Favorite Animation Director

[BigDocFan]

Just curious, who do you think is your favorite animation director

Yūji Asada has to be one of my favorites, in charge of episodes like Pikachu Revolts, One Journey Ends, Another Begins...

 

[ii kanji]

Yuji Asada is a storyboarder although I agree his episodes always look smashing.

Tamagawa was the AD for Pikachu Revolts, I want him back, fighting fit with a clean bill of health and an immortality guarantee!!!

There are a lot of excellent ADs in SM. Has anyone got a hang on them yet? I can't yet figure out exactly who is who (except Iwane and Shimura who we've had since OS), especially as a lot of the new ADs get joint credit for multiple episodes...

 

[BigDocFan]

I got his role wrong but Yuji Asada has certainly contributed a lot to the series as storyboarder

 

[RetroPokeFan]

Too cliched but Masaaki Iwane is my all-time favourite.

Other favourites of mine are Aito Ohasi, Yasushi Nishitani and Akihiro Tamagawa.

 

[~ Blazing White Yang]

When I look back at some of my favorite episodes, Iwane is usually involved xD I especially loved his work from the Mega Evolution Specials, and Ash v. Paul at the Sinnoh League.

Though we rarely ever see him in action, Akihiro Tamagawa is also another huge favorite. Even as a child I remember loving how positively sharp and expressive the characters looked in episodes like Bye-bye Butterfree, Tactics Theatrics, the first appearance of Ash's Gible in DP, etc. With a touch of exaggeration for those more comedic moments. His work probably represents my most preferred look for the series to be quite honest.

Spoiler

 

[Jared DiCarlo]

Without a doubt, Masaaki Iwane is my favorite!

 

[Johtohfiller]

Might be a cliche answer but just about anything from Iwane or Tamagawa is gold.

 

[MizuTaipu]

Tamagawa and his iconic triangle mouths. I too agree that his style should've been the series' default. I hope he's doing Ok nowadays.

 

[The Real Code Gamer]

My favorites are:
10. Yumenosuke Tokuda

9. Toshihito Hirooka

8. Yuko Inoue

7. Kumiko Shishido

6. Kunihiko Natsume

5. Tomohiro Koyama

4. Yasushi Nishiya

3. Aito Ohashi

2. Akihiro Tamagawa

1. Masaaki Iwane

 

[ehh123]

Remember when this show had two animation directors at most? I can't remember the last episode that only needed one director aside from Iwane, who basically does everthing (Izumi Shimura is only credited with him these days for correcting his animation).

 

[The Real Code Gamer]

HZ036 was the last episode to have one animation director aside from Iwane, Takashi Shinohara.

 

[charizardoreo]

I feel like around BW, the animation became more difficult to tell apart; before then I think it was easier to tell the difference and had a bigger impact on the look of each episode (at least how characters' faces were drawn, and stuff like movement and shading).

The fact that so many newer episodes use one-time directors and more than one director (as many as 8+ in some episodes I think) has changed this even more, I mean just look at the list of episodes with one time animation directors and multiple ADs on Bulbapedia, and see how it's increased. In the original series only 2 episodes had more than one AD! Not really complaining, and I guess it's just a reality of changes in production to this almost 30 year old anime. But still it interested me to see how the animation used to look so different from episode to episode, even if, if you know what to look for, it could be a bit distracting to have an Iwane episode immediately followed by a Takeda episode.

Here are my thoughts on some of the more frequent ADs during the first 5 generations; I'm mostly only familiar with the first 5 generations of the anime, I haven't kept up with the anime really since then.

Masaaki Iwane

(pics from EP059, EP273, AG173, BW133)

An obvious favourite, but he is popular for a reason; his episodes just look so consistently detailed, on model, expressive and relatively fluid (for this show's budget), and his episodes have great shading and lighting, such as sort of bloom lighting effects in some episodes, and dynamic shadowing.

Akihiro Tamagawa

(pics from EP015, AG113, DP156)

Again a very popular favourite, but also for good reason; Tamagawa's episodes, especially in the Original Series, had a look that I always loved, the characters were drawn with at times hilarious over the top expressions, and at times very cute, the animation was very fluid, and because he seemingly worked closely with Iwane (Also frequently pairing with Yuji Asada, and usually having Iwane as a key animator), you get the same nice lighting and shadowing.

Keishi Sakai

(pics from EP001, EP198, AG007)

Animating from the very first episode until the end of Kanto fairly regularly, and off and on through mid Johto and early Hoenn, I really enjoyed this director's work, especially from mid Kanto onwards where their animation style seemed to hit its stride and set itself apart from other directors. I liked their nice, on model, expressive characters with their sometimes wide-eyed expressions.

Yusaku Takeda

(pics from EP025, EP254, AG115, DP116)

Starting their tenure as an animation director in early Kanto, Takeda's early episodes actually looked pretty good, as you can maybe see with how expressive Ash is in the first image. But by mid-late Johto, their animation descended into, in my opinion, some of the worst looking animation on the show. Stilted posing, lower amounts of detail in shading/lighting, poor looking character faces... just not great looking episodes. I don't want to lay all the blame on them, maybe their animation team just had a lesser budget compared to others? But I will admit, I was glad that they stopped directing in mid Sinnoh. Their episodes just seemed to be getting worse and worse by the season.

Yumenosuke Tokuda

(pics from AG066, AG075, AG075, AG097)

This is a lesser talked about AD, but I loved their relatively short lived tenure as an animation director on Pokemon, from mid-late Johto to mid-late Hoenn, with the way the characters were drawn in their episodes, and some of their over the top expressions and moments where they'd stylistically use thick outlines.
This is pure speculation on my part, but I almost feel like maybe they stopped directing on Pokemon because their last episode, the first part of the groudon/kyogre 2 parter was unfairly lumped in with the awfully animated second part? Whatever the reason, I miss them and enjoy their animation when I rewatch the episodes from around this time.

Takeshi Mukoda/Kazuhisa Kosuge

(pics from EP247, EP267, EP267)

Although Kosuge only directed on two episodes in mid to late Johto and Mukoda only directing on three, I still wanted to highlight these ADs because, as short lived as they were, I really enjoyed their work on the show. I'm putting them together because their episodes look pretty similar to me, but characters in their episodes had a nice on-model, cute look to them and I only wish they directed on more episodes.

Toshihito Hirooka

(pics from AG043, AG056, AG124, DP111)

Directing quite a lot of episodes from early AG to late DP and even directing some a few later episodes up to Journeys, this is an AD I have always really liked for their pleasant, cute looking animation, and it's easy to see why they were promoted to executive animation director from DP to XY, and character designer for XY. They also seemed to work with Tokuda, making their episodes share some traits at times.

Kazue Kinoshita

(pics from DP004, DP055, DP140, DP185)

A somewhat infamous AD in the Pokemon anime community for their animation quality throughout their tenure in the Diamond and Pearl series, their episodes definitely do look very rough and ugly at times. But an opinion I haven't seen as much is that their episodes actually were showing serious improvement by late DP, lacking the ugly looking character animation of their earlier episodes. It would have been interesting to see them work on BW with the art style change, but sadly this wasn't to be, as they left right at the end of DP, even animating the Dawn special episode that was just after the DP series had concluded.

Kunihiko Natsume

(pics from DP033, DP103, DP133, DP189)

Another animator that got their start in DP, but unlike Kinoshita, went on to animate many episodes after that until early Sun and Moon (also animating one Journeys episode with some other animators) this director's episodes at times look like Iwane's (often collaborating with him and having him as a key animator), but can also look rather strange, but not in a bad way, with some pretty over the top expressions.