Prix ​​d’animation Sakugabooru 2024

Il va sans dire si vous l’avez vu, mais l’eupho S3 # 12 est également le pic de la franchise en ce qui concerne l’animation. Le travail de supervision (en particulier dans la partie B) doit être remercié pour une grande partie du travail d’expression émotive, mais beaucoup de ses animateurs avaient en fait fait assez bien à partir du Étape de mise en page Déjà! L’excellence cohérente malgré la pure quantité de jeu réfléchi est louable, encore plus avec Ogawa ajoutant des coupes plus difficiles; Comme tous ceux qui nécessitent de fortes compétences volumétriques pour imaginer un instrument rotatif dans l’espace 3D, ainsi que les coupes au ralenti brillatives.

Son joyau de couronnement est la dernière scène. Tous les sentiments et les rêves que Kumiko avait permis de construire, son désir de jouer le Soli aux côtés de Reina, explose sans doute la scène la plus cathartique de la série. L’animateur en charge était Tomomi Sato , un talent montant qui a vraiment compris la nuance émotionnelle de fouiller de ces personnages. Elle l’a fait à travers une quantité stupéfiante de coupes qui ont totalisé environ 3 minutes d’animation extrêmement ambitieuse. Parallèlement au reste de l’équipe, elle a réussi à clouer toutes sortes de coupes délicates qui s’appuient également sur des compétences au-delà de la sienne; Plutôt, vous pouvez sentir la force extraordinaire de Douga de Kyoani tout au long de celle-ci. Ce n’est rien de moins qu’une réalisation exceptionnelle de tout le personnel d’animation impliqué.

Maintenant Le une pièce TV spéciale, lettre de fan . À ce stade, il est bien connu que megumi ishitani et keisuke «soty» mori sont des talents générationnels à part entière-un duo qui se rappelle l’incroyable équipe qui était Rie Matsumoto x Yuki Hayashi , ne manquant jamais à créer quelque chose d’aussi impactant et spécial qu’il resterait toujours gravé dans votre esprit. Ce nouveau Superteam Toei est revenu dans les royaumes d’une seule pièce après leur ouverture spectaculaire plus tôt cette année, et même si j’en aurais personnellement pour obtenir une toile complètement vier Adoration pour une franchise.

La lettre de fan est une autre percée créative pour le duo magique. Le sens des couleurs d’Ishitani est toujours impeccable, et elle parvient à l’étendre à l’esthétique globale plutôt que de se sentir comme une livraison de réalisateur de moment inspirée; Par exemple, les arrière-plans et la représentation de l’éclairage sont réglés à partir des étapes antérieures pour ressentir beaucoup plus atmosphérique . Cela est jumelé au contrôle de Soty sur les tâches de conception, aux corrections d’animation omniprésente et à son talon de nouveaux défis tels que l’art de conception. Deux sensibilités créatives distinctes dansent ensemble, ce qui fait un bel épisode suintant de charisme.

La section de la guerre de Marineford Storyboard par Soty est ma partie préférée de tout cela, celui que j’ai trouvé de manière créative revigorante de sa puissance artistique pure. Il est encadré dans une perspective beaucoup plus ancrée, accompagnée de formes et d’animations organiquement lâches qui se sentent incroyablement viscérales. J’ai également été émue par la façon dont Ishitani a élégamment déployé des images récurrentes, comme le motif de puzzle qui communique les messages de l’œuvre; Comment chacun de ces civils ordinaires est collectivement lié, montrant que même ils sont des pièces autonomes placées dans ce grand monde. Bien que cela les éclipse, ils peuvent toujours créer un impact significatif après avoir été influencés par ceux des figures plus grandes-than-life .

Ishitani parvient même à se faufiler dans un certain plaisir préfigurant qui maintient Gravitas dans son climactique Moment, et l’archipel de Sabaody se sent imprégné de manière indispensable avec ses vastes listes (レイアウト): les dessins où l’animation naît réellement; Ils étendent les idées visuelles généralement simples du storyboard dans le squelette réel de l’animation, détaillant à la fois le travail de l’animateur clé et des artistes d’arrière-plan. and characterful mob drawings. This aspect in particular highlights another important storytelling skill Ishitani excels at: breathing life into the mundane, even if people miss it in the midst of her emphatic, grand greatness. The wait for her own, purely original project has me vibrating in anticipation!

My final shout-out has to go to another episode that shook me to the core: Gimai Seikatsu’s climatic episode #09. It’s a pivotal moment for a character in attempting to shut down her romantic feelings for good, but it’s the presentation in an already unique show that blew me away. The purposeful, striking imagery flows from Souta Ueno’s storyboard—while there was another episode director present, Ueno’s hand in the A-part and the diary segment in the latter half of the episode is unmistakable.

Throughout this adaptation, Ueno has made it clear that he has a way with memorable abstractions that really draw you into the storytelling, and it’s in this episode’s exploration of Saki’s suppressed feelings that I felt that most strongly. Abstracting the Asamura family audio tapes into a Saki-fantasised recollection, which then employs live-action footage filtered with a canvas texture, results in the type of screen you’ve likely never seen before. But most importantly, this distinct imagery is built to communicate Saki’s desire for a fulfilling childhood she didn’t get to experience.

Not stopping there, Ueno underlines those feelings further by contrasting the past and present through effective light usage; what was once brighter days as a child, are now dimmer and unattainable. They’re complex feelings that she herself hasn’t come to terms with yet, so the director gets many chances to express that multilayered emotional mess through many visual techniques; for example, the Morning Glories in the foreground to convey how fleeting that love of hers may be. It’s an episode built upon themes like the recurring water motifs from previous ones, but that iterates on them in newer, fascinating, and meaningful ways.

Honourable mentions: 

Literally every other episode of Eupho S3 (The show is peak I’m afraid) Dungeon Meshi #03: Perfect encapsulation of what makes the series so special and fun: the seamless switching from the tense and comedic, with the corrections and animation to tonally match it well. It’s easily one of the most expressive episodes of the year, displaying the animation supervisors’ proficiency in this type of artwork. All of that, whilst cleverly integrating the appeal of its worldbuilding. Il y a tout ! DanDaDan #07: Excellent showcase of an emerging storyteller handling a very sensitive topic with grace, showcasing in the process his incredibly visceral artwork and imagery. Shout out to the enshutsu as well for nailing the lighting at end of the episode. Puniru #07: An eclectic mix in an already odd series. It showcases China‘s ability to capture the mundanity of daily life (that tangible feeling of summer!), while still retaining the fun and goofy charm of the show and taking it further in some wild, loose ways. Best Show: Hibike! Euphonium S3

Now this is an obvious choice, as it’s a special work to me that I have followed since its inception. I can still vividly remember being captivated by the first season all those years ago. Despite the departure of staff members that have sadly left us, Hibike! Euphonium S3 carries on the torch in very profound ways.

Eupho S3’s success is built upon smart efficiency as it goes through dense material; you’ll notice many events reshuffled into moments that fit more naturally than in the spot where they were originally placed, reinforcing the thematic flow and trimming the fat. The way they arranged the adaptation further emphasises Kumiko’s changing relationship with music, at points building around its legacy by swapping locations and the traversal from them to achieve a type of emotional catharsis you can only reach when you’ve spent so much time within a story. Its acknowledgment of iconic moments in the franchise to head into new destinations is just one of many aspects that embody Eupho‘s storytelling prowess.

This entire season showcases the staff’s clear and intimate understanding of the characters and setting—unsurprisingly, considering that the creators are literally located in the same part of the city, meaning that locals are sometimes jumpscared by director Tatsuya Ishihara taking a stroll down Mt. Daikichiyama. That sense of locality blends into the show itself, with the prime focus this time being Kumiko’s leadership skills and especially her love of her club at Kitauji; something emphasized since the slogan accompanying the first key visual.

The protagonist’s love for those around her and her goals as a person exist in a precarious, somewhat contradictory balance that the staff knew was important to communicate but not to blanchir. While the route Kumiko embarks on is slightly different than that of the novel, the staff knew which feelings to prioritize to remain coherent with how they arranged this season and the series altogether; this led, for one, to a focus on her navigation through tricky club drama and her future with music, as those aspects best embodied the themes of the season. In doing so, they had to tread fine lines to still be able to express the validity of her competitive drive, which at points she wanted to suppress due to her presidential responsibilities and the weight she placed on everyone else’s feelings. Doing so must have been hard, but succeeding at it made for an excellent culmination of the entire series that leaves me feeling like Kumiko’s character was thoroughly explored.

On a technical level, this season of Eupho has made strides with notable aesthetic changes; for example, the more prominent usage of paint trace techniques/irotore to further emphasise Eupho‘s shine and dazzling essence, going hand in hand with its storytelling in gorgeous ways. In that regard, the staff have been more ambitious in playing with difficult cuts when it comes to shadow animation coinciding with emotional climaxes—you’ll see natural shifts in the colour settei as they believably comb around the forms in a very three-dimensional way. The technical precision that shots like this require is undoubtedly tough to achieve, but the animators executed them well for these important narrative beats.

Last year, the studio released Tsurune: The Linking Shot ; like the title indicates, a series about building connections through one another. That aspect was reflected in its director’s infectious positivity and open-mindedness, which like his peers said, motivated everyone so much they were able to put together excellent work that blended in everyone’s views. In its own way, Eupho S3 is also very representative of KyoAni’s current position: looking towards to their future as they cultivate a new generation. The show’s final twist that ties it so close to the present day of the real world, beginning anew in spring, goes to show how much personal and emotional investment there is in sending off Kumiko’s story. As Ishihara himself said, it leaves you uplifted, knowing it isn’t truly over.

Despite Eupho being just a fictional story, this is certainly the case for me; the ending really does give me a comfortable peace of mind that Kitauji’s cycle will continue alongside us. Much like with KyoAni’s, and they themselves getting a new generation of artists early this spring—with some of them having already contributed illustrations to their Thanks Staff Art Collection special video to its fans. The show has immediately cemented itself as a turning point, being the last of KyoAni’s legacy titles announced in the wake of the arson to wrap up. I can only be thankful they were able to give Kumiko’s story a beautiful end.

Thank you, Eupho, for these wonderful 9 years.

Honourable mention: Gimai Seikatsu. Now this is one that surprised me in different ways than my anime of the year. If it weren’t for the third season of Euphonium, this would be my favourite show of the year without any contest, honestly. If you read this blog regularly you’re likely aware that Kevin has covered it in great detail already, but the inherent limitations mentioned in that piece that the show works around makes it an even more respectable work for me.

Gimai Seikatsu is a sincere portrayal of a pseudo-incestual relationship between a multilayered couple, each with their own deep-seated familial trauma and complexities. Both of them try to find their way as they navigate through a new family situation they’ve been suddenly thrust into. It’s grounded to the core and only blossoms the way it does thanks to director Souta Ueno and a team fully committed to his vision for the adaptation. The sheer amount of original means of expression and new elements they came up with—like the medaka fish and the Asamura family cassette tapes—embody how involved of a storyteller Ueno is, as well as his willingness to dig into the innermost feelings of the cast even if they’re not made explicit in the original work.

The director even introduces consistent floriography as a secondary background context to convey ideas like the harmony of a new family or suppressed romance . There’s a clear understanding of the source material, and I couldn’t be happier he was given such an interesting work to adapt into such a special show. I implore people to give it a shot because the first episode alone sets the tone excellently.

Best Movie: Garden of Remembrance

A year when you can experience 2 brand new works from my favourite anime director back-to-back is certainly rare, and particularly worth celebrating considering that one of them was trapped in film festivals for way too long. While I’m certain that The Colors Within would have taken this award alongside my current choice if work didn’t block me from attending a screening, Naoko Yamada’s recent short film (that she produced with the mindset of a music video!) brought me to tears easily.

Garden of Remembrance is a deeply evocative tale about enduring and accepting loss, remembering what we had, and taking the first step forward without regret. There is no dialogue either, allowing Yamada to present why she’s one of the most striking expressionistic storytellers out there, with just how much she’s able to convey to the viewer without verbalization.

There are many details to appreciate in the way she communicates the passage of time throughout. The repetitive layoutsLayouts (レイアウト): The drawings where animation is actually born; they expand the usually simple visual ideas from the storyboard into the actual skeleton of animation, detailing both the work of the key animator and the background artists. establish Kimi’s mental state by first creating a sense of familiarity, which then helps you spot these little changes. Cycling through dozens of t-shirts and phone wallpapers, eating habits becoming a bit laxer, finally starting to wake up on time and her room progressively getting messier… It’s through all these repetitive morning routines and increased sloppiness that she gradually begins to heal, gradually lifting the weight of the thoughts of her late love. Her smartphone wallpaper stood out in particular, as it starts off with a red anemone—which holds a meaning of painful love—to convey that she’s getting used to life without him, but that those feelings didn’t simply vanish.

Speaking of floriography, being the hanakotoba nerd Yamada is too, flowers are the key motif and take the front seat in this work. For one, we have the anemone flower that also implies fleeting love. Yamada manages to find many effective ways to express the innermost feelings of the characters with it, down to the colours they choose in remembrance of Boku, but also serve as a more dynamic means to create ambitious, seamless transition sequences. The most striking part though is of course the climax, when Kimi re-experiences her cherished memories; it had me sobbing the most, likely being the most beautiful abstract use of floriography I have ever seen in anime.

Lovely Summer-chan’s indie pop-rock is also great, managing to complement the film well with its structure and composition; it starts quiet during those repetitive, monotonous days, slowly ramping to the emotional climax before slowing doing again to quietly fade away.

Garden of Remembrance feels like a distillation of Yamada’s aesthetic sensibilities, but with quite a few new adjustments that I found she was successful in expressing. Her love for soft pastels and watercolours is present, and the designs are realistically fleshy to her tastes, but it’s actually the lack of digital effects that surprised me; there are essentially no camera lens effects from the compositing department, much as she has emphasized that before.

Interestingly, though, the chromatic aberration effect was transported to a different field; which is to say, that it was emulated from the background stage, so you can see the multiple coloured contours along linework on objects and the background actually painted in. I found this interesting since it achieves the blur effect associated with those digital effects, without actually needing them. Line boiling for the cel layers is also a new addition that had never been in a work of hers before; perhaps the intention is to match the subjectivity of the framing, considering the amount of low placed, telephoto shots to make the viewer really feel they’re peering into an actual, living person’s life.

Honourable Mention: Uma Musume: Pretty Derby – Beginning of a New Era. Surpassing your limits is not a new idea for sports anime. Pas du tout. And yet, there’s something about the way Uma Musume Beginning of a New Era does it. The movie brings that idea to the forefront and abstracts that concept visually, through a prominent suncatcher prism motif that results in some of the most visceral, intense races you will ever lay your eyes on. They’re overwhelming, striking and incredibly ferocious, but perhaps the most amusing thing is how much of the movie embodies the director’s unmistakable radical expressions, doubly so in the races. Ken “Leaf” Yamamoto’s influence can be felt everywhere, with how insanely angular and deformed the characters become; you can feel the palpable strain of these horse girls pushing themselves beyond their limits as the faces twist into tangible anguish, which is amusing considering the bishoujo aspect of Uma Musume is a big deal. When it comes to a movie like this, though, the coolness aspect is too important to compromise it in any way.

My only reservation is that I wish I could have seen it in theaters. The team clearly went above and beyond with the sound design and how it intertwines with the animation itself to truly make a sensorial experience. Even with this caveat, however, it all comes together as a movie that’s way too entertaining for its own good (and for the health of the viewer). The definition of never letting go off the brakes.

Best Opening: One Piece OP26 (link), Ojamajo Doremi 16-20 teaser opening (link)

Megumi Ishitani started off the year with one of the most visually stunning and technically proficient openings I’ve seen, with an amazing team behind it at that. Unfair competition, if you ask me. The sequence begins with an operatic start that hypes you up, then immediately pulls you in through Keisuke “soty” Mori’s characterful walk cycles; the type where you can see the personalities of each Straw Hat distilled into a few drawings, signalling you’re in for something special.

What impressed me the most, though, is the cohesive visual clarity of the whole PO. Reduced line counts and emphasis on the bodily shapes pairs well with the vibrant pastels, and the natural sense of flow between cuts supports that clarity. It’s particularly impressive that they they still retained that feeling when conveying things on a grand scale, with strong volumetric drawings to back it up. Ishitani’s usage of colour is also getting more clever as she even started emphasising light with solid colour shapes rather than relying fully on compositing effects seul. To top it off too, her evocative usage of silhouettes and foreground elements to create spatial depth is immersive as ever.

It turns out this category for me is a Toei-dominated one—though considering that Ojamajo Doremi is literally my favourite anime series, its 16-20s teaser opening from earlier this spring demands a shout-out from me. Seeing Yoshihiko Umakoshi’s light novel illustrations brought to life in animated form was enough to bring me to tears. It’s maybe even more emotional to see Tatsuya Nagamine return to direct it, demonstrating that his love for the series is very genuine. I think I speak for all Doremi fans to say I can’t thank Hiromi Seki-P enough for enabling these great small-scale projects for the franchise since its 20th anniversary movie.

Bustling with some of Toei’s greatest youngsters too, along with some ex-KyoAni staff I’m fond of, I felt it was made to pamper me. Pending on whatever their plans for the future are, this sequence might very well be the closest I’m going to get to my dream of the novel sequels being animated with as much care as Doremi has always received. (Where’s Haruka Kamatani tho?)

Best Ending: Too Many Losing Heroines/Makeine ED1 (link)

There were quite a few good endings this year, but Makeine reaching those heights for all of its sequences was a beautiful surprise. Even more so, because they’re all aesthetic bangers that accurately match the arc of each heroine. That said, it was the very first one that impressed me the most. ED1 cannot be praised enough for its ingenuous, mesmerising usage of stop-motion effects and hand-drawn animation intertwined with filming live-action footage; not only for how striking the result was, but also because of the impressive physical effort required to arrange (and create) so many props and devices.

These efforts come together to communicate not just the romantic, down to earth side of the series, but also evoke a clear sense of summer nostalgia. It’s the feel of a romantic youth, with its warm, sepia and earthy tones, plus a cover of the aptly named song Love 2000! I can only imagine how creatively fulfilling this must have been for all the staff involved, since these specific flavours of creation are rare in commercial animation. Aoi Otani’s renditions of the designs are also an interesting take, as they’re less “moe” with how the features are arranged and drawn. They look a bit more mature, suiting the romanticised nature of the ED; the eyes especially in close up shots being more volumetric and having more defined lashes. Great cohesive look!

Honourable Mention: Gimai Seikatsu’s ending sports an unusual but fitting style. CG artist hewa’s work usually features a painterly texture over it, with ethereal blues that happen to be an excellent match for the show’s mood and tone. That naturally extends to how it’s shot, as it captures the mundane through pillow shots of the setting, following Souta Ueno’s visual groundwork. Being the Akane fan I am, Ranma ½ 2024’s ending really got me good. It’s an incredibly lovely ED framed her point of view, which sums up her and Ranma’s dynamic well! It’s even complemented with cutesy red effects to indicate actions. Love it!

Best Aesthetic and Animation Designs: One Piece Fan Letter (soty)

The immediate stylistic similarities that One Piece Fan Letter brings to mind are Mamoru Hosoda‘s Baron Omatsuri film and Where Le Wind Blows. Both Keisuke “soty” Mori and Megumi Ishitani have made it clear they have a stylistic preference for that type of flat look. Mind you, that isn’t surprising, since the former had already admitted influence from one of anime’s greatest animators who is synonymous with this unburdened style.

I have been a huge fan of soty and the way he approaches shapes in his drawings, so it goes without saying that I adore the look of Fan Letter. It’s been delightful to see him apply his sensibilities from the early design stages, as opposed to manipulating someone else’s as animation director like in the episodes he’s involved with. The line count remains low and efficient, and his love for slim proportions carry on with eye-catching, beautiful curves of the forms. Despite that low amount of lines, though, his approach feels so effortlessly organic with how well defined a lot of the anatomical landmarks are; a perk of his smart line placement.

Soty’s diverse supervision allows him to pivot from that elegant to depictions of more cartoony elements as well, and I adore how recognisable the forms still remain when the shapes literally coalesce. Of course, to achieve this line count efficiency and minimal shading you need strong draftsmanship skills. Otheriwse, there’s no way to convincingly sell the body as three-dimensional without feeling too flat when needed, especially when employing a stylistic trait as kagenashi/zenkage as often as they do. Given the team they could entrust this work to, though, that was no worry in the end.

