Been really looking forward to the Tengoku Daimakyou adaptation - out of excitement due to its interesting high-profile team, but also because I was curious how they'd navigate such a tricky series to adapt. So far, the anime's qualities far outweigh the compromises. Great start! TDM is a dense series with maniacal foreshadowing, but at the same time a breezy and comfortably paced read. The manga balances the page-turner side with laid-back postapocalyptic adventures very well, and with just 1 cours for this long arc, the anime has to shift the approach

Vibrant start to Hirogaru Sky Precure, one of the most energetic intros in the franchise at a time when you can't take that for granted. Wealth of amusing scenarios, witty irreverent script, and a bunch of neat animation that culminates in this cool & loosely expressive setpiece Brought to mind Ryunosuke Kingetsu's older anime works, when he came up with many off-kilter worlds where surreal nonsense passes as their own normality - hope his wild ideas don't clash too much with Precure's rigid formula. For now they're letting him be a nasty freak, lol

The stunning Yama no Susume Next Summit finale explains the unusual structural choices they made. Early recaps even at the cost of runtime, switching to full eps at the end, all for the sake of the conquest of the mountain Aoi painfully lost to *8 years ago*. Now, sweet revenge The scenery alone is enough to move you to the core if you've been watching this far - for what it signifies, and because it makes it easier to tell that they put everything they had into this. Their own experiences, their own photos, carefully tweaked to fit YamaSusu's worldview

Yama no Susume (Mama no Susume?) NS #09-B was led by the opening team of Irei Eri direction x Yusei Koumoto supervision. The former's processing is the show at its prettiest & the latter offers the most lavish art, so it's no wonder they got called *2 years later* to make the OP Hinata's view of Aoi's back as they climb brings to mind all the POV shots in that sequence. Irei's camera's movement emulates the eye so in this case it's got rhythmic swaying, while in the OP there's a wider variety with appropriate tracking, more stationary takes, etc

A month ago, Yuki Kamiya / uki directed his first Chainsaw Man ending sequence so I pointed out how much he loves the orange & blue contrast

You're not going to believe who directed this week's ending

https://twitter.com/Yuyucow/status/1584979230835679232

Beautiful sequence regardless, a bit of an alternative retelling of the relationship the episode is all about. The looming Makima eye in their moment of intimacy got me good

Checked credits to see which of KyoAni's new hires are already officially part of their productions, and which department they're in for that matter

Yuri Taniguchi, Mizuho Masaki, Kou Tsunashima, and Haruka Sato are all doing animation at the studio, as in-betweeners for now Ayaho (?) Harashima was credited as an in-betweener in the Tsurune movie as well. No surprise in her case since it's not even a new role and her extravagant training arc as an animator is well-documented. High expectations for her career

https://twitter.com/Yuyucow/status/1503394370296418316

Recurring layouts in Bocchi #08 give that tangible contrast to make the difference between the two performances clear. Nijika's body language & looser smears are more joyful, Ryo enters her zone, Kitachan's more aware, Bocchi's more involved & energized, the stage shines brighter Bocchi the Rock has earned a reputation as a bold show for all the unique visual tricks it uses, but this episode is brave in a different way - making you sit through a butchered performance with Kitachan's strained vocals is tough, in a good way when it eventually pays off

Pretty amazing how Takuya Yamamura directed exactly one movie (a recap at that, though hardly one given how much new material it seems to have) and then simply decided to apply those standards to a TV show. Tsurune season 2 looks so damn good it's nuts Kyoto just different

Happy that Tengoku Daimakyou's team is finally public because it's very interesting - so is the fact that it got a TV show, it's a wild ride, lol. Even with a newbie series director, the stunning teaser shows why I'm confident about the immediate execution

https://twitter.com/tdm_anime/status/1596096369688809473

As storyboarder and episode director, Hirotaka Mori's work has been evocative & charismatic, and now we get those sensibilities translated to a higher level while leading top talent. The real challenge will be more structural, since this is such an intricately knit, dense series

I love Suletta because she can barely afford to breathe in the vicinity of another human being, but at the same time piloting a robot is such a source of confidence that she kept bodying Guel without even thinking about it. Just inconceivable to her that she'd lose to him These are the mannerisms of a disaster dork child who grew up learning from nothing but space TV because her mom was busy planning Shakespearian revenge. And they're so attractive a whole school of space bougies are falling for them

