Animator Spotlight: Kazuto Arai

All gifs in order
Hybrid x Heart Magias Araraxia (2016)
Mob Psycho 100 Season 1 Episode 3 (2016)
Flip Flappers (2016)
Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale (2017)
Made in Abyss (2017)
Fate/Apocrypha (2017)
Revue Starlight (2018)
Attack on Titan (2018)
Mob Psycho 100 Season 2 Episode 5 (2019)
Rising of the Shield Hero (2019) first cut Shuu Sugita
Symphogear XV (2019)
Azur Lane (2019) AD by Hironori Tanaka
Fate/Grand Order Absolute Demonic Front Babylonia (2020)
Fate/Grand Order Camelot Paladin; Agateram (2021)
Heavenly Delusion Episode 1 (2023) 2nd KA on pole melting, the rest is Tetsuya Takeuchi and Ryo Araki
Jujutsu Kaisen (2023)

Happy Extremely Belated Birthday to Kazuto Arai born February 23rd, 1991. A part of what I’d like to call the second wave of webgen artists after the arrival of Ryo Timo, Shingo Yamashita, and Kenichi Kutsuna in the late 2000s opened a door for new animators to join them on projects. Arai came up in the mid 2010s first making waves on Gate with his impressive effects KA. Arai initially started as an in-betweener at Studio Trigger joining a new brigade of animators not affiliated from the former Studio Gainax. This new group included Kai Ikarashi, Takumi Sunakohara, and a few more. Arai slowly became close to Sunakohara, and the two went freelance shortly after proving themselves as two new capable effect animators. While some might call Arai a bit more of a traditionalist from Sunakohara, Arai’s practicality and destructive animation, overshadows what some may see as a nominal effects wizard. His work on Mob Psycho, and Attack on Titan put him in a class of workhorse explosion artists similar to Kazunori Ozawa or Satoshi Sakai. The fruit of his and Sunakohara’s efforts came through on episodes with Hakuyu Go at the helm. Go’s cinematic repertoire gave Arai and Sunakohara time to rise up to the challenge of his boards and showcase their wide ranging talent. Arai also had the opportunity to learn as throughout the late 10s he became an episode director noted for his universal eye in epic animation. This then led to his eventual direction of Fate/Grand Order Camelot Paladin; Agateram in 2021, a superstar showcase of sakuga wizardry between him, Go, and other animators in some of the most epic clashes of the Fate franchise. Arai even got shared script duty, as he wrote some one shot mangas here and there. Without further ado, Kazuto Arai.

It is kind of amazing Arai was not made a key animator when joining Studio Trigger off the bat. Perhaps he didn’t pass the animators test at Trigger which involves making about 1000 frames a month in animation. His original animated shorts OUTBURST and Avara made on Flash were nothing short of amazing for their time. Arai is completely in his element doing monstrous sci-fi action with his smoke and fire effects in their infancy. During his tenure at Trigger he bonded closely with Ikarashi and Sunakohara as they were in-betweening on Kill La Kill and in the following years getting outsourced work for other projects. One PV that stood out during this time was called Cord all self produced and directed by Arai. While he was still learning some significant improvements were made, emphasizing scale wise photography, and also smart rough character acting, fitting for the webgen age that was about to become much more refined.

Arai’s first formal credits go to Umaru-chan and God-Eater 2 but his first identified credits came on Symphogear GX. Arai unlike his previous animations, due to his experience in in-betweening opted for the paper route for most of the production resulting in his explosion scenes having a more organic, ka to douga look.

Strong drawings

After directing a 7 minute Hacka Doll episode in late 2015, Arai would leave Trigger and go freelance. One of the earliest scenes that got Arai recognition was his work on Gate

Arai 0:44-1:26 action cuts only

Arai explosion only at 0:37-0:43

Explosions seemingly heavily inspired by Takashi Hashimoto following after his popcorn plumes

Several months later, Arai and Sunakohara joined the first ever episode directed by the action genius Hakuyu Go. Go was only 24 at the time, and for such a young guy was able to assemble the most exciting generation of webgen animators on episode 12 of My Hero Academia’s climatic battle between All Might and Noumu

Arai 2:59-3:03
Previously associated from the late episodes of Kill La Kill, Go had made a numerous series of connections for this episode. Arai and Sunakohara were the two going a few years back with Tatsuya Miki. Itsuki Tsuchigami aka Miso, Toru Iwazawa, Ken Takahashi, Kenji Mizuhata, Toshi Sada, Toya Oshima, and Naoki Miyajima were among the new batch of animators. Hiroshi Tomioka and Hironori Tanaka were the only two vets recruited onto Go’s first episode with the ladder appearing on almost every Go tv episode since then.