In the end, soty’s designs are foundational for this appealing flatness to work, but it’s worth noting that they are in perfect synergy with Ishitani’s sensibilities. Look no further than the soft colour palette, which somehow still retains the adventurous vibe of the series despite the pleasant atmosphere it evokes. While that default inviting palette is a great starting point, they never fail to dial it well to tonally match a scene, be it the clear but deep vivid blues of the Marine offices, the warm oranges of the bar’s interior, or the muted greys of the Marineford war. It’s a great display of something many know at this point: Ishitani’s proficient use of colour is about as good as it gets.

Fan Letter’s aesthetic greatness extends to even the art direction. The backgrounds forego the rigidity that straight lines give, and embrace uneven linework that helps give it a rough, organic finish; all while confidently rocking minimal detail, where environmental silhouettes remain clearly identifiable even in pleasing atmospheric perspective shots.

Non-contemporary Work Award: The Idolmaster Cinderella Girls Part 2

Much to the surprise of my friends, I only got around to experiencing this show for the first time this year. Cinderella Girls is something I had been meaning to get around to for a while now, after longing for more goodness due to the ever-going Noriko Takao Drought. Now I can say that I’m honestly annoyed with myself for putting it off for so long. As much as I enjoyed the first cours and the bubbly personalities of the cast, some of them can feel rather lacking in the depth that they deserved. By placing those at at the forefront, they can feel gimmicky to varying degrees.

In the second cours, however, most of the cast truly come into their own and allow Takao to display how strong of a storyteller she est; especially, how much she truly cares to dig into these characters. The introduction of a corporation-driven antagonistic force shakes things up to be a lot more interesting, as the idols try to navigate through the changes imposed on them and try to thrive within these corporate demands. Those gimmicky natures end up becoming strong material to explore the characters’ self-identity and to embrace their individuality. This angle leads to many episodes diving into their insecurities, framed around the personas they’ve built.

The godly Uzuki arc deserves a special mention, since it solidified her into by far my favourite Animas character. Not only that, but her arc serves as the strongest realisation and culmination of that overarching theme. Adding to that, it was also produced during an era when the imas crew was at its collective peak of togetherness. And so, despite the show being an expensive production disaster, having a team like that still resulted in many articulate dance sequences throughout and all sorts of consistent detailed acting to enjoy.

Okay now, while this amount seems like a lot, I think this is a good problem to have! I’m honestly surprised at how many names came up when thinking about it, but this I met quite the group of creators who left their mark both from an animation standpoint and through their storytelling abilities.

Being an exceptional animator doesn’t necessarily mean you will transition into new roles easily and put out equally stellar work, but Shuuto Enomoto proved how strong his storytelling skills were with DanDaDan #07. His use of imagery and understanding of the characters was surprising, naturally deserving of being put in the spotlight through a focused Newtype interview. I look forward to which path he continues going down whether it be enshutsu aspirations or continuing focusing on storyboardStoryboard (絵コンテ, ekonte): The blueprints of animation. A series of usually simple drawings serving as anime’s visual script, drawn on special sheets with fields for the animation cut number, notes for the staff and the matching lines of dialogue. & animation directionAnimation Direction (作画監督, sakuga kantoku): The artists supervising the quality and consistency of the animation itself. They might correct cuts that deviate from the designs too much if they see it fit, but their job is mostly to ensure the motion is up to par while not looking too rough. Plenty of specialized Animation Direction roles exist – mecha, effects, creatures, all focused in one particular recurring element. like other sakugaSakuga (作画): Technically drawing pictures but more specifically animation. Western fans have long since appropriated the word to refer to instances of particularly good animation, in the same way that a subset of Japanese fans do. Pretty integral to our sites’brand.-focused animators.

Moving to a very different environment: when it comes to KyoAni, it can be difficult from an outside perspective to know who is well regarded for their skills internally—for example, those who impress their peers through the studio’s private pitches. That’s why, every time an individual who hasn’t had a main role yet is shouted out specifically after spending a while at the studio it can come as a surprise. One such case was an individual who was, while remaining anonymous, highlighted by Nobuaki Maruki in Tsurune S2’s fanbook. I personally assumed he must have been talking about one of the studio’s newbies, but their handwriting actually turned out to be a perfect match for someone else when more materials were made available.

That person was Tomomi Sato. Having contributed many highlights across Euphonium S3, she made it clear that she has a clear understanding of each character’s nature and how to convincingly draw an array of shifting, nuanced expressions to bring out their innermost feelings. This was highlighted not just in their output, but through her own words, as she used the Blu-ray commentary track to share how much she values communication with the core staff; alongside other traits that paint the picture of a very attentive animator, like the fact that she religiously studied the physical materials of each piece of cloth to draw convincing folds. She’s a rising Osaka ace—funnily, alongside their other veteran Tatsuya Sato, sharing the same surname. I feel she will really be instrumental to KyoAni’s future if she remains persistent with her mindset to animation.

Next up that is also tangentially related to KyoAni, as Haruki Sakamoto had a short stint there before landing in another great environment filled with other inspiring artists. Haruki’s contributions throughout Dungeon Meshi have been some of my most favourite throughout the year. His animation is diverse but often involves cuts with snappy timing that can fit comedic-centric scenes, although he can modulate its timing well for more grounded action-oriented cuts. As you can see there, he’s clearly fond of tiny details like the spit droplets to accentuate the force of collision from a punch.

It’s no surprise that his expression work and nuanced animation were recognised as he kept getting assigned a specific type of scene—those were he got to delve in a little deeper into the characters’ psyche, often getting to handle the emotional catharsis too. My favourite work from him, however, is when he brings his timing closer to realism. The drawings are much closely spaced, resulting in a very satisfying motion to watch; just look at those lovely secondary details, especially on the fabric and the weighty back and forth swaying! He’s someone I’m sure will continue to put out stellar work especially if he stays in environments that enable it like DunMeshi’s production imagining he sticks close with his pal Ichigo Kanno.

My final discovery is on the directorial side, but since I have written about his own show in detail in two categories already I will keep it succinct. Souta Ueno is simply a one of a kind director. In just one project, he has already proven he understands how to construct a series with a stark, fascinating personality of its own. His inherent desire to grasp what is going on with characters and worldview on a deeper, fundamental level, as well as his inspired mentality and broad influences will allow more intriguing works to bloom under his helm.

Yuusei Koumoto

Sometimes Key Animator, Sometimes Animation Director, Sometimes Character Designer, Always Good At Drawing [Twitter][Sakugabooru tag] Best Episode: Dandadan #07

I believe Dandadan #07 will go down in history; not only as an episode that makes the most of the original manga, but uses the medium of anime to enrichen it with new methods of emotional resonance that have reached so many people.

It touches on some pretty serious topics for a series with a lot of comedic moments, but I think it was truly a masterstroke to hand this episode over to Shuuto Enomoto.

I must say this: thank you to all of the staff members who helped create this episode…

Best Show: Too Many Losing Heroines/Makeine

Great visuals aside, Makeine on its whole had me hooked with how entertaining it was from the very beginning.

Watching it made me realize that I’d forgotten how much fun a school romcom could be. This feeling has reawakened within me! School romcoms are the best! I want an intake of shows like this on a regular basis.

Best Movie: Uma Musume: Pretty Derby – Beginning of a New Era

This movie’s sensorial excellence shines through Ken “Leaf” Yamamoto‘s direction, which you can enjoy even without thinking at all. You’ve got those magnificent drawings, full of charm that draws you in. Appealing acting as the backbone of it all; expressed through Jun Yamazaki‘s character designs, which are catchy and filled with potential. All of it comes together in a really satisfying way.

Coupled with its emphatic sound design, Uma Musume Pretty Derby: Beginning of a New Era is a movie I’m really glad to have seen in theaters.

Best Opening And Ending: Too Many Losing Heroines/Makeine OP (link), The Elusive Samurai ED (link)

I would say I enjoyed Makeine’s opening and The Elusive Samurai’s ending the most this year; I loved them both for their great songs and fun visuals that get you excited.

I didn’t skip them a single time as I watched weekly.

Best Aesthetic: One Piece Fan Letter

One Piece Fan Letter isn’t only marvelously polished, but catchy in a way that made me wish we could have had these visuals in something more long-form. The way it controls the amount of detail in the backgrounds is especially wonderful, an expression of pure, unburdened artistry.

An aesthetic delight, where every second showcases something to keep you interested!

Best Animation Designs: Look Back (Kiyotaka Oshiyama)

Out of a handful of surefire answers for how to design characters for a Tatsuki Fujimoto anime adaptation, I think Look Back offers one of them.

The fact that the lines are intentionally not cleaned up is a contributing cause. Of course, that risky approach only works because of Kiyotaka Oshiyama‘s obscenely good drawings.

Non-contemporary Work Award: Working!! (S1-3)

I love this series enough to rewatch it every year. Shingo Adachi‘s catchy character designs, coupled with episodes that never leave you bored. It’s a simple concept revolving around a group of part-time workers, but it’s so much fun… That’s what I think to myself every time, as I keep returning to it.

I wasn’t too familiar with Yasushi Nishiya until I got to work with him on The Elusive Samurai, where I found out what an excellent animator he is. His drafting skills and techniques fostered over the length of his career are impressive, of course. But when you factor in his drawing speed, his broad perspective not limited by his drafts, and his good sense, he’s just overall a very talented animator.

He helped and taught me a lot during our time together on Elusive Samurai!

Futon

Professional Yama No Susume Liker [Twitter] Best Episode: Puniru is a Cute Slime #07

The dynamic duo of China and Noriyuki Imaoka strikes back. This ‘power couple’, born during the amazing series that is Yama no Susume where both studied under Yuusuke Matsuo, has been working on many projects together. Like in this case, this usually involves China as the director and Imaoka as the animation supervisor or the main animator.

From its first second, Puniru #07 is one of the liveliest episodes of TV anime I’ve ever seen. It invokes the vibes of brilliant short-form anime from about 10 years ago, such as the aforementioned YamaSusu, Ooya-san wa Shishunki, or Mahoii; to no surprise, China took part in all of those. The age of shorts as a creative outlet for many great animators and directors is long past, but this episode brings back that nostalgia, a specific set of skills, and the freedom that characterized them.

You can feel the short anime background of the staff even from the way the episode is constructed. It’s a series of 4 or 5 shorter stories slightly connected by an overarching theme of summer, with each skit focusing on a different aspect from a directorial standpoint. Extra loose animation for a story about characters literally melting from heat is just one example of the amusing execution of that concept. You have exaggerated comedic animation, dumb faces, and abstract jokes counterweighed by skillful storytelling and drawings—a perfect mix for a highlight of the year, and that’s what Puniru #07 is. Go watch it, please!

Best Show: Hibike! Euphonium S3

Hibike! Euphonium S3 is the stunning finale to Kumiko’s story.

I have to admit, I’m not the biggest fan of the preceding Ensemble Contest special, therefore I was worried about how the last season would feel without some of the core staff members from past TV series and movies. Don’t get me wrong, I’d trust Kyoto Animation to adapt my own life, but there was still that little worry in the back of my head.

However, from the first episode I already knew it was unwarranted and the staff taking over knew what they were doing. Taichi Ogawa as the new assistant series directorSeries Director: (監督, kantoku): The person in charge of the entire production, both as a creative decision-maker and final supervisor. They outrank the rest of the staff and ultimately have the last word. Series with different levels of directors do exist however – Chief Director, Assistant Director, Series Episode Director, all sorts of non-standard roles. The hierarchy in those instances is a case by case scenario. and all the new storyboarders/episode directors have blown me away; Mei Isai is so, so good!. The tale they were entrusted with felt like a big roller coaster. As a viewer, I went through every emotion with no time to breathe, which ultimately turned into a nerve-racking, impactful experience. I’m sure it tested the staff in new ways, but like Kumiko herself, they grew with every episode up until the breathtaking finale. Special mention goes to the even more intricate instrument design and corrections; this franchise’s commitment to this aspect will never stop being impressive and unmatched.

In the end, not only is Eupho my anime of the year, it’s also probably my favorite title from the studio. Having reached this point, it feels both incredibly fulfilling and sad to see the story complete.

Best Movie: Uma Musume: Pretty Derby – Beginning of a New Era

Two movies battled for my heart, one about colors as a theme and the second one with my favorite use of colors this year. I will have to watch both of them a couple times more to make the decision that I can stand by. For now, that’s not possible, as Naoko Yamada’s The Colors Within is not available outside of theaters yet. For now, then, I will talk about Uma Musume: Beginning of a New Era instead. I consider both of them to be the greatest of 2024 but unavailability to rewatch one of them made this temporary decision for me.

The Uma Musume movie was always advertised as an animation tour de force; snappy and powerful, as everything that Ken “Leaf” Yamamoto, its director, touches. To no one’s surprise, the animation staff was out of this world. Do you have a favorite animator from Yamamoto’s energetic generation of artists? If the answer is yes, rejoice: they were most likely in this movie.

The second strongest aspect of this movie, which you may already suspect by my preface, was the color use. I’ve never seen a film that changes its color script so often while still fitting the text like a glove. You can imagine a color and it probably has had a specific scene smartly built around it. Instead of an emotion strictly dictating the scene’s color—for example, reds for dramatism or blue for calm moments—Yamamoto tried to prove that all colors are able to fit any type of emotion. In one scene green can be associated with loss and sadness, but in another with anticipation and hope. It changed how I read every scene and I loved that.

I would never suspect that Uma Musume would be a franchise with the most colorful movie of the year, but having seen this one, I would pay anything to see color scripts and image boards for it.

Best Opening: Wind Breaker OP (link)

Tomohisa Taguchi is a fascinating creator with one of the strongest visual styles I have ever seen—it’s frankly hard to miss his neon colors and clashing points forts. If you’ve experienced works like Akudama Drive, Natsu e no Tunnel, Sayonara no Deguchi, or even Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War, you will know what I mean.

Generally, his openings follow the same style, all vibrant and garish. However, this year he was tasked with an opening for a show that differs greatly from his own style: Wind Breaker. With its bleaker look, mostly grey with darker greens and browns, it’s a far cry from what Taguchi is a natural fit for. Rather than bending it to his will, he adapted to the show’s style and its direction by drawing inspiration from one of most influential creators in this space—Shingo Yamashita.

Yama has already influenced many creators, in particular when it comes to crafting opening sequences; Ryohei Takeshita (openings for Yorukura/Jellyfish Can’t Swim in the Night and Oshi no Ko S2), Tetsurou Araki (Spy x Family OP, Blue Box OP), and even debutants like Tooru Iwazawa and his opening for Orb: On the Movements of the Earth. This tends to involve heavy attention is put on compositing the light, with dust particles floating in the air and glittering, cross dissolves as the primary transition technique between scenes and irotore—often using white—as a way to elevate edge light on characters. They’re appealing concepts that come together to form a style I love, but, what’s even more interesting is how all those directors take it and make it their own.

This is to say that even then, Taguchi is still Taguchi; he wants those striking colors, and he needs his bright highlights. To find a balance in this case, he compromises by making them part of this more grounded aesthetic. Instead of making the primary color of a scene red, as he would in Akudama or Bleach, he instead utilizes diegetic elements that exist in the background. For example, a blinking red light or a blue umbrella are allowd to cast these highlights onto characters.

Taguchi is a brilliant creator, and not the one-trick director I would have suspected before. He could have gone his usual route and made a colorful chaos that doesn’t look like the show itself, as many anime openings do nowadays. However, he adapted and took inspiration from another director while also adding his own spin on top. I hope to see both sides of him from now on.

Best Aesthetic: The Elusive Samurai

Let me preface by saying I hate Elusive Samurai’s writing with a passion. It might not be the nicest thing to say in an article celebrating the year, but it puts into perspective how impressive its aesthetics are for me to be celebrating it regardless. It’s now harder than ever to single out any shows based on color use, so it catches your eye when a show mixes pastel blues and greens with saturated reds and purples like EluSam does. Bold and confident. It’s got an experimental edge and yet also a classic understanding what ought to work—and this describes everything about this show’s visuals, not only the colors. It cycles through styles multiple times per episode; different approaches to drawing and paintings, modulation of realism and whimsical, the show has it all. Even the show’s amazing Blu-ray covers embody everything I’ve just mentioned.

However, as much as every frame is a picture, the actual experience of watching EluSam is a type of chaos that I don’t find very enjoyable. Experimenting is fine, but if there is no cohesion it can end up feeling directionless. From a fully superficial standpoint, this show is a masterpiece, but one I would rather experience through screenshots and booru uploads.

Best Animation Designs: Look Back (Kiyotaka Oshiyama)

Look Back is a one-in-a-lifetime project that would never work in TV. Kiyotaka Oshiyama’s designs are intricate yet animation-friendly. Simple yet requiring a lot of skill. It’s such a fine line to tread that I’m not surprised Oshiyama himself had to supervise almost the whole movie himself, while the rest of the team was up up of some of the best artists whom he could trust to follow his path.

The decision to complete the look of the movie by leaning into rough, uneven linework, evoking the main theme—manga, drawing, art itself—was a brilliant move. It’s also not something we will see much more of as it’s done by hand by animators, and it directly contradicts the anime production pipeline. I can only imagine how much extra work not being able to scan and process linework is.

Fede

Studio founder [NEW!], Translator, International Production Coordinator, Savior Of Doomed Projects [Twitter] Best Episode: Puniru is a Cute Slime #07

I wouldn’t say this episode really felt as cinematic as previous China outings, nor did it flaunt as much sakugaSakuga (作画): Technically drawing pictures but more specifically animation. Western fans have long since appropriated the word to refer to instances of particularly good animation, in the same way that a subset of Japanese fans do. Pretty integral to our sites’brand. pouvoir. Instead, it felt like what moving manga could be like if you idealized that concept; an awareness of the potential of that idea, unleashing it through screen composition and timing unburdened by the influence of older forms of paneling coming from comics and illustrations.

The more perspective-oriented framing felt more isometric than volumetric in a way, and I found that choice particularly captivating. It depicts daily life scenes in a way that isn’t necessarily connected with real-life camera work using real-life lens, thus allowing something more akin to spiritual rendition of the subject matter. In this regard, the less-detailed and rounder animation supervision did an incredible job of de-anatomizing the character behaviors; otherwise, those may have felt a bit uncanny with Noriyuki Imaoka’s usual approach to supervision, which while not being the most anatomical is still quite intricate.

While I think it might be early to tell whether China’s Naoko Yamada era is over or not, they demonstrated a high level of proficiency with so many more different visual tropes and ideas. At this point, it would be fair to start looking at them as one of the innovators of this medium rather than anyone’s follower. Someone who’s trying to see what anime has not yet done, rather than simply a talented and dedicated young director who is in love with a world of anime that doesn’t exist anymore.

That was really kino, wasn’t it? A special type of kino, even.

Best Show: Girls Band Cry

There’s no denying that Girls Band Cry builds on top of the legacy of other, perhaps more drama-heavy titles about girls playing music—Bang Dream first of them all. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed the interesting mix between the genuine elements of universal human drama and the specific depiction of hurdles that Japanese Gen-Z individuals will find so relatable; that struggle to find a path for themselves in these troublesome times, spiced up with more heartwarming comedic aspects that at times felt very slapstick-y and at times almost subtle.

In this sense, while the composition wasn’t perfect (the fact that they didn’t give me a Rupa episode made me cry) it felt explosive in a way I hadn’t seen in a while when it comes to CGDC; as in, cute girls doing cool things. If you think about it from a theme color perspective for this genre space, rather than feeling like Nina’s boisterous nature is an out-of-pocket depiction of superficial angst and anger, it feels closer to an expansion of the attributes we associate with those red protagonists. She adds a dash of chaos and juvenile bursts of anger to the clumsiness and straightforward will of the Haruka Amami, Honoka Kousaka, and everyone who’s preceded them. Only time will tell, but this could be a breaking of the mold in favor of more harmony-breaking leads like her to enter the stage in the years to come.

Additionally, the animation did a great job supporting the general atmosphere the show wanted to push over the individual character interactions. I found that to be a smart move that differentiated it within the current era 3D projects. On a more technical front, I appreciated the work that went into modeling individual mouths for the singing to achieve a more 2D for the serious, climatic moments. The timing choices themselves didn’t feel like they were trying to mimic a specific model, but rather attempting to achieve the best of both worlds when it comes to stylization. Which is to say, blending together traditional 2D anime concepts with the kind of timing tropes you’d see on cheaper 3D and indie projects, where the lack of realism becomes so funny that it’s endearing.  In the beginning, I wasn’t feeling the lighting direction that much; it felt a bit too chaotic and overly intense on the broader screen, but not being punitive enough on the 3D materials may be what 3D anime really lacked until now. Not sure, just a thought!

