Running in the 90s (Shin-chan ED1)

It’s tough to talk about timing without sounding like a bean counting asshole. Still, we have to try. Today’s post is about a run cycle animated by Masaaki Yuasa for the first Crayon Shin-chan ending. You can watch the ED here. The full cycle is shown below. There are 12 drawings (though of course, poses

Stickers, cars, crayons (Shin-chan OP1)

Let’s begin at the beginning: with Shin-chan’s very first opening sequence, storyboarded by Mitsuru Hongo with key animation by Shizuka Hayashi.1 Watch it (with sound!) here: OP1: Doubutsuen wa Taihen da. Before we get to the meat of the OP, I want to point out these cute title cards. The use of crayon sets the

Early Crayon Shin-chan credits: spreadsheet and observations

I have created a spreadsheet of the Shin-chan credits for the first 46 episodes (and two specials). You can find it here. As a warning, this post is going to be very boring because it’s nearly “pure” information; I tried to avoid talking about the actual animation or developing a coherent narrative of the production

Marco Presentation Summary (Mechademia 2022: Migrations)

I’ve been trying to get the recording of my Marco/Takahata/neorealism presentation for a few months so I can take notes on what I liked and didn’t like about it, but it’s taking a while and might be lOsT mEdIa at this point, so I’ll just go off my slides and script. This post will contain:

Reading list: independent Japanese animation

This is a work in progress (and probably always will be), but here’s a list of resources on indie animation in Japan. I will use a generous definition of “independent,” but as we will see this term is troublesome. We will also see that sticking within the boundary of Japan is something of a problem

Comments on The Soul of Anime

Ian Condry’s The Soul of Anime[i] is a powerful and accessible argument for viewing anime’s value via the collective social energy generated by creators and fans. The book has seven short chapters: Ch. 1 is on collaborative networks in Hosoda’s films; Ch. 2 is on the importance of characters and worlds (rather than story) as seen

An Alternative Syllabus

This exercise was inspired by a few things: This class will never be taught (which is why I have not included legal boilerplate, assignments, or grading policy). For one, I am not in the field. But the deeper problem is this: in an effort to design a class composed of marginal (in some way) works

Notes on Hayao Miyazaki: Exploring the Early Work of Japan’s Greatest Animator

We have some red flags already on the cover. First, Miyazaki’s case for “Japan’s Greatest Animator,” while not exactly weak, is also far from the strongest. I mean, Otsuka himself has a stronger case, no? But this alone isn’t too alarming; maybe the author can actually make a case for Miyazaki the animator based on

Some thoughts on Loving Vincent

Loving Vincent is beautiful, but I don’t have much to say about it as animation (or as film, really), outside of a few cool moments of motion blur and scene transitions. (Maybe someone else does.) I’m not too well-versed in rotoscopy, but I can certainly name several rotoscoped works that I found more interesting in