Animator Spotlight: Hironori Tanaka

All gifs in order
One Piece: Episode of Chopper Plus: Bloom in the Winter, Miracle Cherry Blossom (2008)
Bakemonogatari (2009)
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (2010)
Black Rock Shooter (2010)
Bleach The Movie: Hell Verse (2010)
Nisemonogatari (2012)
Highschool DXD New (2013)
Space Dandy (2014)
Death Parade (2015)
My Hero Academia (2016)
Kakegurui (2017)
Mob Psycho 100 (2019)
Jujustsu Kaisen (2020)
takt. op Destiny (2021)
Chainsaw Man (2022)
Heavenly Delusion (2023)

Happy Birthday to Hironori Tanaka. Arguably one of the most significant Japanese animators of the century when viewed in a freelancing standpoint, Tanaka has accumulated an astounding résumé of animation over the last 16 years. If you have watched any tv-anime aired in that time frame there is a high chance you have seen him on many occasions. One of the busiest working people in the industry, so influential that Tanaka is considered “a modern Yoshinori Kanada” according to Bones animation director Yoshimichi Kameda and for good reason. He is well known for conveying what can be considered expressionistic animation and is able to make it accessible to the everyday anime watcher, and fit it into the standard anime production pipeline. He is great at drawing wispy and thin effects that also relate to his very dark and rough artstyle (when uncorrected or in his AD or director work) that conveys a sense of mysticism and on the flip side horror that few animators copy. Tanaka is also one of the best hair animators in the industry today, giving hair a more flowing and realized appearance. Let’s dive in to what makes this legend so great.

Considering the volume of Tanaka’s work, covering his career from anime to anime from each year in order is downright impossible. Tanaka has worked on…. Attack on Titan, Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, My Hero Academia, One Piece, Demon Slayer, Sword Art Online, Jujustsu Kaisen, Chainsaw Man, Naruto Shippuden, Bleach, Mushoku Tensei, Fire Force, Space Dandy, Mob Psycho 100, Code Geass, Deadman Wonderland, Tokyo Ghoul, Made in Abyss, Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, Banana Fish, Oniichan, Susume: Next Summit, Fate/Grand Order Baylonia, Fate/Extra, Fate/Prism Illya, Fate/Stay Night, Fate/Apocrypha, Mobile Suit Gundam 00, Takt. OP Destiny, Flip Flappers, Princess Connect Re:Dive, Nisemonogatari, Bakemonogatari, Kizumonogatari, Nekomonogatari, Noragami, Precure Splash Star, Precure Max Heart, Yes Precure, Golden Kamuy, Gurren Lagann, Konosuba, Tatami Galaxy, Star Driver, Urusei Yatsura, Air Gear, Re:Zero, Ruroni Kenshin, Sailor Moon Crystal, Persona 4, Pokemon, Digimon, Yugioh, Panty and Stocking, Zettai Karen Children, Tsubasa, Sora No Otoshimo, Demon Capitol, Kill La Kill, Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, Macross Frontier, Madoka Magika, Captain Earth, Campione,Highschool DXD, Kids on The Slope, The Idolm@​ster, Detective Conan, Toradora, Kekkai Sensen, Kakegurui, Konosuba, Lupin The Third, Terror in Resonance, Garo the Vanishing Line, Rage of Bahamut, Sacred Seven, School Days, Saki, and many many more.

It is not exactly easy to talk about his career in order so I’ll give you the general cliff notes version of where he started then break down his animation and artstyle.

Tanaka’s first big break was on the Precure series where he worked on several Max Heart, Splash Star. On Yes! Precure 5 Gogo director Takashi Otsuka allowed him to improvise on storyboards, where he specialized in fights. Episode 4 is the first time we begin to see some of his timing develop, as well as hair and smoke effects sakugabooru.com/post/show/8008 there is also a bit of Naotoshi Shida influence as some scenes are briskly paced and animated on 1s. Mind you, while Tanaka was closely associated with Toei during this era he was just a freelancer, and he was doing dozens of other shows in-between this.

