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Oh God no! It's a 'Favourite Animation Director' thread!!

Gravy

Contaminated KFC
Hey boys and girls. It's time to learn some new words! Impress your friends, be the life of the party, get ALL the ladies/men/prefered genders, become rich without having to man a crudely constructed lemonade stand! The word of today is;

niche
-A situation or activity specially suited to a person's interests, abilities, or nature: "found her niche in life."
-A special area of demand for a product or service. This is why baby food is often aimed at a younger demographic.
-A specific habitat in nature in which certain organisms can thrive. ie. a rat's niche is a chemical testing plant.

(Remember that second one when you turn up at Alan Sugar's boardroom table, it's required knowledge. That Sir Alan....he sure does love his Banana and Pea mush…)

Who's your favourite animation director on Pocket Monsters?
Proving that Bulbpedia is good for something, there's a list here for those who have been foolish enough not to read into this incredibly important topic.

My personal favourite is Yumenosuke Tokuda, who (unfortunately) worked on a only handful of episodes during his time on the show. While perhaps not the absolute best when it came to the actual movement side of things (although he was pretty damn good regardless), he provided some wonderful stylised artwork which really brought these characters to life. In comparison to a lot of other directors, the art was surprisingly detailed and much more dynamic, often employing the usage of thick, bold outlines and heavy shading, which was especially effective during battle scenes, and highly suited for the typical wacky filler episode rich with bizarre facial expressions and the like. When you've got something like the almighty Fishing God as exhibit 'A', you can't really argue with that.
 

ZgonDuck

Like A Boss
I'd be lying if I said anyone other that Iwane.

The way he seems to bring the action to life is just amazing. Even during The World's Strongest Magikarp episode, I just loved the way the characters were drawn, especially Feebas, evern though it didn't really do crap.
 

Dax

Legend
I love Takeda. The ability to draw pokemon without an inch of imperfection amuses me. Look at the Hippowdon episode, it's amazing, outstanding... astonishing!!

Sarcasm aside, I'm between Iwane, Natsume and Tamagawa. I love all of them. Natusme for bringing an unique design and comedic point in every character and Iwane and Tamagawa for the quality of their work.
 

S.Suikun

Thank you, SPPf! :)
Iwane may get the award for best AD who's consistently churning out every 6 episodes or so, but overall, it may be a brutal battle between Akihiro Tamagawa and Yumenosuke Tokuda. Tamagawa delivers even richer environments and characters than Iwane does, and I still say that staircase scene in DP060 is the best usage of CG this series has ever pulled off. Tokuda (not to be confused with Takeda), like Gravy said, did a stellar job with creative poses and expressions, in addition to delivering the fantastic art direction that can be expected from the series' better animation directors. Natsume has been able to fill a void in regards to wacky facial expressions, but is inconsistent when it comes to proportion and whatnot.
 
I'm in love with Akihiro Tamagawa, because the animation is nice , consistant, and just plain sexy. I always have to watch his episodes more than once, because they are so well-drawn and his episodes are always interesting.

Yumenosuke Tokuda is amazing as well. His characters have si much personality, and I do like his wacky style of drawing. It just bring the characters to life, and his episodes are always just so entertaining.
 

TeddiUrsa

Well-Known Member
What is an Animation Director? The person who does the animation of an episode? How silly! Pokémon isn´t about animation or drawings! It is about Ash Ketchum! The greatest master of Pokemon and his wonderful tale of marvelous awesomeness! It doesn´t matter how the episodes are animated!

*cough cough*

Sorry,...my Ash_forever trauma keeps popping up more often nowadays...

I have to vote for Tamagawa.
I love Yumenosuke Tokuda for the more than awesome Whiscash episode ( my favourite Pokemon gets a good AD? Fabelhaft!) alone, but Tamagawa is my favourite AD since episode "Fire and Ice" from the Kanto league and was burned into my brain with "Pikachu Revolts".
Tamagawa makes ANY episode worth watching and most episodes done by him are great episodes anyway, so maybe that´s the reason I prefer him over Tokuda...not very fair, I know.

He just needs to do more episodes...

Natsume is great for comedic episodes. I can live with inconsistent proportions as long as the right style is there.
 

Crystal Clair

Well-Known Member
Oh
My
Gawd!
I was just about to do a journal entry on this at my deviantart. I had the entry all planned out and I was planning on including the most prominent ADs in my head.
Gravy, I love you

Yumenosuke Tokuda
I was just looking up the Wiscash episode and Tokuda did that episode.

