ACCA – Production Notes 6 & 7
Goodbye Yoshiaki Kawajiri, hello Yosuke Hatta. The storyboarding duties change hands but Madhouse’s outsourcingOutsourcing: The process of subcontracting part of the work to other studios. Partial outsourcing is very common for tasks like key animation, coloring, backgrounds and the likes, but most TV anime also has instances of full outsourcing (グロス) where an episode is entirely handled by a different studio. policies never come to an end!
Episode 6
StoryboardStoryboard (絵コンテ, ekonte): The blueprints of animation. A series of usually simple drawings serving as anime's visual script, drawn on special sheets with fields for the animation cut number, notes for the staff and the matching lines of dialogue.: Yoshiaki Kawajiri
Episode directionEpisode Direction (演出, enshutsu): A creative but also coordinative task, as it entails supervising the many departments and artists involved in the production of an episode – approving animation layouts alongside the Animation Director, overseeing the work of the photography team, the art department, CG staff... The role also exists in movies, refering to the individuals similarly in charge of segments of the film.: Shigatsu Yoshikawa
Chief Animation DirectionAnimation Direction (作画監督, sakuga kantoku): The artists supervising the quality and consistency of the animation itself. They might correct cuts that deviate from the designs too much if they see it fit, but their job is mostly to ensure the motion is up to par while not looking too rough. Plenty of specialized Animation Direction roles exist – mecha, effects, creatures, all focused in one particular recurring element.: Gosei Oda
Animation DirectionAnimation Direction (作画監督, sakuga kantoku): The artists supervising the quality and consistency of the animation itself. They might correct cuts that deviate from the designs too much if they see it fit, but their job is mostly to ensure the motion is up to par while not looking too rough. Plenty of specialized Animation Direction roles exist – mecha, effects, creatures, all focused in one particular recurring element.: Akiko Kumada
Key AnimationKey Animation (原画, genga): These artists draw the pivotal moments within the animation, basically defining the motion without actually completing the cut. The anime industry is known for allowing these individual artists lots of room to express their own style.: Tadashi Abiru, Takahiro Arai, Shunryo Yamamura, Li Zhien, Shouichi Funaki, Aya Aso, Kayoko Suzuki, Makito Uehara, Keita Hagio, Hiroki Itai, Yuka Nagata, Junko Matsushita, Makoto Tsuruta, Tatsuya Urano, Yasuko Higuchi, Ai Mochida, Kanako Ueda, Yasunori Matsuki
Production Assistance: GONZO
— Yet another outsourced episode. We’re 6 episodes into the show and that’s already been the dark fate of 3 of them! Some of you may be surprised considering the previous anime we covered (Mob Psycho 100, Flip Flappers, Sound! Euphonium) all had a grand total of 0 fully outsourced episodes. However, this is a typical production procedure at studio Madhouse. I have no concrete answer as to why they’re relying on outsourcingOutsourcing: The process of subcontracting part of the work to other studios. Partial outsourcing is very common for tasks like key animation, coloring, backgrounds and the likes, but most TV anime also has instances of full outsourcing (グロス) where an episode is entirely handled by a different studio. so heavily even by industry standards, but I suspect it could be a combination of following factors:
- Rushed production schedules have been a problem in the industry for many years, growing exponentially worse with time. OutsourcingOutsourcing: The process of subcontracting part of the work to other studios. Partial outsourcing is very common for tasks like key animation, coloring, backgrounds and the likes, but most TV anime also has instances of full outsourcing (グロス) where an episode is entirely handled by a different studio. this many episodes – especially early ones – essentially pushes the production 3 weeks forward for the in-house production teams.
- The second factor is also a very troubling one: lack of animation manpower and also production staff, such as production assistants. In ACCA’s case, the show seems to have only 3 active in-house production assistants (the people tasked with ensuring everything gets finished, to keep things short) and a production desk (a person who oversees the production assistants, working under the animation producer). The first episode was handled by Misa Takahashi, the third one by Shuhei Honda and the fourth by Kenta Imazu. The next episode marked the return of the episode 3 team, again with Shuhei Honda handling production assistantProduction Assistant (制作進行, Seisaku Shinkou): Effectively the lowest ranking 'producer' role, and yet an essential cog in the system. They check and carry around the materials, and contact the dozens upon dozens of artists required to get an episode finished. Usually handling multiple episodes of the shows they're involved with. duties. If Madhouse were to actually make every episode in-house, then Honda and the team would have likely been forced to do episodes 2 and 4 back to back; you can’t even imagine how stressful that would be when dealing with an unhealthy project. In a way, this showcases the rather poor situation that studio Madhouse is in. The jobs are there, but the staff isn’t. OutsourcingOutsourcing: The process of subcontracting part of the work to other studios. Partial outsourcing is very common for tasks like key animation, coloring, backgrounds and the likes, but most TV anime also has instances of full outsourcing (グロス) where an episode is entirely handled by a different studio. is only the solution, even if it leads to unsatisfactory results.
