However the scene of the movie has to go to Sushio, who expands on the Spiral King just getting killed in the original and instead doing a drawn out brawl between him and Simon. A glorious fight, with so much respect to the physicality, and mystifying storyboards


One of Gainax’s finest hour

In-between the releases of the Gurren Lagann movies, Gainax also released Parallel Works a series of music videos from the show and original songs as companion pieces.

After the release of the Gurren Lagann movie Sushio, Yoshinari, and Imaishi all made brief appearances on the final battle of Khara’s second rebuild film. sakugabooru.com/post/show/71060 sakugabooru.com/post/show/61210 sakugabooru.com/post/show/122249 sakugabooru.com/post/show/122250

Imaishi and Sushio would then be credited on Redline

Takeshi Koike’s racing supernova, this film took everything that made Koike’s style and turned it up to a bazillion with some of the highest tiers of animation you will ever see. Imaishi and Sushio both were attributed to character cuts, displaying the racers
Imaishi went first with Lynchman and Johnnyboya sakugabooru.com/post/show/222008, and Sushio with the Super Boins twins sakugabooru.com/post/show/222006\. Sushio had a enough time to do more cuts, but I’ll cover that in his spotlight. This also marked the meeting between Imaishi and Takafumi Hori who’d work later at Trigger.

After the success of Gurren Lagann the crew vacationed out, high and mighty and drunk off their asses, they began to think of ideas for a new show. One that drew influence from early 2000s American cartoons like Samurai Jack and Powerpuff Girls but also had the revolting and offensive humor of a show like Drawn Together, originally thought of by producer Hiromi Wakabayashi. All concepts and sketches were made along the way and this lead to the release of Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt in 2010 directed by Imaishi

A raucous and lewd portrayal of two s***crazed angels, and a weird priest. The two fight ghosts, and go on wild splurges in Daten City, a place with American and Japanese influence. If you have never seen this show just know it is stooped in a very edgy barrage of cynicism and vulgarity. No scene is right without a f***, or s***, or piss, or b****, t***, or ass. It is listless and undeniably gets it job done depending on your tastes. Imaishi takes a similar approach to Tsurumaki on FLCL, basically saying “fuck it” and letting the most absurd plots dictate every action taken by the characters, with occasional action eye candy.

Adapting the Powerpuff Girl and Genddy Tartakovsky aesthetics would be taken on by Nishigori, who is able to convincingly make you believe you’re watching an American style cartoon.

The creature designs were done by a number of people, but it looks like Yoshinari had a fair bit of input

As for animation, most of the cast from Gurren Lagann had stayed. There is a fair bit of notable newcomers, for one Megumi Kouno who would later go on to become a pretty important figure in Nishigori’s future projects sakugabooru.com/post/show/197477 sakugabooru.com/post/show/197475 sakugabooru.com/post/show/198199, and some in-betweeners that I will get to later. Still a lot of standout sakuga moments by the usuals here. One notable aspect of the show is Imaishi and co began incorporated CGI into backgrounds and vehicles in the series and I’d say to great effect, because they’re not trying to make their motion be entirely convincing instead making it look like jerky Kanada animation that he’s used to.

Here are a few stand out episodes that might peak your fancy, or just to get idea of what you’re watching

this last episode is entirely key animated by Shouko Nishigaki, a stellar feat of animation

Right after Panty and Stocking something changed. After Gainax had made Dantallion a series with less than stellar reviews a massive exodus was going on. Character designer Atsushi Nishigori had left the studio to go direct The Idolmaster at A1-Pictures, and a majority of staff followed suit. Imaishi and Masahiko Otsuka were both tired and overwhelmed of the corporate side of Gainax as (like Hideaki Anno) they could see the studio was just beginning to pump out shows for profit and not artistic merit. So breaking off meant the founding of a new studio had to happen, and so Studio Trigger was formed on August 22, 2011

The founding of this studio was very important as being a smaller company the studio was free from the restrictive freedom of Gainax, and able to fit in a decent schedule to their works. Not dropping an anime every season, as is the norm with some studios. Trigger flourishes and embraces the wackiness of it’s respective directors, and would go on to be very much the top 3 studios in the industry still to this very day. Although the first few years of Trigger were admittedly rough

The very first work Trigger released was Akira Amemiya’s debut Inferno Cop, though this show has nothing to do with actual animation, the writings of Imaishi’s ethos of doing something insanely stupid on paper, and making it happen comes in spades here. It is not essential viewing to any fan of the studio, but it does reflect what the studio does.

