think of animator
Yutaka Nakamura : what makes his cuts stand out is not only the insane talent the man has, but also the fact that his
recent work is almost systematically on 1’s or 2’s. When your anime is mostly animated on 3’s, but suddenly there’s a
sequence of multiple shots animated on 1’s, the sudden burst in movement is obvious. This is why the intensity
created by such modulation is among the strongest. This kind of effect, which relies heavily on editing, is closely
related to editing techniques in cinema : for example, having a shot with a character shown from afar, and then, without
transition, a sudden close-up, with create the same kind of surprise. In Deleuze’s words, we could say that in such
instances of modulation, “the image must change its power, switch to a superior amount of power” [Deleuze, 1983,
p.54].

This last remark brings me to my conclusion. I argued that there was an essential difference between animation in
cinema, that is that they are two distinct mediums, because the representation of time that they each create is very
different. Cinema relies on a regular, mechanically-produced time, whereas animation rests on irregular, handmade
time thanks to the techniques known as timing and modulation.

That does not mean, however, that animation and cinema do not communicate : as I’ve said multiple times, the
projection apparatus is identical. Moreover, they share a common element : cinematography, that is, all that involves
editing, shot composition, etc. In Deleuze’s words, these are “determinations of the Whole” [1983, p.46], and not of the
parts, that is of the individual shots or frames. This means that, even though animation and cinema share a strong
analogy, they are still separated by their different ontologies, i.e. the different status that what they represent has. They
could be compared to closely related, but ultimately different, languages : a Spanish speaker may understand some
Italian, because the two resemble each other ; but that does not mean that he speaks Italian, because the grammars
are different, and there are a lot of words that are not common. In the same way, someone knowledgeable about
cinema may understand animation, because he has something to say (sometimes something more to say) about the
common element, that is cinematography. But it’s not because he understands and talks about animation that he
masters it : there will always be an element that cinema will not be able to assimilate – which is, as I have shown, time.

Notes
(1) The animator may eventually be corrected by the animation director, but for my argument, it amounts pretty much
to the same thing.

(2) Please note that all the quotes from Deleuze have been translated by myself ; I have done my best, but I’m by no
means a professional translator, so please excuse me for any mistaken or unclear translation (thanks to Calann for
reviewing them).

(3) I am aware that experimental cinema may play with such factors ; but I’d answer that it is the very nature of
experimental art is to play with the boundaries and set definitions.

(4) What this means, if we must absolutely follow Deleuze here, is that the integration of CGI by live-action cinema
doesn’t mean, as some argue, that animation is replacing cinema. On the contrary, it’s just cinema (as a whole) made
up of a live-action part and a “computer-action” part, so to speak, which is as much cinema because it rests on purely
objective and regular time.

(5) Because snapping often involves this kind of omission of in-betweens, I think it’d be more accurate to call it
“omission” : “snapping” describes the impression of the movement, but not what’s actually happening.

(6) Many people call this scene the first example of framerate modulation ; however, all the places where I’ve read this
do not cite any sources. I find it hard to believe it would be the first example ever of framerate modulation, so it (among
with Otsuka’s other scenes in the movie) may be the first use of it Japan, but even then, I’m not really sure that would
be the case. But since I haven’t counted the exact framerate of every single Japanese animated production before
1968, I can’t say anything for certain except that further research would have to be made.

(7) This similarity has been noted by McCloud himself : cf. 1994, p.88 where the mind is described as an “in-
betweener” and the comic artist as a “[key] animator”. This obviously doesn’t mean that comics and animation are the
same thing ; but that they share a strong analogy between them, of which cinema is not a member

Bibliography
Bergson, H. (2013). L’évolution créatrice [The Creative Evolution]. Presses Universitaires de France, coll. “Quadrige”.

Clements, J. (2013) Anime, A History. Palgrave Mac Millan.

Deleuze, G. (1983) Cinéma 1 : L’Image-Mouvement [Cinema 1 : The Movement-Image]. Les Editions de Minuit, coll.
“Critique”.

Lamarre, T. (2009) The Anime Machine : A Media Theory of Animation. University of Minnesota Press.

McCloud, S. (1994) Understaning Comics : the Invisible Art. HarperPerennial.

Sifianos, G. (2012) Esthétique du Cinéma d’Animation [Esthetics of Animation]. Le Cerf, coll. “7ème art”.

Anime Photography in the Cel Era

I came across this opening by the popular indie animator Kouji Nanke while watching Maison Ikkoku (it was the 5th
and last in the TV series), and it made me look up a lot of details on photography in old animes that I’ll write in this
post. I’ll be referring to this OP later so watch it first.

I’ll come back to that OP in a moment, but what makes photography in cel era anime interesting is the fact that
everything was completely physical, using a real camera and shooting real drawings and so on. I mean, if we look at
the history of 2D animation, especially its most common form (cel animation), cameras were the standard for a long
time and computer photography is a pretty recent development in the medium. Disney had used tower-style recording
machines since the 30s at least, because remember that every cel is a layer that has to move on its own on top of the
background.

Obviously this is a bit too sophisticated for most anime, considering the tighter economical and time-related
constraints. I believe Toei Douga used something similar in its movies at least, but generally speaking laying all the
cels on top of each other, including the background, does the job faster and easier, albeit not as elegantly, and this
could become a nightmare if you have a lot of layers moving at the same time, maybe even at different speeds.

Needless to say this process required skilled staff to pull it off well, and while photography still requires a lot of skill and
experience nowadays, using software on a computer is totally different. I once read that photography, although a
visually defining step in modern anime even now, isn’t regarded as highly as it was back in the cel era, simply because
it costs less and is all digital. And although photography became all digital, the workload is said to have increased
since higher quality is demanded and more things are added in and tuned digitally. That’s not our topic today anyway.

Photo of what was probably a common photography setup of the day. Simpler setups also existed. The cel is usually
placed on transparent glass, underneath which there is a light source. Notice the physical space available for moving
the cel, which is important for creating various effects I’ll talk about later.

That’s why photography required actual photography know-how back then, and any effect you wanted to create had to
be done physically somehow. A lot of these effects could be created using what is called an Optical Printer
(https://href.li/?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_printer), which was a very common device in cinema for creating
special effects such as transparency (and by extension fade ins and such). What it basically does is taking two film
rolls and projecting them on top of each other, manipulating them as necessary, while a camera recaptures the final
footage on a third film. Sounds simple but it really wasn’t, and 3 rolls of film (sometimes even more) weren’t cheap. All
that made this device irrelevant when it came to anime.

You could still create most visual effects yourself, and that’s what anime creators did. If we go back to transparency,
say you wanted to make a character look transparent, this had to be done by photographing the cels at different
exposure than the background. It’s possible to use the same film multiple times, so all you had to do was shoot the
background alone first with full exposure, rewind the film, and shoot the character only at lower exposure and it will
look transparent on top of the fully visible background. I believe other methods existed but this was the most common.
This is especially useful for shadows, reflections, or objects behind windows and so on. The process had to be
repeated as many times as there were objects with different exposures on screen, and rewinding the film posed the
risk of damaging it and having to repeat the whole process again, in other words it was troublesome.
This is what is called a “Double Exposure” in photography, and a lot of terms are used in the anime industry to refer to
it derived from that. Dabu-Rashi (ダブラシ, Wラシ) and WXP are the most common and are still in use today.

The next effect I want to talk about is illumination. I mean the effects when the background or a part of it shines a bright
light (e.g. sunlight). Remember what I said about the light source underneath the glass? It’s all about that light source. I
think that this light isn’t necessary most of the time, and maybe it’s only used to create those effects. Since cels are
transparent, all you have to do is shine light from underneath them and this light will shine through. And to focus light
on certain areas of the screen just use a black paper sheet with the desired area cut-out or color the back-side of the
background black except for the desired area. This is what is called 透過光 (roughly translated “Penetrating Light”).
I have to note that this isn’t necessarily the way it was always implemented. Other methods existed, techniques
changed with time, different people did it differently etc. I’m trying to explain the general concept behind those
techniques here. Also, just because I think this is interesting, I’d like to mention that cels aren’t completely transparent,
which resulted in complex cuts with multiple cels on top of each other sometimes having blurry backgrounds among
other undesired artifacts.

This technique is especially useful in creating starry skies or the starry backdrops of mecha animes, all you needed
was a black sheet with holes in it. You could do another trick based on a similar principle, a trick called Masking (マス
ク合成 - Mask Composition), using sheets of black paper called “Masks” to hide parts of the drawings you didn’t want
to show. A very simple example of this would be framing a character inside a rectangle on top of a background.

As you can see, all that involves some physical manipulation in one way or another. Adding filters to the camera lens
or on top of the drawings adds another whole desminsion of possibilities, but I believe that’s the most straightforward
trick of the bunch so no need to go further into that. You could also manipulate the glass behind the cels, as seen in
this example from Ideon: Be Invoked movie, which was one of its most memorable scenes.
You can clearly see that what’s behind the cel is glass, not completely transparent though.

The last technique I want to mention is physically moving the cel during filming. The effect resulting from moving cels is
what you expect, and I bet you can easily come with a few uses for this yourself, but the use of this extends beyond
creating simple visual effects.

Backgrounds are usually drawn on sheets larger than cels, and then cels are placed on them accordingly. Here’s the
thing: If the background is large enough, you can do a “following pan” if you move the cel on the background along a
horizontal line. Characters walking in a city, running in a forest, flying through clouds, you name it. Moreover, the
background can consist of multiple layers moved at different speeds based on the distance between them and the
character. This is essential in creating 3-dimensionality in anime and is the basis for a lot of visual tricks. This is mainly
called “Multi” (マルチ).

One has to be cautious with this, however, since scenes with both moving backgrounds and characters are and have
always been some of the trickiest scenes in animation. If the disparity in the speed of movement between the
character and the background is clear, say the character is animated on 3s and the background on 1s, then the
character would move in a stuttery way, as if trying to catch up to the background, in what is called “Flicker” (フリッカ
ー) in anime. This is a problem modern anime still runs into. Examples can be seen in this video (https://href.li/?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKIMKmjl-vY) or in this scene (https://href.li/?
https://www.sakugabooru.com/post/show/129273) from Urusei Yatsura near the end.

Now we can finally go back to the opening.

Starting with the first few frames of the OP, you could see masking, illumination and transparency in a single shot.
Kouji Nanke didn’t only draw Kyoko’s (the character) eyes obviously, and you can see how more parts of her hair show
up on the letter and to the sides. I think it’s safe to assume this wasn’t intentional, since masking was hard to
implement perfectly, and we can see light bleeding from the right edge. I believe the letters are cut-outs. As for the
shadows, I believe he left a distance between the letters/cels and applied light on an angle while shooting.
Moving on we see the flower petals. I’m not quite sure how he did that, but if you look closely you can see that their
shapes are constant, they just “glide” on screen, so it’s safe to assume it’s some kind of sheet with shapes on it used
with light some way or another. Also I feel like they don’t interact with the shadows of the letters, so maybe he filmed
them with the background first and then filmed the letters on top.
This is easily the most impressive cut in the OP. You have two characters half transparent (double exposure), Kyoko
framed with illuminating background (masking and illumination), a cut-out petal, and characters moving out of the
screen (multi). Filming all that together requires high photography skills and shows just how versatile of an animation
creator Kouji Nanke is.
Kyoko is cute.

This OP seems simple and plain at first, but when you take a moment to consider all the techniques involved in
creating it you can’t but admire the level of craftsmanship it takes to create something like it. It boasts a strong sense
of 3-dimensionality through all these visual tricks. The animation is of course nice and Nanke’s drawings are lovely, but
his focus was obviously the unique feel created by the shadows/lights, the layering, framing and transparency. Almost
all common photography techniques were beautifully incorporated in this OP, which made it a very fascinating piece of
animation to me.

Well, most of this post is irrelevant now that everything can be done with a click on computers. Nonetheless, these
techniques and knowledge are the basis for what we have today, and persisted in one way or another into modern
anime. This post was intended as an introduction to cel era photography, so I’ll link a few resources and extra reads
below.

A bit on Sakuga
The Fragmentation of Anime Production: Too Many Cooks Spoil the
Broth
Today we’re here to talk about a phenomenon that’s gradually been eroding anime’s very identity, while at the same
time souring the experience for its animation: the extreme fragmentation of the anime production process. Let’s see
what the model that reinforced anime’s visual cohesion was all about, how these changes were introduced and later
corrupted, and what to the animators who suffer the issues the most think about it.

