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Category: Weekly Highlights

The Eyecatch: Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron & Masayuki Yoshihara’s Komada, Frieren #06, Overtake! & More

The Eyecatch: Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron & Masayuki Yoshihara’s Komada, Frieren #06, Overtake! & More

By popular demand, we’re starting a new column for shorter commentary on animated works and their craft, as well as news and general industry happenings. To open things up: parallels between Hayao Miyazaki and Masayuki Yoshihara’s new films, the quiet theming amidst the bombast of Frieren #06, and much more!

Fate Grand Order: Babylonia #05 And Shouta Umehara: Heroes In the Trenches

Fate Grand Order: Babylonia #05 And Shouta Umehara: Heroes In the Trenches

Renowned series directors, main writers of notoriety, ace animators in various positions, perhaps some painters acting as art directors or designers – there are some individuals whose name alone can generate excitement, but it’s reserved to a select crew. So how come fans and industry folks alike are clamoring about Fate Grand Order: Babylonia #05’s production assistant, even though that’s anime’s most undervalued role? Let’s learn about how people like Shouta Umehara can make a difference in the field!

Isao Hayashi’s Breath of Life into FGO Babylonia

Isao Hayashi’s Breath of Life into FGO Babylonia

While F/GO Babylonia hasn’t quite kicked off with the bang many expected it to, things have began to take a turn for the better with its latest episode. As the cast finally settle into Uruk, let’s take this opportunity to explore not just why this episode stands out, but also the mind behind it.

HANEBADO! 01 – Production Highlights

HANEBADO! 01 – Production Highlights

The summer anime season has started in the most intense way possible. Hanebado‘s anime adaptation turned out to be a transformative effort, ditching the source material’s lighthearted start for a bitter, emotional, grand and hot-blooded first episode that won’t leave anyone indifferent. And so it’s time to examine this team’s ambitious approach, also peeking behind the scenes to find out exactly what was their mindset and who’s responsible for this impactful beginning.

Anime Craft Weekly #41: I Can’t Believe It’s 2017 And I Have To Write That Anime Is Hand Drawn

Anime Craft Weekly #41: I Can’t Believe It’s 2017 And I Have To Write That Anime Is Hand Drawn

Anime is hand drawn. By people, with their hands. That’s honestly all there is to this enduring myth, which is somehow alive on both sides of the pond. I’m used to western fans spouting the classic I miss when anime was hand drawn rhetoric, but it got to me last week when I saw Japanese press report Ghibli successor Studio Ponoc as a source of traditional hand drawn animation in an age of digital anime…even though their country has hundreds…

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Anime Craft Weekly #40: Your Name, the Post-Ghibli Industry

Anime Craft Weekly #40: Your Name, the Post-Ghibli Industry

Studio Ghibli’s announcement that they were halting regular operations in 2014 hit mainstream sources as hard as any piece of anime news ever could. It was such a big deal that the discourse understandably revolved around what this would mean for the industry as a whole, but that also means a smaller scale issue was mostly overlooked: Miyazaki was retiring and Takahata on his way out, but what about everyone else at the studio?

Anime Craft Weekly #39: Anime Credits Are Weird, Actually

Anime Craft Weekly #39: Anime Credits Are Weird, Actually

Anime sometimes has very specific roles, like Kazunori Ozawa’s recent duty to animate basically every explosion spell by Megumin on KonoSuba. And in rare occasions, these tasks can get explicitly credited under very amusing terms. Consider this a slightly instructive, but mostly comedy-focused, rundown of weird yet entirely real anime credits. What’s a Meal Animation Director? A Bear Supervisor? An Animation Director of Evil?!