Qualitative Production Info

[paparapa!!]

Hey, I was wondering, what are some of the qualitative aspects of the production process? How do things like, for example, the director of a particular episode affect the quality of an episode and in what way? What do you consider the best produced episodes(taking together factors such as animation, music, art, voice acting, editing, direction, etc.) independent of story?

If I can think of anything else later on I'll post asking about it, in the meantime, thanks again

[csl002]

Well, simply...some directors are simply better than others and produce better results. Some directors also have a certain style and feeling that they have in any episode they direct. I'm a big follower of staff in any anime I watch so I tend to notice these things.

One of the better directors and a personal favorite (even outside of DBZ, he's a great director) is Shigeyasu Yamauchi. He directed 45, 49, 53, 57, 95, 99, 104, 109, 114, 118, 123, 128, 132, 136, 147, 156, 160, 167, 190, 207, 232, 236, 239, 243, 247, 252, 256, 272, 275, 279, 283 according to the credits on this site, along with several movies.

He's just got a great visual eye and sense of editing. He's sort of the first in line of a certain line of visually flamboyant Toei directors. Kunihiko Ikuhara, the most notable Sailor Moon director as well as the director of series like Revolutionary Girl Utena and Mawaru Penguindrum outside of Toei, considers Yamauchi his mentor. Ikuhara himself went on to mentor directors like Takuya Igarashi (director of most of the Doremi series (which Yamauchi also worked on), lots of Sailor Moon including the Stars series, Nadja, and other things at Toei, directed Soul Eater (which Ikuhara also worked on), Ouran Highschool Host Club, Star Driver at BONES) and Mamoru Hosoda (director of the first two Digimon movies, One Piece movie 6, Superflat Monogram, episodes of Nadja, and key animation on DBZ and DB/Z movies at Toei, directed hit movies like The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and Summer Wars, and was the original director of Howl's Moving Castle at Ghibli before getting fired for being too different for Ghibli. Also Hosoda seems to be friends with one of the main DBZ anime artists/animators, Katsuyoshi Nakatsuru, as he's worked on all of Hosoda's movies even outside of Toei!)

This post sort of veered off the subject of DBZ but I hope it was informative nonetheless. I also didn't answer much about your first question, but for that I will defer to a better writeup than I could do from Ben at anipages:

演出 Enshutsu = Episode Director (TV) or Technical Director (movie)

監督 Kantoku = Director

There are various terms for director in anime, which can be confusing. The kantoku or director is the one who oversees the whole project, steering it towards completion by coordinating the various main staff, and making important creative decisions about the project as a whole. The enshutsu or technical director is responsible to the director, and does the physical work of putting together all the components (art, animation, sound) into the final product. As I mentioned above, the animation director is not a 'director' in the same sense. The animation director mainly just corrects key animation. Animation directors answer to both the director and the technical director.

In a movie, the kantoku or director has most of the creative control. The enshutsu or technical director in a movie is there mostly to alleviate the burden on the kantoku by handling the technical tasks that the director might not know about or might not have time to take care of. The director might now know certain photographic techniques, and would rely for this on an enshutsu with more experience in such matters. The enshutsu might also check layouts or key animation for the kantoku and correct lines of dialogue or drawings in a pinch. Ko Matsuo and Shogo Furuya helped Satoshi Kon tremendously in this role on his films.

Among other things, the director is there to make sure things are on track. The director of a TV series checks the storyboards for each episode, and may in fact re-do them or have them re-done if they're not satisfactory. Satoshi Kon had to re-draw the storyboard by Shogo Furuya in episode 2 of Paranoia Agent, and Hayao Miyazaki reportedly re-drew the storyboards submitted by Yoshiyuki Tomino on Future Boy Conan from scratch even though Tomino is still credited. These rejected storyboards might have gotten accepted under other circumstances (Tomino was widely relied upon for his storyboards), but the chief directors happened to be auteurs with exceptionally exacting artistic standards.

In the old days, enshutsu was used to refer to the director of a whole TV series. Nowadays, the word kantoku is used for that purpose, and each episode of a TV series has its own sub-director who oversees that particular episode. The episode director is referred to as the enshutsu. I assume the more holistic and supervisory role of kantoku evolved in the natural course of things as productions became more complex and production methods evolved accordingly.

Enshutsu seems to entail something quite different in a TV environment. The basic job of episode director is to hold meetings with and coordinate the heads of the different sections - animation, art, coloring, photography - in such a way as to achieve the objectives of the storyboard, which is ideally drawn by the episode director, but often these days is drawn by someone else. The episode director checks layouts and key animation as they are handed in to make sure the key animator drew what was required in the storyboard, calling for a retake if not, otherwise passing the key animation on to the sakkan. After everything is assembled, the episode director is responsible for getting any mistakes taken care of and putting together the final package.

Other tasks of an episode director include marking the rush copy used during voice actor recording sessions in such a way that the voice actors know when to read their lines. If everything isn't ready by the time of dubbing, they put together a provisional rush copy of an episode using raw materials like key animation or inbetweens so that the voice actors will have some visual material to work with. Episode directors also put together next episode previews by choosing which shots to use in the preview from those that are complete.

Episode directors in a TV series seem to have comparably much more control over the creative outcome of an episode than the enshutsu in a movie. They're essentially a mini kantoku. Thus you can get an episode like Mitsuo Iso's episode of RahXephon that's remarkably different in tone and style from the rest of the series due to the tight control exercised over the episode by the director of that particular episode. Although naturally, the director of the series would have to approve whatever the episode director decides to do. Talented storyboarders/directors like Keiichi Hara, Hosoda Mamoru and Atsushi Wakabayashi honed their talent working on TV shows where they were allowed to direct episodes in their own particular style.

Almost all anime TV series have a director supervising the whole show and a separate episode director for each episode. TMS's Hajime Ningen Gyators Group Tac's Manga Nihon Mukashibanashi are among the few examples I know of that didn't have a series director, only episode directors.

Yet another level was added to this already complicated hierarchy with the recent creation of the role of Sou Kantoku 総監督 or chief director. Some productions have a chief director, a director and a technical director.