It's week 12. The Spring season is wrapping to a close and we have some great animation to go along with it. Here’s my take on what we got this week. If you want to read last week’s post you can find it here.If you’re wondering what sakuga is, I recommend checking out the subreddit r/AnimeSakuga as well as this great panel on the subject. Also I will spoiler tag my analysis of the animation, but know that the links may contain out-of-context SPOILERS if that bothers you.So let's get this out of the way right now: the anime with the best animation this week was the finale of Concrete Revolutio. There were a number of other fantastic cuts this week but it terms of sheer volume of sakuga it wasn’t even close. Before I dive into ConRevo I’m going to cover the other amazing animation we got this week. We got this rotation from Kiznaiver, more Nozumu Abe battle effects in Haifuri, and Nishiki Itaoka continuing his strong work on the Precure franchise. Chengxi Hyung continues to prove his talents in this smear-heavy fight from Naruto Shippuuden as does this unconfirmed animator on Kabaneri. Kuromukuro also delivered a fight scene through not nearly as smooth as some of the earlier fights in the series. And Toei even managed to produce a good looking Sailor Moon Crystal episode with a transformation scene and some cool beam attacks.Meanwhile, Takafumi Hori gave us this beautiful background animation alongside Luluco’s Gainax Pose in a clear reference to Yoh Yoshinari’s famous Gurren Lagann scene(here’s the key animation for the Luluco cut). Toshiyuki Sato delivered wonderfully insane action on Luluco, which capped off an episode chock full of Trigger’s energetic talent. The Asterick War had its final episode this week and Takashi Torii did not disappoint with this dynamic action scene strengthened by well-integrated moving CG backgrounds. Say what you will about the show itself, but it does have moments of great action.Lastly, I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk about the other awesome animation sequence from Bones this week, All Might vs Nomu from My Hero Academia. I encourage you to check out the multitude of animators listed for these scenes on sakugabooru. A lot of them are young webgen animators and you can see their styles bleed through in the loose drawings and dynamic camerawork of this cut. I especially love the animation of the air currents around his fist in this awesome punch and the way they animate the dark shading across All Might’s body. But as amazing as that punch was, in my opinion we got one even better in Concrete Revolutio.That would of course be Yutaka Nakamura’s amazing contribution to the finale. I predicted in my week 9 post that he was probably busy working on a cut for the finale and it seems I was right. The mix of white black and grey colored impact frames right before the punch and the blue frames right after the punch are such a cool and unique way to emphasize the impact. Also got to love the ConRevo That cut alone would be impressive, but there’s such an abundance of greatness in this episode. Hironori Tanaka delivers a fast and loose fight scene (although I could’ve done without this face) which contrasts nicely with Kenta Yokoya’s polished but less dynamic sequence with Jiro’s fire dragons.This is as good of a time as any to talk about what those fire dragons were inspired by, Yoshinori Kanada’s legendary sequence from the 1983 film Genma Taisen (Harmagedon in English). If you can ignore the awful 80s music, the first four minutes of this video shows off the scene which would come to be parodied and reused in anime for decades and known by the name “Kanada Dragon”. If you want to know more about Kanada I recommend this article but its not an exaggeration to say that he is one of the most important and influential Japanese animators of all time. He influenced multiple generations creating what we now call the Kanada School of animators and directors who have integrated elements of his style into their own. Gainax and Trigger in particular are immersed in his exaggerated style, especially Hiroyuki Imaishi who took Kanada’s rapid exaggerated pose changes to their furthest extent. So next time you see that distinctive flaming dragon pop up in an anime, remember the man who started it all.Anyways, we get more Kanada Dragons in this Takashi Hashimoto cut. If you’re noticing that the fire feels more fierce in this cut, that’s because Takashi Hashimoto is THE preeminent explosions animator working today and thus a master at dealing with flame animation. The fire columns in the first two seconds of the cut are particularly smooth. Then there’s Yasushi Muraki’s mecha animation and Chihara Sato’s dual Kanada Dragons scene. She’s drawn a very good Kanada Dragon in the past and even included an old school yellow screen flash at :08 for good measure. Lastly there’s this cool scene from Hideki Kakita and Sakiko Uda. I’m not positive, but I believe Uda did the mecha section while Kakita did the explosion given the unqiue explosions he’s drawn in the past.Bones did not hold back this week and Conrete Revolutio Episode 24 was surprising me with awesome and unique animation at every turn. We’ll see how next week goes but it’ll be hard for anyone to dethrone the ConRevo finale as the best animated episode of the season.So that's why I think Concrete Revolutio had the best animation from this past week's anime. Do you agree or disagree? I'd love to hear what animation stood out to you from this week's simulcasts, so post your thoughts in the comments below. http://ift.tt/28JFJfv
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