Soon after the broadcast of Symphogear XV #08, an acquaintance with plenty understanding of the inner workings of
anime threw a question my way: exactly what did sakuga star Takahito Sakazume, confusingly credited under the role
of key animation Key Animation (原画, genga): These artists draw the pivotal moments within the animation, basically
defining the motion without actually completing the cut. The anime industry is known for allowing these individual
artists lots of room to express their own style. supervision assistance (原画監修協力), contribute to the episode?

Sakazume and the rest of the staff immediately provided an answer on social media, essentially acknowledging that
the credits were undecipherable otherwise. As it turns out, young artist Shouya Sakaguchi had fulfilled his Symphogear
dream and made his first appearance in the industry by drawing some layouts and key animation for this episode.
Since he wasn’t used to the professional pipeline quite yet, he received help by people like episode director Hiroki
Hirano and supervisor Tokiemon Futsuzawa. And, besides that kind of standard assistance, he was directly supported
by an ace animator like Sakazume, who provided guidance with the work and delivery process after those steps,
making sure nothing was off in Sakaguchi’s grand debut.

The truth is that this season of Symphogear is no stranger to non-standard, sometimes deliberately amusing
production credits. Just three weeks prior to that, the series had introduced the concept of 0th key animation to the
world — a term that confused and unsettled fans, studio representatives, and industry legends all the same;
incidentally, while the team didn’t provide an official explanation that time around, I’d wager on that referring to very
rough drafts by key staff members before the animation process started in full.
Don’t take this the wrong way: this piece isn’t meant to criticize Symphogear XV’s production process. If anything, the
extra time it’s been granted and these initiatives to reinforce animation positions appear to have raised its standards
higher than ever when it comes to consistency and polish. However, while this might be as benign of an example as it
comes, the addition of all these extra specific animation roles still highlights a very important trend. One that, while not
intrinsically negative, has synergized with chronic issues in the industry, and is now threatening to change its
essence… if it hasn’t done so already.

If you’re browsing a site by the name of Sakuga Blog, chances are that you’ve heard about the individuality of key
animators being one of the defining elements of Japanese animation — at least in the commercial field that people
tend to refer to when they talk about anime. While that doesn’t mean key animators are free to rampage as they
please, most sequences used to revolve around them to a large degree; for the longest time, you were entrusting a
single person to interpret everything in the director’s storyboard for the corresponding shot into its layout, then draw
the pivotal points of the sequence in the key animation phase, leave notes on how it should be composited, and even
polish it during the clean-up phase. And that meant a supposedly low-ranking artist was key — duh — to the
production process.

Of course, plenty of other creators have always come into play when making anime. The production process is
inescapably a choral yet also hierarchical endeavor. The role of animation director has existed since The Little Prince
and the Eight-Headed Dragon in 1963, the layout system was instaurated in 1974 for Heidi and has remained ever
since, and of course there’s no animation to be had without in-betweening, backgrounds, compositing, and so on. Key
animators were always directly outranked by other creators and surrounded by people whose work they needed, so
even though selective memory by veterans sometimes could lead you to think otherwise, there was never really a time
where they were the undisputed kings of the anime jungle.

And yet, over the course of many decades and despite many exceptions one could find, something remained
consistently true: the individuality of anime’s key animators tended not to be removed — if anything, it was protected.
Not just for artistic reasons, but for more pragmatic ones that we’ll talk about soon.

Even the animation supervision process, which theoretically stands as the biggest roadblock for idiosyncratic key
animators, was often lenient when it comes to personal expression. Animation directors were there to ensure quality
rather than to silence other artists’ voices, so personal quirks more often than not remained, unless they went actively
against the identity of the work or were deemed technically subpar. And even when a supervisor did redraw the hell out
of a key animator’s work, it was more likely to be interpreted as a worthwhile learning experience than a personal
affront. Believe me when I say grudges over this have been held for a long time, but they used to be the exceptions
that confirmed the rule. Nowadays, I’m not convinced that’s the case anymore.

While anime could rarely ever boast of ostentatiously fluid animation, even the most modest of projects have often had
striking shots where everything seemed to fit perfectly together. Though every sequence was made up of the work of
multiple departments that followed the director’s vision in the first place, having the key animators set the foundations
for everything in the actual shot tended to give it harmony — or very calculated discord — in a way you wouldn’t get
otherwise. There’s no single correct way to make art, but anime found its own answer. And considering how many
people love anime’s looks, feeling, and texture regardless of limitations and aesthetic trends changing with time, it’s fair
to say that it worked.

As a side note, this consistent production philosophy affected not just anime itself, but also the culture that surrounds
it. The reason why sakuga fandom is a fairly widespread phenomenon is simply that anime indirectly encourages that.
To notice individual animators whose works keep resonating with you, you don’t need an artistic background nor loads
of encyclopedic knowledge, but rather the simple interest to start identifying pretty obvious — especially if we’re talking
about action and effects animation — patterns in their drawings that anime lets these artists get away with. So in a
way, the existence of our site sort of proves this is indeed anime’s nature.

It’s not just fans that are pretty content with anime’s way of doing things, though, so were key animators themselves.
While it never truly made up for the hellish problems of having a 2D animation career in Japan — something that is not
new despite the situation having gotten worse — the idea that they’d play such a pivotal role at least motivated them;
you can call it a genuine source of fulfillment or a carrot to dangle in front of their noses, depending on your degree of
cynicism.

Now that obviously didn’t apply to in-betweeners to begin with, seeing how it’s a job essentially bereft of personal
expression… but one of the most insidious problems in this industry is having devalued that role to the point where in-
betweeners are merely treated as key animators in the making, a temporary state that “real animators” are meant to
abandon as soon as they’re ready. And so, for the longest time we had consistent practices that defined anime’s
identity, while at the same time they were used as one of the many emotionally exploitative tools to keep animators
chained to their job.

When did things start changing, then? That’s a hard one to answer. Even now that evidence about anime’s changing
nature has piled up for years, you can’t really pinpoint one single event. What’s easy to do, however, is point at the
overall tendency that the sum of those events has caused. And that’s the atomization of Japan’s animation process.
Or, to put it in simpler terms, the idea that the process has been separated into the smallest bits possible, so every
shot now goes through many more hands than it did before, often sacrificing that harmony anime used to have in favor
of barely making it to the next deadline.

The clearest example of this is the proliferation of an astonishing number of roles on the levels immediately above and
below key animators: all sorts of animation directors, as well as 2nd key animators. The change in the former has
received the most attention, as it’s impossible to miss that long gone are the days where episodes would have a single
animation director, with perhaps a specialized mecha, action, or effects supervisor by their side. Nowadays, a series
that keeps that averages less than a handful of them per episode already feels like a particularly orderly project.
If you feel like numbers aren’t everything and there’s no exact anime-making recipe for everyone, then I would say
you’re in the right. In fact, the idea of very specialized animation supervision roles — even the outright ridiculous ones
— still has merit to it… except that’s not the reasoning behind this outrageous escalation at large, of course. As
schedules fall apart, more and more animation directors pile up in a desperate attempt to maintain a decent level of
polish. Even the chief animation director role, which gained relevance precisely to keep the art consistent despite the
increasing number of supervisors, has lost its essence now that we often see multiple chiefs per episode.

That gives you a good hint as to why anime might be losing that source of harmony it once took pride in, but the truly
illustrative example as far as I’m concerned is the 2nd key animation boom; its growth from a situational mechanism to
an inescapable reality, without any of the arguably deliberate reasoning behind the increase in animation directors, but
simply a corruption of the original intent caused by this industry’s chronic issues.

As hard as it might be to believe if you’ve gotten into production matters in recent years, 2nd key animation is a
relatively recent practice. Though the idea wasn’t in and of itself revolutionary, it wasn’t formally introduced to anime
until 2002’s RahXephon. Its team knew of a certain ace by the name of Yutaka Nakamura, who wasn’t the single most
influential action animator worldwide like he is now, but already proved to be an exceptional talent. In their desire to
have as much as Nakamura work as possible and seeing how cloning people isn’t feasible, they divided animation
tasks that already existed into fully separate roles; “1st key animators” (which included not just Nakamura but other
individuals with eye-catching approaches to movement) would draw the rough animation, while “2nd key animators”
would do the clean-up work, saving time for the former group.

And as you might have noticed, saving time is something anime is always up for; understandably so, to be fair,
considering how most TV projects are asphyxiated by their tight production schedules. Inertia drives so many
processes in this industry that it takes ages for change to happen, yet slowly but surely it became a common practice.
As the 10s hit, less than a decade after this method was first experimented with in RahXephon, 2nd key animation had
spread enough that it began appearing in anime production guides — though it was a new enough phenomenon that
people still wondered what it entailed.
Now flash forward to the current season: all 35 new TV series from the summer 2019 season, including the shorter
length ones, feature a separate 2nd key animation role essentially every single episode, intro, and outro. More often
than not, there are actually more people entrusted with that work than 1st key animators. Quite the change, especially
if you factor in how much the nature of the job itself has changed; rather than polishing up animation, 2nd key
animation can often mean entirely fleshing out very rough layouts, not because the level of skill of key animators has
mysteriously plummeted over the years, but because they’re simply not given enough time to turn in satisfactory work.

This process doesn’t just erode that inherent harmony in anime’s visuals that we’ve been talking about, it also makes
for a tremendously unsatisfactory job for everyone involved. The person who turned in the rough animation has no idea
what their work will look like once it hits TV screens, which often ends up with the bits they were proudest of fading
away. Meanwhile, the 2nd key animator has an inherently harder time taking pride in the work at all, since they’re doing
kind of an invisible job — and one that pays quite poorly at that. The remuneration for both of them will be even lower
than it’d if they drew a full sequence… and the studio can’t even take solace in having saved some money, since
adding up those two pathetic sums will still cost more than paying a single animator to handle the same cuts; as proof
that studios themselves are aware that this system hurts even them, keep in mind we’ve heard from animators about
how often they’ll get requested to do the clean-up work themselves if it’s a all possible, even offering to extend a
deadlines a bit… but still not enough to make it work out in most cases, as seen by the resulting credits. It’s a
depressing game where everyone loses.

At this point, you likely understand that we’re not talking about a superficial change like the messier production process
making it harder to guess the work of individual animators — a fun pastime that’s survived the changing landscapes
pretty well, all things considered. The real issues we’re dealing with here is an increasingly more burdensome, less
satisfying job for the animators, and an often inexplicable feeling that something looks off for the audience due to the
effects this has on everyone’s output; the theory of anime production hasn’t changed despite the wild evolution of the
process in practice, meaning that anime’s been slowly losing the inherent visual coherence that made even the
cheaper projects have its moments of brilliance, without being able to find enough new qualities to make up for that.
We’d be lying if we claimed no one tried to step up to the plate, though.

That’s where the next catch is, however: even undeniably positive advances have fueled the process as a side effect.
Regardless of aesthetic preferences, the evolution of compositing has opened up new doors for anime, especially in
recent years as post-processing efforts have grown in ambition. Quite often, the feel of a scene is no longer
determined by the choices of the key animator, but rather by those in the photography department, whom no longer
just follow simple instructions by the animators. At its best, this can enable aesthetics that could have never been born
from traditional toolsets, or even fabricate the feeling of harmony that’s no longer inherent to the fractured animation
process.

But at its least fortunate, which is often the case in TV anime, that creates another big rift in the production process;
the risk of things not being executed as envisioned grows exponentially higher with each degree of separation, so
turning the animation process into a needlessly layered process out of desperation, and then handing the result to an
external department — often in a different company altogether — for them to do substantial work is simply asking for
something to go wrong. And of course, that’s what ends up happening. Animators lamenting that their work ended up
looking nothing like it was supposed to have become a depressingly common sight. Even though the job of the
compositing team is just as valid as theirs, it’s hard to argue that things are working as intended when a relationship
that should be synergistic turns out to be another source of disunion.
Most animators, particularly those in the freelance field, have been inconvenienced by these changing tides to some
degree. But as it tends to happen, it’s the most vulnerable groups who have received the brunt of the damage. Young
animators in precarious positions get saddled with those cheap and unfulfilling requests for rough layouts and 2nd key
animation. And, as much as the true globalization of anime production has increased its possibilities tenfold, it’s
precisely those newcomers flowing in from all over the world that get the worst treatment when it comes to this… and
other matters like getting paid in a reasonable timeframe, but let’s leave that shaming for a dedicated piece.

