i called you a hater not black

Animator Spotlight: Keisuke Kobayashi

All gifs in order
From Me to You (2009)
Saekano: How To Raise A Boring Girlfriend (2015)
Occult;Nine (2016)
Grimgar Ashes and Illusions (2016)
Eromanga Sensei (2017)
Darling in The Franxx (2018)
I Want to Eat Your Pancreas (2018)
Sword Art Online: Alicization (2018)
Ni no Kuni (2019)
Wonder Egg Priority (2021)
My Dress Up Darling (2022)
Spy x Family (2022)
Cool Doshi Danshi or Play It Cool, Guys (2022)
Chainsaw Man (2022)
Heavenly Delusion (2023)

Happy Birthday Keisuke Kobayashi. I love character acting animation. In a world rife with sakuga compilations showcasing action getting millions of views on Youtube, character acting tends to be overlooked. Sure you can have fantastic character animators like Hiroyuki Okiura get praise or some of the best of Kyoto Animation’s peak scenes or every Ghibli scene, but its rare for it to be a point of interest and discussion. For several obvious reasons, it is not visually engaging, usually doesn’t have the most insane camera trickery or angles, and most average anime viewers are subjected to mouth flaps + exaggeration and not much else a majority of the time, and this is primarily applicable to tv anime. Keisuke Kobayashi transcends this notion as he’s one of the few animators that can make deceptively simple character acting scenes compelling. With his use of realism, and lifelike movements used strategically in certain cuts, Kobayashi seems to come almost from a realm of animators that is more deadset on suggesting realism with tads of exaggeration. Thanks to heavy use of reference footage and understanding of form, he’s among one of the best animators that showcases the humanity, and intimacy of characters in animation.

Starting at Studio Xebec Kobayashi got a decent start hedging his way through animation. His first credited works are on shows like Heroic Age, Minami-ke, To LOVE-Ru where he began as a in-betweener. We’d finally get credited KA on Pandora Hearts, Saki, and From Me to You. His early cuts don’t have the same sense of realism, but what makes him stand out is his focus is working on shots that focus on hands or legs, and generally areas of the body in a first initial shot. sakugabooru.com/post/show/221368, sakugabooru.com/post/show/79694, sakugabooru.com/post/show/79907

For the next three years Kobayashi is solo, and he begins to excel on longer cuts, and while limited we see him capturing the mystery and dramatic anticipation of characters. On Working!!! in 2011 Kobayashi gets his first work as an animation director on 3 episodes, and an assistant AD on another three episodes. These are very simple scenes, but you can see the hallmarks of his animation style begin to form sakugabooru.com/post/show/17355\. Two years later on Oreshura, Kobayashi handles KA and AD alike. His movements aren’t too much of note, but there is more of an emphasis on exaggeration to some degree. And on Wake Up Girls! Kobayashi makes his debut as an Episode Director, on episodes 7 and 11 blessing the screen with his very gratifying and ephemeral AD work.
On Saekano in 2015. There is a fair match of drama that ends on comedy in the end, I believe one of the first times he attempts it sakugabooru.com/post/show/212940, sakugabooru.com/post/show/60517

It’s 2016, and Kobayashi hops on to A-1’s Occult;Nine, where he really shows off what he’s capable of. Getting super fearful performances out his subjects sakugabooru.com/post/show/26248\. The murder scene here is especially nice, I love the very life like movements when the character picks up the knife, a lot of nice turns and adjustments that feel like something a teenager would do being a goofball. sakugabooru.com/post/show/26615\. Some of the head turns here are super nice, just breathing Kobayashi’s reference footage to life.

Eromanga Sensei is without a doubt one of Kobayashi’s biggest accomplishments at this point in his career as he’d be assigned as a primary animator for the heroine Sagiri as assigned by Xebec friend Ryohei Takashita who was also the director.

In the words of Kobayashi

“The director requested that they look vivid, alive. Also I’m careful to draw certain parts in a very realistic way. I think the reason why the director left this role to me is that I like keeping in touch with realism when I draw” - Kobayashi

Kobayashi also makes a point that most scenes where he works freelance he just receives contents then does what he sees, but with Eromanga Takashita gave many specific instructions.

This shot was particularly hard for Kobayashi. Tying a bikini is a super unconscious for girls, but animating it is whole other story. He does a great job following through with the whole motion sakugabooru.com/post/show/219828\. Here is the whole interview between the two pixivision.net/en/a/2559

After doing an incredible beach scene on Darling in the Franxx sakugabooru.com/post/show/46391, Kobayashi would pen the same year the bizarrely titled I Want to Eat Your Pancreas. Despite its odd title the movie carries Kobayashi’s talents over to the big screen.

Kobayashi for the first time handles sub-character and costume designs. and is joint AD alongside others. He does around 4-5 minutes of key animation on the film, and is strategically placed thanks to director Shinichiro Ushijima. The scenes Kobayashi commits to shows his utter and complete understanding of subtlety and patience. The scenes are very well laid out, and any time the characters move they move with life like precision. Not too lifelike, Kobayashi isn’t trying to be Hiroyuki Okiura or anything like that. The library scene in particular has Kobayashi seeking total control over the cut sakugabooru.com/post/show/7453\. The close up shots of characters grabbing the books feel like something Kobayashi must have referenced just by filming himself.

