One of those is a brief TED talk he gave in Shanghai a few months back. An inspiring statement of firm sense of purpose from one of China's most prominent and creative indie animators at the moment. Looking forward to seeing more strong voices like his emerging from the country, something with a perspective neither western nor anime-influenced, but personal and informed of the history of a different culture with a different baggage of history and outlook.

The animator as a one-man studio, animation as a form of personal expression to sort out ideas that float around in your head, not as a product, inspired by travels around the world and meeting people, sharing the experience of living life, and the vitality to modestly limit oneself to "at most 3 films a year". Brief statements of purpose worth sharing.

This is why I'm completely in agreement with the idea of exposing animators trained in one tradition to another tradition that was brought up in the comments of the last post. And it cuts both ways; it doesn't just apply to Japanese animators. We live in a unique time when it's easier than ever to create new hybrids and discover new approaches to animation through collaboration, and it would be a waste not to take advantage of those opportunities. Animators from whichever western tradition could certainly stand to expand their range by studying the very different but equally valid approach used in Japan.

A project recently completed by Ankama Japan, the Japanese offshoot of French studio Ankama, seems salient to this discussion. It's a one-off episode to their hit series Wakfu that looks completely different from the rest of the series. The series was done by the home French team in Flash, with blatantly anime-influenced character designs, situations and atmosphere. The extra episode is animated traditionally, and is actually produced by a Japanese team, but looks nothing like the stereotypical image of what anime supposedly looks and feels like. (kind of ironic)

This episode is very much of a must-see. It's a beautiful episode viewed as a stand-alone, and it represents an ambitious new style of co-production, featuring as it does the main staff behind Kemonozume and Kaiba working at a French studio with French staff, creating a never-before-seen kind of hybrid. Here's the main credits:

Noximilien the Clockmaker

Storyboard and director: Eunyoung Choi
Character design: Masaaki Yuasa
Animation director: Michio Mihara
Color design: Kunio Tsujita

Animators:
Michio Mihara, Christophe Ferreira
Masahiko Kubo, Miki Wasada
Hiromi Hata, Eriko Kubokawa
Antoine Antin, Yoshiya Fujisaki
Alex Ulmann, Yann Legall

I've seen the film, and visually it feels very much like an extension of Kemonozume and Kaiba in terms of the directing, animation and layout sensibility. The designs of the kid characters feel very Kaiba-ish. The fact that it's a hybrid production comes through I'd say mostly in the animation and the story, which was written by the French side. (And the voice acting, which was a little overdone at times for my taste.) Overall it feels like it's got a more character-animation-centric feeling to the presentation, and much of the animation has a particular kind of nuanced acting that you don't find in anime. Unlike most co-productions I've seen, this one really feels like it works as a film, and that's obviously because it had an awesomely talented team heading it, and they were given full creative control.

Some of the animation feels distinctly French and some feels distinctly Japanese. I would have liked to feel that the animation was more of a blend of the two overall, rather than distinct sections by different groups - more active learning from one another, striving to incorporate something from the other's approach. For example, the sections animated by Michio Mihara and Masahiko Kubo are very obvious, as each is done in their unmistakable style (Kubo in the wobbly style he used in the Minotaur scene at the end of Tekkonkinkreet), while for example the far more supple, weighty and nuanced character animation during the first sequence seems clearly to have been the work of one of the French animators.

But I don't want to overstate that gripe. This episode does a great job of blending two cultures' very different concept of good hand-drawn animation in a harmonic way in the same film, creating a film that shows how beautiful 'classical' or 'hand-drawn' animation (whatever you want to call it) can be, in its various guises, which was Choi Eunyoung's stated goal with this film. It shows that the twain can meet and produce beautiful offspring. This film feels fresh and warm and has a richness of animation that's unusual even for a Yuasa production, and in that sense it shows a new approach to creating an animated film, though of course Yuasa has expanded the range of character acting in anime in many of his TV episodes.

One gripe I have in general is with the idea of an 'anime style'. I don't think there's any such thing as an anime style; there are only conventions rehashed by people without the talent to come up with something of their own. This applies to any animation industry. You can find plenty of people working in anime who do not espouse an obviously anime style - you wouldn't call Yuasa's or Choi's or Mihara's style typical anime style. They have come up with their own approach.

I like this Nox project because it shows an understanding that what makes anime great is not the lowest common denominator, but the talented artists. Co-productions like this are only fruitful when they are genuine, heartfelt collaborations between talented artists from different traditions attempting to learn from one another for their mutual growth. It's not just about randomly combining Japanese and French or other production methods, or using a Japanese studio to animate something because it's the cool thing to do. It should be about a meeting of great minds. I admire this project because the producers of Ankama clearly have a creator-centric approach to their projects - obviously, if they were willing to greenlight this episode that clashes aesthetically with the rest of the series.

I think this was a laudable project for many reasons, most notably because the spirit of this project was mutual exchange of animation knowhow - not just farming out the animation to Japan and letting them do their thing. The people heading the project at Ankama were genuinely interested in learning from their counterparts while also communicating something about their own approach in the process. It's more projects like this we need to see, though I doubt there are many studios with not just the money but the willingness to go to such lengths to create a site for the meeting of two animation cultures that would also be used to produce some commercially viable films. This extra episode is a great first step in that direction, because it does work as a film, and it has a particular visual style that in some senses neither side could have been able to create by themselves.

