Animator Spotlight: Kenichi Yoshida

All gifs in order
Porco Rosso (1992)
Pom Poko (1994)
Whisper of the Heart (1995)
On Your Mark (1995) Presumed
Gunsmith Cats (1996)
Princess Mononoke (1997)
Spriggan (1998)
My Neighbors the Yamadas (1999)
Cowboy Bebop The Movie (2001) Presumed
Overman King Gainer Episode 11 (2002)
Planetes ED (2003)
Planetes Episode 7 (2003)
Eureka Seven (2005)
Gurren Lagann The Lights in the Sky are Stars (2009)
Eureka Seven AO (2012)
Mobile Suit Gundam Reconguista in G (2014)

Happy Belated Birthday to Kenichi Yoshida Born November 23rd. Some animators are so good, at what they do, and remain so invisible in a production that they secretly become legends. Yoshida got his start at Studio Ghibli where under keen mentorship he blossomed very quickly in to an amazing animator. He immediately excelled in vehicle animation, animating very difficult dimensions and making it seem like a cake walk. His character acting and realism was sought out to, as he could pack in a lot of details in just a few frames. From there Yoshida started to become a sleeper hit animator doing visually stunning scenes with Ghibli and abroad. He left Ghibli in the 1999, and became freelance lending his talent elsewhere. Yoshida from there on out became a star character animator doing scenes with trick layout mapping wrapped in a blanket of that Ghibli magic, this began around right before he became a character designer for Eureka Seven with designs so good and flexible that you couldn’t look away. And that’s where his true power lies, in soft and fluid designs. Though there is a Ghibli-esque roundness to his designs the bright and star-crossed nature of how he draws them gives characters a higher aptitude of sophistication, even if the shows they are on are not that good. This is Kenichi Yoshida

So Yoshida’s got hired into vocational school right around the time of Kiki’s Delivery Service, Ghibli was looking for new hirees, and he got the job along with Masashi Ando. As an in-betweener, Yoshida was joined by a successive new generation of artists on Isao Takahata’s Only Yesterday

There were a slew of artists on this project that Yoshida was looking up to. Mitsuo Iso was chiefly one as Yoshida recalls memories of him and Ando checking out his unattended desk that had incredible run cycles that they both thought were amazing. Iso was a member of the Akira* school despite not even participating in that movie. Other big era realists like Shinya Ohira, and Takahata’s best Osamu Tanabe.

Yoshida and Ando got their first show of talent on Hayao Miyazaki’s Porco Rosso

This was the start of a new era of talent at Ghibli that made a very early mark here, and the two at the forefront were Yoshida, and Ando. One of the biggest demands from Miyazaki and AD’s Megumi Kagawa, and Toshio Kawaguchi was vehicle animation. This was a difficult challenge for the new guys like Hiroshi Shimizu and Ando, but Iso and Yoshida had a meteoric rise here. One of the earliest chase scenes in the film is a chase between Porco and the Italian police in which he twists and turns a truck to evade them. The attention to the mechanical nature of the shots is so well realized here and hard to animate. Yoshida is able to fully animate the truck at one particular bottom angle shot where Porco makes a u turn, and the detail in that one shot is so impressive, you can feel every creeping inch of the truck in how the weight is shifted. Meanwhile Iso was on plane duty, making it look effortless

The next two years moved Yoshida into more subtle character acting on two films, Ocean Waves in 1993, and Pom Poko in 1994. On Ocean Waves the film had pretty lenient character acting, so Yoshida had to carry a lot of the emotions through emotion and a more laidback feel even in intenser scenes, he even got to do the classic anime trope, the “baka” slap. Pom Poko is the exact opposite being a very noisy and crowd heavy movie, Yoshida was on two crowd scenes. Already 5 years as an animator and has imbued a lot of the hard technical aspects of working on a Ghibli production. Yoshida had to do some pretty raucous crowd scenes, one with the tanuki breaking out into song and dance, unwilling to adapt to a modern era, and another scene where they use their giant balls to riot police officers, take a look

