Sailor Moon Art Director motifs

[sailor Yaoi 81]

I think that the only thing that made the episode 138 of SuperS memorable for me , was this scene.
Hawk eye vs Sailor mercury.
The director of the episode was Masahiro Ando , but this sequence doesnt have his style , so obviously it was done by another animator , maybe hasegawa..................idk help me.

I like the pose of his left hand here.

imagenes web gratis

cool background too.

I liked the sequence where the two attacks made contact , i will suppose that the two attacks just got cancelled at the same time , the water beats fire logic doent function in sailor moon.

and then we return to masahiro style

off topic , but i have thought that this episode could have had worked to do some interaction with and in the future , since haruka drives car and amy learned how to repair cars in this episode...................they could have that thing in common.

 

[Talentless Fool]

I think that the only thing that made the episode 138 of SuperS memorable for me , was this scene.
Hawk eye vs Sailor mercury.
The director of the episode was Masahiro Ando , but this sequence doesnt have his style , so obviously it was done by another animator , maybe hasegawa..................idk help me.

This sequence is originally from #130 directed by Kagawa

Speaking of which, other interesting looking shots of that episode.

Interestingly, just like Itoh, with SuperS you'll see Kagawa gearing closer to the manga aesthetic and Takeuchi's 'croquis-esque' drawings with less detailed & very svelte figures.
Kagawa handles it better than Itoh (as Itoh's strength comes from all the beauty of the details she adds) however I still prefer his style on the SuperS movie.
Following Takeuchi's style too closely was never a good idea...

Like these shots are expressive and super cool-looking but you see the desire to try to look like the manga and I'm not digging it.

 

[Talentless Fool]

I have talked about the Dead Scream before but it's so gorgeous that it deserves it's own complete image set
A pity Pluto doesn't get to have her own version of the Planet Orb but is relegated with a color swap with Uranus :/

 

[Talentless Fool]

This was Itoh at her best, at her peak, touching perfection by the tips of her fingers - I wish she stayed on this more mature style.

Abracadabra, it's magic time!

 

[Late to the Game]

Do you know, by any chance, why the animation directors were allowed to use such different styles on Sailor Moon? I don't remember another anime in which the style varied so much between episodes. Is it a thing from its time, allowing animators to use their own style instead of aiming for consistency?

 

[KingPriceman]

Do you know, by any chance, why the animation directors were allowed to use such different styles on Sailor Moon? I don't remember another anime in which the style varied so much between episodes. Is it a thing from its time, allowing animators to use their own style instead of aiming for consistency?

It was to get the episodes out the door and onto TVs as quick and as soon as possible, at least once a week. Many other anime have the same thing as well. I have read about examples of this in Dragon Ball as well, but this should generally apply to any anime or even U.S. cartoon that puts out more than 26 episodes a year.

This is still evident today for the remaining weekly anime, but slowly and surely, the 13-episode ones began taking over.

However, a lot of 13 episode anime today all look the same, of which is also a result of their year-long or so planning time.

 

[Talentless Fool]

Do you know, by any chance, why the animation directors were allowed to use such different styles on Sailor Moon? I don't remember another anime in which the style varied so much between episodes. Is it a thing from its time, allowing animators to use their own style instead of aiming for consistency?

It was mostly a thing of it's time. However, Toei was one of the studios who was the most prominent in allowing this 'grace' to their series and honestly it was a good thing.
Even though some styles might be jarring, it also allowed a lot of young animators to learn and spread their wings.
Sometimes it had it's downsides like for example in Saint Seiya with Shizuo Kawai (who didn't have a kawaii style at all!) - a major infamous animator in the franchise - who had an utterly crude 'Hokuto no Ken' style but was a somehow good animator. However, after being given 3 chances to improve, he was demoted and only did small cuts or in-between shots.
For Sailor Moon, Itoh debuted as a somehow noticeable but lackluster rookie on her 1st episode to only being a power force.

