Curated playlist
Japanese animated film directors
- Hiromasa YonebayashiHiromasa Yonebayashi became Studio Ghibli's youngest feature director at 37. He had spent years as a key animator.
- Yoshifumi KondōYoshifumi Kondō directed only one film before he died at 47. Many at Studio Ghibli saw him as heir to Miyazaki.
- Goro MiyazakiGoro Miyazaki was hired to draw storyboards and ended up directing Tales from Earthsea.
- Hideaki AnnoHideaki Anno wrote his own experiences of depression into the characters of Neon Genesis Evangelion.
- Katsuhiro OtomoManga artist Katsuhiro Otomo planned Akira as only about ten chapters. It ran for eight years and two thousand pages.
- Yoshiyuki TominoMobile Suit Gundam was cut short in 1979 and still became one of anime's longest-running franchises.
- Hiroyuki MoritaHiroyuki Morita danced the idol choreography himself before drawing it into Perfect Blue.
- Osamu DezakiOsamu Dezaki made anime fade into a painted still. He called the technique a "postcard memory."
- Makoto ShinkaiAnime director Makoto Shinkai studied Japanese literature, not filmmaking.
- Shūkō MuraseShūkō Murase is a Japanese anime director and animator whose credits begin in the 1980s and reach all the way to a film dated 2026. He was born in 1964 and is a member of Sunrise. His name appears beside many different jobs: animation…
- Yoshikazu YasuhikoYoshikazu Yasuhiko answered a newspaper ad on a whim and became Gundam's character designer.