How to identify different animation supervisors

[Jared DiCarlo]

- Episode 64: The Misty Mermaid
Animation Director: Hiromichi Hayashi

Spoiler: I can see why

I just found out that Masayuki Uchiyama was a key animator for the Johto episode, “Right On, Rhydon”. For those who don’t know, Uchiyama is probably most famous for supervising episodes of the Dragon Ball franchise that aren’t particularly well-animated, an example of which is included in the spoiler below:

Spoiler

His studio, Last House, is credited for the Rhydon episode, along with Uchiyama himself. Some select frames from that episode:

Spoiler

Uchiyama is the first key animator listed, and that usually means that he did the most animation for the episode. But I can’t really make out any of his Dragon Ball traits. Sadly, Uchiyama died unexpectedly in 2010.

It gets even better. Another infamous Dragon Ball animator, Yukio Ebisawa, did some work for Pokémon as well! His episodes tended to look like this:

Spoiler: QUALITY

HOW DOES HIS NECK WORK LIKE THAT?!?

According to Anime News Network’s database, Ebisawa’s studio, Studio Live, worked on episodes in Diamond and Pearl, and Best Wishes. I don’t know which episodes, though. If anyone else has more info, let me know.

 

[RetroPokeFan]

Speaking of Anime News Network, according to them Studio Trigger did some stuff for the XY series.

 

[KrspaceT]

Speaking of Anime News Network, according to them Studio Trigger did some stuff for the XY series.

...Well, that explains a few things.

 

[KenzeyEevee]

...Well, that explains a few things.

Like?

 

[Jared DiCarlo]

Speaking of Anime News Network, according to them Studio Trigger did some stuff for the XY series.

Awesome! My brother, who’s also a big anime fan, loves Trigger’s stuff!

 

[RetroPokeFan]

One Time Animation Directors:
Part Two


The Hoenn and Sinnoh eras

Spoiler: Hoenn

- Episode 362
The Garden of Eatin'
Animation Director: Tsutomu Murakami (Director for Snow White with the Red Hair, animation director or key animator for Arc The Lad, Desert Punk, Beyblade, Slayers and Scooby Doo on Zombie Island)

- Episode 372 (oh boy)
The Scuffle of Legends (the second part of the very short lived Team Aqua-Magma arc)

Animation Directors: Chuta Kamiishi, Koji Sugimoto and Kaoru Tanaka (Mobile Suit Gundam: Seed)

Out of all the animation directors, only Kaoru from the looks of it had experience in animation.
Yep, quite the catastrophe indeed.

- Episode 449
Going for Choke! (Prepare yourself for many exclamation marks as we're pretty much now in the TPCI era)
Animation Director: Kazuyuki Ukai
Megumi Yamashita (a regular at the time) was the second animation director.

- Episode 454
May, We Harley Drew'd Ya!
Animation Director: Shoki Yanagi

- Episode 463
Gathering the Gang of Four!
Animation Directors: Masaya Ichikawa (Saint Seiya: Omega) and Aiko (Akio) Hirakawa (the Toei Yu-Gi-Oh movie, Afro Samurai: Resurrection, A Certain Scientific Railgun and Green Lantern: First Flight)

Spoiler: Sinnoh

- Episode 470
Dawn Of A New Era
Animation Director: Yukihiro Makino (Silent Mobius, Tenchi Forever, Shadow Skill, Bubblegum Crisis)
Kazue Kinoshita (a regular at the time) was the second animation director.

- Episode 555
Up Close and Personable!
Animation Directors: Yumi Kamakura (director for Eureka Seven, Haikyuu and IGPX: Immortal Grand Prix and assistant director for four of the Pokemon movies and one episode of another OLM animated series Deltora Quest) and Sadatoshi Matsuzaka (.hack//SIGN, Tokyo Mew Mew, key animator for 2 episode of Pokemon, Ninja Scroll: The Series and Persona 3 the Movie: #1 Spring of Birth)

- Episode 558
A Lean Mean Team Rocket Machine!
Animation Director: Ryu Yokoyama

- Episode 596
Frozen on Their Tracks!
Animation Director: Masasuke Sumomo

- Episode 602
Gateway to Ruin
Animation Director: Kazuhiko Ishii (director for Tokyo ESP, various key animation for Pokemon and key animator for Kill La Kill, Marvel Disk Wars, Thundecats (2011), Cardcaptor Sakura and Slayers)

 

[Jared DiCarlo]

Gathering the Gang of Four!

