Another movie Sushio embarked on was Steamboy directed by Katsuhiro Otomo

Sushio was able to prove his versatility more and more as the years went on. Among the many names of vetted freelancers here many are coming from the realist school of thought in animation from the 80s, and it all came in the form of effects artists. We have Bones affiliates at the time Yasushi Muraki, Soichiro Matsuda, Hideki Kakita and Shuichi Kaneko plus Takashi Hashimoto helming a lot of effects work with the most chief of the bunch being Masaaki Endo and Toshiyuki Inoue, two Akira alumni that excelled in the effects towards the finale of the film. Lots of Ghibli, IG, and TMS staff were brought on, but what about the lone Gainaxer Sushio? When observing his scene in isolation it becomes easy to tell that a lot of practice went in to getting the smoke close to resembling the feel of the destruction laden set pieces from Akira. Sushio’s smoke has shades of Yasushi Muraki, and but also TMS animator Hiroyuki Aoyama where the clouds kind of curl in but also plume out in a way that Yoshinari does still giving a feel of volume. If you compare him to other effects animators here he also uses less frames utilizing 2s and 3s with more generous instead of tight spacing.

Another pivotal show that would run its course for the next few years, and elevate Sushio into stratosphere next to Yoshinari and Imaishi was Gunbuster 2 or simply known as Diebuster

Directed by Katsuya Tsurumaki, this was one of the last holdouts for chief direction by Hideaki Anno, and the departure of several veteran Gainax creatives leaving the studio. A sequel to the original, Diebuster is a propulsive and futuristic take on the old material. The big three Imaishi, Yoshinari, and Sushio all handle pivotal action scenes. Some freelancers were able to make their way here like Doremi animator Yoshihiko Umakoshi who in one of his seldom Gainax appearances is invisible among the staff. This show was one of the first instances of Atsushi Nishigori who had made his debut back on Mahoromatic become a character animation director, shifting the harsher textured designs of Yoshiyuki Sadamoto and move towards something more soft.

Sushio is a pivotal animator here. His action scenes lend a blend of Gainax laden dynamism, and an abundance of explosion sakuga (pioneered by legends of the studio like Shoichi Masuo). His first scenes are Masami Obari pilled and feel like a mishmash of realism and janky Gainax stuff.



Some of the character cuts with Nono contain more even spacing as the explosions ripple across, and her hair flows very smoothly in the wind.

After doing an award worthy cut on Episode 4, Sushio became the head AD and SB on Episode 6, the finale of Diebuster. While Hiramatsu and Tsurumaki did the character focused first half, Sushio did the last battle with his boards moving into full swing. There are a lot of scenes of swinging lumbering action topped with fast paced cuts of missile and explosions. The best cuts in the episode are the ones by Sushio does himself, first paying homage to the original with some assistance by his idol Mori, and the “Rider Double Kick” displaying insane aptitude for infinite spinning cuts, brush stroke line work, and Tsurumaki pilled spectacle.

The next year after various collaborations, and seeing the high caliber of trust and collaboration between Chikashi Kubota and Sushio, at the time Toei director and former animator, Mamoru Hosoda hired the two to be chief animation director and character designers for the One Piece spinoff film Baron Omatsuri and the Secret Island

If you have been following my spotlights you know I have talked about this movie to death, and how it propelled Hosoda’s career. For the franchise, this was a complete and utter overhaul in character designs, only delegated to just this one movie. Hosoda’s aesthetics since the first Digimon film had debuted his aesthetics to mixed results, but a clear vision. Once you get to Omatsuri, Hosoda is in full control with a shadeless and simplified style perfect for animators to make room with.

