Recent Animation Staff

[paparapa!!]

I was wondering, who was responsible for the animation in the JSAT, PTETSS, Episode of Bardock specials, as well as any new or re-animation tie-ins with Dragon Ball Kai or any of the recent video games, as well as anthing else? I know that all of the promotional artwork and such has been done by guys like Katsuyoshi Nakatsuru and Tadayoshi Yamamuru for awile, but I was just wondering if there still involved with the animation. If not than who is and if so than who else? Who, for example, worked on the key animation for the specials and video games and who would have been doing the various re-animating and re-tracing for DBK? And why with regards to DBK does everything look so damn inconsistant?

[Hujio]

For the most part, all of the recent animation has been overseen by Tadayoshi Yamamuro. He oversaw most of the productions you listed, as he was the animation supervisor and character designer for "Heya! Son Goku and Friends Return!!", "Plan to Eradicate the Super Saiyans", and "Episode of Bardock". Katsuyoshi Nakatsuru on the other hand hasn't been too involved recently, besides drawing the cover art for the Dragon Ball Z anime comics and being a key animator on "Heya! Son Goku and Friends Return!!".

Dragon Ball Kai is a bit trickier because the specific animators for the re-animated work were never actually credited; all we know is that it was done by the animators at TAP (Toei Animation Philippines). Some of these animators were actually credited as key and in-between animators in "Plan to Eradicate the Super Saiyans", but that still doesn't tell us exactly who did what or if they were even involved with Kai at all. However, we do know who animated the opening and ending animation sequences, as they were actually credited -- Tadayoshi Yamamuro, Tatsuya Nagamine, Naotoshi Shida, and Yasunori Gotō.

While I haven't seen any actual credits for the recent video game animation, it does look like Tadayoshi Yamamuro's work. Hopefully I can track those down to confirm it.

Hopefully that answers your questions, but if you have anything else I'd be glad to help. I eat up questions like these!

[JulieYBM]

The Ultimate Blast cutscenes? Those are credited in the game credits, which is on YouTube. It seems Yamamuro managed to get Kurita Shin'ichi to freelance for the project, which I'm just now noticing. He must've only worked on the opening, though. Now that I think about it, Gokuu versus the Heroes avatars look like his work.

There's a bunch of returning faces, too. Kanno Toshiyuki (the best key animator on the Studio Live episodes), Tate Naoki (one of Seigasha's key animators who really started to come into his own in recent years with his personal style and work as an animation supervisor), Shida Naotoshi (a former Last House animator who left right before their episodes got bad), Oonishi Ryou (the guy who does the key animation for the big fight at the end of Episode of Bardock) and a few of the Toei Phils. key animators who worked on other recent stuff.

Two popular One Piece key animators/animation supervisors also worked on Ultimate Blast. Kawamura Atsuko and and Satou Masayuki did key animation. Satou Masayuki is most well known for being the animation supervisor and character designer of One Piece Film: Strong World.