Animator Spotlight: Nakaya Onsen

All gifs in order
Eromanga Sensei (2017)
Fate/Apocrypha Episode 4 (2017)
Fate/Aporcrypha Episode 22 (2017)
Record of Grancrest War Episode 14 (2018)
Record of Grancrest War Episode 23 (2018)
Mob Psycho 100 (2019)
Cannon Busters (2019)
Azur Lane (2019)
Fate/Grand Order Absolute Demonic Front Babylonia (2020)
Jujutsu Kaisen OP1 (2020)
Jujutsu Kaisen OP2 (2021)
Tropical Rogue! Precure (2021) first cut by Miso
Fate/Samurai Remnant (A) (2023)
Fate/Samurai Remnant (B) (2023)
Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2 Episode 16 (A) (2023)
Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2 Episode 16 (B) (2023)

Happy Birthday Nakaya Onsen A close friend of Itsuki Tsuchigami or Miso, Onsen had a sensational rise to fame in the late 2010s with his fantastical movement oriented action animation. As a freelancer, he put his early years on to slice of life shows like Eromanga Sensei and Idolmaster Cinderella Girls for A-1 Pictures, where he was renowned for his subtle character acting. Once coming on to Fate/Apocrypha everything changed, and he immediately became an action animator. Traits that make Onsen stand out, is his super limited approach to effects valuing movement over anything. His explosions, and debris are so simple that it might be a bit crude to look at, and that kind of trait can also be applied to his unchecked character drawings which are often completely remodeled just for better freedom of motion. Onsen loves to be volumetric all while being limited, sometimes resorting to 3s and 4s, but he lacks a refined take like Keiichiro Watanabe making his animation seems naked and bare bones which is all part of the charm. He uses these aesthetics to his advantage, and fares better than most action animators today.

For several years Onsen had a stint as a character animator on girl oriented shows. He first got his start doing KA on Idolmaster Cinderella Girls in 2015, he first appears doing second ka on Episode 11 doing some minor second key animation, and he’d do other episodes with very subtle character acting. I believe at this point his focus was primarily on drawing characters rather than movement. Onsen afterwards joined The Asterisk War, another A-1 Pictures project and presumably brought on by Tetsuya Kawakami subtle improvements took place in Onsen’s animation. For one he got better at dimensionality with a character giving a good since of 3D presence even in small scenes. His first legitimate action scene with movement has more characteristics than you see in him in present day, fast paced timing with minimal drawings to get across speed in a conservative but efficient way

Across several projects over two years Onsen got better in smaller increments. Improved hair animation on Kiznaiver, better character acting on Mahou Shoujo Nante, and also freedom from AD restrictions on Long Riders! where he got to show off his nearly shadeless style.

Once we get to Eromanga Sensei Onsen had gone from simple character animator, to an advance and fun artist

Onsen 0:41-0:52
An Iconic and fun dance scene, Onsen is able to a great job with the movements, but in the close up shots with the mask he is able to help Izumi settle into the poses rather than just end with a static frame of the key pose in each shot, and holding on it.

Onsen is also able to delegate time into some nice food animation
on the series, with specific notes about each individual part of the food for in-between artists to help with

The same year a few months later A-1 Pictures aired another show Fate/Apocrypha where here on out Onsen becomes almost exclusively an action animator from here on out

Directed by Yoshiyuki Akai, for a Fate series to work a figurehead of action direction was needed, and what better pairing to get than webgenners Takahito Sakazume and Shun Enokido. The Enokido/Sakazume combo team for several years had been directing Fate/Grand Order commercials and through their time spent their it was only right they came on the main series to be the head action aficionados, orchestrating fantastic battle scenes. Onsen learned first hand Sakazume action design, on Episode 4

Onsen 0:37-0:48
Sakazume and Enokido like sure-footed action, and there is a lot of power in the poses. The strong smears also give a sense of weight to the sword spinning, and give the impacts follow through and anticipation beforehand.

Everything was about to change once Onsen got placed on Hakuyu Go’s episode. Go after displaying impressive direction skills on My Hero Academia Episode 13 with a team of his close friends, being some of the top digital freelancers in the industry Go was ready to take on Apocrypha 22 without the assistance of Enokido or Sakazume. This is the first time Onsen is placed in close proximity to Miso and the two would form a close bond, being on several episodes in future years. Onsen was placed on the fight between Achilles and Atalanta. Placed in tight proximity with Miso and Masami Mori, Onsen is able to standout through his sense of contrast, something that isn’t too visible in their scenes. We get long sweeping background shots of the pillars they are going through, and then close ups of the struggles happening. It’s a component of Miso’s boards that are so strong, having that situational awareness in the environment while a fight is happening. Another element that is great about Go’s AD is he is super lenient on shading the point where characters nearly look almost completely different.