As we just mentioned, distance tends to make everything messier. And if Japanese animators have issues getting their
fellow countrymen one train station over to treat their job as intended, or at least an approximation to their vision that
sits well with the other creators involved, imagine what a nightmare this can be for a youngster who lives in the other
side of the world. Foreign veterans in the anime industry used to repeat the mantra that knowledge of Japanese is the
number one skill that newcomers from overseas should try to master, even above the actual animation techniques. But
nowadays, the ease of digital animation and sheer desperation of the industry, have made it so that people with no
understanding whatsoever of the language whatsoever can fulfill their dream of working in anime. Something that
sounds good on paper, until you hear that there are no new systems in place to accommodate for their needs, so all
these newcomers end up confused and sometimes outright taken advantage of.

Communication is the key to creating something as a group. It’s not a coincidence that it’s also a highly valued skill
when it comes to the directors overseeing entire projects. And that’s why it’s frankly nonsense to have an industry that
actively pursues up-and-coming artists overseas but then can’t be bothered to follow up with proper mentorship, which
leaves them exposed to mistakes and wastes of time for simple reasons such as instructions on the storyboard being
misunderstood due to the language. Even among those with a solid grasp of Japanese, the lacking means of
communication, lack of trust in “outsiders ” — why seek them out then? — and the sad reality that some people in the
industry simply don’t feel a thing when disregarding these artists they’re so physically and emotionally distanced from,
make for a very bitter cocktail. Those are the feelings we’ve heard of first-hand and wanted to make sure were echoed.
Is there a solution to all this, then? Before you get depressed, let me say that there is… sort of. The real problems
stem from the same chronic deficiencies at the root of everything; all of anime’s riches mysteriously never trickle down
to the people actually making it, most projects are rushed out the door with little conviction, and that’s caused
theoretically valid choices like freelancing or the specialization of the animation process to morph into grotesque,
harmful forms of themselves. Thinking that can be fixed requires more hope than I can afford, so I believe anime will
remain in this chimeric state, where every shot is the product of way too many artists who have too much yet too little
say over it.

That said, some teams at the forefront of the industry are working towards patchwork that’s meant to alleviate the
effects of this trend, rather than addressing the causes — not ideal, but by all means preferable to watching anime’s
identity and the little joy animators had vanish into nothingness. What does that exactly entail, though? For the most
part, it’s changing the pipeline itself, finally updating anime’s archaic management practices.

Software toolsets like Shotgun aim to revolutionize the hands-off pipelines that are so at odds with the industry’s state;
in a world where the risk of seeing your animation turn into something that doesn’t fit your vision nor the director’s goal
is very real, a system where you turn in your cuts and no longer know what’s going on until the episode appears on TV
simply makes no sense. Turning anime production into a more interconnected process, where the different actors have
it easier to communicate with each other and keep an eye on every step if desired can go a long way to make the
fragmentation of the work more palatable. Tech alone won’t fix the problems, but an embarrassing amount of
dissonance in this whole ordeal comes from the fact that most freelance artists (which again is most of them) don’t
know what’s actually going on with the work of their peers. And when so many people are required to make anime
nowadays, that’s a lot of confused creators.

To see substantial advances in this regard, we might have to wait as much as it took for this curious negative
phenomenon to become widespread. It’s hard to make predictions over such long spans of time, but I believe that the
two goals we set for this piece have been fulfilled. For one, it was illustrating anime’s changing landscape, and perhaps
put the vague dissatisfaction that the atomization of anime production has had on viewers into words that make sense.
And just as importantly, this was our attempt to elaborate on the discontent this has caused to animators themselves,
whom we’ve talked about these topics on repeated occasions. If nothing else, consider this piece your indirect venting
mechanism!

Before we talk about what’s changed, though, it’s important to establish how things used to be. When an idea as basic
as “individual key animators construct essentially the whole skeleton one sequence at a time” remains consistent for
such a long time, it’s bound to shape the output of the entire industry. And that it did. In the same way that the
constraints forced anime creators to innovate with limited animation techniques, the decision to give a lot of leeway to
individual key animators fueled anime’s visual cohesion.

On animetism : or, the importance of sakuga to theory

Thomas Lamarre’s The Anime Machine is undoubtedly one of the most important books dedicated to animation, and
especially to anime. It manages to be at the same time a historical overview of anime and its techniques, a thorough
analysis of some of its most prominent artists, and a compelling theory of animation and media in general. Most
importantly, it is one of a few very precious works that try to focus on “the materiality of the moving image itself” and
uses it as a starting point, rather than examining anime as a part of a larger media system, or just like another form of
cinema.
Lamarre’s perspective centers around the idea of technology. Using as a starting point the provocative statement that
“Much of anime is […] unabashedly low tech” [Lamarre, 2009, p.xiii], he focuses at the same time on the technology
(or technologies) that make anime possible and how anime thinks about and presents technology : “I wish to indicate
that animation at once works with technology and thinks about technology – and the two processes are inseparable. In
anime, thinking about technology is inseparable from thinking through technology (not only using technology but also
aligning thought with its operations).” [Lamarre, 2009, p.xxx] Whereas most anime histories start with individuals or
studios, he begins with a technical apparatus, the multiplane camera : its historical genesis in Disney Studios, and its
harnessing by Japanese artists. It is from these purely technical concerns that he the approaches practices of
production : compositing, character design, plot, while always interrogating how these all relate to the theme of
technology.

The multiplane camera, or the animation stand (two related, but different objects, the most fundamental being the
second one), the decisive objects at the core of Lamarre’s reading, can be understood and presented in two ways : 1)
in their nature, that is as purely mechanical and technological objects, or 2) in their function, that is to stack cels in
order to create a sense both of depth and unity in the final image, the one shot by the static camera. This second
aspect is also known as “compositing” : “Compositing is a matter of assuring that the gaps between different elements
within the image are not noticeable” [p.31]. What distinguishes anime is then not a particular style or nationality, but a
specific approach, or set of approaches, towards compositing. From this quick overview (1), one clearly understands
that what is key in anime is not animation, but compositing : “In fact, as I aim to make clear in this book, in the analysis
of animation, priority should fall on compositing (the space within images that becomes spread across frames) over
character animation (movement across frames).” [p.xxv]

However, it is precisely this focus that I believe is problematic. Indeed, the two aspects of the animation stand that I
just presented lead, in my view, to two of the trappings that Lamarre seeks to avoid : an overly deterministic “apparatus
theory” on the one hand, and missing movement and animation on the other. I will therefore proceed to analyze these
two points and offer an alternative reading of animation in anime. However, in the scope of a simple blog article, I will
not be able to engage with the entirety of Lamarre’s theory ; I will therefore mostly focus on chapters 10 (“Structures of
Depth) and 11 (“The Distributive Field”) which focus the most, in my opinion, on the stuff of animation, through the work
of animator and director Hideaki Anno.
Apparatus theory is a branch of cinema theory that emerged in the 1970’s and 80’s ; its main argument was that
cinema was an ideological tool resting on the passivity of the viewer before a technological apparatus (mostly the
camera and the screen) which decisively influenced representation. In Lamarre’s account, which focuses a lot on
notions like space and depth, the most important point is that of camera movement and perspective : “Baudry, for
instance, insisted that the monocular lens of camera constrained it to reproduce one-point perspective, which in turn
resulted in the imposition of a seemingly rational and scientifically accurate grid upon reality, enacting the ascendancy
of technologized optics over human perception and generating a world in which human actions were necessarily
reduced to cause-and-effect relations.” [p.xxvii]. At a first level, insistence on the alternative apparatus that is the
animation stand allows Lamarre to explore another kind of representation : most notably, Hayao Miyazaki’s use of
“open compositing” which plays and insists on the different layers of the image, is read as an alternative relation to
technology and an opening of a new relationship to space and nature. This is the core of the distinction between
“cinematism”, centered around one-point Cartesian perspective, and “animetism”, a flat image comprised of different
layers. But more importantly, what Lamarre contests is the determinism running in apparatus theory : indeed, it
contends that “the singular apparatus determines the whole of cinema” [p.xxvii].

Against this position, Lamarre defends the alternative concept of “machine”, which is not only the material, mechanical
apparatus, but also the set of presuppositions and practices upon which it rests and that inform its use. Therefore, the
major object of study must not be the animation stand itself, but its uses and transformations across time, sometimes
in contradictory directions : this is what Lamarre calls “divergent series”.

However, even if we move from concrete objects to an abstract machine, the question of determinism still subsists.
Lamarre does avoid falling into an entirely deterministic position ; but setting entirely the focus on the machine’s stance
towards technology transforms it into a set of technological restrictions rather than a creative force. In other words, the
“anime machine” works as a (powerful) hermeneutical presupposition : it is a reading tool which allows the critic to
instantly situate works in a grid of possible positions. For example, in his analysis of Daicon IV, Lamarre points to a
sort of “hyper-cinematism” or “hyper-Cartesianism”, that is an emphasis on movement in depth, most notably in Itano
Circuses (https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/a67166288e0aef36a8a58fe5af49581e.webm). But, invoking the force
inherent in the machine, he immediately reverses it into an animetically critical form of cinematism and technological
optimization :

“The Daicon animations, however, approach optimization from a very different angle.
They embrace technological optimization. The density of information, the dizzying
rapidity of cuts, the explosion of projectiles across the screen, not to mention the
attention to spaceships and powered suits, all are part of a technical optimization of the
perceptual field. […] When it comes to thinking technology, then, a great deal depends
on whether one thinks that optimization is always just optimization, or whether one thinks
that there can be different modes of technical optimization, some of them better than
others, some of the potentially opening a critical relation to the technological condition.
Can there be such a thing as critical optimization, or does optimization invariably result in
incessant crisis, in the destruction of the human life world ?” [pp.138-139]

Putting aside the philosophical argument, what Lamarre does is two things : first, he immediately reduces animation as
moving images to a representation of technologically-powered movement ; then, he proceeds to a general conclusion
about Daicon’s stance towards technology. In another instance, when confronted to the hand crafted stuff of animation,
Lamarre again diverts the focus :
 “In his memoirs, Takeda recalls that at that time Anno Hideaki had never worked with cel
animation but only with paper animation. In fact, when he interviewed Anno, Anno pulled
out a pad of paper and quickly produced a flip-book animation of a powered suit with
great detail and complexity. […] It is significant that, to demonstrate his abilities to
Takeda, Anno chose to draw a powered suit. This choice is significant not so much
because it shows Anno’s allegiance to certain kinds of SF anime, but because the
powered suit is truly an embodiment of the multiplanar image within a character form.
[…] Nonetheless, to repeat my argument in the Introduction, even though animation
relies heavily on the art of hand (as with Anno’s sketches of a powered suit), such hand
arts do not explain animation. Animation folds the art of the hand into a multiplanar
machine, where their relation to the machinic force of the moving image thoroughly
transforms them. Animation is not the art of sketching characters that will then be forced
into movement. […] The art of character design anticipates its movement within the
multiplanar machine, anticipating the dynamics of compositing.” [pp.129-130]

Even though this is quite a long excerpt, I believe it is one of the most important paragraphs of Lamarre’s book,
because it reveals more clearly than any other his stance on animation. It shows that theoretical and technological
concerns take precedence over esthetical ones ; more importantly, it questions what Lamarre precisely means by “the
materiality” of animation, which he claims to study. While the anime machine is not a deterministic system or structure,
as Lamarre repeatedly points out, it is difficult to construe it as anything other than an essence, therefore both a key
determination (without animetism, there is no animation) and a prerequisite for any understanding. Most importantly, it
appears as a tool to integrate, maybe forcefully, all kinds of images : this is what’s expressed by the metaphor of the
“fold”. Then, even though Lamarre focuses on “divergent series”, that is on apparent contradictions in the machine, its
force is more one of uniformization than diversification. Determinism is then not the word, and Lamarre does not fall
into it ; but his understanding might be as limited, considering that it does not account for exceptions.

This is why I believe we need to expand our understanding of anime production beyond a technological account.
Technology is, indeed, a necessary component, but it needs to be understood in relation to social contexts which are
the driving force behind the harnessing of the machine. In other words, the machine does not stand by itself, nor is it
the beginning and end of production ; it is but a necessary step, a means for an end which is, in the case of animation,
the production of movement. Animetism is not, therefore, the movement itself.