There's a good documentary on the making here that I recommend checking out to learn about how this project came about, though it's in French with no subs. (If you don't understand French, you can always skip to the 14-minute mark, where Choi herself speaks in English.)

The way this mysterious project came about is that Anthony Roux, Ankama's founder, was in Japan when he met Choi Eunyoung, and invited her to come visit Ankama France. She herself then invited Masaaki Yuasa and Michio Mihara to come along, and all of them went there for a visit in January 2009. After that, 25 French animators went to Ankama Japan, where they were charged with directing two episodes in 3 months using Japanese methods. I think it's after this that Choi was appointed to direct the extra episode. She presumably asked Yuasa to provide the designs. Choi Eunyoung says that she had worked with Eddie Mehong, the studio's artistic director, on projects before, which is perhaps how she got appointed to direct the extra episode. Choi is a preternaturally talented lady, as shown by the great work she did right from her first job animating on Kemonozume and her first job directing on Kaiba, but I think her multi-cultural experience and training helped a lot. Exposure to different cultures and modes of thought is something that everyone should be blessed with, whether they're working in animation or otherwise. Even if a project like this doesn't produce that interesting results, it can still be a very valuable experience to the people involved and eventually maybe bear fruit.

There was apparently some exchange of technique between them and Michio Mahara on one of the Flash episodes of Wakfu (#22?), with Mihara drawing genga and his genga being scanned and transferred to Flash to be animated. Eddie Mehong comments how it was hard finding Japanese animators willing to work in Flash. You can see Miki Wasada interviewed about her experiences working in Flash, saying how it's faster and easier to stay on model but it loses the looseness and freedom of hand-drawn. She also makes an interesting observation about the difference in directing styles - she was surprised how she was assigned to do a section from 'here to here', and was pretty much on her own from there on out for everything within that section, because the Japanese method would entail a lot more back-and-forth with the director and other staff about what do do and how. It was clearly a learning experience for everyone involved, which can only be a good thing.

Quick note about the animators, since the Japanese names are all familiar names who have been working with Yuasa for years now, but the French animators might be less familiar: Christophe aka lebuta we of course know as the Frenchman who worked at Telecom on Soul Eater among other things. Several of the others have also worked on productions in Japan - Yann Legall worked in Japan at Satelight in 2008 (his blog) and Alexandre Ulmann worked on Casshern Sins (one of his student films). Antoine Antin co-directed Papillon (2002), a nice little Japan-inspired short.

There was a lot of wonderful work throughout this film, but I really loved the opening scene in particular for its combination of richly nuanced animation in the French style with the Japanese style designs, staging and directing. Otherwise there was some gorgeous art, especially of the bizarrely morphing mad studio at the end.

One thing I'd like to see is more stuff like Cat Soup - lavishly produced shorts spearheaded a unique artist, filled head to toe with inventive animation and designs, adopting narrative structures that have never been explored in anime, exploring interesting themes without relying on industry tropes and cliches.

In a longer format, I'd like to see more believable down-to-earth drama like Haibane Renmei exploring a serious subject of relevance to us human beings, but with more realistic designs. I'd like to see something without an audience-pandering gimmick - be it anime-style designs or sci-fi trappings - something completely real life.

I'd like to see international collaborations where the Japanese side directs and does everything else, but foreign animators do the animation - not outsourced, but working in Japan. I'd like to see more Japanese animators spend a year in some foreign country learning a non-Japanese approach to expand their palette.

And so on. I pretty much know the reason WHY stuff like this isn't made more often - that's not the question. I just want to plumb the depths and figure out what it is I REALLY want to see, not what I compromise and watch because it was produced and is decent. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who feels this way. We all have a director in our heads who has ideas about what would be interesting, what it is that truly interests YOU but that you've never seen addressed in anime. I want to hear some dreams of alternate realities. For once, don't compromise.

So, open question to all the people out there who, like me, AREN'T satisfied with what they see in anime:

What is it you really want to see in anime?

The most recent episode in Pierrot's Naruto franchise has one of the mainstays of the shounen fighting anime, Atsushi Wakabayashi, who cut his chops on Pierrot's first hit show in the genre, Yu Yu Hakusho (1992-1995), returning to prime form with another action-packed episode that moves something crazy from almost start to finish.

It's nice to have Wakabayashi back in the director's seat on the show. It's been 5 years since his last episode. Love him or hate him, he's one of the most unique and unmistakable voices in the genre. I never expected to see him back. There has been the occasional action extravaganza episode, in which after a span of a few dozen episodes we finally get some animation, but none of them have had the impact of the legendary Naruto episode #133 by Atsushi Wakabayashi. This one is every bit the equal of Wakabayashi's previous episodes. However, due to the different staff involved, it doesn't feel quite as polished. What it lacks in polish it makes for in an exciting, densely packed onslaught of kinetic action animation.

It wouldn't be an Atsushi Wakabayashi episode without Norio Matsumoto, and indeed he again leads the animators. For once, though, Norio Matsumoto is not the only talented action animator involved. He is joined by Shingo Yamashita and Kenichi Kutsuna, two young ex-gif animators who have been associated with Norio Matsumoto and Satoru Utsunomiya since they started working. Yamashita in particular has been doing some very impressive action lately. They in turn are joined by an army of seconds, which complicates making a straight breakdown of scenes, although I felt pretty sure about Norio Matsumoto's sections. In a strange coincidence, many of the seconds here were involved in the Shingo Natsume episode of Yojouhan Shinwa Taikei that just aired.