The same year Kobayashi did animation for Sword Art Online: Alicization’s first OP sakugabooru.com/post/show/87518\. The opening director Shingo Adachi makes an interesting choice deciding to to use a tilt-shift to make the characters seem like miniatures in frame. Really interesting effect that you don’t see a lot in anime.

The next year Kobayashi worked on Ni no Kuni, directed by Ghibli veteran Yoshiyuki Momose at OLM studios.

With Ghibli-esque character designs and based off the video game series, the film boasts alot of talent. Under the guidance of former Bleach AD Masaya Onishi, Kobayashi animates a majority of the first leg of the film doing about 3-4 minutes of keys. This is a former Ghibli director after all, and Momose’s boards demand you to take in the scenery with Kobayashi being the one bringing the characters to life. Though some of this is left presumed we can still see Kobayashi doing a great work of recognizing the depth of some the compositions here sakugabooru.com/post/show/109842\. I love the extras Kobayashi animates in these scenes as they make the world more full, rather than just limiting them to being still cut-outs.

A few years pass and it is time for Wonder Egg Priority, which blows the small achievements previously on Eromanga Sensei out of the park.

Kobayashi serves as the show’s lead animator, pulling a Kou Yoshinari White Album and animating on every single episode of the show. Saki Takahashi provided very dreamy and soft character designs, and left the baby in Kobayashi’s hands. What he does so well in this series is capture the mindset of the characters very wel, with well drawn frames that deliver the emotional stabs and beats. Another element is his foray into more full animation. sakugabooru.com/post/show/142095 Episode 1 is the best example, with great run-cycles, and framing. Episode 3 Ai meets Rika sakugabooru.com/post/show/143408 in an almost 2 minute scene. The first couple moments of the scene are so well done. Ai’s arm swaying cuts are done super well.

The running scene in Episode 6 is so peak. Kobayashi’s attention to details in strides is definitively top tier sakuga.

Kobayashi 0:05-0:25 sakugabooru.com/post/show/145664 full unedited scene
Without a doubt one of his best cuts. I love how after just a few cuts the folds on Ai’s t-shirt get more wrinkled by being in the rain, and her pace and speed diminish over time. The head-tilt on the bridge feels very reminiscent of Bahi JD’s animation as there seems to be recycled head shots. I don’t know if Kobayashi works digitally, but the execution could possibly merit that. This episodes ends the long winded cuts of Kobayashi as he’d provide very short scenes to the following episodes.

In the summer of 2021, Kobayashi joined Shingo Natsume’s Sonny Boy. While it isn’t as rife as some of the top tier moments of Wonder Egg, Kobayashi aptly returns to his more subtle days of the past doing really memorable scenes that make dialogue seem not so boring sakugabooru.com/post/show/165919

Now we’re in 2022. This year boasts one of the highest yields of Kobayashi sakuga, and that speaks to the pure clout he has accumulated from his work. Its wonderful to see a widely acknowledged character animator work on the bigger shows. First we start the year up with My Dress-Up Darling.

Kobayashi animates on the OP around 1:17-1:30. He does something I’ve never seen before in the last cut where he frame-modulates from 3 frames a second to 2 frames a second. Normally you would do the reverse order of that modulation with characters walking further away, but he is against the status quo.

Kobayashi then puts a hell of an AD performance on Episode 8 with the beach scene. Shockingly wistful storyboards by episode director Yusuke Kawakami, and phenomenal animation by Kobayashi and company (the scene is riddled with his corrections)

Kobayashi AD, the last couple of cuts are presumedly him. sakugabooru.com/post/show/181499 unedited scene

Kobayashi worked on several shows in the year including Spy x Family, Do It Yourself, and Bocchi The Rock!. On Cool Doshi Danji Kobayashi works in a regular person’s morning routine with exceptional attention, and timing. sakugabooru.com/post/show/207690\. A day after the Danji episode airs we get the first Episode of Chainsaw Man with Kobayashi handling Denji’s first encounter with Pochita.

whole scene is presumedly Kobayashi. Notice the stumbling cut is reminiscent of the other one in My Dress Up Darling. He also animated a scene with Himeno and Aki sakugabooru.com/post/show/210452.

Most recently Kobayashi animated on Heavenly Delusion. His animation on Episode 3 is particularly good with Kiruko going through his/her? backstory sakugabooru.com/post/show/225740.

Keisuke Kobayashi while still young is going to be regarded as one of the best character animators in anime in the future. His subtle attention to gestures of characters performing everyday tasks, and so on may seem very standard but the willingness for him to give time to these things reasons to understand what performance you can get away from just hands or other parts of the body. For sure a forerunner in the pool of best animators in the Cloverworks and A-1 Pictures staff, Kobayashi’s level of delicacy is bewildering. I’ve never seen an animator do so much with so little, and for that we are grateful for him.

finally some character animation

f***kk it looks so good

2024 release but f*** it

ez aoty

spittin, absolute garbage