In 2008 on One Piece: Episode of Chopper Tanaka fully realizes his animation style going forward, seemingly uncorrected by whoever the AD was in a 2nd Gear fight with Luffy.

Tanaka to 1 minute in, he then picks up again 8 seconds afterwards
So the first thing that is extremely apparent is the way he draws Luffy’s hair which stands apart in complete disregard to the character sheets, and how full it looks there.


This is one of earliest examples of Tanaka’s hair animation coming into full bloom. He is so good at drawing this very wiry hair, and while a lot of the shapes in it have this a ragged and macabre abstraction, it still is discernible as hair just with the classic Tanaka touch.

The same year he’d also work on Kurenai an anime about apartment tenants, and despite the weird plot Tanaka is able to sink in his early signatures and showcase some of his most hedonistic animation in a strange singing scene where we see the full brunt of Tanaka hair sakugabooru.com/post/show/112883\.

It’s a bizarre scene, but Tanaka is full of passion and is able to make it work with his artistic touches. Notice how dark and ragdoll like the characters feel, and I know there’s no audio but just imagine the most annoying song you can that’s what they're singing.

Also in that year came out Yes Precure 5 GoGo! Happy Birthday in The Sweets Kingdom sakugabooru.com/post/show/19963 where Tanaka goes unnecessarily ham on 1s.

After doing insane sakuga on Tetsuwan Birdy Decode and solo animating an episode of Saki, he’d come on to two shows them being Bakemonogatari and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. First lets talk Bakemonogatari* Episode 8.

Tanaka 0:16-0:19, 0:35-0:50
Since Monogatari is so strange and idiosyncratic it is only right to bring on an idiosyncratic animator and Tanaka is the perfect fit. I love his approach to effects and smoke here, and he has a really good understanding of when to commit to modulating the frame rate. You can also see how he’s visibly abstaining from stiffening the character designs from being on model and instead going loosey goosey with abstractions and showcasing his love for Shinya Ohira esque incomprehensibility and Masaaki Yuasa type perspective shifts (two of his biggest influences).

On Fullmetal Alchemist, Tanaka is the second most prevalent key animator on the show next to the young star at the time Yoshimichi Kameda. While Kameda is a obvious Kanada school animator, Tanaka still opts for his more vain and warped style seriously benefiting action scenes.

Whole scene is Tanaka
The show contains some of his best and most grounded action ever, and though that is one of his strengths he’s also just as good at character acting which was all over the show. sakugabooru.com/post/show/213801 even with a little girl passing by you can see the Tanaka hair.

might as well read the manga cus that aint happening any time soon

Around 2010 we get to see several of Tanaka’s best contributions to sakuga ever. First starting on Black Rock Shooter. sakugabooru.com/post/show/202177


you can see the intentional jaggedness of Tanaka’s work here and his very limited attention to overdetailing his smoke effects. Something he likely picked up from Norio Matsumoto.

genga

Secondly we get Star Driver with Tanaka animating the amazing Tauburn sequence.

Tanaka 0:32-0:53

And then lastly that year we get one of Tanaka’s most remarkable feats. It’s remarkable for any animator, but its his primary contributions to Bleach Movie 4: Hell Verse. Tanaka goes god mode in a 5 minute long fight all done by him sakugabooru.com/post/show/191764\. What is insane is that is not even the most popular scene from the movie, it is Ichigo’s fight with Ulquiorra which is 1/10th the length of the hell fight.

Tanaka 0:55-1:30
Unfathomably spindly effects brought to life by heavy usage of 1s, and fantastic storyboarding.

And the rest is history, I could cover all of Tanaka, but his career would overload this thread so much with useless Tanaka trivia you wouldn’t care anymore, so let’s break down some of the features I like about his AD work, and I’ll start in order and then skip around for fun.

So his early AD work is fairly simple, this could mainly impart be due to the shows he’s working on like Naruto Shipuuden Episode 131 for example which is very simple.