The shots with the explosions were quite beautiful, and there was a lot of action choreography on water that felt similar to #133, which I suspect to have been the work of Norio Matsumoto. Overall I'd say this episode hasn't overtaken #133 in my heart, because #133 felt better balanced overall, and had a larger proportion of Matsumoto animation. Though I was impressed by most of the animation in the episode when I watched it for the first time, on rewatching this episode, I find myself less and less convinced by much of the animation, with the notable exception of the sections obviously by Norio Matsumoto.

For a while now one of my favorite shots by Shingo Yamashita - or what I've assumed to be so - has been the one of Naruto transforming into a beast in the previous Naruto Shippuuden opening, so it's interesting to see him here animating that very material. Maybe they were already working on this episode at the time that opening was done, and they did that as kind of an easter egg. Although I don't have a total grasp of Yamashita's style, he seems to manage a decent level of draftsmanship, unlike some of the ex gif animators I've seen. One problem I have with these ex-gif animators is that they overuse wobbly body movement, as if making the character wobble around were sufficient to make a movement look realistic. I find it surprising that they haven't learned from Matsumoto how to use drawings more efficiently.

There were a number of shots that stood out in a bad way, unfortunately. I think it's great that there is a generation of younger animators who got into the industry because they want to make things move, but I've been of mixed feelings about the sort of work they've been doing over the last few years, notably on certain episodes of Birdy. Rather than developing into a certain style, the way Norio Matsumoto did, I feel that they're striving to mimic a certain feeling in the movement that they've seen in the work of the great mover animators like Norio Matsumoto, without having the patience to do what's necessary to acquire the knowhow underpinning that talent over many years of hard work. It feels like they're putting the cart before the horse.

Thus we have scenes of action that are actually quite ambitious in their choreography, but are rendered nearly unwatchable due to their poor draftsmanship. Simply put, I think this generation is missing training in fundamentals. That, and I find there to be a slight unproffesionalism in their work. It's like they're just playing around making gif loops as usual, without the cognizance that they are in a group effort situation that demands at least some level of adaptation to the circumstance. I feel very torn to say this, because up until these guys appeared, unhinged exuberance of this kind is something I always used to welcome unconditionally in anime episodes, even if it didn't really work, and even if it worked against the episode that contained it. With these guys, for once, for some reason, I feel it crosses a line. It's simply not good or interesting enough to pull it off.

Wakabayashi's episodes have have been criticized for having poor drawings in the past. Mostly the criticisms have been laughably ignorant of the nature of animation - picking a split-second inbetween from a very fast motion that the eye doesn't even register discretely unless you pause it. Matsumoto's drawings in 133 were deformed a certain way to achieve an effect in motion, and the effect when viewed as intended is flawless. Take any of those drawings out and the animation would lose its intended impact.

This case is different. Some of the shots in here attempt to convey the feeling of a character doing an intense action by using excessively deformed drawings, but the animator doesn't have the skill to pull it off, and it just looks sloppy. That sketchy shot in particular was very hard to watch. And the shot of the guy getting punched in the face seemed like a pale attempt to imitate the very well executed and memorable face-punch in episode 71 of the original Naruto series. It's unfortunate that this time I can't deny that some of those drawings are misfires that probably shouldn't have made it into the final product, and not all of the movements are flawless Norio Matsumoto creations. There were a lot of seconds, so I wonder how the work is broken down.

One thing that I find amusing and does not bother me in the slightest is how little effort was apparently put into some of the still shots that are interspersed between the action scenes - it looks like Wakabayashi spent exactly three seconds on them (three seconds that he would have preferred devoting to the action scenes). Those drawings are about the only moments this episode resembled the usual Naruto. Sure, Wakabayashi has an odd drawing style, but I find it's not Wakabayashi's drawings that are criticized in his episodes so much as the drawings taken out of context in a movement. If it weren't for the legitimately bad drawings in this episode in particular, I'd say it wasn't the drawings so much as the fact that there is a lot more animation than usual that strikes the regular viewers as being incongruous in Wakabayashi's episodes. Though of course he does change the material a bit and isn't as concerned with mimicking the style of the manga. Production studio Pierrot is obviously proud of the work Wakabayashi does for their show if they keep inviting him to do episodes again.

I'd like to see an episode like this from Wakabayashi not in Naruto for once - something with an interesting universe, creative designs and a self-contained story. Here the action just sort of trails off due to the necessity to process the material he's been provided from his alloted section of the manga. And I don't really feel that Wakabayashi's very idiosyncratic drawings are best suited to mimicing someone else's drawings. I'd like to see his exaggerated style of drawing allowed to come through more. In Naruto he has to suppress the unique flavor of his drawings way too much, which is a complete waste.