1995, was a very big year for Yoshida, seeing him work on 3 big projects. The first of these was Miyazaki’s On Your Mark

A strange non-linear esque tale of two officers saving an angel girl from the captors in a future sci-fi setting (pretty rare for Miyazaki). This was the animation direction debut for Masashi Ando, and at just 26 years old, it was a show stopper of a music video, with impressive high end action animation, and innovative implementation of cgi backgrounds (especially for 1995). Yoshida was placed on the escape scene, where the two guards escape with the girl in their truck whilst fleeing the police they work for. Once again, we get mind bogglingly good vehicle animation, with Yoshida going so far to animate a tire spinout, and take on the movement of the future-esque gunships. Yoshida had the aide of Ghibli titans including Kawaguchi, and Masaaki Endo to take on the sequence

Another project that year was Whisper of the Heart

Directed by the late great Yoshifumi Kondo, an animator who’d been with Miyazaki since the 70s. This was originally supposed to be a Miyazaki film, but due to his intentions of finishing another film, it ultimately went on to Kondo making it his directorial debut (still had Miyazaki’s writing and storyboards). Kitaro Kousaka was on AD, and this was yet another chance for young Ghibli talent to show off. Kenichi Konishi, Kenichi Yamada, Takeshi Inamura, Ando, and Yoshida all had represented the new faces Ghibli, and through smooth, and sanguine character acting they were able to translate a lot of cute scenes through drawings. One special element of the film was the fleeting magical sequences within the context of the storybook the MC was writing. Along with the legendary Atsuko Tanaka, they both were chiefly in charge of these scenes, starting with Yoshida who did the wonderful sky city world within the book. These kinds of scenes with this kind of scenery is the stuff you only get out of a Miyazaki film, and can only be achieved in animation. The next scene Yoshida did was a bit more nightmarish with the MC running through the crystalline caves of her book coming to find the magical macguffin of the story might’ve been just an interrupted thought, as some surrealist imagery of a barely born bird ends the scene.

On Evangelion, Yoshida worked closely along Mitsuo Iso taking on the first angel attack

Yoshida 0:35-0:39
Full scene a little more over a minute of Mitsuo Iso madness, showing off his bubble pop explosions, and full-limited animation techniques in full. Yoshida only assisted with one cut being the cuts of Sachiel catching a missile mid air, shredding it, and then exploding.

The next sequence would be a little more overbearing for Yoshida on Gunsmith Cats, doing one of the best car chase sequences ever done in anime possibly ever.

Yoshida 1:54-3:10
This was from Episode 2 of the three episode OVA, an episode that required Studio Ghibli’s assistance, as well as several subcontracting studios like Studio Cosmos and Studio Twinkle, also in-part due to connection by the director Takeshi Mori. After a Russian spy kidnaps a character named May, Rally and another girl caught in the crossfire chase after him in a stunningly executed vehicular pursuit. After ducking and diving through some overpasses the chase gets to the freeway where Yoshida shows off in all his glory. Not only is he dealing with very detailed mechanical sheets, but also having to maintain an absurdly high quality in background animation. Even in some fleeting shots of Rally in her car, or the Russian Spy there is such a high density of it. I love through how through all this chaos of the chase, he’s also able to keep a wide variety of expression through the character acting, and also effects work. The truck spin has got to be the most tricky scene to layout as you have a classic American action set piece where an assailant fire’s at a large semi truck then another car has to evade the truck as it rolls out of control. You can see and feel all of the weight and momentum from the semi, immediately and accurately shift over to one side of the freeway. It is a masterful sequence.

