Maid War final

Modern day classic

Animator Spotlight: Yutaka Nakamura

all gifs in order are

neon genesis evangelion (1995)
the vision of escaflowne (1996)
cowboy bebop (1998)
cowboy bebop: the movie (2001)
overman king gainer (2002)
wolf’s rain (2003)
fullmetal alchemist (2003)
sword of the stranger (2007)
soul eater (2008)
star driver: the movie (2013)
space dandy (2014)
kekkai sensen (2015)
one punch man (2015)
mob psycho 100 (2016)
my hero academia (2017)
my hero academia: world heroes mission (2021)

Happy Birthday to legendary key animator Yutaka Nakamura, aka Yutapon, aka The King. Why is he the king you might ask? Well let’s journey back in time.

During the late 80s and early 90s Nakamura began his journey working for a studio called Ad Cosmo, which was subcontracted under Toei and Sunrise. There, Nakamura was able to get placements, flourishing and building his craft.

While he did get a pretty neat credit in a scene for Dragon Ball Z: Cooler’s Revenge and another for Mobile Fighter G Gundam, his first big cut was on episode 9 of Neon Genesis Evangelion, with his incredible comic like approach in the scene he would go on to making his cuts as dynamic as possible.

Nakamura 1:15 to 1:35
Yutaka Nakamura’s first big show off after that was with Cowboy Bebop. Bebop proved him to be an incredibly capable action animator, giving life and a cinematic element to scenes that could only be captured in his style. His use of poses, timing, and choreography was flawless, and was only impeded by his limited imagination at the time.

Yutaka Nakamura, following Bebop, went to join Bones studios, a studio formed by former Sunrise producers and animators who wanted to do other things besides mecha. During the 2000s Nakamura made a significant amount of alterations to his style. He would begin implementation of morphing, and would be put on to scenes with brief horror like transformations.
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This was mainly due to Bones being able to give animators the freedom they wanted, and express themselves through their idiosyncrasies.
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While Nakamura was making more changes to his animation during this time, there was one thing he was still great at more than anything else in his repertoire; fight choreography. In 2007, Nakamura contributed a 2 minute cut to Sword of The Stranger, and it is often regarded as one of the best sword fight sequences in anime of all time. The scene was made possible from the storyboards of the film’s director Masahiro Ando who was a huge influence on Nakamura’s 2000s output. Nakamura’s cut in the film marked the end of an era for his style at the time, though the scene was hugely influential in the sakuga world, and changed a lot for the way action scenes played out in anime.

Nakamura from 2:05 to 4:43

Post- Sword of Stranger, Nakamura would begin to up the scale of his battles. His implementation would begin with one of his many contributions to sakuga; the yutapon cube. Yutapon cubes are typically cubic ground and/or hard surface debris that is usually made on impact.

Nakamura from 1:30 to 2:11
Nakamura had used this technique before, but never to the extent he did after Sword of The Stranger. His work on Star Driver in 2010 marked a dramatic shift into large scale fights, with an incredible amount of contrasting framing and precise character posing applied.

Nakamura 1:25 to 2;27

This would also begin the trend of another perk Nakamura would flex; impact frames. Now, Nakamura did not invent impact frames, but the way he animates them you might be inclined to think he did. Impact Frames are exactly what they sound like, sketched frames made on impact usually highlighted on pencil or charcoal pens depending on the aesthetics of a show.


While most animators would normally animate a single impact frame before contact, Nakamura pushed it to a whole new level, layering multiple impact frames one after another in a single cut.
This would ad an enormous sense of style and recognizability to his scenes moving forward.

Nakamura at 3:58 to 4:24 (the Boros impact frames where he knee kicks Saitama has 18 impact frames in total)

At this point I’ve made seem like Nakamura is bit of a one trick pony, but no. Nakamura has constantly been shifting his style. You could take one of his cuts from Bebop, and one from My Hero Academia and just be amazed that it’s the same person that animated both scenes. Another thing about Nakamura is that while I made seem like his style is aggressive and action packed his actual drawings have a somewhat soft touch to them, often Nakamura smoothing out the edges of most of his smoke and particle effects and making everything feel more sleek and appealing to the eyes. This is also true of his character shading and expressions too.

im done talking about production this is the new production guy

hope they stretch csm season 2 upto ch 70

So yeah, with the amount of innovations Yutaka Nakamura has made to the sakuga world it’s hard to deny his skills, and influence

Recently you can see very heavy influence of his during certain action sequences from One Piece’s Wano Arc

key animation: katsumi ishizuka

A lot of newer web-gen animators are also taking a lot from the way Nakamura uses impact frames, cross flares, and all the other techniques he’s pioneered over the years.

If you haven’t seen Blue Lock, or have and like it check out my new video! Trying to be as consistent as possible

Another episode another girl for Ataru

Also @op

AYO that Mob Psycho finale was a masterpiece

KAGEYAMA SHIGEO.. 100%

The scene where Mob tries to save the cat stuck on the pole is perfect.

He tries to save the cat, not by using his innate powers, but through the physical strength he has gained through rigorous training with his friends at the Body Improvement club. And the cat eventually manages to get off the post by itself. Thus reinforcing the idea that even when the outcome of things is not what we had anticipated, we should always give our best anyway.

Amazing show.

Amazing

doesn't look like they put their usual budget on it tho

fire keep going on

Watching steins gate for the first time looking to get sauced

Have fun man. I enjoyed watching it the chronological way with season 2 played before the last two episodes of season 1

Is this Hathaway gundam movie standalone can I just watch it straight up

Minato one shot

I'm kinda in on a Minato one shot. Either that or Shisui, or a more obscure lore character.