After doing more minor work on Pom Poko, and Whisper of the Heart, Otsuka is brought on to “On Your Mark” a music video performed by Chage and Aska

sakugabooru.com/post/show/226570
A short written as a side project while Miyazaki was writing Princess Mononoke. One of the only Miyazaki projects to be set in a futuristic sci-fi setting, it also makes the first use of computer animation on the shot of several gunships going through a city sized tunnel. Otsuka handles that portion along with the opening police-raid of cultists. The short also features a young Masashi Ando on animation direction who was only 25 at the time. It's a hidden gem in Ghibli's discog and has a strange and nonlinear narrative

Two years later, after various writers blocks Princess Mononoke finally was released in 1997

This film in a way feels like a final hurrah of of the old guard of animators as many of them including Endo, Kanada and Otsuka himself all would leave Ghibli after this film. It boasts some of Miyazaki’s most dynamic action boards, and Otsuka is primarily at the forefront. Doing about 4 minutes of KA he proves himself early in the film handling the hillside attack on Lady Eboshi’s forces sakugabooru.com/post/show/16771\. Super detailed layouts, and brutal cuts by Otsuka. He’s able to maintain a lot of hasty cuts of the human and cattle characters, amongst the chaos of the assault. I love the drawings of the wolves. Later on with Endo, he handles San’s charge on the fortress with her directly confronting Eboshi sakugabooru.com/post/show/16774\. The condition of the characters is illustrated so well here as the difference in fighting by Eboshi and San is made clear. He then handles more character acting cuts later on.

After Mononoke, Otsuka was left tired and brutalized by the production. He left Ghibli in 1998, only showing up on My Neighbor the Yamadas in 1999, and on The Cat Returns as his only films to be with the studio during this period. The first big project would be on Jin-Roh in 1999.
Directed by master realist animator Hiroyuki Okiura (one of Mamoru Oshii’s top animators at the time) it was originally slated to be a Oshii feature, though due to several circumstances Okiura was brought on making his debut. Production I.G had proven themselves to be at the forefront of anime realism in the 90s, and Jin-Roh pushed this to another degree with Okiura’s intense AD, featuring verisimilitude and patient storyboarding. I’ve already gone over a majority of the animators in my Tetsuya Nishio spotlight, but how does Otsuka fare amongst the others? As the oldest animator on the staff, Otsuka proved he’s no slacker to this style animating the horrifying dream scene sakugabooru.com/post/show/118730\. It’s a dismal sequence, that encapsulates much of Okiura’s vision.

The next year Otsuka makes a name for himself on FLCL directed by Kazuya Tsurumaki

Otsuka joined Production I.Gs team as opposed to the staff on Gainax which had another array of insane talent. Nishio and Otsuka would be the show’s two primary animators with Otsuka himself animating on all six episodes (the only other fulfilling that role being Gainax’s Sushio). Otsuka handles the first cut of animation on Episode 1

Otsuka 0:19-1:37
The first cut has an unbelievable understanding of cloth physics. Though this level of realism isn’t necessary as the following cuts go into the exaggerated comedic acting, and subtlety that makes the OVA so great. No rhyme or reason to animation style changing, just a thing of its own.

On Episode 2 Otsuka handles part of the battle with Takkun’s second head robot, he’s joined by Nishio and Sushio

Otsuka 0:15-0:46, Otsuka and Sushio 1:45-2:23, fun fact Hideaki Anno does the explosion at the end of this scene.

Episode 3 we get more subtle character acting cuts sakugabooru.com/post/show/121579 sakugabooru.com/post/show/121619 my favorite is between Takkun and Ninamori sakugabooru.com/post/show/221874, flirty character acting and a nice light hearted vibe. While Otsuka’s cuts on Episode 4 haven’t been identified, Episode 5’s are. Young Gainax star Hiroyuki Imaishi is the AD on the episode and boasts some of the funniest character acting on the whole show sakugabooru.com/post/show/221898 sakugabooru.com/post/show/70164

Episode 6, we see Otsuka helm a long sequence sakugabooru.com/post/show/78282 rife with great subtle character acting.
Him and Nishio then help helm the final battle, with Otsuka doing the “I love you part”

Otsuka 1:11-End
The comic character shock face at the end seems incredibly reminiscent of Tsurumaki’s style, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he honed in on a lot of Otsuka’s traits.

That same year Otsuka worked on Blood: The Last Vampire, another IG effort helmed as an idea by the company’s president, and directed by Kenji Kamayama. It’s a fantastic display of the studio’s talent and also their second venture into bringing it on to digital animation. One of the only projects to feature Norio Matsumoto and Yutaka Nakamura (considered the best action animators in modern anime) they are condensed down to more simple cuts, the IG cast are the real MVPs here. Of course Okiura and Toshiyuki Inoue do a great job, but the highlight member is Mitsuo Iso’s cut which is hard to top. Otsuka i’d say came fairly close with his scenes. He is featured early on sakugabooru.com/post/show/167197 then executes a portion of the final battle with Iso, and other animators. sakugabooru.com/post/show/174819 dramatic finish with a vampire sword slice

2001, Otsuka was commissioned onto Millenium Actress alongside Inoue, Nishio, and others. Otsuka does about 2 minutes of KA, mostly handling scenes that transition from the train attack in the story, to the flashback Japanese war scenes all within the confines of the actress’s films. My personal favorite is the war scenes, great and expressive character acting in the leads and the hallway run has a lot of limitations foregoing many in-betweens sakugabooru.com/post/show/195005\. 2002 Otsuka’s back to Ghibli on The Cat Returns where he helmed the creepy cat parade scene sakugabooru.com/post/show/16596.