This freedom from shading turns the entire movie into an animators heaven with some of the best in the industry at the time lending their hand. The Toei group is composed of veterans Keisuke Masunaga, Masahiro Shimanuki, Yoshihiko Umakoshi, Katsuyoshi Nakatsuru and former employees like Hisashi Mori, Michio Fukuda, Hideki Hamasu and Kouichi Arai (the last two Akira alumni along with Aoyama). Lot of freelancers with Bones ace in the holes like Yoshiyuki Ito, and Masashiro Ando, Soichiro Matsuda, Takashi Hashimoto, Tatsuzou Nishita, Takaaki Yamashita more mysterious guys like Nobutake Ito who has a fantastic scene, and of course the legend Norio Matsumoto who’s very short scene still is a topic of discussion cause of how good it is. The Gainax group is everyone you’d expect from the big three to Yoshigaki, and even Takeshi Honda. Their involvement ranges into the final act which is a haunting and dark climax, that only a viewing experience can muster up words for.

Sushio was on pretty decent AD duty along with Kubota. Though this style is seemingly fluid with how its able to mold to the animators sensibilities. His lone scene on the film is a 1 minute and 25 chase scene with loose character acting, and the best facial expressions. You can see some of Kubota’s influence with the light scattering on the water being just rounded circles

Here is some of Sushio’s promo art for the movie

The next year, 2006 was pretty uneventful for Sushio outside of finishing the Diebuster OVAs. The next big project, skyrocketed Atsushi Nishigori into character stardom, and proved the potential for Hiroyuki Imaishi’s directing prowess for years to come, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann

A spiral powered phenomenon, Imaishi made a big impact on anime with this well regarded classic. If Gainaxing was a term before this turns Gainaxing to a hundred and infinity. This show was the impactful blend of Imaishi combining his best animators from the studio right now and putting the new and old talent in inevitable positions to succeed. Nishigori of course was the main character designer on the series along with Yoshinari doing the unique Mike Mignola influenced mecha designs. All new talent was brought on board; many webgen era animators sought to show of their talent on a few episodes with Shingo Natsume, Shingo Yamashita, and Ryo Timo all chimed in to prove themselves. I can name many more but the most significant was Akira Amemiya. After in-betweening for Diebuster, Amemiya became one of the top credited animators on the show, being able to gel with Goripon’s soft sensibilities and Imaishi’s Kanada pilled action. Eureka Seven’s Shigeto Koyama also chimed in to assist with mechanical help.

Sushio, Yoshinari, and Imaishi all did their due, and though Yoshinari is the MVP of the show Sushio is able to run his slight of hand in the grittiest scenes (aesthetically) of the show. Sushio debuts on Episode 7 along with the homie Kubota. One of Amemiya’s first AD episodes, the inclusion of big flat brush strokes to emphasize speed adds an auteur feel to the episode making it way more engaging than copy and pasted white lines. Episode 8 then has Sushio doing a classic Gurren Lagann finishing move where the stars align and kill the enemy. Sushio is doing so much heavy contrasting adding thick black lines and beautiful fire esque effects, its like he’s combined Mori and Yoshinari’s aesthetics on one canvas.

Sushio himself handles AD on Episode 15. The climatic midway of the series, what better person to get than the shining wildcard of the studio.
The epic assault of Lordgenome’s building it is very high scale, yet stylized action sakuga. You can see Sushio’s brush lines all over this episode, giving it a raw and gritty feel. Some of best drawn frames are linework hatching on Lordgenome.

even this shot of Simon has the hatching

All of the animators do a great job this episode, several standouts being Hiramatsu who does an epic shot, Umakoshi who came on as an ask from Sushio. Another addition is head Shaft animator Genichirou Abe who some how appears here, Sushio heavily corrected his scene so not much of his style is left in tact.

Sushio returns sparingly in the final episodes towards the back half of the series. On 24 and 25 , Sushio reprises his hatching with additions of Yoshinari like explosions, and heroic sacrifices. His last scene of the tv anime is of course on a Lordgenome scene, made up with all that hatching and sensational artwork.

The very same year Sushio made his debut solo character designs on Kiss Dum: Engage Planet for Satelite


although this wasn’t a popular series, at all, these designs are decent and I wonder why he worked on this?

