Portal:Anime and manga/Selected biography/2007
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2006 2007
Week 1
Akihiro Yamada (山田章博 Yamada Akihiro?) is a Japanese illustrator and mangaka. He was born in 1957 in Kōchi Prefecture, Shikoku, and now resides in Kyoto. He designed characters for anime such as RahXephon, and also supplies covers and interior art for many Japanese novel series, including the Twelve Kingdoms novels by Fuyumi Ono.
Anime for which Yamada has done character designs includes Shinkai Densetsu Mermanoid and RahXephon. He has created character designs for a number of video games such as Enix's Mystic Ark on Super Famicom, Terra Phantastica on Sega Saturn, and Saiyuki: Journey West on PlayStation.
Yamada drew the manga Record of Lodoss War: The Lady of Pharis in conjunction with writer Ryo Mizuno, and is currently working on a Japanese-themed solo manga, Beast of East.
Yamada attracted attention outside of Japan through his illustrations of Fuyumi Ono's long-running Twelve Kingdoms light novel series. He specially designed the rich cover illustrations for the home DVD releases of the anime adaptation of this series. Within Japan he has illustrated covers for numerous translated anthologies of Cthulhu Mythos literature , and is currently working with Kurodahan Press on their translation of a four-volume Japanese anthology of Cthulhu Mythos literature, The Lairs of the Secret Gods (秘神界 Hishinkai?). Yamada is drawing covers that are exclusive to the English translation.
Week 2
Tomoki Kyoda (京田知己 Kyōda Tomoki?) (born 1970 in Osaka, Japan) is an animation director and animator.
Formerly a graphic designer, Kyoda changed his occupation to the animation industry, having aspired to be an animation director since his childhood. After doing various work supervising drawing continuity, he joined the staff of the Bones anime RahXephon as asistant director and subsequently directed RahXephon: Pluralitas Concentio, his first film. He then went on to become head director of Eureka Seven, also under studio Bones.
Week 3
Masashi Kishimoto (岸本斉史 Kishimoto Masashi?, born November 8, 1974) is the creator and author of the popular manga and anime Naruto. He debuted as a mangaka (Japanese cartoonist) with his work Karakuri, which was submitted to Shueisha in 1996. Beginning in 1999, his next work Naruto was serialized in the Weekly Shonen Jump manga magazine. Kishimoto had received the Hop Step Award, which is given to new artists once a month by Shonen Jump.
His twin brother Seishi Kishimoto is also a manga-ka and the creator of 666 Satan. Their art has been remarked on as being very similar and accusations of plagiarism were made, either that Seishi had copied his brother or vice versa. However, Seishi notes in one of the his manga volumes that the similarities are not intentional and that the occurrence would have been likely because both he and Masashi have been influenced by many of the same things. After several accusations, Masashi Kishimoto has asked that fans stop calling his brother a "copycat".
Week 4
Dr. Osamu Tezuka (手塚 治虫 Tezuka Osamu?, November 3, 1928 - February 9, 1989) was a mangaka (Japanese manga artist) and animator. Born in Osaka Prefecture, he is best known as the creator of Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion. He is often credited as the Father of Anime, and the Walt Disney of Japan.
His prolific output and his pioneering techniques and genres earned him such titles as "the father of manga" and "the god of manga." The distinctive "large eyes" style of Japanese animation (anime) was invented by Tezuka, who based it on cartoons of the time such as Max Fleischer's Betty Boop and Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse. As an indication of his productivity, the Complete Manga Works of Tezuka Osamu (手塚治虫漫画全集, published in Japan) comprises some 400 volumes, over 80,000 pages; even so, it is not quite comprehensive - in fact, his complete oeuvre includes over 700 mangas in about 170,000 pages.
Week 5
Maaya Sakamoto (坂本 真綾 Sakamoto Ma'aya, born March 31, 1980) is a Japanese seiyū (voice-actor) and singer who made her debut in 1996 as the voice of Hitomi Kanzaki in the hit anime series The Vision of Escaflowne.
