I often find crew denominations in Japanese anime that don't match wordly with what is currently in the crew table of the contribution rules. Can someone please help me verify is the following is matched by an existing crew role or if I should enter it as 'other'?

- Script
- Storyboard
- Episode Director (is a different person that the director. Episode directors direct one or more specific episode(s) while the director is on board for the entire season)
- Animation Director (usually the same person as above but can differ)
- Mechanical Design or Mecha Design (designs mechas ... does this fall under Creature design?)
- Character Design (person responsible for designing the traits of the characters, which the art crew uses as templates to draw the entire anime)

Especially Mecha and Character Designers are famous in Japan, but for no I've been entering them under Art > Other, so they don't get submitted to the online. If their roles match some existing crew role, I can change it and submit those as well. Otherwise, I'll keep it local.

Any insights would be welcome.

For the director that is for the entire series... he would have to be listed in the episodes... not before the dividers. See the Rule I put in bold below...

Quote:
Complete Series/Season & Anthologies of Episodes:

Enter Cast and Crew for each episode using standard rules, and insert dividers to separate each episode's credit list from the others. Do not list Cast and Crew outside of the dividers even if they are credited in all episodes.

Enter the episode number and title in the divider that marks the beginning of that episode's credit list. The divider should be formatted as "1. Episode Title", or "Episode 1" if no title is available.

Take the episode title from the episode itself, or from elsewhere on the DVD or DVD packaging, exactly as shown. If all episode titles are entirely capitalized, use standard capitalization rules instead. If the episodes are listed with quotes around each title, exclude the quotes.

If the DVD or DVD packaging specifically numbers the episodes, use that number in the divider. Otherwise, episodes are to be numbered sequentially in the order that they appear on the DVD(s) in the set, with the number sequence carrying over from disc to disc. Do not number non-episodic features such as movies or alternate cuts unless they are given specific numbers on the DVD or DVD packaging.

So cast or crew outside the dividers is not an option.

Well, what I've been doing so far for episodic directors is list them only in the episode they directed, under the full series director.
So I use episode dividers, start with the full series director and adapt the director per episode where needed.

Here's an example for Saint Seiya Lost Canvas vol 3:
Osamu Nabeshima is series director, so I've put him first
Nana Harada is director for, among others, episode 5, so I've put her there as director, under Nabeshima
Yasuyuki Honda is director for, among others, episode 6, so I've put him there as director, again under Nabeshima


Am I doing it correctly like this? They're credited as 'episode director'


Ace, I absolutely agree that being able to submit character designer would be a huge plus for the online. Lot's of important people, like Shingo Araki, are only created as character designer but can't be submitted right now. Moreover, character designer is an extremely common crew role in Japanese anime. Maybe something to consider posting in the feature request or rules committee ...

Taro:

I would recommend that you use Custom Roles to fill out the Actual Roles,long term this will be more helpful and useful to both you and others. And yes if you use Custom roles and redo those screen caps after you upload, you will find that all will get to see YOUR data.

That said I agree with pete

By custom roles, what Skip is saying is that, for example:

Script (screen credit) = Screenwriter (radio button) = Script (filled in the custom role field)

So it will show Screenwriter for the online, but will show Script in your local.

As far as the others you mentioned:

Chara & Mecha Design I track locally under Art: Other.  Would like to see Chara Design as a contributable, but that's for the future.

If I were to track them, I would do Storyboard under Writing: Other and Animation Director under Direction: Other.

As far as Script & Episode Director, I think you're doing it right.