Shin Oonuma

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

Career

Oonuma's first appearance 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. 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, Takeshi 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 (and vice versa). 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 (which Shinbo worked on as an episode director). 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

Template:Color box In "Director(s)" column highlights Oonuma's directorial works.

Year	Title	Director(s)	Studio	SBTemplate:Efn	EDTemplate:Efn	Other roles and notes	Ref(s)
1997	Berserk	Naohito Takahashi	OLM	Template:No	Template:No	In-between animator
1998	Silent Mobius	Hideki Tonokatsu	Shaft (Radix)	Template:No	Template:No	Key animator
2001	A Little Snow Fairy Sugar	Shinichiro Kimura	J.C.Staff	Template:No	Template:No	Key animator
2002	G-On Riders	Shinichiro Kimura	Shaft TNK	Template:No	Template:No	Key animator
2003	Twin Spica	Tomomi Mochizuki	Group TAC	Template:No	Template:Yes
2004	Wind: A Breath of Heart	Mitsuhiro Tōgō	Radix	Template:No	Template:Yes
	Tsukuyomi: Moon Phase	Akiyuki Shinbo Template:Small	Shaft	Template:Yes	Template:Yes	Assistant episode director Opening director Key animator
2005	Paniponi Dash!	Template:Yes	Shaft	Template:Yes	Template:Yes	Ending animation Supervisor
	Akahori Gedou Hour Rabuge	Hitoyuki Matsui	Radix	Template:No	Template:No	Key animator
2006	Negima!?	Template:Yes	Shaft	Template:Yes	Template:Yes
2007	Hidamari Sketch	Akiyuki Shinbo Template:Small Ryouki Kamitsubo Template:Small	Shaft	Template:No	Template:No	Opening director
	Ef: A Tale of Memories	Template:Yes	Shaft	Template:Yes	Template:Yes	Opening director and storyboard 2nd key animator
2008	Hidamari Sketch x 365	Akiyuki Shinbo	Shaft	Template:No	Template:Yes	Opening director
	Bakemonogatari	Akiyuki Shinbo Tatsuya Oishi Template:Small	Shaft	Template:No	Template:Yes	Opening director
	Ef: A Tale of Melodies	Template:Yes	Shaft	Template:Yes	Template:Yes	Opening director and storyboard
2009	Natsu no Arashi!	Template:Yes	Shaft	Template:Yes	Template:Yes	Opening director Ending director
	Natsu no Arashi! Akinai-chū	Template:Yes	Shaft	Template:Yes	Template:Yes	Series director for 7 episodes Opening director Ending director
2010	Baka and Test	Template:Yes	Silver Link	Template:Yes	Template:Yes	Opening director and storyboard Ending director and storyboard
2011	Baka and Test 2	Template:Yes	Silver Link	Template:Yes	Template:Yes	Opening director and storyboard Ending director and storyboard Screenplay
	C3	Template:Yes	Silver Link	Template:Yes	Template:No	Opening director and storyboard
	Level E	Toshiyuki Katō	Pierrot David Production	Template:Yes	Template:No
2012	Dusk Maiden of Amnesia	Template:Yes	Silver Link	Template:Yes	Template:Yes
	Kokoro Connect	Template:Yes	Silver Link	Template:No	Template:No
	OniAi	Keiichiro Kawaguchi	Silver Link	Template:Yes	Template:No
2013	No Matter How I Look at It, It's You Guys' Fault I'm Not Popular!	Template:Yes	Silver Link	Template:Yes	Template:Yes	Opening director and storyboard Ending director and storyboard
	Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya	Template:Yes	Silver Link	Template:Yes	Template:No
	Monogatari Series Second Season	Akiyuki Shinbo Template:Small Tomoyuki Itamura	Shaft	Template:No	Template:No	Opening director
2014	No-Rin	Template:Yes	Silver Link	Template:Yes	Template:Yes	Opening director and storyboard Ending director and storyboard Ending photography
	Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya 2wei!	Template:Yes	Silver Link	Template:No	Template:No
	Invaders of the Rokujouma!?	Template:Yes	Silver Link	Template:Yes	Template:No	Opening director and storyboard
2015	Chivalry of a Failed Knight	Template:Yes	Silver Link Nexus	Template:Yes	Template:Yes	Opening director and storyboard
	Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya 2wei Herz!	Template:Yes	Silver Link	Template:No	Template:No
	Chaos Dragon	Hideki Tachibana Template:Small Masato Matsune	Silver Link Connect	Template:Yes	Template:No
2016	Anne Happy	Template:Yes	Silver Link	Template:Yes	Template:Yes	Opening director and storyboard
	Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya 3rei!	Template:Yes	Silver Link	Template:No	Template:No
	Magic of Stella	Shinya Kawatsura	Silver Link	Template:Yes	Template:No
2017	A Sister's All You Need	Template:Yes	Silver Link	Template:No	Template:No	Opening director and storyboard
2018	Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody	Template:Yes	Silver Link Connect	Template:Yes	Template:No
	Miss Caretaker of Sunohara-sou	Template:Yes	Silver Link	Template:No	Template:No	Opening director and storyboard
	Butlers: Chitose Momotose Monogatari	Ken Takahashi	Silver Link	Template:Yes	Template:Yes
	The Girl in Twilight (#12)	Jin Tamamura Yūichi Abe Template:Small	Dandelion Animation Studio Okuruto Noboru	Template:Yes	Template:No
2019	The Ones Within	Template:Yes	Silver Link	Template:Yes	Template:Yes	Opening director Ending director and storyboard
2020	Bofuri	Template:Yes	Silver Link	Template:No	Template:Yes
	The Misfit of Demon King Academy	Template:Yes	Silver Link	Template:No	Template:No	Opening director and storyboard
	Our Last Crusade or the Rise of a New World	Template:Yes	Silver Link	Template:No	Template:No
2021	Deep Insanity: The Lost Child	Template:Yes	Silver Link	Template:Yes	Template:No	Opening director and storyboard
2023	Bofuri 2nd Season	Template:Yes	Silver Link	Template:No	Template:No	Opening director and storyboard
	The Misfit of Demon King Academy 2nd Season	Template:Yes	Silver Link	Template:Yes	Template:Yes	Opening director and storyboard
	Ragna Crimson	Ken Takahashi	Silver Link	Template:No	Template:Yes	Opening director and storyboard
2025	Princession Orchestra	Template:Yes	Silver Link	Template:TBA	Template:TBA

