Random Thoughts.....What Are You Thinking?

Ep 22: Meijin vs Meijin
Episode Director - Kazuki Tsunoda
Storyboard - Yuu Kou, Yuuki Ukai
Animation Director - Kayo Ikeda (Character), Munetaka Abe (Mecha)

Ep 23: Gunpla Eve
ED - Shinya Watada
SB - Susumu Nishizawa, Masami Obari, Kazuo Sakai
AD - TBA (Charar), Masami Obari (Mecha)

Ep 24: Dark Matter
ED - Yasuhiro Minami
SB - Ken Ootsuka
AD - TBA (Chara), Se Jun Kim (Mecha)

Ep 25: Promise
ED - Kenji Nagasaki
SB - Kenji Nagasaki, Iwao Teraoka
AD - Kenichi Ohnuki (Character), Hiroshi Arisawa (Mecha)

Notes:
- All scripts are written by Yousuke Kuroda as usual. Props to the whole guy for handling the entire show.

- 22's Storyboarders are a strange pick since they have rarely ever worked with Sunrise, let alone on BF which almost all the other storyboarders have. Their most recent work is Uta no Prince Sama Maji 1000 percent.. Will have to wait and see what they come up with.

- Obari seems to have stepped in to storyboard some of the action in his episode, probably was unsatisfied with Nishizawa's action scenes. I can't blame him, most of Nishizawa's past episodes have been quite lacking (eps 14,18 & 20). Sakai has generally worked on all the comical episodes, so his scenes are probably all the non-action bits.

- 24 is the turn of Kim again, who has been one of the best animators on the show and probably one of the best young animators at Sunrise right now. A Ken Ootsuka SB is generally a good sign and Minami is a good ED.

- 25's staff list was pretty much a given in terms of Nagasaki, Ohnuki and Arisawa being there since they are all the chief staff members of what they do. Iwao Teraoka also made it there since he has been on every Gundam final episode since 00. (s1, s2 and AGE's).

I forgot to add one more thing, these are the number of animation cuts for the final 4 episodes:

22 - 355 cuts
23 - 323 cuts
24 - 359 cuts
25 - 396 cuts

May not mean much to most people but let me explain. An average episode of anime has around 290-310 cuts. A good budget episode will have around 340. The fact that the final episode is pushing almost 400 means they have ALOT packed into the finale. It is likely they will skip the OP or ED to fit all the content in. 22 and 24 pushing close to 360 is also a good sign.

All this cut nonsense may not mean a thing if they are not used properly, so we'll just have to wait and see how the show handles it all, but I have high hopes.