Kutsuna then assisted with Yamashita, being credited on his phenomenal Pokemon: Twilight Wings series as a “2D works” artist, then showing up on OP2 of Jujutsu Kaisen

Kutsuna 1:03-1:08

We then get Kutsuna’s first ever directed OP on VLAD LOVE,

Presented in dry yet radiant colors, Kutsuna’s first ever OP gets down to the most wistful and breathtaking atmosphere’s drenched in grey. The backgrounds are almost entirely done in a certain handrawn Flash presentation that you could only get from one of the first webgener’s artistic sensibilities. The animation is well drawn too with Kutsuna working with a rotating staff. Great running cuts from Shuu Sugita, and Norio Matsumoto doing the gorgeous underwater cuts.

The second OP for the series went for a completely different vibe

A thrashy banger of an OP. Unlike how Timo, or Yamashita would approach OPs Kutsuna is way more perverse and experimental. The addition of interspersing the OP’s real life artist “Lovebites” is an interesting choice, but even more so is changing up the compositing with cgi blood, and grainy 1920s camera filters. The animated performance is heavily rotoscoped, but has the personality of the designs intact without losing the sense of immersion.

The next year, Kutsuna directed his first ever music video with Back to You an animated MV crowdfunded by Animator Supporters, a nonprofit meant to support young talent

Kutsuna AD, KA, and Editing throughout

The following year marks Kutsuna’s most recent work on two OPs. The first was The Fire Hunter at Signal M.D.

Beautiful and expansive with minimalism as a tool, Kutsuna takes the similar natural aesthetics of Vlad Love’s first OP and combines the supernatural with subtle hints of steampunk. It’s a gorgeous watery OP, and even pays homage to Kazuto Nakazawa’s Record of Lodoss War with the cliff cuts.

Then we get one of Kutsuna’s most ambitious works to date, again throwing a curveball after the beauty of Fire Hunter’s, Magical Destroyers

Dim yet saturated, the animation preps for something pretty standard. Punk girls, crazy male MC, wastelands, and surreal visuals. Vercreek, Weilin Zhang, Masayuki Nonaka, and other animators lull the viewer in early on, but it does not prepare you for the eruption of noise in the second half where everything in screen becomes a data mosh of crude drawings, and digital collages.



It’s an incredibly risky look for an OP, but paid off with Kutsuna’s direction. This OP was also largely in part thanks to help from Yoko Yuki a longtime friend going back to Kutsuna’s time at Marza Animation Planet. Her approach is what made the second half of the OP, with little to no direction from Kutsuna. The two of them train animators in university lectures, when they are not committing to bigger projects.

So that’s Kenichi Kutsuna, the first webgen animator. Much like Ryo Timo, the two didn’t overstay their welcome into the 2010s after the first wave of webgen animators had concluded, and Shingo Yamashita had helped usher in a new second wave of webgen animators. Now into the third wave of in country and overseas talent, the movement is more widespread than ever thanks to the initial launch platform of Timo on Birdy or Yozakura Quartet. From Utsunomiya to Kobayashi, Kutsuna has retained the advice and knowledge of these two legends and has pretty much done his own thing working in complete freedom. Heralded nowadays for his convention, and panel work, Kutsuna’s advisory position has helped a lot of young animators on the come up, and I hope we can see more of his sagely talent in the future.

okay so imgur gifs or jpgs aren't working on mobile rn, please view on desktop, sorry y'all

Kenichi Kutsuna (continued next page)

@ragedsycokiller

gifs working on my phone

hmm

Works for me

gonna need season 2 of apothecary diaries immediately

High chance for an announcement this weekend

Same for Frieren

i’m in my mecha era now bout to watch gundam pocket wars after i finish eva rewatch

pocket wars

usually takes me a while to finish an anime but im already almost finished with mob psycho s2 lol, im hooked

mob when he went past 100%

The goat is back

Flawless masterpiece front to back

didnt watch any anime past 2 or 3 weeks

time to binge a few episodes in time for finales

might drop undead unluck and apothecary i'm like 12 episodes behind and i don't really have the time

forgot urusei yatsura came back, another anime im behind on

Man between One Piece, Attack on Titan, and Heike Monogatari, Takashi Kojima is a really sensational animation director and character designer, his loose style feels so fitting for Yamada’s vision

Looking back at his spotlight I wrote I idiotically didn’t write up on Heike a big part of his career shift

Cliff hangers are the worst

Started Frieren