One day, I’d love to make characters like Nina and Momoka. They’re very cute girls but they’re also very real ones, aren’t they?

Best Movie: Look Back

Well, the first time I watched Look Back I cried 5 times. And I’m crying even right now while trying to write something about it. A work able to depict creation as a beautiful curse rather than a blessing is something that I believe has value in and of itself. What made Kiyotaka Oshiyama and Tatsuki Fujimoto’s child truly special, though, was the way the directorial and animation choices felt so deliberately in their expression of that idea; within them, you can feel the expression that, despite being a curse, making art is so beautiful that us creators are oftentimes willing to sacrifice our happiness and wellbeing for it.

There is so much to appreciate about the synesthetic connection between haruka nakamura’s music and the low-profile colors, the almost geometric structure that’s full of reiterative payoffs, and how even the story itself was elevated by the painstaking temporal balance in the storyboardStoryboard (絵コンテ, ekonte): The blueprints of animation. A series of usually simple drawings serving as anime’s visual script, drawn on special sheets with fields for the animation cut number, notes for the staff and the matching lines of dialogue., between rapid still montages and longer emotional shots. We are talking about a movie brilliant enough that, at its mathematical center, places a shot with the two protagonists; one in the first half of the movie, and the other one in the second half, those corresponding to the focus as well. It’s the type of film where every single little detail is worth obsessing over, but doing so here might be out of place. Every time I rewatch Look Back, it becomes a moment of self-discovery and vulnerability. It’s incredibly accessible through its universal language of raw cinema, but at the same time it’s really painful, like every great piece of art should be.

I could write about this movie all this, but out of consideration of the people who have to edit and publish this piece, I’ll call it a day here.

Best Opening: Too Many Losing Heroines/Makeine OP (link)

I really hope that A-1 Pictures seisaku folks will not read this one thinking that I’m somehow happy with them; for the record, we’re still enemies and we will face each other in that battlefield that is the anime industry. However, I really appreciated the stance this opening seemed to take. Compared to modern sequences that attempt to feel super artsy while still remaining conservative in their choice (not execution) of methodology—I’d put the recent One Piece opening in that camp—this piece wasn’t afraid of feeling naif, dirty, or even amateurish in places. With its great range of color designs, inspired typography, and especially the traced backgrounds, it achieves that appealing indie feeling.

But it’s not as if it has no muscles to flex: I was really impressed with the exorbitant amount of strange production design choices that this opening did consciously. For one, they clearly understood how the lack of character outline in certain cuts could blend together with the rakugaki-ish fonts at the start. For another, they also knew the more outline-heavy characters in the latter parts would feel appropriate, but only with the addition of nonsensical geometrical shapes within the picture and that indie flair for the backgrounds. At points, those instead featured shapes that felt way more reminiscent of the very surgical work of Eizin Suzuki. What a style!

Makeine was really kino, wasn’t it? Nevertheless, prepare yourselves A-1: one day we will win.

Best Ending: Too Many Losing Heroines/Makeine ED2 (link)

I was already a big fan of how Kasen was able to blend a minimalist production design with the kind of shapes that someone like Tetsuya Nishio would draw when he was entrusted with the final Shingeki no Kyojin ending. And yet, he keeps on improving! This was a peculiar cocktail, blending the eros of vulnerable self-discovery approaching adulthood with the energetic yet delicate charm of Lemon as a character. This exploration is remarkable with its technical emphasis to achieve a feeling that I wouldn’t describe as pervy or voyeuristic, but rather warm and pure. And you know, that’s an achievement for an ending that essentially shows her au naturel by end of it. In particular, I enjoy the shapeliness both in the chrysalis and rotoscoped parts that give her new design a womanly feeling closer to statuesque physiques rather than pin-up girls.

I will cut it with the technical appreciation of a fictional girl’s animated body, though. Wouldn’t want to be crucified over this, would I?

Best Music Video: Snail’s House Utakata (link)

It was really motivational to witness Rapparu approaching a more bucolic setting and atmosphere in the Utakata music video. With less of a focus on the effects animation side of things, this time the emphasis wasn’t so much what is happening frame by frame on the cel layer but rather the combination between the background style, the compositing, and the specific colors of the cel layer. While I’d never considered production design to be Rapparu’s forte, I was really impressed with its soft-solarpunk depiction of current-day Japan; you could even pinpoint big influences and references to the post-impressionist era of painting in the second half. Really refreshing stuff!

Utakata was kino, wasn’t it? I really hope Rapparu will keep experimenting with different elements of the animated whole.

Best Aesthetic: Look Back

Have you heard of this movie by the name of Look Back? The sort of unfinished layout look of certain colored drawings drew many people into its aesthetic. Personally, though, what enamored me was the usage of color tracing/irotore only in small segments of the outlines to depict rim lights. This completely bypasses the technical issues of the more showy lighting you might see in shows like Bleach TYBW, which oftentimes feel like they project a phony cinematic aura rather than reinforcing a depiction of physical space.

In general, the way the iroshitei and the shiage guides—means of color design and guidance for its usage—were made felt like they were trying to improve the accomplishments of early digital era anime color palettes, using Oshiyama’s top-notch shape design skills as the springboard to enable even the boldest choices. A lot of them are accomplishments that theoretically could have been done even in 2001, but at the same time, they feel born out of a more current contrarian spirit. There’s a desire to give more dignity to individual flat colors over the kind of more cumbersome effects that are tied to modern compositing techniques, which is a positively reactionary mindset that would have been harder to justify in the part. It’s not necessarily the best approach in a vacuum, but within this movie’s context of emphasizing the drawings themselves as mandated by the subject matter, this was the way to go.

Maya Kusumoto deserves more credit. She really did a great job, didn’t she?

Best Animation Designs: Look Back (Kiyotaka Oshiyama)

The Look Back appreciation tour continues. When it comes to the design work, I really liked the way hands were depicted throughout the movie: a combination of shapes that felt very reminiscent of the Studio Ghibli/Yasuo Otsuka school and newer tendencies, giving unexpected forms of articulation when it’s their time to shine. For example, one key example would be their behavior during Fujino’s run in the first half of the movie, or their behavior in the scene with her assistants.

I also loved how many bold moves were made to diminish the total line count, even to the point of allowing certain drawings to feel quite radical because Kiyotaka Oshiyama cared that little about properly defined outlines. The raw feeling the art always emanates is something that doesn’t always land for me; can’t say I’m in love with the depiction of Kyomoto’s disheveled hair, much as I appreciate Oshiyama’s confidence as an artist. He doesn’t really need much shading or detail to construct an excellent drawing; all it takes is a few well-placed lines, in a way that feels familiar to all the kagenashi enjoyers even when he does add a degree of shading to his pieces.

On a more narrative level, it was soul-consuming to appreciate how different Fujino’s lips and chin were from Kyomoto’s. Even when using almost the same visual language, these incredibly small variations are enough to give Fujino this distinct, actress-like feeling that elevates her characterisation in conjuncture with her personality. In contrast, those opposite choices gave Kyomoto this blob-like cuteness that wasn’t pretty in a straightforward way but made her endearing in the same way a puppy would be.

A lot of godly animators settle on a definite style after a certain age, but Oshiyama keeps inventing and discovering new stuff. He’s really a drawing nerd, isn’t he?

Non-contemporary Work Award: Honey and Clover

I’m going to confess the truth: back in the day, I only watched the episodes dominated by Tetsuya Takeuchi’s animation. While those do stand out, I now realize my mistake—this show is so good! It increased my appreciation of Takahiko Yoshida, one of the greatest sakkan of the beginning of the new century; supervising the animation with a minimalist yet realistic touch that is very appealing. However, my greatest nerdy prize out of the show was the realization that Kenichi Kasai (someone who rarely comes up in the conversations about the greatest directors) actually held massive influence among the more demure enshutsu crowd of the 2010s.

That influence is channeled the likes of Tatsuyuki Nagai and other younger, more introspective directors who trend towards screen compositions that resemble well-put together evening TV dramas than TV anime. The show even toys with digital tools in a very mature way for its time; it gives a hazy, unshapely feeling to it that I didn’t get from the source material, which I believe elevates the more contemplative moments. That gives a more unpredictable yet very placid tone to the narrative beats in a series that is already one of the most interesting depictions of the uncertainty of young adulthood—and that of artists too.

I really hope Morita, the great man who introduced Kanada-kei animation in the American VFX industry is doing well these days. I’ve heard that they are facing a difficult time, aren’t they?

Creator Discovery: Souta Ueno, Motoki Nakanishi, Yoshiaki Yanagida (Sakugabooru tag)

Souta Ueno and Motoki Nakanishi are two relatively young directors that I believe have potential to bring enshutsu-focused anime back. Even if their debut works—Gimai Seikatsu and Koi wa Futago de Waikirenai respectively—were hindered by their environments, their efforts were a pleasant surprise nonetheless. We’re together with them in this fight to bring spiritual, elegant, non-muscular kino back.

On a completely different end, Yoshiyaki Yanagida is someone I was aware of but whose greatness I only recently processed. While I’d watched plenty of his designs in motion before, it took until now to realize how his design sense can elevate entire works; it’s someone who has turned relatively boring projects into very appealing end-products on his own, on the basis of his wonderful sense of shape balance. The fact that he’s still so active within Ajia-do is incredibly impressive given he’s just one year younger than my dad. I really want to thank him for his hard work.

eichiwai/Hayato Kunisada

Production Desk Aiming For Animation Producer at Cygames Pictures, ascended sakugaSakuga (作画): Technically drawing pictures but more specifically animation. Western fans have long since appropriated the word to refer to instances of particularly good animation, in the same way that a subset of Japanese fans do. Pretty integral to our sites’brand. otaku [Twitter] Best Episode: Dandadan #07

Dandadan #07 features Shuuto Enomoto as storyboarder and animation director, Koutarou Matsunaga as episode director, and Hana Okutani as assistant animation director. By having Enomoto on that dual role of storyboarding and supervision, then entrusting Matsunaga entirely with the episode directionEpisode Direction (演出, enshutsu): A creative but also coordinative task, as it entails supervising the many departments and artists involved in the production of an episode – approving animation layouts alongside the Animation Director, overseeing the work of the photography team, the art department, CG staff… The role also exists in movies, refering to the individuals similarly in charge of segments of the film., they were able to supervise the quality of the entire episode’s layoutsLayouts (レイアウト): The drawings where animation is actually born; they expand the usually simple visual ideas from the storyboard into the actual skeleton of animation, detailing both the work of the key animator and the background artists. and final footage, which I felt was the best decision.

Also, I find it remarkable how both Okutani and Kana Itou, acquaintances from the production of Tengoku Daimakyou (Heavenly Delusion), participated in the episode through Enomoto. Having such animators in charge of important cuts work on the layoutsLayouts (レイアウト): The drawings where animation is actually born; they expand the usually simple visual ideas from the storyboard into the actual skeleton of animation, detailing both the work of the key animator and the background artists. stage likely led to a drastic increase in quality. And speaking as a production assistantProduction Assistant (制作進行, Seisaku Shinkou): Effectively the lowest ranking’producer’role, and yet an essential cog in the system. They check and carry around the materials, and contact the dozens upon dozens of artists required to get an episode finished. Usually handling multiple episodes of the shows they’re involved with., I believe having the in-between and finishing animation work done as much in Japan as possible resulted in a higher aesthetic quality.

Finally, it wasn’t just the animation, but the combined effort including the background art, the 3D background animation before the opening even kicked in, and the performances from the voice actors that gave us the pinnacle of excellence.

Best Show: Yubisaki to Renren/A Sign of Affection

From my point of view, its greatest strength is clear: by having the series director—Ajia-dou’s Yuuta Murano—as storyboarder for all the episodes, as well as episode director for three of them, it gives the entire series a precious sense of cohesion. He understands the manga well, so even when fans of the original watch the anime, nothing serves as unwanted noise; you can naturally grasp the characters’personalities and the events of the story, which you don’t see that often.

Also, shout out to the effort of gathering Ajia-dou’s Yuuki Nishioka, Emiko Endou, Kazue Tamari, and Kanako Tsuji to serve as chief animation directors, while Yoshiaki Yanagida , Masaya Fujimori, and Yuuki Miyamoto were assembled to be sign language animators. I believe that having Ajia-dou veterans support the production by animating the sign language, a key point of the series, was also very important.

Best Movie: Look Back

I’m sure a lot of people will share this appreciation for Look Back. The audience came with high expectations, as an anime adaptation of a Tatsuki Fujimoto one-shot—and the adaptation answers them. Technically, it reaches a high level of quality in all areas, including animation, backgrounds, color designs, and compositing. But more importantly, it adapts the manga’s story to work as a feature film with a perfect runtime that doesn’t wear out its welcome, allowing those who watched it in theaters to feel its emotional impact right until the final credits roll. I feel that this was possible thanks to Kiyotaka Oshiyama‘s wonderful talents as a director.

Best Opening and Ending: The Elusive Samurai OP (link), The Elusive Samurai ED (link)

Both the opening and ending of EluSam feature energetic animation of the characters synced to catchy songs. Instead of relying too much on post-processing, the animation, backgrounds, and colors are all pleasantly in balance, resulting in an opening and ending that makes you want to watch and listen to them over and over.

Best Aesthetic: Hibike! Euphonium S3

This third season of Hibike! Euphonium arrived eight years after season 2. Not only that, but it’s an anime adaptation in the hands of an effectively new Kyoto Animation. Despite this, it maintains the same level of quality as the movies and season 2, and not only for the animation and direction; it hits excellence in all departments, from the background art both in-studio and from Anime Kobo Basara, the color designs by Akiyo Takeda, and the post-processing team led by Kazuya Takao, everything remains similarly excellent. Completing these 13 episodes to such standards must have required no small amount of effort.

Best Animation Designs: Makeine + Lycoris Recoil (Imigimuru)

This year, Imigimuru was responsible for the original character designs for Makeine (Too Many Losing Heroines!), where he brought into the world a variety of heroine paradigms. This was on the heels of Lycoris Recoil, where he acted as the actual animation designer; in both cases, he shows an ability to make all his heroines appealing and distinctive. He’s given both the original authors and anime watchers so much to enjoy, which I find wonderful.

Non-contemporary Work Award: Scorching Ping Pong Girls

Scorching Ping Pong Girls is a show that people should definitely check out.

It’s full of talented storyboarders and episode directors; you can start running down with series directorSeries Director: (監督, kantoku): The person in charge of the entire production, both as a creative decision-maker and final supervisor. They outrank the rest of the staff and ultimately have the last word. Series with different levels of directors do exist however – Chief Director, Assistant Director, Series Episode Director, all sorts of non-standard roles. The hierarchy in those instances is a case by case scenario. Yasuhiro Irie, who handled 8 episodes, assisted by the likes of Kaori on 3 of them, and one Hiroshi Ikehata leading an episode too.

Their scouting ability is demonstrated by the fact that the show features a lot of animation from folks who nowadays are entrusted with leading roles. We have Takushi Koide, Hiroyuki Saita, Satoshi Mori, and even Shiori Tani. Their work takes no shortcuts for the main draw of the series, its ping-pong scenes, which are a real delight to experience. I think it’s a must-watch for people who have just recently gotten into animation.

Creator Discovery: Shin-Young Lee

In the year 2024, Shin-Young Lee is an animator that I got to work with as a production assistantProduction Assistant (制作進行, Seisaku Shinkou): Effectively the lowest ranking’producer’role, and yet an essential cog in the system. They check and carry around the materials, and contact the dozens upon dozens of artists required to get an episode finished. Usually handling multiple episodes of the shows they’re involved with.. He’s skilled at character acting, and works hard as an animator, never neglecting his daily practice through sketches. I believe he’ll become an animator to keep your eye on in the future.

Omar

Believes Love Cobra is real (send help) [Twitter] Best Episode: Hibike! Euphonium S3 #12, Puniru is a Cute Slime #07, One Piece Fan Letter

Hibike! Euphonium S3 #12 contains the narrative climax of not only what this season had been building up, but the entire series as well. Of course, the whole episode is excellently animated and directed, but the emotional climax at the end of the episode reaches new heights and delivers an intense mix of emotions that I will never forget (nor stop crying about). The impact of this scene was only possible thanks to the combination of multiple factors; the visual staging, for one, is directly taken from a very well-known and beloved moment in S1, which this time serves as an effective and painful contrast to the events that unfolded in this episode.

The emotive animation of Kumiko and Reina by Tomomi Sato has a huge impact mainly because their body language and facial expressions feel real, and not just due to its ambitious and well-executed character animation. Props to the staff at KyoAni for not pulling any punches and even deviating from the source material to achieve maximum emotional damage to the audience. Definitely the episode that had the biggest emotional impact on me in 2024.

On the other hand, Puniru wa Kawaii Slime #07 deserves a spot here due to its commitment to a single, simple goal: fun. It was a delight to see China, who served as storyboarder and episode director, successfully apply his style to a fun and light hearted series like Puniru. I feel this is a side I haven’t seen from him before because the episodes he directed in the past are more on the emotional, nuanced side. Though general audiences and even sakugaSakuga (作画): Technically drawing pictures but more specifically animation. Western fans have long since appropriated the word to refer to instances of particularly good animation, in the same way that a subset of Japanese fans do. Pretty integral to our sites’brand. fans tend to appreciate dramatic and action showcases more, this episode’s commitment to fun and loose animation deserves to be celebrated in equal manner. I feel like showcases like this are becoming rarer in TV anime (and luckily you can read more about it in an article posted on this site). So here is to more fun sakugakai in the future!

Finally, let me add that I’m definitely not qualified to discuss One Piece at length, as someone who has only seen about 5 episodes of the series. Despite that, my inclusion of Fan Letter goes to show how universal its appeal is. What Megumi Ishitani and Keisuke “soty” Mori achieved is truly sensational, you can enjoy this even without previous knowledge of the series so go watch it if you haven’t yet!

Honorable mentions: Other awesome episodes that I want to at least give a shoutout include Shuuto Enomoto’s amazing storyboardStoryboard (絵コンテ, ekonte): The blueprints of animation. A series of usually simple drawings serving as anime’s visual script, drawn on special sheets with fields for the animation cut number, notes for the staff and the matching lines of dialogue. debut in Dandadan #07, Tatsuya Yoshihara’s grandiose opener in Tsue to Tsurugi no Wistoria #01 and Masahiro Tokumaru’s storyboardStoryboard (絵コンテ, ekonte): The blueprints of animation. A series of usually simple drawings serving as anime’s visual script, drawn on special sheets with fields for the animation cut number, notes for the staff and the matching lines of dialogue. and episode director debut in Boukyaku Battery #11.

Best Show: Hibike! Euphonium S3, Yubisaki to Renren/A Sign of Affection

Not content with featuring my favorite episode of the year, Hibike! Euphonium S3 also went and sat at the very top of my 2024 anime. Every episode felt stand out and properly built up to the conclusion of the series. It helps a lot that this season stood on the foundation set by the also excellent two first seasons, but it delivers an experience of its own that makes it stand on the same level as previous seasons, regardless of which one is your favorite.

What I find so appealing about this series is how it convincingly establishes its characters as actual people, each with a distinct set of body language, expressions and goals, and places them in the conflicts that arise in the school’s brass band club. This season’s main conflict is intrinsically tied to the two main characters and the brass band club, and the way it slowly but unsubtly develops it made me simultaneously fear and crave the impending doom. In the end, the resolution to such conflict was logical but emotionally impactful.

Another standout aspect of this season is that it depicts the 3rd year students’ struggles (or lack thereof) regarding their future after graduation. I could write more, but at this point I’d just recommend you to just watch this season or start the series if you haven’t yet (and read the numerous posts published here, they are awesome complimentary material).

The last thing I want to highlight is the confident execution of this ambitious narrative by the staff at Kyoto Animation. It’s a work that spanned almost 10 years and the level of accomplishment is remarkable given the numerous changes in the main staff as time passed. Of course, there were changes along the way, but the essence of the series remained intact. Goes to show how valuable Kyoto Animation’s focus on mentorship and self-sufficiency is!

