2004, saw the release of Howl’s Moving Castle which in my opinion has Tanaka’s most essential work.

One of Miyazaki’s most popular films, Howl diverges from the usual wondering heroic female MC, and in favor of a swept away romance narrative (imo doesn’t really work that well). It feels like a lot of the trickery learned on Spirited Away had been diversified, leading to improved compositing, coloring, and scenery. The colors, bells and whistles of the film pop out like none of his other films prior.

Tanaka does a variety of cuts, for about 7 minutes yet again. Early on she does a fantastic food cut, does a lot of enthusiastic character acting, and even towards the end explosion effects animation which is more unusual for her, but not something she’s incapable of. Every scene is a feast for the eyes, sometimes literally

The explosion laden finale has many effects handled by Tanaka, so much so that assistance by destruction wizard Takashi Hashimoto had to help out. One of the shots between Howl and Sophie as they escape the liquified soldiers, back into Howl’s lair was so well drawn that the shot was used for American promo material.

Tanaka came back on to Ponyo

One of Miyazaki’s most difficult efforts in creature effects, many of the top animators were in charge of drawing an abundant variety of sea creatures. Tanaka was assigned to the opening cuts of the film, with slow shots carefully bringing the viewer into the aquatic wonderland. The density of creatures is so high here, and with everything moving in frame it is tough rough animation in first stage passes, likely even more difficult for in-betweeners to finish. Fish, octopus, jellyfish, plankton, crabs, sea slugs, anemones and even prehistoric animals like trilobites are present, and moving. Fujimoto’s bubble ball is surrounded by the creatures Tanaka also was in charge of Ponyo’s introductory scene, showing her and her sisters following behind. Ponyo then sneaks out blanketing herself in jellyfish as she looks. Tanaka did some minor character acting later between Ponyo and Sasuke.

After Tanaka finished Mamoru Hosoda’s Summer Wars, she did some fantastic work on Hiromasa Yonebayashi’s debut film Arrietty doing great cuts with the crow. Her work later on From Up on Poppy Hill she was used pretty sparingly

The Wind Rises would mark the beginning of Miyazaki’s longest hiatus, and for good reason.

Many of the same animators returned, senior staff including Kitaro Kousaka on AD, Makiko Futaki, Megumi Kagawa, Shinji Otsuka, Atsuko Ohtani, and Katsuya Kondo all make appearances. Takeshi Honda and Hideki Hamasu both being the more realist type animators also appear. Yonebayashi mentored staff from Arrietty hop on, most namely Yoshimi Itazu and Kiyotaka Oshiyama. Hiroyuki Aoyama now freelance does some minor parts, and Kazuhide Tomonaga returns to work on a Miyazaki film for the first time since Castle in the Sky. Masaaki Endo also made a subtle return, his longest hiatus from Ghibli since Princess Mononoke. This would be the last Miyazaki film with Futaki as she would pass away a few years later.

Tanaka’s very first is a monstrous display of natural disasters.

Tanaka 0:17-0:28, Taichi Furumata handles a few cuts after along with Tanaka until 0:56
This scene is a recreation of the Great Kanto earthquake, a real life event that happened on September 1st, 1923. It leveled most of Tokyo, even whipping up firestorms, which the film does not depict. A total of 142,800 people perished from this event, effecting the Chiba, Kanagawa, and Shizouka prefectures. The film also omits the Kanto Massacre, where rumor spread that ethnic Koreans were poisoning water wells or planning attack after fallout from the quake, leading to the killing of over 6000 to 10,000 Korean-Japanese citizens, throughout the surrounding area of effect. The opening cut depicts the subduction zone, rupturing creating a great shockwave that moved and destroyed everything in its path. Miyazaki has the scene depicted like a wave, where buildings crumble as they cannot physically withstand that kind of stress. It’s an interesting depiction, especially with the unorthodox sound design having the earthquake huff and puff like a billowing dragon awakened from its slumber.

Later on Tanaka animates several cuts of Nahoko, Jiro’s love interest. The final scene of the movie has the three female seniors, Kagawa, Tanaka, and Futaki animating it.