In 1997, Miyazaki finally, through crunching down a tough schedule, and also nearly breaking his animation staff Princess Mononoke was released

For the majority of the staff this was a nightmare process, harkening back to the days of Lupin III: Castle of Cagliostro albeit with more frames, and intense storyboards and layouts. The very first scene of Mononoke is reminiscent of a lot of those problems due to the dense level of animation that needed to be achieved. The demon boar scene was among the first sequence to be touched by the animation staff. This sequence took nearly a year to finish for a number reasons. One the tendril like animation of the boar was not something easily achievable, so many wormy demon parts had to be meticulously key framed and in-betweened, even with cgi used as a replacement in some spare shots. You had a lot of animators having to pick up the slack for drawing it Kitaro Kousaka, Masaaki Endo, Megumi Kagawa, were all the seniors that took up a bulk of the tendril animation, with newer staff like Konishi, Yoshida, and Hideaki Yoshio following in toe. Yoshida had a pretty short cut compared to the other animators, but still had to do a lot in such a short time

Yoshida back again went on to do more commissioned work, on Hirotsugu Kawasaki’s and Studio 4C’s seminal action banger Spriggan

Early studio 4C put all their display of animation in to work, on projects like Memories and here is no exception. 4C along with assisted help from Ghibli and other sub-studios. Masaaki Endo, and Yoshida were two of the Ghibli animators placed on this project, notably in the more effects heavy sequences. Yoshida once again was smartly placed on a vehicle scene, having Volumetric control over the mechanical sheets. Just phenomenal stuff

1999, Yoshida would work on My Neighbors the Yamadas, his third film with Takahata and his last work at Ghibli for the foreseeable future.

Once again the new generation of animators really get their chance to shine here in some pretty nutty sequences. This was the character design and AD debut of Kenichi Konishi, who lent his very sketch heavy style lent to the visual language of the film. Many of Takahata’s usual troop appeared here with specialists like Shinya Ohira, Shinji Hashimoto, and Osamu Tanabe returning. The strangest inclusion of the old guard would be Masaaki Yuasa, marking his only credit on a Ghibli anime. For the two animators to show off, the first was Eiji Yamamori who had rose up, and became a wonderfully talented KA. Yoshida next to Hideki Hamasu, and Yoshiyuki Momose probably had the most taxing animation sequence in the movie. This entire boat sequence is a pinnacle sequence in Yoshida’s career. Once again he’s able to get down a lot of the fastidious detail in the animation of the sail, boat with it getting destroyed, but also able through heavy Konishi corrections, and digital paint was able to translate a lot of the surreal and dreamlike nature of the scene. It’s all here to chew in, and it is exceptionally beautiful.

Post Ghibli, Yoshida went freelance on a number the first couple of years, most notably Yoshiyuki Tomino’s Turn a Gundam, showing up on a few episodes towards the back end.

Tomino like Miyazaki, was another giga sized titan within the animation industry, who refused to push the boundaries of his own storytelling. Gundam being such a recognized franchise had gone through a slew of different character designers, and the introduction of character designer Akira Yasuda had pushed the usual Gundam esque heroic designs into a more diverse palette of people, with a lot of different skin colors and traits.


He was a bit of an odd choice considering his background stemmed more prominently in Capcom games. Why do I bring this up? I feel some minor characteristics of Yasuda’s designs feel like they had a heavy influence on Yoshida, and would determine some of his traits for moving on to future Tomino projects and beyond. Yoshida’s KA was more of a formality, as there wasn’t too many standout cuts he committed to, but some showed out

In 2001, Yoshida was the assistant animation director on Shinichiro Watanabe’s Cowboy Bebop: The Movie, one of the first projects by Bones studio

While the movie was heavily centered around action, helmed by AD’s Masahiro Ando, Norimitsu Suzuki, and the original series star animator Yutaka Nakamura, Yoshida was placed on a scene where there was no action at all, and was on the Moroccan influenced bazaar scenes that took up the middle of the film. Bringing alongside Turn A Gundam animator Akitoshi Yokoyama, and also wonderful art by Atsushi Morikawa it is a bustling crowd scene, that feels very reminiscent of real life North African/Middle Eastern inspired scenery. It is a dense amount of crowds and characters to animate, one of the guides Spike is lead by Rashid was inspired by a real life person Watanabe had as a guide in Morocco when taking reference photos.




