My top 9 anime openings

I recently waded through compilations of probably hundreds of anime OP's on nicovideo.jp, yet didn't really come across too many hidden gems. I didn't list the most technically impressive OP's I know, merely my personal favorites because they're easier to write about. Though some of these come with good songs, the focus is mainly on the animation/design side of the vid.


9. Naruto Shippuuden
Naruto is probably the only long-running shounen title with occasionally worthwhile animation, so some of the OP's are rather decent as well. I appreciate how lively the motions are here. The sketchy running part is neat.


8. Death Note
I generally don't care about styles that are overtly trippy, and this vid isn't particularly well animated either, but the overall attitude is so much fun that I can overlook the flaws. This is exactly how Death Note should look animated. Batshit crazy.


7. Hellsing
Maybe it's the music or simply nostalgia. I just have a soft spot for this vid. It does a good job summarizing what's so darned cool about Hellsing; ghouls, blood and grinning badasses. I like Seras and the knife.


6. Record of Lodoss War TV
I'm such a big sucker for Kazuto Nakazawa's artwork that even wind-posing clichés are forgiven this time. I usually find anime fantasy awfully gaudy but this is an exception with tasteful palettes, layouts and editing. I especially like the use of slow motion.


5. Shoujo Kakumei Utena
The style is so over-the-top 90's that I find it kinda silly, but the animation is still flashy and ambitious enough to make it a fun watch. A whole bunch of big name animators here as far as I remember, and they've certainly worked hard.


4. Princess Tutu
I'm just fond of the art direction here; the boldness to use dark, nightly backgrounds alone is what sets this apart from your average show aimed for little girls. The animation flows with grace while the subtle palettes and soft lighting create a very convincing fairytale atmosphere.


3. Cowboy Bebop
It's such a classic I won't even bother explaining.


2. Re:Cutie Honey
Probably the most entertaining OP I've seen. So much fun! Very much Imaishi's style with the fast cuts and crazy details and whatnot, and I love every second of it. The long pans of still images are especially clever. Bold use of a whole damn rainbow of colors as well.


1. Samurai Champloo
Every frame of this thing could be a desktop wallpaper. I find the combination of hip-hop and old Japan incredibly cool, so in terms of overall style this could be my favorite OP of all. It blends modern anime designs and traditional paintings seamlessly while the palettes and animation are very neat as well. I love the character montages.

Typography

Still could use a little polishing but I like it anyway. Yippee! Props to anyone who gets the movie reference.

This was a school assignment and I have to admit I won't do this again anytime soon. I have a bad enough relationship with vector graphics (which is why my letters have zero curves) and painstakingly adjusting some 80+ characters with it wasn't exactly a pinnacle of joy. B, K, 3, 8 and v were especially difficult, and the software kept crashing (?!) every time I worked on the umlauts. Though I really love beautiful fonts, I don't think I have a knack for this stuff myself...

Speaking of typography, I have to spread this magical clip:



I was never hugely interested in oldschool calligraphy but this guy changed my mind a little. Oooh, what a steady hand.

Panty & Stocking

Haven't been updating for a while, sorry! I've been busy with school and stuff, but I'm also having some trouble on deciding what to write about. Ideas?

Well, I just got my hands on ep#1 of Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt so I might as well put down my first impressions. Being the Gainax/Imaishi/Yoshinari fantard I am I've been anticipating this anime ever since it was first announced.



The premise is simple; an episodic show about two angel sisters who hunt for "ghosts" (aka monsters of the week). Panty is a blonde sex addict who's panties turn into a gun. Stocking is a cake-munching gothic lolita who's stockings turn into a pair of swords. Their boss is Garterbelt, a black priest with a huge afro.




With a whole cast named after underwear this is nothing too highbrow. A pretty juvenile show really, with the first episode already delivering a giant poo monster and countless dick jokes. As much as I love director Imaishi's wacky shenanigans I would've appreciated something more clever... but it's still fairly entertaining with the right mindset, and I trust that the best episodes are yet to come.




