Staff list for the following episodes. It goes director(storyboard artist) / (Animation direction). SB: means storyboard artist is different from episode director
#945: Yusuke Suzuki/Kazuya Hisada
#946: Yutaka Nakashima/Tu Yong-ce (AD DEBUT)
#947: SB: Akitaro Daichi/ED: Takuhito Sato/AD: Ippei Masui & Kaonnuri (Studio Name?)
#948: Yutaka Nakashima/Shuichi Ito
#949: Kenichi Takeshita/Hirotaka Ito & Toshio Deguchi
I'm a little dampened by the fact that Suzuki is the episode and storyboard artist for 946. His historically quite weak, but Kazuya Hisada is a very competent animation director and I've enjoyed his output on Wano. So visually, I'm expecting a nice episode, that may not be particularly engaging.
946 is incredibly exciting. This is Tu Yong Ce's debut on the show as an animation director. Tu Yong Ce previously has had the role of key animator on the show, and has been one of the best action animators on the series. Its a nice step forward in his career for him to move from the key animator, to animation director role.
In saying that, while I still expect him to have some nice key animation, this will mainly be a demonstration of his art correction and his output on the episode may be more limited than some of his prior showings. Still, its an incredibly exciting thing to see any animator like Tu Yong Ce progress from being one of the major action animators on the show, to be an animation director.
Here are some of Tu Yong Ce's notable bits of action animation on the series, his got a shit ton of notable scenes already:
947 has a good storyboard artist and a decent director, but the animation appears to be entirely outsourced. I think 947 could look serviceable, or mediocre at best.
948 is features the return of Yutaka Nakashima. His an incredibly quick and decent enough storyboard artist and director. He is decently creative and can hand in a solid episode.
949 should also be decent enough, with decent direction and storyboarding, and a decent enough animation director in Hirotaka Ito. Toshio Deguchi does tend to be a bit of a weaker animation director, though I hope his sort of blotted out with corrections.