Meanwhile, Yubisaki to Renren was a series I was not expecting at all to enjoy as much as I did because romance anime is not really my thing. However, I was instantly charmed and genuinely moved by the effort led by series directorSeries Director: (監督, kantoku): The person in charge of the entire production, both as a creative decision-maker and final supervisor. They outrank the rest of the staff and ultimately have the last word. Series with different levels of directors do exist however – Chief Director, Assistant Director, Series Episode Director, all sorts of non-standard roles. The hierarchy in those instances is a case by case scenario. Yuuta Murano. On top of storyboarding every single episode, the creative choices he made in all departments were finely tuned and exponentially enhanced the result. Thanks to this, the characters and world created by Morishita suu were brought to life to a degree rarely seen in other adaptations.

The studio in charge—Ajia-Do—might not be as certain juggernauts out there, but they made great use of the exceptional staff at their disposal and delivered truly outstanding work; including some who are also important for some of my entries below. You can see this in the show’s focus on immersive layoutsLayouts (レイアウト): The drawings where animation is actually born; they expand the usually simple visual ideas from the storyboard into the actual skeleton of animation, detailing both the work of the key animator and the background artists., which we can thank veteran animator Masayuki Sekine for as he was entrusted with its Screen Design. This feels appropriate in a series with a deaf protagonist, whom you’d expect to have developed a keener spatial awareness. Likewise, Yoshiaki Yanagida, Masaya Fujimori, and Yuki Miyamoto imbued the hand sign language animation with life, which is of essential importance because it’s the main means of communication between the characters.

All of these factors combined made me fully embrace the somewhat idealistic romance of the series; it might make some eyes roll but I don’t care, I just want to see Yuki happy because it heals my soul. I really recommend you give the series a try even if it doesn’t appear to be your type of anime, maybe it will surprise you like it did to me! After watching it, you can also read this nice article posted on this site that goes in-depth about the show’s production, very convenient!

Best Movie: Uma Musume: Pretty Derby – Beginning of a New Era, Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window, Look Back

Uma Musume: Pretty Derby – Shin Jidai no Tobira is the spectacular debut of Ken “Leaf” Yamamoto as a film directeur. It is also proof of Kan Mizoguchi’s exceptional abilities as an animation producer. And yet, this movie is much more than a ridiculously stacked sakuga movie. The story focusing on Jungle Pocket and her journey towards being the best in the fictional sport of horse girl racing is as viscerally satisfying as it gets.

Without spoiling too much, her journey becomes more than just winning or losing. It deals with the act of competition itself, what it means to the main characters and how they find or lose their motivation. However, the truly exceptional aspect of this movie is its unhinged and intense delivery. Yamamoto pulls no punches and uses every weapon at his disposal to overwhelm the viewer, be it via the unrestricted animation philosophy which deforms the characters however it sees fit, the smart placement of the OST and sound effects, or everything at once. As a result, the act of watching this movie is an exhausting experience (in a good way of course) which will stick with me for a long time. Definitely give it a try, you can watch it with no previous knowledge of the series!

For a complete change of mood, Madogiwa no Totto-chan, directed by Shinnosuke Yakuwa, was a pleasant surprise. It is based on an autobiographical memoir written by Tetsuko Kuroyanagi and mainly shows her childhood years in Japan right before and during the 2nd World War. To avoid spoilers and be brief: it’s a movie that deals with many themes and is able to connect them in a meaningful manner. It’s a beautiful movie, which I’m sure will move anyone who watches. Also, the animation and art direction are fantastic so go watch it!

A lot has been said already about Look Back. I’m sure it’ll get a lot of praise here (deservedly so) and there is even a neat article about it on this site so I will refer to them. But I will say that Kiyotaka Oshiyama’s decision to express the joy of creating animation with a unique philosophy that embraces the inherent roughness found in key animationKey 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. fascinated and resonated with me. It added a new layer to Tatsuki Fujimoto’s original work, which deals with the act of creating manga and made this movie stand on its own. It’s a type of approach that we probably won’t see happening in a long time, but hopefully its success opens up the door to more works like this.

PS: Naoko Yamada’s new feature film, Kimi no Iro, would for sure earn its place in my list if I had the chance to watch it…well at least that is something I can look forward to next year!

Best Opening: One Piece OP26 (link), Kuroshitsuji: Public School Arc (link) One Piece OP #26: Just an absolutely stunning opening that never ceases to amaze me no matter how many times I watch it. Shines due to Megumi Ishitani’s slick storyboarding and editing and Keisuke “soty” Mori’s visually appealing designs and loose animation supervision. Kuroshitsuji: Kishuku Gakkou-hen OP (link): I love Masashi Ishihama’s openings and even though I haven’t watched a single episode of this series, this opening instantly charmed me. You can find many of his usual traits here such as the use of flat coloring and geometrical shapes. What stood out the most to me was the flow of the opening (another Ishihama specialty of course); before I noticed, the opening was already over. Very addicting! Best Ending: Too Many Losing Heroines/Makeine ED1-3 (link, link, link), Urusei Yatsura 2022 S2 ED1 (link), The Weakest Tamer Began a Journey to Pick Up Trash ED (link), Shoshimin series ED (link), Undead Unluck ED2 (link), Wind Breaker ED (link), Ranma 1/2 (2024) ED1 (link)

First I want to highlight what a great year 2024 was for anime endings. In contrast to anime openings, which are becoming more of a grand spectacle that gather many of the industry’s big names, I feel like endings are increasingly becoming a space where artists can showcase more of their personal style or apply bolder creative choices to the respective series, which wouldn’t be possible in the episodes themselves.

Make Heroine ga Oosugiru! All 3 EDs (link 1, 2, 3): It was a nice choice to dedicate an unique ending to each loser heroine, but it is really remarkable how these were made. From the first ending being literally cel animation inserted into live action footage, the second one being a lavishly animated dream sequence with a very attractive and unique style, to the third one being beautiful hand painted animation. Urusei Yatsura (2022) 2nd Season ED #01 (link): An almost solo effort by Hitomi Kariya. Really liked her take on Lum’s design and the overall beautiful aesthetic. This ending felt like a proper homage to the original series (noticed references to openings, endings and one particular episode) while still having its own creative identity. Now this is a good way to give a modern take on an anime classic. If only I could say the same about the remake series itself… Saijaku Tamer ED (link): The animation of the abstract shapes in combination with the music give this ending sequence,  which is storyboarded, directed and solo key animated by Jamie Vickers, an ethereal feeling that really stood out to me. Shoushimin Series ED (link): Directed by Tao Tajima, who was also in charge of Sarazanmai’s wonderful ending sequence. Tajima blends anime characters in live action footage in a very cool and convincing manner. And it’s not only cool live-action footage, it depicts the city the series takes place in (modeled after Gifu city) that is already faithfully depicted in the anime’s backgrounds. It was nice to see their live action counterpart, which looked much better by the way. Undead Unluck ED #02 (link): Full solo effort by Taiki Konno, there is no need to say more. Wind Breaker ED (link): Atsuya Uki is a fantastic illustrator and animator; if you don’t know him, please do yourself a favor and go watch Cencoroll, two short movies he basically produced fully by himself. Because of his tendency to operate as a one-man army, the second Cencoroll entry was released 10 years after the first one. Which is to say, that it’s a special occasion whenever an animation by Uki is released—on those grounds alone, Wind Breaker’s ending solo Uki effort is already worth celebrating. Uki’s wonderful take on the designs and color choices breathe life to the series’ characters in a very special way. Ranma 1/2 (2024) ED (link): Mostly put together by Minami Kitamura with some animation help from Fumiyuki Uehara. Kitamura depicts the charismatic characters of this series with her simple and attractive art style, leaning more onto the romantic and cute side of the series. The sequence shows a typical interaction between Ranma and Akane that feels very genuine and sweet, it’s just very cute. Now this is a good way to give a modern take on an anime classic. If only I could say the same about the…wait is this deja vu?? Best Aesthetic: The Magical Girl and the Evil Lieutenant Used to be Archenemies/MahoAku, Too Many Losing Heroines/Makeine

MahoAku  makes aesthetic choices that normally don’t sit well with me in modern anime: designs with high line count, highlights, strong postprocessing from the photographyPhotography (撮影, Satsuei): The marriage of elements produced by different departments into a finished picture, involving filtering to make it more harmonious. A name inherited from the past, when cameras were actually used during this process. department, enhanced brightness and more. These choices are more or less what one could expect from a current day magical girl or shoujo show, but are executed beautifully by series directorSeries Director: (監督, kantoku): The person in charge of the entire production, both as a creative decision-maker and final supervisor. They outrank the rest of the staff and ultimately have the last word. Series with different levels of directors do exist however – Chief Director, Assistant Director, Series Episode Director, all sorts of non-standard roles. The hierarchy in those instances is a case by case scenario. Akiyo Oohashi and her team at Bones. I really liked Yukari Gotou’s color design, which built a tight color palette based on the protagonist’s colors. This extended to the backgrounds and lighting, ultimately forming a strong aesthetic identity in the show.

It was nice seeing this more focused color palette, which gave the show a unique mood (and contrasts with the more heterogeneous and varied palettes typical of magical girl shows). The painterly backgrounds supervised by art directors Yumiko Kuga and Takumi Okutani greatly contributed to the show’s ethereal feel. I also think that they acted as a counterbalance to the show’s more “modern” touches like the intricate lighting, which were also executed pretty nicely. This series reminded me that it’s all about how you execute the creative choices you make, and I hope we get to see more works as well accomplished as this one (so maybe give Oohashi another nice project).

Though not as refined as Katsute Mahou Shoujo, Make Heroine ga Oosugiru! is another example of a very good looking modern aesthetic. What I want to highlight is what series directorSeries Director: (監督, kantoku): The person in charge of the entire production, both as a creative decision-maker and final supervisor. They outrank the rest of the staff and ultimately have the last word. Series with different levels of directors do exist however – Chief Director, Assistant Director, Series Episode Director, all sorts of non-standard roles. The hierarchy in those instances is a case by case scenario. Shoutarou Kitamura was trying to convey with his aesthetic choices.

As he stated in an interview, Kitamura sought to evoke a “cheerful nostalgia” through the atmosphere of Makeine. For that purpose, the team first gathered a bunch of reference materials (via location scouting, research, etc) of Toyohashi city, the location where the series takes place. With the help of these materials, the backgrounds of the show managed to become a very accurate representation of the city. But simple photorealism wasn’t Kitamura’s goal, as the visuals were filtered through a subjective lens (mostly color and lighting modulation) to give them this youthful, nostalgic feel. To me, the visuals of this show look like how the characters would remember the events that unfold in the series, filtered through their emotions. Happy moments are visually enhanced, sad moments look like it’s the end of the world and so on. Having an aesthetic carry this much narrative weight was one of the highlights of the year to me. If you want to know more, there is a nice article on this site!

Best Animation Designs: NegaPosi Angler (Hiromi Taniguchi)

NegaPosi Angler was a very special work for its character designer Hiromi Taniguchi. That is very clear if you follow her on social media, where she constantly posted drawings of the different characters as the series was airing and commented on basically every episode, sometimes even explaining her creative choices. It wasn’t only the passion she expressed in social media that got through to me, I also think that her designs are quite special in how they successfully showcase her range as an artist.

Each character from the main cast has a very distinctive look, some appear to come from a different series even, but it still feels unified because they are all clearly Taniguchi’s art. This also conveys how very different and quirky people can come together thanks to a common interest like fishing. This diversity is not only conveyed through the characters’ physical traits, but their clothing too, another specialty from Taniguchi. The more illustrative qualities of her art are evident in the series’ more serious moments (and in the ending that is literally an exhibition of her illustrations) and in characters such as Ice, who is a model.

Taniguchi’s Gainax roots are evident in the way the characters move and deform in goofy and fun fashion. Thanks to all these qualities, the show’s animation always felt dynamic, diverse and was able to seamlessly switch between fun and serious moments. This held even for the episodes with more conservative animation, which really highlights how great these designs are. Hope Taniguchi gets another chance like this in the future!

Before moving on, a disclaimer: the next categories, which deal with works released outside of 2024 are very long, maybe too much. But I watched all of them this year and are thus representative of my anime watching experience in 2024. If you are only interested in anime released this year, you can skip the rest of my section. However, if you are burnt out from keeping up with seasonal anime, maybe you can find some interesting recommendations among all the series I will mention. What I learned is that there are enough great anime released throughout the industry’s history for a lifetime!

Non-contemporary Work Award: The immaculate vibes of Kimagure Orange Road, Urusei Yatsura 4: Lum the Forever, Ranma 1/2 (but actually all the classic anime adaptations of Rumiko Takahashi works)

Maybe you are familiar with those annoying “80s/90s anime aesthetic” accounts plaguing social media. The same ones that idealize anime from that period, and yet often misrepresent them. Well, Kimagure Orange Road, directed by Osamu Kobayashi, is dedicated to portraying 80s Japan in a beautiful and idealized way. Rather than glorifying that era, though, that focus has a well well-defined narrative purpose. The anime is framed as a distant memory, with a future version of the protagonist acting as the narrator, even referring to the events of the series as him living the best years of his youth.

Across the show, many important moments are presented as “snapshots” thus highlighting them as valuable memories. To top it off, the final scenes of the episodes are literally turned into photographs. All of this gives the series a very strong sense of nostalgia, which is enhanced by the very beautiful and romanticized presentation of its setting. I think anyone can relate to idealizing, even a little bit, the fond memories of one’s youth. This anime goes for that feeling and executes it splendidly by looking stunning for every single one of its 48 episodes.

The efforts of the staff (many of whom also involved in other shows I’ll talk about) will make you feel nostalgic towards 80s Japan, even if you never experienced it. Add to that Shiro Sagisu’s soundtrack, which oozes 80s energy, the banger openings and endings and you get some of the best vibes in anime. To top it off, Tomomi Mochizuki’s incredible movie that serves as a conclusion to the series adds gravitas to the whole series and a bittersweet feeling to its nostalgia. Annoying, clout chasing accounts might tarnish the concept of “retro anime aesthetic” but Kimagure Orange Road is the real deal: 80s beauty distilled, with a purpose.

Following that elegant romcom rec, I’m going to invite you to my journey through the works of the queen of the genre. Rumiko Takahashi is undoubtedly one of the most important mangaka ever. In the 80s she published at least 3 classic, all-timer manga series in Urusei Yatsura, Maison Ikkoku and Ranma ½. This is already a huge achievement, but what if I told you that their anime adaptations are also all-timers that you should definitely watch?

The Urusei Yatsura TV anime is for many reasons a historically important production for anime. One of them is that its (debuting) director for the first 106 episodes was a young Mamoru Oshii, who proved very quickly that he was the real deal. He took full advantage of the series’ ridiculous setting, which combined slapstick comedy with supernatural and sci-fi elements. He made tweaks and additions to the source material to exploit the creative sensibilities prevalent in his team.

In short, Oshii let the young core staff of animators and directors go wild, which attracted even more animators to the series. For this reason, this series is a must-watch for sakugaSakuga (作画): Technically drawing pictures but more specifically animation. Western fans have long since appropriated the word to refer to instances of particularly good animation, in the same way that a subset of Japanese fans do. Pretty integral to our sites’brand. ventilateurs; just look at the contributions from Masahito Yamashita, Katsuhiko Nishijima, Yuji Moriyama, and Motosuke Takahashi among many others. Besides these thrilling bursts, the series simply looks beautiful on a consistent basis, and remains a really fun time I would recommend without hesitation. The team became increasingly more daring with the anime original additions—with Oshii even writing the script for some episodes, which definitely have that unique flavor his fans are familiar with. The culmination of this process was Oshii’s marvelous movie Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer, which further launched his career into stardom.

And yet, the entry in this series that had the biggest impact on me came from the second director of the series: Kazuo Yamazaki. Yamazaki was a regular storyboarder and animation director in Oshii’s half and took over the director’s seat from episode 107 until the final 195th episode. I find it a bit of a shame that Yamazaki gets overshadowed in analysis of the series, because his understanding of the world and characters of Urusei Yatsura was only second to Rumiko Takahashi herself.

Many of the best episodes of the whole series were in his hands. Yamazaki came from an animation background (in contrast to Oshii’s production background) so he gave a different touch to the series. Under him, you’d see evocative storyboards, great layoutsLayouts (レイアウト): The drawings where animation is actually born; they expand the usually simple visual ideas from the storyboard into the actual skeleton of animation, detailing both the work of the key animator and the background artists. and enhanced emotional expressivity for the characters. As a result, he stood out as a specialist in giving genuine depth to the character’s emotions, which struck a good balance to the series’ more dominating comedy.

After this introduction, now it’s time to speak about Yamazaki’s magnum opus for Urusei Yatsura—the fourth movie of the franchise, Urusei Yatsura 4: Lum the Forever. This movie serves as the definitive ending to the animated series, as the manga was still ongoing and its ending wasn’t yet in sight. And what a finale it was! Concluding a series as episodic as Urusei Yatsura is definitely a challenge and Yamazaki’s answer to that challenge is nothing short of fascinating.

It’s important to have a bit of context in mind. When the time came to put together this movie, Yamazaki was understandably exhausted after working on the series’ grueling production for years. I don’t think he grew to dislike the series, but he felt the need to reach a definitive conclusion on his own. He also wanted to convey that to the audience because he believed they were just as enthralled by Lum as the characters from the series. It was time to move on.

This leads us to Lum the Forever, a movie with a somewhat unusual structure and even more unusual rhythm. It overwhelms the viewer by being constantly disruptive, challenging the series’ own tropes and making the characters question their obsession with Lum. This movie is a unique experience that could only work in the universe of Urusei Yatsura and could only be told by Yamazaki. I think it succeeds in conveying to the viewer that the crazy happenings in the series will eventually come to an end, but the characters will be fine as they’re capable of moving on. As far as I know, there isn’t an anime movie tied to a huge franchise as daring as this one.

In the same month that the Urusei Yatsura anime concluded, the next animated adaptation of a Rumiko Takahashi manga would start: Maison Ikkoku, with Kazuo Yamazaki directing the first two cours. Its adaptation is more straightforward and less daring than Urusei Yatsura, but it’s a good choice given that the series is more grounded and much less chaotic than its predecessor. Most importantly, it is still an excellent adaptation with its own creative vision.

One particularly noteworthy aspect was how consistently excellent the series looked throughout its 96-episode run, a monumental achievement by the staff at Studio Deen, which also produced the latter half of the Urusei Yatsura anime. People who know and talk about sakugaSakuga (作画): Technically drawing pictures but more specifically animation. Western fans have long since appropriated the word to refer to instances of particularly good animation, in the same way that a subset of Japanese fans do. Pretty integral to our sites’brand. and the anime industry tend to rightfully point out that a studio is not the biggest factor behind a series’ success or failure. But in this case, I think that Deen really played an integral part behind the success of the anime adaptations of Rumiko Takahashi manga. Their members gained a cumulative knowledge and understanding of the mangaka’s works, which enabled the excellent adaptations they produced despite the core staff changing considerably across different projects.  If you look closer into those teams, it starts to make more sense when you notice that these adaptations benefitted from promoting young creators who’d contributed extensively to preceding Takahashi works into main roles in their follow-ups.

The animated adaptation of Ranma ½ is the best example of this, and also what I consider to be the peak of this process. The first director of Ranma ½ was Tomomi Mochizuki, an already acclaimed director who previously directed Maison Ikkoku’s excellent film. The following series directors Kouji Sawai and Junji Nishimura also had experience in preceding Takahashi adaptations—Maison Ikkoku and Urusei Yatsura respectively. Debuting character designer Atsuko Nakajima was at the time one of the young promises of Studio Deen, having worked previously on Maison Ikkoku as one of the best animation directors on the rotation. As you can see, it’s a team representative of this process of constant promotion of staff already acquainted with Takahashi’s flavor. And more importantly, they’re all great at their job!

Nakajima’s designs in particular are all-timer level, giving the anime its own visual identity. They have an incredible range of expressivity that lets them seamlessly switch from looking beautiful to extremely goofy. Nakajima herself deviated from her sheets in the episodes she supervised, thus encouraging the other animators to do the same. This made the Ranma ½ anime into a training ground for many up and coming young, freelance animators who delivered excellent work there and later became legends of the industry. Perhaps you’ve heard of a certain animation legend known as Norio Matsumoto. And what about a certain director by the name of Kazuhiro Furuhashi? Well, he was also one of the promising young talents at Studio Deen. It was precisely in Ranma ½ that he started his excellent career as a director, consistently directing the best episodes of the whole show.

