Kagurabachi is still a meme no?

Hard to tell. My gut reaction is yes but the numbers aren’t a lie

yeah and the meme is already wearing thin. i know it's not the most credible source but if you look at r/manga the amount of comments from the 1st chapter thread to the 3rd chapter thread have already halved. it pretty much pulls what dandadan gets and that series has no meme behind it or even a whole lot of promotion, just a passionate fan base.

the memes will only inflate the numbers for so long before people realize how boring the material itself is

So this should adapt the whole manga right?

where the f*** are the uma s3 subs

def seems doable

Animator Spotlight: Hiroyuki Imaishi

All gifs in order
FLCL (2000)
Lupin III: Alcatraz Connection (2001)
Dead Leaves (2004)
Re: Cutey Honey (2004)
Gunbuster 2 (2004)
Gurren Lagann Episode 15 (2007)
Gurren Lagann Episode 27 (2007)
Gurren Lagann The Lights in the Sky are Stars (2009) co animated with Atsushi Nishigori
Yoko Box Pieces of Sweet Stars (2009)
Redline (2009)
Evangelion 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo (2012)
Kill La Kill (2014)
Space Patrol Luluco (2016)
Little Witch Academia (2017)
Promare (2019)
Evangelion 3.0 + 1.01 Thrice Upon a Time (2021) Presumed, could also be Kai Ikarashi involved, Ichigo Kanno 2nd KA

Happy Birthday to Hiroyuki Imaishi. The undisputed king of Studio Trigger, and the resurgent director of 2000’s era Gainax, making up a big three with animators Yoh Yoshinari and Sushio being the top of both studio’s respective arsenals. Imaishi is more or less a game changer in the landscape of animation, as his loud and abrasive style demands attention. From his early days on Hideaki Anno’s adaptation of Kare Kano, to his directorial debut on Dead Leaves this vivid and wild is approach can only be categorized into a new adept generation he helped foster, the “Neo-Kanada” movement. This rise encapsulated everything essential about Gainax during the time and represented a sea change, to help distinguish them against other studios. Since Yoshinori Kanada and Masahito Yamashita are Imaishi’s biggest influences, he was able to apply what made their work stand out in mecha animation, and effects and give it an application into comedic devices. Nearly all of Imaishi’s directorial or KA have an insane amount of poses, and warped perspective shifts. The timing of his cuts are very much Kanada but much more chaotic as he is constantly trying to draw exaggerated faces, angular proportions, and even cycle animation to get a laugh out of the viewer. His art style is heavily shaded, with hints of inspiration from Mike Mignola to contemporaries like former Madhouse animator Takeshi Koike. From features like Gurren Lagann to Kill La Kill, to the foe-Americanized Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt Imaishi has always let the boisterous and bold aesthetics of a once dying style flow through his writing and editing too. The type of scripts that fights the power, repents motherfuckers, and tells you to just rip it off and get naked!

When Imaishi got his start at Gainax, there was no telling he would get so big. Imaishi joined Gainax after graduating from Tama University of Arts around the mid 90s where he would immediately be put on to in-between animation on Neon Genesis Evangelion

The anime that defined Gainax, Imaishi was throughout the process of the production got to observe so many wonderful animators. One of the big three that got a head start ahead of Imaishi, was of course Yoh Yoshinari. At the time, chief AD Takeshi Honda had very much informed a more realistic and environmental style that had been taking precedence over the past couple years. While Yoshinari was getting to the route of a lot Honda, and Hideaki Anno’s tendencies, the heightened styles of Kanada and detailed mecha animator Masami Obari were very much present in his work. This was also a stepping stone for Mitsuo Iso, a Production IG associate who’s simplified yet heavy verisimilitude was another example of the changing landscape the show set the standard for. Still there were many examples of heavy exaggeration especially in the character acting cuts. Some of the more light-hearted episodes share a lot of traits of Imaishi comedy that he would workshop, guys like Masayuki, Shinya Hasegawa, and Nobutoshi Ogura all went in an atypical more fun and lively approach. Ogura’s cut signified a very unusual A-Pro kind of approach with circular simplified deformations all for comedic effect something I’m sure influenced Imaishi a lot.

From about 1996-1998 Imaishi got into key animation and his progress was overpowering. He was able to land some major cuts on a majority of shows, yet early on wasn’t super Kanada-influenced. Based on these three cuts from the Slayers series sakugabooru.com/post/show/110900 sakugabooru.com/post/show/136350 sakugabooru.com/post/show/136338 Imaishi had traits of Kanada, adding the light flare, janky impact frames, doing angular sword play with two sticks on acute angles, but the animation was more flowing, something consistent with Atsushi Wakabayashi or Tetsuya Nishio’s work around this time. A best example of this is on Lupin III: Walther P-38 yes there is distinctly Kanada elements here, but there is a high degree of movement that is not representative of his future output.