Achilles in Sakazume’s scene drawn by Onsen on Episode 4

Achilles in Go’s episode drawn by Miso
That kind of flexibility gives so much ease to character acting, and work generally better for battle sakuga. In the battle we get the introduction of the “Onsen face” a super close up shot of a character moving into throw a spear or object with a voluminous and slightly off model face.


Near the end Onsen handles Atalanta’s death strong character acting.

The next year Onsen joined two episodes of Record of Grancrest War

After proving himself on Apocrypha 22 Onsen quickly and suddenly was given auteur privileges out of nowhere, being able to animate scenes without corrections. This was surprising since despite not being accompanied by Go or Miso, Onsen got the not follow model sheet privileges first coming up on Episode 14

All Onsen full scene
Again super off model character sheets all in favor of helping him push the scene in a more abstract way but also ramp up the intensity of everything with even more Onsen faces


Compositionally Onsen does a lot with close angle shots to get the spear motions going, almost like he was a javelin thrower in another profession

Episode 23 has Onsen carrying some similar attributes, but even more unrestricted in his character designs.
Here is the character Lassic

and here he is drawn by Onsen


Other than that great background animation and one take shots all over the place.

A year later Onsen got the privilege of joining one of the best anime fights of the 2010s, the Shizimaki fight on Mob Psycho 100 Season 2 Episode 11, directed and storyboarded by Miso with chief AD work by Yoshimichi Kameda

Onsen 0:27-1:25
One of his longest scenes so far in his career Onsen and Miso are a match made in heaven. Much like Go Miso prioritizes environmental action in short moments to help the animator flex. What do I mean by this? We are given shots of the parking lot being used for a drone like shot then the classic Onsen spear throw going into a close up angle makes the action feel intimate, but then its contrasted with big sweeping shots of Teru leaving a trail of explosions behind. That kind of contrasting depth in composition can only be handled by supremely experienced animator an Onsen is completely right for the job. Also another element I mean of environmental is Shizimaki hitting one character with a stop sign. The best shot in the scene is the POV shot with Sakurai struggling to aim at the constantly moving Shizimaki. It is a wildly impressive scene, and the following animators after Takafumi Mitani, Kosuke Kato, and especially Kenichi Fujisawa all do great too.

Onsen the same year did a brief Yutapon inspired cut on Cannon Busters that looked amazing

Then Onsen joined onto Hironori Tanaka’s episode of Azur Lane

Onsen 7:19-7:54
In an episode filled with other top KAs like Weilin Zhang, Ren Onodera, Toru Iwazawa and Kazuto Arai Onsen minimalist style still manages to standout and was even given minimal touch ups by Tanaka. It’s a pretty limited scene with Onsen mostly using 3s and 4s. The singularity of just that sequence with the slicing blade and the airplane is so different then how a myriad of other animators would approach it usually opting for 1s or 2s to build up to the explosion. The explosion itself is also lacking in detail just one or two layers of smoke and three or four chunks of debris which again if anyone else did that other than Onsen they would likely get fired.

Finally after several years Onsen made his directorial debut of Episode 18 of Fate/Grand Order Absolute Demonic Front Babylonia “Star of the Beginning, We Look Up at the Sky”

Onsen brief animation and AD
After only three years of action animation, Onsen had skyrocketed into being a known name in the epic battle episode director’s circle whether it was Go, Miso, or Soty (Mori). He now had any animator in that circle on speed dial and gladly got the best he knew; Miso, Soty, Go Zhang, Arai, Kato, Tanaka Kerorira, Eri Irei, and Toshiyuki Sato all were huge players on the episode with Moaang and Taichi Kawakami on basic AD. Throughout the season Megumi Kouno’s chief action direction had been ramping up the assortment of action AD’s as it kept going along, and this feels like the pinnacle. Unlike his actual KA, Onsen surprisingly imbue to0 much of his own drawings on the cuts, in fact due to the simplified nature of the designs they don’t veer far off from his own likings. Although there are some shots that are super Onsen, putting so much expression with minimal detail.


So action wise Onsen much like Go and Miso loves his sense of space between the action happening. Some of the shots handled with the flying creatures, and our heroes buzzing around are all reminiscent of how the other two like to space out their action. He’s able to take the exciting spacing of Miso, with the epic scale of Go and pair together to give the most flattering result. Miso handled nearly 2 minutes of animation once again emphasizing the space control between combat. The final cuts of Quetzalcoatl towards the end of the episode are incredibly reminiscent of Go’s work on Mob Psycho Episode 5 with the huge scale of action and of course Tanaka and Sato closing out the scene with their crazy effects animation. Sato’s digital effects especially are a sight to behold. The most amazing part about this episode is despite being met with a laundry list of idiosyncratic animators Onsen’s touch is not lost, with strong boarding, planning, and art direction to boot.