Here's a list of some of the more notable Naruto action episodes over the years:

Naruto #30 (dir. Atsushi Wakabayashi, 2003)
Naruto #48 (dir. Toshiyuki Tsuru, 2003)
Naruto #71 (dir. Atsushi Wakabayashi, 2004)
Naruto #133 (dir. Atsushi Wakabayashi, 2005)
Naruto Shippuuden #85 (dir. Toshiyuki Tsuru, 2008)
Naruto Shippuuden #123 (dir. Toshiyuki Tsuru, 2009)
Naruto Shippuuden #131 (dir. Akitoshi Yokoyama, 2009)
Naruto Shippuuden #143 (dir. Atsushi Nigorikawa, 2010)
Naruto Shippuuden #167 (dir. Atsushi Wakabayashi, 2010)

Staff for Naruto Shippuuden #167

Storyboard, Director and Animation Director: Atsushi Wakabayashi

Key animators:
Norio Matsumoto, Shingo Yamashita, Kenichi Kutsuna, Atsushi Wakabayashi

Second key animators:
Tomoyuki Niho, Kenichi Fujisawa, Shintaro Douge, Yasuyuki Kai
Takeo Oda, Shingo Natsume, Miyako Matsumoto, Atsuko Yamazaki
Kasumi Wada
Go Hands

This episode brings everything to a head and puts things in perspective, without really revealing anything, which is kind of interesting. It feels like we're reaching a sort of saturation point where the jumble of alternate narratives is reaching critical mass. It crystallizes what I was feeling from all the previous episodes. It's like each new episode has reinterpreted the whole basic situation of the protagonist's association with all of these characters during his first few years at university through the lens of what happened in the previous episodes. Hence things get progressively more jumbled and crazy as time goes on. The amazing feat of this episode is that it manages to convey a tangle of ideas, mixing and remixing what came before, picking a bit from from one situation and then throwing in a bit from another, in a way that for some reason doesn't feel jumbled, even though he's deliberately creating narrative contradictions. You get exactly the point it's trying to make, but it's so complex it's difficult to pin down to one statement.

For the first time in this series, the heart feels an emotional tug. The climax is a beautiful, emotional ride combining tour-de-force directing with superb animation of the kind that reminds of Yokoyama's work in Kaiba. A lot of hints about what might be happening are dropped here and there, but nothing concrete. Something human begins to emerge behind the impenetrable facade of intellectual play that dominated the proceedings up until now, with nary an emotion peeking through. I'm reminded of the montage at the end of Mind Game, with its beautiful display of all the possible futures of each character, representing a sort of acceptance of all the world has to offer, good or ill, and the privilege we each have of being able to create our own narrative in this world.

Such is the genius of Akitoshi Yokoyama. Once again, he's outdone himself. I don't mean to pat myself on the back, but I managed to guess while watching that he was the director and that it was probably Ryotaro Makihara helming the animation. Such is the force of their respective visions that there is no mistaking them for anyone else. With Makihara it isn't even a particular way of drawing things. There are some stylistic hallmarks, but it's more simply the fact that the animation suddenly moves a lot more, and more convincingly. The characters act out actions, rather than simply sitting there. With Yokoyama, it's the absolute hairpin precision with which every shot and every sound is manipulated to create an inexorable forward momentum. It's the torrent of interesting visual ideas. It's the stellar use of animation to create excitement and bolster the emotional impact of the story, notably in the climax, with all its beautiful flowing abstract animation. This is really the pinnacle of animated filmmaking - every shot perfectly honed, a theme develops towards the climax under the surface of the various goings on, and every drawing and movement delectable and exciting.

Thematically there's so much happening in the episode. In essence, you could say it's a would-be love story - if the protagonist would only do the right thing for once. It's like the cumulative detritus of needless imaginings of possible outcomes has gradually shunted aside the one thing that was obvious from the outset - the little Mochigumon doll - and its significance has grown gradually dimmer to the protagonist until in this episode it's no longer him who even found the doll. That leads to the emotional breakthrough.

It's a shame that people who did not have the patience to put up with the first eight episodes leading to this will be able to appreciate what Yokoyama achieved with this episode, because he does finally bring some emotional catharsis to what felt in many ways like an intellectual exercise up until now. In a way, with this episode I start to feel like it was all worth it. Never have I seen such a complexly recursive and densely packed so-called narrative in anime.

That emotional resonance is one of the hallmarks of Masaaki Yuasa's work. It's not just about the wildly imaginative technical wizardry of a master animator. It's the way he combines that with stories that aren't mere fictions and character tropes removed from any reality we can relate to, but that involve basic truths and emotions and behavior that apply to everybody in the world - even those who don't watch anime. It's about groping your way through life and figuring out how to face both the beauty and the ugliness in life. That's what I liked about Mind Game, and there's a lot of that deep, simple mulling over the stuff of our lives in his other work. Finally, I'm starting to get that feeling from Tatami Galaxy.

On the animator side of things, lots of regulars this time around, with the additional presence of one new face, Kanako Maru, whom I remember did a very nice solo episode of Casshern Sins, which I wrote about briefly before, though I haven't really followed her since then. Nice to see her turn up here.

Storyboard / Director: Akitoshi Yokoyama
Animation director: Ryotaro Makihara
Assistant animation directors: Tsutsumi Mai, Shouko Nishigaki

Animators:
Ryotaro Makihara, Tsutsumi Mai
Natsuko Shimizu, Satomi Higuchi
Shouko Nishigaki, Hiroshi Shimizu
Kanako Maru, Kenichi Shima
Tetsuo Moronuki, Takeo Oda
Kana Harufuji, Akitoshi Yokoyama

Seconds:
Takayuki Hamada, Sawako Miyamoto
Sayaka Toda, Kenichi Fujisawa
Wombat

I see now that this and the previous two episodes form a unit; one for each girl, and one for each of the three clubs that the protagonist decided to join to maximize his efficiency. So the only loose ends that were tied here were those for this trilogy. The reason for the repetition has yet to be explained, something I expect will happen eventually. One thing I admire about what they've done, despite finding the repetitive structure somewhat tedious, is that it feels cumulative. It doesn't feel like they're starting from scratch each time. You sense that aspects of previous episodes have a subtle impact on the new situation, so that it's neither purely repetitive nor purely linear. It's like a dream being re-dreamt. The basics are the same, but the details vary, and echoes of the previous version peep through here and again. It feels like they've carefully woven a painstakingly complex web of meaning.

