Twilight Q / トワイライトQ (1987)  

segment: "Time Knot: Reflection / 時の結び目 Reflection"

[letterboxd | imdb]

Director: Tomomi Mochizuki

Animation Director: Masako Gotō

Art Director: Shichirō Kobayashi

Key Animators: Hiroki Takagi, Kazunari Kume, Kazuya Takeda, Michitaka Kikuchi, Takayuki Goto

Studio: Ajia-do Animation Works

this specific shot is still rotating round and round in my head like a spinning top

one thing i've always understood as Akira Toriyama's influence on manga, even if just assumption on my part, was how his cartooning came to bear when he started writing pure action manga. when I think of his contemporaries I think of overblown special moves like Saint Seiya or the gory fist clusters of FotNS

to me it seemed what Toriyama brought to the table was the satisfaction of clarity in martial arts

when you read his fight scenes, which may have become notorious when animated for dragging on, there's no question about what's happening in the action

a clear kick to the jaw

a clean line of action on Yajirobe's slice

I first noticed this clarity pretty quickly early on in the General Tao fights during the red ribbon arc, where entire fight scenes playing out with these clear motions on the pages

Even as it got more detailed later on, the clarity stayed

clear hits on clear fight scenes

and dirtier but still completely legible lines of action

And when he started introducing the big over the top special moves we got the same thing quite often in DB: that simple visual clarity amplifying the excitement

i'm not super coherent on it right now, i'm not the biggest shonen action fan all the time and maybe Toriyama didn't introduce the world to visually clear and interesting fights in manga.

but when I see any action manga showing off clean fight choreography or sick ass lazer beams that show off clear shockwaves of destruction, i'll always be thinking of the GOAT

RIP Akira Toriyama

Appleseed Illustration And Data File

Art by Masamune Shirow