Well that certainly quite a year for anime. It has to have been one of the better years in recent memory. There were lots of great shows on and lots of great animators doing some of their best work. We saw Studio Mir put out their most work in a single year, MOI Animation produce 2 good looking DC animated movies, Space Dandy be a thing, The Boondocks go down in flames, Black Dynamite return in spectacular fashion and lots more. There was so much good work produced this year that it was incredibly hard to choose what to include in this list. Now like last year, the 3 simple rules i set for myself are as follows:
Naoki Kobayashi has truly been one of biggest assets to Naruto this year. All his work has just been great this year with this sequence being my favourite of the work he produced this year. With Hiroyuki Yamashita doing more directing work its a good thing Kobayashi stepped in and filled his shoes as best action animator otherwise we would have been in a bit of a bind with Masayuki Kouda and Sesha Gorou elsewhere as well.
That's it for this year. Here's hoping we get even more splendid work from the animators that are this industries backbone and see you on the next post. Next post is most likely gonna be either my long Korra or Hunter X Hunter posts so stay tuned and ...
- I have to have watched the show (no just seeing a cool clip on sakugabooru, i have to have watched a good amount of the thing).
- The show must have aired this year (only episodes of a continuing show that aired this year count).
- One sequence per show.
Warning before we continue, there will be spoilers for many shows including but not limited to Korra, Space Dandy, Hunter X Hunter, Noragami, Naruto Shippuden and more. Now without further adieu.
10. Sailor Moon Crystal: The only good cuts produced for it as of yet and they're obviously by Shida
9. Noragami: Masahiro Sato struts into our hearts
8. Nanatsu no Taizai: Generally everything animated by my sakuga waifu Takashi Torii
7. Mushishi Zoku Shou: Artland Masterstroke
6. Justice League War: A Classic Wonder Woman Beatdown
Sailor Moon Crystal has to be one of the worst looking high profile shows i've seen in a while. Thats not helped by Toei working on so many shows at the same time with all their best staff off elsewhere other than on their most high profile release Nishiki Itaoka is still on Precure, Naotoshi Shida only managed these cuts for the opening and is mostly on Disk Wars: Avengers with Naoki Tate. Others like Kenji Kuroyanagi are spread between World Trigger, Majin Bone and other shows. Its really the most ridiculous situation imaginable. With that being the case they probably didn't have any good animators left to do the transformations so they are all in CG which is low framerate and with low tier character models with badly rigged hair. The show is such a disappointment that i'm glad i can at least enjoy this work from Naotoshi Shida at the start of every episode. Good grief.
Since i obviously chose Masahiro Sato as one of my Top 10 favourite animators he would have been on this list somewhere. His work this year mostly consisted of some nice cuts from Noragami which itself was a pretty decent show. His work there mostly felt like cuts that would have otherwise been done by Yutaka Nakamura if he wasn't working on Space Dandy. The choreography isn't as complex or frenetic as Nakamura's but Sato makes up for it with great effects animation and really nice drawings that still manage to make the sequence exciting though not as good as some of his other work.
When i say generally everything i mean all his work has been good but so far this particular sequence has been my favourite because it is less of a tease as to what he can do than his other work which is short but good. It very much felt like he was teasing us as the show went on this season till we got a good long sequence from him here. We'd probably get more KA from him if he wasn't helping with Character Design so often on the show though. As one of the 2 main animators his work has been enjoyable and this sequence shows his development from past work more clearly than others. Still not as glorious as his most recent Senran Kagura Opening but it's getting there.
Well this is a bit of a cheat as i've only watched just over half this season but hey. Mushishi isn't really a show i can marathon as its very emotionally draining for me to watch. Also theres the fact that it isn't Umakoshi enough for my tastes. I still like the style but if every other nigga doesn't have ridiculously spikey hair it leaves me a little wanting. Nevertheless this cut was absolutely breathtaking to watch the first time. The flawless drawings, the beautiful pan and the vast number of mushi onscreen as well as the look of awe on the characters face matching that of mine watching. It was a gorgeous cut.
