Hideaki Anno

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Hideaki Anno was born in Ube, Yamaguchi, the son of Fumiko and Takuya Anno, and the world of Japanese animation would eventually pivot on decisions he made in the grip of clinical depression. His most celebrated creation, the Evangelion franchise, reshaped the anime television industry and seeped into Japanese popular culture in ways few single creators have managed. But the story of how a student who stopped paying his tuition and got expelled from Osaka University of Arts became Gainax's defining director involves a chance encounter with Hayao Miyazaki, four years of psychological collapse, and a television series that began in a children's timeslot and ended inside the minds of its own characters. What made Anno capable of building something that large? And what exactly does it cost to build it?

• 2. An Expelled Student's Break

  ›

  Anno began his professional life while still enrolled at Osaka University of Arts, working as an animator on The Super Dimension Fortress Macross from 1982 to 1983. He was simultaneously producing the Daicon III and IV Opening Animations alongside fellow students, and financing his own short films. He stopped paying tuition and was eventually expelled. The turn in his fortunes came through an advertisement in the Japanese animation magazine Animage. Miyazaki's production studio was short on animators for Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind and posted an ad calling for help. Anno, then in his early twenties, read it, travelled to the studio, and showed Miyazaki his drawings. Miyazaki hired him on the spot to handle some of the most complicated scenes near the film's end. That 1984 film gave Anno his first real recognition. By December of the same year, he was one of the co-founders of Gainax.

• 3. Building Gainax

  ›

  At Gainax, Anno took on the role of animation director for the studio's first feature-length film, Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise, released in 1987. He eventually became the studio's leading anime director, steering the majority of its projects. Gunbuster ran from 1988 to 1989, followed by Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water from 1990 to 1991. Nadia came to Anno from NHK, based on an original concept by Hayao Miyazaki, the same concept that partly underpinned Castle in the Sky. Anno was given little creative control over the series, and the experience sent him into a four-year depression. The toll of that period was not merely personal. In 1994, the minor planet 9081 Hideakianno was named after him by his old friend Akimasa Nakamura, an honour bestowed even as Anno was at one of the lowest points of his career.

• 4. Depression on Screen

  ›

  Neon Genesis Evangelion premiered in 1995 and ran through 1996, set in a post-apocalyptic version of Tokyo where humanity fights giant monsters called Angels. Anno has described the series as a continuation of Nausicaa done in his own way. His history of clinical depression was the explicit source for the show's psychological depth; he wrote down his own experiences of depression and fed them into the characters. The series was broadcast in a children's timeslot, yet its plot grew steadily more introspective as it progressed, and all attempts at conventional narrative logic were abandoned by the final two episodes. Those last episodes use an abstract atmosphere to map the human psyche. Anno held that young people should encounter the realities of life as early as possible. The show's initial ratings in Japan were low, but after moving to a later, more adult-oriented timeslot it gained considerable popularity. Timing constraints at Gainax forced Anno to replace the planned ending with those two psychologically driven episodes, setting the stage for the conflicts that would follow.

• 5. Evangelion's Unfinished Ending

  ›

  In 1997, Gainax launched a project to reconstruct the scrapped ending of Evangelion as a feature film. Budgeting problems stalled production, and the completed twenty-seven minutes of animation were folded in as the second act of Evangelion: Death and Rebirth rather than released as intended. The project ultimately produced The End of Evangelion, a three-act film that served as the series' proper finale. Anno appeared in September 1999 on the NHK television documentary "Welcome Back for an Extracurricular Lesson, Senpai!", answering questions about Evangelion, including the origin of the name, and demonstrating animation production for children. Several of Anno's anime won the Animage Anime Grand Prix award during this period: Nadia in 1990, Neon Genesis Evangelion in both 1995 and 1996, and The End of Evangelion in 1997.

• 6. Live Action and New Directions

  ›

  Anno's first live-action film, Love and Pop, appeared in 1998. Shot largely on miniature digital cameras with constantly shifting aspect ratios, it took a cinema verite approach to the subject of enjo kosai, a form of compensated dating involving teenagers in Japan. He won the Best New Director Award at the 1998 Yokohama Film Festival for it, and lead actress Asumi Miwa won Best New Talent. His second live-action work, Shiki-Jitsu from 2000, cast popular indie director Shunji Iwai as a burnt-out former animation director who falls in love with a woman disconnected from reality. Shot in the more traditional 2.35:1 aspect ratio, it earned Anno the Best Artistic Contribution Award at the Tokyo International Film Festival. He also directed Kare Kano in 1998, the first Gainax television series adapted directly from an existing manga. During that production, frustration with restrictions imposed by TV Tokyo after the Pokemon seizure incident pushed Anno away from television anime for years.

• 7. Returning to Evangelion

  ›

  On the 1st of August 2006, Anno's official website posted job listings for key animators and production staff at Studio Khara, a company he had founded. In September 2006, Newtype magazine reported his departure from Gainax, and on the 9th of September 2006, Gainax confirmed Rebuild of Evangelion was in production. The plan called for four films: the first three as an alternate retelling of the TV series with new scenes, settings, and characters, and the fourth as a wholly new conclusion. Kazuya Tsurumaki and Masayuki were named as directors, with Yoshiyuki Sadamoto on character designs and Ikuto Yamashita on mechanical designs. Anno officially resigned from Gainax in October 2007. The first Rebuild film launched in Summer 2007. The second arrived on the 27th of June 2009. The third released on the 17th of November 2012. The fourth, Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time, was rescheduled twice due to the COVID-19 pandemic before launching in March 2021. After its release, Anno stated that Shinji's story was complete but that he had more ideas set in the Evangelion world.

• 8. Tokusatsu and the Shin Trilogy

  ›

  In March 2015, Anno announced he would team up with close friend and Gainax co-founder Shinji Higuchi to write and co-direct Shin Godzilla, a 2016 reboot of Toho's Godzilla franchise. The film won Anno the Best Director award at the 41st Hochi Film Award, both Best Director and Best Screenplay at the 71st Mainichi Film Awards, Director of the Year at the 40th Japan Academy Prize, and Best Screenplay at the 90th Kinema Junpo Awards. Shin Godzilla was the first entry in what became a trilogy of tokusatsu franchise reboots: Shin Ultraman followed in 2022, and Shin Kamen Rider in 2023. Anno took on an unusual range of roles across these productions, including co-editor, co-cinematographer, costume designer, and concept designer. In 2012, he had already signalled his investment in tokusatsu history by curating an exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo showcasing props and suits from Japanese tokusatsu productions, and producing the short film A Giant Warrior Descends on Tokyo for that exhibit, featuring the Giant Warrior-God from Studio Ghibli's Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. In 2022, Anno received the Medal with Purple Ribbon.