Animation Directors on Yusei
I held off doing one of these collages for a while, because the blog is called ygoanimation, not ygostillscreenshots. That is to say, I want everyone to keep in mind that what makes an animator unique is not only how they draw the characters, but how they express motion, compose layouts, and so on. And be reminded that the animation director is not the be-all-end-all to how their episodes will look. Most of them can have up to 20 or more key animators and inbetweeners. This leaves for a lot of room for variation.
That being said, it’s hard to get people to visualize the differences in an animator’s style without some sort of comparison, so these collages do have their uses. In addition, I’m lazy, so these aren’t all the ADs that worked on 5D’s. Merely the ones who work on it most often, or ones I otherwise find notable for comparison.
Kenichi Hara: Needs no introduction. He’s been with the franchise since early DM. 5D’s features the stabilization of his style. He draws facial features (all of them) in a very angular fashion. While not pictured here, his shading tends to be high contrast, and very angular/spiky as well. Proportionally, Hara likes to draw Yusei’s hair bigger.
Kokai Yuji: The mechanical animation director (D-Wheels) for several episodes. His characters are a tad weaker. His drawings typically feature thinner necks with that odd hatching over it. A lot of times he corrects drawings to have thicker, curvier outlines, but it doesn’t save the often-wonky looking faces and body proportions. Almost always is AD for episodes outsourced to Animation Planet during 5D’s.
Shuji Maruyama: The official character designer for 5D’s. His style should be considered the “default”. OP/ED 1, 2, and 5 are his work. As well as episodes 27 and 154. And a good chunk of the DVD covers until the second half. Being the character designer, the model sheets are in his style.
Kimiharu Muto: Believe it or not Muto was also an AD during late DM, and alternated doing in-house episodes with Hara during the Memory Arc. Here, Muto often does AD work for episodes done by Gallop’s Korean half, Dong-Woo animation (during 5D’s, they’re technically listed as being in house crew). Because of that, Noh Gil-bo often shows up as a KA during his episodes. His style is kind of “safe”. He has a quirk where he likes to draw highlights right next to his characters’ nose lines. This goes all the way back to DM.
Shinichiro Minami: I wrote about him in an earlier post. Usually ADs for Studio Flag’s episodes in early 5D’s. While his still shots are fluid and full of life, you can tell the team is short on time because there are often huge chunks of episodes without any sort of correction.
Nagare Namikaze: ADs for MAP episodes. I’m not sure whether or not to blame them or the KA staff for how off most of the episodes look. Namikaze’s work is relatively nice in late 5D’s (the Ark Cradle stuff).
Mitsuru Natsukawa: I used to not be such a big fan of their work. Still am not, really. But then I found out that (as a part of Ecura Animal) they almost always do storyboard, episode direction, AD, and KA all by themselves. The end result... still isn’t that great, but it’s a distinctive style that I’m impressed doesn’t look worse considering it’s usually a one-man band. Natsukawa’s work is often characterized by the BIG SHINY EYES they like to give the characters. Right next to Takahashi, their style is probably the furthest away from the model. Having to do a large part of the work themselves, Natsukawa tends to over-rely on stock footage (see: episodes 108 and 135).
Takahiro Kagami: One of the first people most Yu-Gi-Oh fans think of in regard to animators. His only work concerning 5D’s was on Bonds Beyond Time. Looking back through it, relative to his other stuff it’s not quite as consistent and smooth as his other work. Being the character designer for the movie though, I think this is the best I can do.
Noh Gil-Bo: While 5D’s 136 is his debut as an AD in YGO, he’s been working on the series by doing bits of key animation since GX. During 5D’s, he gains somewhat of an influence from Kenichi Hara (it’s sort of in the eyes), but his faces and bodies tend to be rounder, and his animation timing smoother. In comparison, Hara likes a lot more quick, jerky (in a good way) motion.
Kazunori Takahashi: Takahiro Kagami’s right-hand man during the DM days, his work on 5D’s is fairly limited. I’ve written about Takahashi’s style at length on the first post of this blog, and what I said still stands. Takahashi likes to throw the models out the window, but his snappy, wacky character animation just makes me love what he does. His episodes here, as well as in ZEXAL and ARC-V, tend to be on the low side of animators. About 3-6 or so?
Astro Stadium: ED 3 was the only thing they did, and most fans agree that it doesn’t look that good. I put it up here for comparison.
Hidekazu Ebiba: He didn’t actually work on 5D’s, but he’s an AD with a lot of ZEXAL/ARC-V work. His Yusei is fairly unique all things considered. I wonder how he’d draw him if he had to do it so many times as an animator on the show itself?