— The episode’s production quality itself was rather unremarkable, as you would expect. The animation by GONZO’s crew was around DR.MOVIE’s level from episode 2, and it was mainly the background art that carried the visuals. The studio has its own project this season so this was clearly not their highest priority job. Storyboarding was also uninteresting, sadly similar to Kawajiri’s previous outing on episode 5. But let’s move on…
Episode 7
StoryboardStoryboard (絵コンテ, ekonte): The blueprints of animation. A series of usually simple drawings serving as anime's visual script, drawn on special sheets with fields for the animation cut number, notes for the staff and the matching lines of dialogue., Episode directionEpisode Direction (演出, enshutsu): A creative but also coordinative task, as it entails supervising the many departments and artists involved in the production of an episode – approving animation layouts alongside the Animation Director, overseeing the work of the photography team, the art department, CG staff... The role also exists in movies, refering to the individuals similarly in charge of segments of the film.: Yosuke Hatta
Chief Animation DirectionAnimation Direction (作画監督, sakuga kantoku): The artists supervising the quality and consistency of the animation itself. They might correct cuts that deviate from the designs too much if they see it fit, but their job is mostly to ensure the motion is up to par while not looking too rough. Plenty of specialized Animation Direction roles exist – mecha, effects, creatures, all focused in one particular recurring element.: Kanako Yoshida
Animation DirectionAnimation Direction (作画監督, sakuga kantoku): The artists supervising the quality and consistency of the animation itself. They might correct cuts that deviate from the designs too much if they see it fit, but their job is mostly to ensure the motion is up to par while not looking too rough. Plenty of specialized Animation Direction roles exist – mecha, effects, creatures, all focused in one particular recurring element.: Shun Enokido, Keita Nagasaka
Key AnimationKey Animation (原画, genga): These artists draw the pivotal moments within the animation, basically defining the motion without actually completing the cut. The anime industry is known for allowing these individual artists lots of room to express their own style.: Shin Ogasawara, Hidehiko Sawada, Masayuki Mizutani, Yoshie Kimoto, Keiichiro Saito, Takahito Sakazume, Tomomi Shimazaki, Mari Shirakawa, Keiko Takagi, Yuko Danki, Koichi Nakaya, Hiromi Nanbe, Tomoaki Mimiura, Yukari Watabe
— Yes, now that was more like it! A very important episode that was entrusted to Yosuke Hatta, who proved his excellent outing on episode 3 wasn’t just a one time wonder. His usage of diagonal shadows stood out once again, and we got to enjoy another beautifully staged intimate conversation – not as outstanding as the in the third episode, but still a step-up from Kawajiri’s work. I especially liked the shot of Nino swirling his glass of wine. Another scene that left a strong impression was the sequence in Nino’s room when he’s on a phone; I’m not sure how much of it was due to the episode director’s direct input, but I absolutely adore this kind of color setting. It added to the mysterious nature of Nino’s character, plus the flow of the scene also felt very natural.
— The background art in this episode was nothing short of amazing. Korore district seems architectonically quite similar to episode 4’s Suitsu, which means art directorArt Director (美術監督, bijutsu kantoku): The person in charge of the background art for the series. They draw many artboards that once approved by the series director serve as reference for the backgrounds throughout the series. Coordination within the art department is a must – setting and color designers must work together to craft a coherent world. Seiko Yoshioka was again in her element. The very first shot of the district already speaks for itself, and the city looks attractive even on somber rainy nights. There’s no better companion for solid storyboards than outstanding sceneries to elevate them.
— The animation credits featured some interesting names this time. The show’s costume designer and webgenWebgen (web系): Popular term to refer to the mostly young digital animators that have been joining the professional anime industry as of late; their most notable artists started off gaining attention through gifs and fanmade animations online, hence web generation. It encompasses various waves of artists at this point so it's hardly one generation anymore, but the term has stuck. superstar Shun Enokido worked on the episode as co-animation director. He brought along some other excellent webgenWebgen (web系): Popular term to refer to the mostly young digital animators that have been joining the professional anime industry as of late; their most notable artists started off gaining attention through gifs and fanmade animations online, hence web generation. It encompasses various waves of artists at this point so it's hardly one generation anymore, but the term has stuck. animators, namely Shin Ogasawara who did some unforgetable cuts on Mob Psycho 100 and Takahito Sakazume, Enokido’s most frequent collaborator as of late – as Fate/GO fans are likely aware. The episode felt very polished in the same sense as the third one, which is unsurprising considering Kanako Yoshida and Keita Nagasaka both reprised their roles. We even got one animation highlight as shown below! I wish the movement this lively more often.
Caccajiri
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It’s worth noting that even when Madhouse was at the peak of their size and output they still relied on heavy outsourcing for a lot of their projects (that weren’t “prestige” stuff with directors such as Yuasa). E.g., Kaiji S1 in 2007 was almost completely animated by DR Movie rather than any in-house animators.
That was mostly because Maruyama’s practices, that we can see nowadays on Onihei, 7 of 7 episodes outsourced! On that time, it had a reason, at least, the studio had a lot of projects at once, so, the most prestigious ones was giving better staff, instead of wasting it on low key projects.
Also, on that time, they had directors than can carry a outsourced episode and make it look impressive, like Hiroshi Hamasaki and Ryousuke Nakamura, not the bland direction that they give now because they are also out of directors.
Oh, for sure, Madhouse has almost completely lost their old connections aside from the couple veterans who have loyally stuck by the studio, primarily Morio Asaka and the ever reliable storyboarding machine Kawajiri. It sucks for the people who stubbornly stick to studio brand names long after they’ve ceased to be relevant, but the dispersal of talent has been good for the rest of the industry! (E.g., Yuasa founding Science Saru.)
At least they now have some fresh and good talent that is being cultivated on series like this one, One Punch Man and All Out. Namely Yousuke Hatta and Shinichiro Ushijima, that surely are going to be the next ones to be ascended to Series Director duties, seeing how much trust the studio have on them, to support the actual fixture of the veterans Morio Asaka and Yuzo Sato, the young Atsuko Ishizuka and the animators-turned-directors Shingo Natsume and Kenichi Shimizu. That is a pretty small and less talented group compared to the 2000s Madhouse.
I am really interested im some examples of bland directorion it’s not like I’m disagreeing with you just curious i am