Ask John: Who is John’s Favorite Director?
|Question:
Who is John’s favorite Anime Director and why? I personally think Kazuhiro Furuhashi is the best of his generation. From Rurouni Kenshin (TV and OVA), Hunter x Hunter to Le Chevalier D’Eon and Real Drive, Amatsuki to his latest, Gundam Unicorn. He continues to make compelling works and most of all, his realistic characters and situations. I think he is the best director for adding emotion to a scene which is vital in any great story or film. One of the many things he makes use of is his trademark use of first person point of view and choice of music that reflects mood in certain scenes which makes his work so effective.
Shinichiro Watanabe is probably a close second but I feel he hasn’t created enough work yet [which] sometimes makes Cowboy Bebop seem like a one hit wonder even though Samurai Champloo was great too.
Answer:
I maintain a personal credo of attempting to not follow specific anime directors. I understand that appeal and value of doing so, but doing so also inevitably encourages predisposition to upcoming productions and can lead to inflated expectations and disappointment. I have an academic interest in the work of many individual anime directors, but I try to avoid expecting any particular director to consistently produce shows that I’ll adore. Instead, I want to appreciate each anime I watch on its own strengths. That said, there are anime directors whom I respect and directors that I like. It would be very easy to give a predictable answer. I can’t imagine any anime fan that wouldn’t call Hayao Miyazaki a favorite director. Satoshi Kon, Mamoru Oshii, Masaaki Yuasa, and Koji Morimoto are particular critical favorites. Seiji Mizushima has come to prominence for me, particularly, with his recent run of Fullmetal Alchemist, Oh! Edo Rocket, Gundam OO, and Hanamaru Yochien. I’m also particularly fond of Tsutomu Mizushima, director of Hare Nochi Guu, several Crayon Shin-chan movies, Bokusatsu Tenshi Dokuro-chan, Dai Mahou Touge, Mudazumo Naki Kaikaku, Yondemasuyo, Azazel-san, and XXXHOLiC. However, if I’m forced to choose a single favorite director, my selection is Koji Masunari.
With titles including Photon, Android Ana Maico 2010, Kokoro Toshokan, Risky Safety, Kamichu, R.O.D., and Saber Marionette R on his resume, Masunari has consistently helmed productions that I’ve enjoyed immensely. Moreover, Masunari’s productions are consistently imbued with a personal character that’s not always present in every anime production. Masunari’s directorial efforts – with the partial exception of the R.O.D. television series, I would say – are consistently distinguished by stylistic creativity and evocative atmosphere. Photon remains one of the most hilarious anime series I’ve ever watched. Maico 2010 took place almost exclusively inside one room, yet the series never felt isolated or dull. Kokoro Toshokan, Risky Safety, and Kamichu – especially the later – are heartfelt and charming productions that deftly merge whimsy, fantasy, sci-fi, and tender sentimentality. The R.O.D. and Saber Marionette R OVA series are exhileratingly exciting. In its short length, Saber R packs in a tremendous amount of character. The R.O.D. OVA series remains one of the most kinetic screen productions I’ve ever watched. Masunari’s upcoming feature film, Welcome to the Space Show, promises to again contain the wondrous visual creativity evenly balanced with engrossing characterization that has typified his directing career. Anime otaku typically think of directors like Miyazaki, Kon, Oshii, Yuasa, and Morimoto as anime’s preeminent personal directors – creators who express their distinctive artistic vision through each of their unique anime productions. We tend to not give as much credit to the directors who helm productions that seem less personal and more commercial. However, considering the way that Koji Masunari drastically diverged Maico 2010 and Risky Safety from their original manga, in the process creating his own original vision of these titles, and his creative involvement in the development of R.O.D, Kamichu, and Welcome to the Space Show, I think that Masunari deserves to be recognized as one of the anime industry’s great personal directors – a director that makes his shows uniquely his own and imbues each of his works with an extraordinary degree of personality.
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Who cares about directors or production staff members as general! As long as the series is good and enjoyable for the individual.
If we talk about studios, now that does matter as it speaks volumes of what to expect of a series.
Koji Masunari is an interesting choice. I remember looking him up after re-watching the dark and perverted SMR and being surprised that he did the bubbly happytime Kamichu and all that other stuff, and the upcoming A-1 Pictures movie (Space Show)… I’m vaguely looking forward to that.
