Ask John: Is Akiyuki Shinbo an Auteur Director?

Question:
Akiyuki Shinbo is an anime director with a fair sized body of work. Do you think he qualifies as an auteur – someone with his own recognizable “voice,” visual style, and/or themes, as, say, Mamoru Oshii does? If so, what do you think of his corpus?

Answer:
I’ve been a fan of director Akiyuki Shinbo’s work since watching the Yamamoto Yohko OVA series he directed back in 1996. In fact, as much by coincidence as conscious effort, I’ve watched at least some of every title he’s directed, including watching the Yamamoto Yohko, Tenamonya Voyagers, SoulTaker, Petit Cossette, Tsukuyomi, Negima!?, Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei, MariaHolic, Bakemonogatari, Dance in the Vampire Bund, and current Arakawa Under the Bridge series in their entirity. I’ve also watched sample episodes of series including Musashi Road, Yu Yu Hakusho, Kyoryu Wakusei, Montana Jones, Ninku, Midori no Makibao, and Kaiketsu Zorro that he’s done episode directing for. I’m not especially a strident fan of everything he’s helmed. I didn’t like Petit Cossette, and Shinbo’s direction for series including Metal Fighter Miku, Debutante Detective Corps, Triangle Heart: Sweet Songs Forever, and Natsu no Arashi! have been more practical than exceptional. So I don’t intend any disrespect when I say that I’ve always thought of Shinbo as a visual stylist rather than an auteur.

The classification of “auteur” is amorphous, but the categorization of Mamoru Oshii, I think, suggests that the classification includes directors like Maasaki Yuasa, Takeshi Koike, Koji Morimoto, Makoto Shinkai, Satoshi Kon, and Hayao Miyazaki. The difference between these animators and Akiyuki Shinbo is not, I think, one of talent but rather one of interest. Directors including Miyazaki, Oshii, Kon, Morimoto, Shinkai, and Koike have personally created many of their directorial works. Furthermore, to varying degrees, these directors are characterized by their tendency to include thematic depth in their works. Particularly directors including Hayao Miyazaki, Mamoru Oshii, and Makoto Shinkai consistently use their anime to make personal ethical statements. Akiyuki Shinbo, in contrast, creates adaptations of other creator’s ideas. And Akiyuki Shinbo’s seeming conscious goal is often to evoke an immediate, automatic response but not a philosophical and reflective one.

I like some of director Akiyuki Shinbo’s more conventional works, including Metal Fighter Miku, Debutante Detective Corps, and the second Galaxy Frauline Yuna OVA series, but I’m more fascinated by his more distinctively stylized shows – even ones like Tennamonya Voyagers and Dance in the Vampire Bund that are appreciably weak or flawed. Akiyuki Shinbo doesn’t drastically change the material he’s hired to direct; he presents material with his own very distinctive vision that’s typically characterized by abrupt and non-linear edits, vivid and contrasting color, and abstract framing. In other words, Shinbo’s style is highly and primarily visual. In fact, it’s such a distinctive and unusual style that tends to polarize viewers. Possibly no work better exemplifies that fact than the Negima anime. Xebec’s original 2005 anime adaptation of Maho Sensei Negima is rather straightforward and conventional. It’s fairly popular among American otaku. The Akiyuki Shinbo directed Negima!? anime is widely reviled by American otaku, yet it’s proven so popular in Japan that Shinbo and animation studio Shaft was commissioned to produce the Spring & Summer specials, the Shiroi Tsubasa OAD series, the current Mou Hitotsu no Sekai OAD series, and possibly a future motion picture while Xebec has not produced any new Negima anime. I’ve long thought that Shinbo’s directing on the Negima!? TV series was just too “hardcore otaku” for average American anime fans to appreciate and enjoy. The series is the epitome of Shinbo’s unadulterated visual kineticism, filled with random asides, non-sequiters, inside gags, obscure homages, and striking stylized imagery that demands the viewer pay attention – imagery that frequently contravenes conventional expectation. Viewers that want to see a “normal” anime find Negima!?, and much of Akiyuki Shinbo’s stylistic work, too outré while viewers seeking anime outside the norm enjoy Shinbo’s distinctive style.

But while “auteurs” like Maasaki Yuasa, Koji Morimoto, and Mamoru Oshii try to force viewers to extend their perception to anime that resides well outside of the range of the familiar, Akiyuki Shinbo only tries to give the familiar a unique surface appearance. Hayao Miyazaki, particularly with films like Nausicaa, Princess Mononoke, Howl’s Moving Castle, Ponyo, and his short film Yadosagashi, tries to convey his personal messages and introduce new approaches to animation. Mamoru Oshii has challenged viewers with creations like Angel’s Egg, Ghost in the Shell, and Musashi that defy convention and seek to bring new innovation to anime. Makoto Shinkai’s works have all been original and highly personal. Koji Morimoto and Maasaki Yuasa helm anime that challenge viewers both visually and rationally. Akiyuki Shinbo’s goals aren’t so lofty. Shinbo seeks only to entertain while keeping his works visually engaging with unexpected cuts, contrasting colors, and sometimes exceptionly fluid animation. I’m not suggesting that Akiyuki Shinbo is any less of an artist or any less deserving of praise and respect than other “auteur” directors. Shinbo simply belongs to a different school of anime thought and approach apparantly by design. He’s a master visual stylist, and that alone may qualify him for consideration as an auteur. But there’s a significant difference in goals between his work and the anime of other directors frequently considered auteurs.