Something that differentiates Ranma ½ from other Takahashi adaptations is that nearly half of its content is fully original, on top of making some changes to the events in the source material. Given the team’s accumulated understanding of Takahashi’s work I mentioned earlier, though, this was not a problem. As a result, Ranma ½ became a transformative adaptation, which stood on its own and offered a different experience while maintaining the essence of the manga. Out of all Takahashi adaptations, this was the one I enjoyed most because it simply was a blast to follow its charismatic cast of characters.

Again, it also helps that the animation was consistently great across its 161 episodes. Thanks to the spirit in Nakajima’s designs, the animation remained loose and expressive even when the amount of movement was conservative. The amount of “filler” might be a big turn off for many, but I could not have cared less. In fact, it was difficult to differentiate between anime original and manga canon episodes; many of the best episodes were fully anime original after all.

In the end, one strong point of the anime that I feel sums up the appeal of this team’s approach is that it made its world feel actually lived-in by the cast. It adds a lot of original scenes with the characters just living normally, which made them more relatable and also served to contrast with the crazy situations they’d constantly experience. I highly encourage anyone to consume both the manga and Deen’s adaptation because they offer excellent, distinct experiences!

Creator Discovery: Takashi Anno, Naohito Takahashi, Atsuko Ishida (Sakugabooru tag)

Though recently retired, Takashi Anno’s career spanning since the 70s is unarguably a well-accomplished, complete one. Despite that, his name is not well known in the current sakugaSakuga (作画): Technically drawing pictures but more specifically animation. Western fans have long since appropriated the word to refer to instances of particularly good animation, in the same way that a subset of Japanese fans do. Pretty integral to our sites’brand. sphere, which sort of makes sense given the type of works he did and their time of release. I watched some of his most representative work and was absolutely fascinated.

For starters, I consider Anno to be a truly holistic director; he has a great understanding of every production department and is able to unify them all into something greater than the sum of its parts. But Anno is more than a technically proficient director: he has well defined interests and style, favoring the creation of immersive worlds, quiet atmospheres, subdued storytelling—he’s also the best at depicting street lamps slowly turning on, which is an important skill. No really, I can assure you that he has brought countless viewers to tears with it, he is that powerful.

Anno’s more subdued style made him stand out both as an episode director in series directed by others—Creamy Mami and Kimagure Orange Road come to mind—but especially in his own titles. You can watch his OVAs for Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou, rightfully considered by many as his peak of incidental storytelling (there is also a great blog article about it). I also highly recommend Mahou no Star: Magical Emi, a magical girl series with its good share of fun moments and animation, but that will also surprise you with its grounded presentation of the character’s lives and its quiet and elegant delivery of its messages.

If you are more sakugaSakuga (作画): Technically drawing pictures but more specifically animation. Western fans have long since appropriated the word to refer to instances of particularly good animation, in the same way that a subset of Japanese fans do. Pretty integral to our sites’brand.-brained, you can try the Hakkenden  OVAs (the first 6 directed by Anno) which showcase his feel for the atmosphere and get to showcase some of the best realist animators of the time firing on all cylinders. You can also kill two birds with one stone when it comes to my recommendations and watch Maison Ikkoku, which he directed from episodes 27 to 52; in my opinion, the best segment of the series and also the one that features its greatest episode…incidentally the only one storyboarded by Anno. And of course, in this episode there is a scene of street lamps slowly turning on and it’s peak fiction.

Similarly, Naohito Takahashi is another criminally overlooked figure in the anime industry. He was well-regarded as an animator and animation director in the 80s and early 90s. I can personally vouch for his AD work in Maison Ikkoku, definitely one of the best in the rotation; his designs in works that are best left to adults are also pretty good, if you’re so inclined to check those out. However, it’s his work as a director that resonated strongly with me.

Takahashi’s directing style is actually similar to Takashi Anno’s: it embraces the pauses and silences, is refrained and clinical with its deployment of music, constructs scenes as if they were shot with an actual camera, and employs intricate layout work for an overall feeling of solemnity. I believe that Takahashi was likely influenced by Anno in Maison Ikkoku and maybe I’m onto something here.

His vision was hard to pull on a technical level, but luckily, he could rely on many excellent creators to sustain his vision. The works I particularly want to highlight are the ones he created alongside Yuriko Chiba as designer and/or CAD, as well as the great Shichirou Kobayashi as art directorArt Director (美術監督, bijutsu kantoku): The person in charge of the background art for the series. They draw many artboards that once approved by the series director serve as reference for the backgrounds throughout the series. Coordination within the art department is a must – setting and color designers must work together to craft a coherent world.. The first work with this trio was OLM’s adaptation of Berserk—and despite what you might hear about it, as a manga reader I can say that Takahashi made an excellent adaptation that focused on the more human, contemplative side of the series to great effect.

My favorite work from this group, though is 1999’s transformative adaptation of To Heart. Considering that angle better suited for animation for starters, Takahashi’s vision of the story carefully depicted the daily lives of its characters, in a way that motivates the viewers to remember their own days in school. Watching To Heart is just soothing for the eyes, ears and soul—with no exaggeration, one of the best-looking TV anime I’ve seen.

The original anime Figure 17 is probably this trio’s most obscure title, but it is also wonderful work. It leans even more on Takahashi’s slower, naturalistic side by having 50-minute episodes that really take their time. This might turn off some people, but I think it’s successful due to the sweet story, excellent layout work, and one of the best Kobayashi works in TV anime I’ve seen; he was apparently extra motivated for this work because it was set in Hokkaido, the prefecture where he comes from. And if all these neat offerings weren’t enough to make you curious about Takahashi, I’ll add that he was an amazing mentor, who had the aforementioned Chiba under his tutelage, but also Kazuya Tsurumaki, Nobuyuki Takeuchi and more.

This won’t surprise you after such a long write-up, but I watched a lot of anime this year and thus got to experience many amazing artists. And yet, it was easy to pick the animator whose work I enjoyed the most this year: Atsuko Ishida. She’s best known for her design work during the 90s, which flaunts of a great illustrative quality (see the likes of Magic Knight Rayearth and Shamanic Princess). What I want to highlight here, however, is her work as a  key animator for Ranma ½, where she did a monstrous amount of work.

In a tweet, Ishida fondly recalled the time when she worked for Ranma and mentioned it was an anime where she could draw freely. I could tell that was the case because her animation always stood out though its personality. Whenever she was animating, the drawings became more detailed, the expressions more exaggerated, and the timing much more frantic (or everything at once). However, I didn’t find her to be the series’ best animator due to purely technical reasons. In my eyes, the characters of Ranma ½ felt the most alive under Ishida’s animation. I had the most fun during the comedic scenes she animated, was constantly impressed by her action scenes, and she made the characters emote in unique and charming ways. Atsuko Ishida was not only an impressive animator in Ranma ½, but also one of its best storytellers.

Ukloim

The Sonniest Of Boys [Twitter] Best Show: Shuumatsu Train Doko e Iku?/Train to the End of the World

Tsutomu Mizushima’s career is very diverse, given that he has dabbled into all sorts of genres as director. Scroll across his works and you’ll find everything from comedy, horror, sports, slice of life, you name it, and always with one recurring spice: his sense of weirdness. This makes Shuumatsu Train Doko e Iku? the quintessential Mizushima anime; it has that mix of genres and pop culture knowledge he has accumulated—The House of the Dead bit is still my favourite—with the great control over pacing and mastery over oddness that he has developed during that densely-packed career. In short, it has everything to become a highlight of the year for me.

The show kept on delivering every week; constant surprises, a deluge of insane new ideas being introduced weekly, and the unshakable feeling that those deranged concepts were conceived to be inherently amusing with animation in mind, which made it an extremely enjoyable ride for me. There’s so much to unfold and discover in each location, especially if you know a bit of history of the medium and art altogether. Because let me tell you, this show is not above parodying tropes and other people’s works just to add extra dashes of weirdness.

Keep anime weird, as some of my fellow sakubuta would say.

Best Movie: Kimi no Iro/The Colors Within

I gotta admit to committing a crime: Kimi no Iro was the first Naoko Yamada work I’ve ever completed. I was fortunate enough to watch it at a festival, and now I couldn’t imagine a better introduction to her filmography. I immediately understood the craze; it’s impossible to miss the film’s emphasis on delicate character movement and gestures, the focus on the relationship of the main trio, her understanding of art (music in this case) as a tool to connect people, and a whole lot of elegant, charged floriography.

This all creates an image of a director with well defined priorities, who has a story to tell and knows how to do it the way she really wants to; what you would call a genuine vision, very thoroughly developed at that. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to prepare myself for tomorrow’s delicious ramen, amen.

Best Ending: Negaposi Angler ED (link)

When I heard that Hiromi Taniguchi would be doing character designs for an original project I was very excited, because I really like Kurage no Shokudou—an OVA which she not only directed but did the designs for, while also supervising its animation. Negaposi Angler retains much of the appeal that the OVA had, simultaneously adding a very cartoony vibe to the characters and the animation itself.

That said, it was the ending of the show in particular that resonated with me most fortement. It only debuts a few episodes into the show, and ditches any sort of animation in favor of series of very charming and cute illustrations by Taniguchi herself. Sometimes that’s all you need, you know?

Best Aesthetic: Look Back

The return of Kiyotaka Oshiyama to the directorial seat was definitely one of the biggest, most significant moments of the year. As was expected, the long-awaited comeback turned out to be a visual feast. The animation wasn’t the only aspect that shined though; to be perfectly honest, the aspect that impressed me the most was the approach to compositing and processing that allowed them to retain the original animators’ lines.

The result isn’t only beautiful, but also fits perfectly with the themes of Look Back’s story, which focuses on artists and what creating art means to them. Everything in the film complements the whole; the aforementioned processing, the colours designed by Maya Kusumoto, the backgrounds supervised by Kiyoshi Sameshima, all of it blends together so flawlessly that Kazuto Izumita deserves extra props for the compositing that blends it all together. A phenomenal team effort led by an extraordinary artist.

Best Animation Designs: Dragon Ball Daima (Katsuyoshi Nakatsuru)

When the era of Tadayoshi Yamamuro as the visible face of Dragon Ball came to an end, that torch was first passed to Naohiro Shintani. The results were excellent: not only did he make the character designs more animation friendly, but also managed imbue them with the Frieza arc-era Akira Toriyama energy, resulting in a fresh, distinct mix of styles. He was then succeeded by another winner—Chikashi Kubota took the role of designer for the next film and captured another era of Toriyama’s drawings in the sheets, closer to their look near the end of the manga’s run.

As a side note, I feel like it’s important to understand that Toriyama and thus Dragon Ball’s style has changed a lot since it finished serialization; especially when he switched to digital in the early 2000s, losing angularity in favor of rounder forms and opting for a skinnier look when compared to their previously bulky, muscular feeling. Most of these modern traits weren’t carried over into animation designs until Katsuyoshi Nakatsuru took the helm of a Dragon Ball project once again, returning as a character designer almost 30 years after Dragon Ball GT.

I believe Nakatsuru always understood Toriyama’s style the best. That remains the case to this day, as is visible through his work as Dragon Ball Daima’s chief animation directorChief Animation Director (総作画監督, Sou Sakuga Kantoku): Often an overall credit that tends to be in the hands of the character designer, though as of late messy projects with multiple Chief ADs have increased in number; moreso than the regular animation directors, their job is to ensure the characters look like they’re supposed to. Consistency is their goal, which they will enforce as much as they want (and can).. The tends to prioritize consistency, so it doesn’t veer into heavy deviations from the sheets, but that’s not a big issue when the designs themselves are a perfect rendition of what Toriyama used to draw in the last decade. It looks like his modern illustrations were made alive and honestly, I couldn’t imagine a better farewell to such a legendary artist.

Non-contemporary work award: Sonny Boy

Sometimes in life you come across a work of art that changes how you view certain things. For me, that was Sonny Boy.

I was aware of Shingo Natsume’s abilities before and had been interested in his work since Space Dandy. I had one problem, though: I couldn’t really grasp what made him a truly great artist. With the release of an original project where he as an individual had had full control over everything and was given freedom by the producers, I was finally able to see what I was missing—the exceptional aesthetic sense, the very clear Masaaki Yuasa inspirations, and what’s most important, a worldview that really resonated with me.

Since then, nothing really felt the same. I started paying even more attention to colour design and art direction, focusing on what really makes animation an art form so interesting and engaging. It inspired me so much I even wrote my thesis about this topic, and one of the shows I tried to make an analysis of was of course Sonny Boy.

I’ve always gravitated towards original projects, but Sonny Boy made me realize how important they really are. If I could have one wish for the future of the industry it would be for the producers to finally start embracing its creators, so we can get as many director/animator-driven originals as possible.

I’ve been following a certain Twitter account for quite some time, always enjoying the art they shareed. Thanks to Dungeon Meshi, this year I found out that this account belongs to a Trigger animator Sho Oi, whose name I was familiar with already at that point. However, it was specifically his work on the show that really made me fall in love with his work and realize why that name comes up in conversations about talented youngsters at the studio. His style is obviously inspired by Hiroyuki Imaishi, but even more so by Kai Ikarashi, who at this point has created a following of his own.

Oi has a lot in common with him when it comes to the snappy timing and general drawing style in general, but there’s something about his art that feels even rougher and rawer that makes him distinguishable even among animators with similar traits. He’s already made his debut as an animation director, and with him seemingly moving from the studio’s Fukuoka branch to the main office in Ogikubo I hope there are many great opportunities coming up next for him.

Theleux

EMT [Twitter] Best Episode: One Piece Fan Letter

I wouldn’t call myself an active follower of the One Piece anime; only recently have I started showing up for episodes that are either narrative highlights for the series or offer something special, an exciting gift in the form of animated sequences or neat direction. You can colour me surprised, then, that one of my favourite experiences of the year spawns from what is essentially a nostalgic reflection of the series. Perhaps not too much, though, as One Piece has been on a roll for the past couple of years. Two big contributing factors towards that have been precisely Fan Letter‘s creative duo of Megumi Ishitani and Keisuke “soty” Mori. They’ve got to be one of the best pairs of this decade, bringing forth incredibly strong animated spectacles that fill your soul with super positive vibes. #1015 was (previously) the best One Piece thing I was lucky enough to witness, with this duo’s particular colourful sequences still living rent-free in my mind. To then take that exact energy and apply it to an entire episode—one that is less confined by the regular broadcast limitations—is just… well, I think the result expresses itself enough.

Having the freedom to really go off and strike directly where your strengths sit helps tremendously when it comes to producing something of this caliber. As someone without even that extensive experience with the anime, I was mesmerized by how well the direction and boards detail what level of significance the main cast holds in this scenario. There is no need to stop in their tracks to explain everything, the feeling that pushes through tells you all that you need. The new characters we are introduced to are presented wonderfully too; soty’s character design work is just absurdly bouncy and playful, all whilst conveying those real human characteristics—it all ends up feeling lived-in and authentic. Of course, there’s the joy in movement too; it really does not stop, just ever so lively and constant. The first minute and a half would already be enough to sell itself as a fantastic opening in any given year, but it just keeps going! The massive spread of deliciously animated sequences continues the whole way through, but that doesn’t even begin to speak about the colour and composite work, the gorgeous background artwork, or even the music and SFX implementation. It really is an incredible endeavor—and yet here we are, witnessing it.

In a year with quite a wide spread of standouts to pick from, I think it is difficult to ignore just how bright the light is shining from Ishitani and soty’s phenomenal creation. I wish this level of expertise, understanding of the craft, and industry support and participation were a more common occurrence, but that is but a distant dream. Until that time arrives though, I will be keeping this one locked on replay for the foreseeable future. Thank you to the team!

Best Show: Hibike! Euphonium S3

2015, spring time, I booted up my computer after a day at school, scrolled through social media, and stumbled upon an animated clip of a black-haired girl playing the trumpet atop a hill. I was intrigued; I had played in a concert band back throughout elementary school, so I marched forward. Symphony No.9 in E Minor, Il. Largo, from Dvořák, titled “From the New World“. Little did I know at that time what wonders this “New World” I was venturing into for the first time would provide, but nearly 10 years later, I am very thankful for that first proper step into this medium as a whole.

Hibike! Euphonium has been a significant part of my anime-watching experience, something I come back to occasionally or whenever a new chapter airs. It is one I’ve come to set as a benchmark for my personal rankings; which even it itself, as it has progressed, has not always been able to meet—yet impressively, here we are again, with the bar now even higher. Hibike’s third season takes all the best elements of the series and combines them into one spectacular experience for the final season of Kumiko’s journey. The excellent pacing and comedic moments from the first season, the anxiousness and dramatic clashes of the second season, even some of the strong framing tendencies from Naoko Yamada‘s Liz to Aoi Tori. Everything comes together in an excellent and neat package, evolving the themes of the series in an understandable; incredibly painful, but truthful way, which acts as the perfect send-off for this cast and venture as a whole.

The refinement of the craft director Tatsuya Ishihara exhibits as the series progresses is really just incredible. The first season was never one to really look down upon (and still holds as one of my favourite entries in the series), but going back through again recently, it really highlights just how much the execution has been enhanced by this point. The occasional ‘extra pretty’ moments are absolutely plentiful in the third season, with stronger attention to lighting usage, character motions, and especially the boarding. So much symbolism is present, nothing in outlandish ways; perhaps hilarious at times, but well intended and well delivered. The music too, which may have been one of the factors I would have been more concerned about at this point, is utilized with such outstanding grace. It really is a complete and perfectly executed work, with the reworked narrative direction for the ending being the cherry on top.

All in all, Hibike! Euphonium has always been what I’d deem a pinnacle of human drama in anime, and I am beyond thrilled to see it hold through and true with this third season. Special thanks to all those involved, whatever the future brings, I know it is in great hands.

Honorable Mentions:

Tsutomu Mizushima’s Shuumatsu Train Doko e Iku? is quirky and bizarre, but entirely endearing. One of the funniest shows to air this year, but also wonderfully human in nature. The cast fills every role I’d wish to see from an adventurous series of its kind, and by the end leaves little left to ask for. Colourful, exotic—a nice tight box riding along the rails, a pleasant surprise at every stop and for the year too. Frieren finishes off as strong as it started, offering an intriguing shift away from the day-to-day life experience into a more battle-shounen direction, but still retains the laid-back and chill pacing you’d already come to love. Visually outstanding; expected now from the incredible team at the ready, which shows its extra muscle during the more intense moments as well. Looking forward to the next entry. Dungeon Meshi was a double surprise in a way—the initial manga commercial produced by Trigger was a lot of fun, but to see it be fully realized in a TV anime by the same studio was a real treat. Plenty of fun appearances throughout; one Kai Ikarashi especially. But most importantly, it felt like a genuine exploration of a dungeon with some great stakes, entertaining cast, and delicious food. Excited again for the next season to come. Best Movie: Look Back

I had the chance back in July to visit Anime Expo LA for the first time, at which point I was lucky enough to attend Look Back’s North American premiere. Before said panel, I had the opportunity to speak with Kiyotaka Oshiyama; director, and heart and soul of the project. Around 8 years prior, I had witnessed their directorial debut on Flip Flappers, thoroughly enjoying the eccentric, creative, and occasionally heavy tone of the series, which left a solid impression in my mind. Needless to say, I was happy that they were given the offer to handle a film for this oneshot, originally created by the equally well-regarded Tatsuki Fujimoto—an artist who had also left a mark on me by releasing a similarly bizarre manga in the form of Fire Punch, back in that more formative era for me.

Since that premiere, I’ve seen the movie numerous times in theatres, and a few more once it arrived on streaming. Perhaps the shorter runtime helps with keeping it easy to sit through. Maybe it’s the incredible artwork and music, which provide depth that requires multiple viewings to fully capture. Whatever it may be that keeps getting me to come back, I always end the film with tear-stained eyes and a heavy (but full) heart. And just as heavy is my appreciation for Oshiyama’s approach to the character artwork; as mentioned in interviews, the director wholeheartedly advocates for respecting the work from all contributing animators exactly as it is. This results in much of the film having a very personalized appearance, with what some may deem as ‘errors’ or factors that need to be cleaned up still present. Considering the overwhelming amounts of shows and movies being produced in this overwork-burdened industry, the number of hands in the pot tends to eliminate those individualistic aspects—ones which I so very much cherish. This preservation approach also carries over, not only as a way of portraying Fujimoto’s own artwork in arguably the closest way possible, but as a reflection of the themes as well.

