Animator Spotlight: Naotoshi Shida

All gifs in order
Dragon Ball: Episode 96 (1988)
Dragon Ball Z: Episode 53 (1990)
Dragon Ball Z: Ppisode 120 (1991)
Dragon ball Z: We Gotta Power Opening (1993)
One Piece: Chopper’s Kingdom on The Island of Strange Animals (2002)
Futari Wa Pretty Cure Max Heart: The Movie (2005)
Pretty Cure Splash Tic-Tock Critical Moment! (2006)
One Piece: Strong World (2009)
Suite Precure: Episode 24 (2011)
Precure All Stars New Stage: Friends of the Future (2012)
Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods (2013)
One Piece: Episode 726 (2016)
Dragon Ball Super: Episode 130 (2018)
Dragon Ball Super: Broly (2018)
Dragon Quest (2020)
One Piece: Episode 1000 (2021)

Happy Birthday Naotoshi Shida!!! Being one of the most significant animators on the Dragon Ball franchise, Naotoshi Shida would carve out a legacy for himself in the series by becoming one of the most noticeable staff on the show. Known for his quick scenes, and stop start action timing, he can easily make a scene pop within in an episode. Whether its Dragon Ball, One Piece, Precure, or Digimon Naotoshi Shida is one of the best. Shida currently does freelance work for Toei Animation, and has been a decade long animator of the company along with fellow Toei animators like Kazuya Hisada, Masahiro Shimanuki, Naoki Tate, Tadayoshi Yammamuro, and Katsuyoshi Nakatsuru.

Naotoshi Shida was very fond of animation as a young kid. He was enamored with series like Lupin The Third, and started to notice the works of Kazuhide Tomonaga on Castle of Cagliostro, where a young Shida never wanted to be an animator until he saw the opening car chase of that film. Other anime Shida was watching at the time were Mobile Suit Gundam and Space Battleship Yamato. Shida became animator in the early 80s joining as an animation apprentice through a magazine recruitment advertisement. Shida never joined an animation school so learning it became a gradual process for him. One of the first scenes Shida animated was a cloud in the tv series Miyuki. In1985 Shida would join Studio Last House founded by Masayuki Uchiyama as an in-between animator, which was a studio sub contracted under Toei Animation. Some of Shida’s in-between work would be on the last season of Doctor Slump, and according to the man himself his very first key work would be on Fist of the North Star in 1986. Following those shows Shida would then go on to work on the adaptation of Akira Toriyama’s Dragon Ball

Naotoshi Shida during early Dragon Ball would be placed on pretty simple scenes though his first work of true sakuga would be on Episode 27 where Master Roshi would witness Goku transform into a Great Ape and then Roshi destroys the moon. It’s fairly well done with multiple staples of Shida’s work coming into play. Later down the line on Episode 52 we get to see one of the most prominent hallmarks of Shida’s animation that being his camera work. Shida’s moving camera shots are incredibly dynamic, and in this movement he’s able to balance character acting and action choreography. While the cut doesn’t have the movement anticipation he would later be known for the wormy camera movement is something that would show up throughout his entire catalog.

Shida would handle a lot of episodes moving on from here, and while a lot of his key animation where he’d be a regular could sometimes be pretty limited there would still be a lot to appreciate. Shida’s pacing of his scenes would drastically improve. The speed of his cuts would move faster and his anticipation would result him utilizing slow motion to great effect. Episode 96 is very important essentially being the culmination of these elements in one scene.

This scene doesn’t have the snaking camera movement typical of a Shida cut, most likely being because Daisuke Nishio (series director) would like to keep the action cinematography stationary as opposed to Mitsuo Hashimoto (Daisuke’s right hand man) who would rather have it move whenever he would direct. Other than that element missing it isn’t crucial to the scene, the very obvious start stop timing of the cut is laid right in front for all to see and is one of the best sequences from the original series. Another aspect about the scene is quick rotation cuts from characters that would come up later on.

After Episode 96, Shida would keep improving and improving greatly upping the speed even more and even animating on 1s which isn’t a characteristic that would show up much on the sequel series but would become a prominent part of his work. Shida following this would then give a spectacular amount of cuts in the following arcs of Dragon Ball up until the end of the series where Goku faces off with Piccolo. There is an incredible amount of impact and force in these cuts, one of the best coming from Episode 147’s meteor combination where Shida just lets completely loose showing an insane flurry of kicks from Goku on Piccolo. Shida had done cuts like this before, but the emotion packed in to this scene is intense and seeing Goku deliver the final blow is so satisfying.

Shida is :36 to 1:03

Enter Dragon Ball Z. This show still remains the most popular incarnation of the series, and Shida would get work done here. As soon as Episode 8 Shida is evolving making use of shard like rock debris. He would continue this in Episode 32 with Goku vs Great Ape Vegeta, which remains one of his favorite scenes he did in the series.

Now it is important to bring up Masayuki Uchiyama again. While Uchiyama is an incredibly important mentor to Shida during this period, Shida had already done a lot to surpass him and many of Uchiyama’s corrections were not for the better. Despite being friends at the time with god tier animator Yoshinori Kanada, Uchiyama didn’t have that great drawing skills in terms of adapting to Toriyama’s ever evolving art style at the time, and this problem would become worse overtime.

Shida’s original drawing

Uchiyama Correction

It was a big shame people like Shida, Taichiro Ohara, and other Last House staff would suffer from Uchiyama’s underwhelming changes. Shida had an incredible art style with a lot of sharp angles that presented his animation as very aggressive.

More amazing cuts from Shida would be just around the corner where on Episode 74 he would display an incredibly dynamic cut of Vegeta beating the s*** out of Ginyu.

