u/Electrical_Chance991

Looks like every fight is gonna be well animated

They been uploading clips regularly on their official twitter account and my god it looks really good.

Nobody expected this from JC staff but looks like they're putting all their resources onto Overgeared anime.

It's gonna start airing next season from October 2026

This show just came out a day ago and Tetsuya Takeuchi, the director of Kagurabachi anime was credited for Action Storyboard and Action Animation Director for this ep and this is what he delivered. My god we're in for a treat.

You might remember him from his work where the meme "Never Pause Naruto" started.

I watched most of the AOT without interacting with the community so I was really surprised when I saw final chapter's discussions and a lot of top comments being upset that Historia was benched in that final stretch of the manga. A lot of ppl really considered that as a huge deal breaker for them and I genuinely... don't understand.

Historia from her introduction never really stood out to me as a character. Don't get me wrong she's a "great character" in the story and her arc is great but she, as an "anime character" never really stood out to me. Like characters like Riener, Mikasa, Annie, Pieke, Falco, Gabi, Levi etc stands out to me for their personality, character traits and design. That's why I understood why they were there during final battle.

But Historia as a character never stood out to me like that. Her design wasnt all that special, there weren't really any memorable character traits bout her and her personality wasn't something unique that made her stand out among sea of anime characters. Yeah her arc was great and her love story with Ymir was cool but still I assumed she was always gonna be one of those characters that'll be important for 2-3 arcs and then we'll only see them few and far in between. And that's exactly what happened and I wasn't really surprised.

But I saw a lot of ppl genuinely confused and even upset that we didn't see more of her. Don't get me wrong wanting more of a charachter you like is not that big of a deal but ppl were acting like one of the core members of cast was missing or sum. Like when many ppl genuinely hated the ending for that, made fanfictions of Eren getting together with that character or having a baby, I was genuinely confused.

Did I miss something, how did Historia develop this much of cult even though she was only present for like a short bit in the manga and never really felt like a main cast atleast imo

Name - False Memory

First 3 eps just dropped

Some info -

The Main director of Naruto, Hayato Date as usual outsourced majority of the pain arc to different studios and prioritizes all the main resources on two most important eps, them being EP 166 and Ep 167. Since Naruto was a weekly show with no breaks, the main director made a choice of always prioritizing "key/major episodes" while putting other eps in low priority and done by other teams/studios. That's why as we all know there are certain eps where the quality of animation and direction just BUMPS up quite a lot, those are priority eps done by the core staff.

Director Wakabayashi was responsible for directing 167 and in that he gave the animators 100% creative freedom. The production only had 3 man team to animate the entirety of the episode. Some of the most important staff members of Naruto staff were busy working on the Naruto movie and could not help out for pain arc. Those 3 animators were Kenichi kutsuna, Shingo yamashita and Norio Matsumoto. Shingo Yamashita animated first 5 and half minutes of the episode where he completely sacrificed the drawings to have highest possible fluidity during that fight. Kutsuna did the same too, stretching and morphing characters to it's absolute limit. Whether the scenes as a result looked goofy or not was not even a question came to their mind, they were just doing the best job that they could at that time. And ultimately we saw the result.

Sadly this was the unfortunate turning point of Wakabayashi's career. Imagine spending like half a year on the most high profile and the most important episode of the entire franchise, you're carrying the hopes and dreams of the series director, fans and the entire production. All of those resources to put out an episode that is widely regarded as a "Bad episode".

Im not saying that he is not working now. No, he is still storyboarding episodes but one of the most talented directors who tried to push the boundaries of animation and gave animators 100% creative freedom, now only gets to work on "low priority episodes" with minimal resources. Wakabayashi has done storyboards for 29 Boruto episodes, I didn't even know they existed until I looked them up. It's just that he is no longer getting any opportunity to do any high profile work and there's no way of telling whether that's his own choice or because his reputation has gone down to a point where no studio is willing to give him that opportunity. Its just a sad situation overall.

All those 3 animators who animated the ep are now legends in the anime industry btw, putting out some of the best works possible. Kutsuna is responsible for upcoming Sekiro anime, Shingo Yamashita just recently directed Cosmic princess Kaguya which was a massive succeess, and Norio Matsumoto as we already know is one of the legends who has inspired countless animators.

BTW before ppl misunderstand, Wakabayashi wasn't some random director that they gave a priority ep, Wakabayashi was responsible for directing the OG Naruto vs Sasuke fight that everyone remembers soo fondly. He also directed the Sasuke vs Orochimaru fight in the forrest. He was the main guy in Naruto production when it came to directing "important action eps". That's why he was given the responsibility to direct the Naruto vs pain fight.