When Hirohiko Araki draws, colors shift like a chameleon with ADHD and onomatopoeia explode across the page. Adapting that visual chaos to television seemed destined for failure, until Naokatsu Tsuda took the helm. This director achieved what many considered impossible: capturing the wild essence of the manga without losing narrative coherence or fidelity to the original.
The technical challenge: animating a manga that hates color consistency 🎨
Tsuda implemented a workflow that combined CGI and traditional animation to handle Araki's kaleidoscopic palette. For JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, he established a dynamic coloring system where clothing and background tones shift according to dramatic tension, replicating the manga's covers. Additionally, he integrated onomatopoeia as 3D elements that interact with characters, a trick that required coordinating digital composition and graphic design teams on every frame.
How to survive a director who asks you to animate an onomatopoeia with shadows 💥
They say that at the studio, Tsuda would arrive with manga panels and say: I want this DORARARA to feel like it has its own weight. The animators, amidst nervous laughter and cold coffee, ended up modeling letters in 3D so they would cast shadows on the characters. In the end, the team understood that working with him was like solving a puzzle where the pieces change shape every five minutes, but the result was always a work of art.