Holy! There sure are a lot of animation directors out there!

Okay, now here it is, what we've all been waiting for. Crystal Clair's favorite animation directors!
Warning, lots of Shinji but a brief mention of Falkner and Harley and some others

Masaaki Iwane is my favorite. I know Tamagawa and Tokuda are better but Iwane is a regular and he animated some great Shinji episodes.

I really dont like Izumi Shimura. In some of my screenshots, it seems like she cant draw a smooth line for her life! She draws all the characters who have less common character designs like Shinji, Falkner and Harley in his debut episode... she has a problem drawing them. Thanks to her, Falkner's only episode made him look awkward as heck. I still love him though.

Kazue Kinoshita may be the worst AD (along with Takeda whom I didn't know was bad till the episode that just aired in Japan) but she did a better Shinji than Shimura half the time (even though Shinji only appeared for like a moment in only one of her episodes). And just for that, I give her credit.

Takeda, normally I wouldn't like her/him but 1. [spoil]Cassidy and Butch's episode in DP wasn't as bad in my eyes as everyone thought and I love Cassidy like I love Shinji so that means something[/spoil] and 2. Takeda did the Shirona episode. Not only did some great Shinji screencaps come from that episode but that one scene where there's lots of wind and Takeda gave us Shinji's lovely flowing hair... however since it wasn't in a movie, it was a bit choppy, but I dont care, better than nothing.

Regardless, some Pokemon characters are just flat out hard to draw. Clair I'm looking at you! The animators (and me tbh) couldn't keep her appearance consistant. Sometimes she looked young and sometimes she looked like an old dominatrix. The dominatrix happened mostly when she was in battle though. Her best episode was Beauty Is Skin Deep IMO (Masaru Fukumoto) and the episode I liked least was Why, Wynaut (Hiroshi Sakai). Not familiar with Fukumoto or Sakaki.

One day, I would like to see some sort of Animation Director Guide describing almost every AD and their styles like what Habunake/Korobooshi Kojiro did over at Bulbagarden.
 

King Of Steel

I'MA USE AYSE PHANG!
Tamagawa was good. I liked the way he animated the characters and all. The ones that stick to my mind are "The Flame Pokémon-athon", "The Song of Jigglypuff" (which was utter hilarious) and "Pikachu Re-Volts". I also like Iwane for good-looking episodes, and Tokuda did well for "Gaining Groudon" (I like the art in this episode, even if the plot plain sucked).

Although, I don't really have a favourite.
 

Rave

Banned
Its difficult for me to say which ones are my favorites.

The ones that come to mind are the following...

Kunihiko Natsume is probably my favorite animation director. Probably because I like the quality of the character designs, and how they turn out.

Akihiro Tamagawa for the excellent work on the Journey to the Unknown episode. Gives the characters an appeal that I honestly can't explain.

But this is from someone who isn't very knowledgeable about the very specifics of the series, so I'm pretty much recalling from episodes I liked the art direction and pointing out who is responsible.
 

Electivirus

Not really, no.
Iwane is definitely my favorite, hands down.

But for the more seldom-seen ADs, I would have to choose Tamagawa. His character designs are the best IMO and I don't know why he doesn't animate more often.

Tamagawa cuz his awesome character drawing. I wish he would do episodes on a regular basis :<

He used to animate on a fairly regular basis WAYYY back during Kanto into early Johto, but for some reason he stopped :(

I love Natsume too...the way she can bring life and humor into an episode is amazing to me, even if she does have a bit of a problem with the character designs.

It's also nice to see Hirooka back. I've missed her quick attacking Walrein's of doom :) And she did a nice job on the Chimchar ep too.

I'm shocked no one metioned Taguchi yet...the Probopass ep was decent, but I thought that the animation itself was highly inconsistent (granted, it was his first, but still...). Compare that to the Yanma episode, and you can tell that he's improved a lot. I actually think he's one of the best around now.

And say what you will about Shimura, but she's gotten a lot better since the first D/P episode. Lucario vs Buizel, the Bidoof episode, and Pikachu vs. Raichu come to mind.

Speaking of ADs that have improved, Kinoshita *puts on flame shield*. Just look at her previously cancer-inducing episodes (ex. That god-awful Pikachu vs Ash episode) then look at her recent Wallace Cup ep. Sure, it was only meh-worthy, and her character designs are still a bit off-model, but still...meh.