By this point Naotoshi Shida would be one of the top action animators for Dragon Ball, and his reputation wouldn’t overshadow the other animators since all of the work from him and others around this time was mostly great. Shida would leave Studio Last House around 1992-93 and would move over to Studio Junyo and Shindo Productions where he would fare off a bit better and escape the corrections of his mentor. Though around this era Tadayoshi Yamamuro would correct him further, sometimes for the better sometimes for the worst.

Yellow and still frames Yamamuro, White is Shida





Shida would be adapt to this style later on to the point where it would he wouldn’t need any corrections.

I could gush over Shida’s Dragon Ball days all day, but this is about his entire career. By around 1996 Shida would finish up his work on Dragon Ball Z, and move on to Dragon Ball GT in some scenes and in Path to Power. There still is a very prominent Shida but here he feels more refined and confident in his camerawork.

Following The Dragon Ball run, Naotoshi Shida would go on to work on a few obscure shows here and there until he landed a part on the first One Piece film, and then later on in Futari Wa Pretty Cure. The Precure series is the point where the modern hallmarks of Shida’s animation would finally start to come to the forefront with several features still present to this day. One of the first noticeable aspects is Shida’s shading. Shida’s shading would easily stand out amongst his peers. Instead of doing a lot of more rounded shapes or sea curves Shida instead opts for a lot angular shadows with sharp endings and straights giving a pin sharp edge to his drawings.



Lot of the influence of this can come from Akira Inagami who was the character designer of Pretty Cure. This shading worked especially well on villains, and he would carry it over later on to benefit characters with muscles.



Shida's effects work from this era would be another thing that would change pretty drastically. His smoke would become more rounded and cartoon like, often opting for only two tone shading with subtle variation. Another element altered would be fire and water effects which would be almost the same in terms of shapes, yet more wispy and looser

Another thing that would change during this era is Shida’s timing. Shida would start animating scenes that are incredibly smooth. So smooth to the point where some people think it is bad? How crazy. The way Shida would get this result is by animating on 1s which is is an incredibly time consuming process for any animator, but he is somehow able to get it done. The volume of animation that he has on 1s to this day is staggering and goes to show the immense talent he has at his fingers. Naotoshi Shida’s unwavering challenge of having incredibly smooth 24fps animation has ended up working very well for transformations, action, and effects. I think it works best in transformations as Shida is able to get a ton of interesting character angles and poses in movement, added on top of wormy camera movement. You can see this effect done well in his Precure and One Piece works where we start to see some of his most complex work.

These scenes make for very interesting use of perspective shifts too. I love how Shida holds on small moments for the viewer to take in yet doesn't hold too long then ramps to the next pose or point of interest in a quick manner.
One of the most insane examples of Shida committing to 1s is in the Precure All Stars DX2 movie. He said this was one of the hardest cuts he ever had to animate and it shows. The sheer amount of background animation in the frame, with the smooth timing on top? I cannot begin to imagine how hard it was to do.

Around the late 00s to early 10s the frequency of Shida’s work would be immense and he’s still incredibly consistent to this day. There is too many highlights to mention, and a lot of them speak for themselves. The Battle of Gods fight, the Precure New Stage opening, Luffy’s Fourth Gear, the four minute opening scene of One Piece: Gold, so much content to unpack in Shida’s career and he just keeps doing what he does and does it well. One trait that can pop up from Shida’s current era since the 00s is his posing. One of the best apart about watching Naotoshi Shida’s animation is his absolute understanding of the human form. While he is not trying to be realistic he does keep exaggerations on model so that there is no suspension of disbelief. Shida has said before that focusing on the muscle underneath the skin is incredibly important for posing and it can be seen in spades on so many scenes he’s worked on. They’re so eye-catching and really give away that it’s him (plus the shading). Great use of foreshortening (producing the illusion of extension of an object).




Shida has said hands are one of the hardest things for him to draw.
Shida’s wide angle postures make for very appealing character artwork too.

Naotoshi Shida is a GOAT! Despite never going to an animation school it is amazing the amount of quick progress he was able to make in his early years, and rise up to become one of the top requested animators for Toei Animation productions. Though his animation has gone through many changes his style is still relatively the same. His sharp line work is still at the very forefront of his work, and he's just upped the ante going forward. Yes, he has gotten flack over the years for his recent repetitive style, and use of spazzing frames occasionally (usually from cough cough Naruto fans), yet he has overcome time and time again. Sure his style can be repetitive, but he f***ing owns it and if it ain't broke don't fix it. Shida isn’t the best animator of all time, he doesn't pride himself in anything and he hasn’t had much of an influence on action animation outside of people at Toei (specifically Yuya Takahashi), yet he’s special and makes up for it. He is notorious for standing out and that is what makes him the best to do it. Everything from art, composition, and pacing comes in a full package with Shida and he always delivers every single time.

You can recently find Shida working on the Wano Arc of One Piece where he has animated many scenes of Luffy and Kaido. He actually debuted a new scene on Episode 1051 literally today! On his birthday!!! He is also working on the concurrently airing Soaring Sky! Pretty Cure. The show is the twentieth installment of the Precure series and is celebrating 20 years of the franchise!

Though there is no new information about a new Dragon Ball Super release date I do not doubt that he will make an appearance on a future episode!

Follow Shida on Twitter twitter.com/naoV47/media
He doesn't post a ton on production materials for shows, but he does post about baseball, Pokemon Go, Switch games, and just seems like a friendly and hard working guy!

Fun fact Shida animated Light's "I Am Kira" speech (at least shots of Light)

Trigun stampede is good

RIP

kaposztas animator spotlight when?

Finished Scum's Wish, yep classic

I can fix her ..