Tag: action animation

Current trends in action animation: Hiroto Nagata and Ryûki Hashimoto

~ matteowatz ~ Leave a comment

In today’s landscape, this evolution and, possibly, a new development in action animation seems to be represented by two rising figures: Hiroto Nagata and Ryûki Hashimoto. At first sight, this pairing might seem strange, since both men come from opposite ends of the industry and have never worked together. Despite their distance, they share a close proximity in terms of style and, possibly, philosophy. The goal of this article will be to understand the nature of this proximity: I will first focus on each animator on his own, and then consider more generally what are their common points, and how they may open new ways for animation.

The Kanada style now

~ matteowatz ~ 2 Comments

Although the Kanada style has certainly known a rebirth in the 2000s, it seems that, in the 2010’s, it has gone through a new phase of decline. It’s not that it has totally disappeared: it is still thriving around specific studios (like Trigger) or artists (the most important among them being Yoshimichi Kameda). However, outside of those circles, the presence of the Kanada style is mostly visible through citations (Kanada dragons, very angular effects) and a generally snappier approach to timing. Overall, there is little formal innovation. But this doesn’t mean that the Kanada style is dead or dying; it has just acquired a new, more secondary, place in the field of anime aesthetics. This situation is what I call the “post-Kanada” era; not just because it has been long now since the golden age of the 80’s, but also because most Kanada-school animators emerging today have done so after the death of Yoshinori Kanada himself. They have therefore never directly experienced his work, and their influences might be more diverse than that of previous artists. The goal of this article will be to understand this new context, and to highlight some promising artists in the Kanada lineage.

The new generation of the 1990’s

~ matteowatz ~ Leave a comment

More than the Kanada school, whose members appeared throughout  the 80s, this new group of animators deserves the word “generation”. The six major animators I will focus on were all born in the second half of the 60s, and debuted as key animators within the same five years: Atsuko Ishida (1986), Masayuki Kobayashi (1988), Atsushi Wakabayashi and Norio Matsumoto (1989), Tetsuya Nishio (1990) and Hirofumi Suzuki (1991). Most of them have since risen to prominence as some of the most important animators alive, and left a deep mark on 90’s and 2000’s animation. This was made possible by the new style they all contributed to establish, one I would term “flow animation”.