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 Yasunori Miyazawa, who indeed has more Kazuko Nakamura and Akio Jissoji than anyone else. Thank Toei Animation for spreading the studio break layouts that have spread across Japan, to the point of its very own current Kozuma-Kanada hybrid sty...

The Shindo Lineage (Shindo Rogue)  Shindo School  Mitsuo Shindo > Nishiki Itaoka *Given that Yano is heavily influenced by Toyoo Ashida, as well as by Masahito Yamashita, Shinsaku Kozuma and more so 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) Nagaoka School  Daikichiro Kusube > Naoki Tate  Yasuchika Nagaoka Yuu Yoshiyama *Naoki Tate 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 been g...

Dear old and young adult fans of Latin American softcore fiction (due to the unhinged implications of both boobs and butts!)   For more accessibility towards beginners from multiple cultures that aren’t Latin American nor southern European, the author Caridad Bravo Adams has a largely posthumous shorthand, C.B. Adams. The three novels in many non-Anglo markets will expand into six novels for the Anglophone market, in order to let beginners read something fairly above the quality of Stephanie Meyer’s notoriously yucky Twilight series. The future six novels may as well be considered hood classics in the history of softcore fiction due to being better written overall than Tessa Dare’s otherwise fun bodice rippers.  Given that C.B. Adams might’ve been a closet straight ally in a time when misogyny was too flagrant even for most queer phobic humans (no wonder why she didn’t marry a guy), there is a good reason why a lot of her novels can indeed ascend beyond caste and class. 

The Otsuka Lineage  Inoue School  Toshiyuki Inoue  Hiroshi Shimizu  Iso School Mitsuo Iso Kenichi Yoshida Ayumi Kurashima Kiyotaka Oshiyama *Even as a reluctant Yamashita, Itano and Kanada follower, Mitsuo Iso began his career briefly at Neo Media by being taught by Keiichiro Kimura alongside his very estranged colleague, Shinsaku Kozuma’s junior Shinji Hashimoto, who himself was following Yamashita, Tomonaga and Maeda at the same time.  Then again, as Iso’s frames are more similar to those of Yoshinori Kanada and Ichiro Itano, he merged both design styles with Toshiyuki Inoue’s detailed landscapes while innovating them all with his own full limited process, the IsoLocation (aka Full Limited Solidity), allowing the rise of anime fluidity for decades to come. Though based on Kimura’s old style yet clearly blended with both Shinbo and Inoue at the same time as Kanada, Yamashita and Itano, it’s still a relevant surprise renovation in the anime world even today....

It is a very interesting reminder that Baruuba is just the fourth most famous alongside at least 3 Sōji Yamakawa characters.  Tiger Boy -

It’s becoming increasingly well known that there’s a slow growing amount of generational diversity in terms of hybrid art styles.  Ichiro Itano himself is perhaps one of the greatest living effects animators in Japanese history, no wonder why the Itano school has most likely led to a rise in other fusion schools of thought from the early 1980s and beyond, which is pretty understandable when the Ichiro Itano inspired Kazuhiro Ochi now has a pretty strong, long running school once led by the two Kimuras. As one of the school’s older members, Kazuhiro Ochi has long birthed the Neo Kanada movement over 3 decades ago, since members of his school’s first generation include Yoh Yoshinari and Sushio, as well as backups Fujio Suzuki and Kenji Hayama, both masters of stylish comedic animation in their own right. Yuji Moriyama still does interesting craploads of so bad it’s good stuff that I still forgive him for doing his best to just even animate.   But it’s the Trigger school which un...