Around early 2016, Shingo Yamashita started more diligently pursuing his career with OP direction going further than his kagenashi/Naruto roots, and indulging more in photography, cgi, compositing, and a more cinematic scope to his visuals. Early on this came in the form of Twin Star Exorcist’s second OP.

Sakazume 0:45-0:55, Enokido 1:05-1:07
This would be a precursor to Enokido and Sakazume’s attention to photography and direction on action. Large in scope, strong imagery, and quick flashes of sakuga. Which to be fair is most OP’s, but with Yamashita’s unique attention to rack focus, and certain photography and lighting tricks makes him stand out.

The next project that had the TakaRyuShun group would be interspersed involvement on Flip Flappers by Kiyotaka Oshiyama.

This is probably the third show in a row that was really sakuga oriented, ending the three piece combo of Space Dandy, One Punch Man, and then Flip Flappers in 2016. The three all show up in Episode 8, which was Enokido’s episode direction debut, with assistance from Satoshi Shigeta on AD. This episode is filled to the brim with big sweeping action cuts, dynamic background animation, and a lot of lightning. Considering the theme of this episode was tokusatsu its nice for Oshiyama and company to pay heavy homage to the familiar tropes of the genre while also adding his particular Flip Flappers flare.



With Shingo Yamashita on assistant AD, the entire episode’s explosion and smoke effects are very minimal in detail, and appear as blobs.


In fact Sakazume’s scene is a direct homage to his and Kutsuna’s work from nearly a decade earlier on Bokurano.

Now we move on to 2017, which is probably the most important for all Enokido, Sakazume, and Nakayama. This is the year where the three elevated themselves from mere students of Tanaka, Yoshihara, and Yamashita getting closer to their levels of fastidiousness and detail as they all took on the role of action director on Sword Art Online: The Ordinal Scale

Directed by series show runner Tomohiko Ito, with an exceptionally special team were able to create some of the most visually stunning sequences in the SAO franchise. Not only was the TakaRyuShun team here, but the involvement of freelancers on AD like Pierrot’s at the time new ace Naoki Kobayashi, Gundam effects expert Se-Jun Kim, and explosion extraordinaire Satoshi Sakai made the movie full of cooks. The biggest contributor to the visuals was the involvement of Kentaro Waki, one of the most skilled cinematographers in the industry. Waki’s compositing genius is able to make all of the most impactful scenes in this movie standout most.



Nakayama starts early off doing some adjustments to timing, and of course smears, but the real cherry on top is Enokido and Sakazume’s section in the final boss battle

uploader edited this clip heavily
Foreshadowing their future work, Enokido and Sakazume go all out in this scene doing a furious barrage of cuts in the second half with no sight in end. The early half of the sequence is a mix of younger animators like Naoki Miyajima, and Kazuto Arai. Sakazume and a new follower of his Toshiya Kouno take over the spacier portions of the fight. Once the entire gang of combatants is geared up to raid the boss we get an explosion of animation with ufotable affiliate Nozomu Abe coming into the fray doing blisteringly fast beam and spark cuts on ones, as well as one of the progenitors of effects animation in anime as we know it former Ghibli animator Masaaki Endo. Enokido nears the end of the fight, and the resulting takedown of the boss are handled by Chinese animator Chengxi Huang and Toei affiliate Ken Otsuka. With Waki’s DP paired with Enokido and Sakazume’s direction it is glorious.

The latter series goes into the more notable installments of Enokido/Sakazume’s involvement on the Fate series coming on Fate/Apocrypha with the two as series action directors

action cuts Sakazume and Enokido
Directed by Charlotte director Yoshiyuki Asai (of all people), this was basically most of the Ordinal Scale team trailing off onto this show with many of the animation directors and storyboard artists under the duress of the duo, with them working in tandem with CAD’s like Hidekazu Ebina, and Kiminori Itou. A remarkable attribute of Enokido/Sakazume is much like their formers Yoshihara, and Natsume they are great at allocating new talent, and knowing where and when to put them. Through action or character acting these guys simply know their s***, and as gifted as they are as animators are so well adept on giving their teams as much shine as possible. I can go on and on into earth shattering action and how Enokido and Sakazume were the main animators for the show, fostering new blood was important and that went on to Toru Iwazawa. Much like how the duo looked up to Yoshihara, Iwazawa was a follower of the duo. Iwazawa resembled a lot of features of the duo, but I always felt like his style hinged more on practicality rather than how over the top Sakazume or Yoshihara could get. That doesn’t stop him from being engaging, his first cut is hinging on making Astolfo look as cool as possible. The cut at 21 seconds with her staying still, and the creatures breaking apart seems like a subtle homage to the games.

