They put Fighting My Demons on JJK??

Animator Spotlight: Shingo Fujii

All gifs in order
Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha (2010)
Star Driver: The Movie (2013)
Naruto Shippuden OP13 (2013) last cut is Gosei Oda LO, with 2nd KA by every key animator on the cut, so that includes Fujii?
Yuyushiki (2013)
Go! Princess Precure Episode 1 (2015)
Go! Princess Precure Episode 9 (2015)
Go! Princess Precure Episode 22 (2015)
Aikatsu (2015)
Pokemon XYZ (2016)
Naruto Shipudden Episode 477 (2016)
Pokemon: Sun & Moon (2016)
Eureka Seven: Hi-Evolution 1 (2017)
Line Novel (2019)
Pastel Memories (2019)
Onimai: I’m Now Your Sister! (2023) Series Direction only, OP direction by Ryo Imamura, and animation by Hiroki Uchiyama

Note: The Aikatsu episode came out between the Go! Princess episodes, I just reordered it better for flow :)

Happy Belated Birthday to Shingo Fujii born November 4th. An animator who’s an interesting case study in convergent animation evolution. Fujii in his early days was a simple guy coming out of AIC in the mid 2000s making acquaintances with Yoshimichi Kameda and Shinichi Kurita. When the three diverged they all went entirely different directions. Kameda became one of the most popular animators of the late 00s early 10s, making essential fight sakuga on Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Kurita on the other hand became an important piece of the long running shonen of the 2000s Bleach, doing more grounded and practical approaches to action. The two have since gone unchanged in their respective styles. While Kameda is the retro ink splashed Kanada animator, and Kurita is a bit more individualistic, Fujii is the pair’s webgen animator. After working a handful of times with Shingo Yamashita and Ryo-Timo at the height of Flash animation in the late 00s and early 10s, he’d become an adopter of the newfound form of the medium. Joining the mentorship of Yasushi Muraki and Soichiro Matsuda he was able to breathe new life into Flash animation, using it in a more volumetric, and three dimensional sort of way on mecha and magical girl shows, much different from Yamashita’s rougher style. Fujii’s animation in essence is multi-faceted, acrobatic, and vivid in the bounce. The stylization of his cuts feel flowing and alive, and unlike most early webgeners maintain a sense of uniformity, and also unique camera work making a Hollywood-esque use of slow motion. He has been placed on several big time projects, even directing his own with Onimai: Im Now Your Sister! this year.

The opening of Fujii’s career before he went full time Flash wasn’t that special though there were highlights. He managed to amass an astounding amount of friends and make his name known on several series. Fujii’s first break out would be on Zero No Tsukaima, where a lot of elements of Matsuda’s KA would rub off on Fujii in a few ways, but wouldn’t show up yet. Early on Fujii learned he had an affinity for drawing bishoujo here. These are the Matsuda cuts with the missiles I imagine that rubbed off on Fujii. Zettai Karen Children would be another AIC affiliated show where he would work with Kameda for a last time, showing off his Kanada infused action. One important thing Fujii was able to maintain during the period was connections, working at Bones, Shaft, and Seven Arcs kept long term relationships going for the foreseeable future.

Umi Monogatari had Fujii’s early sensibilities with insane body rotation cuts, able to pull of something like this

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Movie 1st was Fujii’s first time integrating Flash animation into his work, along with a short cut from Halo Legends

This 1 minute fight scene near the beginning of the film is heavy laden in digital processing. There are prevalent scenes with rotation cuts on 2s involving buildings, lampposts, and missiles with the squid monster. The camera work also falls into that category where there is a lot of emphasis on the scale of the action rather than being close to it, which he would lean into much later on. Matsuda also assisted the scene with the missile dodging.

The innovations would continue with Fujii on Star Driver

A strange mecha design, with a stranger assortment of animators. Fujii worked diligently alongside Muraki, and Matsuda being exposed to the long time Bones vets including Norimitsu Suzuki and Yutaka Nakamura along with respectable freelancers like Hironori Tanaka, Takahiro Shikama, Shingo Abe and Jun Arai. Fujii here could show off a lot of his Matsuda influence doing some harrowing Itano Circus cuts in a more Matsuda sense. While Fujii’s other mentors like Muraki focus on a barrage of missiles, Matsuda draws one or two having skiddling and worming across the frame. In regards to other areas of expertise like object animation, this cutsakugabooru.com/post/show/217448) exemplifies how Flash animation can assist at rendering keys faster, and paired with requested scenes on 1s, in-betweening is faster too. The finale of Star Driver had a pretty stellar looking scene in scale, but made more remarkable with Fujii allegedly making 800 drawings for his scene. All the effort put into the dissipating energy barrier above, drawn on 1s.

