Mamoru Hosoda's “Superflat Monogram” animation for Louis Vuitton, based on designs from Takashi Murakami:
I see someone has been uploading more of Hosoda's work onto Youtube lately. In the form of episodes of the fourth series of GeGeGe no Kitaro and the 3rd series of Akko-chan. Hosoda really looks to be the guy who can be the next big name anime director. As much as I like Yuasa, Hosoda has a much more palatable and down to earth style. Both though have come up through working on commercial successes in TV and film that I guess US anime fandom looks down on somewhat.
On AWO the other week they were bemoaning that Toei wasn't generating the talent it did in the 70s, which I called them on in their comments section as Hosoda came up through Toei, working on Digimon movies before his ill-fated call to Ghibli (I guess we're never going to find out exactly what transpired there any time soon) and then back again to work on the great 6th One Piece movie, after his departure from the Howl's Moving Castle director's chair. While his big breakthrough has been Tokikake with Madhouse, he produced some good work through Toei. Indeed the hacked up US Digimon film caught my eye to his style long before I knew his name. Hopefully both critical and commercial success awaits in the future. As I understand it while Tokikake got rave reviews as the animated film of 2006, Madhouse ballsed up the release somewhat and demand vastly outstripped the screenings.