Obscure Adventures in Geek and Nerd Culture

The Web Kanada Movement is now a popular breeding ground for many limited frame animators throughout the world, and it’s perhaps due to an unsuspecting Studio Break fanboy expanding anime movement vocabulary altogether. There still is a surprising growth in the use of ‘Konno/Web-Kanada smears’ as a regular tool thanks to Yuki Hayashi being partly inspired by Konno himself.  Being the only predominantly Alt-Kanada founder out of an indirect bunch, Naoyuki Konno has fathered the Web-Kanada movement by innovating quite a lot of batshit, then-little known ideas from the mid-1990s and beyond. With his otherwise realistic shading thanks to Studio Break’s influence, he also created what are now called the ‘Konno/Web-Kanada smears’ for everyone to see!  Being a studio break fanboy at heart, Naoyuki Konno also has animated surfing, Glen Keane-ish Super Robot scenes in Martian Successor Nadesico, which funnily enough resemble a lot of Disney’s Tarzan tree surfing scenes. He’s also the f...

I think the Kanada/Kozuma/Yamashita Pers-kun movements were named for just three guys, Yoshinori Kanada, his cheekier and more internationally relatable friendly rival Masahito Yamashita and Yamashita’s much more surreal friend Shinsaku Kozuma. Unlike Kanada at least until recently, his funky disciple Yamashita still being more influential outside of Japan is perhaps why we get a ton of glitzy, giddy, goofy as hell anime art amongst others.  It’s pretty clear that the OG Kanada/Kozuma/Yamashita Pers-kun movement has now become not just irrelevant but now ultimately outcompeted by the Web, Neo and Alt Kanada/Kozuma/Yamashita Pers-kun movements.  And so, the real reason why the OG Kanada Pers-Kun movement has retired is because of a certain One Piece adaptation by Toei Animation. Even by Kanada schooling standards, the show has such decadently exaggerated motion that it makes even Fooly Cooly look rather relatively tamer overall in comparison. 

The Shindo Lineage (Shindo Rogue)  Shindo School  Mitsuo Shindo > Nishiki Itaoka *Given that Yano is heavily influenced by Toyoo Ashida, as well as by Akihiro Kanayama and more so Shinsaku Kozuma and Tadayoshi Yamamuro, he’s perhaps the most radical first gen Yamashita/Kanada type schooler out there, other than Naoyuki Konno, Yuu Yoshiyama and Naoki Tate, at least in a typical sense. While Shindo and Ashida remain more known for having been colleagues of Kanada, they’re instead lined up with Nishiki Itaoka rather than with the rest.  The Imazaki Lineage (Tumbleweed) Kagami School  Daikichiro Kusube > Masami Otsuka Takahiro Kagami  Yuu Yoshiyama *Takahiro Kagami instead is known for having long achieved the level of knotty, curly angularity that Yoshinori Kanada or the still living effects master Masahito Yamashita would not even do. Thus he and Yuu Yoshiyama have a pretty fairly unique bond that will last for the rest of their lives. He’s having long ...