Sakuga pt.16 - Why Animation Matters in Anime Storytelling
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- Опубліковано 7 лют 2025
- The conclusion in which I preach the sakuga gospel. Thanks for sticking with us through the whole presentation. The end scroller contains some titles & resources to check out.
The use of copyrighted clips in this video is fair use, as the clips are limited length at web resolution, attributed in captions, and used for the explicit purpose of criticism.
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This series of videos are just GOLD, thank you so much!!!
I've been immersing myself in the Sakuga community for several years now, and this presentation was fantastic. I learned a lot. I will sincerely recommend this presentation to anyone interested in diving deeper into the medium. As someone who got into anime circa 2014 it blows my mind that this presentation came out before many of my favorite shows did (and it goes to show how many of my then to be favorites already existed). At any rate thanks for these videos, they really got to the heart of what makes me so passionate in my love of anime and animation. Cheers!
I had just recently found Bahi JD on tumblr and was floored when i saw his work.
It had inspired me to try animation once more. Though i have to keep up with my actual work too. I bet if i try hard enough i can be up there with Imaishi and Iso, at least be close to their level.
This was an excellent panel. I also wish my local con had stuff like this. Thanks for introducing me to some new stuff like Trava, too, by the way. I'm a big Koike fan, but had no idea that that even existed.
+relyat89 With you on that.
I've watched this playlist a few times, neverending source of inspiration as an animator.
the church scene (especially 'the fall') in Cowboy Bebop episode 5 is probably a shining example of visual storytelling
+Ssgt Griggs Great example of editing instead of animation in that case :).
Still one of my favorite sequences in anime period.
Yay, you talked about Mamoru Hosoda! He's my favorite director (and Makoto from *The Girl Who Leapt Through Time* is probably the most beautifully realised character in all anime), but since you were only talking about the animators I thought there's no way you will mention him. I'm very glad you did. :)
Kinda wished you talked about Satoshi Kon too.
R.I.P.
I hope Masao Maruyama gets Kon's final movie made someday.
Sean Bires The last I heard wasn't so hopeful, there were rumors that the movie wasn't made due to financial problems but instead due to what was coming out being not at the level of a Satoshi Kon film.
If there had to be one person to direct it I think Morimoto would be a good choice as he did wonderful work with Kon's material in Magnetic Rose.
really excellent. Got linked the first video and thought it was neat, ended up binging all the way to here in a sitting, fully engaged the entire time. I've so many of these sakuga clips and it's great to be able to better put a name and some context behind them now
As an animator, this video, just expanded a quote I heard from a youtube page called Every Frame of Painting. And it said, "The camera is a playground" Which means you can play around with different camera angles and different camera positions to create really great things. But, now its "Everything is a playground." In a more detailed way. In one of the clips, where the girl just turns into a noodle tornado, thats a fine example of playgroundism. (Yep, playgroundism is now a term. ;)
yay great series of videos. Very insightful
Thanks a lot for this whole thing guys.
This was so good! I've always loved sakuga and tracking down works of stand out animators but this is the first time I've seen someone compile together what it's all about and highlighting influential animators along the way.
Thanks for this awesome panel guys! I will miss those videos as well as Collins jokes.
damn started off from watching MAD sakuga compilations to this, should be taught in animation lessons cuz you guys compiled it like a great textbook! love you guys so much !
Wonderful wrap up of the pannel guys thanks for really putting the time into doing this for us.
What a fantastic panel! I love how after many years of being an anime fan and having wide variety of shows under your belt you can occasionally identify the work of someone who stands out.
Thanks for the series, mate. Some great clips and insight.
Very thorough and well-researched presentation (despite some mistakes, which are really easy to understand considering how good some animators are at mimicking others' styles).
I think something I would have liked to see is the mention of at least one female animator. While I'm aware that they don't receive quite the same level of recognition as a lot of the animators mentioned in the presentation, at least one sticks out in my mind clearly- Ikuko Itoh.
You can very clearly see her influence in later seasons of Sailor Moon (she was present in early seasons but for whatever reason wasn't pushing her own style). The episodes that she was the animation director on stick out because of how beautifully drawn and animated they are. Her style of drawing Sailor Moon is also prominent in certain official artworks, such as those used for the DVD releases in Japan. She's also responsible for re-animating the inner senshi's henshin for Sailor Moon Supers (X Crystal Power). At a glance, the layout appears to remain the same, but looking closer at the animation, you see a vast improvement on the drawings of the character and the motion of the hair.
Anipages has a decent number of writeups on this subject, here's one about Ghibli which is probably the most friendly animation studio for women in Japan: www.pelleas.net/aniTOP/index.php/title_34
Just do a search for women animators or female animators and there are plenty more articles on that site. Also I'm going to take this opportunity to recommend one of the best up and coming female directors - Sayo Yamamoto, check out Michiko to Hatchin and Lupin III Fujiko to see her work.
