Cumulative rating:	(3 ratings submitted)

Associated Studio(s)

Toyo Laboratory

Synopsis

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Won the 1962 Noburo Ofuji Award: Best Japanese Animation

Animation Type: Standard (Hand-drawn-Cel) Animation

Original Country: Japan

Original Language: Japanese

Reviews and Comments

From Toadette :

There are important clarifications to be made in regards to the so-called "Key Animators" and "Inbetweeners" here. To be specific, Eiichi Yamamoto, Yusaku Sakamoto, Gisaburou Sugii, Kazuko Nakamura, etc. are actually credited for "genga", and Rintarou, Shigeru Yamamoto, etc. for "douga". These terms have relatively different connotations from the American key animators and inbetweeners, and explaining what they mean is insightful in regards to the differences between the American and Japanese animation systems.

I asked magnil about the precise meanings of these two terms. He was kind enough to give the following detailed explanation (republished here with his permission), including how the terms may have applied to "Tales", in particular; as he warns, however, a substantial part of it is based on his own guesswork, and may not be accurate:

"In general terms, "genga" could be translated as "keys" and "douga" could be translated as "inbetweens", like most English sources would do, but there are actually slight differences between the Japan genga/douga system and US key/inbetween system. To further explain this question, I'll quote Yasuo Otsuka's explanation on "genga" and "douga". In his autobiography book "Sakuga Ase Mamire", he wrote:

In America, especially in Disney, there are:

1) animator, who would drew extremely rough poses in general

2) assistant animator, who drew "keys" based on the rough sketches

3) clean-up artist, who cleaned the lines to be prepared for inbetweening

4) inbetweener, who drew inbetweens

But in Japan, 1) 2) are genga's job and 3) 4) are douga's job.

Since his book was written in 80s, he should be refering to post-80s Disney but not classic-era Disney, when there were a more specialized department for cleaning-up. Unlike post-80s Disney's ultra specialized workflow, Japan didn't used assistant animator (except early Toei) nor extra clean-up system, there were only "genga" and "douga" in Japan.

Normally, a genga man would draw all genga/keys for his scenes - by "keys", Japanese actually mean anything not inbetween, that is, extremes, breakdowns, secondary motions (like extra hair, clothes movement), and even layouts if there isn't a specialized role for layouts. These "keys" are often comparatively cleaner than their US peers, more like a tie-down / 1st clean-up / semi clean-up drawing in US system (like the 2nd drawing in this post, sometimes even close to the 3rd final clean-up drawing). A douga man would then do the final clean-up (if needed) and draw the inbetweens. In early animes, some douga men might get chances to tie down rough drawings and add breakdowns (1-2 by Otsuka's words), but nowadays a douga man would normally only do little final clean-up work and inbetween them (3-4 or only 4).

But like there are US animators who don't use any assistants and would tie-down/clean-up by themselves and only left inbetweens for the inbetweeners, there are also Jp animators who work very rough and rely on others for cleaning-up. What a genga/douga do is depends on the studio's specific workflow and the animators' habits. So I guess it's safe to just translate them as "animator"/"inbetweener" unless we know the specific situation.

Back to "Tales of a Street Corner", I knew Gisaburou Sugii worked very rough and Shigeyuki "Rintarou" Hayashi (credited as "douga" in the first one) was probably responsible for tying-down/cleaning-up/inbetweening animators' keys. In the first few episodes of "Astro Boy" series, Rintarou's role was much like an assistant animator would do in US system, clean-up Gisaburou's rough drawings and may even add some breakdowns between extremes. Shigeru Yamamoto could be in the same situation as Rintarou, but the rest douga men in "Tales of a Street Corner" are likely pure inbetweeners with little to no extra works to do. But I should clarify these are all by guess, it's hard to tell how much work a douga man had done."
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