Obscure Adventures in Geek and Nerd Culture

The Sano Lineage  Matsuo School  Shin Matsuo  Shuichi Ito  Hanako Ueda  Koki Fujimoto  Kazunori Ozawa *The Matsuo school is more closely linked with the Yamashita effects school even though it’s a Sano school, partly due to showing off a stronger tendency for shivering camera effects and crotch shots. It’s also a Taniguchi Anno hybrid, having become somehow more divergent by adding in Moriyasu Taniguchi’s heavier details while also using relatively fewer frames a la Masahito Yamashita from the late 1980s onward. Sano School  Hirotoshi Sano  Masanori Shino  Eiji Nakada Atsushi Ikariya  *Hirotoshi Sano’s Kanada Itano hybrid school is likely where Masami Obari and his gaggle of friends ended up after being influenced by Hideaki Anno’s many details. Though his effects come from Moriyasu Taniguchi’s, his designs still remain a mix of Yoshinori Kanada’s and Ichiro Itano’s designs, which explains why his style remains highly obvious. The Habara...

The Hisashi Mori Lineage  Imamura School Osamu Dezaki > Ryo Imamura Kazuki Kawata *Ryo Imamura’s school remains the animation school somehow closest to Osamu Dezaki’s overall legacy. It’s so unnervingly close to all of Dezaki’s styles even with divergent succeeding variations, that it still leans much more towards a Mushi Pro-indie lineage, which remains obvious in the sheer intensity of the successor’s own liquid style. Even Kazuto Nakazawa and Toya Oshima show off strong Dezakian features as well.  Nakazawa School Kazuto Nakazawa Toya Oshima Hisashi Mori School Yusaku Sakamoto > Hisashi Mori (aka Hisashi Nakayama)  Hiroaki Takagi  *Oddly enough, Sakamoto did do occasional work at Toei Animation, whereas Sueyoshi funnily enough has somehow more in common with Norimoto Tokura and Shinsaku Kozuma even in spite of obvious differences. Thus, Dezaki and Sakamoto are linked together more so than we think, resulting in an explosion of highly experimental animators de...

Here you go! With so many Morton's fork situations occurring in both our culture and society, it's no wonder that I have learned how to live with a bit of AlgoSpeak, because even with all the nuances, we still can't cherry pick everything and choose arbitrarily all the time. Nothing is fully original under the sun, and yet it’s more likely that people have to become creative and imaginative after all.

For the first tale in the now-largely canonised Tarzan: The New Adventures, Tom Grindberg designed an ugly-cute Tarzan on a mishmash of Jesse Marsh and John Coleman Burroughs (via Ramona Fradon and Sal Buscema), and then Benito Gallego came along with a Tarzan that’s as ugly cute as Shrek. Even after the ERB Universe line launched in 2019, Chris Peuler made a Jesse Marsh-Mac Raboy crossbreed, about as teen audience alienating as Baki the Grappler, yet one of the most accurate takes of the ERBU canon Tarzan by far. Rather tellingly, Rick Leonardi, Shane Foley, Mike Wolfer and Joe Jusko are amongst the few other artists who actually blend them properly for official Tarzan works.  This why Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc’s own ERB Universe and its original canon prefer these otherwise different styles being blended into something else. It makes sense with many of the oldies being the preceding ‘godparent’ styles to most of the newer ones. Jesse Marsh (both first two ever Tarzan covers for De...