Now that i have told you my thoughts on the character designs and the background art, lets get to the main feature. Just to remind you i will be analyzing the work of the animators with the most memorable scenes in the show.
Hironori Tanaka
For me this sequence was Hironori Tanaka's best work on the show as it showcased everything that he can do but it was also his most restrained work on the show. The effects animation is fairly unique with the laser blasts coming out of Valic's blaster not being the generic beams we have come to expect. For some it might look a bit weird but it works quite well. When the scene moves on to Birdy and Moss fighting it really starts to pick up with Birdy's hair starting to get more detailed and move while Moss's hair stays more in place since her hair is shorter but nevertheless the sequence continues to build until it comes to an abrupt end for plot reasons. Its a short burst of fun action and the detailed and on-model character animation and unique effects animation elevate it from just being a "filler fight." I am of the school of thought that good animation can elevate something from just being merely "good" to excellent. The story start to pick up in this episode and the fight being this well animated just elevates everything else and the viewer gets more invested in watching the show as a result and that is exactly what happened to me when i was watching this for the first time.
Now that we have seen Tanaka's best work in the show, lets have a look at some of his more unique work in the show. This sequence shows Moss and one of her allies attacking a group of soldiers. This is a sequence that while i liked it, it wasn't quite as good the previous sequence that i discussed. This is more because of the cuts of Moss than anything else. The movements of the character are more overly exaggerated than Tanaka usually employs and I'm not sure if he was experimenting with a different style of movement but, when you see her ripping the soldiers heads off the movements don't particularly look like they should be flowing into each other the way that they do but it looks good enough anyway. The following sequence in which Moss is running very quickly towards the soldiers is a very good cut however. It combines the slight detail he usually adds to this exaggerated movement in a more pleasing way. It helps that its very fluid as well and not to take away from his good work but there are a few cuts here and there that look like they could have had a bit more work on but then again that could have been what he was going for.
Shingo Yamashita
Sometimes i feel really sorry for poor Shingo cause some of work gets shit on so much. In particular his work on the first 6-7 mintes of Naruto Shippuden #167 (which i really liked) was called man things including being too cartoony which i find a tad contradictory seeing as you are watching a fucking cartoon. His work on Birdy however was quite excellent. Not as retardedly amazing as his work on the Yozakura Quartet OVAs but good nevertheless. As show in the above video, he has a very look realistic style that he chooses to use for the way he animates the characters movements. He also uses minimal shading on characters which allows him to focus more on making the characters move more realistically. He animates hair very well but doesn't go to the lengths that Tanaka does in terms of the detail he puts in. Besides this sequence he also had a crutial sequence he animated in the final episode that you can see in the video below. It starts at 1:48 in the video.
Some people would say that the animation used in the final fight of the series was bad but a youtube comment of all things actually best describes my viewpoint on this issue.
"As someone who has considered following a career in animation, I can't
help but feel discouraged by all the "well there's no detail so
everything looks sloppy" ideology. When there's action that's moving
this fast, and with this much power behind it, excessive detail actually
would take away from the force of the motion of each character and
serve as a distraction from the whole movement. This is not an animator
being lazy; it's one who knows how to use motion in the physical form." -
This fight has to be one of the best i have ever seen because everything came together to make it something truly memorable. The animation, the music, the voice acting, the sound effects etc... The use of minimal detail really allowed Yamashita to produce some intense animation. That's the end of this post now. For my next and final post on Birdy I will be going through the last 3 animators. Look forward to it. *winks*
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