This alternative look has already been developed in fan discourse, and has taken the form of the sakuga community ;
here, “sakuga”, does not mean just “animation” or particularly good animation, but a certain kind of gaze : the one that
realizes “a conceptual shift from anime as something to be enjoyed (read, interpreted, consumed) to anime as a cool
process of production” [Condry, 2013, p.44]. As this quote makes clear, this perspective has been adopted by some
academics who do not look at anime from the vantage point of philosophy or media studies, but from that of social
sciences and most notably anthropology. This marks an emphasis on human practices first, and how they shape
institutional systems, rather than on abstract structures. Taken as a method of analysis, sakuga must therefore mean
not just an appreciation for animation taken for itself, but as the result of human and economic investment : it has to be
a holistic look on animation production, from a bottom-up perspective, rather than a top-down one. If it does not, and
confine itself to simple appreciation and catalogue of outstanding animation, it is but another (however respectable)
form of amateur connoisseurship. The other thing sakuga must not become, however, is some kind of simplistic auteur
theory which would put all creative responsibility and praise on the individual animator : it would be a failure to
understand anime in its complexity and an absolutely uncritical stance on it.
Sakuga must therefore be a study of actual movement : the movement that’s on the screen, but also the movement of
individuals and objects in production processes (2) and the movement of value, both economical and social. The word
“sakuga” is therefore not just a nod to the fandom : among the three terms used in Japanese to refer to animation,
sakuga literally means “crafted” or “made” image : even in its meaning, it points to the importance of man-made
production (3). It is in light of this that I can now argue that Lamarre in fact misses movement, or rather gives a very
limited account of it.

The Anime Machine claims to be a theory of the moving image ; however, I would say that from its account only, the
nature of movement itself is very difficult to construe. The way I understand it, it is either something too restricted and
concrete, the simple practice of compositing, or on the contrary something too abstract : movement in general, a pure
force. This indetermination of meaning is what allows Lamarre to shift meanings in his definition of animetic movement
: for example, when discussing differences and parallels between animetic compositing and live-action cinema, he first
argues that “compositing in cel animation is analogous to camera movement in cinema” [Lamarre, 2009, p.124] and
then changes its role, describing it a page later as “internal montage” or “editing within the image” [p.125]. Later, the
same problem of consistency arises : “Giving ontological priority to movement has led to an emphasis on compositing
or “editing within the image”. In effect, compositing is analogous to camera mobility in cinema, and character action is
analogous to montage.” [p.191] But more importantly, I believe that Lamarre’s view on movement rises two more
fundamental problems :

1. It reduces movement to a purely mechanical force without intentionality. A passage I have already quoted makes it
evident : “Animation folds the art of the hand into a multiplanar machine, where their relation to the machinic force of
the moving image thoroughly transforms them. Animation is not the art of sketching characters that will then be forced
into movement.” [p.130] The specific expressivity aimed at by the animator or character designer is put aside in favor
of the more general concerns of technologically supported movement. The origin of this position might be found in
Lamarre’s ambition to mimic “the attitude of experimental science and technology studies” [p.xxvii] : just like in modern
science, movement is but data which can be analyzed and calculated to give birth to prediction – or, in the case of
criticism, predetermined interpretations. However, on a general level, one could argue that this misses the core nature
of movement, that is its dynamics, the ways movement is not a purely quantitative process, but a factor of change both
in the object that is moving and the space and time it is moving in. Moreover, this mechanical point of view entirely
rules out the possibility of final causes – that is, of intentionality. But considering that we are, after all, not just studying
technology or media but art or something like it, creative intent (even if it is something as vague as creating dynamic
movement) cannot so readily be cast aside.

2. It reinstates the duality between Wester full and character-focused animation, and Japanese limited, non-animation.
Lamarre himself aims to counter this “tendency to think the distinction between full and limited animation in terms of
movement versus stasis” [p.184], and I fully share his analysis of the problems arising within it. However, I wonder if
compositing can really be called animation ; and most importantly, I believe that Lamarre’s emphasis on it may very
well lead to a complete absence of care for other kinds of movement, most notably character animation : “I see a
priority of (a) compositing over character animation, and of (b) compositing and character animation over camera
movement and montage” [p.191]. In other words, Lamarre accepts too readily the idea that limited animation is limited
towards acting and expression, and therefore seeks movement elsewhere ; but this preconception might very well be
misinformed.

The origin of this problem is in fact fundamental, because it lies in Lamarre’s definition of animation : “animation as
moving images” [p.ix]. This definition suffers from two fundamental problems. First, it is far too general : “moving
images” could very well be the definition of cinema, and there would then be no way of differentiating between the two
mediums. Second, and most importantly, it is too ambiguous : moving images could at the same time mean the act of
changing the spatial position of images, or images that move by themselves. To clarify the difference, I think it
necessary to introduce a distinction between the mobile image, that is the image that is moved by an objective and
external force or agent, and the moving image, that is the image that is compelled to move by its own internal
subjective energy. Whereas Lamarre’s insistence on the internal force of the animetic machine might make us believe
that he is talking about moving images, his focus on compositing as the key component of animation in fact reveals
that his object is mobile images. If instead we define animation as “a media form that is created one frame at a time”
[Condry, 2013, p.9], or even as movement created frame by frame, the movement we are looking for becomes a factor
of continuity between stases of immobility : what we are looking for is then concrete dynamism (the “art of the hand”)
and not a soulless technological force (to borrow the title of Ian Condry’s book, The soul of anime).

To illustrate my points, I believe it necessary to reconsider and reevaluate the legacy of Japanese character animation
; this is where sakuga becomes an essential study tool, as it gives us the much-needed care and appreciation for
animators and their work. I will therefore proceed to a study of animator Yoshinori Kanada, who is both a paragon of
limited animation techniques (4) and arguably one of the most important character animators in anime history.

The most common reading of Kanada’s animation and style is inspired by Japanese contemporary artist Takashi
Murakami. Starting an art movement called “superflat”, he sought to root it both in traditional Japanese art and
animation.

The idea is quite simple, and was reinterpreted by Lamarre : according to Murakami, the main visual characteristic of
anime is the flatness of the images ; a flatness present in the Edo-era ukiyo-e style of wood print which also rarely
used “Western” Cartesian perspective. It is mostly in Kanada’s work that Murakami sees a prolongation of such a
tradition ; and, most importantly, it is in Kanada’s effects animation. One of Kanada’s most well-known technique is that
of the “Kanada dragon” : smoke, fire or lightning taking the shape of flying dragons. The important point here, for both
Murakami and Lamarre, is that feelings of movement and depth are not created through geometric perspective or
space, but only line and color : in this
(https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/e269a1a68dde6d42b25bdae270108f07.webm) masterpiece of Kanada’s portfolio,
the dragons’ movement and shapes are only given form thanks to the play between colors – black, red and yellow.
This technique introduces in animation two key ideas : those of flatness (opposed to depth) and dehierarchization
(opposed to the Western/Cartesian vanishing point). Kanada’s animation therefore opens a new relationship to space,
representation and, if we follow Lamarre, technology.
However, Lamarre strongly critics Murakami and the two theses must not be mixed up. And I have to note that I
completely follow Lamarre’s account here : “Murakami thinks entirely in terms of the structural composition of the
image. He has little to say about animation as movement. […] The emphasis falls on techniques of image composition
rather than animation and the force implicit in the moving image as a mechanical succession.” [Lamarre, 2009, p.112]
But then, in what follows, Lamarre mostly discusses Murakami’s uncritical stance toward technology and militarism ; in
other words, he never directly engages with Kanada’s animation, therefore implying that what is problematic in
superflat is its general theory, and not its local analyses. While he critiques Murakami’s lack of discussion of animation,
I do not believe that he provides an alternative look at it.

While I aim to do such a thing, I, as well, do not believe that Murakami’s (and Lamarre’s) understanding of Kanada’s
effects is wrong : there is, indeed, an unavoidable play on depth and space here. However, focusing only on the
“superflatness” of Kanada’s effects appears as a very poor appreciation both of Kanada’s work and anime in general.
Indeed, Kanada was also a prominent character animator, who engaged with notions like space and depth in other
manners that the superflat.

First, in the realm of effects, it must be noted that Kanada dragons are not systematically associated to superflat
techniques. Most notably, in this cut (https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/c8e495a0b340155b773a985838724246.mp4)
from Laputa : the Castle in the Sky where the dragons are made of lightning instead of fire, they are precisely made to
emphasize depth rather than suppress it, and are not antithetical with (albeit somewhat distorted) vanishing lines. It is
by the way most significant that Kanada, who frequently worked with Miyazaki, almost only worked on scenes of flight
(https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/0e7af56952506e7be43b65ca49bd6f41.mp4) or dynamic 3D movement
(https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/6bab08ba810497e4fe51cf81af0df546.mp4). In the same vein, one must recognize
that one of Kanada’s central techniques is background animation, something he explored more than ever in his
passion project, the OVA Birth (https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=P3JH3DE99n4&list=PL9KATzhKk8hIZflOy4p3up7f1Fapy107y&index=8&t=0s). Here, what Lamarre would call an
“optimization” of Cartesian perspective is pushed to its limits in an exhilarating chase. And it is important to note that,
against readings that would put anime’s flatness at the forefront, and therefore insist on the proliferation of Kanada
dragons, even in Kanada’s so-called “school”, that is animators who took after him, background animation remained a
prized technique (https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/8cd61d420c16304f1602824c09e63a18.mp4). What instantly
becomes visible from this simple catalogue of cuts is that there is no univoqual reading of animation’s and animator’s
space : the space of the image is first and foremost built and dictated by the animator according to the object
represented, the effect sought, and probably something like individual inspiration and adaptation to storyboards or
layouts – even though, in the case of Birth, the layout was entirely Kanada’s.

Character animation properly speaking is entirely missing from both Murakami’s and Lamarre’s account ; and this is
probably what makes them miss actual movement, because movement is not just about composition or space : it is
those two parameters considered dynamically, in regard with time. And time, or more precisely timing, was one of
Kanada’s most distinctive traits. Indeed, in the anime production process, it is the individual animator which decides
the timing of his cuts, and most notably, the number of in-between frames between each key frame ; and Kanada is
famous for the highly irregular or unusually low number of in-betweens, something that then emphasize key frames. In
other words, movement is created by a paradoxical emphasis on stasis. This technique has been overemphasized in
later Kanada-style animation and became a staple of Hiroyuki Imaishi’s style (among others) : in this cut
(https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/ef3413f8f3e54ae331ad36d895f518ac.mp4), for example, movement is not
conveyed through the addition of in-betweens, but by the striking pose adopted in each new frame – as if each frame
was a key frame (5). This creates a movement that is far more dynamic, while staying consistent with limited
animation, superflat and open compositing techniques (especially considering that pull-cells are another staple of
Imaishi’s directing style). Considering timing, which is not just a mechanical part of movement, but relies heavily on the
animator’s own eye and artistry, therefore shows that limited animation is not antithetical to movement, character
animation, or expression.

Moreover, this apparent detour by time allows us to understand space and depth in another, more dynamic manner.
Indeed, it makes us understand how the famed “Kanada poses” create their own sense of spatiality, which I would
argue is close to, but not reducible to, the superflat space. My main reference here would be this cut
(https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/05bae58d6d0bb34aef401c2857312c6a.mp4) from Galaxy Cyclone Braiger’s OP,
another one of Kanada’s masterpieces in both effects and character animation. What’s striking here is the centrality of
the characters, who drive all of the first cut with their movement in depth (from the front to the back of the image) and
their striking poses. Moreover, this movement in depth is created by the characters themselves : they are the ones
establishing space, which is not a preexisting dimension. For example, if you look at it frame by frame, you can see
that it is the first character shooting which apparently materializes the two other characters ; in the same vein, the
square monochromes that appear behind the characters to emphasize them are in fact their shadows which first take
an abstract, triangular shape (https://imgur.com/a/2mKOYpB), then take the form of a square
(https://imgur.com/a/i5eooZF). In other words, it is character poses which generate spatial composition and movement,
and not compositing or cinematography. This is both an animator and character-driven animation, and not the result of
pure, abstract, force.

