Masaki Sato definitely made the characters look almost identical to the manga panels, and underrated for it. Even with the right level of gritty hatchet shading. Its what stood out about the Saiyan arc at times you could see it. Imo he did the best looking scenes.
I just wanted to point out a couple of things. Shimanuki and Hisada were both animation directors at Seigasha. They would be promoted in episode 68 (which Shimanuki ADed) when Takeuchi stepped down, and they would then trade off episodes as supervisors. Also Masunaga did not work at Seigasha. He was the animation director at Studio Cockpit with whom Iwane worked under.
Much of the issues in Super's animation early on was badly drawn due to it's poor scheduling. The episodes had little to no production time leading to many poor quality drawings to it's first half. Naotoshi Shida is one of my favorites too. I absolutely love his shading style so much. He has top tier scenes in Dragon Ball and One Piece. One of his best scenes in Dragon Ball is in Dragon Ball Heroes. Another great guy is Ryo Onishi. He's absolutely incredible and did some amazing work on Dragon Ball Super and One Piece. He did the entire scene of Goku fighting Broly up until Goku throws broly over his shoulder in SSJG. That whole first person scene was done by him. He also did a few other scenes in TOP where Android 17 and 18 run up Ribrianne's arm and when Goku is being shot at by Ribrianne with arrows. He's not too well known but he does fantastic work
Damn, i dont even know what to say. This video captured all my thoughts perfectly on Dragon Balls identity when it comes to animation. Like, its a perfect summary. I'd add Ryo Onishi and Futoshi Higashade. Shida is also my favorite and he's the reason why I started to take notice of different stylesin Dragonball. I'll never forget when he animated Trunks slicing Freiza with gorgeous art and then the next episode looked abysmal and I was like WAIT WHY'D THEY CHANGE IT. Then I started to notice that were certain sequences and game intros where the camera moved so dynamically and the characters moved with such fluidity and pieced together that it had to be the same team not knowing it was one fucking guy. Amazing. I really wish info about this stuff would be more widespread so people can finally understand why Super or Z looked the way it did and the circumstances around that. To speak to your point about consistency, it's always something I've appreciated which many people give me crap for. I love the Broly movie because its animation is second to none on the franchise, but it switches art so often that the question of consistency comes into play. Do people prefer consistency or do they not care as long as it looks "cool"? Consistency is something i always appreciated in Western Cartoons over anime but I think theres a time and place for it and for letting people go apeshit with their own flairs and styles.
My only problem with modern Shida is that I think his camera work is a bit too fast, where the characters look like at times they're moving sped up and the heavy rotation use thats is hard on the eyes when the characters are also flying and a bit over the top at times, but his characters look good for not looking as stuff as modern Yamamuo with no hair highlights.
Disagree with 1st statement..dbs itself has never looked as good as those beyond those 3 episode/scenes Db/dbz leagues above them The pool of talent & dedication..back in 80's & 90's Uchiyama artstyle maybe wacky but watch his fight choreography in DB up till Frieza vs Goku pre-SSJ..Real solid work..