I have a lot of names that I like to follow, whether those are directors or studios or other creative staff (key animators), but it’s true that those are never great predictors of whether a particular production will be good. At best it’s only a predictor of what kind of sensibilities will be expressed in it.
Few directors and studios are actually consistent. Even Masaaki Yuasa, whose productions are usually bursting at the seams with ideas and unpredictability, is helming the painfully repetitive Yojouhan Shinwa Taikei (Tatami Galaxy) right now.
Studios have their ups and downs as well– their top-tier prestige pieces and their cheaply-made cash cows… studios tend to be diverse in their output (MadHouse as the best example), and the only ones I can name that are truly consistent in production quality and their sensibilities are Kyoto Animation and Ghibli.
I think the reason why I follow creators & studios is not necessarily to discover or preempt great work, but to gain an understanding of what unifying ideas have gone into a body of work. In other words, I want to understand the thought processes and sensibilities that have gone into the thing I’m watching, and one way to do that is to learn more about (and watch more from) the key creators and the studio behind it.
I guess I try not to view anime as arbitrary disposable entertainment that materializes from nowhere, wows people with flashiness and drama, and evaporates 1 year later. There’s always a culture (key creators, studio, anime industry & fanbase as a whole) whose ideas are manifested in every anime, and understanding that mix of cultures allows me to deeply connect with, or in other words _enjoy_, the anime that I watch.
I enjoy following directions if only for the sake of checking out how they diversify their skills over the years. One might be an key or integral designer or storyboard artist in television for a dozen or more years without ever getting the opportunity to direct… and that wouldn’t be uncommon. And yet, becoming an anime director isn’t what’s important here, it’s becoming a recurring anime director. For longtime animators, becoming a director for the first time is a big deal… but getting the call to direct more than once is the key to success.
In any case, with that all said, at the top of my list of television directors: Shoji Kawamori, Ryousuke Takahashi, Akiyuki Shinbou, and others I’m sure I might be forgetting.
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a sucker for almost anything/everything with Kawamori’s thumbprints on it. MACROSS PLUS certainly wasn’t the first OVA I sank my teeth into, but it blew me away and showed me how someone composes a series in such a way that character, setting/environment, and narrative style are equally important in a big way. He’s largely a mecha design specialist, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t know his way around the studio. I liked the ESCALFOWNE franchise, especially the film for shounen fans; thought the AQUARION TV series was beautiful; absolutely hated EUREKA SEVEN but loved his designs; have heard great things about ARJUNA… and so on and so forth.
My adoration of Ryousuke Takahashi is admittedly part-hallucination and part-sentimentality. ARMORED TROOPER VOTOMS is one of my all-time favorite anime TV series of all-time’s all-time — killer mecha action and evolving character drama. His eventual contributions to the political drama GASARAKI and sci-fi action project BLUE GENDER, I have found particularly enjoyable. I haven’t finished watching FLAG, but I like what I’ve seen thus far.
I first saw Akiyuki Shinbou’s work in the more-than-strange horror OVA TWILIGHT OF THE DARK MASTER and later saw his work again in SOUL TAKER, which is probably the most inaccessible anime series ever created. But at those times, I wasn’t aware he was the director. The way he approaches the darkness of human sentiment with canted camera angles, detailed character studies, and an incredibly diverse slate of screentones and tints or filters always astounds me. I’ve long since enjoyed the horror OVA LE PORTRAIT DE PETITE COSSETTE, romantic-comedy MOONPHASE, and am on my way through the suggestive comedy MARIA-HOLIC, in which Shinbou is surprisingly thorough in his personal touch. Shinbou’s directed a lot of other titles from a lot of other genres.
Yeah, you make a good point with directors John.
You can’t just follow them hoping for consistency.
I was gonna put Kazuki Akane in too but like you mentioned
alot of his work I kinda don’t like. I really love Heat Guy J and
Escaflowne but I’m not into Geneshaft or Noein or even Birdy really.
Although they are great, they’re just not what I look for in certain
productions. Also you know Naohito Takahashi of Berserk fame did
so well with Berserk, but most of everything else he’s done is so
far from Berserk it’s not even funny…