The Scuffle of Legends

Oh, god, these two episodes. They’ve got some of the worst animation in the entire series. Even Yusaku Takeda’s episodes looked more professional than that. In the future, I’m going to have to make a whole post about why The Scuffle of Legends’ animation sucks so much.

Back on topic, I found some images of Masaaki Iwane’s DBZ work.

Spoiler

The three-toned shading that characterizes his work on Pokémon is easily visible in the first capture.

And here’s how the shading looks in his Pokémon episodes:

Spoiler

(He seems to enjoy using it on Jessie )

The various designs of Skitty:

Spoiler: Iwane

Spoiler: Shimura

Spoiler: Takeda

Which is the cutest? I personally think Skitty looks cute no matter who draws her, but I’m sure someone disagrees.

 

[Johtohfiller]

Iwane's shading is so damn good.

Oh, god, these two episodes. They’ve got some of the worst animation in the entire series. Even Yusaku Takeda’s episodes looked more professional than that. In the future, I’m going to have to make a whole post about why The Scuffle of Legends’ animation sucks so much.

I'm looking forward to that!

 

[Nicolas721]

Last year when I rewatched Gathering the gang of four I noticed that the first 5 minutes looked downright terrible and the rest of the episode was ok at best, specially Charizard's snout. I now know why.

Spoiler: Takeda

View attachment 113086

That shot looks like it were from the Hand-colored era.

 

[Jared DiCarlo]

Why is “Scuffle of Legends” so awful looking? Let me explain. This will be a three-part post, because I obviously can’t fit all my screencaps in at once.

Spoiler

Deformed body parts. Seriously, look at Archie’s hand! It’s a freaking claw!

Spoiler

This is not an inbetween. Max’s face is stuck like that for a good few seconds.

Spoiler

Nice long neck you got there, Ash.

Spoiler

The worst sin the animation commits is the way it portrays Groudon, my favorite legendary Pokémon. This shot here doesn’t look so bad...

But this one just looks goofy. Where did his top row of teeth go? And why is the end of his mouth so pointy?

Part two: this next series of frames is so awful

Spoiler: I warned you

Yes, I know these are mostly inbetweens, but even as inbetweens, they fail, because Groudon’s face keeps deforming in each frame. This is a shot that needs to be seen in motion to understand how bad it looks.

Do you guys know some other episodes with horrendously bad animation? If you do, please provide pictures. I will not accept any from “The Misty Mermaid” or “Scuffle of Legends”, because everyone knows those look bad.

 

[RetroPokeFan]

Frozen on Their Tracks. Looks like a regular normal looking Pokemon episode but it slowly gets worser as it progresses, Pikachu is ridiculously off model half the time.


Then there's Litten's first episode. I know many people criticised S&M for having "bad animation" before it was even out but that episode is one of the only worse-looking ones as of now.

 

[Jared DiCarlo]

Frozen on Their Tracks

Bulbapedia says that the animation director for that episode only ever supervised that one episode.

Spoiler

Some choice frames from this horror show

Here’s the worst part:

Spoiler

How does someone make this error? No wonder this person never supervised again!

Spoiler

I hate the way that Takeda draws Wobbuffet:

Wobbuffet is supposed to be cute, not hideous! The worst thing is, that second drawing is used more than once, so, not only is it awful, it’s lazy, too!

 

[Flynn]

Takeda's Meowth has always looked off to me; particularly his head shape and side profile. I also really dislike how short Jessie's hair is in episodes supervised by him. It should be long and voluminous.

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

[Jared DiCarlo]

I think that Masaaki Iwane’s style fully crystallized in “Battle Aboard the St. Anne”.

Spoiler

Before this point, all of his stuff was hindered by his supervisors’ corrections. Here, while still heavily corrected, he allows his style to shine through.

I’d also like to know who did the awesome shading in Giovanni’s introduction scene:

Spoiler

It’s definitely not Iwane’s shading style, but it still looks really cool. Credit should also go to the late Hirotaka Suzuoki for making this scene come to life with his sinister voice. He was such a great choice.

 

[RetroPokeFan]

Spoiler

Meowth up next and unlike the other two I'm not gonna put up every animator who did him because otherwise we'd be here for centuries but here's the few that stick out the most.