A lot of the animators were also part of smaller studios/teams so they had a 'style'/DNA to their work which also became their main selling point like the Nakamuras or Kagawa (who was part of studio Cockpit and had a similar style to Keisuke Masunaga).
These studios were commissioned to handle episodes on rotation for really long-running shows as their in-house animators were not sufficient enough.
Several young animators who worked on Toei series such as Dragon Ball Z, Saint Seiya & Sailor Moon ended up being house hold names in the animation industry and it's thanks to the chance of showing their own personal take on the series they were working on.

Shorter, year-long series of some 40-ish episodes (like Taiyo no Ko, Esteban or Cat's Eye) still had some style differences however it was minimal.

This practice has been 'abolished' in the early 2000s with the first arcs of Naruto & Bleach being the last to show this freedom to the animators.
I think the OG Yu-Gi-Oh! of Studio Gallop was the last to showcase varying styles over the episodes giving us legends such as Takahiro Kagami, Kenichi Hara and Eiji Hirayama.

Terumi Nishii, currently one of the most prominent and prolific animators in the industry, has openly commented on the poor state of the animation industry and how younger animators are not being allowed to learn, experience and develop their own styles because of the sheer amount of anime being produced in such big quantity as well as quality.

Terumi, who learned under Kagawa, has said that once Kagawa's generation will be gone, the animation industry will enter it's dark ages as the younger animators will have no one to guide them and no one to learn from.
Basically, the level of the green animators is so low (and because of the very tight schedules, the senior animators can't guide and correct them like back in the day where their 'average' but progressive work would pass), the senior animators have to essentially draw a whole episode by themselves because the work by the young animators is useless.

 

[Rika-Chicchi]

I have talked about the Dead Scream before but it's so gorgeous that it deserves it's own complete image set

Her postures in that attack are so elegant & graceful - wonder who choreographed them.

 

[sailor Yaoi 81]

I have talked about the Dead Scream before but it's so gorgeous that it deserves it's own complete image set
A pity Pluto doesn't get to have her own version of the Planet Orb but is relegated with a color swap with Uranus :/

I like the little make up in her eyes

It was mostly a thing of it's time. However, Toei was one of the studios who was the most prominent in allowing this 'grace' to their series and honestly it was a good thing.
Even though some styles might be jarring, it also allowed a lot of young animators to learn and spread their wings.
Sometimes it had it's downsides like for example in Saint Seiya with Shizuo Kawai (who didn't have a kawaii style at all!) - a major infamous animator in the franchise - who had an utterly crude 'Hokuto no Ken' style but was a somehow good animator. However, after being given 3 chances to improve, he was demoted and only did small cuts or in-between shots.
For Sailor Moon, Itoh debuted as a somehow noticeable but lackluster rookie on her 1st episode to only being a power force.

A lot of the animators were also part of smaller studios/teams so they had a 'style'/DNA to their work which also became their main selling point like the Nakamuras or Kagawa (who was part of studio Cockpit and had a similar style to Keisuke Masunaga).
These studios were commissioned to handle episodes on rotation for really long-running shows as their in-house animators were not sufficient enough.
Several young animators who worked on Toei series such as Dragon Ball Z, Saint Seiya & Sailor Moon ended up being house hold names in the animation industry and it's thanks to the chance of showing their own personal take on the series they were working on.

Shorter, year-long series of some 40-ish episodes (like Taiyo no Ko, Esteban or Cat's Eye) still had some style differences however it was minimal.

This practice has been 'abolished' in the early 2000s with the first arcs of Naruto & Bleach being the last to show this freedom to the animators.
I think the OG Yu-Gi-Oh! of Studio Gallop was the last to showcase varying styles over the episodes giving us legends such as Takahiro Kagami, Kenichi Hara and Eiji Hirayama.

Terumi Nishii, currently one of the most prominent and prolific animators in the industry, has openly commented on the poor state of the animation industry and how younger animators are not being allowed to learn, experience and develop their own styles because of the sheer amount of anime being produced in such big quantity as well as quality.

