Miyazaki Hayao's Eulogy For the Late Kanada Yoshinori

Miyazaki Hayao looked back on the memory of the late Kanada Yoshinori. Miyazaki and Kanada had worked together on six Ghibli movies from Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind till Princess Mononoke.

When Miyazaki was producing Castle in the Sky, he came up with a new system. He divided the animators into groups and let a number of Genga Gashira (chief key animators) supervise each group. Kanada was one of the Genga Gashira. Unfortunately the system didn't work but the term Kashira (chief) remained in Miyazaki's mind. "Kanada-san was the only guy I called Kashira", Miyazaki said.

"The sharpness of Kanada-san's key animation and posing were unprecedented. And he had an excellent sense of determining how many frames to be assigned to a given scene."

Kanada's key animations attracted many young animators and amateurs who aimed to be animators. Especially, his unique description of lights was called "Kanada Bikari (lighting)" in respect for him. "In 1970's, Uchuu Senkan Yamato and Galaxy Express 999 let many young people dream of a bright future of the anime industry. Kanada-san was a symbol of the anime boom at that time."

However, it was not easy for Miyazaki to deal with his unique art style as a director. "He couldn't adapt his style to each of the works. I was always struggling not to spoil his uniqueness. And the struggle returned great impressiveness to the works." Miyazaki was most impressed by one of the scenes of My Neighbor Totoro, where Mei and Satsuki took a bath with their father. "He submitted extremely dynamic key animations. I thought 'How far he has gone!' It was painfully hard to handle the descriptions of the water overflown from the bath. But the scene got much funnier than I expected." Miyazaki learned how to deal with Kanada's originality, so he actively hired Kanada even if the work didn't match Kanada's style.

There was another reason why Miyazaki liked to invite Kanada to his works. "He lightened the workplace. When we worked late at night, female animators surrounded Kashira and were talking cheerfully with him. He was loved by everyone."

When Miyazaki heard of Kanada's death, he was upset for half a day. "I knew the anime boom supported by the cheerful animators has already ended, but Kashira's death made me reconfirm it's really gone. He is a legend. I like him very much."

Source: IT Media
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