The same could be said of Ichiro Itano’s “circuses” ; I believe that, in their analysis, Lamarre is closer to a real
approach of movement, most notably in his reading of the distortion of classical Cartesian perspective and the “use of
movement to generate a sense of depth rather than the reverse” [Lamarre, 2009, p.130], which is precisely what I just
argued for. However, he immediately comes back to his technology-centric discourse and tries to reverse Itano’s
apparent perception of movement : “Instead of movement into depth, you have movement that generates an exploded
view of movement on the surface of the screen. […] Density of information, a sense of tightly packed elements with
potential depth, begins to take precedence over movement within a world.” [pp.132-134] Here, Lamarre in fact focuses
on just one of the two aspects of the Itano Circus, that is the impression that each missile is moving independently (6) ;
but he misses the other key aspect, that is the feeling of being at the center of action. The genesis of the Itano Circus
is almost legendary : it comes from animator Ichiro Itano having attached fireworks to his bike, an adventure he barely
got out of alive. This is this highly subjective experience which then inspired the technique, whose core idea was for
the animator to go “inside the action” and “think himself into the places where no camera has been before” [quoted in
Clements, 2010].

Once again, then, the individual animator’s experience and art are key to understanding what is being seen and
experienced : that is, movement, and not just any kind of it. Such an analysis should probably be pushed further,
because sakuga, as I said, cannot just be an uncritical admiration of individual animators-auteurs ; however, this kind
of poor understanding can only be avoided by looking further into the concrete aspects of production, instead of
looking at it from afar, as an abstract process. This does not mean that we should relinquish Lamarre’s theory or
methods : on the contrary, they are as necessary and insightful as ever ; however, we should admit that they do not
totalize the experience of the animated image, and we should therefore endeavor to develop a complementary
approach.

Notes

(1) I have given another quick summary that does not do any more justice to the complexity of Lamarre’s thought here
(https://animetudes.wordpress.com/2020/03/05/defining-anime-part-2/) ; you can also watch these two interviews of
Lamarre himself : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GpUQ42qtRA (https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=6GpUQ42qtRA) and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6HSrR0MHvE (https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=T6HSrR0MHvE)

(2) The paradigmatic figure might then be not the animator, but the production assistant who moves from animator to
animator to collect the cuts

(3) The same could be argued of genga, which means “original image”, and would refer more to the individual’s work
and creativity ; but it is not the case of douga, which only means “moving image” without specification about the origin
of this movement. This is the same difference I noted in an earlier essay
(https://animetudes.wordpress.com/2020/03/13/defining-anime-part-3/) between the “sakuga system” and “charisma
animators” system

(4) Which is why I do not study the fathers – arguably – of Japanese character animation, that is Yasuji Mori, Akira
Daikubara, and Yasuo Otsuka, considering that they all come from a full-animation tradition, that of Tôei Dôga

(5) This description is not far from Mitsuo Iso’s “full limited animation”, which aims as well to erase the distinction
between key and in-between frames by having the key animator draw even the in-betweens ; the fact that it is common
to Kanada-inspired stylized and Iso’s realistic animation would tend to indicate that this might be a common technique
in anime, and one of its distinct stylistical traits. Lamarre also uses the expression “full limited animation”, but it has a
completely different meaning and has more to do with character design than animation – I don’t even know if Lamarre
knows about Iso’s terminology [edit : I have recently learned that the terminology “full limited animation” isn’t
used in Japanese, but has been introduced by Ben Ettinger on his website Anipages. The question still
remains if Lamarre knows about it or not]

(6) Which I would describe as each element of the image having intentionality, rather than as creating potential depth,
even though both views are, here, not incompatible

Bibliography

Chung, P. (2007) “Japanese Animation Theory”. Retrieved from http://www.pelleas.net/forum/viewtopic.php?

f=1&t=238&start=15&sid=e6d1e73d062eb1d1229ee4f121dc2d7 (http://www.pelleas.net/forum/viewtopic.php?
f=1&t=238&start=15&sid=e6d1e73d062eb1d1229ee4f121dc2d7)

Clements, J. (2010) “Entering the Itano Circus”. Retrieved from https://schoolgirlmilkycrisis.com/2010/11/14/entering-

the-itano-circus/ (https://schoolgirlmilkycrisis.com/2010/11/14/entering-the-itano-circus/)

Condry, I. (2013) The Soul of Anime. Collaborative Creativity and Japan’s Media Success Story. Duke University
Press.

Ettinger, B. (2011) “The anime production line”. Retrieved from http://www.pelleas.net/aniTOP/index.php/the-anime-

production-line (http://www.pelleas.net/aniTOP/index.php/the-anime-production-line)

Lamarre, T. (2009) The Anime Machine. A Media Theory of Animation. University of Minnesota Press.
Kaneda's History according to a Tumblr User
Kanada was born in 1953, and rose to prominence in the 70s as one of the first animators to get an individual
reputation as a distinctive ‘charisma animator’, earning him magazine interviews and inspiring fans to seek out his cuts
across different productions.

(For this post I’m going to be leaning heavily on the research of Matteo Watzky, who just concluded a long series
(https://href.li/?https://animetudes.com/2021/03/06/the-kanada-style-in-context/) on Kanada and his successors. Big
thanks to that guy!)

But he didn’t come out of nowhere. One of his major influences is the work of A Pro, one of the first major offshoots of
Toei Animation back in the 1960s led by Daikichirō Kusube and Yasuo Otsuka. In contrast to Toei, who at the time
tended to emphasise realism on films like Horus: Prince of the Sun, Otsuka’s style emphasised energetic comedy,
doing everything they could to overcome the restrictions of limited animation with secondary action, irregular rhythms
and strong poses. You can read about the details here (https://href.li/?https://animetudes.com/2021/03/06/the-kanada-
style-in-context/)…

Matteo writes:

it’s important to note that Kanada could be considered one of their students: it’s on
(partly) A Pro shows like Akado Suzunosuke (1972-1974), Dokonjô Gaeru (1972-1974)
and Kôya no Shônen Isamu (1973-1974) that he did some of his first in-betweening
work, and even some key animation.

but he advised me on Twitter that Kanada didn’t actually work directly at A Pro, so my bad there!

Originally posted by kanoref (https://tmblr.co/Z9HjjwkclEpU)

Another major influence on Kanada can be traced to late 60s gekiga anime aimed at a slightly older audience like Star
of the Giants, Ashita no Joe and Tiger Mask, whose animators started experimenting with photocopying drawings
directly onto cels to create a much more rough, textured look, and layouts emphasising 3D motion and complex
camerawork. Both would become a hallmark of Kanada’s style, and the recognition of their distinctive creators like
Shingo Araki and Keiichirō Kimura helped lay the groundwork for the role of ‘charisma animator’.

So what of Kanada himself? He started, like pretty much all animators of the time, as an inbetweener (dougaman),
drawing the final lineart and inbetweens prior to colouring. Apparently he despised this work, finding it tedious and
repetitive, and part of the reason for his idiosyncratic timings when he became a key animator was to spare his
inbetweeners the same fate.

Kanada’s early work was considered unremarkable and even unskilled by his peers like Takuo Noda, but he very
rapidly rose to prominence around 1974, marked by his animation on a half-episode of Cutie Honey (https://href.li/?
https://www.sakugabooru.com/post?tags=cutey_honey+yoshinori_kanada+) in which most of his stylistic flairs were
present, at least in early form.

So what is this Kanada style, or Kanada school? It’s hard to describe a graphic style in words, but if you wanted to
point to a few elements associated with Kanada…
 extreme poses, designed more for drama than naturalistic motion
highly varied frame timings, combined with big changes of pose to create really sharp, snappy movements
impact frames and speed lines
elaborate background animation sequences where the camera flies along tunnels or corridors
shiny surfaces with complex specular highlight shapes
bright lens flares
complex fire effects with ropes and coils of flame (especially in the signature Kanada dragon (https://href.li/?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-IsUCrAGUM), since homaged by of animators)

Of course, these didn’t appear as a package of course, but took time to develop. Kanada was not yet the star of the
industry in 74 - that took a few more years, during which time Kanada worked at Toei, and then went to their major
subcontractor No. 1 along with others in the aftermath of the strike, before finally founding his own studio Z2 with
Shin’ya Sadamitsu and Kazuo Tomizawa in 1977. Z2 quickly gave way to Z3, and then that too folded Kanada returned
to No. 1. Somewhere in this time, he did some of his definitive work on Galaxy Express 999, defining those ‘liquid fire’
explosions (https://href.li/?https://www.sakugabooru.com/post/show/20026) and creating all kinds of characterful
mecha animation (https://href.li/?https://animetudes.com/2021/04/10/kanada-the-first-realist/).
These years are notable mostly for the rapid evolution in the ‘Kanada school’ style. By this point this was not just one
animator’s idiosyncratic style, but increasingly a movement of other ambitious young animators who’d been influenced
by Kanada such as Masahito Yamashita, as they animated projects like Urusei Yatsura (https://href.li/?
https://animetudes.com/2021/03/19/their-collective-masterpiece-urusei-yatsura/)…

By the 80s, Kanada and a number of his proteges once again formed a studio of their own in the form of Kaname Pro
(https://href.li/?https://animetudes.com/2021/03/26/a-brief-history-of-kaname-pro/), and it’s here that one of Kanada’s
best known works, the Birth OVA, was made. Combining some absolutely astonishing animation with a chaotic, hard to
understand sci-fi story about a girl on a hovering platform in a post-apocalyptic wasteland (notably very little of the
writing on Birth bothers to say what it’s about!), it was very much an animator-first project… which means, however
flawed, it should be a fascinating and unique artefact.

And… I’m out of time! Very frustrating; there are a million more things to say about Kanada’s later career and the
million people he influenced since (not just in anime: he was also one of the inspirations for the superflat art
movement), but the hour is upon us, so let’s get on and watch some films. Tonight our main features are going to be
Birth and Galaxy Express 999, which showcase some of Kanada’s best known animation. If we end up with a surplus
of time, I might yet put in some other Kanada stuff, we’ll play it a bit by ear.

Animation Night 62 will start very shortly, so hop on into twitch.tv/canmom (https://href.li/?
https://www.twitch.tv/canmom) and we’ll check out some 70s-80s classics from one of the greatest animators. And
I’ll add finishing this post to the big list of ongoing projects ><
A bit more on Imaishi!
Case in point: there's a pre and post-Imaishi in the definition of "Kanada-school" at least in the West. There were some
Kanada-inspired animators in Gainax in the 80s but the studio's aesthetic never went that way before Imaishi and his
gang came in around the time of Kare Kano. So it's more of a late 90s/early 00s thing as far as Gainax is concerned It
really just means weird timings and cartoony stuff now (and God forbid it ever existed before 1995). It's also interesting
because some of the most outrageous/cartoony stuff in Imaishi's animation doesn't come from Kanada but rather ppl
like Daizô Takeuchi or Tsutomu Shibayama. But imagine watching anime in *black and white.* Of course, I don’t really
believe imaishi’s style is reducible to just this one thing (and/or kanada), I just think it’s a very cool and relatively
overlooked influence. Imaishi is just gutsy frog with a few extra steps, fortunately imaishi provides all the needed proof!

Incidentally, Hiroyuki Imaishi cites dokonjo gaeru/gutsy frog as one of his main influences (here's a direct reference
from imaishi's medarot ep 14). you can clearly see it's where the cartoonier side of his style comes from!

A Quick Excerpt on Hiroyuki Imaishi

Hiroyuki Imaishi is no doubt the most important artist to rise out of the Kanada school in the last 25 years: the renewal
he contributed to trigger with the Neo-Kanada style completely renovated what Kanada-inspired animation would look
like in the 21st century. As one of the major figures of studio Gainax and then studio Trigger, he has also managed to
create an environment with a peculiar and recognizable aesthetic, that could hopefully foster new generations of
Kanada school artists. Finally, Imaishi is also a famous director, one of the major artistic figures of the last two
decades. Having already partly covered Imaishi’s work as an animator, it is precisely this last aspect that I’d like to
study here: what Imaishi directed.

The question would then be to interrogate if there exists a Kanada style of direction, or how can direction make room
and open possibilities for a certain kind of animation – here, Kanada-style animation. I have already asked those
questions, although less directly, in my previous artist spotlight on Kazuhiro Ochi. But there are many differences
between Ochi and Imaishi. The first was an interesting and important figure, but didn’t go far beyond episode direction
and storyboarding, and as unique as his style was, it doesn’t seem to have had much influence. On the other hand,
Imaishi thoroughly cultivates his image as auteur not just as series and movie director, but also as studio leader. The
most important distinction between the two men, however, is context: Ochi was in Kanada’s closest circles, and
contributed to the original expansion of the Kanada style in the early 80’s, whereas Imaishi and Trigger develop an
aesthetic of their own, very different from that of the anime world at large, which has largely evolved beyond the
Kanada style.