The visuals are fresh and cool, that's the main treat here. The art style borrows heavily from American cartoons and a bunch of animator superstars are taking turns going absolutely nuts with it. PSG looks awesome and it's full of surprises. The backgrounds are neat and stylish while the streamlined character designs work perfectly in the fast-paced action scenes, spiced up by typographic sound effects. There are bits of CG thrown in too, but they blend in almost seamlessly and are well used to complement the action. This is a real blast to watch.

ALSO, MAGICAL STRIPPERS.
(Gorgeous sequence animated by Atsushi Nishigori & You Yoshinari)

Some poor gags aside Panty & Stocking is an enjoyable piece of eyecandy and I'm definitely looking forward to future episodes. Might write another entry about this once the series is over.

Detail and shading

This is a pretty fun thing to do; redrawing an old work to see how my style has developed. Yeah, I used to have that phase when I drew cutesy anime girls in fantasy outfits. Surprisingly there are still a few people who say the earlier version looks better, which kind of baffles me. Really? Are you sure? What about the improved anatomy and posing, and the more consistent lighting?

Oh right... the old pic is more detailed.

I know I wrote in the previous post that backgrounds are better with more detail, so this might sound a bit contradictory... But overall I think people obsess with detail too much. There's one English guy called "Otaking" who has even made it his personal crusade to declare that detail is the one and only measure of visual brilliance. Naturally he loathes modern anime because the art styles have gotten more simple over time, particularly the shading. He argues that even Disney films look bad for the same reason.

Never mind that his 80's examples are mostly still frame "money shots".
Those styles were a nightmare to animate.

His edit of a 2008 anime screenshot into a typical oily-skinned 80's equivalent

I thought this guy was an elaborate troll at first. Of course this is all a matter of taste in the end, but I can't help but facepalm a little. The whole medium of animation is hardly meant for super detailed drawings to begin with; the more detail you have in a character, the clumsier it will move. At worst you would end up with little more than a slideshow!

The simplicity is a welcome change in my opinion. Most anime, especially in the 90's, uses shading just for the sake of using it, so the characters are always evenly lit from somewhere above:

Like Miyazaki's films, where light sources tend to be kinda vague
(Mononoke Hime, 1997)

And then there are a few titles where shading is used in a very sparing, strategic fashion - to create a feel of space and atmosphere:

(Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo, 2006)

I have to say I prefer this approach. You don't need to use a lot of detail to make a solid, functional, appealing image. It's not a matter of laziness either, as some might argue; in fact a good simple drawing is harder to pull off than a good detailed drawing, since there isn't a ton of extra crap to hide your flaws with.

Having more to look at isn't always the better option.

Just my two cents. And I just happen to love flat surfaces anyway. Flatness is great.

Toulouse-Lautrec, bitches.

My blog was recently added to ani.mu, an online listing for Finnish anime blogs. They asked me to mention it, so here goes!

Backgrounds

(One Piece vol. 46)

Lately I've been working as an intern at a local manga publisher, so naturally I've gotten my hands on tons of manga. I was catching up with One Piece and noticed how much the backgrounds had improven over time. The horror-themed Thriller Bark was especially cool! It really heightens the feel of adventure when you have rich environments to ogle at. When did Eiichiro Oda hire such hardworking assistants? That said, why can't some other popular authors do the same? I'm looking at you, Kubo. Goddamn you.

(Bleach vol. 13)

Call it minimalistic or whatever, but this just screams lazy to me. I hear it's gotten even lazier since.

So because of One Piece I kind of got inspired to kill myself with backgrounds. Not that I haven't been doing that before, as I feel there's no such thing as a background too elaborate. There's always room for improvement no matter how hard I work on them. And then it gets to the point where I spend four hours inking a single panel, crying a little, thinking whether I'm wasting my time after all...

Chapter 1 was easy because 95% of the visuals were practically disposable. Random baddies in a random hideout? Piece of cake. I could just come up with characters and furniture as I went.

Figuring out the right vanishing points
is a challenge by itself

But chapter 2 is completely different. It's set in the Cypress HQ, so I have a lot more design work to do. I won't allow myself to draw a crappy location now and hope to "update" it later; it has to look good right from the start. So I've been battling the architecture like mad, and it's not even enough that I get the outside appearance done. I also want to know how the facilities are divided for different uses, and how people move around between the rooms and floors...