Having shared the experience with varying types of crowds by now, I think it is rather impressive how a film largely targeted towards and dedicated to creators still leaves a significant impact on many who may not be as aware of the trials, tribulations, and general struggles that come with being an artist. As may be evident by the previously mentioned Best Show selection, Kyoto Animations’ works have greatly influenced me over the years; Yasuhiro Takemoto’s mysterious and quirky Hyouka being another strong showing that had molded my outlook over the years. It is therefore hard not to notice the parallels between the narrative and the tragedy that took place 5 years ago, an event that resonated deeply through much of the industry. The questions that spawned from that are asked throughout the story; what reasons do we have to continue doing what we do, or what our real drive or motivation comes from. It is a meta-discussion in a sense, expanding beyond just the characters within the story, or even the audience watching or reading. I think that is where the experience really shines. Everyone has experienced some form of loss, those feelings causing us to reflect on the things we have and do. Being an artist is much like any other passionate venture—it requires the whole of a person to study, evolve, and master. Art in of itself though is an expression of an individual, evocative and pure, but is something that can be appreciated in different ways by many. That to me is why the film transcends those boundaries, potentially even opening the eyes of many along the way.

I believe this film could not have been handled in any better way than it was, and I hope we get to witness more passionate and sentimental offerings in the future of this kind, preferably through better circumstances. These are the ones that remind us of why we do the things we do and that is an important factor – to both reflect on and motivate us. I am very much so looking forward to what more is in store from these two, whenever that may be.

Honorable Mentions:

One of the most anticipated showdowns in the series comes to fruition through Susumu Mitsunaka with Haikyuu!! The Dumpster Battle. A recent rewatching of the series really brings the evolution of the visual approach into the light, highlighting what a great combination of the early seasons’ character acting fundamentals and the newer design work can provide. The extended set coverage really brings that cinematic feel to the film, offering a much more constant experience you would normally only get during match points in prior entries. The same core feeling is there still, which makes for another satisfying, hilarious, and moving time.

One of the most intense watching experiences of the year, Ken “Leaf” Yamamoto’s leap as director for Uma Musume: Beginning of a New Era resulted in an absolutely exhilarating audio-visual spectacle. Ramping up the dramatic tension to the max, the storyboarding for this film keeps you on your toes at all times; of course, compelemented with the excellent soundtrack and SFX work further investing you in the high stake races. Add in the absurd amount of highly creative and well-animated sequences throughout the movie, these honses have simply never looked this good!

Best Opening: One Piece OP26 (link)

One Piece’s 25th opening (already directed by Megumi Ishitani) was an impressive and thoughtful love letter for the series, with its visual direction bringing the entire story back into focus and celebrating the journey thus far. To see Ishitani at the helm again for the next one was exciting news, yet did not fully prep for how colossal of an audio-visual experience the new opening would be. UUUUUS!! is genuinely absurd, filled with excitement and life visible in every nook and cranny. It is a behemoth, practically never resting, delivering an onslaught of clear, vibrant, and zany sequences across the entire runtime. It continues the trend of having one of the cleanest aesthetics from a series that already hits some wonderful highs in that regard; especially so in recent years. To be given an opportunity to send it even further is something really special. Ishitani and Soty are, in my eyes, simply infallible. And if you don’t believe that, simply check out their work across this year alone.

Honorable Mentions:

Keisuke Hiroe presented a lovely opening to Honobu Yonezawa’s Shoushimin Series, accompanied by a surprisingly smooth and rejuvenating vocal performance from the renowned Eve. The clean blue and bright aesthetic goes great with the yellow highlights and strong lighting across the varying settings, carried further by pretty character drawings and animation that depicts the characters in quaint but cute ways. The type of piece that you can easily sit back and watch on repeat for a while. The evolution across Saho Nanjo‘s’Otozure’opening for Kimi wa Meido-sama is a treat to watch, offering some incredibly unique concepts through utilization of LIDAR imagery and real footage. Paired with a progressively energized tune from tricot, the resulting experience reflects some neat themes from the story and creates its own little contained narrative that can be appreciated all of its own. Best Ending: Blue Archive ED (link)

The nostalgic vibes for Furan’s Blue Archive ED ‘Mahiru no Sora no Tsuki’ are immense. The music instrumentation does a lot of work early on to establish that tone, with the lovely character acting sequences fading over each other resembling various memories and experiences had in the past. The seiyuu vocal performance is also one that is always appreciated, but especially so in a case like this where the group experiences are a core thematic. The visual front genuinely rocks too; Moaang and Myoun have a wonderful understanding of and way of expressing character movements, making this group truly look and move the best they ever have. Add in the great utilization of lighting across the various times of day and settings, and you truly have something special on your hands.

Honorable Mentions:

Akihito Sudo’s work on the second ED for Makeine ‘CRAZY FOR YOU’ is a delectable treat, presenting a self-contained narrative that reflects the dreams and desires of one of the cast’s best through gorgeous abstract and starlit imagery. The whole lot of Makeine’s themes are underlined, brought forth through re-integrated animation techniques and very clearly trained artistry.

Re:Zero‘s newest ending’NOX LUX’has the favourable return of MYTH & ROID, their work elevated this time through Takashi Mamezuka‘s involvement in directing a neat overview of the cast and approaching conflicts, all while utilizing the extra animation muscle this season has been provided to animer up the visual experience. A solid addition that highlights a refreshing approach for the series going forward.

Best Music Video: Arknights 2024 Special Commemorative Animation PV (link)

Hiromatsu Shuu has been popping up more and more of late; be it their involvement with Blue Giant, contributing to Chainsaw Man’s 5th ED, their animation participation with Ranking of Kings, Wonder Egg Priority, and many other strong showings. Their work with the Fate/Grand Order Memorial Movie last year was particularly impressive, exhibiting a keen eye for symbolic imagery whilst keeping the flow of excellently animated sequences moving—and all of it, with such visual density! They’ve already proven their capabilities as an animator and director up to this point, so it wouldn’t surprise you how excited I was to witness their work once again with Arknight’s Special Commemorative Animation PV earlier this year.

Being a favourite property of mine, it was impressive to see just how efficiently they were able to convey the story in such a short timeframe, as well as how significant and motivational the events depicted would be moving forward. The heavily detailed drawings and shading add both a lot of depth to the imagery, but also bring out more of the human aspects of the series, which for a heavier story helps in establishing a feeling of significance for the audience to latch on to. Mili’s musical accompaniment does incredible work alongside the wide range of stylistically composited sequences, by the end of which fills you with a desire to do what is needed to fight for this grand cast of characters (IE. opening the game and doing your dailies). All in all, a lovely treat to be provided with this year, one I’ve struggled not to humm to myself constantly.

Best Aesthetic: The Elusive Samurai, Frieren

Ever since the initial trailer released, I’d been thoroughly smitten by the art direction and general aesthetic of the Nige Jouzu no Wakagimi adaptation. The lovely saturated colour work is super appealing, but also does good work in contrasting the heavier setting that the story takes place in. The brutality of the battles and bloodshed is ever present, but the approach allows the comedic and significant narrative beats to be elevated, blossoming the protagonist’s innocence and doing a great job at selling their influence on the rest of the cast. It also does wonders for further boosting the rather abstract and impressive sequences throughout, bringing a strong visual identity to the series overall. Fabulous job all things considered.

Couldn’t help but mention Frieren too as it continued its airing from last year. The second half of the season starts leaning in a more action-centric direction, yet the beautiful settings and clean composite work still remains and leaves a strong impression. The series continues to look fantastic from beginning to end, with some especially strong appearances towards the final stretch. I am glad to see that Keiichirou Saitou’s vision for the series held true for the entire run, and look forward to what more is to come.

Best Animation Designs: One Piece Fan Letter (Keisuke Mori), Look Back (Kiyotaka Oshiyama), Too Many Losing Heroines/Makeine (Tetsuya Kawakami)

As the years go by, I feel like designs become more and more of a calling card for me when sniffing through the onslaught of shows coming out each season. This year we were blessed with soty’s excellent work on multiple occasions, enabling many wondrous sequences in his playful worlds. Kiyotaka Oshiyama’s intense work, one that very much so evolved over the course of Look Back‘s production, depicted what may as well be one of the best renditions of Fujimoto’s artwork we’ve seen.

Yet when it comes to your usual TV anime offerings, Tetsuya Kawakami really nailed it with Make Heroine ga Oosugiru’s character design work. Even before the anime was announced, the light novel illustrations of multiple girls wearing an outrageous number of bows on their school uniforms was a frightening sight; and now here we are with said designs being some of the funniest and most appreciated of the year. Every episode brought way for some new twists to the cast, either through quirky movements or goofy facial expressions. It worked wonderfully to bring these, well, losers some well-deserved charm. The supporting cast was no exception either, numerous presumably nameless mob characters are still fresh in my memory. Much like my other favorites, excellent across the board.

Honorable Mentions:

The ‘Girls Band Anime’ debate you were coerced into picking a side in was a lie, turns out both Yoru no Kurage wa Oyogenai and Girls Band Cry could cook. Kiui, Shizue, Subaru, and Rupa are a triumph for everyone.

Non-contemporary Work Award: Die Hard

The holidays inevitably signaled another rewatch of the Christmas film classic Die Hard, and I must say it continues to hold up each year. John McTiernan and Jan de Bont really were the perfect pairing for the work, setting a stellar tone and visual approach for the action thriller. The perfect pacing of the movie, from the ominous arrival of the terrorists through to the tense shootouts and emotional highs, really keeps you seated and immersed. The excellent casting, particularly in the late Alan Rickman, but also further into the supporting cast, sell the experience excellently. The splashes of comedy throughout also come off well-intended and don’t detract from any moment. Michael Kamen’s score for the film is one I can practically memorize by heart now, whose instrumentation choices with the christmas elements lovingly dotted throughout brings some much needed levity to the otherwise aggressive and impactful soundtrack. It is clear over the years how big of an influence it had on the genre and really cinema as a whole around that point. I wish we’d see more of this type of work, with this particular execution primarily. Maybe someday we’ll get more in this vein for animated works too, especially considering the freedom that the medium offers for action and creativity in general. Overall, I just hope this isn’t simply a relic of the past.

Natasha

Ah, Satan [Twitter] Best Movie: Look Back

Tatsuki Fujimoto has always been a bit of a hit-or-miss for me. More than once, his love for the absurd through male-dominant perspectives has left me feeling like I’ve been shut outside in the cold snow, in front of a surprisingly cozy cottage. It’s not that I can’t peer through the window and see his warmth and hope for the human condition; it’s just that it has felt clinically dissected from my personal experiences.

Kiyotaka Oshiyama shatters that wall with his deft and personal adaptation of Look Back—a  story that hit very close to home for me when I first read it, as someone who was honored to attend the KyoAni Memorial back in 2019. The movie captures the momentum, grief, awkward grace, and messiness of growing up with dreams in a world with the capacity of such cruelty. If that sounds simple, well, it is: Look Back’s story isn’t novel, but its execution pricks at all my sensations, as an engineer amidst the chaotic center of AI discourse and what it means to pursue true art. Like many a good story, it doesn’t offer an answer; it begs us to know that as a creator, where your hundreds of drafts end as a final page’s brushstroke, is where a reader’s inspiration begins.

Best Opening: Kimi wa Meido-sama/You Are Ms. Servant OP (link), One Piece OP26 (link)

It’s a little unfair that You are Ms. Servant‘s OP is set to Tricot, as a massive fan of their music. It is perhaps even more unfair that this opening is the most creative work I’ve seen this year, made by the rising alternative team within Qootain. I don’t have the chops to dissect how this opening manages to capture societal isolation in a variety of mediums that push the boundary of what an anime opening is; nor can I encapsulate how well it brings Tricot’s fresh math rock appeal to life with visual galore with paper cut animations, CG use, and key animationKey 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.. What I can say is that Saho Nanjo and Setsuka Kawahara are easily a duo I’m keeping my eyes on from now on.

As for my runner-up, it has to be One Piece‘s 26th opening. That sequence hit our screens very early in 2024, but it still remains fresh on my mind; Megumi Ishitani‘s talents continue to thrive here, again with Keisuke “soty” Mori‘s bubbly character designs. While it’s not as cohesive as her previous opening, it has some of the densest—yet so free—execution I’ve seen in an opening, almost akin to the work of Rie Matsumoto. Thinly veering on almost too dense, this opening manages to effuse charm and delight while capturing that flat aesthetic that is so emblematic of One Piece at its best.

Best Episode: One Piece Fan Letter

It seems unfair to keep throwing One Piece on these lists, year after year, especially when it’s usually the same person at the helm of its greatest highlights—but is that not a proof of Megumi Ishitani’s astounding skill? I already discussed how her work alongside Keisuke “soty” Mori on the 26th opening encompasses the chaotic and vibrant affairs of the most recent arc, but I believe Fan Letter  is where the duo truly shines most. Mori’s tight supervision over most cuts, in combination with Ishitani’s densely packed spectacle of color, come together to create a short series that embodies the soul of One Piece within the brief and incidental—as opposed to among the grand and epic. I’m particularly fond of how Ishitani imbues consistent motifs throughout quick cuts; we saw it in her work around the 25th opening, and she continues it here, amidst colorful layoutsLayouts (レイアウト): The drawings where animation is actually born; they expand the usually simple visual ideas from the storyboard into the actual skeleton of animation, detailing both the work of the key animator and the background artists. and composition.

Best Show: Gimai Seikatsu

2024 had plenty of bombastic and dazzling hits: the beginning of the year treated us with Delicious in Dungeon and wrapped up Frieren, and the end of the year greeted us with the intense second season of Arcane as well as the spunky Dandadan!. In between, we had some good moments; I’m sorely tempted to place the third season of Sound! Euphonium, Makeine, or even Girls Band Cry here, never missing a beat in characterization, stunning animation and composite, and sharp script.

But it’s perhaps because there were so many explosive productions that Gimai Seikatsu‘s sombre, almost too quiet of a story struck me harder than anything I’ve seen all year. Much like After the Rain, Seikatsu‘s story seems scandalous and cringe-worthy, but arriving to it you’re met with a glassy, calm lake instead. Underneath lies some of the most mature and hard hitting truths I’ve seen about relationships and self-realization. Its delicate soundtrack, simple layoutsLayouts (レイアウト): The drawings where animation is actually born; they expand the usually simple visual ideas from the storyboard into the actual skeleton of animation, detailing both the work of the key animator and the background artists., and pragmatic direction embolden a nuanced story about trauma, vulnerability, and the inherent need to reach out to connect with others—even when that moment could greet you with shame, rejection, and uglier truths about yourself.

Creator Discovery: Souta Ueno

To that end, the directorial debut of Souta Ueno for Gimai Seikatsu is immense. Some have made drawn comparisons between his works and those of Mamoru Hatakeyama and they’re not wrong, but I personally felt like I was looking at a creator achieving similar success as Ayumu Watanabe; a deliberate comparison, since Watanabe’s After the Rain also handles messy relationships with equal care. Like Watanabe, Ueno doesn’t limit his concept of adaptation to (attempting) a 1:1 replica. Instead, he dives into the soul of a work: what makes it tick, which wheels and cogs turn on each other to fuel this holistic and breathing piece of fiction.

Ueno lives in the attics of his characters’têtes; among the cobwebs built by their flaws and internal dialogues, brings it all to life through avantgarde visual framing. In any other pair of hands, Seikatsu would be dull, facetious, and glazed with empty commentary. Ueno’s attention to poignance by contrasting muted moments of household mundanity with budding emotional catharsis turns Seikatsu into a beautiful, blooming flower. I can only rub my hands together with anticipation for what career opportunities await him next.

Creator Discovery: Hi-Fi Rush

Over the last decade, I’ve had a tendency to look back at the Saturday Morning Cartoon concept with a slight sense of derision: we don’t have the likes of 4Kids anymore, but maybe that was for the best, right? The age of goofiness and zany optimism could be over, but at least we had other forms of animation to enjoy.

Hi-Fi Rush technically came out in 2023, but I only got the chance to play it a month ago. It has, with a beating heart and a guitar, smashed my expectations and forced me to realize the error of my ways. It is, unironically, Saturday morning anime. I emphasize that lack of irony because it embraces all the whistles and bolts of the cheese that leaves you beaming, rather than cringing.

Hi-Fi Rush offers an acoustic symphony with fast-paced rhythm combat mechanics that leave you addicted and wanting for more; a tempting offering accompany by an explosively banging soundtrack and a charming cast of characters that never verge on being annoying. Tango Gameworks really steps up to the plate by creating a toon shader that is sharp, colorful, and easy to spot amidst visual effect galore, creating a pop art aesthetic with bold outlines, distinctive shadows, and comic expressions. It’s a joyful experience from beginning to end and I couldn’t recommend it enough.

Kevin

Me [Twitter] Best Episode: Kusuriya no Hitorigoto/The Apothecary Diaries #18, Dungeon Meshi #03, Wazamonogatari, Hibike! Euphonium S3 #12

Isn’t the passage of time cruel? That’s the profound conclusion I reached when looking at the calendar and realizing that we tend to forget the great works that landed at the beginning of the year, especially if they started back in the previous one. I sort of understand why people don’t feel the necessity to reiterate that Frieren has continued to be one of the most aesthetically appealing shows, or that Kusuriya remained thoroughly entertaining; I also said those things last year, so they’re not exactly new revelations. When it comes to episodes that landed in the calendar year, though, I see no reason not to shout out moments like Kusuriya #18. Its breathtaking usage of color gives elegance to hints of a tragedy that may appear in poor taste otherwise, making its first half in particular a highlight of 2024.

Dungeon Meshi, which also began a whole year ago, has plenty of candidates. There is the explosiveness of Ichigo Kanno’s episode #03, which meets the appealing spontaneity of Ryoko Kui’s original art from a different angle. Can’t forget about #06, a very smartly constructed episode that also represents the potential of premium outsourcing—and of studio Enishiya in particular, as they’re currently on the rise. Because of that astute management, Trigger’s in-house team was allowed to go all-out whenever that was required; episodes like #11/#15 (welcome back Nobutoshi Ogura!) and #17 certainly come to mind. There are enough excellent episodes of DunMeshi with an identity of their own that you could tell me any of them are your highlight of the year and I would immediately understand it.

Many of my 2024 favorites blend too successfully into their shows as a whole for me to attempt to separate them, but sometimes their style is too distinct and their role too prominent to feel like just another part of a great show. Shoshimin #02 is one such case, thanks to the storyboards and direction by Nobuyuki Takeuchi. The appeal of Honobu Yonezawa’s works is in the mundane nature of his mystery-solving, and in this particular case, in the friction between those everyday scenarios and the weirdness of characters who nonetheless wish for normalcy. The off-kilter nature of that mix requires a tight grasp on the atmosphere to convey, and Takeuchi is here at his most measured to offer the groundwork that allows the show to become a riot later. Although they arrive at different points, Gimai Seikatsu #09 and Makeine’s anime-original finale also stand out as particularly sharp examples of the ideas in their shows; Bravern #09 as well, and by ideas I also mean Yoshinari Saito’s commitment to making the explosions kick ass.

One series I expected to be a lock among my favorites was Monogatari OMS, which reinvigorated the franchise under the wing of a new director. In the end, it arrived slightly too exhausted to a final arc I didn’t find as compelling as the preceding ones, but along the way it still landed some of my favorite episodes of 2024. I would highlight in particular Nademonogatari #01, which followed up the actual first episode of the season with an upfront exposition of its themes and the limitless means of expression brought back to the table by director Midori Yoshizawa. In contrast to this breath of fresh air, I’d also highlight the two episodes that constitute Wazamonogatari; effectively a short film split in two, and with so much focus on gothic horror that Akiyuki Shinbo transcends his usual role as supervisor to become the true director.

In the end, however, my answer is clear. Hibike! Euphonium S3 didn’t need an episode to elevate it. The show never felt passive because that’s not in the nature of its creators, but it’s undeniable that at this stage in the franchise, so much excellent work has already been done that this season simply had cash in cheques to be a great show. Again, that was never its intention. It rearranged the entire structure of the source material, somewhat unfocused that it was, to be able to naturally cover the final two novels in a single season; lack of breathing room has been a relatively issue of certain arcs in the series, but not in the one that is meant to slowly asphyxiate the audience to begin with.