In regards to the directing, this episode felt functional at best. Many of the episodes have their own special character due to the director in question, but this one felt kind of generic. It didn't feel particularly unique. It felt like it simply did what was necessary to push the plot forward and bring the plot threads from the previous two episodes to a clear conclusion, without any unique approach being presented in terms of the directing or mood. Perhaps it's because storyboarding, directing and animation directing weren't all done by one person like some of those previous episodes.

On the animation side, the staff was very similar to that in episode 1. The drawings were supervised by the chief animation director this time. I liked a number of the drawings here, like the drawing of the hand when the protagonist is holding the book. There were some interesting shapes and angles in there. Otherwise, the quality was good, but nothing stood out as mind-blowing.

I don't want to knock the quality, because it is just as good as ever. The layouts in particular are as fun and inventive as ever. That's an arena in which this series excels, like all Masaaki Yuasa productions. He and, presumably influenced by him, his staff are great at coming up with interesting ways of framing the shots. Even before Mind Game, Yuasa's productions stood out for all the comically angled and extremely wide shots he used so effectively. You can see a number of these angular wide shots in this episode, as in the previous episodes. I like the way the shot in the hallway of the university is framed, and that wide shot of the interior of the 'ideal' protagonist's home, with all the odd angles in there.

Layout is a pretty important fundamental element that doesn't get as much attention from fans as, say, the animation or the directing, because it's a little harder to assess. I have a hard time distinguishing between what's a quality layout and what's just there from the framing in the storyboard. I wonder to what extent Nobutake Ito was involved in the layouts. There is no separate credit, although I know that sometimes an animation director of his caliber will do most of the layouts, or at least correct them. (since usually layouts are drawn by the gengaman based on the konte) The layout policy varies from production to production, or at least it does on productions where the directors care enough about the animation like this one.

Finally, the color work in this show is remarkable. The opening credits pass by so damn fast I never really noticed, but checking it now I see that Kunio Tsujita is credited as color supervisor. He's done excellent work here. His color design does a great job of giving each shot its own unique texture, and differentiating the mood from scene to scene, from very subtle gradations in the real world to more wildly divergent coloring in the fantasy sequences. I often find myself admiring the coloring of a shot, which is something that rarely happens to me. Usually the layout or animation or art will stand out. Casshern Sins is another show that I remember had great coloring. Right after writing the previous sentence I looked it up real quick to see who the color designer of Casshern Sins was, and HOLY S*** it's Kunio Tsujita. Look for this guy's name. It's the mark of quality.

Storyboard: Hiroshi Shimizu
Director: Junichi Fujise
Animation director: Nobutake Ito

Animators:
Takayuki Hamada, Shouko Nishigaki
Natsuko Shimizu, Sawako Miyamoto
Kenichi Fujisawa, Nobuhiro Takefuji
Fuminori Tsukita, Yoshihiro Maeda

Seconds: Wombat

Suddenly we seem to have some continuity, albeit reversed. This episode lays the groundwork for what happened with the mouth fetishist Hanuki in episode 6, then proceeds forward with the as yet unnamed protagonist's attempt to elope with the mannequin Kaori. Clearly next we will be having an episode about mystery girl Keiko. Then comes Akashi?

This episode was the most insane so far, despite being the most straightforwardly dramatic. It's a simple love drama, but a completely surreal and artificial one that you know the whole time is fake. I felt I had to watch at an emotional remove and just enjoy it on an intellectual level, expecting that at a later point it would make sense. The situation isn't played up as a joke; it's played completely straight-faced, which makes it pretty fun to watch. It makes for a peculiar disconnect - the drama is so earnest and passionate, yet you are always aware the you're being toyed with. I understand that this is all a game being played in the protagonist's mind, but his apparent inability to make any decision whatsoever without agonizing melodramatically over it is frankly annoying and maddening rather than funny.

Identity seems pliable and impermanent in Tatami Galaxy. Aspects of the protagonist's identity such as his libido literally come alive and act of their own volition. There was an unexplained bit where a doppelganger appears briefly at the end of a previous episode. Hopefully that will make sense later. There are clearly lots of things throughout the show that are not meant to make sense immediately, but hopefully will fall into place by the end. So there is not really much point in speculating about what this or that means. You just have to kind of let it wash over you and say, "Okay then." You just have to observe all the layers of meaning at play in each episode, like the protagonist wearing a white Mochigumon suit and saving Akashi from the punks, mirroring Akashi's doll we've seen hanging in the protagonist's 4 1/2 tatami room in every episode so far.

I never cease to be amazed how many little details are packed in at every moment. Rewatching it now, I consciously notice for the first time, for example, the protagonist's inner libido voice saying "What's it matter?" when the protagonist wonders about his 'ideal woman' Higuchi Keiko - the libido isn't concerned with perfection; it wants release in a real woman like Hanuki. Also just noticed that he mentions that his ideal girl Keiko says she wants to meet him, but he's hesitant to meet her because he's played himself up into his ideal vision of himself in his letters.