In early 2013, Fujii did a stunning aerial dogfight on the Star Driver movie

whole scene Fujii
I feel like a culmination of all of Fujii’s skills up to this point come to a head. The rubber thin Matsuda missiles, and the webgenny laser effects. Fujii began experimenting with the pacing of his scenes with slow ramps into action then moving incredibly fast for a long period of time, then closing up with anticipate slow motion, leading into blowing out the scene.

The 13th opening of Naruto Shippuden was the debut OP direction for Shingo Yamashita on the series

Fujii 0:49-0:53
This pitted Fujii with some of the top animators of the webgen generation with Yama on direction, boards, and compositing bringing on legends like Kenichi Kutsuna and Gosei Oda. Though Kutsuna is the senior webgen animator, Yama made it more of a showcase for the young crowd featuring Ran Kamezawa, Tatsurou Kawano, Shin Ogasawara, Hiromitsu Seki, Ryu Nakayama, and the debut of Keiichiro Watanabe one of the most bizarre action animators to come into the limelight in recent years. Fujii is able to blend in seamlessly with the other animators, looking more even and tightly spaced than the others.

Fujii did a number of appearances on a variety of shows. Muromi was his first time doing a solo-OP and while not as crazy as his later shoujo efforts it proved him to be more than capable in this wheel-house.

Solo KA Fujii

He’d do commissioned work on Iron Man the Rise of Technovoreworking alongside Yamashita, Kameda, and mecha animator Sejoon Kim, and also a gorgeous three second cut on Yuyushiki. Yozakura Quartet: Hana No Uta marked his first time working on the series with Ryo-Timo and AD Shingo Yamashita. Though he was only allotted to two cuts the cute atmosphere of the show I feel would inform a lot of conscious or unconscious aesthetic choices he’d show in his later work.

After minor cuts on Space Dandy and Captain Earth, Fujii joined Toei on one of the many spinoffs of their beloved Precure series; Happiness Charge Precure! and the subsequent movie.

Fujii’s first entry into the Precure series. Less hectic than his next one, but a strong litmus for how he would fare on it. Fujii does a number of scale heavy cuts looking like his work on Star Driver, but girlfied. His efforts here prove much more fruitful on the movie the year later. The large circle air impacted shapes greatly emphasize Fujii trying to instill a sense of nuclear scale with a cut that stays relatively centered around the girls, his use of digital layouts make for very cgi-esque effects, and elements of animators like Precure mainstay Nishiki Itaoka rubbed off on him in spades.

While Happiness Charge feels like a swim in a kitty pool, Fujii comes on like a tsunami in his second starlet series Go! Princess Precure in 2015

I am not entirely sure what happened in a year, but all of a sudden Fujii became the star animator of the show here, delivering some of the most light footed and snappy fight scenes I have ever scene in magical girl action. Fujii animated a total of 9 episodes, and does not sell short on any scene he appears on.

Episode 1 has Fujii’s first scene and it is an immediate masterpiece of a scene, and I will break down what makes it so special

Fujii 1:27-1:47, Kenichi Fujisawa and Itaoka handle cuts afterwards
The whole sequence was boarded by series director Yuta Tanaka, but feels like more of Fujii’s DNA was instilled here. The first cut is so unusual, the Zetsuborg, a creature with a block lock representing a victim’s dream (this one being a children’s picture book) has a unorthodox look for a fairytale Precure villain. Suddenly out of nowhere, Fujii is able to get this oddly proportional creature to first do a kick up then go into two spinning back kicks, and reversing crescent kicks. Haruka or Cure Flora, then runs into the action with winding lower background animation, and her spinning and dodging the painted attacks. After dealing a blow to the paint shield, we then get more very close camera work following the evading patterns of Flora dodging the brush attacks, doing kick ups, and then getting into a sideways slow motion jump finally bringing down the creature. The best element of this cut is use of contrast in motion between very different figures, and sense of volume and rhythm to the cut. The two spinning and flipping cuts of the opposing characters mirror each other, first having the Zetsuborg on the offensive with kicking, and then Flora on the defensive with evading. The spacing feels incredibly believable, but not too real as there is a great sense of timing on 2s then transitioning to slow motion to anticipate Flora’s ground slam. Fujii also makes an incredibly concerted effort to use smooth feathery speed lines and smears to make the motions flow way more evenly (having additional camera blur to make it look more realistic), and even through all of this the physics of Flora’s incredibly busy dress and hair is respected within these parameters which is super difficult given the physicality of the cut. It is a cut you don’t normally see in shows like this, and made Fujii a star overnight

The latter 8 episodes have other crazy displays of his talents. Episode 9 has Cure Mermaid fighting a Zetsuborg.

