Another post, another episode of Naruto Shippuden with Hiroyuki Yamashita as an animation director. I don’t want to make this blog dedicated solely to him, but there are only a few things that are making me fired up enough to post on here nowadays. Anyways, there were 8 episodes in-between Yamashita’s episodes as an animation director. Last time he was only directing half of one episode, whereas here he was in charge of the whole thing. The lip sync, timing and drawings that were so clear in Yamashita’s half of 178 wasn’t as prevalent here. You could see a bit of the flat fingers and everybody is thinner than usual, but everything that makes Yamashita so interesting to watch seemed to be lacking all around. It was much more reserved. I imagine Yamashita as an animator himself must have been responsible for the start of the fight here since that’s what stood out the most, but it still didn’t wow me like the ep. 178. Here are some of shots from 178
(^Presumably Yamashita work)
and from 186
(^Yamashita again?)
I’m guessing that the production schedule and the overall learning curve in becoming a animation director lead the difference in quality here. He’ll have plenty of chances to get more familiar with the the process of actually correcting and supervising everybody’s shots for a weekly TV schedule in the future, so I don't think this is a big deal.
On another note, Tsuneo Ninomiya was the first animator on the key animators list for this episode. He’s been involved in the industry since the mid 60s, but as far as I can tell his biggest contribution is being the character designer for MD Geist. Clearly the connection to Koichi Ohata's masterpiece had something to do with how this episode turned out.
I'm still watching Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt and I still think it's the best show that's come out this year. Great action aside, episode 11 (or 6) had some beautiful work done by Yasunori Miyazawa. I'm guessing he did the brief shot of the little ghost getting killed and transforming, but there's no doubt he was responsible for the multitude of flames that were present at the end of the episode. Tomorrow's episode will have Ryo-timo as the animation director and next week will have Nobutake Ito teamed up with Masayuki. Good times ahead!