The early portion of the series is admirable, with some interesting new additions to their circle. Hakuyu Go, best known for orchestrating the All Might fight on My Hero Academia’s S1’s final episode makes several appearances, and one we will get to later. Coming off of Eromanga Sensei, animators China and Nakaya Onsen were asked on to do action for 4 and somehow hold their own despite never formally doing any before. This show would become Onsen’s rocket to action stardom, and unite him with Itsuki Tsuchigami aka Miso. Lots of highlights between early on from the fight in Episode 9, early Myoun and Moaang on Episode 11. After a rough several episodes with barely any animation we get the last four episodes which all things considering kind of redeemed the rest of the second cour as it is the most extreme high octane full blown action. Episode 20 features a lot of Yoshihara with one of the first instances of him using Blender explosions, even his impact frames are just Blender color inversions.

Episode 21, is great with the Achilles and Chiron fight, all taken up with Enokido/Sakazume and Iwazawa on KA.

Episode 22, is the first full length movie tier sakuga directed, storyboarded, and partly animated by Hakuyu Go. After blowing up on the viral All Might fight on My Hero Academia what if Go translated that energy into an entire episode? You get this one of the most cinematic episodes of anime of the 2010s. I could go into extreme detail for this episode, but basically splits into Achilles and Jeanne d’arc vs Atalanta and Sieg vs Karna, the former coming first.

I’ve gone into extensive detail in previous spotlights how Miso is dominant in this section, showing a big Enokido influence, as well as Onsen, Masami Mori, and Toya Oshima.

Then we get to Sieg vs Karna

This entire fight enters the hall of fame of effects sakuga, with Go’s team of animators ranging from veterans to close friends. Kazuto Arai and Takumi Sunakohara take the mantle of effects wizards here with Sunakohara blitzing the screen in Kutsuna Lightning. Go, Miso and Toshi Sada play a relay race of cuts, and Tatsuya Miki and legendary Kanada animator Shinsaku Kozuma pair up the latter half of the section. As the fight revs up Toshiyuki Sato does massive disruptive waves what looks like a combination between the earth cratering, and a nuclear explosion filled in webgen goodness. Go, Tanaka, and Kai Ikarashi all close out the initial blows, then Go initiates a palette swap with the effects changing with the entire scene melting down into green suggestive imagery. Hiromatsu Shuu and Go end the sequence. Go would only go up from here.

The last few episodes didn’t hit the grand slam that 22 did considering the messy schedule, Yamashita’s cut in 23 looked half baked considering what he was capable of, and 24 redeemed some issues with the previous episode with an elongated clash between Sieg and Shirou

1:14-1:36
The combined master and apprentice quartet of Yoshihara, Enokido/Sakazume, and Iwazawa all having full say over this sequence. Enokido and the others hold their own, but Sakazume is the true star here, pushing the fluid dynamism of webgen animation to do the impossible.

In-between their time on Apocrypha Enokido and Sakazume had time to reunite briefly with Nakayama to help on the Gamers OP, specifically the boss battle section

2018 would be an interesting year for the two as it would span their creative direction towards Fate/Grand Order CMs, and started the Mayu Tokage production team of which had a small order of talented animators joining the two on their commercials. They had already tested their gait with these two years prior on a Camelot and Summer ad

Then a little later where get into the Lostbelt CMs of 2018

with other additional ads around the time

The duo was still working effectively on OPs assisting Ryuuta Yanagi on Seven Deadly Sins

Enokido/Sakazume around 0:46-0:57

and Tatsuya Yoshihara on his direction on Black Clover of which he was the main animator and director for the show

Enokido, 0nepeach, Sakazume 1:02-1:10

The end of the year they did a fun little project doing a chibi parody of the Fate/Grand Order series

Moving into 2019, several more Fate ads were commissioned by Aniplex for the duo working with producer Sachio Fujita notably Lostbelt 4 and a Fate/Strange Fake ad.

Both of these teasers had some quick bursts of insane imagery, captivating screenshot material, with *Keisuke Hiroe, Kai Shibata, Hiro Nagano, Cocoran Mark Kenta**, and Hidekazu Ebina on KA.

2019 at the start also had Enokido, and Sakazume reuniting with Shingo Natsume on Boogiepop, Sakazume was more involved with the show, but the two both took up the mantle for some episodes. These two are extremely effective at character acting, and on request can hold their own. Somewhat later in the winter season, Hakuyu Go struck again with an even more cinematic fight than that of Apocrypha on Mob Psycho 100 Season 2 Episode 5. Due to the unknown nature of the cuts since this episode, and subsequent Mob S1 and 2 episodes were erased from the booru it is hard to know where the two are amongst the spectacle.

I am convinced the two appear at 2:23 with Dimple’s rant and Mob’s shonen face is by them.

