Hiroyuki Morita

• 1. Introduction

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  Hiroyuki Morita danced the idol choreography himself before drawing a single frame of it into Perfect Blue. That instinct, to get the fundamentals right before committing anything to paper, ran through a career spent almost entirely on other people's productions. He worked for years as an inbetweener, a key animator, and a storyboard artist. Then Studio Ghibli entrusted him with a film of his own, The Cat Returns. What carried a young animator from an engineering degree into some of Japanese animation's most recognizable productions? And what happened decades later, when two public statements turned him from a name in the credits into a name in headlines?

• 2. Early Life And First Film

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  Morita was born in Fukuoka Prefecture in 1964 and graduated from Fukuoka Kenritsu Chikushikoto School. During his high school days he produced an independent animated film that won a prize in an animation magazine contest. One of the staff members on that production was Katsuyuki Toda, who later became a manga artist. That early prize marked Morita's first credited film work, years before Fukuoka University or any professional animation studio entered the picture.

• 3. Learning The Craft

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  Fukuoka University's Faculty of Engineering handed Morita a degree in mechanical engineering before he joined the animation production company Shaft. His first credited work as an animator came on Hiatari Ryōkō! in 1987, where he handled in-between animation. He then went freelance, taking inbetweener work on Akira and Kiki's Delivery Service. He also took key animation work on Roujin Z, Hashire Melos!, Memories, and Perfect Blue, among many other titles. He also worked as an episode director on the OVA Golden Boy, which aired between 1995 and 1996. By then his résumé spanned in-between work, key animation, storyboards, and directing duties, broad enough to eventually catch Studio Ghibli's attention.

• 4. Path To Ghibli

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  Morita provided key animation for My Neighbors the Yamadas in 1999. He then worked on Koro no Daisanpo, a short film made for the Ghibli Museum, in 2002. That combination of work led Studio Ghibli to select him as director of The Cat Returns, also released in 2002. Five years later, in 2007, he moved from film into series work, directing his first TV series, Bokurano: Ours. That series would soon put Morita's own blog commentary under as much scrutiny as the episodes themselves.

• 5. Industry Roles And Later Career

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  On the 27th of February 2011, Morita was elected director of the Japanese Animation Creators Association. He retired from that board in June 2015, having served for around four years. Until mid-2017 he worked at Polygon Pictures, a digital animation production company, where he also helped manage ACTF, a forum focused on digital animation. Since then he has continued working as a freelancer. Freelance work also meant no studio stood between Morita and the public, whether he was posting on a blog or, years later, on social media.

• 6. The Bokurano Blog Backlash

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  While Bokurano: Ours was in production, Morita used his own blog to post progress reports and hold question-and-answer sessions about episodes that had already aired. Viewers responded with a mix of criticism, support, and questions of their own. On that same blog, Morita wrote, "I dislike the original work, and I admit that I made some malicious changes to the original when making it into an animation." That single post turned criticism of the Bokurano adaptation into criticism of Morita himself.

  "The word 'dislike' that I used towards the original work was misleading so I'll correct myself," Morita wrote, walking back his earlier blog comment. "The original manga is good and full of mysteries, and I think it was worth adapting. I wrote that I 'disliked' the original story simply because there was so much mystery there, and because of the hardships involved. I was wrong to easily blame my personal 'dislike' and 'malice' for the criticisms written about the quality of my work. There is no escaping the fact that we have our own interpretation of the greatest mystery of all: why do the children die."

  In an interview with the original author Mohiro Kitoh for Monthly Ikki magazine, Morita admitted, "I was half-forced to say that I 'dislike' it." Kitoh replied, "I'm sure you were (laughs)," adding, "On the contrary, you've shown some good stuff (laughs)."

• 7. The DJ Soda Tweet

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  On the 13th of August 2023, during the third day of MUSIC CIRCUS'23, an audience member sexually victimized the performer DJ Soda. Morita responded on X, formerly known as Twitter, posting: "I guess the sexual victimization DJ SODA is talking about is a public type of enticement. She says that if you are seduced and befriended, someone will come along later to scare you. The organizers of the music festival should not be complicit in her art." He later deleted the post, but not before it drew criticism from Korean media. The incident, remembered as a secondary perpetration controversy, did not end Morita's career. His most recent credited work lists him providing storyboards for Akane-banashi, dated 2026.