The Beauty of Being Itself: Botan Kamiina Fully Blossoms When Drunk
Watching the first three episodes of Botan Kamiina Fully Blossoms When Drunk (hereafter Botan Kamiina) in succession, one notices considerable differences in how the same characters are drawn from episode to episode.
Episode 1 was supervised by animation director Miyachi, who personally drew the key animation for 141 cuts. The drawings are relatively refined and orderly. Facial proportions and bodily forms remain stable, while poses are arranged to be easily readable within the frame. Rather than simply reproducing the character designs, Miyachi creates movement without significantly altering the characters' basic appearances. With so many cuts handled by a single animator, the episode establishes a consistent standard of form, particularly when compared with the episodes that follow.
Episode 2 features solo key animation by Yusuke Matsuo. What first catches the eye is the treatment of poses and lines. Rather than standing perfectly upright, bodies lean and twist slightly. The axes of the joints and torso are not arranged into straight, regular forms. Small tremors remain in the outlines. Because the lines do not firmly enclose the forms, even the still drawings seem as though the bodies have not completely stopped moving. Rather than substantially changing the characters' basic forms, Matsuo allows a certain instability to remain in their poses and lines.
In Episode 3, animator Gin-san handled the storyboards, animation direction, and key animation, as well as some of the in-between animation. The drawings are considerably freer than those of the preceding two episodes. Facial proportions, body lengths, and the sizes of hands and feet vary greatly depending on the scene. Faces are stretched to suit particular expressions, while entire bodies may bend into exaggerated curves. Rather than continually restoring the characters to their established proportions, Gin-san reshapes them according to the movements and expressions required by each scene.
Miyachi organizes form, Matsuo leaves a sense of instability in poses and lines, and Gin-san transforms the forms themselves. Across these three episodes, the differences extend beyond faces to the ways bodies are constructed and lines are drawn. Yet rather than disrupting the work, these differences give each episode a distinct character.
How Botan Kamiina Makes Room for Differences in Drawing
It is not unusual for different animators to draw the same character differently. Commercial animation is built around the work of many people. Even within a single episode, several key animators may divide the same characters among themselves, with an animation director correcting their drawings. Depending on the production, a chief animation director may further adjust faces and bodies that differ from episode to episode. After all, even as the people drawing them change, the characters on screen must continue to be recognizable as the same individuals.
Character design sheets and animation corrections make this possible. Differences in facial proportions, eye placement, and hair structure are brought within a certain range, and poses and lines may also be adjusted when necessary. Characters appear consistent in the finished animation not because everyone drew them identically from the beginning, but because their different drawings were coordinated during production. Through correction and standardization, even drawings produced by many people can be made to look as though they were created by a single animator. Differences arising from collaborative production can easily become less visible in the finished work.
Botan Kamiina does not eliminate all these differences. Matsuo's trembling lines could have been smoothed out, and Gin-san's distorted faces and bodies could have been returned to proportions closer to the character designs. Yet much of each animator's approach remains visible on screen.
This does not mean that every difference is left untouched. The features necessary to recognize the characters are preserved, and their actions and emotions remain continuous from scene to scene. Information necessary for understanding a scene, such as clothing and props, also remains largely consistent. What distinguishes Botan Kamiina is not simply a refusal to standardize its animation, but a relatively narrow definition of what needs to remain consistent.
This distinction changes the qualities of the images themselves. If Matsuo's lines were cleaned up further, the subtle instability felt in Episode 2 would be weakened. If Gin-san's forms were corrected to more closely match the character designs, the exaggerated expressions and bodily transformations of Episode 3 would also be reduced. In such cases, correction is not merely a matter of fixing forms. It is also a decision about which differences should be allowed to remain within the work.
The degree of visual consistency in animation cannot automatically serve as a measure of its quality. Carefully matching appearances can improve character consistency, but it can also narrow the range of lines, poses, and transformations available to individual animators. Conversely, preserving more differences does not automatically produce better images. If characters become difficult to identify, or if the continuity of their actions and emotions breaks down, the result may amount to little more than inconsistency.
What makes Botan Kamiina interesting is how it handles this boundary. It maintains the standards necessary for the same characters and scenes to remain continuous, without forcing the qualities of the lines, the construction of poses, the finer proportions of faces, or the degree of deformation* into a single averaged style.
Deformation (deforme) refers to an expressive technique in which forms or proportions are deliberately exaggerated or altered to emphasize particular characteristics.
Viewers do not perceive the characters as entirely different individuals each time. Even when the axes of their bodies shift in Episode 2, or their facial proportions change dramatically in Episode 3, their actions and emotions remain connected to the scenes before and after. Recognizable features, such as hairstyles and clothing, are still present. In other words, the information necessary to maintain a character's identity is distinguished from those aspects that may vary from animator to animator.
Because of this distinction, the individual approaches do not disappear during the correction process. Instead, they shape the impression left by the finished images. Miyachi's carefully organized forms give Episode 1 its stability, while Matsuo's tilted poses and trembling lines introduce a subtle instability into Episode 2. Gin-san's extensive transformations make the expressions and movements of Episode 3 more exaggerated. By preserving the characters' identities without eliminating every difference, the production allows these distinct approaches to become part of each episode's movements and expressions.
The Beauty of Botan Kamiina Being Itself
This is where we can begin to speak of the work's sense of being itself. By this, I do not simply mean that it differs from other works, nor that it possesses a distinctive visual style or a particularly strong artistic personality. Rather, I mean that it can exist as a coherent work without having to conceal the conditions under which it was actually created.
Commercial animation is not, in the first place, something made entirely by one person's hand. Multiple animators draw the same characters, and their different drawings are connected within a continuous sequence. If that is the case, there is no inherent need to erase every trace of their individual contributions for the result to constitute a single work. It is possible to preserve the visible evidence that different people drew the characters while still maintaining the identity of both the characters and the work as a whole.
Botan Kamiina leaves this possibility visible on screen. The bodies in Episode 1 and Episode 3 are not drawn in the same way. The lines in Episode 2 also differ from those in the other episodes. Yet these differences do not appear as traces that fall outside the work. They become part of how each episode constructs its movements and expressions. Differences that emerged during production remain visible in the finished images.
The reason I find this beautiful is not simply that the work contains a great deal of variation. If every element were to vary independently, the continuity of characters and scenes could collapse. Conversely, eliminating every difference might produce a stable image, but it could also erase the particular ways each animator constructs bodies, draws lines, and creates movement.
Botan Kamiina maintains the necessary continuity without making every element uniform. As long as the characters remain recognizable, their actions and emotions remain connected, and the information required by each scene is preserved, there is no need for every facial proportion, body length, pose, or trembling line to be identical.
The beauty of this work does not arise from inconsistency as the simple opposite of uniformity. It comes from the possibility that different things can remain different while still forming a single work. The orderly drawings of Episode 1, the instability of Episode 2, and the transformations of Episode 3 do not interfere with one another. On the contrary, precisely because they are drawn differently, the three episodes develop different rhythms and expressions.
A work created by many people does not have to disguise itself as something made by a single hand. Nor do the drawings of its individual animators exist independently, without any relationship to one another. They remain connected as the same characters within the same work, while retaining the characteristics of different hands.
When different hands, each retaining their own distinct qualities, come together to move a single body, Botan Kamiina reveals the beauty of being most fully itself.