Terumi, who learned under Kagawa, has said that once Kagawa's generation will be gone, the animation industry will enter it's dark ages as the younger animators will have no one to guide them and no one to learn from.
Basically, the level of the green animators is so low (and because of the very tight schedules, the senior animators can't guide and correct them like back in the day where their 'average' but progressive work would pass), the senior animators have to essentially draw a whole episode by themselves because the work by the young animators is useless.

So it would be a good thing to the anime to go back to give more artistic freedom to its animators?

 

[Late to the Game]

It was to get the episodes out the door and onto TVs as quick and as soon as possible, at least once a week. Many other anime have the same thing as well. I have read about examples of this in Dragon Ball as well, but this should generally apply to any anime or even U.S. cartoon that puts out more than 26 episodes a year.

This is still evident today for the remaining weekly anime, but slowly and surely, the 13-episode ones began taking over.

However, a lot of 13 episode anime today all look the same, of which is also a result of their year-long or so planning time.

I had never noticed it on Dragon Ball before and now I can't unsee it. I admit I'm not a great fan of Dragon Ball but I'm still surprised I'd never noticed it before, the differences can be as drastic as the ones we observe on Sailor Moon. Now that I look it up, the difference between animation styles on Digimon Adventure, for example, seems to be much more subtle. Maybe that's when they started to go digital?

It was mostly a thing of it's time. However, Toei was one of the studios who was the most prominent in allowing this 'grace' to their series and honestly it was a good thing.
Even though some styles might be jarring, it also allowed a lot of young animators to learn and spread their wings.
Sometimes it had it's downsides like for example in Saint Seiya with Shizuo Kawai (who didn't have a kawaii style at all!) - a major infamous animator in the franchise - who had an utterly crude 'Hokuto no Ken' style but was a somehow good animator. However, after being given 3 chances to improve, he was demoted and only did small cuts or in-between shots.
For Sailor Moon, Itoh debuted as a somehow noticeable but lackluster rookie on her 1st episode to only being a power force.

A lot of the animators were also part of smaller studios/teams so they had a 'style'/DNA to their work which also became their main selling point like the Nakamuras or Kagawa (who was part of studio Cockpit and had a similar style to Keisuke Masunaga).
These studios were commissioned to handle episodes on rotation for really long-running shows as their in-house animators were not sufficient enough.
Several young animators who worked on Toei series such as Dragon Ball Z, Saint Seiya & Sailor Moon ended up being house hold names in the animation industry and it's thanks to the chance of showing their own personal take on the series they were working on.

Shorter, year-long series of some 40-ish episodes (like Taiyo no Ko, Esteban or Cat's Eye) still had some style differences however it was minimal.

This practice has been 'abolished' in the early 2000s with the first arcs of Naruto & Bleach being the last to show this freedom to the animators.
I think the OG Yu-Gi-Oh! of Studio Gallop was the last to showcase varying styles over the episodes giving us legends such as Takahiro Kagami, Kenichi Hara and Eiji Hirayama.

Terumi Nishii, currently one of the most prominent and prolific animators in the industry, has openly commented on the poor state of the animation industry and how younger animators are not being allowed to learn, experience and develop their own styles because of the sheer amount of anime being produced in such big quantity as well as quality.

Terumi, who learned under Kagawa, has said that once Kagawa's generation will be gone, the animation industry will enter it's dark ages as the younger animators will have no one to guide them and no one to learn from.
Basically, the level of the green animators is so low (and because of the very tight schedules, the senior animators can't guide and correct them like back in the day where their 'average' but progressive work would pass), the senior animators have to essentially draw a whole episode by themselves because the work by the young animators is useless.

Thank you for your explanation. Somehow I imagined it was related to the budget, but from what you say that's not exactly the case. Sailor Moon has always felt like the odd one to me because other anime I used to watch repeatedly (Cardcaptor Sakura, Pokémon Indigo League, Magic Knight Rayearth and even Digimon) looked much more consistent. But now that I see that Digimon Adventure also showcased different animation styles, I wonder if I would notice inconsistencies on the other shows as well, if I watched them more carefully.