More nice tweaks in Bocchi the Rock with the literally cold open for ep #02, making a gag about her dysfunctional life more surreal by giving no context to her gross frozen bath. Snappy animation by Kerorira who continues to average 60 cuts weekly - and he's barely gotten started As the series director & storyboarder for the first episodes, Keiichiro Saito has carefully framed Bocchi's isolation and overprotection of her personal space in a serious manner... so it's funny to see him take it up a notch when there's an actual joke about being a loner, lol

Shingo Yamashita brought out Chainsaw Man's spirit with his opening. The barrage of references to memorable shots from all types of films doesn't just sum up Tatsuki Fujimoto's love of cinema & influences, but also matches his constant non-sequitur turns with an eclectic sequence Yama matches the tone of whatever series he's made to introduce without compromising on his own style - all the OP/ED greats have this level of technical self-indulgence. In his case it's evident in the cross dissolves and specific representations of light like the dust particles

THE SHUCHIIN REDEMPTION (1994, 2022) Kaguya-sama S3 #08 was storyboarded & directed by Nobukage Kimura, an unsung hero hailing from early 00s Toei (Hosoda/Yamauchi/Igrs bloodlines) who collaborates with visionary TV directors like Kenji Nakamura, the aforementioned Yamauchi, Iso, and of course Mamoru Hatakeyama too

Impossible to have a nuanced discussion about the HeroAca layout nerf situation when the discourse is driven by people with no understanding of anime production (neither the technical causes nor the fact that this is a common issue) and no willingness to listen to industry folks Frustration over overly conservative corrections of the animation are as old as the role itself becoming part of the pipeline. Key animations and supervisors/directors will never fully see eye to eye, that's inevitable. But this is obviously not what's happening here

I mentioned that Chainsaw Man's trailer would be a cool pre-animated affair, not as a smart deduction, but because I'd been told so (the pre-animated part, coolness was a given). Now it's out and wow it is! The separate staff's in the damn vid! Multiple animators mentioned it! As far as I can tell, the reason people made such a big deal out of it was that they're upset about the Shingeki S4 situation, which is funny since the most famous modern instance of pre-animated non-teasers was Imai preemptively boarding & animating PVs for its previous seasons

I'd believe it if you told me that Toshimasa Ishii has heavily corrected everyone's boards in 86, since sleek transitions & match cuts packing a punch have become the norm across all ep directors. Rare to see TV anime with this well-defined of an identity, more so from a rookie All individual directors still left some of their personal flavor in though, and episode #06's Kuniyasu Nishina sure seemed fond of using depth of field to highlight the important details. And since it's this goddamn show, they're painful details

Slime 300 #06 was produced at Madhouse almost like a prelude to Natsume's upcoming work. Shinashina's attentive animation direction is a difference-maker, and so is the fact that his pal Keiichiro Saito animated 1/3 of the episode. Fun loose form compatible with elegance & beauty Saito tags in at the halfway point and immediately makes his hand known. Good volume and weight, constant characterful tidbits despite the economical approach, plenty of looser art & charming shorthands, and instances of lowered drawing counts for comedic purposes. In short: fun!

Dynazenon is great on the regular, and just one iconic scene after the other when you add Yoshihiro Miyajima's eye for color

Bakuten #06 was outsourced to Studio WIT and their younger sibling St Kafka. Interesting not because of the quality of their work (good enough!) but because it proved that the rhythmic gymnastics performances have a production line of their own, keeping the same specialized team Shout out to Shingo Yamashita's camerawork as usual. Even in performances where he's not getting crafty to hide transitions between 2D&3D within the same shot, he's still carefully enhancing the flow, adding more dynamism to the presentation, and even hiding rougher edges

The gag gets objectively funnier with every second where you can watch/hear them be a mild annoyance with the ball. I'd watch a whole episode of asshole sea creatures volleyball. I might watch a whole show of asshole sea creatures volleyball Big fan of NatsuNatsu consistently looking dumb with those in the background as they're getting beaten up

Keisuke Kojima was co-animation director on Slime 300 #04, even got Shun Enokido to help as a key animator. Action involving a bunch of 2D dragons on a modest TV production is impressive in the first place, even more so being able to imbue stylized designs with this much volume Same thing applies to the character art here and there, the three-dimensionality in that hand shot is crazy good