For the next year Sushio did two movies, the first Rebuild Evangelion movie and Childhood’s Endsakugabooru.com/post/show/191117). One was one cut and the other was some high end large scale kaiju action, big explosions, and doing things with Muraki.

2009 became the most seminal year of animation for Sushio, due to the large workload he took on, but also insurmountable amount of sakuga that came out of it. The first came on the final Gurren Lagann film The Lights in the Sky are Stars

For Sushio had several cuts that weren’t too much of note, then all of a sudden drops one of the most legendary fight sequences of all time, influential in Gainax history, and showing off the full power of his style. Being an abridged version of events with added animation, this is an extension of Yoshinari’s scene and improving it. Instead of Simon flying in and killing the Anti-Spiral, Sushio’s version has Simon fighting him in handheld combat.




This is entirely Imaishi’s board, yet this is more Sushio adjacent then anything Imaishi has touched. The rawness and viscera displayed in these series of cuts are some of the coldest and rawest scenes that you will ever witness in anime. The pure physicality of the cut is what makes Sushio stand out so much here, I don’t believe that either Imaishi or Yoshinari were ever capable of getting that kind of dirtiness out in any of their cuts in their careers.

The next film Evangelion 2.0 is adorned with highly destructive Kaiju action

Sushio 1:34-3:06, explosion after is Takashi Hashimoto
Shortly after Imaishi and Tsurumaki’s scenes, Sushio brings on this epic Berserk mode. Not some of Sushio’s most enthralling effects, but thanks to minor cg assistance still pretty fantastic per usual

Afterwards, Redline was released

Takeshi Koike’s tour de force, this film was a 7 year in the making monster, that grew significantly out of proportion to what it was worth. Given Koike’s connections he was able to get a lot of acquaintances from around the industry including Imaishi and Sushio. Other friends like Shinya Ohira, and Takafumi Hori helped assist. Hori would shortly get to know Imaishi and Sushio and be important to them in the future. Sushio and Imaishi briefly helped with the pilot film the year before. Sushio was in charge of a couple dozen cuts as opposed to Imaishi who was only allotted one. Sushio himself did some promotional racing cuts, famously doing the Super Boin Twins with a lot of the raunchy sexuality and distorted proportions per typical of Koike-san.

Sushio’s biggest impact on the film is the first scene with Funky Boy, a super bioweapon meant to stop the race.

Sushio does the cuts of Funky Boy only and the resultant effects, with brief shots of him shooting at the fleet above, and the orbital cannon firing on it. Truly an insane sequence, lots of the circular and chunky debris feel heavily inspired by working with Takashi Hashimoto for several years notching up the Mitsuo Iso influence.

Shortly after Sushio participated on an Episode of Heartcatch Precure with Yoshihiko Umakoshi on Chief Animation Direction.

All Sushio
Really fun energy in these cuts, and you can see him incorporating a lot elements of Umakoshi’s CAD which is nice martial arts like posing, brushy line work, and even doing cinnamon wheel run cycles, (something picked up from Yoshinari).

The same year Sushio worked on two episodes of Gurren Lagann: Parallel Works side story music video animations presented in different art styles as a way for Gainax to keep interest in the series up. He first did Episode 7, where he made his debut in creative direction.

All Sushio KA
This was the first time Sushio was able to show off his unique aesthetics and how he differed from Imaishi, and Yoshinari creatively. Imaishi had always loved to use heavy dark Mike Mignola influenced block shading and darker coloring, along with Yoshinari too who favored it in his artstyle, Sushio has none of those affinities and instead opts for a more pastel colored almost Moebius inspired color palette. It seems contrapuntal to the other two, but would definitely encourage a simplified approach for art in the future.