In terms of directing, this episode was different from everything that came before, closer in spirit to Ryotaro Makihara's episode 3. It didn't have the fast-paced manic cutting and flood of colorful visual embellishment of the other episodes; it was played out using more conventional dramatic staging and pacing, letting the characters act out the drama rather than interpreting it through montages.

I could tell pretty quickly that this was the Michio Mihara episode in the series. I suspected there was probably going to be one. It would be odd if there hadn't been. It seems to be a tradition in Yuasa TV shows to have an episode by Michio Mihara. It's not actually that identifiable. For the first few minutes I didn't realize. (I think this part was done by Yasunori Miyazawa) Then I could start to tell from the way the characters acted, and particularly from the mouth and the expression. Mihara is unmistakable from the mouth. He has his own unique exaggerated forms for the various mouth shapes. You see them in everything he does. But this felt low key for Mihara. It wasn't moving like crazy like his Kaiba episode or drawn as crazy as his Kemonozume episode. The more expressive and pliable face of the protagonist is about the only place that felt a little idiosyncratic and showed his personality. He didn't animate everything this time around, not sure why. Maybe he was deliberately holding back as an animator, and letting the storyboarding do the talking. Who can blame him for not wanting to do all that work. Mihara has a unique style of subtle humor that I like. For example the moment where we see him looking in puzzlement at his gloves is subtly funny and very understated - I only figured out the comedy of the moment while rewatching.

I just figured out why the ending seemed familiar. I'd seen one of Takuya Hosogane's music videos before and posted it on my animated music video blog. In fact, I chose it as one of my favorite picks - his video for Cubesato. Fantastic video & song, and great choice for a person to do the ending.

Storyboard / Director / Animation director: Michio Mihara
Supervising animation director: Nobutake Ito

Animators:
Hiromi Hata
Yasunori Miyazawa
Michio Mihara

This was the most youthful and energetic feeling episode. That's saying a lot. Each episode so far has been full of hustle and energy. But this one felt particularly lively and full of enthusiasm for some reason. I suspect the reason is because it's storyboarded and directed by Shingo Natsume, an animator about whom I've been quite enthusiastic since discovering him due to his work on Welcome to the NHK (another connection!). He apparently directed his first episode quite recently, on that same mermaid show where Ryotaro Makihara directed episode 11. He directed the extra, DVD-only episode 13. Apparently it involved a number of the small community of younger firebrand animators who all seem to work on each other's projects these days. A lot of them seem to have connected on Guren Lagan. Shingo Natsume worked on Guren, and a huge number of these young talented animators seem to have helped out on this episode as a favor to him. It seems to happen often that when a young talented animator does his first sakkan or enshutsu, it turns into a sakuga bash with all sorts of animator stars coming out of the woodwork to help out, like happened with Tatsuzo Nishita's episode of Gaiking

That's what this episode was - a bash of young animators, many ex-gif animators, like all those episodes on various shows directed by Hiroshi Ikehata. Coming after the very small teams of the previous episodes, this one was a huge team. The animator list filled the entire screen. And there were tons of the names we've become familiar with over the last few years in various places. I'm sure there are plenty that have done good work in places that I'm not aware of, but I recognize quite a few of them. Kikuko Sadakata is of course the well-known Gainax animator; Shingo Yamashita the ex-gif animator who's done so much great work, notably on Birdy; Yoshimichi Kameda is probably the star animator of the current FMA show; Tomoyuki Niho is the old guard of the new generation, one of the first ex-gif animators to go pro, back on those Satelight productions of a few years back like Aquarion and more recently Birdy; Tamotsu Ogawa first came to people's attention with a crazy sequence in that infamous episode 7 of Bokurano, and has since done a lot of other crazy sequences with lots of weird deformation including a nice one in the 2008 Doraemon movie (a disregard for beautiful drawings seems to be a trend among these animators); Shingo Fujii did good work on the Ikehata episode of Soul Eater; Fumiaki Kouta has done lots of great work in various places in the last few years including Prototype recently (Fujii was there too); Toshiyuki Sato is another Ikehata regular; and Akira Amemiya needs to introduction - another one of the new generation of 'mover' animators Shingo Natsume presumably met at Gainax while working on Guren.

So this would be the second episode Shingo Natsume has directed, and boy, he really put his all into it. This was an incredibly tightly directed episode, packed with so many ideas and so many different textures. It was a hilarious romp through the college student's first sexual experience - or would-be sexual experience. Personally I don't understand why he didn't do it. I found that kind of annoying in a typical anime way. That's my main gripe about this episode. Otherwise, the amazing tension that Natsume builds up in the climax is... wow. The way it was all put together cutting frantically between the cool collage cowboy Johnny, the boiling kettle about to blow its load, the various denizens of the protagonist's sexually aroused brain all communing about the emergency situation like the Cerebellum and the Noiseman-looking Parietal Lobe, and the surreal sexual advances of the dentally obsessed girl (Hanuki is a homonym for 'dental extraction')... just wow. That was some inspired and very fun directing. The tongue was just awesome. And my favorite shot? The fingers going into the (...) which at first looks like fingers going into a (...). Brilliant!