Talk about last minute change. I originally intended this room to be big and round like a ballroom, but just as I was going to draw the first panel with it, I realized it was actually a really freaking stupid design. So many curves and diagonals! They are the worst things to have in a building, and I've learned to hate them with a burning passion! ...So the room got a more straight, angular look. It's still pretty difficult to draw though.

I haven't actually studied architecture for this project. Maybe I should've, but I figured it could be more interesting to see where my ignorance can take me. My research consists solely of keeping my eyes open on my way to work... though I don't want the city to end up looking too much like Helsinki. Personally I love both the Art Nouveau and Art Deco movements, but I don't care to really study those either. Too much work, and I start to fear the chance I'm doing it "wrong" somehow.

Thus, Santa Luison is a vaguely European city with vaguely European buildings from vague time periods. As long as it feels like a plausible and familiar environment to the average reader, I'm pretty much content.

Handy hands

For the whole length of Death Note I remember wondering how awful it must've been to draw. It's really heavy on dialogue; the characters are seen sitting around in their hideouts discussing and contemplating for the majority of the story, while any moments of action are few and far in between. This is tricky, because anyone who's done manga-style storytelling knows that info dumps and long bits of dialogue can be a chore to wade through - for the reader, and especially for the artist.

Panel after panel of people opening their mouths is not a fun idea. So how is this problem dealth with? How to draw a long conversation without mentally killing oneself?

Keep their hands busy!

There were a lot of fan theories to explain the quirky habits of the three detective masterminds, but I believe it was mostly to make Takeshi Obata's job easier. It can be hard to draw idle characters, so basically you need to have some kind of physical thing going on if you want to make the talky bits visually interesting. It gets dull just having the characters sit still and exchange their lines. Something more needs to happen, even if it's just a bar of chocolate.

(Billy Bat)

Naoki Urasawa's works tend to be an exception though. His manga has a lot of dialogue with the occasional page full of talking heads. He knows how to handle this "lazy" approach, though; it makes sense to use a bunch of closeups when you want to make the conversation more intense. Backgrounds lose their purpose when you focus on the tension between characters.

Again, I'm reflecting the subject to my own projects! Incidentally the second issue of Phantomland has so much dialogue that I'm constantly at my wit's end trying to deliver it all smoothly. As a consequence some of the characters have become coffee or tea drinkers... although I kind of hate drawing dishware.

That said, there are also things like Jon's smoking. He didn't always smoke in my drawings - some of my earlier story plans actually had a completely abstinent Jon. But he's not that smart anymore, partly because the fact stands that smokers have better poses available. It's easier to look cool and dignified when you have an item to hold.

Like Freud.

You Yoshinari

This awesome crossover fanart kept bothering me for years because I couldn't find out who drew it. Turns out it was You Yoshinari (吉成曜) all along, none other than my favorite animator! No wonder the style looked familiar. I couldn't imagine he'd have a thing for American cartoons.

Born in 1971, You Yoshinari had his animator debut in 1992. Soon after he did action scenes for Evangelion, and has been known as an in-house "genius" at Gainax ever since. His works include animation, illustration and character/mechanical design, but (almost) no directing at all. Maybe that's why he's kind of an obscure name for everyone but animation geeks.



Incidentally he's drawn most of my favorite parts in FLCL and Gurren Lagann. There's just this beautiful flow and rhythm in his animation. It's a great combination of realism and style; he has a good understanding of physics while managing to make every little twitch look flawlessly cool.



Gurren Lagann Parallel Works #8 is a rare direction work of Yoshinari's, though I can't tell how much of it he drew by himself. It's all very much his style though. All the robots in the series were his design too:



Yoshinari also has a trademark lush illustration style which is mostly seen as promotional art for anime, but a couple of videogames too (Grandia III, Valkyrie Profile 1 & 2).

There's so much detail it almost makes my eyes hurt... but the palettes are rather nice. He really loves those purple hues, eh?

Sources:
http://www18.atwiki.jp/sakuga/
http://www.creativeuncut.com/