Fujii 0:17-0:39
Again another crazy display from Fujii. Very tight shaky cam impacts with his smears give his cuts a lot of force, but don’t confine him within too much of a realist approach. I love how Fujii takes a very practical stance on smears, pretty much using the ligaments that guide the movement to lead into the key poses. Despite the flips Fujii still is able to draw every single increment of Mermaid’s dress, giving the oomf and fullness to her hair, having it even squish down when she gets near the ground several times. It is exact, and shrewd sakuga.

He even gets into it more on Episode 15

Fujii 0:00-0:04, 0:09-0:34
This is just more of the same peak from Fujii, look at how easy he is able to manage just the movement and give it suck a good sense of weight and anticipation regardless of the speed. The Zetsuborg moves so fast the movement is all smeared up. Flora even goes into a spinning hip hop upward kick, you just do not see anyone do that

On Episode 22, Cure Scarlet has a nicely timed fight with Fujii going full Hollywood slow motion

0:00-0:20
Even with the previous fights overshadowing this cut, the slow motion is to die for. So smooth, with so much texture and weight in every movement

Episode 30, has the girls fighting as a group, once again getting tossed around by the villain of the week. The finale has Fujii pitted more into the beam struggle action of the last Hapiness Charge film although I’d say this time he is way too good to be cuts like this. At the end of the day Go! Princess was incredibly successful for Fujii as an artist.

In-between working on Go! Princess, Fujii lent a cut to the concurrently airing Aikatsu doing this cool break dance scene idk if Fujii is a dancer himself, but his cuts have so much physicality I wouldn’t be surprised if he wasn’t. Fujii gets into more dancing on this one very special cut of Pokemon XYZ. Fujii is able to execute the trickiest shots. He’s dealing with a rotation cut, moving at a pretty even paste, like a camera man following a dancer. Even with that his volume and consistency through drawings is astonishing. He makes it look effortless, there is so much bounciness and bonding interaction between the characters.

During the middle of that year he did a standout cut in the finale episode of Naruto Shippuden with Arifumi Imai among others on action AD, Fujii is able to standout the most among the fight scenes, once again due to his mind-creakingly good 3D-esque cuts

After finishing work on, Eureka Seven: Hi-Evolution, Pokemon Sun & Moon, and I Want to Eat Your Pancreas, Fujii was able to make his ED directorial debut for Pastel Memories produced by project No. 9, doing a complete solo KA. SO, Fujii is a pretty big ecchi fan, no doubt about it, if you got to his twitter OH MAN you will see some smut. It’s easy to not talk much about the exaggerated b****, but nonetheless sweet compositing, and very lively animation for a show that apparently is very stiff throughout.

Fujii kept the ball rolling in 2019, working on his directorial debut, with a LINE Novel commercial. This was the launch of an unsuccessful app meant to promote light novel authors launching in April 2019 and closing August 2020, due to abysmally poor sales from the app, and failing to attract any users compared to other platforms like the LINE Manga app. Despite all of that, Fujii was able to make a pretty cool promo trailer.

Fujii 0:53-1:08, 1:23-1:30, 1:33-1:37
A shockingly tight animated preview. The character designs and AD were supervised, by freelancer nut-job Toshiyuki Sato with production, compositing, and coloring producer at CloverWorks. Fujii was able to bring a stunning cast of heavy hitters, Sato, Masakazu Sunagawa, and Keisuke Kobayashi all handle the character acting cuts while the fight in the middle is handled by Fujii, Yutaka Nakamura, Tatsurou Kawano, Norimitsu Suzuki, and Kenichi Fujisawa. A fantastic lineup, two Bones legends, and two webgen disciples. Fujii’s insatiable 3D-esque action is to die for meanwhile Suzuki, Yutapon, Fujisawa, and Kawano all do fantastic quick cuts. The character acting scenes have nice high gloss looks into really feminine pink rooms.

After doing a promo trailer two years prior, Fujii was hired as an AD and animator on Studio Bind’s Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation, on Episode 11 where Fujii brought on the industry’s best to helm the serpent fight.