For the following year the two were mostly working freelance on Fate ads, and shows with friends. The Acca 13 OVA of 2020 was directed by blossoming newcomer Keiichiro Saito and Natsume, with the two both delegating their talent to character acting, the two both appeared on episode 7 of Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Ido Club joining unit director and guest storyboard artist Naoya Nakayama for Kanata Konoe’s song “Butterfly” with smart blends of CGI, and 2D

unknown what Sakazume and Enokido did

The two also helped with a full music video for the artist EVE music video directed by one of their friends Ken Yamamoto who had previously worked with them on Fate/Apocrypha

Yamamoto had wowed with exceptional action direction on Fate/Grand Order Babylonia and his resultant style and look was formed in the looseness that only webgenners like Hakuyu Go could inspire.

The middle of the year had the two doing more Fate ads with the 5 year anniversary trailer directed by Enokido, being a romantic and elegant tribute to the franchise.

Ebina on AD

2021 had another interesting assortment of projects for the crew to work on. During the Covid 19 pandemic anime production was more difficult than ever, but the duo managed to get by. The two initially started off the year on Evangelion: Thrice Upon a Time having unidentified cuts of animation. Months later they both directed the Hololive Alternative previews, a platform designed for Vtubers. Enokido directed the first, and A-1 pictures animator Takahiro Okawa did the second.

For the first ad, with some decent connections Shingo Yamashita was assigned to the DP role, having a gorgeous taking the compositing department to the next level with gorgeous lens flares, paired with soulful use of warm and radiant colors by Naomi Nakano. Lots of great shots storyboarded by Enokido, with old friends, and newcomers making the animation come to life. Sakazume definitely set a standard with his animation here.

For Okawa’s episode, Enokido was more involved on AD, and the assortment of animators made for some super expressive and gorgeous cuts

Yuukei Yamada’s CAD throughout the two PV’s is exceptional

Additional illustration by Enokido

This year its important to mention Enokido had also come on to help out with minor battle sakuga on takt. OP destiny, one of their students Iwazawa’s debut on action direction

After the two helped out Natsume on Sonny Boy’s first episode, they were seemingly absent for months, perfecting what would be Sakazume’s stellar Episode 4 of Princess Connect: Re Dive

@Tranquility ’s episode of the decade contender, Sakazume really goes out of his way to make the action scenes some of the best spectacle they could possibly be. This was Sakazume’s first ever episode he storyboarded and directed, and he demolished any notion of falling short given the circumstances of this being a tv anime. This sudden recruitment by Sakazume was not totally out of the blue, as he directed an in game event from a year and a half prior

With AD by Eri Irei, and a ton of very young webgen animators with notable members like TMD, and Sute, it was merely an appetizer until the main meal would come later.

Back to Episode 4, the episode appropriately starts with Enokido resembling more of a Fate ad then rather a show about food?

Enokido start to 0:59, the legendary Kou Yoshinari handles the explosion with his heavy use of digital paint, self compositing, and subtle cgi blend. An enigma of an animator.

The entire middle portion of the episode is nearly entirely character based. Kai Shibata and Shuya Fuchimoto hilariously opens up the comedy section of the episode, with a gauntlet of character animators coming after, Ayaka Minoshima is exceptional with the jerky motions, then Odashi comes to the rescue in a following cut. Konosuba animator Koichi Kikuta comes in doing a scene that would be very familiar to him from his experiences on that series, with Sota Shigetsugu closing it out. Minoshima and a returning Nakayama the do a quick relay of subtle character cuts brimming with life. Minoshima is truly the saving grace of this episode’s characters with 3 minutes of footage from her alone. Sakazume even supported the scenic character acting scenes

When the Shadow attack occurs, we enter the middle portion getting cgi hybrid animator Ren Onodera, Hideki Hamazaki, and Sute all in one scene. Kanada specialist Takeshi Maenami appears smearing up the whole scene and perhaps taking minor liberty over the storyboards. Following that the clone of Kirri section is mostly animated by webgenner Fukuroup with Soty having a minor scene in-between, and Saito ending the whole section.

Then we get to the real meat of the episode which is the Golem fight.

This is where Sakazume’s connections run deep getting an Avengers level group of animators to make for a finale of friends. Arifumi Imai brilliantly opens this part with a low angle foreshortened shot, his resultant effects shots are caked in debris and random interjections of sparkles that he insists on adding

Hironori Tanaka then follows up with his macabre animation style, followed by Iwazawa with some cinematic running shots. Miso then formally closes out the first third of the battle with Makoto fleeing the golem

The middle portion begins with Yukina Kosaka doing dolly angled running cuts, with a very nice assortment of smears, and selling the scale of the golem. The resultant cut by Shingo Yama is a bit confusing, as he seamlessly blurs the line between 2D and 3D making for a super solid and creative blend of the medium, and the cut only lasts 4 seconds

Harumi Yamazaki and Eri Irei then close out the middle section leading into the finale

Leaf (Ken Yamamoto) follows up once the gang reaches the core of the golem, fighting off the shadows along the inside.