The next year, in a rare turn of events, Tanaka was back onto tv anime doing an Episode of Shinichiro Watanabe’s Space Dandy. Due to her connections with Hiroyuki Aoyama (AD of the episode), recently working on Summer Wars where he was the lead supervisor, and their friendship dating all the way back to The Fuma Conspiracy Tanaka was a wonderful pull. After Dandy and the gang fall into a ramen dimension, an alien explains what he did to fall back in love with food again. Tanaka first starting out her scene with a top down angle is a huge flex, then later on showing off just how diligent her food animation really is. Made all the more unique by the bizarre alien that is eating it. Later that year she does more amazing food cuts on When Marnie was There

After minor work on The Boy and The Beast, and Your Name Tanaka came headstrong onto Hiromasa Yonebayashi’s Ponoc debut Mary and the Witch’s Flower. She does a majority of character cuts, but particularly morphing animation, one cut that really stood out is her work on the spell casting scene, where a ton of unrealistic animals, are transformed back into their natural form.

Tanaka the next two years did work on two Hosoda films, Mirai (2018) and Belle (2021)


On Mirai Tanaka did about 3 minutes of animation, the first cut is a two minute long unbroken scene with some of really gracious and homely character acting. Hosoda is usually not as stringent as a Miyazaki, but his flat shadeless designs to give way to more movement friendly scenes for animators.
For Belle Tanaka had a pretty brief part.

The most recent credit in Tanaka’s name is on Hayao Miyazaki’s final film How Do You Live, or known by American audiences as The Boy and the Heron

Based off of Miyazaki’s favorite book, it is allegedly his last film, though he had stated he has more “ideas” for future projects. Given his time in the industry being well over 80 years old, the animation department had taken a long 7 year period of pre production just for Miyazaki to get his boards done, and finish corrections. AD had been left in the hands of Evangelion legend Takeshi Honda, who through his previous KA on Ponyo and Wind Rises made himself the prime candidate for this film. Other realist legend, possibly the greatest Japanese animator of all time Toshiyuki Inoue also returns to his second Ghibli project in 34 years, dating all the way back to Kiki’s Delivery Service. It is a regular foray of staff including Shinya Ohira, Akihiko Yamashita, Megumi Kagawa, Kitaro Kousaka, Atsuko Otani, Katsuya Kondo, Shinji Otsuka, Takeshi Inamura, Masashi Ando, Hiromasa Yonebayashi, and Eiji Yamamori. Kiyotaka Oshiyama and Yoshimi Itazu reprise their roles from Rises bringing on new animators such as Ai Takashi and Yoshimichi Kameda
According to an interview from Toshiyuki Inoue, the film diverges from Miyazaki’s style in the second half, due to Inoue stating his “worsening vision” couldn’t allow him to correct the movie as much as he used to. Takeshi Honda’s realist style ends up being much more prevalent resembling the likes of him, Masashi Ando, and even Hiroyuki Okiura (not credited, said that it looks like their style since Honda is fairly close to Okiura)

Tanaka is one of the most iconic animators to bless the Ghibli pipeline. Getting an upbringing in a stressful work environment can be tiresome, and perhaps more in a male dominated space but Tanaka has come to the aid of Miyazaki time and time again. Though she may seem pretty understated, and not as idiosyncratic as the more popular Ghibli adjacents like Shinya Ohira or Yoshinori Kanada, her concrete and firmly paced flow to her scenes have made her the bedrock of how Miyazaki scenes should look and move. The detail in her animation is unmatched, as the insane boards she is faced with are managed with so much and care and respect to the material. The blend between realism and exaggeration is so finely articulated through every single line of drawing, and not an ounce of her talent is wasted. From TMS to Miyazaki, to Hosoda, Tanaka is a saint of anime animation.

Going to hold off on two other spotlights as I'll let the AOT discourse take over tomorrow

I always liked her design cause it feels out of place a bit in this show and it plays into her character

Belle again!?

Considerate nerd fr

just let it rip tbh its been talked to death a billion times itt

good spotlight btw ive always wanted to get into lupin at some point

Here's your watchlist for the series

Movies
Mystery of Mamo
Castle of Cagliostro
Farewell to Nostradamus
Jigen's Gravestone
Goemon's Bloodspray
Fujiko Mine's Lie
The First (cgi movie)

Specials
Island of Assasins
Tokyo Crisis
Alcatraz Connection
Blood Seal of the Eternal Mermaid
The Woman called Fujiko Mine

OVA
Green vs Red

Pluto

Goat show just ended

You free to go. Everyone else in AoT thread.

Gotcha

yeah that aot ending was ass but tbh they dragged this s*** out for so long that i'm no longer emotionally invested enough to even care

then the shots afterwards go back to the manga style and it’s such a jarring change

Whatever, Imai made peak, making the material look better than it was

Mappa producers should be on their hands and knees getting him back to do just one cut

castle of cagliostro

my aunts fave movie

Writers trying to salvage their main female lead at the end of a story will never not be funny to me

watching anime with headphones is crazy