Week by week it accumulated nuance to their personal drama and club politics, in the same way it had done for entire seasons prior. The relationship between Eupho’s anime and its source material is unique in the first place—authors who share a city and who have been pushing each other, influencing each other for a decade now. And yet, that doesn’t mean they perfectly coincide, even when they ultimately want to express the same things. So, by episode #12 of season 3, the details that had made KyoAni’s take on this story had accumulated enough to move a mountain. A molehill, perhaps, because the drama in this series is very human and you know what we tend to do with those. It was, nonetheless, something quite important for the characters.

Framing it as a change in the narrative is missing the point; if anything, it’s the anime’s bold move to remain itself. Considering the accumulated details about the characters and the angle they had taken towards others—most notoriously in refusing to allow Mayu to be othered and misunderstood like she was in the novel—the show simply made the most coherent choice and shifted one outcome. It did so delicately, delivered with such finesse, that you both can feel it coming and still wish that it goes the other way around; maybe the next time you rewatch the episode it will, because it’s that close, and that’s the point.

Although the current anime ecosystem is so used to flavorless adaptations that completely depersonalize their creators, I don’t believe the episode and thus this final arc on their own would be that daring in a healthier space. Again, not only is the anime’s choice the most coherent it could make within its own story, but they also go an extra length to sell that friction in perhaps the most emphatic delivery Eupho has ever seen. The animation in episode #12 and the finale itself isn’t only technically great but palpably emotive, with its greatest highlight in form of the bittersweet return to the most sacred of places. Tomomi Sato’s animation is never “sad”, and it certainly isn’t pure happiness either; it contains everything in between, with a degree of emotional precision you simply don’t see in anime. It’s, in many ways, the summary of a final arc in Eupho S3 that confidently raises the whole show.

So, in the end, Hibike! Euphonium S3 got an episode to elevate it, and the entire series with it. Maybe Eupho itself didn’t need it, but now I realize that I did, and certain reactions indicate that the industry as a whole did as well.

Honorable mentions: I already wrote about it recently but don’t you dare forget about China’s Puniru #07. And what’s with the number #07 anyway? Shuuto Enomoto also knocked it out of the park with Dandadan. Shout out to him too, since he got invited to the awards and happily said he reads the site a bunch even if he couldn’t join. Everyone loved the episode you led for a good reason!

Best Show: Hibike! Euphonium S3, Yubisaki to Renren/A Sign of Affection

Come on, it’s Eupho S3. What are we doing here.

Honorable mentions: Since competing with that is unfair, I must give plenty of shout-outs still:

Bravern was easily the most fun series to follow, as an original series thoroughly committed to the madness of Masami Obari. One of the first big projects by the then still developing western sakugaSakuga (作画): Technically drawing pictures but more specifically animation. Western fans have long since appropriated the word to refer to instances of particularly good animation, in the same way that a subset of Japanese fans do. Pretty integral to our sites’brand. sphere was a series of articles by my good friend Kraker, who attempted to bridge the gap between Obari’s renown within the industry and the image of him as a fanservice peddler in broad English-speaking communities; of course, robot nerds always loved him. That didn’t involve denying that Obari has gleefully worked on trashy shows before, but illuminating that he’s also one of the most influential mecha artists of all time, and a very fun director in the right scenario. Bravern is exactly that: juvenile, enthusiastic, hilarious, and robosexual. Shuumatsu Train was another blast of an original—capital o Original, honestly. At some point we need to have a conversation about Tsutomu Mizushima, who might not simply be a good director but one of the best to ever do it. I hesitate to place any individual work of his among the greatest anime, but if I look at the echelon right below that, it’s so full of the likes of Girls und Panzer, Shirobako, Mayoiga (yes, did I stutter?), Oofuri, and more surreal comedies than I can count that the arguments in his favor become irrefutable. This show in specific is fueled by his experience across many genres, switching from film parodies you could have never imagined to riffing on himself with Garupan-like setpieces. A microcosm of Mizushima’s bizarre appeal, and how nonchalant he is about it. Yubisaki to Renren/A Sign of Affection was so good, and so welcome in a space like shoujo anime that had been barren for years, that I’m retroactively including it as a top pick as I write this. Thoughtfully brought to life by series directorSeries Director: (監督, kantoku): The person in charge of the entire production, both as a creative decision-maker and final supervisor. They outrank the rest of the staff and ultimately have the last word. Series with different levels of directors do exist however – Chief Director, Assistant Director, Series Episode Director, all sorts of non-standard roles. The hierarchy in those instances is a case by case scenario. Yuta Murano, who storyboarded it all after extensive research—accumulated on top of the consideration that its original authors already had given it. Beautiful, bold to tackle the challenge that is animating sign language within TV animation, and proudly successful of having cleared that hurdle. Please watch this show. Gimai Seikatsu was another clear highlight of the year for me, and perhaps the show I respected the most. The sheer gall to approach a genre that is usually delivered in the plainest, least challenging way possible as if it were arthouse cinema is hilarious—and in the end, very successful. When it comes to renowned studios putting out a bit of a side project, both Dungeon Meshi and Dandadan started as strong contenders; not embracing the full idiosyncrasy that their workplaces are known for, but led by up-and-coming directors there who have immediately proven to be very resourceful. Despite similarly enjoyable beginnings (and in no way because of the core staff’s failings), Dandadan completely ran out of fuel when Saru’s unsustainable production pacing caught up with them. Which is to say, Laios and company win this time. I may have said that Kusuriya’s greatness is classified as 2023 in my mind, but that won’t stop me from saying it’s one of the best anime of 2024 Fascinatingly methodical in approach, always amusing in its catcatness. I hope that the less favorable schedule for season 2 doesn’t rob us of another incredible show. It’s not a secret that I was completely in love with Girls Band Cry initially, but also that I felt like it lost its edge in a disappointing way for its final arc—notoriously, after a baffling family-themed épisode. I would be lying to myself if I didn’t call it a highlight of 2024, though, because most of it is excellent. With director Kazuo Sakai drawing nearly every storyboardStoryboard (絵コンテ, ekonte): The blueprints of animation. A series of usually simple drawings serving as anime’s visual script, drawn on special sheets with fields for the animation cut number, notes for the staff and the matching lines of dialogue. and Jukki Hanada penning all the scripts, you get a stylistic consistency that most TV shows can’t aspire to; in this case, manifested through a musicality to its direction that bleeds into the animation as well. While not short of technical issues, the way the series distances itself from the norms of CG anime feels delightfully fresh; and of course a Nina-led show would say fuck you to the rules! At its best, GBC was as good as anime gets. My late favorites have been Kinoko Inu (what if Yurucamp was about overcoming ordinary grief and mushroom dogs), and Dragon Ball Daima (what if GT was about being good anime); the latter I plan to write about at some point before it finishes, I promise. Negaposi Angler nearly stuck among my absolute favorites with its charming found family angle, though the way it played it relatively safe at the very end makes me wish for a bit more out of an already great anime. And as far as narratives I’d enjoy even if you gave me the script on its own, but that have also adorned it with interesting visual choices every now and then, I have to say that Chi/Orb slightly beat Yatagarasu for me. Incidentally, I found out that Orb’s author may not watch much anime but is a huge fan of Eupho, which is relevant to the adaptation of his show because his one request was to enlist Kensuke Ushio as the composer—yes, because of the likes of Liz and the Blue Bird. See, we’ve come full circle. Best Movie: Kimi no Iro/The Colors Within, Look Back, Anzu-chan, Uma Musume: Pretty Derby – Beginning of a New Era

Frankly, I’ve done my homework in writing about my favorite films of 2024. Kimi no Iro is Naoko Yamada’s most amusing film since she wrapped up the K-ON! franchise, but without abandoning the ethereal touch that characterizes her modern films. It’s presented with traditional sources of drama and kindly pushes them away because it would rather you have a good time. And yet, even though that choice to distance itself from the norms could make it appear unapproachable, the moment to moment experience of following Totsuko is so funny that right about anyone can have a very enjoyable time if they meet the movie with honesty. While it’s not its intent—the movie isn’t burdened with any type of agenda to begin with—it becomes a demonstration that the dichotomy between obtuse arthouse films and broadly entertaining movies has always been fake.

In contrast to Kimi no Iro’s brightness, Look Back tackling the paradox of the artist makes it a rather heavy experience; though in the direction that Tatsuki Fujimoto and Kitotaka Oshiyama steer it, an ultimately uplifting one too. The blessing and curse of wanting (needing!) to create things imbues it with that duality, which Oshiyama translates into the production itself with a methodology that both isolates but also connects each animator. It’s a powerful movie that I like about as much as I enjoy Anzu-chan, the adventures of a rude child and a ruder, human-sized feline. It’s a movie about fostering community among very different people, which in turn involved two directors with different sensibilities meeting in the middle through their shared interest in outcasts. It’s got the quirky tempo of a Nobuhiro Yamashita film, but more bounce to it thanks to the sumptuous touch of Yoko Kuno.

The one film I’ve regretfully not gotten around to writing about is Ken “Leaf” Yamamoto’s Uma Musume: Pretty Derby – Beginning of a New Era—an error I plan to rectify sometime this month. For now, I can say that this one mocks another dichotomy: the idea that modern anime built around its sheer animation power can’t also be deliberate and meaningful. It’s not as if this phenomenon doesn’t happen; Leaf himself complained about the reliance on animation alone for spectacle last year in these same awards. But as Beginning of the New Era exposes, it doesn’t have to. Right about every scene is chockful of either powerfully raw drawings or impressive depictions of perspective, but also of its overarching theme of possibilities. Its usage of color is as sharp as its art, its storyboards as efficient as its horses are deranged. If it really kickstarts a new era, I’ll be happy to join it.

Honorable mentions: Most positive stuff that people have said about Beginning of a New Era applies to Precure All Stars F; Yuta Tanaka’s equivalent with girls who are merely magical as opposed to equine, featuring Toei’s most exciting young animators. Easily the most entertaining 2023 film that I saw this year! Shout out to Those Scary Black Things by Geidai student Shinkai Dango too. It’s a short film that uses its cute stop-motion aesthetic to depict the fear of the unknown from the point of view of a child, making the anxiety more palatable. Ultimately, it shows that the unknown can simply stand for things we’ve yet to love, so we shouldn’t be afraid.

Best Opening/Ending: Solo Leveling OP (link), The Elusive Samurai OP (link), Cherry Magic OP (link), I Parry Everything OP (link), Kimi wa Meido-sama OP (link), Every Too Many Losing Heroines/Makeine OP/ED (link, link, link, link) Saijaku Tamer ED (link), Ranma 1/2 (2024) ED1 (link) Solo Leveling is a bit of an uncharacteristic first pick for me perhaps, but the action is just that cool. What I particularly like about it is that studio PPURI and Inseung Choi offer a clearly different flavor from the one you’ll tend to find in Japanese animation. Embarrassing controversies aside, it was a smart choice to go with a team representative of Korean animation given the nature of the source material. The neat finishing touch to that choice was appointing Production IG’s Hiromu Ooshiro as its motion graphics artist. Ooshiro holds that position within the show itself too, and was even allowed to have complete stylistic control over the ending he directed ; which is to say, that there is a consistent thread still between these parts that are deliberately different. Tough needle to thread but they pulled it off! CherryMaho’s opening is an unexpected comeback of the Escaflowne duo of Kazuki Akane and Nobuteru Yuuki. It abstracts the show’s premise—a guy has the ability to read thoughts via touch, whether he wants it or not—into a very readable, beautiful sequence. Unwanted dark thoughts become crows that harass him, but someone’s pure affection reaches him too; and at that point, deliberate and warm physical contact is made, after all previous hands missed each other. Both of The Elusive Samurai’s sequences look great, for similar reasons why the colorful show itself does. I’m contractually obliged to shout out the opening in particular though, because it’s another showcase of Yuto Hama being the greatest typography specialist around anime. Can Love Cobra be real yet? I’ve become a big fan of Ayaka Nakata. She’s the type of alternative artist you wouldn’t necessarily expect within commercial animation, but she approaches the pitches that are sent her way with the same attitude and seriousness that she would face more personal work with. This means that, rather than a hazy summary of future events or just placing the characters in nondescript cool situations, she genuinely attempts to distill the themes of the work. That’s why I Parry Everything, which already featured neat moments thanks to its Kusuriya-adjacent team, got to have one of the coolest openings of the year. Following that independent artist thread, Saho Nanjo’s opening for Kimi wa Meido-sama is the most eccentric sequence of the year—and I love it for that. Her personal interest in perspective fits a series where two people with fundamentally different backgrounds meet, and the multitude of ways to express that (rather straightforwardly too!) keeps you interested all the way through. In a way, this is a double pick; that exact same team and unique roles, with Setsuka Kawahara and Haruka Teramoto involved in both cases, were in charge of the new BEASTARS opening too. Their approach is more refined and polished for this second sequence, and as funky as the song asks it to be. In the end, though, I still gravitate a bit more towards the chaotic nature of their Meido-sama What’s up with Makeine? Having multiple ending sequences is fairly bold, but I grew up with SHAFT’s golden age and recently enjoyed that about CSM the most, so that much I can deal with. But perfectly nailing specific flavors of wistfulness that correspond to each losing heroine with all of them, when your opening gleefully succeeds at showing the more vibrant side of your romcom? C’est juste ridicule. I refuse to pick favorites among them. You were supposed to be losers, why are you winning so hard?! To wrap this up, my surprise ending of the year has to go to Saijaku Tamer. Closer inspection would tell you that such an unusually evocative sequence makes sense; after all, the show was supervised by Shigeyasu Yamauchi, who has also been kicking ass at his age in Sengoku Youko’s best episodes. Even with that in mind, though, contacting Jamie Vickers ages ahead of its eventual broadcast so that he could direct, storyboardStoryboard (絵コンテ, ekonte): The blueprints of animation. A series of usually simple drawings serving as anime’s visual script, drawn on special sheets with fields for the animation cut number, notes for the staff and the matching lines of dialogue., paint the backgrounds, and fully key animate the ending shows the degree of care that went into this. Ranma 1/2‘s new ending is, simply, perfect aesthetic economy. And also, very cute. Best Aesthetic: One Piece Fan Letter, Kimi no Iro/The Colors Within, Look Back

For the record, One Piece Fan Letter is one of the greatest episodes of 2024, if not the last few years altogether. I nodded with approval every time someone acknowledged it as such, which has been in fact many times across everyone’s ballots. The reason why I chose to place it here instead has nothing to do with insufficient quality overall—rather, Fan Letter is such a cohesive audiovisual triumph that it just had to be here. It’s no secret that I value aesthetics that naturally extend from the themes of a work, ideally encompassing them all in one way or the other. And that’s exactly what the latest collaboration between Megumi Ishitani and Keisuke “soty” Mori is.

Fan Letter’s thesis is simple: the sprawling tapestry of One Piece’s world only exists as a combination of individual threads, of people and their circumstances. One may be shinier than the others, or have a placement that invites higher praise, but the whole requires everyone; not just the inspirational pirates clashing against the system, but also the civilians who may inadvertently get on the way of the law, or the many different personalities within the marines themselves. Ishitani & co visually summarize that idea as a puzzle that is gradually constructed until the Straw Hats sail free, and more importantly, they build this special episode in the exact same way.

There is a perfect sense of unity in Fan Letter’s style that makes it feel like every shot embodied that message. It’s not about the appealing colors, so vivid when they need to be, but always with a serene quality to them. It’s not about the malleable designs, nor the art direction with as much range. It is about the way they all blend so naturally that full cel shots and BG-only ones with beautifully stylized vistas look like the exact same whole, because Fan Letter wants you to believe that all of its pieces click together to form a world.

That blurring between the lines to make one seamless whole starts with the job allocation in the first place. Ishitani and soty didn’t only collaborate on the storyboard—with the latter putting his action expertise to good use—but also were involved in the writing process itself. The latter contributed to aspects like prop and art design as well, further merging characters, belongings, and setting into one. The former did the same from the directorial seat; the surge of color with Luffy’s inspirational drive-by is stunning in its own right, but out of consideration for that sense of unity for the world, it’s internally justified by the way he dissipates the smoke. Every piece clicks in place.

Although I’ve already given them their flowers, much of this applies to The Colors Within and Look Back too. Naoko Yamada’s synesthetic sensibilities have been a topic of discussion for a long time, so being able to experience an entire film built around them is a joy beyond words; few people can make a film where you feel like you can stare at music, even touch it. Meanwhile, Kiyotaka Oshiyama was willing to get in the mud to wrestle with the curse of art. His take on Look Back thoroughly embraces a rough, very manmade look, not just to postulate that this approach can be appealing—though doing that too, deliberately taunting the ludicrous advent of AI art. But more importantly, his angle becomes a natural consequence of the unquenchable desire to stand out as an individual artist, even in the context of a grand collaboration like an anime film. It’s the director’s own, confident answer to Look Back.

Honorable mentions: Some of my favorite backgrounds and lighting of the year happened in The Magical Girl and the Evil Lieutenant Used to Be Archnnemies aka MahoAku. The Etranger duo of director Akiyo Ohashi and art directorArt Director (美術監督, bijutsu kantoku): The person in charge of the background art for the series. They draw many artboards that once approved by the series director serve as reference for the backgrounds throughout the series. Coordination within the art department is a must – setting and color designers must work together to craft a coherent world. Yumiko Kaga (accompanied this time by Takumi Onitani) proved their compatibility again with a series that heavily relies on the ethereal beauty of their world—after all, that’s what counterbalances the crudeness of the show’s humor, which could have been overbearing otherwise. And speaking of which: I may not have vibed with The Elusive Samurai, but I’m genuinely happy that a show with such bold style exists in that space. The idea of what action anime can and should look like is becoming increasingly narrower, so it’s comforting to see a high-profile team take a radically different route.

While it doesn’t quite reach the heights of my main choices, I think Makeine is well deserving of praise for the direct link between its physical grounding, the extensive art and color design to express the appeal of that location, and its overall outlook. Similarly, I couldn’t end this without acknowledging Anzu-chan again. Creating a movie that beautiful is already a success, but doing so as an international co-production, by mixing animation and live-action filming, with directors who had never worked in an arrangement like this? That farting cat is a miracle, honestly.

Best Animation Designs: Kimi no Iro/The Colors Within (Takashi Kojima), Girls Band Cry (Teshima nari)

In a way, the tremendous success in the previous category has made it harder for me to find a winner in this one. It’s not that Keisuke “soty” Mori’s designs for One Piece Fan Letter wouldn’t be worthy of this consideration, far from that. Rather, they’re such a perfect piece to the rest of its sprawling puzzle that I can’t even conceive separating it from its whole; think of it as a soundtrack so fitting for the work it accompanies that it doesn’t feel quite right to listen to it in isolation, even if it constitutes beautiful music regardless. Similarly, Kiyotaka Oshiyama’s designs for Look Back are intrinsically tied to his philosophy about not adhering to the sheets, to his ever-presence in the film through that distinct rough art, and ultimately, to its thesis about art. Getting too specific with the praise to its parts doesn’t sit right with me.

The closest I’m able to bring myself to dissect one of these perfect packages would be with Takashi Kojima’s design work in The Colors Within. In this case, it’s the circumstances outside of the work itself that make it a particularly remarkable effort. Naoko Yamada has, like every other highly idiosyncratic director, a specific series of needs that technical skill alone wouldn’t allow just any artist to provide. Even the prospect of working with the late legend Futoshi Nishiya was once intimidating for her; sure, he was a tremendous artist from her workplace that she was already acquainted with, but could they fit together in the way she had so seamlessly did with Yukiko Horiguchi? The answer is now a resounding yes thanks to Koe no Katachi and Liz and the Blue Bird, but their excellence speaks more about Nishiya’s ability to adapt without losing his core than anything else.

It’s not as if Yamada has had poor luck with her designers ever since then—they even include Kojima himself back in Heike Monogatari—but The Colors Within feels like the first real triomphe in following Nishiya’s path of success. Totsuko’s design captures all the adorable, funny mannerisms that Yamada is known for and that serve as the core of the entire film; the same can be said of Rui, who might very well have the cutest acting in the entire thing.

On the other hand, the elegance that can’t be separated from the director’s modern work is embodied by characters like Kimi. She feels distinctly inspired by the sleek nature of the characters in Liz, while still retaining a palpable Kojima-esque look. Like in Nishiya’s case, this aspect is important too; if the designer hadn’t been so comfortable drawing the characters, he couldn’t have acted as the movie’s sole animation director to give it such a strong sense of cohesion. Even this approach hasn’t come to him as naturally as it did to those exceptional artists she had trained with, it’s truly admirable that they’ve found a way to work this well together at an already very developed stage of their careers.