Onsen near the end of the year got to work on two OPs for Shingo Yamashita on Sunghoo Park’s Jujutsu Kaisen

Onsen 0:48-0:58

Onsen start to 0:05, 0:52-0:59
This is one of the cases where Onsen’s feel is lost in the mix somewhat. Under boards by Yama you’re able to get a lot of leverage out of a good animator, but Onsen weirdly doesn’t stand out too much. Probably to the chagrin of Yama his OPs usually take on a holistic approach with many animators strictly following a series of boards without too many corrections. That would be fine, and the cuts look great but nothing characteristically Onsen. The action is still great though, as we see some of his most detailed effects ever, and the first time he drew a cat!

Late in the year Onsen assisted for the first time with character designs on Fate/Grand Order Camelot Wandering; Agateram

Joining Production IG’s team with the likes of their in house legends like Kazuchika Kise paired with other freelancers like Mieko Hosoi and Aya Yamamoto the designs turned out to be modest yet simple recreations of the designs carried over from Babylonia. Not too much to report outside of that due to not much creative freedom, as he wasn’t on AD in any instance

Onsen got to reunite with Miso and Go on Tropical Rogue! Precure Episode 29 all due to a AD position by Soty.

Onsen 1:12-1:32
Onsen’s cut does look kind of janky due to it being mostly on 3s and 4s, but hey that is all a part of his charm. It could either be that, but this season was airing when the Pandemic was still in full swing, so not much could probably done about better in-betweening in a 40 plus episodic season.

Onsen returned back on to the second installment of the Grand Order films

Again not too much to report on other than a better assortment of animators thanks to Kazuto Arai's directing and strong connections.

On Jujutsu Kaisen 0, Onsen was also on character designs for the cursed spirits along with Hiroya Iijima

In a movie that was made under a stupidly tight deadline Onsen and Iijima somehow managed to pull off a decent chunk of the cursed spirits

2022, had no animation or work from Onsen as he was on break. Out of nowhere in 2023 he returned to solo key animate and direct the opening segment on the video game Fate/Samurai Remnant

All Onsen
Never before has he looked so cinematic. In a full two minutes of animation Onsen comes out of the gate shining with one breathtaking shot after the next. Onsen’s slew of compositional knowledge after working with Miso, Go, Soty, and Yama feels like all elements of them have rubbed off in his work and the end result is a beautifully crafted and highly audacious piece of cinematic souffle. It literally doesn’t matter if the game is bad if the opening is this good, stare in awe and Onsen’s shot selection, all favored in dull muted tones that feel surprisingly vidid given the color choices.








It is a beautiful work, that hopefully could put Onsen in the director’s chair for a future series if he saw fit.

The most recent thing Onsen was placed on was Miso’s episode of Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2 Episode 16 “Thunderclap”

Onsen start to 4:14
For a visceral 4 minutes and 14 seconds Onsen is completely in control of the scenes under the combination of Miso’s superb boarding. The two are basically the best thing since peanut butter and jelly as Onsen is so reliable with the boards and likely even was given freedom to modify them. There are so many highlights to this scene that it is not even fair. The first goes to the sheer amount of rabbits Onsen animates in the warehouse portion of the fight, with really snappy fight choreography and Toji’s speed being perfectly conveyed. The scenes of Megumi trying to run away from Toji and planning ways to kill him is so fun with his speed being all too great, and the subtle moments near the end make for a great yet bitter finale.
One of Onsen’s greatest sequences so far, doing this much animation is a lot to ask for, even Miso has not done this much KA in a simple episode, but maybe Onsen will get his payback on another series.

So that is Nakaya Onsen. One of the most prestigious club members of the Go, Miso, Soty, and Arai circles. He is probably the most idiosyncratic of the grouping being a sudden standout in action scenes after years of slowly improving at A-1 Pictures. Onsen has an unrivaled sense of parallax in spacing, and composition. Whether it's his tightly close up shots, to epic background shots conveying scale, he can match both too seismic effect. Through his art and density of movement to some might lie an unrefined and messy animator, but even through dropping all elements of a character design and adding on more limitations can you appreciate Onsen's resolve. He is so strong as an AD and so strong as an artist, and has only gotten better over time outdoing himself one year after another. Miso and him are the saving graces of the new age of epic freelance sakuga

Nakaya Onsen @ragedsycokiller

Sick today, binging Fruits Basket

Undead Unluck is growing on me

Completely missed this