 

[Memelord_Yoshi]

Gotta say this was one of the best of Season 1 Crystal when it looked more 'shounen'.

 

[Talentless Fool]

Gotta say this was one of the best of Season 1 Crystal when it looked more 'shounen'.

Yoshi!

You are WORSHIPPING Cystal?!!?

Even though I'm not a particular fan of this art style, I have to admit it's a very good animation piece and one of the most dynamic action scenes of the whole Crystermos adaptation.
The art style, itself, reminds me of the new 90s anime art during the debut of the revival that came with goodies such as calendars and with the exclusive box art of the DVD sets.
It looks a lot like Kagawa's Precure style and it wouldn't surprise me that it was him who did those box art visuals (even though that Walmart Disney Princess shading style should be Burning Mandala'd into oblivion.)

I had never noticed it on Dragon Ball before and now I can't unsee it. I admit I'm not a great fan of Dragon Ball but I'm still surprised I'd never noticed it before, the differences can be as drastic as the ones we observe on Sailor Moon. Now that I look it up, the difference between animation styles on Digimon Adventure, for example, seems to be much more subtle. Maybe that's when they started to go digital?

Katsuyoshi Nakatsuru - a major animator in DBZ who would become the character design in DBGT was also the character designer in a lot of Digimon series.

Yukio Ebisawa - one of the infamous animators of DBZ

Setsuko Nobuzane

Toshio Deguchi - who has a very similar style to Nakatsuru

Masahiro Naoi - one of the prominent animators of Saint Seiya

Thank you for your explanation. Somehow I imagined it was related to the budget, but from what you say that's not exactly the case. Sailor Moon has always felt like the odd one to me because other anime I used to watch repeatedly (Cardcaptor Sakura, Pokémon Indigo League, Magic Knight Rayearth and even Digimon) looked much more consistent. But now that I see that Digimon Adventure also showcased different animation styles, I wonder if I would notice inconsistencies on the other shows as well, if I watched them more carefully.

I remember way back in the day (around 2008-09), GAME ONE which was a French channel that got the rights to premiere the Naruto (and later Naruto Shippuden) episodes before they were released in video format (and considering back then streaming wasn't a thing and even watching on illegal sites wasn't a mainstream thing for kids/teens - they were basically introducing the series in France), they did an exclusive interview about the production of the anime and it was said that the episodes that boasted incredible animation (namely the Sasuke vs Orochimaru/Sasuke vs Naruto fights) didn't have any special budget but it was just the animators having a lot of fun and going free style.

I would suppose that the fees between, for example, the Nakamura and Kagawa teams were different however in the end it all depended on availability of those teams more so specifically on a budget.
The more prominent animators would be, of course, reserved the season opener and finale as well as major episodes (like the appearance of HaruMichi, Grail etc...) but the rest depended on who was available at what moment.

I remember the director of Saint Seiya Omega Season 2 (that series had a chaotic production schedule with the directors changing mid-way) revealed that they prominently used an Animation Director (I don't remember his name but he was very average, basically like Nakamura - very retro style and janky anatomy/movements but with a little bit more dynamic animation). They used him a lot because he was super quick and could finish episodes very fast so he was given the most episodes because of the hectic schedules with episodes' scripts being (probably) rewritten quite often.

So, in the end, there's a lot of factors involved.

Kyo Ani is a famous studio who allows it's animators to learn and improve uniformly as a team. Despite not making a lot of animes per year, their quality is very high, nearing movie quality for TV shows.
Pierrot has also invested into an in-house studio to produce movie-quality series, which I think the Bleach's 3rd and 4th cours will be produced from.
With today anime packages being 13 episode cour (or the very rare bi-cour of 20ish episodes), it has allowed for more uniformity for the series' art and it would simply be ridiculous for a series of 13 episodes to have 5 different art styles.

However, there are still small fluctuations in between the Art Styles.

Akira Takahashi on Crystal III - Expressive eyes, stylish line-art, cuter faces, athletic bodies.