Otherwise I didn't like the whole setup with the protagonist acting like a typical anime character caught between three girls he can't choose between. Was this intentional? I think it might have been. Though I can see that each girl is probably symbolic, standing for a different kind of attraction, bla bla bla. My other gripe: The episode felt too Gainaxy. I don't know how to explain it. Too manic in a self-consciously comic way. But I don't want to press the point. It's an amazing near-debut for Shingo Natsume, and a great followup to Ryotaro Makihara's episode. I've got this fetish or obsession with seeing my favorite animators become great directors, and I just got a double serving. I love the feeling of frank sexuality that he achieves in the episode, and all the humorous metaphors and symbols he uses. So many great images, like Hanuki lasciviously embracing that phallic tower.

As usual, one of the sub-characters took the lead role again, and it was interesting seeing how the various sub-characters' roles were shuffled around, particularly how Higuchi only got mentioned peripherally by the girl making that gesture with her chin when she says she's got a date with a certain guy. The other girl who he was supposed to meet that night seems to serve a similar role as the daughter in the previous episode, the unobtainable beauty, and the doll character belonged to the protagonist this time around... quite fascinating. There's an amazingly complex web of significance being woven here and throughout the show.

Storyboard & director: Shingo Natsume
Animation directors: Shouko Nishigaki & Naoyuki Asano
Supervising animation director: Nobutake Ito

Animators:
(deep breath)
Takao Yamagishi, Mai Tsutsumi, Kikuko Sadakata
Yosuke Okuda, Katsunori Shibata, Yuuki Komatsu
Tetsuo Moronuki, Shingo Yamashita, Keita Nagasaka
Takeo Oda, Yoshimichi Kameda, Tomoyuki Niho
Tamotsu Ogawa, Maya Segawa, Shingo Fujii
Tatsuki Kanezaki, Erukin Kawabata, Satoshi Nakura
Fumiaki Kouta, Shin Wakabayashi, Toshiyuki Sato
Shintaro Douge, Shouko Nishigaki, Shingo Natsume

Seconds:
Takayuki Hamada, Ryotaro Makihara, Natsuko Shimizu
Sawako Miyamoto, Satomi Higuchi, Nobuhiro Takefuji
Takeo Oda, Kenichi Fujisawa, Akira Amemiya

That's me running a Tatami Galaxy marathon. Going to see how quickly I can get through the remaining episodes.

The story of this episode had the most immediate hook for me, personally. I thought its depiction of this cult hiding behind the facade of selling health food was surprisingly believable and well done. It isn't far from reality either here or in Japan - just take a bit the pyramid scheming madness of Amway, a pinch of the reincarnated thetans of Scientology, and the doomsday auguries of Aum Shinrikyo, and put them together, and voila - Honwaka. Not too far-fetched at all.

It's in moments like this episode that cast satirical light on actual social issues and situations in real life that get my juices running. I was really into the story this time around. Basically, the story this time felt like something anybody could watch and find interesting. The humor was genuinely funny, and the directing did a great job of pulling you in. I think it plays on the feeling of distrust we all have in those people we meet occasionally who are just a little too friendly, and you begin to feel something is a little suspicious about their motivations... The buildup was perfect, leading to the big reveal of the secluded cult headquarters, complete with blindfolds, brainwashing/affirmation sessions a la Lifespring, and an avuncular, charismatic cult leader with a Noah's Ark who plays up fears about the latest ecological and sociopolitical problems and makes even eschatological pronouncements sound so nice and comforting.

Great quality as usual. Very different staff, though. Storyboard was by the director of Texhnolyze and Shigurui, who is obviously involved because this is a Madhouse production and he was on hand, and because, well, he's quite talented. I didn't like either of the latter two shows, but he's done a splendid job adapting to this material.

As has Masashi Ishihama as animation director. I would not peg Ishihama as having the sort of stylistic penchant that would make him a candidate for a Yuasa production, but he has considerable flexibility and is able to adapt to just about anything, from Denno Coil to Welcome to the NHK, and he's been involved in just about every major project in the last ten years. (Speaking of Welcome to the NHK, the comparison with the pyramid scheme in that show is inevitable, and it's interesting that Ishihama was involved in the drawing side of both.)

There were a lot of great moments in this episode, like the cat lounging in the bowl when the narrator is talking about the rumours the ramen-ya uses cats to make his dashi was clever and subtle. And I loved those ridiculous bee antenna caps.

The colors seemed particularly well handled, with the sudden b/w gradient when the protagonist says a faux pas, the all white in the royal jelly factory, the dark blue that night, etc. I liked the visuals in the sequence on the bridge in particular. The colors of the backgrounds and passers-by are a delicately blend of muted yellows setting off the cult members and the protagonist in his bee costume. And there's the colors of the cult members at the end when they're letting out the venom against one another. That scene has great impact combined with the insane animation by Yasunori Miyazawa.

The drawings of the characters in that bridge scene felt really delicately honed and showed off Ishihama's drawings well. It's interesting that he manages to instill each of the cult members with a distinct face despite the fact that each one has the same ^_^ expression stamped on their face throughout. Ishihama is very skilled at that kind of thing. He has a subtle and delicate touch without going overboard in the detail, and he can be really loose with the forms when necessary. There's a lot of personality showing through in the drawings, too, presumably because he lets good drawings by the animators through. There were a lot of great drawings throughout that are fun to go back and step through more carefully after watching the episode, like the sketchy sequence at the end after that very strange and surprising moment that I won't mention here, and the montage of jobs the protagonist has to take to pay for his expensive pyramid scheme lifestyle.

