Jujutsu Kaisen ED
KA: Yuuki Igarashi

Igarashi's sequences are full of flare and confidence from the design & colour choices to the way in which they smear the movement feet & hands mid-performance. Lets take a look at why these dance cuts work so well: (1/?)

Firstly it's important to acknowledge how this 'marker' look is taken advantage of - smears are overlapping w/ colour but they also separate too - doubling down like this creates the impression and is a representation of speed similarly to how our eyes would perceive it. (2/?)

Another crucial part of creating this impression of speed is the framing of the feet close-up. Yuji's feet go out of frame while smeared but a emerge back in the centre a few frames later. The fact that this is done in addition to the smears is evidence of rapid footwork. (3/?)

Even without looking us in the eye there's a large amount of confidence in Gojo's movements, thanks to the extension of the overlapping colour - makes him take up more space on screen while also making faster movements easier to follow. (4/?)

There's even instance where a bit more depth is created through these extensions - generally Igarashi does a great job at making these seemingly 'flat' characters (on these 'block colour' backgrounds) come to life. (5/?)

A few extras:

- a good amount of this is in 3s, which has shown to generally be good for emulating human movment
- that sense of performance is maintained through eye contact - has the feel of confidence but also (this kind of contradicts) breaking the wall between them and us.

- I guess this also shows how valuable real-life reference is in animation (?) All the small quirks of dance can be emulated with reference + 3s kinda feels closer to human movement (at least the way we perceive it) hence sequences like this can be pulled off.