The other problem at hand will therefore be to try and understand how it is now Imaishi’s direction that brings out new
potentials of Kanada-style animation. For this, I will mostly focus on two of Imaishi’s works, among his most recent: the
2013 TV series Kill la Kill, and the 2019 movie Promare. I will show that each one explores very different aesthetical
options: one that is turned towards the past, and the reproduction of analogical production and effects; and one
towards the future and the adoption of digital workflows and visuals.

Tone matters: parody and the Kanada style

Before that, however, it is necessary to remember that animation is not just a formal device that exists on its own. It is
first and foremost a storytelling tool, and the storytelling context is what gives the animation most of its meaning in the
first place – with the animation in turn contributing in an essential manner to the storytelling in a mutual relationship. In
any case, what I mean by this is that the meaning of the animation in Imaishi’s works is largely dictated by the tone and
plot of said works.

It is probably no secret that Imaishi’s approach is largely parodic and rarely takes itself seriously. With the partial
exception of Gurren Lagann, everything that Imaishi directed has such an over-the-top, irreverent tone, that even when
it reaches emotional climaxes, these must always be taken with some distance. Even in the case of Kamina’s death in
Gurren Lagann, it is surely not meant to be welcomed with laughter; but how much is it possible to take it at face value
when it is so strongly mediated through another work (Ashita no Joe) in what is as much homage as it is parody? What
I mean here is that the generally comedic and parodic tone of Imaishi’s storytelling threatens to dictate the meaning of
the visuals themselves and to limit their expressive potentialities. In other words, Imaishi’s overreliance on references
to Osamu Dezaki and Yoshinori Kanada (among others) strips them of their initial expressive intent to transform them
into parodic, comedic devices. The fault doesn’t lie just with Imaishi: Kanada himself, in many of his late works,
increasingly used parodic references and was known for his nonsensical and absurd sense of comedy. Moreover,
beyond Imaishi, the Neo-Kanada boom of the 2000’s was largely fueled by self-referential, comedy shows aimed at an
otaku audience that would quote what would have been perceived as a “classic anime style” – that is, Kanada and
Dezaki’s work.

As time went by, however, Imaishi has come to embody this kind of approach. The clearest example of it is probably
one of his early works as episode director, episode 3 of Gainax’s Abenobashi Mahô Shotengai. The episode is
Imaishi’s parody/homage to classical anime SF, from Space Battleship Yamato and Captain Harlock to Gundam and
many, many other famous or lesser-known series. In terms of animation, it’s a constant display of Kanada-style
animation, and sometimes an impressive one. But this episode also displays an incredibly crass and unrefined sense
of humor, with tons of fanservice and scatological jokes. This, in itself, isn’t problematic, but what must be noted is that
both registers are constantly at the same level in the episode, and that the animation style is the exact same. In other
words, the omnipresent Kanada-style animation seems like it’s only there for comedy: the talent displayed by the
animators doesn’t seem like it’s there as a show of skill, but only as a parody of itself.
It’s of course perfectly alright for Imaishi’s work to lie in what is essentially a satirical register. The question is, however:
if the animation tries to be anything but satirical, can it succeed in doing so? My answer would be no, and I think
Imaishi is very well aware of it: what he’s looking for is more amazing spectacle and creating a sense of fun than an
emotional reaction from the audience. It is a respectable choice, but the overall relationship it creates to classical
anime aesthetics (those both of Kanada and Dezaki) is in the end one of distance rather than understanding or
renewal: it’s as if these stylistic traits are only good to be parodied and mocked. With this in mind, it might be possible
to say that, as much as Imaishi renewed the Kanada style, he might have (willingly or not) closed it up as a highly
formulaic kind of animation. However, it must also be said that, within that formulaic context, Imaishi has been
experimenting in extremely new and interesting directions. In other words, he might have reduced the expressive
potential of the Kanada style, but he considerably expanded its formal and technical possibilities.

Kill la Kill: unexpected crossovers

As I mentioned, Imaishi’s style mostly takes cues from two figures: Kanada and Dezaki. While these two have come to
retrospectively embody a sort of “classical anime aesthetic” (and Imaishi probably played a part in that), the two men
have never worked together, and direct contacts between the two styles have been rare at best. Considering the
reputation each man has – Kanada as a highly individualistic animator who would do anything to stand out, and Dezaki
as a visually-driven director who did without elaborate animation – such a state of affairs might not be surprising.
Taking both styles and using them as prominently in a single work is therefore one of Imaishi’s most original ideas.
Doing this in both Gurren Lagann and Kill la Kill, he revealed that the parallel between Kanada and Dezaki wasn’t just
a retrospective one, made between two important figures of anime history: in Imaishi’s hands, there could be a strong
and unexpected complementarity between the two approaches.

In my mind, the series that best exemplifies this is Kill la Kill, not only because it pushes as far as it can its leaning on
Kanada and Dezaki, but also because it often tries to reproduce a rough, organic approach to animation that’s the best
possible homage to classical animation. Indeed, it manages to replicate the same impression – the pure, unmediated
sensation of feeling the brush itself under the movement. The way blood is represented is a perfect showcase of this.
No need to say that blood is both narratively and thematically important in Kill la Kill, and that it’s simply everywhere.
And when it is projected all over the screen, it is a red, bright presence, made of what seems like wild splashes of
paint. There is a sort of raw materiality here, which works especially well in contrast with characters with “cleaner”
designs – such as Satsuki, Ragyô or Nui.
Imaishi’s work as animator, in continuity with Kanada’s late style, was itself generally clean. It did make use of rougher
linework sometimes, but the lines themselves remained clear and there was very little of all the ornamental little bits of
line and drawing that Kanada had used so prominently. The neo-Kanada style in general used a somewhat
minimalistic approach, aiming for clarity and modernity. But in works like Kill la Kill, Imaishi has changed this; most of
the time, the animation itself retains that simplicity, but it is inserted into a greater whole. It is most notably the art
direction which reimplements roughness in the drawings – the blood was an example, but afterimages and brushwork
are everywhere to be found in the series.

The use of Dezaki-inspired techniques, chief among them the “harmonies”, can be understood in such a context. They
work as both an homage and parody of Dezaki himself, but also take place in the more general movement of Kill la Kill
on the formal and technical level: reproduce the feeling of cel-era techniques and use digital and 3DCG techniques to
their fullest potential. In the hands of a less-talented team, these two sides would have either not worked at all, or only
in contrast with each other. If Kill la Kill is a success, it’s precisely because it goes beyond that: it shows that there’s a
complementarity between the two.

Perhaps as a logical follow-up to the simplification initiated by the Neo-Kanada style, the animation in Kill la Kill also
perfectly oscillates between dense, flashy action scenes and minimal movement that’s all the more expressive. The
two characters that seem to embody that are Mako and Nui: Nui is most times not even animated, but moves across
the screen via pull-cels and related techniques. This kind of motion, which might feel cheap in other contexts, makes
perfect sense here: it traditionally creates a wacky, absurd atmosphere, but also conveys Nui hybrid, not quite definite
and dangerous nature. The same applies to Mako, a character whose animation is always extremely modulated and
irregular. In some sequences, Imaishi himself corrected the animation to remove frames and create an even bigger
sense of contrast between some very short fluid movements and others that are very stiff, with poses being kept for a
good dozen frames. In some fight scenes, such minimalism expresses power, as if the character didn’t even need to
be animated much to win a fight. In Mako’s case, this is the exact opposite: Mako is powerless in a fight, but it’s her
personality that comes through.

In other words, the contrast between complex and simple animation isn’t just the kind that one might find in any other
show, where the animation is naturally distributed according to the intensity of each scene or the talent of each
animator: it takes on a narrative and thematic significance. This is of course only possible because the animation staff
of Kill la Kill was good enough to pull off impressive sequences whenever needed, pushed by a show that very rarely
slows down its pace. But Imaishi’s approach to movement as a director also needs to be acknowledged. It could be
argued that he conceives of everything that happens in terms of intensity: the objective is to create a spectacle that’s
as strong and overcoming as possible in a sort of constant excess. Although it works out very differently, it is precisely
in the same terms that Dezaki’s direction could be described: a work that almost tries to exhaust the viewer by pushing
every emotion to its maximum. It is also a way that one can understand Kanada’s approach to animation: making each
little sequence a work of art, an intense experience that showcases virtuosity. Relying on both at the same time,
Imaishi reveals this similarity and perfectly exploits it; in that, he doesn’t just put together two styles that have only little
in common: he uses them as natural complements and creates a vision of his own.

Promare, Kanada, CG and beyond

This drive and constant research for intensity is beautifully expressed in the constant spectacle that is Promare.
However, it was produced by completely different techniques, showcasing Imaishi’s inventivity. Whereas Kill la Kill
heavily relied on a “retro” aesthetic, Promare is decidedly modern, whether through its simple character designs and
minimalistic background art, its vivid color and, more essentially, its prominent use of 3DCG.

Experiments with 3DCG go far back in Imaishi’s career, and are already very visible in Kill la Kill. Besides the formal
and aesthetic drive, this was made possible thanks to the close relationship between Trigger and one of the most
important 3DCG studios in the anime industry, Sanzigen. Established in 2006 by former Gonzo CG director Hiroaki
Matsûra, Sanzigen quickly established itself as a key figure in digital animation over the 2000’s, and its first
collaboration with Imaishi was on Gurren Lagann.

Gainax and Trigger’s use of 3DCG to enhance the 2D work dates back a little further. The real stepping stone can be
considered to be FLCL, with impressive rotations sequences in 3DCG handled by Kaoru Matsumoto and Yoshimasa
Yamazaki, from the CG department of Production IG. Their work was awe-inspiring for the time, and it could be argued
that even now, it has rarely been equaled. Maybe spurred on by this successful attempt, Imaishi must have taken
interest in the possibilities opened by the technique, which he explored throughout the 2010’s. The most important
moment in that evolution is probably his work on the 2012 Black Rock Shooter TV series: supervising Sanzingen’s
work on action scenes, Imaishi was credited as “CG special skill director” and storyboarded as well as directed 5
episodes. The use of CG there is very reminiscent of Kill la Kill, as it combines a very mobile camera and complex
fighting choreographies with more organic, 2D hatching and light flares.

The reason this works so well is not just because Imaishi adds his own sense for action storyboarding: it has to do with
Sanzigen’s own production process. One of the reasons why 3DCG often integrates poorly with anime’s 2D animation
is timing: it can be hard to combine heavily modulated 2D motion with the more fluid CG animation. But Sanzigen does
its 3DCG on 3’s, that is, what would be considered “limited” rather than “full” animation, thereby following closely the
standard of 2D animation. They also implement specific techniques to integrate their work better to anime standard,
such as cel-shading texture work, or highly plastic character models which create an expressivity almost similar to that
of 2D animation, with the goal of letting every 3DCG artist develop their own expressions and style – that is, to create
something similar to the “charisma animator” culture of Japanese 2D animation.

In Promare, Sanzigen’s work only pushed further the possibilities opened by Black Rock Shooter and Kill la Kill. It
pursued constant camera movement to create extremely disorientating action scenes that more often than not stun the
viewer with their audiovisual excess. But what’s most impressive is the effects work, which was largely left in their
hands except for some specific sequences.

It is thanks to their work that Promare introduced what is probably the first ever full-3DCG Kanada dragon. Kanada’s
Genma Taisen dragons were created through very detailed and intense work on curved lines and the interaction
between colors. Here, there is something similar, although it was created very differently. Indeed, the curves so
characteristic of Kanada’s fire effects have been replaced by mostly triangular shapes; but, in the very same way, it is
the relationship between the colors that creates the motion. The geometrical shapes, as well as the unique sense of
texture created by the 3DCG convey a very different feeling, but the instability of shapes and the constantly morphing
aspect of the dragons remain in what is not just a technical, but also an artistic masterwork.