On Yoshinari’s Episode 8, Sushio helped helm the Spiral King flashback MV, of course with Yoshinari on CAD and additional assistance from Chikashi Kubota

Sushio 1:54-2:29
Tricky fight sakuga, due to the hard layouts with background animation and tendrils coming out of the Gurren, but Sushio makes it flow like butter easily adapting to Yoshinari’s sensibilities

The next big project Sushio was brought on to was Imaishi’s second directorial effort for Gainax Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt

Once again another Nishigori and Imaishi team up with new talent once again joining Gainax. Megumi Kouno, Mai Yonemaya, Masaru Sakamoto, and Toshiyuki Sato were just the handful of prospective newer animators.

For Sushio he was only on three episodes, but was able to contribute to some pretty long scenes especially on the B section of Episode 1 filled with his great comedic acting
Episode 6 has possibly his best animation on the show with fight between Panty and Scanty

All Sushio
Really great boards and even after the bathroom fight with the natural BG animation, the CGI background animation is able to still look just as good, even with the tricky perspective the camera is placed in. Sushio also assisted on the last episode of the show being the chief AD and doing this nice Michael Bay esque shot

For the next two years, Gainax had fallen apart with many creatives in limbo, with Masahiko Otsuka and Imaishi trying to form a new studio.
Sushio was pretty much on freelance duty occasionally venturing off onto other projects friends were on, like Mawaru Penguindrum with Akemi Hayashi, he did episode direction on the Idolmaster, Nishigori’s directorial debut, and also doing another Sanji scene on a One Piece film

Sushio 0:56-1:33

The same year he did One Piece he also provided significant animation to Evangelion 3.0

Joined by Imaishi, the two were going up against the heavy hitters of Production IG, who conversely after A Letter to Momo were all ever present on this film. Sushio’s first scene was Asuka trying to re-engage the ignition for the Wunder ship

with a lot of motion corrections by Takeshi Honda and Toshiyuki Inoue. This would also be true of his second scene with Mari’s Eva a lot of weighty heavy mecha movement with comprehensive run cycle animation, not typically seen in this capacity.

Sushio was luckily able to preserve his smoke fx, so his art wasn’t entirely lost

After Yoshinari made his debut for Studio Trigger on Little Witch Academia, Imaishi commissioned Sushio has chief animation director and head character designer on Kill La Kill in 2013

A big win for Sushio to debut his simple, and bountiful look first showed all the way back on Parallel Works. Sushio was personally asked by Imaishi for the designs after a reluctant series of exchanges during pre-production.

“I first heard it was like "Crows", so I thought it was right up my alley. I was like "alright then", and then it turns out the main character is a girl: "b-but I'm not good at drawing bishoujo!" Try as I might, I just couldn't do it…I knew my drawings aren't "cute", so I thought me doing the designs won't go well.”

Initial sketches of Ryuuko, Sushio admits he had a difficult time visualizing her.

“Something about them didn't quite click for me. There's something off but I don't know what. The rough sketches have a nice feel to them, but there's something missing. For a while I couldn't find the answer and I almost wanted to quit drawing... like that. It almost drove me mad. Even in daily life, "what to do with Ryuuko" was constantly stuck in my mind. It's like thinking "I gotta study" during entrance exam prep. Ryuuko was on my mind for a long time.”

This kind of issue was marred with a very rushed and aversive schedule by the brand new studio, resulting in a lot of outside help and cost cutting animation trickery typical of Gainax, but likely not best for the new studio. Sushio openly admitted he didn’t have Ryuuko down until Episode 7, but once he did the show went over much more easily. The history of Kill La Kill’s pre-production can be documented here in 3 parts of the making of the show where much of early Studio Trigger was down to serious crunch time
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

In spite of this, the show was naturally very charming, abrasive, and excessively over the top in its dialogue fanservice and animation. This was largely in part to the talent of new studio animators like Yuuto Kaneko, and Shuhei Handa as well as Takafumi Hori who came back from Redline. They’re able to add a ton of personality to the character acting, and action that I think Sushio probably wasn’t prepared to see in the animation at all. His designs have none of the trappings from Sakamoto, Hiramatsu, or Nishigori being exceptionally more simplified outside of the male characters.