Neil Clingerman
Well, it's closed now ;_; Well, we still have KyoAni
A woman shouldn't be mentioned just for the sake of it. If the top animators are all men, then mentioning a woman is just patronizing.
mittROMNEY666 But the top animators aren't all men, I mentioned one in my post. Neil went on to post references to other Japanese women in Japan, too.
The importance of recognizing women who aren't given their due respect is more important than potentially patronizing them.
From what I can gather, you are a guy, so I don't think it's your place to decide what is or isn't patronizing to women anyway.
Are those people you mentioned really at the top though? Anything from Sailor moon would look embarrassing in this context. Michiko to hatchin was pretty good, but was it as good as the shows of imaishi or anno? Sorry but no.
It's like how people have tried to insert artists such as gentileschi and cassat into the canon of western painting. The whole effort is a farce because these artists are clearly second rate, and are promoted only because of their gender.
I loved your guy's presentation. great insight on the animation realm overseas and how it influences the contemporary era of animation. It's amazing how a value on experimentation persists and develops in any kind of genre of art. Thank you for your presentation!!
Times I have rewatched this? Many. This is a major reason why i got into panels myself. Presented about 6 hours this year. Inspiration, this was.
Thank you guys! It was fun and I got well-informed, the tastiest kind of education!
Still come back to this lecture to learn about animation
Thank you so much for that presentation! It directly inspired me to try out some animation myself... I might even do my bachelor-thesis as an animation, so every bit I can learn is absolutely awesome. Thanks again!!!! If I go through with the idea and it's any good I'll post you a link. Cya
this was great. stuff like this makes me wanna get into animation as a professional career.
yea same here. too bad i suck at drawing.
Kyorux Rukhunen me too. :( it's nice to dream though haha.
1Manny93
it is :)
I loved all the videos.
Thanks a lot for share it!
Hi. Thank you for these videos, I really enjoyed them. You made a wonderful job on that panel.
Awesome presentation, had fun and learned some new things!
thanks for the lecture. made me had a new motivation and meaning to watching anime
for anyone wondering, 2:21 was part of a symphony called "The Planets" by Gustav Holst. I think this one was "Mars, Bringer of War" but I might be wrong about which planet this was.
actually, it's... ua-cam.com/video/LwLABSm0yYc/v-deo.html
My mistake.
Exceptional presentation. Thank you!
it was really a fun panel to listen to.
I loved watching this. Thank you
Thank you.
Great lecture.
I LOVE KAIBA. Serra also as the opening and a few endings is beautiful!
I have been watching these videos till i lose count !
you need to make a new one !
:O god bless you all
This was very informative & entertaining, big thank you for sharing :3
this whole thing has inspired my i was really into drawing a year or two ago but i didnt really know what i wanted to do with it but after watching this i feel like i want to animate i messed around with it before so i can pick it back up quick i guess but anyway thanks im planning on getting a new graffic pad so i can start animating some cool stuff like those guys probably just start with sick figures and rough stuff :) :)
ps show me more of this stuff i want to learn more
Yep, this is why I watch anime. Thanks!
very interesting. That's exactly what I was looking for :D you cannot start animating stuff before knowing which guys actually developed this whole "thing"
Da is' Summer Wars im Thumbnail
Are you guys planning on doing any more panels like this? Ive never seen this kind of breakdown before and I would love to see more.
i want the same presentation but with western animation!
Don't think there is a similar one for western animators in general, but there is a documentary about Richard Williams floating around who is one of the best animators ever in a classical technical sense: facebook.com/PersistenceOfVisionOfficialDocumentaryPage
Go for it, I'd be happy to see what you come up with :)
I learned a lot, Thanks!
Please reupload part 7, is the only one missing, the first part is available via wayback machine.
Really cool series though I felt Masami Obari was sorely missing, he could have been talked about during the Itano/80s-90s sunrise sequence or mentioned for his influence on Koike.
+shameless display Well, Masami Obari is Kanada school. Anyway, they can fit so much people in 2 hours.
Nearing the end, is there any resources out there, any books, or sites, or people to follow where I can better educate myself about this stuff? Or is it just collected information and hard, deep research over the years that doesn't have any particularly clear sources? I could really use some of this to study for my own learning of animation. Thanks again for this really thoughtful and wonderful presentation.
EDIT: WAIT, nevermind, I finished and see all the sources at the back now. Though anything more would definitely help as well.
Since this panel, the most significant new source in the sakuga fandom is the animation database known as "Sakugabooru". Also the "Anime Auteurs" blog (camonte.wordpress.com) written by @tamerlane420
Thanks!
Who says only characters and story matter? Surely you'd be reading books instead if you thought that...
I am desperatley looking for anime to watch. Anything with horror, action, psychological and character growth. If no kids and no comedy then ++.
I have seen Gatz, Berserk, Black Lagoon and Claymore.
