Shin Oonuma

Shin Oonuma is a Japanese anime director, animator, and storyboard artist best known for his contributions to studios Shaft and Silver Link.

Early life

As a child, Oonuma did not care much for anime and found more interest in video games. He watched some parts of Mobile Suit Gundam while in elementary school without understanding it, and vividly remembered parts of a Gamba no Bouken rerun because of a weasel character he was terrified by, but otherwise was obsessed Famicon that was released around that time. It wasn't until late in high school that Oonuma watched various anime. Since he loved games, he was vaguely interested in going into the entertainment industry, so he watched anime as a part of that idea. This led to Oonuma's discovery of the 1992 OVA Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki, which resonated with him through its characters, comedy style, and in particular the nature of its protagonist who is teased at the beginning of the story but essentially becomes a hero by its end. Tenchi Muyo! inspired Oonuma to join the anime industry. Up until that point, Oonuma avoided drawing because his mother was a former manga artist and illustrator and his older brother was a good artist, and Oonuma didn't like being compared; but Tenchi Muyo was the first time he thought about drawing and making the pictures move through animation himself.

Career

Oonuma's first credit in anime was as an in-between animator for Berserk as a sub-contracting employee of Office AO. He continued working with Office AO, and in 2003 made his debut as an episode director on Nurse Me! and Triangle Hearts ~Sweet Songs Forever~ under the series direction of Akiyuki Shinbo. The following year, he was invited alongside Tatsuya Oishi by Shinbo to join Shaft, and the three became known as Team Shinbo. According to Oonuma, Shinbo had invited him to Shaft due to Oonuma's understanding of digital compositing and processing, which he had showcased on Triangle Hearts. Their first project with Shaft was Tsukuyomi: Moon Phase, and Oonuma's liking of the "moe" aesthetic and "gal games" lead to him being particularly helpful to Shinbo on the series, who admitted to having no understanding of the "moe" aesthetics of Tsukuyomi. A majority of Shaft's productions from 2004 to 2009 were subsequently directed by the three, with Shinbo taking an executive role at the studio, and Oonuma and Oishi doing most of the hands-on directorial work. Oonuma was put in charge of overseeing Pani Poni Dash in 2005 and Negima!? in 2006. In 2007, Oonuma debuted as a director on his own with Ef: A Tale of Memories, with Shinbo participating as a supervisor. According to Oonuma, Shinbo's role as supervisor had him look over and assist with the screenplay and storyboards, but otherwise Oonuma was given complete freedom with the adaptation. Oonuma felt that Shinbo's greatest contribution was overseeing the storyboards to episode 2 and, with the reveal of Shindo's memory disorder, his recommendation during the editing stage that the direction of that scene correlate to the way the scene was directed, which Oonuma said broadly influenced his directing style. In 2009, Oonuma left Shaft to pursue work with Silver Link. At Silver Link, Oonuma has taken a similar role to Shinbo's executive role at Shaft. He has been involved with most of the studio's productions as either director or chief director, and has mentored or influenced several directors including Masato Jinbo, Masafumi Tamura, Keisuke Inoue, and Mirai Minato.

Style

Since his time with the studio, Oonuma's directing style has been consistently compared to his former Shaft colleagues. ANN reviewer Carl Kimlinger, in his reviews of both seasons of Baka and Test, noted Oonuma's visual cues, which he seemed to take from his time under Akiyuki Shinbo; in comparison to Shinbo's "directorial madman" approach, Kimlinger described Oonuma's direction as being "semi-abstract" and "light"; Nick Creamer, reviewing C3, noted Oonuma's emphasis on "wildly creative" visuals, reminiscent of his previous series; and Theron Martin mentioned the similarities between Dusk Maiden of Amnesia and Ef. Despite the many analyses of Oonuma's style, Creamer later stated, in his review of the first episode of The Ones Within, that a single directorial style could not be attached to Oonuma, and that his visual style was more likely the result of visual experimentation for the sake of visual experimentation than any particular style of choice.
Initially, while he worked on Pani Poni Dash, Oonuma stated that he did not know how to make a comedy using gags since he had never done one until that point but became more interested in it upon viewing Yasuo Ejima's fourth episode of the series. After he saw Tatsuya Oishi's sixth episode of the series, Oonuma decided to take things he believed were interesting and make them his own. Oonuma also started to work closely with the animation staff, with whom he consulted with on how to make certain the storyboards and other parts of the production better, and would ask them to add their own ideas into the work. Although only a key animator at the time, Oonuma specifically consulted with later Shaft director Naoyuki Tatsuwa regarding some of the series' parodies and references as Tatsuwa was knowledgeable on how to implement them, for example. Oonuma developed his sense of style in tandem with the creators around him, as opposed to Oishi's self-indulgence as a director in which he made his own references and parodies away from what he described as the Oonuma team.
The most influential aspect of Shinbo's directing style on Oonuma, according to himself, was Shinbo's taste in colors in his works. Although Shinbo had, at this time, shifted away from using abnormal coloring, Oonuma noted that it was the "power of color" that he had been mostly influenced by while working with Shinbo. Speaking strictly on Oonuma's debut as a solo-director on Ef: A Tale of Memories, Shinbo noted that Oonuma would contrast close-ups of happy faces with long and sad lines from the characters. He considered his personal philosophy at the time to be storytelling through the pictures on the screen rather than the voices of the characters. For Natsu no Arashi!, Shinbo asked Oonuma to come up with a unique way of portraying the hot summer. After talking with the background team, Oonuma decided to use a high-contrast lighting style to emphasize the power of the sun's lighting. The shape of the lighting, however, which appears in certain shapes, was an idea Shinbo had used occasionally in prior instances, which was influenced by art director Yuuji Ikeda's work on Marude Dameo. Oonuma stated that he doesn't give detailed instructions to either the cast or staff of his works, and instead develops the project around a single guideline by which all of the staff can move around and understand. In adapting works to the anime medium, he takes time trying to appeal to the intentions of the original author and the expectations of the viewers, so as to please both the audience and the creator of the work.