Justice League: War was a bit of a mixed bag when compared to previous DC Animated Features. On the one hand it had the most consistent animation and best action cuts yet produced by MOI Animation but on the other the story and characterizations were awful. This is especially astounding seeing as the Writer Heath Corson did a fantastic job on that front with the other big DC Animated Feature of the year, Batman: Assault on Arkham. Either way seeing both these movies this year, like me you should have noticed a particularly interesting cadence to the action scenes provided by an animator whose style is managing to shine through. I don't know if we'll ever find out who the culprit is but hopefully they continue to provide their particular brand of dynamic, squash and stretch action evident in this particular sequence.
5. Shingeki no Bahamut - Genesis: Shikama Action Cut
As a general hater of Sword Art Online i generally used to just cover my eyes and ears and pretend Takahiro Shikama's good action cuts didn't exist for a while. Now however, unshackled from that franchise i am fully able to appreciate his work. This one cut has been my absolute favourite from Shingeki no Bahamut: Genesis and the only reason i kept watching was to see more like it. Thankfully the series has overall very good animation and an enjoyable story which is always a bonus for me as a sakuga zealot. I love the viewpoint used here as its not one used very often as its a tad more difficult keeping everything in the right perspective but Shikama pulled it off well making it an enjoyable and well executed cut to watch.
4. The Legend of Korra: Su Bei Fong VS Kuvira
This year was a good year to be a Korra fan. The final 2 seasons of the series proved to be some damn fine animated television and while Book 3 in particular had maaaaaaany scenes i would have liked to include in this list, if i was choosing only 1 sequence this would definitely be it. Throughout the 2 books, Melchior Zwyer episodes ended up having particularly well storyboarded fights and this was most definitely one of the best efforts from his team of talented storyboards which was also brilliantly realized but the artists at Studio Mir (who also had a good year this year producing a plethora of well animated content as is to be expected at this point).
3. Naruto Shippuden: Kakashi VS Obito
Naoki Kobayashi has truly been one of biggest assets to Naruto this year. All his work has just been great this year with this sequence being my favourite of the work he produced this year. With Hiroyuki Yamashita doing more directing work its a good thing Kobayashi stepped in and filled his shoes as best action animator otherwise we would have been in a bit of a bind with Masayuki Kouda and Sesha Gorou elsewhere as well.
2. Hunter X Hunter: Yoshihiro Kanno's Magnum Opus
Yoshihiro Kanno and the other Hunter X Hunter (2011) Animation Directors were in constant competition to put out the best episodes they could on a consistent basis this year and as the series drew to a close every week we got some good animation from even the less flashy AD's but at the height of the excitement Yoshihiro Kanno put out what is most definitely his best animated cuts thus far and this was it. Tomoko Mori was still however the undisputed champion of the overall competition but this sequence stands above a lot of the work produced in the Chimera Ant arc as the most kinetic and exciting sequence mustered up by the production staff.
1. Space Dandy: Yutaka Nakamura showing the peasants how its done!
Of all the other items on this list this was perhaps the toughest because Space Dandy had such a vast library of amazing cuts. Bahi JD had some great cuts, Yoshimichi Kameda did the most excellent modern Kanada Dragon i've seen, Se Jun Kim had some fantastic cuts in episode 26, Hironori Tanaka and Eiji Nakada produced some amazing surfing cuts, Norifumi Kugai had good work all over the place, Takahiro Shikama and Seong Ho Park did great work on episode 3, Gosei Oda did good work throughout, The Dancing episode etc. Man there was just way too many to choose from. In the end i went with the first sequence that comes to mind when i think "SPACE DANDY" and as expected it was Yutaka Nakamura. This won but only by a small margin as there was just too much to choose from and its probably a safe and boring choice too. Either way you can't honestly say as a sane person that you don't enjoy a display of Yutapon cubes.
That's it for this year. Here's hoping we get even more splendid work from the animators that are this industries backbone and see you on the next post. Next post is most likely gonna be either my long Korra or Hunter X Hunter posts so stay tuned and ...
Merry Christmas!
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