What is "Sakuga" in Anime, And Why Has It Become So…

Summary

Sakuga refers to stunning animations seen in anime, celebrated for its visual charm and dynamic quality.
Specific animation studios have shaped the anime industry, with studios like ufotable known for high-quality sakuga.
Focusing on individual animators in anime production gives credit to the unsung heroes behind our favorite animated works.

Anime has been capturing the hearts of fans around the world for several decades, undergoing several changes as it evolved as a storytelling medium. Some of its most celebrated titles arose in the period seen in various realms as the golden age; a renaissance era in which some of each medium's most legendary instantiations were revealed to the world. The late 2010s and early 2020s may be yet another renaissance for the anime medium, an era in which the visual fidelity of Japanese animation is at an all-time high.

Sakuga has been elemental to this emphasis on gorgeous visuals and captivating, dynamic animation; but what exactly is "sakuga", and why has this word become an increasingly important aspect of anime production?

The Terminology Explained

What Is Sakuga?

Put simply, "sakuga" refers to moments in animation that have sharp increases in quality and are impressive to witness. Moments that stand out to viewers for their immense visual charm, dynamic motion and otherwise captivating aesthetic quality are particularly enjoyable to anime fans overall for what they add to productions that are often held back by budget constraints. The word "sakuga" is written 作画 in Japanese, directly translating to "working drawing". In its original language, it just refers to animation in general, but when loaned to English, it specifically refers to the aforementioned eye-catching moments of brilliance seen in countless anime titles.

Sakuga has always been an element of anime production, and is the reason we celebrate many classic anime series and films, but in recent years, sakuga has become a prominent topic of online conversation among anime fans who are also into animation. Sites like Sakugabooru are huge troves of information about sakuga, including the names of animators behind some of the most celebrated pieces of animation, details about production, information about techniques and more.

As mentioned before, moments of brilliant animation have always been part of the medium, as creators love what they do and look for ways to push the envelope of the medium's capabilities. While it's easy to recognize the sakuga in action sequences and/or battles, what makes getting into sakuga and the animators behind certain recognizable scenes is the fact that fluid, eye-catching animation can come up at any point in time to emphasize any kind of moment in an animation.

Anime that are generally celebrated for having high-quality sakuga include titles like Fate/Zero: Unlimited Blade Works, which is often hilariously referred to as "Unlimited Budget Works" in reference to the mind-blowing animation sequences seen in the series courtesy of ufotable, the studio behind Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, perhaps one of the most recognized "sakuga festivals" in modern anime. While it has always been part of animation and isn't necessarily in reference to anything special in Japanese, sakuga has become particularly important in English-speaking fan spaces, but why has its prominence seen such a sharp increase?

Is It The Impact of Specific Animation Studios?

What Have Distinct Studios Brought to the Fore?

Studio Bones Confirmed For Gachiakuta Anime

Many major anime studios have come and gone over the past forty years, many of them coming to prominence through the emergence of hit original titles or highly celebrated anime adaptations. For instance, Studio Pierrot had a strong hold on some of the adaptations of Shōnen Jump's biggest works after the magazine's Golden Age of the mid-80s to late 90s; while Toei seemed to have dominion over some of the medium's biggest hits overall, including Slam Dunk, Dragon Ball and Sailor Moon. Sunrise became indispensable to the medium as the studio gave rise to the medium's most prominent giant mecha anime franchise, Gundam, while Gainax broke the mold of the mecha genre with the medium-defining Neon Genesis Evangelion. Madhouse produced various acclaimed anime titles throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s before really enjoying a period of immense success in the 2000s and 2010s.

Studio TRIGGER, formed from a group of former Gainax employees in 2011, burst onto the scene with a highly energetic approach to animation that quickly captured fan attention with titles like KILL LA KILL, while Shaft became known as the avantgarde anime studio, a perception that was largely influenced by the work of Akiyuki Shinbo Shin Oonuma, and Tatsuya Oishi, who developed what came to be Studio Shaft's iconic experimental style and direction. Many of the aforementioned anime production studios were established in the 1970s as a result of the mass exodus from Osamu Tezuka's MushiPro, a studio established in rivalry against Tezuka's former employers, Toei Animation, that went bankrupt in 1973. It's impossible to mention them all, but various studios began to show personality through some of the trends and habits of animators that showed up in the final product.

De-Centering the Studio

Recognizing the Hands at Work in Our Favourite Pieces of Art

Fans tend to focus on animation studios when they consider whether an anime title will have what they're looking for, or the kind of animation quality they're looking for. For example, it became a rule of thumb, almost, to assume that works made by Madhouse would always have brilliant visuals for their time (something that MAPPA has since inherited), but when fans talk about sakuga, the credit often goes to individuals involved in the production of particular titles.

Anime production projects are often times put together by freelancers rather than staff who belong to a particular studio. Thus, focusing attention on the studio can erase the work of the generally heavily overworked, heavily underpaid staff responsible for creating our favourite anime titles. In such massive collaborative projects such as anime productions, there's usually only a few names who catch the attention of fans, such as cast members and directors, but in this growing enthusiasm for the craft of animation, the unsung heroes of its production might just be able to get more recognition for the work they do.

Some of the names that have become synonymous with sakuga include Arifumi Imai, who gave us THAT Attack on Titan Season 3 chase scene, Yutaka Nakamura, a legend who has worked on countless anime titles including Frieren, Mob Psycho 100, Fullmetal Alchemist and many more. There are literally thousands of animators whose contributions to the productions of which they were part are available to see on their social accounts and other places online, and sites like Sakugabooru have countless entries by anime title, animator and other metrics. In essence, sakuga can be considered a site of individual expression in a production, emphasizing certain moments and otherwise capture the imagination in a way that is rather different from other forms of animation, and becoming a very interesting part of "otaku" culture in terms of the way fans engage with the anime they watch.