Arai’s section of the battle comes right after the punch and is super brief showcase of his destruction

The second series Arai hopped onto was with Sunakohara on Hybrid x Heart Magias Academy Ataraxia. A bit of an obscure series, this was a first storyboard showcase for Arai handling Episode 8, and animating four others, however, when it came to spectacle Sunakohara was visually more impressive. When it comes to effects work Sunakohara is extremely idiosyncratic, utilizing oversized smoke, and sparking effects to make his work standout. This is especially true on Arai’s Episode 8, in which Sunakohara’s work flow takes on unique precedence. There are markers of webgen animation like Kutsuna Lightning and scribbly effects that looked drawn in Flash, but it’s use of frame modulation on smoke going from 2s to 4s, and adding black smear lines to mimic debris that is something I’ve never seen before. He was also very comfortable with animating the characters to since he was a co-designer for the show.

Arai and Sunakohara then hopped onto Mob Psycho 100 Episode 3, and 10.

Arai 1:53-2:01, unsure what Sunakohara did.
One of Arai’s first full fledged usages of Flash, the effect is nearly seamless. The smoke is a tad off of Arai’s usual way of drawing, looking more similar to how a Tanaka school animator would approach it.

On 10, both contributed to the fire psychic scene with Gosei Oda, Miso, and others assisting with the resultant fire effects afterwards.

The rest of the year was several shows for Arai, with Flip Flappers and KanColle among the few.

2017 was a huge year for Arai, working on some of the biggest shows of the year is a testament to his fast participation in the production pipeline. The first came on Sword Art Online: The Ordinal Scale

Arai 0:04-016, full scene with explosion
With the final portion AD’ed by power duo Shun Enokido and Takahito Sakazume Arai, and friends like Miyajima were just lightweights compared to the other heavy hitters in this scene such as legends like Nozomu Abe and ancient destruction animator himself Masaaki Endo

Arai then got to work on Re:Creators storyboarding 11, and directing 20.

Arai makes good use of spacing in his action boards, giving time for monologuing, and not being distractingly flashy. There are a lot of Tanaka inspired effects in this episode

He then joined Attack on Titan for only two episodes, 28 and 46 the next year handling the giant Rod Reiss Titan.

In the middle of the year, Arai and Sunakohara joined Hakuyu Go’s magnum opus action spectacle Fate/Apocrypha Episode 22

Sunakohara 0:24 to 0:34, Arai 0:35-0:47
Under Go, Arai and Sunakohara are a one two combo, becoming way more brave in their skills and abilities. Firstly Sunakohara’s scene is incredibly dense, the first couple of seconds has a ton to a***yze. We got a mixture of frizzy Kutsuna Lightning and background animation followed by scale wise, almost AT Field esque deflection of the attack. The rock slice afterwards also feels very dense, I love how the slice beam shades the interior of the mesa rock after the attack, few animators would put in effort to mark that change by not having the layers subtly distort. Then Arai follows afterwards with his nuke explosion, and he is on ten in these scenes. With Go boarding two of Arai’s successive shots as a pan up, static, pan down, static, he can work with this digitally to see how the cut could look with different frame ratios.



Very realistic smoke effects coming after Sunakohara’s freewheeling approach. This was also their first time the two had been reunited with Kai Ikarashi since the early Trigger days.

Arai then worked on Made In Abyss, doing some creature animation on the first episode.

2018 was more quiet for Arai. One of the big things that year was his direction on the first episode of FLCL: Progressive.

Listen its not his fault. The episode looks nice, has some odes to the original series, and a stellar lineup of animators with Bahi JD, Akira Amemiya from Trigger, Tomohiro Shinoda, Tetsuya Nishio, one of the three wolves of Production IG with a scene nearly ripping off Yutaka Nakamura’s scene from Star Driver’s first episode, and Miyajima

Much later into the Summer, Arai went on to help briefly with Revue Starlight animating a fight on Episode 8

Arai 5:00-5:40
Thanks to connections with series director Tomohiro Furukawa back on Symphogear GX, Arai was able to finally do a girl battle that he kind of seemed robbed of on that show. This is even more elevated than his work there, due to stunning storyboarding

Entering into 2019, both Arai and Sunakohara came back with Hakuyu Go to work on Mob Psycho 100’s second season, on Episode 5. The daring Mob vs Mogami fight.

Arai 0:04-0:08

Sunakohara start at 1:05?-1:39
Arai’s part is pretty short with great BG animation, on the other hand Sunakohara seems made for spectacle. The god warrior homage, to the thick lightning, and maximal approach to limited animation. Sunakohara’s application is definitely unique

Afterwards Arai did some brief work on Rising of the Shield Hero’s second OP

Arai 1:17-1:20

By the end of the Summer, Arai then hopped back on to the last installment of the Symphogear series, XV

Arai 0:41-0:56
Joining animator Yoshiki Nakakouji, and former series action director Fumiaki Kouta Arai like his Revue Starlight cut is a super practical action animator, by being not too flashy but getting his point across with thoroughly dynamic motion. The vivid way the characters are animated you can almost feel the air blowing against them. This was one of Arai’s few times drawing the characters which he was looking forward to, especially drawing Hibiki and Maria.

And the explosions once again are great. Arai said he was inspired by Hideki Kakita of Eureka Seven fame.

Arai’s animation would become more sporadic, with him doing only two within a year’s time span. First on Hironori Tanaka’s episode of Azur Lane, and Nakaya Onsen’s episode of Fate/Grand Order Absolute Demonic Front: Babylonia

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