Toshiyuki Kubooka is a director and designer who understands fantasy as a large-format stage. His work on the Berserk: The Golden Age trilogy elevated the series to a feature-film scale, with detailed armor and large-scale battles demanding the big screen. His vision, also present in the character design of Lunar and the action of Shangri-La Frontier, seeks a visual elegance that does not sacrifice the rawness of combat.
The Technology of Large-Scale Battles in The Golden Age ⚔️
Kubooka combined traditional 2D animation with 3D graphics to achieve mass choreography without losing detail in the armor. In the Berserk films, every shot of the Hawk of the Millennium battle required specific rigging for the horses and camera control that mimicked steadycam movements. The result is a siege sequence where each soldier has a distinct pose, avoiding model repetition and maintaining the visual coherence of the original manga.
How Not to Die Trying to Draw 500 Identical Helmets 😅
Kubooka must have the patience of a saint or an army of assistants on intravenous caffeine. Because drawing a battle of a hundred thousand soldiers with detailed armor is not a job, it's a death sentence for your wrists. The worst part is that later the viewer arrives and says: Hey, that helmet looks like the one from chapter three. And Kubooka, from his studio, replies: Yes, because we traced it, but with a new scratch. Epicness has its price: chronic back pain.