This episode is filled to the brim with a lot of great animation, is especially scenes by Akira Hamaguchi and Toshiyuki Sato, but this scene is the show stopper for the episode. Fujii’s friends like Shingo Yamashita, Soichiro Matsuda, and Yoshimichi Kameda all make brief appearances, Matsuda bringing on Ken Otsuka from the Hi-Evolution films. Newcomers include Shho, Q Kawa, and Naoya Takahashi. Kawa this point had been the most consistent animator on the series so getting him on here was a treat for him. Fujii’s boards exude a lot of his acrobatic timing, with a lot of flipping and jumping. Yamashita stands out due to his use of cgi trees, and Kameda’s shift into his jagged aggressive style is a nice change of pace.

Years of grinding as an animator finally lead Fujii to direct his own series, working again with Bind on an adaptation of Onimai: I’m Now Your Sister!

A surprisingly cute show, joining the ranks of the gender-bending trope along the lines of OGs like Ranma and others like Idol Pretender. Fujii as series director, with Michiko Yokote and Miharu Hirami on writing. If you took a look at Fujii’s fanbox you’d think he’d be h****, but he manages to make a more wholesome romp rather than..well you know. Here, Fujii was able to really flex his connections getting a serious lineup of folks despite the show being a sleeper hit. Masayo Kobayashi is on art direction with her wonderful pinkish, and light hearted backgrounds. For character designs and chief animation that role falls into Shaft legend Ryo Imamura.

Speaking of Shaft many of their animators, plus several freelancers are on the OP.

Imamura on direction, and does a really bright and vivid OP brimming in cute girl euphoria. Imamura coming off of Mushoku Tensei is able to bring on several of the staff members from there including Yuki Matsuguma, Q Kawa, and Kay. Shaft adjacent like Issei Arakaki, Riki Matsura, Hiroki Yamamura and their most vital in-house animator Genichirou Abe all appear. The fruitful assortment makes for a brisk barrage of animation by some of the best in the industry.

The ED is handled by a Bones folk, Norimitsu Suzuki, a complete solo animated effort. Suzuki has been animating and directing EDs for years now, and per usual likes to go uncredited for his work, which is almost impossible due to him standing out every time

Colorful, and vibrant character acting throughout the entire ED, getting to the features of each character with fun background designs. Suzuki is fantastical in his approach making smooth cuts on 1s look more exaggerated than realistic. The cut at 0:54 is one of the best shots I have seen this year. The characters move at such a joyous and coordinated pace, and the cut is made even more phenomenal by the fish eye lens layout, which next to a top down angle is an extremely difficult perspective to draw for an animator.

The 12 episodes of the series is filled to the brim with great animation and comedic offbeats from the staff. Matsuguma, Kawa, and Kay all remain the consistent animators of the series, with Kay doing the most episodes. The animator that left the strongest impression from the series was a young freelancer only involved with Bind projects named Hiroki Uchiyama. On the 7 episodes he’s involved in Uchiyama is able to bring these characters so much life and freedom, whether its running, video game playing, or snowball fights, he is so homely in his presentation, definitely an animator to look out for in the future.
Many other freelancers joined on the project most notably episode 8 directed by Hironori Tanaka and Sato on AD, and also Kouki Fujimoto
making an appearance.

Fujii was able to do this anime in a bit of a tight predicament. For one, creator Nekotofu was involved in every scripting, storyboarding, and recording sessions, and design illustrations. Considering the content that wasn’t too contentious, though the second element was producing the anime during a pandemic which made much of the process more remote than the staff would be used to. Despite that the very young Studio Bind, and help from Fujii’s ranging connections did a great job weaving a serious degree of talent for a warm and easygoing show.

Fujii has such good pull he was able to get the best animators in the industry to draw the end cards for the episodes.

Yutaka Nakamura

Yoshimichi Kameda

Kou Yoshinari

Mai Yonemaya

Akio Watanabe (Bakemonogatari character designer)

Shingo Fujii is a cool fellow. From deceivingly hard mecha animation, to magical girl and ecchi leaning jubilation, he is an unexpected fanatic coming out of the ShingoYama and Ryo Timo era. Through his training by Matsuda and Muraki understanding dimensionality and coarseness of speed, to understanding of digital applications in anime by Timo, he feels like a follower of both schools of thought. Rules really have no bounds in regards to him as acrobatic as he might be, every scene he has in his filmography are SAT levels of sakuga a***ysis with his regularly volumetric and spring loaded cuts, where nothing is monotonous and everything is moving. His animation has always been a highlight of his career, but at age 40 directing his first show, I can only imagine what he will decide to make next.

SOTY is the twitter handle for animator Masami Mori

Why is morena spoiling one of my animation of the year award winners with that huge onimai post