Yoshida animated nearly all of the scenes to great effect

After assisting on the Turn a Gundam movie, Yoshida went to help Tomino’s next big project Overman King Gainer released in 2002

Yoshida 0:49-0:58 in this lively OP
A new original series, not based around Gundam, Tomino roughly based the stories around the concept of French writer Georges-Jean Arnaud’s book La Compagnie des glances. A pretty light looking series, with a lot more political intrigue than one might think. After consideration based around Yoshida’s skill at Ghibli and the time on Turn a Gundam Tomino hired Yoshida to be the show’s chief animation director, his first time in that position. Yoshida also took up the mantle of character designer, along with Yoshihiro Nakamura, and Kinu Nishimura. Nishimura like Yasuda from the last series, was a Capcom designer. Kimitoshi Yamane was on mechanical designs, giving some of the strangest human-like mecha designs of this era. We now enter the era of Yoshida-isms.

One thing I really love about Yoshida’s aesthetics in this series is how rounded and soft his characters feel, but also fleshy and comfortable. There is a certain level of detail that I’m sure many animators had to acquiesce to, but also made for tricky movement. Many of the character talk with their full mouths and teeth some of the time, making Yoshida’s role on corrections more heavier than ever, but thanks to support from episode ADs like Yuriko Chiba, Eiji Nakada, and Atsushi Shigeta they fully understood how to adapt to this new character style that everyone was figuring out

There quite a few highlight episodes, the first one has appearances from Masashi Ando, who Yoshida can freely call upon at this point. 3 has some decent action, and later on with Episode 11 Yoshida animates an impressive vehicular chase sequence with some nice crowd animation to back it up. Although those are great the episode everyone talks about is 14 which is really the sakuga packed bonanza fans of it make out to be.

AD’d by Yoshida himself, he brought on an arsenal of the top animators he knew at the time. Akira Yamaguchi, Kaichiro Terada, Ghibli’s Ikuo Kuwana, Shuichi Kaneko, Toru Yoshida, Yoshiyuki Ito, and Sushio were among the list of animators a full bricked group of Gainax, Bones, and Ghibli crossovers. The most notable of this bunch would be of course Yutaka Nakamura, who in this scene for the first time ever debuted the famous Yutapon Cubes, a shattered cube like debris heavily inspired by flow animation grandpa Satoru Utsunomiya. Yoshida was very impressed with the inventiveness of Nakamura’s layouts, even letting Nakamura animate the insane bio-mechanical energy weapons that were originally pudding and changing it into jello in the draft sheets.

After Gainer finished airing Yoshida went back to KA on Planetes

Directed by Goro Taniguchi one of the more famed Sunrise directors around the time. The show was a stunning and gorgeous space-faring series. Yoshida went back to being humble KA while some of his colleagues like Eiji Nakada and Yuriko Chiba were both on CAD and CD roles. Yoshida had about three stellar cuts here, one on the AD where he does some synoptic Takashi Nakamura esque inspired motorcycle animation, the second comes on the first episode where he’s able to get some serious mileage out of the character acting. Then Episode 7 he does this really compelling and short dream sequence that is oh so beautifully executed

A few miscellaneous KA roles here and there, and then Yoshida was finally able to work and design his character magnum opus Eureka Seven

Directed by Tomoki Kyoda and produced at Studio Bones, this was a 50 episode run original anime that was a part of the early golden age of Bones. The show was produced in an interesting circumstance as Studio B’s (Bones Sub Studio) 4th series. A series revolving around Renton Thurston and his outlaw Gekkostate group as they fight an oppressive force of the Scub Coral, an alien species that has been bent on destroying the human race, among other species. Along with another pilot named Eureka the two form a bond that could have a lasting impact on the conflict.