Beyond all this, it must be noted that experimenting with 3DCG cannot just be formal play for a Kanada-style artist
such as Imaishi: consciously or not, it places him in a complex relationship with Kanada himself, who had himself been
a pioneer of 2D/3D interaction in his later years. However, as I noted in an earlier piece, Kanada’s use of it was very
specific: the 2D characters evolved in a plane of their own, made of flat surfaces, whereas 3DCG was used as an
opportunity to explore complex camera movement and layouts. In other words, Kanada relied on the contrast between
the two techniques, using them in opposition to craft action scenes.
Imaishi’s approach, probably helped by the evolutions of technology, is completely different, if not at odds with
Kanada’s. Indeed, what the former is moving towards is not a contrast between 2D and 3D, but a merging of the two
that would try to erase their differences. With this, Imaishi has considerably opened the possibilities of the Kanada
style, enabling it to eventually translate to 3DCG and conquer new worlds. Although Imaishi’s future works still remain
to be seen, he might have made a prodigious step with Promare, realizing and probably going beyond what were
Kanada’s aspirations.

Imaishi’s aesthetic, both as an animator and director, is very much a product of its time. With the general look of
animation having moved on from the Kanada style, he single-mindedly exploited the most easy path that was still open
to it: homage and parody. In that sense, it would be difficult to credit him with a renewal of Kanada-style animation past
his pioneering work as animator. But Imaishi has also integrated the principles of modern action animation, most
notably overload, and used them to rework the Kanada-style, opening new ways in both the technological and formal
aspect. It will probably be difficult for this to have a significant influence on individual animators, considering how much
it relies on Imaishi’s own sensibilities and collaborations. But it is in any case an important step, through which Imaishi
constantly renews the identity of the Kanada style, between something ancient, bound only to be parodied, and one of
the most modern and pioneering approaches to animation.

Quick Summary: “Lets drink and talk about the appeal

of Yoshinori Kanada!”

So today there was Ustream event held where the main topic was the discussion Yoshinori Kanada. If you don’t know
who he is check out this post on the man (http://washiblog.wordpress.com/2010/11/23/birth-classic-1984-ova-
yoshinori-kanada/). The participants of the stream were Yoshimichi Kameda
(http://www.animenewsnetwork.co.uk/encyclopedia/people.php?id=72522), Yasuo Muroi
(http://www.animenewsnetwork.co.uk/encyclopedia/people.php?id=49831), Shinichi Kurita
(http://www.animenewsnetwork.co.uk/encyclopedia/people.php?id=63641), Yuki Oonuma (http://yukionuma.com/),
Hideki Nakagawa (http://www.animenewsnetwork.co.uk/encyclopedia/people.php?id=112693) and a lady simply called
‘Okazaki’.

Broadcast: 2013/10/06 – Ustream

The majority of the stream involved Kameda talking with Muroi. Kurita sometimes chimed in while Oonuma, Nakagawa
and Okazaki barely said anything.
I missed the start of the talk, but tuned in when they were discussing their first exposure to Kanada’s animation or the
Kanada style. Okazaki, Kurita, Nakagawa and Oonuma mentioned either Genma Taisen (and the Kanada Dragon
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIA6ix0HpYU)) or watching something done by Imaishi. Can’t recall what Muroi
said, but he mentioned seeing slightly different animation on Ghibli works and realised the bits he noticed were always
done by Kanada. Kameda also first came into contact with the Kanada style via Imaishi. He remembers reading an
Imaishi interview and the name Kanada or Kanada style always came up, which promoted Kameda to look further into
Kanada. Kameda saw the Bryger intro and was simply amazed by it all.

Because this was an informal chat with drinks they often veered off topic. Kameda recalls how when he first entered
the industry people thought he had something to do with Kanada because of their names. He explains how ‘Yoshimichi’
could often be misread as ‘Yoshinori’ and when written in Katakana, ‘Kameda’ and ‘Kanada’ are but a tiny stroke apart
in difference. He also mentioned how the Sakuga@Wiki wrote his name as Yoshinori Kameda at first which he then
had to clear up.

In terms of meeting Kanada, I believe Muroi was the only one who met him face to face. He showed a signed
autograph from one of Kanada’s doujins. Kameda said he had heard Kanada was working on some imageboards for
the FMA:Brotherhood video game but was unable to meet him. Though the topic somehow veered towards how
everyone met Kameda, to which he had to tell everyone off as the talk was about Kanada not himself!

Muroi asked what the difference between those that simply copied Kanada’s style and the man himself. This was a bit
of a tough question and eventually Kameda says what made Kanada’s animation unique sadly died along with him.
However with regards to himself he was worried he’d up being a Kanada or Imaishi copy-cat but persevered into
making an original style for himself.

They discuss Dokonjo Gaeru/Gutsy Frog (http://www.animenewsnetwork.co.uk/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=1311) for a

moment, and how it had some really good Kanada animation back from his ‘A-Pro’ days. I couldn’t quite get what they
said but there was a comparison with Disney animation brought up. IIRC it was something like, Dokonjo had charm
and quality but different to the kind Disney managed. Kameda says you can tell Imaishi’s love for it when he snuck
some Dokonjo Gaeru characters into the backgrounds of a Mahoromatic
(http://www.animenewsnetwork.co.uk/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=428) episode.

One of the viewers on the stream commented and said ‘Hironori Tanaka is the modern day Kanada’. Kameda went on
to agree though saying that even though their animation styles are different, Tanaka has created this unique artstyle
and how he has spawned a new legion of animators who look up to him, it is very similar to what Kanada managed
back in the late 70s. While working on FMA:Brotherhood
(http://www.animenewsnetwork.co.uk/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=10216) Kameda remembers looking over Tanaka’s
animation and flipping back and forth because of how good it was. Speaking of FMA:B, someone noted
FMA:Brothered was Kameda’s greatest work up to now and he replied back saying Kurita’s was definitely Bleach.

Kameda goes onto mention Sakuga MADs and how they are very exciting to watch but at the same time he gets
nervous as it shows there are so many great animators about. He later mentions there are many great young
animators these days, two he mentions are Takahiro Shikama
(http://www.animenewsnetwork.co.uk/encyclopedia/people.php?id=49008) and Hiroyuki Yamashita
(http://www.animenewsnetwork.co.uk/encyclopedia/people.php?id=59922).

Kameda moves on to the next topic and says that Kanada was constantly changing as an animator. Even though in the
early 80s there were many animators who were driving and pushing the Kanada style, one especially called Masahito
Yamashita. Kameda says that Kanada went on to look at what these other animators were doing and absorbed what
they were doing back into his own animation. Bryger’s OP is a point where you can see such a change in his
animation.

Kameda then talks about how he loved the lightning effects on the FMA:B movie
(http://www.animenewsnetwork.co.uk/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=12180) by Kenichi Kutsuna. Someone (Muroi? or
maybe it was Kurita..) says how some of his favourite Kanada work is on the Vampire Hunter movie. The effect and
action work on that film is really excellent. Kameda said the Kanada dragon from the ‘X’ movie is one of his favourite
Kanada things.

Kameda mentions that while he worked as an in-betweener at Gainax during the production of Gurren Lagann
(http://www.animenewsnetwork.co.uk/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=6698), he was extremely nervous about
approaching Imaishi and the other professional animators, those that he worshipped were right before him. The most
he could muster up was asking Imaishi for an autograph. Kameda also notes that the young Yoh Yoshinari also had a
strong Kanada dynamism to his animation. Especially on the Evangelion TV show. Muroi speaks about Ghibli movies
and he praises how they have a lot of movement, but it’s not wasted movement and how it often has basis in reality.

Kameda said he would go searching out obscure movies, going from rental stores to rental stores just to see their
animation. They quickly mention the ‘Download (http://www.animenewsnetwork.co.uk/encyclopedia/anime.php?
id=7345)‘ and Birth (http://www.animenewsnetwork.co.uk/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=2662) OVAs though I forgot
what they said about them. Kameda managed to see ‘Download’ Key Animation before he watched the OVA and was
highly anticipating the Kanada scenes.

They mention the 009 OP, Acrobunch, Gaiking, Gundam and Yamato in passing but I can’t remember anything of
significance.

Overall it was interesting to watch, you could tell Kameda and Muroi were getting more and more excited with each
new drink. It’s a shame the other 4 people barely spoke, I would have loved to hear more of their viewpoints. Kameda
came across as the most informed of the bunch, his love for animation and the history behind it really shone through.
To think he watches Sakuga MADs and reads the Sakuga@Wiki was a delightful touch, at several points he even
pulled his phone out to look things up on the Sakuga@Wiki haha.

I know for a fact there is a whole bunch I missed out on (or got wrong), but hopefully there is enough here for you to
have enjoyed reading this.

Cool Character Designs: Gurren Lagann

 Cool Character Designs: Gurren Lagann

Text version:

When I ask myself which anime has the outright best character designs that I can think of, I inevitably come to Tengen
Toppa Gurren Lagann. Let’s list the reasons why!

#1. Readability

Gurren Lagann’s characters were designed from the ground up to be easy to animate, meaning that they couldn’t have
too many intricate details in their clothing, and had to be easily identifiable even when chaotically darting around the
screen. In order to make each of them recognizable without going too heavy on details, designer Atsushi Nishigori
instead focused on giving each character a unique body type and some kind of highly noticeable piece of clothing or
accessory. Yoko has a flaming bikini and a gigantic sniper rifle, Kamina has his cape and famous sunglasses, and
Simon has his jacket and goggles. None of these are too difficult to draw, nor do they need to be drawn in full detail in
order to be recognized–which means that the characters are incredibly readable even when animated frenetically.

As the great Gin-san once explained in Gintama, a good character design should always be recognizable by its
silhouette alone–and this is certainly true of the main cast of gurren lagann. Kamina’s sunglasses and Simon’s goggles
point off of their faces in a very recognizable way, and Yoko’s giant rifle as the only thing adorning her barely clothed
body is unmistakable. This is without even getting into how distinct the shapes of these characters are, with just
enough defined musculature to look human and realistic, while still being able to deform into highly animated modes
without looking like a different character. Even with a mostly-clothed and typically-of-anime skinny character like Nia,
the incredibly distinct shape of her hair makes her silhouette stand out. All told, these are characters whom you can
recognize immediately, and who don’t quite resemble any other characters out there.

#2. Versatility

Each of the characters in Gurren Lagann can be drawn very realistically at times, and have less exaggerated features
and body types than what might be considered typical of the medium; but they can also be made incredibly cartoony
and stretchy without really changing the fundamental nature of the designs. They still look like themselves, whether
they’re being drawn in a highly detailed static harmony shot, or in a much looser and more animated action sequence.
The characters don’t have to become super-deformed to fit into a comedy scene, nor do they seem to drastically
change when drawn more seriously–they are capable of fitting into any emotional scenario in animation.

This is kind of the opposite of how Nishigori’s designs would later be used in Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt,
wherein the difference between each emotional mood of the designs was highly exaggerated, switching between
extremely super-deformed characters, somewhat more normal designs, and ludicrously detailed ones during the
transformation sequence–almost as if director Hiroyuki Imaishi had specifically asked Nishigori to do the opposite of
what he’d done for their previous show.

#3. Unity

Each of the main characters’ designs in Gurren Lagann sort of flow into one-another in ways that are obvious when
you think about them, but not so glaring that they feel overly apparent from the beginning. Kamina, Simon, and Yoko all
follow a clear blue and red color scheme, with inversions in places to reflect that they aren’t all from the same hole,
even if Yoko is simply from the next hole over–i.e. all of them are pretty similar in worldview and unified in their goals.

The flames and skull patterns from Simon’s jacket and Yoko’s bikini top fuse together on Kamina’s cape, and each of
the three carries some kind of oversized crude weapon–a huge katana, a huge rifle, and a big drill. They all wear light
clothing because they come from underground, and both Kamina and Yoko have highly impressive physiques, which
Simon will eventually grow into one of later on, while adopting a sort of combination of his and Kamina’s wardrobe
styles over time.

Then we’ve got Nia, who shows up at a major turning point in the story and completely breaks all of the conventions
established by the other characters. Instead of bold primary colors, she is made of pastels. Her hair is two-toned, her
eyes have their own unique shape, and she’s dressed head to toe in pink. Nia comes from a completely different
culture and background, and as a result looks almost alien amongst the rest of the series’ cast. This goes a hell of a
long way in matching what Nia’s place in the story ends up being, which is to provide an alternate perspective from
Kamina and the others whom Simon has grown up around, and to help him to learn a more balanced way of looking at
the world. Nia’s design does become more unified with the rest of the cast after she properly joins the Gurren Brigade,
however, and is adorned with the trademark skull.

