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Inuyasha Ep. 142: Untamed Entei and Horrible Hakudōshi
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Episode Director: Megumi Yamamoto
Script: Katsuhiko Chiba
Animation Director: Shin'ichi Sakuma
This episode, which introduces the major villain Hakudoshi, largely concerns two minor characters, the oni Rengokuki and the demon-horse Entei. The team that created it was made up of series regulars. Director Yamamoto handled 22 additional episodes, while the script for this and many other installments was written by Katsuhiko Chiba, best known for Series Composition of E's Otherwise (2003).
The episode's animation director was Shin'ichi Sakuma, a hardworking artist who supervised 69 episodes of this series, more than any other animator. He had a distinctive style visible in the roughs and layouts for several of my sketch sets, including those from Episodes 101, 114, 149, and 164. This work did not impress Dylan Acres, author of the interesting Inuyasha Director Guide, who rates Sakuma as "definitely on the low rung in terms of quality when compared to the others." He adds, "His characters tend to be stiff with significantly less movement. His colors often look flat as well."
That said, Acres concedes that Sakuma's work for the Final Act episodes was considerably better, perhaps because it was done under much less work pressure. And judging from the cuts I’ve obtained from the episodes above, the layouts and roughs are considerably more basic than those by other artists, yet Sakuma was able to get the results he wanted, as the dougas at the end of the process seem as smooth and finished as those from episodes supervised by other animators.
This set of sketches, which I obtained in July 2005 during my early days of collecting, appear to be a fat package of "foul papers," rejected layouts and genzus or preliminary drawings for the work that was eventually submitted and became the basis of the finished episode. After including some of the more finished sketches in other galleries, I eventually decided that this interesting "look behind the scenes" was worth a gallery of its own, with a fuller view of the sketches showing how very rough images were developed into more sophisticated drawings step by step.
While I can't say for certain, I believe at least some of these sketches to be Shin'ichi Sakuma’s work, as the preliminary drawings from the other episodes show prominent use of pink and orange colored pencil at the entry level. Many of these drawings show these very basic drawings elaborated very delicately with graphite strokes, just as in some of the layouts and roughs from Sakuma's episodes. On the other hand, they might have been done by a key animator who worked regularly under Sakuma. In any case, they are interesting in revealing a distinctive approach to animation, one that left a major impact on the Inuyasha series.
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