The last time i wrote about the animation in Fairy Tail was around the start of the current series and in that i mostly shat on it for being ridiculously inconsistent (even more so than the first series). As I'm writing this post I'm in a much less irritable mood. I'm back on the Fairy Tail bandwagon after a while of just being sick of Mashima stalling for time with boring arcs. At the start of the Tartaros arc is where the series really hits its stride and gets back to what i loved about the earlier arcs and as i'm enjoying the new episodes i've had some time to look back at the old show and do a bit more research into the people that made that show look good when it did. I already made a sakuga MAD of the old show but as it pertains to this post the most appropriate video accompaniment would be this.
Probably wondering why the second ending was what i chose to accompany this post. Well today we'll be learning about the work of a couple individuals who worked on Fairy Tail during its first couple of years. The first happens to be Toshiharu Murata who was the best animation director who worked on Fairy Tail from Satelight's end of things and the other would be an animator by the name of Sachiko Ohashi. When i was first looking into the animation staff a couple years back i only really looked at the animators who were most prominent and 2 of them also just happened to be animation directors. Murata however is probably more what you think of when you look at an animation director. Even though he never did anime key animation work on an episode, his style is present throughout the episodes he worked on.
Toshiharu Murata is an animator who is perhaps best known for contributing to such works as the first Hellsing series (he was the character designer and chief animation director), Guin Saga (character designer and chief animation director) and Batman: Gotham Knight (he was character designer, storyboard artist and the sole animator for the "Field Test" segment). Given his talents it was a bloody good thing we had him on Fairy Tail as long as we did. Thanks to him the first 5 openings had a consistent style and were generally decently animated and his work as animation director on endings 2-6 kept those consistent in terms of style too. Let's take a look at some examples of what the characters tend to look like under Murata's supervision.
The consistent feature of the characters here is the reduced size of the noses to how Aoi Yamamoto's character designs depict them and the enlarged eyes. Murata's AD work seems to be extensive in his episodes as the character art is in this exact style throughout. Heres some more examples.
The other distinguishing feature of his characters is the unique way in which the highlights in the hair are drawn. Besides applying it to his Fairy Tail episodes, they are in most of his character designs in Guin Saga. It's a pretty simple but easy to identify characteristic of his. It's probably easier to identify than the aspects i described earlier. Seeing as Toshiharu Sugie worked on a decent number of Guin Saga episodes on some cool fights, it's easy to understand why i initially confused the style of the 2 animators as Sugie is able to work with Murata's style fairly well and it was under Murata's supervision that we got Sugie's best work on Fairy Tail as seen here.
Murata seems to make it a habit to do this in everything recently and as you'd expect they are in all the openings and endings he worked on in Fairy Tail. In terms of the endings, this started with his work as AD on ending 2. Using ending 2 as a segue, lets now discuss his work with animator Sachiko Ohashi. Ohashi was the sole animator on a number of Fairy Tail endings starting with the 2nd. This ending established the style that would be used for all the endings that followed until Murata left the show (which was after his work on ending 6 and episode 82). Everything starts off in a fun chibi style and we see many of our favourite characters fly by then the ending is an elaborate lead in to an extended cut of a single character running with some nice background animation. Ohashi only did solo key animation for 2 of Murata's Fairy Tail endings but hers are by far the best of the Murata style endings. Then after Murata left she got to animate basically every ending that followed (starting with 7) with the exception of ending 13. She also got help with the key animation (on endings 10 and 11) by Sayaka Koiso who also worked with Murata a lot in the key animator capacity. Curiously, Koiso was the animation director for the best Fairy Tail openings since Murata's as she was responsible for the quite spectacular openings 10 and 12.
Back to Ohashi hough, the main appeal of her endings is the quality of the background animation and the heart she imbues the character with her character animation. There's generally no action in her earnings by virtue of them being endings but her skill is such that they are the kinds of endings that you don't generally want to skip over. As an example let's look at one of her endings under Murata' supervision first.
This ending was a great accompaniment for the episodes it came after, its focus on Erza and highlighting her attitudes at the different points in her life heightened the emotions felt during the Tower of Heaven arc. The main thing to take away from it is the way if follows Murata's formula. It's also Ohashi's best background animation in a Murata supervised ending. The other highlight in particular is the way it ends with Erza fading from childhood to adulthood and then her heartfelt smile at the end as she cries tears of joy. It hits ya right in the feels as the kids would say. Now for comparison let's take a look at one of Ohashi's solo endings.
Now we aren't looking at this ending in particular because it focuses on my Fairy Tail waifu Lisanna (that's probably 99% the reason though haha) but because it's a different direction altogether from the Murata endings. It still climaxes with the character running at the end but this time Ohashi intersperses detailed cuts of the character emoting along with the chibi stuff. There's some slow moments that have a melancholy atmosphere and Ohashi has the characters walking slowly with specific expressions. Her first ending without Murata (ending 7) was similar in the way it enforced the sad atmosphere but with the detailed character acting cuts here as well as the chibi's it acts as a short character piece much better than Murata's ending 2 and the endings he did without Ohashi. To conclude on this point i basically just wanted to say i really liked Ohashi's work on her endings as they always end with nice character moments, even if they happen to be mostly stills. Her best by far is definitely the last ening of the first series which was 14. It captured the viewers feelings of sadness about the series ending for that moment well.