As usual, it's fascinating to see how the characters of this episode either reference or recall select aspects of what has happened in the previous episodes, and the way certain recurring motifs like the fortuneteller and the Mochigumon are repeated almost but not quite verbatim, with subtle changes in phrasing or pacing. You feel this incredible tangle of references and lives and past and present building in your memory, and being twisted around and re-remembered and rewritten.

Good animators included Nobutoshi Ogura, Takashi Mukouda and Ryotaro Makihara. Ogura probably did the very opening section. There were a lot of nice little bits of movement, and great drawings moving in a subtle way in every shot, but no big showoff scenes. It's interesting to see Tokuyuki Matsutake there. He is ubiquitous and was bound to be involved. He is one of the most prolific animators in Japan, I'm sure. His works list is massive. Coincidentally, I just saw him in the most recent episode of Naruto Shippuuden, 166. There were a few good action bits in there and I don't know any of the other animators so I figure it might be him. Heads up: 167 will be the first Wakabayashi episode since Naruto l33t.

Was it my imagination or is the ramen stand owner wearing Mickey Mouse pants?

Storyboard: Hirotsugu Hamasaki
Director: Tomoya Takahashi
Animation director: Masashi Ishihama
Supervising animation director: Nobutake Ito

Animators:
Nobutoshi Ogura, Ryotaro Makihara
Tokuyuki Matsutake, Kenichi Yamaguchi
Toshiharu Sugie, Mieko Hosoi
Takashi Muratani, Kenichi Shima
Mie Kana, Ippei Ichii
Shouta Ibata, Natsuko Shimizu
Naoko Masui

Chiaki Nakajima, Masashi Kariya
Takashi Mukouda, Yasunori Miyazawa
Masashi Ishihama

With episode 4 it's back to the style of episode 2 - a tight, hermetically crafted overload of the senses. It's Akitoshi Yokoyama at the helm again, which was immediately apparent. He's all sharp turns and rapid-fire creative embellishment. He's one of those directors who's been directing for a good while now, so he has a good grasp of the mechanics of the job, and doing it the easy way would be too boring, so he tries to come up with more challenging and exciting tricks with the directing every time, creating these masterfully edited torrents of crazy images interpreting the story rather than just telling them in a straightforward way using lengthy shots of staged character acting.

I think it's quite brilliant, judged purely from a directing point of view. But on the other hand, it was really bewildering and kind of hard to follow. It feels like a visual analogue of the superfast narration. He creates a barrage of wild images that mirror the fevered rantings of the protagonist, rather than just showing what's going on in the boring old real world. But yeah, really hard to follow. Every shot is highly calculated and precisely timed to create just the right flow. It's a virtuoso display to be sure. It forces you to give up trying to make sense of it all - you've got to relinquish control and be carried along with the flow, sensing what you can. Our brains will piece it together as best they can. It's remarkable how creative he is at coming up with so many and so varied an array of images interpreting the narrative. The vertical line of ancestors above the characters symbolizing the ancestors at the end of the episode in particular was an incredible idea and well executed.

Each episode so far seems to have focused on one of the sub-characters, presenting an alternate potential path through university for the protagonist in which that character plays the lead role in dragging the protagonist down the primrose path. This time the protagonist joins not a tennis club (Ozu) or film club (Jogasaki) or a biking club (Akashi) but a cult club. Mysterious big-chin man Higuchi is the cult leader, and "I"'s duties are to protect and worship the master. The gallery of other sub-characters play supporting roles, dropping hints of their previous roles and behaving in the new situation in a manner consistent with their personalities. Memories of the past episodes seem to float up like fragments of a dream remembered or deja vu.

I was a little confused watching this episode, but I was completely impressed. I'm still not too convinced about the series' gimmick, but I find that I'm enjoying the show more now that I'm getting used to the characters and the narrative style. Now the show feels like a (temporally) cubist vision of the many possible iterations of oneself that might have intersected with all the other possible iterations of one's acquaintances in university. It explores personality not linearly but by running the same characters though different situations and seeing how they react. Though it's not so simple, since in a Pirandellian or otherwise pomo twist the characters seem aware of their situation to an extent.

Character designer and chief animation director Nobutake Ito is in charge of the drawings here. He actually played a supervisory role in episodes 2 and 3, so he has been there making sure the drawings were right the whole time. He's joined by Takayuki Hamada and Hironori Tanaka, who lead the animators. Shimizu Natsuko and Shoko Nishigaki from ep 1 are back. The other animators I've never heard of, but it's still a very strong team, and the results are not an iota diminished from what came before. I think I recognized Tanaka's hand in some of the smoke FX near the end. Kemonozume and even Kaiba had stylistic variation, and the directing tone changed a lot, but so far this series has been pretty smooth in terms of the tone of the directing and the storytelling style.

Storyboard & director: Akitoshi Yokoyama

Animation director: Nobutake Ito

Co-animation directors: Takayuki Hamada, Hironori Tanaka

Animators:
Takayuki Hamada, Hironori Tanaka
Natsuko Shimizu, Shoko Nishigaki
Satomi Higuchi, Mai Tsutsumi
Kenichi Fujisawa, Fuminori Tsukita
Ippei Ichii, Kana Harufuji
Masahiro Iwasaki