Time for the third instalment of the Truth on Micron Legend! Here we take a look at the B Team. A majority of these episodes are still very good, some almost good enough to make the cut for an A Team level episode. The most prolific directors in this field is Masayuki Motsumoto, having directed Confrontation,Swoop,Vacation, Tactician, Detection, Past Part 1, Threaten, Puppet and Alliance. A rather mixed bag here. All these episodes feature some great animation as well as some that is less than stellar and the ratio is often very different. Past, Part 1 would probably be the most consistent outing.
It’s a very strong episode, but nothing that is truly amazing.
Many other episodes feature small amounts of really strong animation but overall are very average. I’ve mentioned before that it’s likely that Hidehito Ueda contributed many small sequences throughout the series, but here I don’t think that’s the case for the most part.
Masayuki’s quality animation is very stylised. It’s not like anything we’ve looked at before. Very harsh lines and shadows.
Alliance is probably the poorest episode, featuring many colouring errors (some which were not even present in the unfinished version!), scale problems, and overall poor animation. However, it does feature Unicron’s transformation, which is fantastic sequence, so I guess that’s where the budget on that episode was funnelled.
Next up is Shigeki Hatayama, who directed such episodes as Comrade, Underground, Credulous, Reinforcement, Awakening and Sacrifice. Shigeki episodes are typified by being very strong overall, but often featuring small amounts of very poor, off model animation.
Underground being the exception, which is overall a pretty poor outing.
Ken'ichi Ishikura directed the episodes Rescue, Uprising and Union. These three episodes have a huge disparity in quality. Rescue is pretty average with some very strong moments here and there. Union is almost good enough to be a A quality episode, though I do think significant amounts of this episode were directed by the mysterious director who worked on the revised animation in the series. Uprising, on the other hand is one of the poorest episodes in the whole series.
Lots of off model drawings, a huge lack of shading and detail.
It’s an unfortunate beginning to the last arc of the series, which after this, would be a very strong batch of episodes.
Next we have a group of directors who each appeared only once in the series. Ryo Motohira who directed Carnival, Shigeki Awai who directed Ruin and Mihiro Yamaguchi who directed Mars. All of these episodes are pretty strong and consistent. Carnival features a lot of nice, dynamic animation.Ruin has a beautiful underwater colour palate.Mars is pretty consistent but does feature some weird moments here and there.
Finally there’s time to mention Satoru Kusuda, who only seemed to work as a co-director on episodes such as Underground,Credulous, Conspiracy and Tactician. Because of this, it’s really hard to determine what effect Satoru had on the animation in these episodes.
So that’s the B Team. Average, gets the job done but nothing really amazing. Next time it’s the C Team, who barely make the cut for watchable episodes.
Go check out the original collab piece that these are for to appreciate both me and my friend’s art together! (Her part is just amazing and I care them a lot )
