And Yet the Town Moves op Cut40

[jiangdc]

And Yet the Town Moves is originally a manga done by a genious mangaka called Masakazu Ishiguro. I believe manga fan should be really familiar with him. The story is about Hotori Arashiyama (Some fans call her "Bakatori") and her friends daily life in a local Maid coffee. There are occasionally detetive story, alien or ghost elements as well.
The animation was produced by Shaft under Shinbou Akiyuki's direction. Given its quality, overall this is a highly recommended anime for watching.

Here is Opening sequence of cut 40 from the opening. The full opening is under the storyboard of Umetsu Yasuomi. He is also the animation director. The layout artist of Cut 40 is Toshio kawaguchi, a big name in Studio Ghibli,also worked in EVA, Ghost in the shell, JIN-ROH etc.
Cut 40 is corresponding to the lyric “Down Townへくりだそう” which is 1：06 of the song. The action Hotori Arashiyamahoding a sweep and quick turn around. Roughly 3 seconds with 22 key frams. Correction sheet was done by Umetsu Yasuomi himself but unfortunaly I scanned as black and white.





Full Opening https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxQqb_ULBjk
The singer is Maaya Sakamoto, a very talented singer and Seiyu. Her famous op song includes Kiseki no Umi,hemisphere,tune the rainbow,Yubiwa etc,etc... Yeah, really like her songs.
The song is actually a cover of Tatsuro Yamashita’s famous song "Down town". Same name.
Highly recommend his original version as well
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlwXdLCUG1A

[Pixel]

Wow man, it looks like you've got every frame there at the layout stage.

If not every frame, nearly every frame anyway. I didn't think studios usually did layouts over this many frames-they must have really wanted to get her moves just right. That show is relatively recent too, note the widescreen aspect ratio. Congratulations, DC-you've got something that I suspect is rather rare, and it's cool to see it running in any case.

I have a cel featuring a character from Maaya's early days as a seiyuu, right here. Sadly the character doesn't actually talk during the relevant frames.

In addition to singing solo, she has also performed with fellow seiyuu Chieko Higuchi as the duo named "Whoops!"

[jiangdc]

Wow man, it looks like you've got every frame there at the layout stage.

If not every frame, nearly every frame anyway. I didn't think studios usually did layouts over this many frames-they must have really wanted to get her moves just right. That show is relatively recent too, note the widescreen aspect ratio. Congratulations, DC-you've got something that I suspect is rather rare, and it's cool to see it running in any case.

I have a cel featuring a character from Maaya's early days as a seiyuu, right here. Sadly the character doesn't actually talk during the relevant frames.

In addition to singing solo, she has also performed with fellow seiyuu Chieko Higuchi as the duo named "Whoops!"

Thank you, and yes this op cut is super rare (actually I hardly ever seen anything from this anime) . I would say this is my top 3 adding for the year. (Just received my top 1 today from one of my favourite anime )
Glad to see you have Natsumi in your collection! And as usual, you have your page really informative .I checked my gallery, unfurtunately I haven't got any character by Maaya yet. She is relative late compared to most of the cel age animes .
She also wrote the lyrics of Million Clouds and performed this song as the opening of Amanchu! (The original manga was done by my Favourite mangaka Kozue Amano. I was literaly jumping on my bed hearing the animation adaption news back to Oct 2015)