JulieYBM wrote:The following is very idle speculation. Please be forewarned that it is not confirmed.
Word is Studio Guts announced on their Twitter account--I have yet to discern which tweet this was--that Nakatani Yukiko would be taking on the role of character designer for a long-running series. Nakatani is most often thought of in relation to her wide work as one of the best animation supervisors for One Piece. Nakatani has performed the role of character designer for the franchise before with Episode of Nami and did sub-character designs under Character Designer Inoue Eisaku for Episode of Merry. For Episode of Nami she and Ide Takeo were the only two credited animation supervisors, but there were eight assistant animation supervisors, so my thinking is that in reality Nakatani was a chief animation supervisor. Toei Animation cartoons are very strange with their credits and don't always match up with the rest of the industry. It took forever for Hisada Kazuya--who has been character designer since 2009 or so--to be credited as a chief animation supervisor in addition to his usual character design credit.
Nakatani taking over as character designer makes a lot of sense. She has done so for specials before, is very talented, was once featured on a variety show's segment with regards to One Piece, and is relatively young. Woman have recently become very prominent within the industry, so I wouldn't be surprised if her mentors at Studio Guts are trying to let her move on from the nest. Recently, the president of Studio Guts, Iso'ichi Yuusuke, has been performing the role of animation supervisor for the episodes of One Piece sub-contracted to Studio Guts. This has me wondering if this will not be a regular thing, given how little Nakatani has worked on the franchise as of late. Her last credit was for Episode #638 (30 March 2014). Oddly enough, she did not work on One Piece 3D2Y, either.
Hisada has been with One Piece since Episode #1 as an animation supervisor and key animator. A little over four hundred episodes later he took over the role of character designer from former Dragon Ball GT animation supervisor, Koizumi Noboru. The series is now two hundred seventy episodes past that. I wouldn't be surprised if Hisada wanted to move on by now. With Yamamuro Tadayoshi taking over as director of the 2015 Dragon Ball Z film it would make sense he would call in Hisada Kazuya. Hisada was an assistant animation supervisor for Yamamuro on Dragon Ball Z movie eight and the tenth anniversary movie, so they're hardly unacquainted. If Hisada took over for Yamamuro as character designer the workload would be less than a weekly television series in the long run.
Again, this is all idle speculation that will likely be proven false, but I do find it to be an interesting turn of events.
If that's true, and I hope that is the case, that Yamamuro Tadayoshi has hired talented Nakatani Yukiko to take the role of the character designer, then she would be able to handle it well enough given the time they have to prepare the production for
Dragon Ball Z 2015 movie. With her, she might be able to attract more talents around her to work on the new movie. The animation quality may be jumped from the 2013 movie. With Tate, Oonishi, Nakatsuru, Shida, maybe Hisada, and among few others to be the animation supervisors working under Nakatani, at least we could have a tad bit more expectation in seeing an improved quality in animations, assuming they will have the same amount of cuts
Battle of Gods had . This is Yamamuro's first time directing the movie, let alone directing in any of the series in his career, this does worry me a bit, but if he does well enough for the movie, then we will have pretty entertaining movie to watch.
I recalled there was one occasion where there was a time when one animator (I forget what his name was) expressed his heavy dislike in Yamamuro's models for last year's movie. With Yamamuro being the director and possibly moved on being the character designer, Nakatani possibly taking over the role, do you think he would be willing to get involved with the movie? It will be pretty interesting from here out.
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