*_Darker than Black_* is cool if you can handle its overall crypticness... It's like a bleaker and weirder _Batman._ Watch it in story-chronological order (TV series 1, OVA series, TV series 2). *_Fate/Zero_* is a gritty and cynical anime blockbuster about a secret last-man-standing contest between mages in the modern day. From the same creator (Gen Urobuchi) is the lower-budget but arguably more interesting & cerebral *_Psycho-Pass,_* which will have a sequel series & film finale later this year.
Psycho pass sounds familiar. I will look at them. Thanks
An Old Movie I would suggest is "Perfect Blue" we also have "Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade".
I saw Perfect Blue and I was watching "Jin Roh" as I typed this.
Is there anything as hopeless as Gantz? That sense of dread and despair is what brought me back to anime and manga
I haven't read or seen _Gantz_ but the most dreadful anime I've seen recently is the sci-fi horror epic _Shin Sekai Yori,_ which takes place in a cryptic post-apocalyptic distant future. The main characters are kids in the opening episodes, and by the end, they're adults (what's left of them anyway). It follows a lifetime of horrifying revelations and catastrophes, but its world is also thoroughly conceived in the sense that I was able to preempt some of its revelations by piecing stuff together and thinking about its mechanics. It's a low/mid-budget show though. The production values oscillate wildly between episodes.
Is there a link for the handout, or is it available only inside the video?
why you dont show "norio matsumoto"?
I hope you will show his works on the next time.
SEANNY!!!!!!!
Do animators really have a lot of creative input? Do they not just do as told?
Sometimes they're given lots of freedom to the extent that they reinterpret the character designs or even draft their own storyboard for their scenes. But most of the time they're a cog in the machine. It depends how the studio, director and animation supervisor prefer to run things, and, of course, who the animator in question is.
Part 15 is blocked in the United States. :(
+Kougeru yeah, just happened a couple weeks ago. It's the _Dirty Pair: Project Eden_ OP, lol.
Okay, I'll check the video some where else. Thanks again for these videos. I wish we had informative panels like this at my local con.
The script is most important. Pretty sakuga won't make a great anime alone, the script is what it hinges on.
Please, do you if they use special programs ?
AFAIK, the typical pipeline is Celsys Retas and Adobe After Effects, if that's what you're asking.
Sean Bires Thank you, so are you telling me, that they "draw" all with hand, that, there is no magical "program" to animate their draws... it is just a lots of "in-between" for make it full smooth?. and they use those programs just to make some effects and stuff?
and what do you think about the creator of the movie "5 cm per second" it has a very nice quality:).
They do coloring (and sometimes animation drawing in the case of Toei) in Celsys Retas, and do composting & 2D effects in Adobe After Effects. I think it's a fully raster pipeline, unlike western 2D animation. But not having worked in any 2D animation industry, I don't know much about it in detail. A decade ago, Lightwave was popular in Japan for 3D animation. I don't know if that's still the case.
Base drawing is done by hand, pencil on paper using a light table.
Detailed backgrounds are done in multiple ways: painted in photoshop, paint tool sail, color painter, etc and even watercolor on paper.
Characters are colored/shaded in the animation program used by the studio: one of the popular being: "ToonBoom" but there are a lot more.
Some additional work sometimes has to be done with a 3D programs and some effect addition from Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere Pro.
And trust me that this is not all. Depending on the specific task more programs will come along.
Sorry for bugging you after 2 months tho.
LordMagtheridon i just wanna say: thank you a lot:), so i see anime is not hard as i thought, you just need know how to draw and a lot of time. thanks!
where was DAICON IV dough?
気になるのは作画にふれてはいるが、1対1のシーンが多いこと理解しているのか。板野のように多対多のシーンを書ける人がいないんじゃないのか。アニメ画面に登場している人数の少なさは不思議に思わないのか。画面で多人数を動かせる監督が少ないもしくは、ＣＧだより。宮崎駿が特段優れているのは、1つの画面で沢山の人間が、色々な行動を細かく表現している。今の監督にもそこは考えてほしい。
端的に言ったら、金と時間と必要性があれば、描くと思いますよ。描き込み量は手の早い人だろうが遅い人だろうが、作業量（金と時間）に比例していきます。どんなに優秀な技術を持った人らがいたとしても、その人らを活かせるだけの企画力と宣伝力と商業力がなければ、宝の持ち腐れです。結局のところ、技術はもちろん必要ですが、物量が物を言います。本当に今のアニメに必要なのは、商業モデルの多様化と、作業員からアーティストへの回帰です。
TVシリーズのような限られた予算と時間の中で編み出されたのが現在のアニメ技術です。私は素晴らしい作画をする人たちに賞賛を贈る一方で、手を抜く技術（不必要な単純作業や反復作業などを減らす）がこれから発達していき、それが新たな技術と発想を生むと楽観しています。その1つがCGです。現にセル画からデジタル画に移行した事で、かなりの作業量が軽減されました。ですので、3DCGは表現を助けるのに十分に有効な技術だと考えています。要は使い方なんだと思いますよ。
Sure, interesting series, but you dont learn how to create any of it at all