Works

Television series

In "Director" column highlights Oonuma's directorial works.

Year	Title	Director	Studio	SB	ED	Other roles and notes	Ref
1997	Berserk	Naohito Takahashi	OLM			In-between animator
1998	Silent Mobius	Hideki Tonokatsu	Shaft			Key animator
2001	A Little Snow Fairy Sugar	Shinichiro Kimura	J.C.Staff			Key animator
2002	G-On Riders	Shinichiro Kimura	Shaft TNK			Key animator
2003	Twin Spica	Tomomi Mochizuki	Group TAC
2004	Wind: A Breath of Heart	Mitsuhiro Tōgō	Radix
2004	Tsukuyomi: Moon Phase	Akiyuki Shinbo	Shaft			Assistant episode director Opening director Key animator
2005	Paniponi Dash!		Shaft			Ending animation Supervisor
2005	Akahori Gedou Hour Rabuge	Hitoyuki Matsui	Radix			Key animator
2006	Negima!?		Shaft
2007	Hidamari Sketch	Akiyuki Shinbo Ryouki Kamitsubo	Shaft			Opening director
2007	Ef: A Tale of Memories		Shaft			Opening director and storyboard 2nd key animator
2008	Hidamari Sketch x 365	Akiyuki Shinbo	Shaft			Opening director
2008	Bakemonogatari	Akiyuki Shinbo Tatsuya Oishi	Shaft			Opening director
2008	Ef: A Tale of Melodies		Shaft			Opening director and storyboard
2009	Natsu no Arashi!		Shaft			Opening director Ending director
2009	Natsu no Arashi! Akinai-chū		Shaft			Series director for 7 episodes Opening director Ending director
2010	Baka and Test		Silver Link			Opening director and storyboard Ending director and storyboard
2011	Baka and Test 2		Silver Link			Opening director and storyboard Ending director and storyboard Screenplay
2011	C3		Silver Link			Opening director and storyboard
2011	Level E	Toshiyuki Katō	Pierrot David Production
2012	Dusk Maiden of Amnesia		Silver Link
2012	Kokoro Connect		Silver Link
2012	OniAi	Keiichiro Kawaguchi	Silver Link
2013	No Matter How I Look at It, It's You Guys' Fault I'm Not Popular!		Silver Link			Opening director and storyboard Ending director and storyboard
2013	Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya		Silver Link
2013	Monogatari Series Second Season	Akiyuki Shinbo Tomoyuki Itamura	Shaft			Opening director
2014	No-Rin		Silver Link			Opening director and storyboard Ending director and storyboard Ending photography
2014	Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya 2wei!		Silver Link
2014	Invaders of the Rokujouma!?		Silver Link			Opening director and storyboard
2015	Chivalry of a Failed Knight		Silver Link Nexus			Opening director and storyboard
2015	Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya 2wei Herz!		Silver Link
2015	Chaos Dragon	Hideki Tachibana Masato Matsune	Silver Link Connect
2016	Anne Happy		Silver Link			Opening director and storyboard
2016	Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya 3rei!		Silver Link
2016	Magic of Stella	Shinya Kawatsura	Silver Link
2017	A Sister's All You Need		Silver Link			Opening director and storyboard
2018	Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody		Silver Link Connect
2018	Miss Caretaker of Sunohara-sou		Silver Link			Opening director and storyboard
2018	Butlers: Chitose Momotose Monogatari	Ken Takahashi	Silver Link
2018	The Girl in Twilight	Jin Tamamura Yūichi Abe	Dandelion Animation Studio Okuruto Noboru
2019	The Ones Within		Silver Link			Opening director Ending director and storyboard
2020	Bofuri		Silver Link
2020	The Misfit of Demon King Academy		Silver Link			Opening director and storyboard
2020	Our Last Crusade or the Rise of a New World		Silver Link
2021	Deep Insanity: The Lost Child		Silver Link			Opening director and storyboard
2023	Bofuri 2nd Season		Silver Link			Opening director and storyboard
2023	The Misfit of Demon King Academy 2nd Season		Silver Link			Opening director and storyboard
2023	Ragna Crimson	Ken Takahashi	Silver Link			Opening director and storyboard
2025	Princession Orchestra		Silver Link			Opening director and storyboard