This all changed on Kare Kano

After an exhausting yet stupendous effort on The End of Evangelion, Gainax diverted their attention into a romance manga, oddly adding Anno direct. In this show Imaishi sort of became a “right hand man” of sorts to Anno. With more softer designs by Imaishi’s mentor Tadashi Hiramatsu being softer as opposed to the more harsher ones on Evangelion, Imaishi used the show as an animation playground. Imaishi storyboarded three episodes, had AD duty on another 3, and did KA on 6 episodes. Every element of the Kanada-school thought of animation was here yet being used to comedic effect had conveniently never really been thought of before as the extreme fast pacing of his cuts are hilarious.

Imaishi 0:18-1:56 (basically)
This scene is a pretty good example of what Imaishi and Anno were cooking. Some animation on 1s is unusual for Imaishi but doing funny cuts like Miyazawa running past the girls and the wind speed catching up to them is great. Some usages of postcard stills, where the characters are enveloped in big shaded outlines also are very funny, and works well as a still frame. In fact the running scene of Miyazawa where she kicks the can was originally supposed to have a panty shot but it was turned down, to which Anno replied “Are you kidding me? if anyone masturbates to this picture, BRING HIM TO ME!”

Even in what could be a really simple scene Imaishi goes the extra mile doing background animation, and preposterous exaggeration. And this so emblematic in other scenes he did

This is also a good time to bring up Sushio, who made one of his first appearances here does a good job sakugabooru.com/post/show/67878 though his rise wasn’t as meteoric as Imaishi he will get just as fast soon, he did do ten episodes even its difficult to attribute some of his cuts. Yoshinari also contributed a good bit of animation, and even he admitted that Imaishi’s rise was “intimidating”

Episode 19, is considered Imaishi’s quote on quote “first success”. It has pretty much every single marker of a Gainax shortcut, where they obviously didn’t have time to color in key frames, and finish everything in post. Imaishi directed, storyboarded, and animated the episode with brunt force.

Perhaps the most bizarre episode of tv anime ever broadcasted inline with Anno’s last episodes of Evangelion, Imaishi opens with a five to six minute cold open of just still frames of rooms or outdoor cityscapes, a very Anno thing to do, but then all of a sudden once you get to the house you get these bizarre paper cutouts of the characters held on little sticks, with key frames. Then there’s live action footage added in which is immediately jarring, then there is recap footage that isn’t even shown in frame. Its literally just someone recording animation playback on a VHS. I could go over every just wonderful stupid detail of this episode, but just watch it is not very common to see something like this.

The next two years resulted in some pretty stellar cuts from Imaishi, one from Lupin III: Crisis in Tokyo is a standout sakugabooru.com/post/show/49281

In 2000, a brand new OVA series from Gainax and Production IG would run from April 2000, to March 2001 called FLCL

Directed by Hideaki Anno’s actual right hand man Kazuya Tsurumaki, he had the intention of breaking the rules of anime by employing new techniques, and flourishes to make the show special. The addition of a rock band doing the score was jarring and different, and unusual for an anime representing more of a promo vid or music video rather than a show. The premise of the show is also extremely obtuse and not supposed to be figurative at all stating “comprehension should not be important when it comes to FLCL”. Even the English dub localizers had a difficult time with the Japanese in-jokes of the show.

All this chaotic and pervasive energy translated evenly into the animation. This was very much IG vs Gainax. On the IG side, you had a slew of animators coming off the heels of Jin-Roh (Hiroyuki Okiura’s magnum opus of dark despair) going into this fun punk rock leaning show. One of the main ADs of Jin-Roh Tetsuya Nishio came on board as a primary action animator, with others like then former Ghibli animator Shiji Otsuka, Hiroshi Shimizu, Ei Inoue, and Kouichi Arai. Another IG affiliate Shinya Ohira hopped on, who’s melting expressionistic animation style took over an entire bit of an episode. A thing that the entire IG staff had in common was they were almost completely opposing to Gainax’s animation ethos around this time, where they all were realist school and/or flow animation school. The Gainax guys were all acclimating to Imaishi’s new presence, with Sushio being another star of the source. Most of the other animators on the Gainax crew were realist leaning especially Honda, and Yoshinari but they were still capable of exaggeration. Then you had the old guard with Yusuke Yoshigaki, Ogura, Masayuki, and even Anno followed through on this newer approach.

Imaishi storyboarded 3 episodes, while being AD on two, even being a setting director for one. His very first scene is immediately after Ohira’s on Episode 2, then we move to Episode 3 where he finally got a big blow to action following Nishio’s scene sakugabooru.com/post/show/83658\. Imaishi’s prowess and ability to convey a sense of comedy and danger is great. This is some pretty limited animation with some frames being conveyed on 3s and 4s, and the side gags in-between some cuts are again pushing the envelope.
sakugabooru.com/data/add1812857eaaf523b6f83826ec0d347.mp4
Episode 4 is another great example of Imaishi showing the insane merits of his animation as he dabbles and plunges into an array of weird and obtuse territory sakugabooru.com/post/show/221885\. Ogura’s AD seems like a formality, and might come down to the color grading, but the degree of which Imaishi is able to get with facial expressions here is concerning.