If you’ll watch the episode you’ll see how incessant he is on leaving his touch on everything with his paper thin, and kite like movement, his drawings have little to no three dimensionality from this era. He also heavily adjusts a lot of the animators timing.

For a long time this would remain a norm until we get to, Kakegurui in 2017 where he did KA. Now this anime may seem fairly unimportant in terms of Tanaka sakuga, but would begin a trend with Tanaka having more exaggerated facial key frames that elevate a sense of horror, fear, and distorted realism with the character Yumeko



A character merely turned on by f***ing people over in gambling Tanaka is able to really able to startle the viewer with her intimidating scenes. Sure there is a plethora of Tanaka-isms, but we can see him drawing teeth more realistically, and also making a conscientious effort to make it feel real.

This did carry over next year onto Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure Vento Aureo Episode 27, where Tanaka begins to perfect his AD

A Jojo anime lives and breathes off of strong drawings and Tanaka brings that in spades here. Though the rest of the episode is unmistakeable Jojo Tanaka’s macabre and unsettling corrections help re-contextualize the designs into more demented caricatures of the cast.

The same year he did AD on Episode 8 of Azur Lane, but this time he directed, and storyboarded the episode. He has directed over 20-30 tv episodes before, and this is just a walk in the park.

There is a lot of fantastic sakuga and is a playground for Tanaka-hair. One thing I really like about his direction here, is he so unashamed to just pause for several seconds to focus on his close up character drawings. Nothing wrong with that, but it has me wondering if Tanaka is that good or self-indulgent? Though this episode isn’t perfect as there is some rushed elements like characters will jump into action, and then cut to still drawings (these issues are fixed in the blu-ray unfortunately with some heavy redraws). All of the drawings are great though.




Tanaka seems to favor focused lens effects too with elements in the center of frame are in focus with everything gradually blurring out along the
edges.One shot that had me perplexed from the Episode was this one where Tanaka abandoned hair shading altogether, and just left in a really rough shape. Thought it seems intentional and would mark a very slight stylistic change.

On Jujustsu Kaisen Episode 13, we get to see some the finest moments of peak Tanaka, AD, episode direction, and storyboarding.

A very stacked affair of an episode, especially for a middle season. A notable addition of the Episode is Tanaka’s use of 3d Blender liquid traced in 2d to make the blood look more real. As for animators on the episodes, it is freelancers galore just like Tanaka. First the eldest of the bunch is Toshiyuki Sato and despite having half as long a catalogue as Tanaka he’s still regarded in the same upper echelon of freelance animators. Then we have a relay of foreign animators such as Mitchell Gonzales, Blu Shade, Blue. Locals Kai Shibata and Orange. The most important of the episode staff is at the time 18 year old Vercreek. A super talented kid by every stretch of the imagination his scene with Mahito will go down in the history books.

Vercreek 0:04-0:58, Tanaka picks up with the hand animation, and then Shibata with the hand domain illusion.
Vercreek does a great job of ramps, slowing down action to a creep and then anticipating more fast paced movement in a proceeding cut, great rhythm to the scene.

Aside from the great KA, a lot of the ragged aesthetics from the Jojo Episode are carried over here in Tanaka’s corrections, he seems to have redrawn a ton of still frames, especially the ones with Mahito.




While every drawing has this uncanny gruesomeness he’s still able to maintain a semblance of realism, albeit heightened.

The next year he’d provide animation direction on the climax of the Jujutsu Kaisen 0 movie, where he continues to show what he does best, correcting animation from legendary Kanada student Shinsaku Kozuma and Mappa animator Yoshihide Ideue.


The four tone shading on Geto is gold.

Next we get Ryu Nakayama’s, Chainsaw Man where Tanaka directed Episode 3 showing his particular eye for gory action on the Denji and Bat Devil fight.

Tanaka supervising several animators, webgen animator Takahito Sakazume, Kaito Tomioka, Kai Shibata, Hayato Kurosaki, Toru Iwazawa, and Riki Matsura.