With the world premier of the movie happening in Japan on 14 November you can expect a lot of Movie #20 spoilers to start coming out mid-November, a month before the official release. I'm glad that the film's production was good enough for the project to be finished a month ahead of schedule, but the 100 minute running time (and eighty minutes of deleted scenes) does make me wish that the film had waited another year to be released, just so we could get more Toriyama goodness.
The overall feel of the film should be interesting, though. It's been implied that the first twenty or so minutes are the flashback to the past, so that means the actual present-day scenes make up four episodes worth of content for the film. Four episodes matches with the length of the theatrical cut of Movie #18, which was itself originally over two hours at the storyboarding stage. It'll be interesting to see how Director Nagamine Tatsuya is pacing the film. Nagamine is already one of Toei Animation's best directors but now that he's handling a 'reboot' of a character that originally debuted in Movie #11, directed by his mentor Yama'uchi Shigeyasu, I have to wonder how many callbacks Nagamine will employ. Throughout the second trailer we already saw this through the use of very specific warm colors and I'm interested in seeing if this will spread to the fight scenes, too.
I really can't wait to see the fights for this film. We already know from both the two trailers and their disappearances from other Toei Animation projects since March that a lot of good animators are working on the film.
Shintani Naohiro is the character designer and animation supervisor but I expect him to try and fit in a short scene from himself even though he's likely busy completely recreating the feel of Dragon Ball as the animation supervisor. What I love about Shintani is how he specializes in character acting, something that Dragon Ball has always, always been dreadfully dry on. In the era of character acting that we're seeing in TV productions both at Toei Animation and at other studios I definitely hope that the reason Shintani was brought on was to make designs that were easy to move in the dramatic scenes, too.
We also know that
Takahashi Yuuya is working on the film, in particular Vegeta versus Broli, which has been described as being very fast-paced. Since all we've seen from Takahashi through the trailers has been his signature way of drawing characters like Yamamuro Tadayoshi did in the mid-1990s I've been pretty concerned that his segment would wind up being as weak as his fighting was in Dragon Ball Super Episode #114 and #122. Takahashi does do a pretty awesome take on Shida Naotoshi's style, though, and with Shida himself being involved as a key animator I'm quite looking forward to what they pull off. Hopefully Takahashi will borrow from what he did in Dragon Ball Super Episode #13.
Speaking of
Shida Naotoshi, the grand master himself has been missing-in-action for about four months now. Shida's only key animation has been on PreCure Super Stars and One Piece Episode #839 since about June. After Shida said on peing that he'd like to do a lot of scenes for Movie #20 I've been cautious about expecting that since he will normally only do 20-50 second scenes. It wasn't until
One Piece Film: Gold came out that Shida finally, finally, finally did
a 'long' scene during his modern era as a veteran ace animator. At 3:37 long Shida's scene in the aforementioned film has become every
Dragon Ball fan's wet dream when it comes to what they want from him. Again, Shida normally does short climax scenes, so to get a long fight from Shida--who is so well trusted at Toei Animation that despite now being a freelancer directors let Shida change the storyboard as he pleases--is a big, big thing. Shida revealed that he did his
One Piece Film: Gold fight in about two months, which means that at the very least we might be getting a three minute fight for Movie #20. I imagine that Shida himself was asked to handle the climatic final fight between Broli and Gogeta, but that leads into my next animator...
...
Umakoshi Yoshihiko (character designer of HeartCatch PreCure, Casshern SINs, and Boku no Hero Academia) revealed that he was practicing drawing Gogeta for the upcoming movie. The dork basically just spoiled the end of the movie by accident.

Umakoshi is a wonderful character designer that doesn't get enough praise for his designs but he's also a great key animator who, like Shida Naotoshi, also worked on
Dragon Ball Z. Umakoshi has a long history working with Movie #20's director, Nagamine, as Nagamine was the series director of
HeartCatch PreCure and the director of One Piece Film: Z, where Umakoshi did the key animation for the final piece of Luffy's climatic battle with Zephyr. Normally, I wouldn't be surprised that Nagamine called in his old friend Umakoshi, but because of the amount of time that Umakoshi spent working on the Boku no Hero Academia film and third TV season I'm honestly surprised he managed to find the time to do key animation for this film, especially with production nearly finished. Then again, some TV episodes are often worked on until the day before broadcast, too, so I'm not surprised. I don't know if Umakoshi's part will be very long or not, but at the very least we know he'll be helping out with Gogeta. As disappointed as I am in fusion characters being used I'm quite happy to see Umakoshi contributing.
Speaking of older talent,
Tate Naoki is also working on the film. Tate worked on the first three series as an in-between animator and key animator but didn't truly begin to develop into the talent he was until the mid-to-late 2000s, much like Shida. Tate's work on One Piece evolved over time to as he adapted and absorbed lessons from working on Movie #6 (which had many great guest animators brought in by Director Hosoda Mamoru) and by 2008 Tate was the character designer for Movie #9. Tate's loose style and snappy Kanada Yoshinori-style movement helped him become a big name among animation fans, although it was his moody episodes full of character acting like One Piece Episodes #396, #404 and #420 that really helped set him as a force to be reckoned with. Finally, Tate returned to Dragon Ball after being absent from Movies #18-19 as an animation supervisor for Dragon Ball Super. While a few of Tate Naoki's episodes were easily the series' best episodes the ace was basically screwed over by the series' poor production schedule and Yamamuro Tadayoshi's ugly and difficult to animate character designs. With Shintani's new, simpler designs at the forefront of this film I think we'll definitely see Tate Naoki get his revenge for the Dragon Ball Super TV series.
Older animators aren't the only ones working on the film, though. Like Takahashi Yuuya and Shintani Naohiro there is at least one other young ace on the film:
Oonishi Ryou. Oonishi Ryou was originally discovered by fans for his character acting scenes on One Piece, in particular the Tate Naoki episodes of the time. It was the episodes from the tail-end of 2008 where fans really began to notice him thanks to his scenes in during the Saobody and Amazon Lily arcs. After Amazon Lily Oonishi moved over to Toriko and was a key animator and animation supervisor (his debut in the role) for a few episodes in the first year. After which, Oonishi focused on the film division at One Piece. Oonishi was an animation supervisor for Dragon Ball Z: Kami to Kami (Movie #18) and in particular animated the Super Saiyan God ritual but thanks to Chief Animation Supervisor Yamamuro Tadayoshi over-correcting his cuts the scene lacks the oomph normally expected. Oonishi went on to be character designer for Majin Bone and did a lot of key animation for that series. Following that, Oonishi was a pretty heavy-hitter on
Tiger Mask W, one of Toei Animation's best series in terms of production value. During
Dragon Ball Super Oonishi returned to the franchise for a few brief bits of action, in particular the beginning of Episode#14 and Artificial Human #18 versus Ribrianne. When the initial teaser for Movie #20 came out we all guess that it was animated by Oonishi Ryou and our guesses appear to be true. Oonishi has been MIA from other Toei Animation projects since early in the year and so is likely heavily involved with Movie #20. Another telling factor is how Oonishi did about three or four minutes of animation for Nagamine's last film,
One Piece Film: Z.
I don't think Watanabe Koudai or Hayashi Yuuki will be on the film, unfortunately, since they've been busy elsewhere, but another young talent from Toei Animation that has been MIA has been Yamamoto Takumi. Yamamoto began making names for himself/herself while working on
Tiger Mask W. I think they're a student of Watanabe Koudai, so I'm interested in seeing whether or not they'll show up here.
This movie is going to be so damned good you won't believe it. Good designs, a proper production schedule and a lot of great animators under a great director make for a huge event!