Also included Satoshi Nakano's kickass Trading Card Game illustration.

 

[ii kanji]

Takeda's Nyasu just

 

[Jared DiCarlo]

Thanks to the wonderful Sunyshore website, here’s an interesting look at the layouts of “Electric Shock Showdown. Due to the large amount of pictures I want to include, this will be a two part post.

Spoiler

Notice anything unusual here? This shot was evidently animated by someone unfamiliar with Raichu’s model sheet.

This face is a correction, and is the one that appears in the final episode.

More off-model wonders show up in this drawing. Surge’s face is rather bizarre here, and, once again, was probably done by someone not consulting the model sheet.

Here’s the final frame. As well as fixing Surge’s face, Raichu has a different expression.

Another drawing of Surge that had to be corrected. I assume the reason was the weird angle of his mouth.

Here is the correction sheet...

And here it is in the final episode.

Usually, the one responsible for these corrections is the episode’s animation supervisor, in this case, Takayuki Shimura, who only directed six episodes in Season 1 (including the infamous Porygon episode), along with a couple Chronicles episodes. Key animators here include Masaaki Iwane (who is listed at the bottom of the credits, so he did the least animation here), and fellow DBZ alumnus Toshiyuki Kan’no. I’m not sure who did the shots that had to be corrected in this episode, unfortunately. I’ll need to watch it again to see if I can find Iwane’s shots, too.

Ladies and gentlemen, I think I have found my all-time favorite piece of animation in the anime.

masaaki iwane pokemon pokemon: best wishes! animated creatures effects fighting fire smoke | #38125 | sakugabooru

Let me count the ways why I like it:
1. The punches. Dear god, the punches are awesome!
2. It’s an Iwane cut. That automatically ranks it pretty high in my books.
3. The timing. I love how Emboar has fewer frames of animation than Sawk does, which is done to convey the fact that he is a heavier Pokémon.
4. And, of course, Iwane’s shading helps it all come together.

For those who don’t want to watch the clip, here are some select images:

Spoiler

Guys, I believe I have found the worst piece of animation in the entire Pokémon anime...

Spoiler: Click at your own risk

This could only have been animated by Yusaku Takeda. You can tell because of the choppy animation, the boxy limbs, and everyone’s dull expressions. This is only a still frame, but I bet it looks even worse in motion.

Now that we’ve got the ugly stuff out of the way, let’s look at something pretty.

Spoiler

My favorite Pokémon movie in terms of animation is Lucario and the Mystery of Mew. The sheer amount of craftsmanship that went into this movie is amazing. In the scenes at Cameran Palace (not pictured here to save space), they used CGI crowds to fill the stadium and ballroom, and the battle sequence at the beginning utilized CGI Pokémon in certain places. Unlike a lot of the other CGI in the movies, these still hold up pretty well today (unlike the horrible “flying fortress” in Pokémon 2000).

 

[RetroPokeFan]

Despite I Choose You being an incredible disappointment, I'd still say it is easily the best looking out of all the Pokemon films to date. Most of the animation was drop dead gorgeous and I'm still glad I was able to experience something like that on the big screen.

Spoiler

https://assets1.ignimgs.com/2017/11...i-choose-you-photo003-1510097874575_1280w.jpg

Spoiler

https://archive-media-1.nyafuu.org/vp/image/1504/71/1504711495256.png

Spoiler

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dh5tm2WVMAU6OJu.jpg:large

 

[KrspaceT]

Honestly I wouldn't call it a diss. Frankly I've gotten more 'what can I do with this' fanfic potential from it than any movie since Lucario.

Frankly I prefer a Charmander who isn't randomly psycotic post evo anyway, though I will say that Marshadow wasn't really needed and that Cross was let off too easily. Couldn't he have died instead...

Also the back and forth on Cynthia being Verity's mom....it's another universe, it doesn't interefer with her Waifu status or whatever reason they have to be that way...

Also one of those scenes was not in the movie, but the trailers. Which do not count.

 

[ii kanji]

Despite I Choose You being an incredible disappointment, I'd still say it is easily the best looking out of all the Pokemon films to date. Most of the animation was drop dead gorgeous and I'm still glad I was able to experience something like that on the big screen.

I agree that it had a very cinematic feel to it, but I must say I really hated the regressive bobble-head/toothpick-neck designs of the humans.