Let's Talk About My Hero Academia's Animation

the evolution and evolution of my hero academia's animation throughout the years is fascinating the show is home to some of the best cuts of Animation period and it was a well organized project for a while that's obviously not the case anymore let's talk about my hero academia's animation make sure to subscribe so as all of you know bones is the studio behind my hero Academia but there's more to it like most major Studios bones isn't a single entity it has multiple sub Studios namely AB b c d and e very creative my hero Academia has for most of its runtime been a Studio C project however the keyword there is most mha started off as a studio a project and ran into its fair share of production issues like most shows do season 1 unlike its sequels was a one core show the team in charge had just finished working on the second season of Noragami and a 24 episode season wasn't viable the show was and still is to a degree directed by Kenji Nagasaki and the most prominent name involved with the project was character designer and Industry Legend yoshihiko umakoshi Yutaka Nakamura wasn't involved at the time umakoshi designs and supervision carried the static parts of the show of which there were a lot the designs were unique from the harsh line art to the large eyes and the stylized facial and Anatomy they looked amazing especially so when they were corrected by umakoshi my hero Academia doesn't go for that modern webgen look it tries to maintain design consistency the show isn't a sakuga Haven either the amount of movement is nowhere near the likes of say a jiujitsu kaisen this is why the designs are so important a still Frame Works when the drawing is fun to look at of course the show does move it has plenty of what we call sakuga season 1 had two major highlights one of which was kazuhiro moa's contribution he did a lot of work on season 1 animating some incredible scenes and doing so extremely quickly mea hasn't worked on mha since season 1 by the way he moved onto other stuff most notably fire force the other highlight was very interesting episode 2 featured four animators who at the time were considered young Talent heart of one punch man these animators ver takum nakara Naim Aima it's kigami and of course hak go sounds familiar it should these four names alongside kazuto aray hironori Tanaka Toshi Sada and more created the first hakuu Go episode AKA my hero Academia episode 12 this same core team would go on to create some of the most outrageous visual spectacles ever including fate Apocrypha episode 22 mob psycho season 2 episodes 5 and 11 and season 3 episode 8 as well as the more recent jiujitsu kaisen season 2 episodes 16 and 17 the Endeavor fight from episode 12 was an incredibly ambitious undertaking this show simply didn't move for such a long period of time prior to this the fight was directed and storyboarded by hakyu go and the sheer amount of energy packed into it was Unreal every strike felt heavy it was genuine chaos and it kept building up the this was easily the highlight of the Season my hero Academia season 1 was a compact show it did have its issues but its unique aesthetic and the cathartic finale made up for it season 2 however was a different story it was 25 episodes long instead of 13 and it had plenty of changes the TV network changed the sub studio in charge changed from a to c the schedule changed from rough to good and the staff list changed from one that didn't have Yutaka naka kamoda to one that dat season 2 was a smooth production up until the last few episodes I didn't keep up with anime back then so I'm going off of the sakuga blog articles published at the Time season 2 had more highlights animation wise and on average moved more utaka Nakamura made his first appearance in episode 2 his drawings were utterly Flawless and the motion was incredible because again it is utaka Nakamura one of if not the greatest D the animator of all time he showed up again on episode 10 animating one of my all-time favorite sequences one which made his work on episode 2 feel tame the flow the energy the long impact frame sequences it was Godlike Nakamura is known to rework the story boards framing scenes in his own way this is a privilege awarded to the very best his sense of timing staging and use of smears and impact frames are legendary another aspect of his skill set one often overlooked by casual fans is his grasp over the basics of animation and his drawing quality his drawings will look amazing even if they show up for 124th of a second CAD yoshihiko umakoshi was heavily involved as well and as always his Corrections looked incredible here's the thing you can't entirely depend on highlight animators like utaka Nakamura they will animate some incredible stuff but only do so once or twice a season unique talent that can produce good-looking scenes consistently and season 2 had that names like takafumi mitani katoo naoa and more were present throughout the show animating several scenes them accompanied by the likes of norimitsu Suzuki and Yuki Hayashi made for a great two core project season 3 was solid overall but it was starting to show a few cracks cracks that would widen in the future remember umakoshi well this is what he did for for season 1 this is what he did for season 2 and this is what he did for season 3 that's less why because of this a my hero Academia movie the first of many these movies tend to handicap the adjacent season as you'll see the first movie had a relatively small key animator list and as such didn't have much of an impact on the TV anime season 3 was organized behind the scenes it relied a lot less on Outsourcing compared to its predecessors koki Fujimoto an animator who had shown up once before was now an important part of the project he alongside takafumi mitani churned out amazing scenes even for the low priority episodes more about Fujimoto later there was another issue a more subjective one the aesthetic was getting old while it was a highlight early on looking at the same designs and style for three seasons in a row with very little variety was a bit annoying also the direction wasn't do doing it for me despite being well animated scenes looked boring maybe because the aforementioned novelty was starting to wear off or perhaps it was because they were two one to one with the manga I don't know I haven't read it these were minor issues at the time but they would compound from that point on regardless the season was solid Nakamura animated the best looking scenes as per usual and things went well season 4 rolled around and the cracks widened umakoshi did well very little and director Kenji Nagasaki took on the role of a supervisor both opted to focus more on the second movie which was produced alongside the anime remember takafumi matani well he showed up once on season 4 and he did a lot of work on the second movie these two things might be related the amount of Animation per episode went down as well with multiple episodes having no real movement the aesthetic continued to get old and the direction felt less ambitious than ever before it was wasn't all bad there were a few highlight episodes Nakamura showed up Thrice and koki Fujimoto continued to animate a pleora of good-looking scenes you can probably see where this is going season 5 suffered especially the second half Ki Fujimoto and takafumi matani were gone both moved onto super Crooks and then onto mapa projects like chainsaw man and jjk the third movie was extremely ambitious and as a result the anime struggled even utaka Nakamura could only show up once there was that Infamous Vincent chanard layout controversy where his work was practically unused most likely because the schedule was too tight as alluded to by chanard himself I wasn't fond of the directorial choices either the unimpressive scene compositions that same art direction that annoying Blue Sky it wasn't good oh but it makes sense for the sky to be blue shut up playing around with the environment to match the mood is Anime 101 season six was an improvement understandably so as they didn't release a movie alongside it freeing up names like norimitsu Suzuki who did a massive amount of work the second half did struggle because again yearly two core Productions are complicated even utaka Nakamura scene was compromised but it definitely was an improvement they played around with fully CGI shots and a part of the story took place during the night so they couldn't spam that God forsaken Blue Sky all over the place and that brings us to the present day season 7 is set to air in May quickly followed by the fourth movie will this be a repeat of season 5 probably will they do something different probably not that's the sad State of Affairs the show looks unique compared to other stuff but internally it's homogenized and it's getting old in my opinion the team does deserve a lot of praise for maintaining a base level of quality for over a 100 epis that's an extremely rare thing hoping for the best that's about it liked the video check out this other bit of content on screen like And subscribe and until next time

Channel: Probably Pretentious

Views: 40,491

Keywords: animation, #sakuga, myheroacademia, bokunoheroacademia, bones

Id: qH5c4NAHK3Y

Length: 10min 10sec (610 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 28 2024