Trigger also did some game promos around this time

Imaishi mostly did KA around this time, working on Star Driver, directing and storyboarding four episodes of Black Rock Shooter, doing KA on another Lupin III movie, and of course working on Evangelion 3.0 where AD Takeshi Honda made it finally possible for Hiroyuki Okiura and Hiroyuki Imaishi to be in the same movie and still have everything flow together

The first bit of actually animated content for Trigger would be Yoshinari’s debut series, Little Witch Academia first presented in a short 20+ minute movie

In collaboration with Anime Mirai as a project raised to bring up young animators, Little Witch Academia worked by bringing in young talent to make a movie. While Imaishi had little involvement only handling the latter half, the in-betweeners brought in would have futures here, most notably Yuuto Kaneko, one of the first bright young talents to come up at the studio sakugabooru.com/post/show/204645.

After 6 months of storyboarding and concept art Studio Trigger’s debut series Kill La Kill released on October 4, 2013

A ludicrous first anime at the studio for Imaishi Kill La Kill is a great starting point for anyone unfamiliar with Trigger’s aesthetics. The story takes place in a world where clothes powered by life fibers grant the user super powers and allow them to fight others in combat. As the main premise goes, Ryuuko Matoi a transfer student from out of town comes to enroll at Honnouji Academy a school dictated by its student council leader, and head president Satsuki Kiryuuin. Ryuuko befriends Mako another resident in the lower levels of the city, with her primary goal to put a stop to Satsuki as she believes she killed her father, however, things are not what they seem.

Written once again by Kazuki Nakashima of Gurren Lagann fame Kill La Kill once again focuses on a small person persevering in the face of an overwhelming totalitarian force. The title of the show is actually a clever play on words that plays into the themes. The Japanese word for “fasicsm” ファッショ, fassho sounds similar to the English word “fashion” and the words for “school uniform” and “conquest” seifuku are pretty much identical, same with the word kiru either meaning “kill” “to cut” or “to wear”. The combination of words leads to the title Kill La Kill or roughly Wear to Kill, along the lines of that. The theme of the show is deeply routed in the systemic oppression of fascism.

This was the debut series for Sushio to show off his own character designs. Sushio had admitted in interview he was not good at drawing bishoujo, and this went on for months, but Imaishi knew he was the right guy for the job, and as result we get probably some of Trigger’s most simplified designs in their catalog.



The senketsu’s get a little more busy


Yoshinari of course handled some of the minor mechanical designs (I could not find a reference sheet)

As for KA staff, its a big uproarious crew. Of course, Imaishi, Yoshinari, Sushio, and Amemiya are all present but this was the debut for Takafumi Hori as a full-time collaborator for Trigger. While he isn’t technically an employee he owns a desk their and is on demand when available and he really shows off the first episode with Gamagori’s first appearance sakugabooru.com/post/show/110743 sakugabooru.com/post/show/214635\. From there on out he’d become the most consistent animator on the staff, next to the aforementioned Yuuto Kaneko sakugabooru.com/post/show/214725\. Once again we’re hit with an array of guest animators, Gen Asano, Hakuyu Go, Futoshi Higadishe, Hironori Tanaka, Atsushi Ikariya, Hiroyuki Terada, Mai Yonemaya, Masami Goto, Kazunori Ozawa, Kei Suezawa, Takashi Kojima, Shingo Abe, Shun Enokido, Yoshihiko Umakoshi, Takashi Mukouda, Tatsuya Miki, Kenta Yokoya. A bulk of Khara staff with Mahiro Maeda, Shuichi Iseki, and Takeshi Honda. Even Bones Kanada star Yoshimichi Kameda (who is a big fan of Imaishi and did in-betweens on Gurren Lagann) did one cut.