2003 we get one of Otsuka’s most successful displays on his entire career on Tokyo Godfathers.

One of Satoshi Kon’s more grounded stories, the animation is anything but being more vivid and wild. While animators Hideki Hamasu, Michiyo Suzuki, and Toshiyuki Inoue dominate a majority of the screen time, its Otsuka with the most doing around 7 minutes of KA. An absolutely incredible feat of dedication, he handles so many fantastic scenes throughout. In fact its his style that visually dominates most of the film as I’m sure younger ADs Kenichi Konishi and Masashi Ando likely didn’t touch most of his scenes. sakugabooru.com/post/show/163188 Otsuka is incomparable with the physicality in his cuts once again opting for not using many in-betweens letting him be interrupted in the animation process down the line. This scene in particular sakugabooru.com/post/show/163220 has some remarkable comedic character acting.

Its so rife with comedy, and the pauses in-between is done masterfully. While its an incredibly giddy scene, one of the more dramatic scenes is Hana’s rant which is without a doubt one of the greatest anime character acting scenes of all time, I wish I could link the clip with audio but here it is sakugabooru.com/post/show/201120.

i f***ing hate that song lmfao

The next year Otsuka returns to Ghibli on Howl’s Moving Castle. I don’t know if it was reluctant or not, but he’d remain around for several years at the studio. Several years later he hopped on to Tales from Earthsea and Ponyo with that movie having many scenes with uncorrected Otsuka as the style becomes a lot less defined and rougher compared to how slick character look throughout the rest of the movie. sakugabooru.com/post/show/120478\. He did some minor work on From Up on Poppy Hill, and on The Wind Rises which has his most subtle work sakugabooru.com/post/show/161734 with resolute and calm character acting. The same year he also did an astonishing cut on Takahata’s last film The Tale of the Princess Kaguya with a bursting running cut sakugabooru.com/post/show/120401

After from When Marnie Was There Otsuka went back on to freelancing and dedicated a scene on The Boy on the Beast one of Mamoru Hosoda’s films. He’d then hop on to Mary and The Witch Flower a Studio Ponoc (offshoot Ghibli) film where Otsuka animates many scenes of Flanagan sakugabooru.com/post/show/48013\. I love how this character moves. Otsuka embues Flanagan with a wind-up toy like quality with hints of authentic real life movement just to make sure he doesn’t come off as too robotic, he’s seasoned and trained. Otsuka then hopped on the next year on Okko’s Inn directed by Ghibli early bird Kitaro Kousaka. Otsuka only had one cut, but its still very spirited and cute sakugabooru.com/post/show/75008.

Otsuka cuts since have been quiet, but its safe to say he likely did a ton of work on Miyazaki’s upcoming How Do You Live which has spent 7 years in production.

Shinji Otsuka. Undeniably a hidden gem of a legend. His work seems to be almost unaccounted for in the list of sakuga greats as he was around exclusively at Ghibli but made his mark by being versatile in other places. Sure, he doesn’t have the action status of guys like Masaaki Endo, or others in the Ghibli canon beyond that he is an unsung hero of the studio and is incredibly well defined in his style and execution of his scenes. The persistence of his key animation is always scene due to how much he does on projects, and speaks wonders to how passionate of an animator he is. Even at 68 he is still working diligently alongside the other goats of the studio to make the best cuts he can, and I hope he makes a triumphant return.

Otsuka KA from Akira

the prologue for Oshi no Ko was so much better than what the anime ended up being

@Scooter whats your mal

Cap u just didnt get it

myanimelist.net/profile/ScooterMcFinna

I'm only 3 episodes into yuru camp but this might be the coziest show I've ever seen

OP is also fire

nah I did

everything promising about what the prologue was leading up to (the trauma leading into developing the main character into an anti hero, the murder/mystery set up, etc.) are all completely abandoned to make an idol harem show with a tsundere MC

s*** fell off

Kappe's work on Oshi no Ko was one of the biggest hard carries of all time.

This is a reasonable opinion. Also it helped that it was presented as a movie instead of being cut into three abrupt ending first three episodes.

you're definitely right that making it a movie helped. Narratively, it makes sense to do so but also I feel that the way it set up what the story ended up being also made me very interested as a viewer to see what was next.

What came after isn't bad necessarily, but it's just infinitely less interesting. I would've probably dropped the show honestly if it wasn't for the prologue. S***, I'll probably still watch season 2 because manga readers have said it gets crazy.