A spellbinding assortment of talent, brought to life by Kyoda and Dai Sato’s phenomenal creative prowess. Yoshida was CAD and mainstay CD, molding the character’s entire visual identity. The legendary Shoji Kawamori, the man singlehandedly responsible for the creation and direction Macross, and the look and creation of Tranformers, Ghost in the Shell films, Brave Express Might Gaine, Patlabor, and Escaflowne, was the main mechanical designer for the show. Many of the staff from Yoshida’s previous two series were able to join him, he assembled a brave team of animators knowing where to place them, and fitting them into a rigorous and lengthy schedule. Yuriko Chiba, Ikuo Kuwana, and Eiji Nakada were the obvious ones along with the assortment of a huge array of animators. A team I affectionately refer to as “The Mecha 6” had heavy involvement in the aerial sci-fi combat sequences of the series. This roster includes Yasushi Muraki, Soichiro Matsuda, Takashi Hashimoto, Shuichi Kaneko, Hirofumi Masuda, and Hideki Kakita. Of the 6, Muraki was the most prominent of the group, you could even say he was the lead action animator of the series, pushing hi famed Itano Circus. Many Bones and Ghibli adjacent staff joined the party as well.

On Eureka Seven Yoshida perfects his sci-fi setting characters with ease. Synthesizing the blend of this soft, almost Frutiger Aero-esque aesthetics along with Kawamori and bringing them together in a harmonious blend, of man, machine, and alien characters feeling all original as a single package to his and Kyoda’s vision.

One of the highlights of the series are the impeccable openings and endings which are really fun.

So many fantastic songs are packed into here

After Eureka Seven ended Yoshida would stick around for the series working on an innumerable amount of sequels that didn’t quite live up to the same status as the original series did. Throughout the years Yoshida assisted on many projects, some bing for friends like on Dennou Coil by Mitsuo where he did brief key animation or shows like Xam’d Lost Memories, and of course Gurren Lagann’s final film with Tadashi Hiramatsu and Sushio where he did some monstrous mecha animation in a very brief scene. Love how detailed he’s able to get everything.

After brief work on Mobile Suit Gundam UC, Yoshida provided new designs to Eureka Seven AO in 2012

A strange sequel the original, Yoshida after a confusing time travel plot had to modify a lot of the character designs into older versions of themselves to retain a freshness throughout.


even making Ao Fukai, Eureka and Renton’s son

Many of the main staff returned with the “Mecha 6” coming back on, but on the composition front without the assistance of writers like Dai Sato the show was not the same as the original.

After 12 years, Yoshida was called back on to another Tomino project, the infamous Mobile Suit Gundam Reconguista in G

A series so marred in a just weird happenstance of story beats and Tomino control. The show in an unrelated matter got DVD sales posters from 2014-2021 ? In spite of the rather off-the beaten path approach of the anime, Yoshida could still make some pretty interesting character designs, considering the immensely large cast of characters.

Kimitoshi Yamane, and Akira Yasuda were on mechanical designs, and they opted for really soft and rounded designs being extremely unconventional for Gundam


I guess cause it takes place in the future? But who knows?

Yoshida himself really perfected his designs which on paper all look great. Lots of personality, and a lot of volume and form to the appearances.

Although it wasn’t all bad, there was a nominal amount of impressive mecha fights throughout the show, that was able to use 2D models which is pretty rare nowadays. Then for character acting Yoshida was able to show off in a few episodes, namely Episode 1. A really strong sky diving sequence. Also Episode 19 he’s able to get a whole cast of characters organized into a training montage.