Takeshi Honda animated the iconic Senkentsu transformation scene

Imaishi had done a few cuts, my favorite being the corrected Hisao Dendo cut of Mako, a classic

Despite a lot of the great well meaning towards the animation department, and also a very high caliber of energy across each episode Kill La Kill was met with some controversy. Yes, the show is rife with pretty intense fan-service, but that is only a superficial issue. The 6 months of production that the show went through was met through script rewrites, last minute changes, and a rough schedule meaning a lot of freelancers having to hop on. This can be a good thing with a lot of talent, but you don’t want to result to it everytime. This can be best illustrated in the making of the first episode in OP1 where the smaller Trigger staff at the time was noticeably rushed
Making of Kill La Kill Part 1
dailymotion.com/video/x36pnws
Making of Kill Part 2

Making of Kill La Kill Part 3
vimeo.com/193543580
This video series gives a good look into the making of the series, and Imaishi’s direction on not only the animation and editing staff but also the voice actors. My favorite bit is Imaishi helping Mako’s voice actor work in a line, and get the inflection right

While Masahiko Otsuka was working on When Super Natural Battles Become Commonplace Imaishi assisted Yoshinari on his second crowd-funded Little Witch Academia: The Enchanted Parade

Once again another rough job with Imaishi primarily assisting with animation direction. Tadashi Hiramatsu was also brought on as a last second stand in to help assist. This movie marked the first showcase of talent from young animator Kai Ikarashi who was just yet to become a big star sakugabooru.com/post/show/224886

Making of, you can see how involved Yoshinari is in the animation process, he is way more of a perfectionist than Imaishi.

After the release of the Little Witch movie Imaishi went to direct a bite-sized series in 2016 known as Space Patrol Luluco

A short series of 13 7 minute episodes, Luluco feels pretty much if not almost like an anime in the form of a s*** post, a high quality s*** post. The plot is a girl name Luluco’s father accidentally becomes frozen and she becomes responsible for taking his place as a space police officer. This show is basically just a vehicle to tell a short little story, and make a dozen references to other Trigger properties like Kill La Kill, Inferno Cop, and even an animator expo short Trigger produced the year before called Sex and Violence with Mach Speed.

Some really cute designs by Yusuke Yoshigaki and Mago

First seven Episodes of Luluco

by the seventh episode I think the OP singer gives up on singing the song? I have no idea what he’s ranting about

The next year Imaishi did more of a full role of key animation on the tv series for Little Witch Academia

On the tv series it varies somewhat differently from the original two movies, having some minor story beats happen at other times.With less production issues than Kill La Kill everything was meant be mostly in house with a few exceptions of Yoshinari’s older brother Kou Yoshinari and a few other freelancers showing up. Hori, Sato, Yoshinari of course are the two big names on the animation side, but this where the young Trigger staff really came into their own. Yuuto Kaneko, Masaru Sakamoto both stand out, but Kai Ikarashi was doing some stellar cuts. Imaishi appeared sporadically throughout the series with some animation on Episode 3 sakugabooru.com/post/show/30118, a crazy mecha henkei on Episode 18 sakugabooru.com/post/show/34108 (mech designed by Sakamoto). And then the finale which had him working in some of his most Yoshinari looking cuts sakugabooru.com/post/show/35744 sakugabooru.com/post/show/35745 he even storyboarded Yoshinari’s aerial maneuver section

After doing minor work on Darling in the Franxx, Imaishi took viewers back to the movies with his first film since Dead Leaves, the burning power of Promare

Announced in 2017, the film had been in production for a total of four years. Of course Imaishi brought on Nakashima, and the duo wrote another insane premise of heroism and world ending events. The story takes place after the events of a great fire caused by humans combusting into fire causing massive casualties across the world. While others perished from this ability, others were able to control their abilities yet were persecuted due to existing. Years later Burning rescue fights against Lio Fotia and the Mad Burnish while the head of a company plans to evacuate a chunk of Earth’s population before the Mad Burnish’s effects on the planet’s magma destroy the world. Imaishi had the interesting idea of the fire fighters being the hot blooded and attitude ridden people, while the Mad Burnish and Lio are cold and calculated criminals.

