At its absolute best, Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2 is a focused effort to fully realize its directors’ ideas, from the grandest action to the least perceptible details. But at all points, it’s also something else: a fight against an asphyxiating schedule. Let’s catch up with one of the biggest, coolest, but also most troublesome productions of the year.
What if an overlooked action expert directed a thrilling episode, effortlessly switching between momentousness and hilarity? What if a generational animation talent invited his best peers to his animation direction debut? What if that wasn’t hypothetical, but the latest episode of Tropical Rouge Precure?
Welcome back to the most special post of the year! As is tradition, we’ve gathered writers from different communities but a shared trait: a love of animation and all it encompasses. The goal, to praise at length the greatest productions and most resonant direction in all of 2018 anime, according to a series of categories. These are our yearly anime awards – the sakugabowl!
Hugtto! Precure #16 was a historical high not just for the franchise, but for magical girl anime and Toei Animation altogether. Though we’ve already covered the main culprit behind it, a look at the episode itself and the whole team who made it possible was well-deserved. Anime doesn’t get much better than this!
We return to our series about up-and-coming anime creators with perhaps the character animator who is generating the most excitement within the industry itself: the mysterious soty, whose work you might have started to enjoy on Toei anime under the name Keisuke Mori, but also on all-star congregations of talent using his pen names on other productions. Let’s observe not only his extraordinary skill, but also the unique animation culture he inherited.