Masaaki Yuasa

Given that Miyazaki and Takahata retired, Masaaki Yuasa (age 50) is perhaps the world's greatest animator working today. Not only because his work has exceptional quality in itself, as he directed several masterpieces of animation, but also thanks to the highly experimental nature of his work.

Other anime directors/artists usually work within the standard "Tezuka manga artstyle" (which sometimes is know in the west as "anime") with some variation (Miyazaki's character designs are clearly different from the norm but still heavily inspired by Tezuka's style while sometimes other work breaks heavily from the usual aesthetic standards, such as Yuasa.

This post/thread will have tons of images and giffs, because they show more of Yuasa's work than words can.

Mind Game (2004) +

Being heavily experimental in it's visuals, extremely aggressive and daring, it's Yuasa's only theatrical film (as most work done in the anime industry is done for TV).









Kaiba (2008) +

It's a TV series yes, but it is listed on MUBI as a film!



This post here is pretty good description of Kaiba:

http://ahumbleprofessor.tumblr.com/p...ki-yuasa-anime



Tatami Galaxy (2010) +

One of Yuasa's most popular works, though I didn't like it as much as some of his fans do.







Ping Pong the Animation (2014) ++

The two masterpieces (at least) among those Yuasa's work I have watched are Kaiba and Ping Pong, while Tatami Galaxy won the animation grand prix in Japan's media's arts festival, the one I loved the most was Ping Pong and Kaiba, because of their highly dense emotional texture.





The character designs are as ugly as they get, while in most anime character designs appear very young, here they are 18 year olds who sometimes look like they are 70.

The animation style looks weird.

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Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.

He is very experimental, very artsy and unusual. Perhaps the most aesthetically creative animator of the last 20 years I might claim.

For instance, in http://todo.ianimelist.com/bbs/phpBB...er=asc&start=0, two of his works were nominated as among the most aesthetically daring anime, one of which reached the semifinals before it lost eventually to Mononoke:



Some anime out there is really visually creative though most opt for the generic "boy's manga" visual style.

Ping Pong is literally perfect.

Kaiba and Ping Pong are the best animations I have watched in the last 2 years, and I have watched 300 animated movies and miniseries in these 24 months.

I don't get into animation much and am unfamiliar with this guy, but those pics you posted totally have me hooked!
Interesting that I hadn't heard of him before; thanks for the suggestion!

Considering he makes mostly TV series and shorts he is only well known among anime buffs. Though he is an animator that deserves to be seem by the wider world, his work is pretty universal in character and still highly personal. IMO he is perhaps the finest animator working today since Miyazaki retired.

I also haven't watching his 2006 TV series which is among his major works, Kemonozume:

I've seen Mind Game. It was excellent. I really do want to see more of his stuff. I particularly have my sights set on Ping Pong and Kaiba. Kemonozume looks really interesting too.

I finished watching Kemonozume, thoughs are in the animation review thread.