As for other shows, I have to give the nod to Teshima Nari’s work for Girls Band Cry; an immediately recognizable cast without having to break out of the ordinary, plus no one else designed queen of lies Pleiades this year. For this category, we tend to pay specific attention to how the designs are translated to animation rather than whatever drafts were originally drawn, as it’s quite common to have those butchered or simply become unfit for the production they’ll be used in. Despite its 3D nature, this isn’t an issue for Girls Band Cry. The models capture their charm reasonably well, with an important feature added in the process: the 3D forms seem to drop the character’s IQ to the level it belongs. Wouldn’t want Nina to accidentally appear smart, you know.

Non-contemporary Work Award: Classic Wallace & Gromit, Jan Svankmajer’s Dimensions of Dialogue

Not to toot my own horn, but I adore this category’s addition to our awards. If the point is that everyone can share works of animation that they’ve truly loved, the ones that have stood the test of time—or at least aren’t fueled by people’s obsession with the new and current—must be particularly valuable. Ever since we started organizing watch parties in our official Discord, you’d think I would have plenty of great material to talk about. Technically, I do; this year we’ve gone through the likes of Kuuchuu Buranko, To Heart, Yozakura Quartet, Kaguya-hime, and You’re Under Arrest, all of them great in their own ways. The only issue? I was perfectly aware of their greatness already, so it’s hard for me to tether them to 2024. Mind you, that’s not necessary for this category, but brains work in curious ways and mine hesitates to talk about works I’d already pre-selected as my favorites in this context.

I kept on hesitating about this category as the time to write my entry approached, eventually resigning myself to trust whichever inspiration of the moment might guide me in the end. A few days ago, by the time I got around to watching the new Wallace & Gromit feature-length film, I wasn’t even thinking about it anymore. The movie turned out to be great; at the series’ current stage of refinement and given the release cadence of studio Aardman, crossing paths with new entries is like meeting an old friend whose tricks you already know, and yet those are executed so ingenuously (and with such grandeur to its plasticine and miniature sets nowadays) that you can’t help but smile.

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl plays the classics indeed. It’s built upon a common source of friction between the titular protagonists, marking the return of one of its most popular side characters as well. While it’s filled to the brim with nods to its past, the joy with which it pays those tributes allows it to not come across as shallowly self-indulgent—especially when they still have so much love to share with other works in film and animation. A major point of appeal in the writing of Wallace & Gromit is how the escalation in their adventures makes use of all threads it lays out at the beginning, but on top of that, Vengeance Most Fowl adds a bit of a punchier message; while the stasis of the characters doesn’t allow it to go all the way in the condemnation of “convenient” technology, it does take a nice stance in favor of things that should always be lovingly done by hand.

Despite appreciating what the movie had accomplished, which I believe puts it among the best entries in the series, something didn’t sit entirely right with me. For some reason or the other, I felt like I didn’t love the film as much as I should have. Could it be that I wasn’t in the mood for Wallace & Gromit? Is there even a mood that isn’t welcoming to Wallace & Gromit? To find out, I did what any completely abnormal person would: rewatch the entire franchise from its beginning in the late 80s.

I was immediately reminded of the way A Grand Day Out set the bar for how imaginative a series about the dullest, most ordinary concepts—a British man and a dog—could be in the hands of an artist like Nick Park. There is a rudimentary elegance to it that further entries naturally lost, as the series grew in scope, popularity, and maturity. A Grand Day Out is a simpler concept than its successors, but because of that, every gag feels more focused on itself and as lovingly rendered as it could possibly be. This extends to the animation as well, which may not be as ambitious as it eventually becomes, but it certainly feels more daring; even though character movements aren’t as polished yet, the lack of clearly established rules allows Park to play looser with the clay, at points dabbling into somewhat extreme deformations for the purposes of character acting. It’s a delight to look at and pick up on these details.

Its successor The Wrong Trousers is, to put it plainly, Wallace & Gromit’s absolute best. The magnificent leap in 4 years (1989 to 1993) makes it clear that nothing beats experience. Although I said that I appreciate A Grand Day Out’s pleasant simplicity, there’s no denying that The Wrong Trousers thrives in adding new wrinkles to the narrative, characters, and cinematography as well. It rewards chronological (re)watching by further highlighting how much more confident its staging is, more inspired in its usage of lighting, and how the storytelling naturally grows alongside those aspects. At the same time, though, it’s so perfectly tight that you can also recommend it to someone who has no idea what Wallace & Gromit is and they’ll immediately get everything; the dynamics between the naïve Wallace, his love for ridiculous technology, and chronically underappreciated, way more sensitive (and sensible) dog Gromit are better defined and explored in more interesting ways this time around.

For a sequel to a short film about taking a trip to the moon, The Wrong Trousers is arguably less grounded—and somehow more gravity-defying than its space travel predecessor too, because much of it is written around a pair of technotrousers that can walk up walls. Inherently amusing concepts like that are elevated by brilliant storyboarding, packing a few exhilarating setpieces into its short length. From a tense robbery that makes you ponder about the combination of ridiculous ideas that led to it, to a chase on rails that embraces the lawlessness of animation, The Wrong Trousers is simply a blast. Portraying speed in a convincing manner within stop-motion animation is inherently challenging, but Wallace & Gromit didn’t seem to get the memo.

What it did get, though, is a great villain in the form of Feathers McGraw. The inexpressivity of the criminal penguin is a genius bit of acting by subtraction. As Aardman members still note nowadays, Feathers has an inherent stillness to himself that makes him stand out. While he’s not the only character who can’t speak, his deadpan presence is totally unlike that of Gromit, always expressing his exasperation through a furrowed brow of clay. And it’s in that unique paradigm where characters palpably made of inert materials move so expressively, even when they cannot speak, that makes this stiff penguin curiously creepy; in its fantasy, the one who adheres to reality the most—of course a flightless bird-shaped piece of clay doesn’t move much—is the least ordinary. When you combine that contrast in acting with that aforementioned improved cinematography, you get neat dashes of horror on top of a very fun short film. If you haven’t noticed it yet, The Wrong Trousers is quite good.

And attempt they do, because A Close Shave leans further into the unsettling with the canine equivalent of Terminator for a villain. That increasing confidence in its own direction pays off with a sense of mystery and even dread in certain moments, paving the way for a successor to keep on escalating—and that is 2008’s A Matter of Loaf and Death, Wallace & Gromit’s take on the murder mystery genre.

Without exaggeration, Aardman could have published the first 30 seconds of this half-an-hour short film and it would already be a successful, complete travail. The way it builds anticipation with the first person shot demonstrates and understanding of the genre they’re spoofing, as well as a level of cinematographic ambition they couldn’t aspire to before. The level of detail in the animation is embodied by an expression that clearly conveys affable acknowledgement of the mysterious killer, followed up by great control of the victim’s line of sight; wavering between the attacker’s face and the place where we presume a weapon is raised. The comedic punchline, in the form of viscerally satisfying claymation and a thematically appropriate pun, bring this perfect short within a short to an end.

Mind you, it’s hardly an issue that it continues beyond that point. At this point in their short film series, Wallace & Gromit has taken another massive leap, most notoriously in the sheer number, size, and complexity of its sets. There is something about the way that A Matter of Loaf and Death carries itself that makes it feel effortless and uncompromised, even though Nick Park and his team definitely had to put their wits into it. The short film dances between quintessential romantic comedy delivery to direct callbacks to horror classics, doing a great job with all these registers. Similarly to A Close Shave but from a different angle, however, its script feels somewhat bloated by the beautiful standards of the series; a few too many lines highlighting a joke that was more enjoyable through the visuals the delivered it. Perhaps just some more growing pains, and not without their enjoyable counterpart.

Although I’ve followed the short films chronologically, that’s hardly all you can find in the Wallaceverse (Gromitverse? We all know who’s the real king ). Without even venturing into its spinoffs, the main series has had multiple TV serializations—and most importantly, feature-length films. Having produced Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit back in 2005 certainly seems to have a lot to do with the level of technical skill on display in A Matter of Loaf and Death.

There are works that trip over themselves in their transition to theatrical productions, so excited over the prospect of the large screen that they attempt to do too much; and there are also hordes of modern anime for whom the word movie seems to mean nothing, so it could always be worse. For Wallace & Gromit, though, that transition is natural—its tendency to grow in complexity has always been a part of it, leading it in fascinating directions even as it occasionally introduces friction. It’s a series that takes the idea that animation is cinema with unbridled joy and to explore adjacent artistic traditions, rather than a motto to feel less conscious about liking cartoons.

Clocking at 1 hour and thirty minutes, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit may not have three times the visual ideas you’d find in a Wallace & Gromit short film despite extending the runtime that much; more of a testament of how packed those are, rather than a sign of lacking ambition with this title. That said, each concept certainly feels executed that many more times bigger in execution, and its interest in cinema is that much more pronounced too.

The film dashes out winks to anything between Dr. Strangelove to Jurassic Park, and in tradition with the series, much of the fun is in its translation process; not content with direct callbacks to scenes in Jaws, the film joyfully also reimagines its conflict as a giant rabbit burrowed underground to evoke the same dread while also having lots of fun with the physicality of its animation. Even when it borrows more directly from the classics, it retains that curious internal coherence that is so characteristic of Wallace & Gromit—for example, dressing up (yet never stating it) Wallace’s new target of affection in a carrot-like dress to justify its King Kong homage.

In the end, and for as thoroughly enjoyable as the film is, this exhilarating execution can’t quite make up for the script lacking the finest wit that Wallace & Gromit has had at its absolute best. And yet, despite Vengeance Most Fowl being a greater movie that I would recommend over its theatrical predecessor, there was something about The Curse of the Were Rabbit that I found more enjoyable to watch; or rather, more pleasant to look at. Skimming through the new film after going through that classic Wallace & Gromit binge illuminated the simple answer: it’s a bit too smooth.

There is a bit more to that gripe, of course. Texture is important in all art, and within a series built around stop motion and plasticine models, that idea is as literal as it gets for animation. We talk about the fingerprints of an artist figuratively when discussing art, but for something like Wallace & Gromit, that is literal. Being able to see the touch of the humans behind it isn’t merely an accident—not anymore, not in a world with dangerous trends of depersonalization in art. It matters to those who experience it and it matters to those who make it; Carmen Bromfield Mason, one of the lead character animators in the film, recently confirmed to Collider that etching one’s fingertips in the models is a deliberate act, even joking about their friendly competitions about who leaves the best marks for what they refer to as thumbiness.

It’s clear, then, that Wallace & Gromit’s emphasis on the visceral feeling of their work is alive and well. Original creator Park himself is not a fan of the smoothness of CGi, so it’s hard to imagine them ever going in a different direction. Its sets are still populated by models that embrace the small, imperfect wrinkles of clay, with fingerprints all over, and delightful wood, string, and even water around them. Why does Vengeance Most Fowl feel a tad smoother and less human, then? I believe the answer is easy again: this was their first movie shot digitally rather than in 35mm film. As Park himself told the BBC, that switch has facilitated some new means of expression for them—most notoriously by enabling extensive usage of water that would have been a pain to film before. Its downside is comparably subtler and smaller; it’s mostly the medium and long shots where the characters appear a bit smoother than they used to be due to that change in the cameras.

Is it a tragedy? Hardly, and reading up what its team had to say was both comforting and curiously in line with their own film’s conclusion; tech advancements can be perfectly fine, but certain things are best left to the old, more human ways. Even if Aardman’s work with this amusing duo remains very enjoyable, I will keep missing its older, somewhat more tactile iterations a little bit. On the flipside—as if rewatching so many fun movies wasn’t already good enough—all this pondering about stop-motion animation with a very human touch brought me to rewatch another old favorite I’d like to recommend before I wrap this up: Jan Švankmajer‘s Dimensions of Dialogue.

This short film is split into three chapters, each of them self-contained but with an overarching theme of communication and interpersonal relationships. The first one embodies the inevitable outcome in environments where everyone keeps a combative, intolerant stance, as all the initially distinct voices have their material brutally ground into homogenous clay; and even then, the conflict somehow continues. Incidentally, one of them is made up of vegetables in the same way Giuseppe Arcimboldo abstracted the human form—which is also the root of the infamous veggie giraffe in Revue Starlight The Movie. See, we’re an anime website after all.

In the second and third chapters, Svankmajer depicts similar cycles of violence despite starting from more positive scenarios. One sees a passionate relationship between two individuals; so positively intense at the beginning, and yet just one unwanted artifact from that relationship is enough to turn that same fierceness in a direction where everyone is brutally hurt. In the final one, a duo perfectly complements the other… until one small change of perspective is enough to turn their exact same positions into a destructive, surreal dance.

Honorable mention: Kaiji is great, isn’t it? I’ve been thinking of that lately, in no small part because someone has started watching. Our Discord watch parties are powered by democracy in the same way that autocracies are, so I’m just looking for an excuse to tell a bunch of animation fans that the best thing they can do is watch an anime that is often very conservative with its ressources; it’s not forcing the show upon them but simply helping them see the light. I suppose I can simply bring up that household names like Ryosuke Nakamura, Tetsuro Araki, and even living legend Norimitsu Suzuki participated in the show. Thank you, potent credit lists that don’t fully illuminate the context—though all of them did great work, there’s a reason (there are many reasons) this show is so good!

With a bit of luck, we’ll manage to summon an adaptation for The Legend of the Strongest, Kurosawa! so that everyone can witness Nobuyuki Fukumoto at his strongest; and if they adapt the sequel, him at his most cynical. Or maybe we’ll simply watch it and the only consequence will be that I will have something to highlight in this category for our 2025 writeup. Didn’t I say that it felt weird to choose these titles I already consciously adore for this category, though? Ah well.

Creator Discovery: Tomomi Sato (Sakugabooru tag), Souta Ueno, Mayu Tanimoto, Mirai Harashima

One of the reasons why we leave this category at the end in the ballot—by default anyway, some people prefer different orders—is because there is a natural flow from your favorites to the teams responsible for them, which will inevitably contain individuals who have surprised you. After all, creator discovery isn’t meant to strictly mean a person you didn’t know existed and turned out to be kinda neat; in many cases, it’s someone whom you may have heard about before, or even a creator you were already conscious of but managed to blow you away with an aspect to them that you hadn’t witnessed before. Although it’s perfectly possible to find remarkable discoveries in places other than your overall favorites, this year I found myself being particularly fond of artists directly tied to those.

A clear example of that phenomenon of knowing a creator for a while but only later realizing how much they can touch you can be found in my show of 2024. Kyoto Animation’s uniquely enclosed environment and measured production schedules makes it hard for most people to acquaint themselves with their individual members, let alone being up to date with eux. As a certified sicko, this year I was able to find out more about their youngest members thanks to the studio’s policy to platform them; Ayumu Yoshida transitioning from barely any animation experience to direction and storyboarding was a neat detail I wrote about, and some of their trainees who have yet to contribute to the studio’s works have impressed me as well. And yet, their biggest surprise was a name I was familiar with but wasn’t giving enough credit to.

In my defense, that seems to apply to the studio itself to some degree as well. 7 years ago, I wrote a blurb about Tomomi Sato‘s promotion to key animationKey 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. duties, which prophetically ended by saying she might be a name to keep track of. She clearly adjusted well to the very technically demanding environment of KyoAni, doing a commendable job even when entrusted with the type of sequence that looks grounded but constitutes one of the circles of hell on its own. And yet, she never took a step onto the next level, which I believe has to do with the fact that others were entrusted with sequences that held higher potential (and admittedly higher risk) to deeply touch viewers. Sato remained someone people knew was good at her job, but that’s about it; though in retrospect, I believe her comrades in arms must have known more.

Recently, that has changed. If Tsurune S2 saw her ramping up and working on increasingly more emotional moments in addition to all the skillful shots she already drew, Hibike! Euphonium S3 made her one of the protagonists. Narratively important shots in the opening. The whole cast wearing beautiful kimono for a collaboration with the series’ (and the studio’s) real location; she thought she could draw all of them in a single day, proving she has the insane gene of the artist. Some of the most dazzling moments for Kumiko as a protagonist. And most notoriously, the intertwined joy and pain from episode #12, where she animated minutes upon minutes of stunning climax. Perhaps Sato has been this good for a while, perhaps she has steadily grown until this point. What’s clear here, though, is that she’s more than ready for the responsibilities of an ace animator. I can only hope that she continues to be entrusted with emotionally loaded sequences like these.

Whatever lays in her future, a perk of Sato’s important role in Eupho S3 is that it got her invited to the show’s staff commentary pistes. Both series directors commended her for her work, and most interestingly, she got to share her insight about her role as an animator. Hearing that she gravitates towards the expression of innermost feelings and that she values research should surprise no one because it really shows in her work, but her passion for the conversational aspect of a key animator in an anime pipeline was fascinating. Sato’s favorite part of the job is pondering what she can add to expression of the characters’ emotions beyond what the storyboards indicate, and rather than attempting to impose it, actively discussing it with the directors—as individuals who are perhaps most intimately aware of the nuance of the story and cast.

Sato also noted that she really loves that specific role, so I wouldn’t be surprised if she remained there forever. Her thoughtful mindset is effectively that of a director’s already, so the could take that route as well—but will she feel inclined to? Though she has managed to stand out for her exceptional skill, that stance is perfectly representative of what KyoAni envisions their animators to be; it’s a studio that explicitly lists aspirations to direct as a positive trait when hiring any animator, and where that consideration for the meaning behind every shifting gaze is key. If she ever wants to become more of a creative leader, I believe Sato has the makings of a good director too. For now, she has already proved that she can make a difference as an animator.

What if we swerve from Eupho’s sensational polish and nuanced animation to a highlight in the opposite end of production values? Souta Ueno was another name I was vaguely familiar with, mostly as the assistant to Shinji Ishihara in SasaMiya. Though checking out some of his slightly older work showed signs of his potential to me, I would have never known that was a wise thing to do were it not for the insanity of Gimai Seikatsu. Somewhat similarly to Sato, his sudden rise has a lot to do with being entrusted with the right job and also being a more public platform to share his vision. Unlike her ability to adapt to various spots in the hierarchical pole of animation production, however, I can say this with confidence: Ueno was born to be a series directorSeries Director: (監督, kantoku): The person in charge of the entire production, both as a creative decision-maker and final supervisor. They outrank the rest of the staff and ultimately have the last word. Series with different levels of directors do exist however – Chief Director, Assistant Director, Series Episode Director, all sorts of non-standard roles. The hierarchy in those instances is a case by case scenario.. And that’s what he finally is.

I’ve spoken at length about what makes Gimai Seikatsu so brilliant. It takes a deliberately methodical book and commits to its dryness through incidental cinematography, with storytelling so confident that it brainwashed the original author into thinking that all of its original additions must have been already part of the source material and he simply forgot to write them. Ueno arrived to those unique solutions by drawing from his avantgarde sources of inspiration, which feel fresh in a world like anime that is often at risk of only receiving inspiration from itself.

And that’s maybe the most intriguing aspect of Ueno’s career: what will be his train of thought when entrusted with other works? For him, it was natural to mirror Jonas Mekas’ diary films when directing an incestuous cartoon, so what other ridiculous (yet fundamentally sound!) choices will he attempt to make in different projects? Will he even be able to get away with them? This time around he was blessed with an original author who was very understanding about the unorthodox approach, even becoming Ueno’s biggest fan in the process—but that won’t necessarily be the case all the time, especially if the projects that are pitched to Ueno don’t really fit his attitude. There is certainly high risk in his career over the coming years. But the reward? Just as high, and deeply weird, the way we like it.

If we continue this trend of discoveries within my absolute favorite series, I owe a brief nod to studio OLM’s young Mayu Tanimoto. As I mentioned in our final writeup about Kusuriya, as well as when bringing it up here as one of my favorite shows of the year (and of the previous year), the adaptation led by Norihiro Naganuma built a genuine system of success. By creating an outrageously large number of variations for their art assets, establishing clear directorial guidelines when it comes to the usage of floriography and colors, and just by conveying each character’s appeal so well, Naganuma empowered the entire team. It was simply easier than usual to put together a great episode of Kusuriya than it would be for a regular show, because everyone had nuanced tools at their material disposal already; though amusingly, their absolute best episode was led by the exceptional guests most willing to do their own thing.