Sushio himself had done a serviceable amount corrections, most noticeably on Takeshi Honda’s Ryuuko famous transformation scene

The second half of the show had a much more confident stride of animation, with as Gainax as an ending as possible and a much better OP.

Sushio himself did not animate much outside of handful of scenes, he stated one of his favorite characters were Nui and Nonon

After Kill La Kill ended, Sushio personally did character designs for a Momoiro Clover Z vs Kiss music video in early 2015

Sushio 0:57-1:30
The first quarter of this video is entirely animated with Sushio and Hori on KA. Coming off the heels of Kill La Kill, Sushio is still comfortable with his round figures. Its a really ambitious style, that you can see more of in a mature light in the promo art

Sushio also got a chance to do even more designs for a short of the Japan Animator Expo (organized by Hideaki Anno) called I Can Friday by Day! directed by Kazuya Tsurumaki

A weird little story about robot girls powered by Hamsters, with heavy Y2K energy in the look of it all. In Tsurumaki fashion it is totally nonsensical so no reason to think about this little plot.




Nice playful designs by Sushio

Sushio later in the year also worked on the One Punch Man OP with CAD by his old friend Chikashi Kubota

Sushio one cut at 1:01

In 2016 Sushio did a quick bout of character acting on Hiroshi Kobayashi’s debut on Kiznaiver, an adaptation of a short two volume manga series

A unique and somewhat forgotten show for Studio Trigger, about people who feel each others pain. The award winning Mari Okada was on writing duties, and Mai Yoneyama now graduated from a quiet KA to stellar character designer both showed out. Sushio himself did a fare bit of character cuts on the show, being the prominent person for the position. Sushio’s is able to play loose with it in just about every scene he’s on

For the next year or so Sushio then did sparing KA on Little Witch Academia the TV series in 2017

While not as animation heavy as the OVAs Yoshiari’s vision came pretty much true on this wonderful and magical romp. In the scenes he’s on his KA presence is felt briefly. Especially on Episode 3, animating alongside new Trigger talent like Kai Ikarashi who helped AD certain portions of this episode.

Sushio could be at 1:33 to 1:37 but looks insanely corrected by Ikarashi so it could be another animator, 1:48-2:21 is Sushio.
I love how Akko uses the ground to get momentum of the broom after the chain is broken, its energetic and has cool spacing.

Episode 8 has a great chase scene, with a lot of highly detailed background animation, and he makes a brief appearance in the finale

2018, debuted Nishigori’s sci-fi mecha love story on Darling in the Franxx

Sushio animates the first scene with Strelizia taking out the Klaxosaur

Sushio start to 0:13, 0:24-27, 0:39-1:13
Nice pose heavy Gainaxing here. He then returns for 15 doing a fight in a more limited style timed by impact, and poses.

The second show he’d work on was Akira Amemiya’s debut series SSSS Gridman

A series that again is unique to Trigger in that, it isn’t as fixated on its animation and more so from telling the story around it, to then make the tokusatsu fights all the more worth it. Sushio was the only one of the big 3 of Trigger involved with the project, and he came on the last few episodes.
He first came on the debut scene of Gridknight

0:09-0:16 hand drawn portion, 0:36-0:49 animated portion

He then came on all a***ogue, by the hand action scene teaming up with Toshiyuki Sato on the reveal of Gridman’s original form

Sushio 1:33-1:55
The poses keep on coming in this late era Sushio with him even further into a simplified when needed style. On the other hand Sato is able to pack as many cool effects in camera zooming through the digital city. A badass scene

2019, came on the release of Imaishi’s second full length film Promare

Now just by looking at the character designs for the film, you would think Sushio was in charge of them, but the credit actually goes to Shigeto Koyama who was involved years ago on Kill La Kill. Imaishi further wanted to hybridize 2D and 3D and managed to a fantastic job with this neon colored fanfare. Since the designs were so familiar looking, Sushio was of course one of the animation directors. He was not personally responsible for much KA, but you can see the personality of his work coming through on many scenes.