| tuxedocat wrote: |
| My question is; Why did the producers waste this animators talent on a show so puerile as Naruto? The largely parochial audience for this show is not going to understand this, as illustrated by this youtube link.
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Pierrot has doing this kind of thing for almost 20 years now. It goes back as far as
Yu Yu Hakusho with the Akiyuki Shinbo (episode director)and Atsushi Wakabayashi (animation director; also the guy who's responsible for the
Naruto episode in question) episodes that applied a similar approach to their episodes. If you've ever seen complaints about
Yu Yu Hakusho's suddenly turning into "rubber" then these two guys were probably responsible. Their efforts set up a precedent in the studio that still continues to this in their works.
That said, I've seen the same core animators responsible for this episode work on stuff like
Birdy the Mighty Decode, and it resulted them getting similar reactions to their work. So I wouldn't say this reaction is something specific to
Naruto's audience. It's just that a show like
Naruto has so many more fans that the overall feedback is much more virulent compared to what comparatively niche show like
Birdy will get.
I don't have a problem with this kind of animation being on such a mainstream show. It gets these animators and their style of animation exposed to a much wider audience. It's not like they don't work on other shows that are popular, but I think them having an entire episode to showcase their talents to an audience that normally would not exposed to this kind of material is actually something productive. I know my views and expectations on animation would have not have been the same had I not been exposed to Atsushi Wakabayashi and Norio Matsumoto's work on
Naruto. There are others like me who got interested in the specific animators involved in anime because they watched an episode that Atsushi Wakabayashi or the Toshiyuki Tsuru and Hirofumi Suzuki duo were responsible for crafting.
)