Takeda is just crappy. I daresay Kinoshita has surpassed him o_O. That being said, I still prefer his stiff animations to Kinoshita's off-model characters. Y'know in the way one would prefer Takeda to Kinoshita.

Did that make any sense at all?

Anyway, to sum it up:

(In order)
Iwane/Tamagawa
Natsume
Taguchi
Hirooka
Shimura
 

SOS! Its Not Healthy..

He Say Whaaa...
Oh my goodness, can Pokemon can get any more complicated with the animation directors. I rarely pay attention who animate unless the animation was done so bad like the recent episode with Crasher Wake, loved the episode but the Pokemon looked weird to me except for Buizel and Floatzel.

Hmm looking through all the animation directors, I liked the episodes that were done by Izumi Shimura, Koichi Taguchi, Natsume Kunihiko, and Akihiro Tamagawa. Those people were really good in my eyes from the episodes I could recalled. I might of missed one, but I don't have exactly a favorite and I'm not that nitpicky specifically on characters designs unless like I said look bad.
 

Electivirus

Not really, no.
Oh my goodness, can Pokemon can get any more complicated with the animation directors. I rarely pay attention who animate unless the animation was done so bad like the recent episode with Crasher Wake, loved the episode but the Pokemon looked weird to me except for Buizel and Floatzel.

Hmm looking through all the animation directors, I liked the episodes that were done by Izumi Shimura, Koichi Taguchi, Natsume Kunihiko, and Akihiro Tamagawa. Those people were really good in my eyes from the episodes I could recalled. I might of missed one, but I don't have exactly a favorite and I'm not that nitpicky specifically on characters designs unless like I said look bad.

I wish I barely paid attention to the ADs. Most of my enjoyment of an episode hinges depends on the animation being at least halfway decent (Shimura) and if it isn't, then that episode is pretty much ruined in my book. It gets pretty annoying after a while. :(
 

Wobuffet fan

TR's #1 admin
I have to say my top 4 animators are(in no particular order): Iwane, Tamagawea, Shimuera, and Natsume.

Shimuera: I love when she draws she makes the characters a lot more serious than usual. She often has a lot of detail around the character's clothes and face which makes watching her very interesting. I know she has that porportion problem(making certain Pokemon such as Seviper and Carnivine look gignantic), but other than that she does fine.

Natsume: He(I think?) just does a wonderful job with humorous episodes. Just the way he animates their facial expressions and body postures is good. Only problem is sometimes he's a bit repetive with TR mottos.

Tamagawea: I had no idea he was animating since season 1. He does an incredidbly good job and catches everything the other three do into one.

Iwane: When it comes to battles, he does a very good job with them. He's extremely good with applying shadow effects in the right place too(Unbeatable Light of Seeing comes to mind).
 

Satoshi

リーリエの為に戦ってるトレーナー
Akihiro Tamagawa animated a lot of my favorite episodes (such as the episode where Satoshi releases Butterfree, the Ponyta episode, that episode where Satoshi's Lizardon leaves to go train at the Lizardon Valley, and the Pokemon Ranger episode in DP). The way he draws the characters can certainly be described as great, he definitely brings them all to life (hell, almost no ridiculous off-model proportions that I can poke fun at!). Masaaki Iwane comes in second, as he delivers some very stylized battle scenes.

When they work together, they create literal tanks that plow every other episode to the ground. Just watch DP039 and the Mewtwo! I Am Here! special, to get the gist of what I'm saying. Basically how I want every Pokemon episode to look like, including those boring fillers and whatnot (alas; the amount of quality work a human can give out consecutively says this dream is not possible).
 
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Electivirus

Not really, no.
When they work together, they create literal tanks that plow every other episode to the ground. Just watch DP039 and the Mewtwo! I Am Here! special, to get the gist of what I'm saying. Basically how I want every Pokemon episode to look like, including those boring fillers and whatnot (alas; the amount of quality work a human can give out consecutively says this dream is not possible).

Don't "Tactics Theatrics". The animation in that one was just full of win :)
 

HikariTajiri

Back! =D
Tamagawa-san... mighty slayer of filler eps! XD Okay, enough going crazy... If you still can't see why Tamagawa is so great at this, then... *points to DP039 and Tactics Theatrics* There you go, proof of Tamagawa-san's awesomeness. Need any more evidence now...?
 
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