The famous 6th episode. There are actually 2 animation directors on this episode: Aya Nakanishi and Yukie Takayama.
More angular faces, more detailed hair and different shadows.

Toei remains the last studio who currently releases several episodes every week and unfortunately Precure doesn't show much diversity in it's art.
The only one that sticks out are the episodes of Yuu Yoshiyama.

 

[Rika-Chicchi]

Yoshi!

You are WORSHIPPING Cystal?!!?

Now you too, at least for S3.

 

[Memelord_Yoshi]

Yes. Season 3. The one with the frogs.

 

[Talentless Fool]

Now you too, at least for S3.

Yes. Season 3. The one with the frogs.

This is a work of art!

Some cool looking shots of Ep.182.
Animation Director is Shigetaka Kiyoyama however these are clearly not his.

Definitely not Kiyoyama...

Setsuna-kun is so tall!

Look at these ding-dongs disrespecting Puu! The nerve!

 

[Lady Pen]

Gotta say this was one of the best of Season 1 Crystal when it looked more 'shounen'.

reminds me of...

 

[Late to the Game]

I remember way back in the day (around 2008-09), GAME ONE which was a French channel that got the rights to premiere the Naruto (and later Naruto Shippuden) episodes before they were released in video format (and considering back then streaming wasn't a thing and even watching on illegal sites wasn't a mainstream thing for kids/teens - they were basically introducing the series in France), they did an exclusive interview about the production of the anime and it was said that the episodes that boasted incredible animation (namely the Sasuke vs Orochimaru/Sasuke vs Naruto fights) didn't have any special budget but it was just the animators having a lot of fun and going free style.

I would suppose that the fees between, for example, the Nakamura and Kagawa teams were different however in the end it all depended on availability of those teams more so specifically on a budget.
The more prominent animators would be, of course, reserved the season opener and finale as well as major episodes (like the appearance of HaruMichi, Grail etc...) but the rest depended on who was available at what moment.

I remember the director of Saint Seiya Omega Season 2 (that series had a chaotic production schedule with the directors changing mid-way) revealed that they prominently used an Animation Director (I don't remember his name but he was very average, basically like Nakamura - very retro style and janky anatomy/movements but with a little bit more dynamic animation). They used him a lot because he was super quick and could finish episodes very fast so he was given the most episodes because of the hectic schedules with episodes' scripts being (probably) rewritten quite often.

So, in the end, there's a lot of factors involved.

Kyo Ani is a famous studio who allows it's animators to learn and improve uniformly as a team. Despite not making a lot of animes per year, their quality is very high, nearing movie quality for TV shows.
Pierrot has also invested into an in-house studio to produce movie-quality series, which I think the Bleach's 3rd and 4th cours will be produced from.
With today anime packages being 13 episode cour (or the very rare bi-cour of 20ish episodes), it has allowed for more uniformity for the series' art and it would simply be ridiculous for a series of 13 episodes to have 5 different art styles.

However, there are still small fluctuations in between the Art Styles.

Thank you for explaining. I definitely don't have the same level of perceptual accuracy but it's all very interesting and I'll try to observe more. But, hey, someone has been sourcing their screen captures from Italian DVDs, I suppose?

Gotta say this was one of the best of Season 1 Crystal when it looked more 'shounen'.

The character designs still ruin it for me

 

[Talentless Fool]

Rei's R Movie 2nd Akuryou Taisan, mainly by Ando (and Hasegawa?)

Hasegawa?

Hasegawa?!?

Also noticed this stunning Rei in the way
When the Tadano style was done right, it was simply the best!

 

[Talentless Fool]

Rei's iconic Akuryou Taisan!

Ando handles a large portion of it.

She literally stepped on a man...

Dang girl!

 

[JunoDX]

This was Itoh at her best, at her peak, touching perfection by the tips of her fingers - I wish she stayed on this more mature style.

Abracadabra, it's magic time!

Damn, her staff looks geometrically corret in all frames and even like glass in some. This is top animation art. They understood colors, layers, shadows, lights,…