Animator Spotlight: Kiyotaka Oshiyama

all gifs in order

dennou coil (2007)
doraemon: nobita and the green giant legend (2008)
xam'd lost memories (2008)
evangelion 2.0 you can (not) advance (2009)
fullmetal alchemist: the sacred star of milos (2011)
the wind rises (2013)
space dandy (2014)
flip flappers (2016) presumed
devilman crybaby (2018)
doraemon the movie: nobita's treasure island (2018)
shishigari (short trailer 2019)
doraemon: nobita's new dinosaur (2020)
the orbital children (2022)
mob psycho season 3 (2022)

Happy Belated Birthday to Kiyotaka Oshiyama, born 10 days ago

Kiyotaka Oshiyama is a fairly young director and animator in the industry. At just 41 years old, Oshiyama has made a name for himself by standing out and not being afraid to take risks.

When Kiyotaka Oshiyama started his career he was a promising animator who kept getting rejected by different studios when he was trying to start up. Oshiyama’s first accepted application was to Studio Xebec. Under the direction of Mitsuru Ishihara, Oshiyama was instructed to meet a quota of drawing 1000 in-between frames a month and “Oshi” was the first one to reach it. Oshiyama was impressing Ishihara with his work on Rockman and Negima so much that Ishihara recommended him to work at Bones on Fullmetal Alchemist: Conqueror of Shambala. In Oshiyama’s words “At that time I was just back from the countryside and I had 0 connections, so I was also pretty interested in working with other companies.”

The mentorship of Mitsuru Ishihara was incredibly beneficial to both Oshiyama and fellow animator Shingo Adachi. Oshiyama highlighted that Ishihara would occasionally place red papers on their desks to invite them to play Mario Kart and Halo on weekends in the conference room, also stating that “Ishihara was a real sniper really good with head-shots, so he was always able to defeat the newcomers.”

Before it came time for Kiyotaka Oshiyama to work on Dennou Coil with Mitsuo Iso, he showed his drawings to Ishihara to which he replied “It’s dazzling to see that you’re able to bring yourself to a higher-level-environment than us thanks to your work here”

Dennou Coil was the first showing of Oshiyama’s true style which is bouncy realism highlighted with a loving sense of character and motion. Oshiyama would then move on to Xam’d Lost Memories where he would show of more of his action capabilities, but it wasn’t typical fast paced sakuga action, it was more of the slow paced intentional action that would be common place in a Hayao Miyazaki picture. In fact a few years later Oshiyama would work on The Wind Rises, which displayed a breathtaking showcase of his skills (as per course for most Miyazaki animators when working on his movies)

The following year, Oshiyama would get to work on Space Dandy with Shinchiro Watanabe and Shingo Natsume on Episode 18 where Oshiyama got the full load of the entire animation department. Oshiyama entirely handling direction, animation direction, script writing, storyboarding, and key animation on the majority of the episode. He even solo animated parts of the entire fishing portion of the episode by himself.

It’s a beautiful looking episode, and with Oshiyama showing the full extent of his powers it was time for him to direct a show. Enter, Flip Flappers Oshiyama’s series directorial debut

Now, after watching Flip Flappers it wasn’t a great show IMO. Despite having some really incredible sakuga moments even having legendary animator Toshiyuki Inoue on Episode 1, the story felt generic and undercooked. Besides that the show looked amazing, and a lot of Oshiyama’s production sheets really give the show a lot of life.

Oshiyama was fine if people didn’t like the show stating in an interview, “hey I’m still young, and if I screw up this director thing I can still make a living as an animator (laughs), so I decided it would be worth the risk of trying something challenging”

Kiyotaka Oshiyama stated in the Flip Flappers interview that “action scenes are one of my relative strengths as an animator” and action it up he would on Masaaki Yuasa’s Devilman Crybaby with his work on episode 10 specifically being a highlight.

He would also handle animation direction on episode 5, and 8, and even being the devil designer

Kiyotaka Oshiyama after Devilman would found Studio Durian and head up their first anime called Shishigari Unfortunately, there has been no new news about the project as it is believed proper funding couldn’t get it up.

I think Kiyotaka Oshiyama is a fantastic animator and has the potential to be a great (better) director. He is a creative, and has adapted to all the beats of anime production. A lot of his animation and directorial works have a sort of special sauce to them that you only see in the best of the anime industry, and he should keep trying new things and see what lands.

Currently you can find Oshiyama serving as creature designer on Chainsaw Man

here's a cool drawing he did for Chainsaw Man

Follow Oshiyama on Twitter, he show's a lot of cool art and production stuff on his page, and him recently doing art for Pokemon cards twitter.com/binobinobi/media

Hard asf

The Devilman designs>>>>

Starting Akiba strip

Thats where ive heard of him, found his name familiar. Loved his pokemon art, thank you for exposing the thread to his work, and yeah hes great

Finally watched inu-oh, this really might be in my favorite yuasa works, truly amazing in every aspect imo

First 2 eps of trigun been alright.
Also people comparing it to the og show acting like that one was so good... it really wasn't

Nier episode 2 was pretty good

the original Trigun is definitely a great show lmfao but what’s not to like about it?

• Vintage Madhouse animation
• One of the coolest & most likeable anime protagonists of all time
• Flashy fights that end with one side outsmarting the other instead of asspull power ups
• A narrative structure that slowly pulls the few plot lines together by the end, saving the most interesting aspects of Vash & his origins/fate for the climax
• Dope & unique setting for a show. (Cyber/steampunk Wild West is f***ing badass)
• Emotional moments (Wolfwood )

I'm digging what they're doing with Nier by exploring the resistance and machines more

I thought the story, worldbuilding and gags were ok, just not really original or executed that well, even for its time.
I enjoyed watching it but I wouldn't rewatch it, that kinda show for me.
Do agree Vash is a sick character tho.

Kobeni working at Whataburger

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just watched the first episode of Stampede, seems like they’re going for a more mature/serious tone from the jump which is interesting

honestly the animation and new character designs are pretty cool, only thing that’s missing is Milly