That it for now folks. Hope this was entertaining as well as a little educational. Been having fun looking up stuff like this in my free time from university work so might as well put all the stuff i learn in blog posts eh. See y'all next time.
Probably wondering why the second ending was what i chose to accompany this post. Well today we'll be learning about the work of a couple individuals who worked on Fairy Tail during its first couple of years. The first happens to be Toshiharu Murata who was the best animation director who worked on Fairy Tail from Satelight's end of things and the other would be an animator by the name of Sachiko Ohashi. When i was first looking into the animation staff a couple years back i only really looked at the animators who were most prominent and 2 of them also just happened to be animation directors. Murata however is probably more what you think of when you look at an animation director. Even though he never did anime key animation work on an episode, his style is present throughout the episodes he worked on.
Toshiharu Murata is an animator who is perhaps best known for contributing to such works as the first Hellsing series (he was the character designer and chief animation director), Guin Saga (character designer and chief animation director) and Batman: Gotham Knight (he was character designer, storyboard artist and the sole animator for the "Field Test" segment). Given his talents it was a bloody good thing we had him on Fairy Tail as long as we did. Thanks to him the first 5 openings had a consistent style and were generally decently animated and his work as animation director on endings 2-6 kept those consistent in terms of style too. Let's take a look at some examples of what the characters tend to look like under Murata's supervision.
The consistent feature of the characters here is the reduced size of the noses to how Aoi Yamamoto's character designs depict them and the enlarged eyes. Murata's AD work seems to be extensive in his episodes as the character art is in this exact style throughout. Heres some more examples.
The other distinguishing feature of his characters is the unique way in which the highlights in the hair are drawn. Besides applying it to his Fairy Tail episodes, they are in most of his character designs in Guin Saga. It's a pretty simple but easy to identify characteristic of his. It's probably easier to identify than the aspects i described earlier. Seeing as Toshiharu Sugie worked on a decent number of Guin Saga episodes on some cool fights, it's easy to understand why i initially confused the style of the 2 animators as Sugie is able to work with Murata's style fairly well and it was under Murata's supervision that we got Sugie's best work on Fairy Tail as seen here.
Murata seems to make it a habit to do this in everything recently and as you'd expect they are in all the openings and endings he worked on in Fairy Tail. In terms of the endings, this started with his work as AD on ending 2. Using ending 2 as a segue, lets now discuss his work with animator Sachiko Ohashi. Ohashi was the sole animator on a number of Fairy Tail endings starting with the 2nd. This ending established the style that would be used for all the endings that followed until Murata left the show (which was after his work on ending 6 and episode 82). Everything starts off in a fun chibi style and we see many of our favourite characters fly by then the ending is an elaborate lead in to an extended cut of a single character running with some nice background animation. Ohashi only did solo key animation for 2 of Murata's Fairy Tail endings but hers are by far the best of the Murata style endings. Then after Murata left she got to animate basically every ending that followed (starting with 7) with the exception of ending 13. She also got help with the key animation (on endings 10 and 11) by Sayaka Koiso who also worked with Murata a lot in the key animator capacity. Curiously, Koiso was the animation director for the best Fairy Tail openings since Murata's as she was responsible for the quite spectacular openings 10 and 12.
Back to Ohashi hough, the main appeal of her endings is the quality of the background animation and the heart she imbues the character with her character animation. There's generally no action in her earnings by virtue of them being endings but her skill is such that they are the kinds of endings that you don't generally want to skip over. As an example let's look at one of her endings under Murata' supervision first.
This ending was a great accompaniment for the episodes it came after, its focus on Erza and highlighting her attitudes at the different points in her life heightened the emotions felt during the Tower of Heaven arc. The main thing to take away from it is the way if follows Murata's formula. It's also Ohashi's best background animation in a Murata supervised ending. The other highlight in particular is the way it ends with Erza fading from childhood to adulthood and then her heartfelt smile at the end as she cries tears of joy. It hits ya right in the feels as the kids would say. Now for comparison let's take a look at one of Ohashi's solo endings.
Now we aren't looking at this ending in particular because it focuses on my Fairy Tail waifu Lisanna (that's probably 99% the reason though haha) but because it's a different direction altogether from the Murata endings. It still climaxes with the character running at the end but this time Ohashi intersperses detailed cuts of the character emoting along with the chibi stuff. There's some slow moments that have a melancholy atmosphere and Ohashi has the characters walking slowly with specific expressions. Her first ending without Murata (ending 7) was similar in the way it enforced the sad atmosphere but with the detailed character acting cuts here as well as the chibi's it acts as a short character piece much better than Murata's ending 2 and the endings he did without Ohashi. To conclude on this point i basically just wanted to say i really liked Ohashi's work on her endings as they always end with nice character moments, even if they happen to be mostly stills. Her best by far is definitely the last ening of the first series which was 14. It captured the viewers feelings of sadness about the series ending for that moment well.
That it for now folks. Hope this was entertaining as well as a little educational. Been having fun looking up stuff like this in my free time from university work so might as well put all the stuff i learn in blog posts eh. See y'all next time.
No comments:
Post a Comment