On the design front, designer Shigeto Koyama and Imaishi came together with the idea to have the fire look uniquely 2D. While instead of traditional animated fire the two opted for fluorescent triangular patterns making it more pleasing to the eye, opting for a pinkish and greenish design.


Imaishi’s inspiration was to make the fire look more other worlds rather than opt for plain boring yellow and red fire. Promare had more CGI per usual than any other Trigger anime before and this was done in tandem with XFLAG and sister studio SANZIGEN. A note that Imaishi told to the 3D staff was “reality wasn’t allowed”. Once again opting for his Kanada esque approach of making things exaggerated, and not be confined to the rudimentary rocket science of 3D.

As for character designs, Imaishi got a fair bit of criticism for his design of Galo looking like Kamina, which he stated was merely accidental. “When I draw protagonists for the pitch they always seem to end up with that kind of hair. Gurren Lagann was the same. I give the drawings to the character designer, who workshops it on their end so that the design fits the anime”. Speaking of designs, those were handled by Koyama who borrows heavily from Sushio’s Kill La Kill aesthetics

The 2D team was made up five animation directors, Sushio being the senior, with Mayumi Nakamura, Tetsuya Hasegawa, Kai Ikarashi and Michelle Sugimoto as the rest. Story boards were handled by the big three, with their former Gainax seniors Masayuki and Nobutoshi Ogura joining on as well as a few other outsiders like Sung Jin Ahn, Daizen Komatsuda, and Ryouji Masuyama

For key animators they let a lot of their top staff plenty of breathing room to make a mark between psychedelic 3D effects. A wonderful staff with Ken Otsuka, Bahi JD Mai Yoneyama, Shingo Abe, Yasunori Miyazawa, Kengo Saito, Ken Yamamoto, Tatsuya Miki, Ikarashi does some nice cuts sakugabooru.com/post/show/111385 Amemiya as well sakugabooru.com/post/show/111405\. Another animator who’d been an in-betweener did some great character acting cuts, that being Ichigo Kanno sakugabooru.com/post/show/111382 sakugabooru.com/post/show/111370

However the most stellar cuts gotta go to the veterans and freelancers, Hori did this cut that almost like something Bahi would do sakugabooru.com/post/show/111367

Speaking of Bahi, he did layouts for a climatic scene near the end sakugabooru.com/post/show/196470

Atsushi Nishigori did a warm fuzzy scene, turning into abstract comedy sakugabooru.com/post/show/111414

Yoshinari probably did his best mecha work since Gurren Lagann with Super Galo Lion sakugabooru.com/post/show/111356

And the most insane full portion of 2D animation has to go to overworked animator Toshiyuki Sato, who Im assuming through digital animation was able to convey this massive mountain sized display of effects from Lio sakugabooru.com/post/show/111359

Now the next year had Imaishi being a primary action director on Yoshinari’s second series Brand New Animal

Once again a standout effort where you’re seeing more of the younger staffs efforts with Ichigo Kanno holding up a brunt of scenes sakugabooru.com/post/show/115586 sakugabooru.com/post/show/115638 sakugabooru.com/post/show/115649 sakugabooru.com/post/show/120324\. Yuuto Kaneko shines in multiple scenes, as well as Ikarashi who does some of the best cuts on the series sakugabooru.com/post/show/115574\.

Now for Imaishi he really made the animation pop as for the few scenes he did have some more abstract qualities that is usual for him sakugabooru.com/post/show/120295 sakugabooru.com/post/show/120333


some of Imaishi’s genga for the show, by this point Trigger has gone completely digital for their animation, whereas before they were working on paper.

Imaishi, Ikarashi, Yoshinari, Nishigori, and Kanno all hopped on the final chapter of Anno’s rebuild saga Evangelion 3.0+1.01 Thrice Upon A Time

A long and welcome closer to the end of the series. The Trigger boys were put in charge of the final battle between Shinji and Gendo as they start to fight in Evangelion Imaginary World. sakugabooru.com/post/show/162049 while its unclear who did what this easily one of the more memorable portions of the film, with some crazy repeating boards then give way to trippy kaleidoscopic imagery.