Later into the series, the skulls and flames are slowly traded in for a star motif, which all culminates in the moment
when Simon’s sunglasses turn into the star-shaped visor–a symbol of how the spiral warriors have already risen high
above the flames below into the stars above.

The beastmen, meanwhile, are a much bigger hodgepodge of design elements, given their nature as sort of weird
chimera creatures; but where they are more unified is in the way that they’re drawn–often being portrayed with
enormously thick, rough, painterly lines, as if a calligrapher was outlining them with a huge brush. Lord Genome brings
this to the next level, as the king of all the beast men with the biggest, most outrageous lines of all.

The anti-spirals then turn to even more abstract and alien designs, to give a sense of their barely-comprehensible,
almost lovecraftian nature. This is reflected in the designs of their ships as well, which are either CG UFOs that look
nothing like anything else in the show, or just really trippy bizarre ships out beyond the reaches of space and time.

#4. Everyone Stands Out

Not every character design in Gurren Lagann is equally memorable, and they certainly aren’t all equally appealing, but
not a single one of them is boring or generic. Every single character has a unique design that communicates their
personalities effortlessly, to the point that some of these supporting characters who get less than ten lines across the
whole series and maybe have their names shouted out once, still feel like distinct characters who have entire stories of
their own that we’re only seeing a small part of.

Kittan’s sisters, Gimmy and Darry, and Leite all have strong enough designs that they could be main characters in any
other series–to the point that it’s easy to forget how little each of them actually appears throughout the story, since
each of their appearances has so much impact. The series villains are all highly memorable as well, and have a great
sense of variety among their designs. Supporting cast members like Leeron and Attenborough whose designs are so
different from the main cast or much of anything else in anime lend the series an extra depth of character, like there
might be as many different body types and features in the world of this series as you could find in the real world.

#5. Evolution–by the way spoilers, if you haven’t figured that out already.

Every major character in Gurren Lagann undergoes a massive evolution in their design across the series–and not just
because of the seven-year time skip that happens in the middle. Kamina starts out as more of a teenaged ruffian
before he comes face to face with his father’s failure and takes up his cape to assume the visage of a great leader. Nia
has her hair blasted off and then shapes it into her adorable short-haired look to signify her finding her place as a real
member of the Gurren brigade. In the future setting, many characters undergo major costume changes several times
to reflect their current place in the story–such as Yoko evolving from a schoolteacher into the biggest set of stars in the
sky, and Viral going from roughed-up prisoner to starship co-commander.

Some of these characters grow in ways that we expect, while others really show how the times have changed them.
Rossiu becomes far more masculine over time, and Kinon totally changes her image in order to follow him. Darry goes
from a deadpan little girl to a passionate warrior with the best body in the series, I’m just saying; and then, at the end of
the series, we get to see these characters grow up all over again into epic old badasses, which I wish every single
anime ever would give us the courtesy of.

None of this is even to speak of the many subtle ways in which the characters’ designs allow them to change with the
different emotional moods of the story; such as how Simon can hide behind his goggles in times when he’s feeling the
most powerless and dead inside, or Yoko can retreat into her scarf when she’s feeling shy. Even though these
characters have so few pieces to their costumes, those pieces are used in as many ways as you could imagine, like
the team behind the show wasn’t willing to let a single aspect of the show’s design go unexplored.

#6. Accessibility

Gurren Lagann is a show for everyone. It’s got hyper-masculine guys, cool-looking and smooth guys, busty, voluptuous
girls, small cutesy girls, and so on–and somehow, all of them naturally fit into this universe and the tone of this series
together. You could show this series to someone who says that they just can’t get into that anime look, or that they
hate the aesthetic of modern anime, and they’d probably still be able to appreciate these designs. Likewise, you could
show it to the most hardcore moe afficianado, and he’d have bought figures of half the girls before he was done
watching it.

Because the characters are drawn with realistic body types and musculature, all of the main cast have been massively
popular for cosplay since the series came out–and anyone with the body type to pull off these cosplays at their full
potential is bound to be one of the best-dressed people at the convention. These outfits look as cool on real people as
they do on the characters in the series, and if you wanted to do a big group cosplay with all your friends, you can
probably find someone in the series for each of them to pull off–albeit not necessarily ones that they’ll be happy to hear
that they’ve got the right body for.

Even when it comes to fanart and porn, this series has one of the highest cross-gender appeals that I’ve ever seen.
There’s as much gay art of Kamina and Simon as there is artist alley airbrushings of Yoko, and it’s not like these
designs only appeal to the opposite gender either. Yoko seems to be an insanely popular design with women,
especially for cosplay, and Kamina is such an inspiration to any man who values aesthetic excellence that some of my
friends have modeled their entire lives after him. Suffice it to say that these are some of the sexiest, coolest, and most
widely beloved character designs in the history of the medium.

So there you have it: the six reasons that Gurren Lagann has, at the very least, some of the greatest character designs
in the history of anime. And those aren’t even the only noteworthy design elements–every incarnation of the robot itself
or any of its main opponents are toy-worthy in their own right, and the setting design has moments of incredible
inventiveness. Gurren Lagann is easily one of the most visually stupendous animated series that I’ve ever laid eyes
on, and perfect in every other way to boot. Holy shit, what a cool series!

Anyways, if you enjoyed this video, be sure to share it with anyone whom you think will appreciate it; and if you want to
help me make more videos like this, then consider supporting my channel via patreon. Check out my other channels
for more of me and, as always, thanks again for watching, and I’ll see you in the next one.

Darling In The Franxx | The Art (Or Lack Thereof) Of

Subversion & Deconstruction In Anime

I don't like wasting my time, especially when it comes to consuming entertainment. Why bother spending two hours
watching a bad movie or ten hours watching a middling game when I could have done something so much worthwhile?

It's been over a month now since mecha anime Darling in the Franxx ended its 24 episode run. The ride that show took
me through was so bumpy that I really needed to sit and rest and recollect myself. It took me a while fully formulate my
thoughts on it aside from, "Wow, that was a rough time." But let me try and turn a negative into a positive here by
writing a discourse on a particular facet of anime that has become much more prominent in the past five years or so -
the use of subversion to critique and oftentimes deconstruct elements of anime.

I find it pertinent to start off this discussion by getting a firm grasp on what I'm trying to get at here. To do that let's
travel all the way back to the 80s and 90s era of anime. A major recurring theme in many popular shows at the time
revolved around one or more protagonists (often teens) tasked with piloting robots the size of buildings in order to save
mankind. Macross, Gundam, Patlabor, Voltron; the list can go on and on and on, but the point is that the market was
over-saturated. As the genre started to grow stale and rote with tropes, a man by the name of Hideki Anno came along
and created an anime that would firmly place its stake in not just the history of mecha, but anime in general.

Neon Genesis Evangelion is a subversion of mecha by first making it appear that you're going to get standard fare a la
Gundam, where our protagonist Shinji is brought in as a young teen to pilot the illusive "Eva" mech created by his
father as a desperate final attempt to save humanity. While that premise may make you quick to dismiss it, for the first
few episodes you slowly feel this depressing undertone beneath the surface, billowing with each frame that's different
from other mechas for the period. It creates an unsettling feeling in your stomach, and you quickly realize why the
further you watch.

Evangelion puts on a face at first not too dissimilar from Gundam and Macross and the like, but it's actually a much
more serious and self-reflective look at the genre as a whole. It subverts your expectations with tact to provide a show
capable of providing the viewer with a fresh new take on the genre through deconstruction.

Going by Merriam-Webster's explanation of the term, deconstruction is "the analytic examination of something (such
as a theory) often in order to reveal its inadequacy". To put it a little more simply, when you are deconstructing anything
you are essentially analyzing that piece of work, usually to find the faults that lie within. Going back to Evangelion,
deconstruction is apparent throughout the show's run whether it be giving scenes ripe with tropes a more realistic
outcome or creating characters like the protagonist who handle the situations they find themselves in a more traumatic
light.

We can see that Studio Trigger tried to replicate their success of Kill La Kill and Gurren Lagann using the same
methodology as before. In Kill La Kill's case, the studio created a subversion of expectations by laying an icing of over-
the-top fanservice on top of a plot and cast that are meant to embolden female empowerment. Gurren Lagann echoes
similar thematic elements, but to deconstruct toxic masculinity in anime. Darling in the Franxx tries to replicate the
formula that made these shows so successful by providing commentary on adolescence and puberty over a skin of
fetishized co-piloting, but fails in very key ways.

First, Darling suffers from its pacing. For the first 17 or 18 episodes of the series, the plot progresses at a fairly slow
pace with certain aspects of world building being set up very subtly. World building that relates to how the society
operates, the roles of the adults, and what is kept from the children are granted to the viewer piece by piece.
Sometimes these things are more explicitly stated, while others are subtly hinted at.

However, once we get to the 19th episode we are almost immediately overloaded with information concerning various
aspects of the world and some key characters in it. You almost have to wonder why things like Dr. Franxx and the
origin of the Klaxxosaurs arriving on Earth weren't properly revealed at a similar pace to previous pieces of lore earlier
in the season, or why things weren't revealed at a quicker pace to make this episode feel less jarring. Things only
accelerate from here, and we're even shown a new omniscient entity called VIRM. To this day, I still don't quite
understand what advantage their existence has on the story over just having Papa and the council of elders be the
series' main antagonist. Being only 4 episodes away from the finale, who at the helm thought it was a good idea to
introduce a new villain?

Segueing into my next issue is this additional twist of our late-game villain being introduced into the story. What
purpose does VIRM really serve that the adults on Earth couldn't have done? To me, this screams of adding a final
twist to the plot just to serve as another "gotcha" moment. I feel like this was done to mimic the twists in Gurren
Lagann, but the issue here is that in Gurren; 1) the twists are paced out in a way that is consistent and 2) narratively
make sense. You see, there is an art to subversion. Subversion for the sake of subversion brings us to series such as
School Days, where the attempt to subvert harem tropes by the series' finale felt more like a cheap way to shock and
awe the audience rather than provide truly insightful deconstruction of the genre itself.

I don't want you to just take my word for all the arguments I'm making. So, let's look at an interview with Koyama
Shigeto, Mechanical Designer for Darling. In it, he answers a question regarding his time working with Series Director
Nishigori Atsushi's, revealing the following:

Well, first off, Nishigori’s ideas were all over the place. He knew he wanted stuff like a girl
born with horns and mechs that required male/female combo pilots, so we had to go
through them one by one and figure out why and how they connected. — Koyama
Shigeto

He also touches on how Tsurumaki Kazuya (Assistant Director to Hideki Anno for Neon Genesis Evangelion) and his
influence stuck with them as they grew in their careers, especially so for Nishigori.

To put it bluntly, the age of Anno Hideaki was out, and the age of Imaishi Hiroyuki
(Gurren Lagann: director, FRANXX: action director) was taking its place. It also felt like
our mentor Tsurumaki Kazuya’s presence had followed along with us. Even though
Nishigori was part of the new Imaishi age, Tsurumaki’s style coursed prominently through
his veins. — Koyama Shigeto

I mention Evangelion once more because, for those unfamiliar, the history of its development hits a personal spot for
its director Hideki Anno. Prior to and during the anime's creation, Hideki was dealing with severe depression. Being in
this state helped to shape the show into the defining mecha of the 90s we eventually got. Let me be certainly not the
first in believing that Evangelion was a special kind of anime, a once-in-a-lifetime type of show that simply can't be
replicated because of that personal component to it. It takes a specific set of circumstances to create such a story, one
where without a creator finding themselves at perhaps their darkest state might not ever be made.

It's clear that Nishigori was heavily inspired by both Neon Genesis Evangelion and Studio Trigger's previous works, but
wanting to create inspired works doesn't always equate to a great product. While he might have had his spirits in the
right place when creating Darling, he seemed to lack a comprehensive understanding of what was so successful about
those shows past the surface. Whether it be ongoing personal struggles, having a writer with impeccable wit, or just
creating something at the opportune moment when it seems that the industry has been oversaturated with certain
elements you may take umbrage with, Darling in the Franxx suffered from all of it. It's a shame too because the series
started off really promising, who knows where it could have gone had it not been chasing the shows that were all about
not chasing what had come before it.