Curated playlist
Japanese animators
- Michiyo YasudaMichiyo Yasuda took her first animation job to avoid work as a bank teller. She stayed for more than half a century.
- Akira NishitaniAfter leaving Capcom, Akira Nishitani's studio Arika still made Street Fighter EX games for it.
- Kenzō MasaokaKenzo Masaoka was the first in Japan to put recorded sound into animation. Before him, film sound was live.
- Noburō ŌfujiNoburō Ōfuji animated with patterned handmade Japanese paper. He used washi, including Edo chiyogami.
- Yoshiaki NishimuraProducer Yoshiaki Nishimura left Studio Ghibli in April 2015 to start Studio Ponoc.
- Mitsuyo SeoAnimator Mitsuyo Seo was jailed as a leftist in 1931, then made a film of Momotarō bombing Pearl Harbor.
- Yasuo ŌtsukaA realistic skeleton in Magic Boy made audiences laugh, and it changed Yasuo Ōtsuka's view of animation.
- Ōten ShimokawaŌten Shimokawa drew on film with ink and rubbed figures away with his fingers.
- Yoshifumi KondōYoshifumi Kondō directed only one film before he died at 47. Many at Studio Ghibli saw him as heir to Miyazaki.
- 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.
- Tadahito MochinagaTadahito Mochinaga began stop-motion in China because paint and film were scarce. Puppets saved paint.
- Osamu TezukaOsamu Tezuka was a licensed physician who never practiced medicine. He is the manga artist behind Astro Boy.
- Kihachirō KawamotoPuppet animator Kihachirō Kawamoto said his puppets only came alive after a year studying in Prague.
- 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.
- Satoshi KonWhen Satoshi Kon died in 2010, the news landed as a shock. He had kept his illness private, and only a short time earlier he had appeared at public events with no visible sign that anything was wrong. Kon was a Japanese film director,…