A supervising animator is commonly in charge of all aspects of the design and artwork for a single major character.
The day-to-day responsibilities of an animation director may include checking and updating lists for each scene.
[3] These corrections can range from the sakkan literally correcting parts of the animation that are off-model or not up-to-par, to changing some of the drawings into their style, or simply maintaining a level of quality while allowing for free expression from the key animators.
[3] Although these roles are meant to be encompassed by a small number of animators maintaining high-quality work, the state of the Japanese animation industry has shifted the roles, with sou sakkan appearing in multiples across singular episodes at times, which is largely due to the lack of animators and lack of time or bad scheduling which vastly limit the possibility of only a few sou sakkan appearing across an entire work.
[4] Another way the credit is used is as a sort of pseudo-director, such as Keizou Shimizu's role on Legend of the Galactic Heroes seasons 3 and 4, in which he described his role on the series as him acting as both a drawing director who supervised layouts and animation, as well as performing traditional directing duties such as checking storyboards and correcting them.