The black vomit from the creature courtesy of Toshiyuki Sato, and as Pecorine is the only one in position to attack as she flies down. Tatsuya Yoshihara relays over with a beam attack from her

Then after some buildup from Yoshihara and their old friend Nakayama, Enokido and Sakazume end off the episode with a second attack in glorious fashion

with the final still shots of the episode animated by Leaf

The episode is truly the pinnacle of heights that Enokido and Sakazume could rightfully achieve given the time, climate, and schedule for their cinematic prowess to flourish.

Speaking of “cinematic”, after the duo assisted Leaf on Pokemon: Paldean Winds later that year helped alongside their friend Nakayama for his series directorial debut Chainsaw Man

Controversy aside, it can be made clear that thanks to the leadership of their mentor Yoshihara on AD this show could have fallen short of what Nakayama had envisioned, taking the source material into a more “realistic” direction. Sakazume and Enokido were more than happy to help on the preview then Episode 1, in which we first get a taste of what the series had in store.

After piling on hoards of zombies with Kouki Fujimoto and Sakazume, Denji attacks the Zombie Devil with raw force, then ricocheting him off with long entrail like tendrils animated by Enokido

Later on as Enokido had other priorities set, Sakazume along with Kaito Tomioka animated large chunks of the bat devil fight.

Sakazume and Tomioka 1:56 to 2:11, Hironori Tanaka was the AD for this episode and his corrections are ever present the entire episode, and the retaining the level of detail must have been extremely difficult.

Sakazume later helped with the first appearance of the Eternity Devil

We then enter 2023, which unfortunately starts off on a pretty negative note with a Fate ad.

This is not any ordinary Fate commercial, as the primary mistake of the promotion rests on Sakazume’s shoulders. When most Fate commercials are animated the entire treat of getting them done is to showcase the skills of the artists and their talents of drawing people, in one instance here that doesn’t happen.


That is right, Sakazume decided to use an AI “animated” sequence in this ad. Short enough for the average viewer to dismiss, but erroneous enough to completely smear. Out of all people for Sakazume have an arsenal of animators, then use something that goes against the very nature of art itself is incredibly hollow headed, and a dumbfounding choice. If someone like him wanted to use AI, maybe go and join a league of fake AI artists on Twitter that have zero of the talent that he has and realize that this was a major f*** up. Of course the animation community was frustrated with this approach, but it is concerning things like this are starting to happen in media. Even Studio Wit last year promoted a short using AI generated backgrounds, and Netflix stated it was a move to help the shortage of “manpower” in the industry, in reality it is not cause it looks terrible, and no “artist” was credited

The better the tech gets, the artists are hired and the more f***ed we are
Aside from that this move puts Sakazume much lower in integrity than Enokido, cause there is no way he did not notice this.

Anyways as summer closed out the duo then came back to direct their first special, Fate/Strange Fake: Whispers of Dawn

Adapted from spinoff material based loosely on an April Fool’s joke from the light novels, it took time for Strange Fake to come into fruition. This movie had an interesting staff, and given the circumstances of Aniplex’s terrible production schedule Sakazume and Enokido were given somewhat of a decent chance to leave an impression. Their ability to make an impact in a short time span was perfect for a 55 minute special. Light novelist Kiko Nasu like most Fate projects was involved in supervision, an so was the illustrious Gen Urobuchi of Madoka Magica fame, having say in the franchise for being the Fate/Zero creator. Youhei Miyawaki returned on DP from the CM trailers giving a dark yet sultry look to the visuals, as well as color designer Takahiro Mogi. For characters, frequent collaborator Yuukei Yamada was on board. Unlike previous works on Apocrypha and his other CD add ons Strange Fake had a interesting take on line work in regards to the characters, adding in a variability filter that shows some commonality with One Piece’s current character filter



This is very subtle and has the markers of what Im assuming was a mostly digital production, and in small ways harkens back to the duo’s work on Yatterman Night

Enokido and Sakazume are really known for their bombast, in ways that only a webgenner could be, but on this special things are different. There is an overwhelming sense of atmosphere in their boards, and have an interesting array of cast members to carry out the animation. 9 animation directors is a bit of ask, but people like Kou Aine, Kozuma Tanaka, Hiro Nagano, and Maki Todaka have been under the duo’s guidance for a while. Norifumi Kugai, Kaito Tomioka, and others are all aware of the task of animating on an Enokido/Sakazume project, one notable exception here through intervention of Urobuchi is the inclusion of legendary Akira alumni Yasuomi Umetsu, and his close friend Shinya Takahashi.

The most notable section of this special is the massive battle between Gilgamesh and Enkidu, potentially handled by the directors themselves.

Enokido/Sakazume presumed til the end, full part
a simple manipulation of digital effects sakuga, with cgi blended in a way that feels oh so Shingo Yama esque.