Now unfortunately Yoshida has been involved with the Reconguista and Eureka Seven Hi Evolution movies, serving as a primary character designer, but outside of that not involved in any animation direction. But at the end of the day his designs help carry a less than flattering product

Now in 2022, Yoshida got to work on a new original anime by Mitsuo Iso The Orbital Children

Something good. A nice and slick depiction of the future, where the discussion of AI and logistics of robots is taken into question in a race against time plot. Through a combination of Kenichi Yoshida character designs, and Toshiyuki Inoue serving as the main animator it is a delightful romp in a short 6 episode series melding a mixture of not-to distant future sci-fi shenanigans and heavy animation that conveys a ton of movement. Yoshida briefly goes into detail about his process for designing his characters under Iso’s direction.

“I had been working on stories about space before, like Gundam: Reconguista in G… But above all I feel like people, not only in Japan but all over the world, are wondering if there is a need to go to space. With the construction of stations like the ISS, which has welcomed several Japanese astronauts, people are starting to get accustomed to images of space, and what everyday life there is like. But it’s no longer possible to realistically imagine making such a life part of man’s domain, to push the boundaries of the world like SF used to. On the contrary, I kinda feel like everyone has come to realize that life in space is impossible. So, by doing this, I’m sort of drifting away from everyone’s choice.
But the way I see it, we can’t know for sure if it’s possible to live in space until we’ve tried it, right ? I don’t know how difficult it actually is, but there’s probably a way to achieve it, or if we can’t live in space, maybe at least go to space, stay in contact with space. Keeping this up surely will push man’s knowledge further and further, and somehow I get the feeling that stopping it could only lead to bad things. That’s why I have to continue making space-related anime : to foster people’s interest in the subject, to make them think it’s okay to go to space. But then as I work on that, I realize that… well, it’s about children more than other people, adults are no good. I’m convinced that adults can’t go into space anymore (laughs).”

For animation, Yoshida considered Inoue and Iso as pioneers especially giving a lot of praise to Inoue’s work on the project in regards to his technical skills

”You know, about Inoue, I think you can only understand him once you’ve worked with him. You probably know that he draws very fast, but I don’t think you can understand how fast exactly. I don’t even get it myself… What I can say is that I don’t think time works the same way for us both, because no matter how fast I draw, he’ll always be way faster than me. I couldn’t even imagine drawing that fast, even working without a worry, so I just came to wonder if maybe he was working on a different plane from the rest of us. Like he’s in the metaverse. Or he’s resting his body and soul in a different dimension while working in this one, or he’s working simultaneously in several dimensions… I don’t know, something of that caliber, at least.”

Yoshida’s AD gave way to a lot interesting animation talent, Toshiyuki Inoue was of course the main animator pretty much carrying a good majority of the show, but several webgenners like Tatsurou Kawano, Bahi JD, and Chris all got their chance to shine. Kou Yoshinari who goes way back to Eureka Seven with Yoshida, got to do some interesting boards and douga segments all by himself which were a bit unusual for the compositing team, since he’d color the scenes in himself. Much like Dennou Coil Iso is able to keep a healthy blend of 2D and 3D animation, and for a series heavily reliant on technobabble the scenes give way to fun uses of the proto future technology in practical usage, and even in hacker fighting? It’s an interesting series and definitely worth a watch. Yoshida recently provided KA to Mobile Suit Gundam Witch from Mercury but hasn’t done much outside that.

Kenichi Yoshida. A guy with a pretty healthy and productive career. After proving himself as a specialist vehicle animator at Ghibli, who would’ve thought he’d be one of the slickest character designers in the industry. A feature of Yoshida that carries on with his contemporaries, is his quest to make his designs relatively comfortable for animators draw, though not the most simple animator in his own right, his attention to anatomy and soft features have given a lot of flexibility over the years. Though I wouldn’t say the series he was placed on really backs this notion up, only a few being standouts, he is sincerely an underrated genius of animation who deserves credit for his gentle, and unharsh style. Definitely one of the best veterans of the post-Ghibli 90s team.

Kenichi Yoshida @ragedsycokiller