OVAs

Year	Title	Director(s)	Studio	SBTemplate:Efn	EDTemplate:Efn	Other roles and notes	Ref(s)
2000	Luv Wave	Katsuma Kanazawa	Triple X	Template:No	Template:No	Key animator
2002	Mazinkaiser	Masahiko Murata	Brain's Base	Template:No	Template:No	Key animator
2003	Nurse Me!	Akiyuki Shinbo	AT-2Template:Efn	Template:No	Template:Yes
	Triangle Hearts ~Sweet Songs Forever~	Akiyuki Shinbo	Seven Arcs	Template:Yes	Template:Yes
2004	Hourglass of Summer	Takahiro Okao	Rikuentai	Template:Yes	Template:Yes
2006	Negima!? Magister Negi Magi: Spring	Template:Yes	Shaft	Template:No	Template:Yes
	Negima!? Magister Negi Magi: Summer	Template:Yes	Shaft	Template:No	Template:No	Ending animation
2008	Shina Dark	Template:Yes	Shaft	Template:No	Template:No
	Mahō Sensei Negima!: Shiroki Tsubasa Ala Alba	Akiyuki Shinbo Template:Small Various	Shaft Studio Pastoral	Template:No	Template:No	Ending animation
2009	Pani Poni Dash!	Template:Yes	Shaft	Template:No	Template:No
	Mahō Sensei Negima!: Mō Hitotsu no Sekai	Akiyuki Shinbo Template:Small Various	Shaft Studio Pastoral	Template:No	Template:No	Ending animation
2011	Baka and Test: Matsuri	Template:Yes	Silver Link	Template:Yes	Template:No	Ending storyboard
2012	C3	Template:Yes	Silver Link	Template:No	Template:No
	Dusk Maiden of Amnesia	Template:Yes	Silver Link	Template:No	Template:No
2014	Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya	Template:Yes	Silver Link	Template:No	Template:No
	No Matter How I Look at It, It's You Guys' Fault I'm Not Popular!	Template:Yes	Silver Link	Template:No	Template:No
2015	Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya 2wei!	Template:Yes	Silver Link	Template:No	Template:No
2018	Masamune-kun's Revenge	Mirai Minato	Silver Link	Template:No	Template:Yes
	Strike the Blood III	Hideyo Yamamoto	Connect	Template:No	Template:No	Opening director, storyboard, and key animator Ending director, storyboard, and key animator
2019	Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya: Prisma Phantasm	Template:Yes	Silver Link	Template:No	Template:No
2020	The Ones Within	Template:Yes	Silver Link	Template:No	Template:No

Films

Year	Title	Director(s)	Studio	SBTemplate:Efn	EDTemplate:Efn	Other roles and notes	Ref(s)
2017	Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya: Vow in the Snow	Template:Yes	Silver Link	Template:Yes	Template:Yes
2021	Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya: Licht - The Nameless Girl	Template:Yes	Silver Link	Template:Yes	Template:Yes

Notes

Works cited

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Further reading

• "Negima!?". (November 2006) Newtype USA. p. 10.

External links

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