Who began those rumors about XY's staff being made of new people everywhere and in every instance? X__X I mean, it was the same thing at the beginning of Best Wishes!, just replace the "it sucks, it's lackluster compared to DP, why did they fire the old staff!" comments by "there will be romance yay/arg, totally new staff writing romance!".
So, uh, if I'm not mistaken:
- There indeed is a new director, Tetsuo Yajima, since the beginning of XY. However (feel free to correct me), a director's job is not to create the series from scratch, it's putting it into shape from the work of a writer. So, I would say that despite the title, it's not so much deciding a series' direction than ensuring the direction will be conveyed to the viewers?
(Same difference than playwriter and stage director working in a collaboration.)
- Atsuhiro Tomioka still is, as far as I know, in charge of the series as head-writer - and has been since the beginning of Diamond&Pearl.
During his era, so far, we've had one-sided feelings, Satoshi being especially oblivious to love, big casts of recurring characters/(friendly) rivals, so not really romance-oriented (then again, he could be trying new things, though Satoshi's obliviousness in XY007 tends to make me believe that not that much). Seems to have a casual liking for making main girls cry, too!
- Out of 8 episodes so far, 6 had animation directors and storyboarders who have been working at least since early BW!, the majority being veterans (the new ones being: Shinji Matsuda and Hirotaka Tomiyasu for XY004 / Mai Tsutsumi (who only worked on BW119 before) and Yoshifumi Sueda (who also worked for XY001 and XY002) for XY008).
Except for Akemi Omode (XY007) who joined late into BW!, all of the other screenplay writers are veterans.
Takahiro Ikezoe as assistant director (XY005) is a new name; so is Sou Toyama (XY003), but he worked for Shaymin's movie back in the days.
So, not that many new names. The animation is indeed smoother, probably because they have more funding (and staff), or are more at ease with "standardized" designs (everyone is proportionally taller and thinner, now)...? But not really because there are many new people in charge. In fact, it's even a little surprising that Izumi Shimura's episodes (XY001, XY002, XY005) were suddenly that smooth - they're usually not that great ^^' (Though, the first three episodes had, in fact, two animation directors instead of one!)
- Tipbit: Atsuhiro Tomioka and Masaaki Iwane generally work together (respectively as writer and animation director) for "important" episodes: big matches, plot involving Teams, important episodes regarding goodies promotion(/or their personal biases) like the Lizardon one, etc. Random but, generally, Iwane's episodes tend to have more Satoshi+Pikachu moments than usual.
Some scenes/part of XY's stock animation were clearly Iwane-style. As chatsy88 pointed out, Akihiro Tamagawa hasn't been listed so far for XY, but he is still, at least, part of the staff given some faces in XY009's previews. He tends to work on important episodes, too, or on really really cracky ones. Both kind are awesomely animated.
Trust me and hope that Noboru Furuse won't come back as an animation director during XY.