In addition, she sang the opening song "Yakusoku wa Iranai" and the movie closing song "Yubiwa". She has since teamed up with composer Yoko Kanno and has had many subsequent voice roles in anime such as Record of Lodoss War, Kanon, RahXephon, Gundam SEED DESTINY, .hack//SIGN, and others. She also has had voice roles in video games such as Panzer Dragoon Saga, Kingdom Hearts, and Napple Tale. She also does the voice of Padmé Amidala in the Japanese dub of Star Wars Episodes I, II, and III and Max in the television series Dark Angel. She plays the role of Eponine in the Japanese production of Les Misérables.
On her singer side, Sakamoto has released five solo albums, one mini album, numerous singles, and two singles collections.
Week 6
CLAMP is an all-female Japanese mangaka group. Their manga series are often made into anime after release. More than 90 million CLAMP tankoubon copies have been sold worldwide. The current members are Ageha Ohkawa, Tsubaki Nekoi, Mokona and Satsuki Igarashi.
CLAMP originally began in 1989 as a twelve-member doujinshi circle. The former members of CLAMP included Tamayo Akiyama, Soushi Hishika, O-Kyon, Kazue Nakamori, Inoue Yuzuru, Sei Nanao, Shinya Ohmi and Leeza Sei. By 1990, the circle had diminished from twelve to seven. Of the remaining seven, Tamayo Akiyama, Sei Nanao, and Leeza Sei left the group over the course of RG Veda's production, leaving the current four members.
According to CLAMP, the group's name means "a pile of potatoes".
Week 7
Makoto Shinkai (新海誠 Shinkai Makoto?) (born February 9, 1973) is a Japanese anime director, animator, and principal voice actor. A native of the Nagano prefecture in Japan, he studied Japanese literature in university. He traces his passion for creation to the manga, anime, and novels he read while in middle school. His favorite anime is Castle in the Sky by Hayao Miyazaki. Shinkai has been called the new Miyazaki in several reviews including Anime Advocates and ActiveAnime, though he disagrees with this comparison, stating that "it is an overestimation".
In 1999, Shinkai released She and Her Cat, a five minute long short piece done in monochrome. It won several awards, including the grand prize at the 2000 DoGA CG Animation contest. After winning the grand prize, Shinkai began thinking about a follow-up while he continued to work as a graphic designer for Falcom, a video game company. Some months later in June 2000, Shinkai was inspired to begin Voices of a Distant Star by drawing a picture of a girl in a cockpit grasping a cell phone. Some time later, he was contacted by Mangazoo, who offered to "work with him," giving him a grant to turn his idea into an anime they could sell. In May 2001, he quit his job at Falcom and began to work on Voices.
Voices was followed by the 90 minute long The Place Promised in Our Early Days, which was released nationwide in Japan on November 20, 2004. It was critically acclaimed, winning many honours. Shinkai's next project titled 5 Centimeters per Second will premiere in early spring 2007. It consists of three short films titled Oukashou, Cosmonaut, and 5 Centimeters per Second. The estimated total play time is one hour.
Aside from his own projects, Shinkai also assists in animating eroge opening movies for minori, a visual novel company.
Week 8
Ichiko Hashimoto (橋本 一子 Hashimoto Ichiko?, born July 1, 1952 in Kobe, Japan) is a jazz pianist, composer and singer. She has also acted in television and film.
Hashimoto was born in Kobe, grew up in Tokyo and started playing the piano at the age of five. She attended Musashino Academia Musicae, where she graduated in 1975.
Ichiko sometimes performs with her sister Mayumi Hashimoto (橋本 まゆみ Hashimoto Mayumi?)
She has composed the music for many Makoto Tezuka movies, and in RahXephon she was both the principal composer and played an important recurring character.
Week 9
Mitsuo Iso (磯 光雄, Iso Mitsuo) is a Japanese key animator, designer, and anime screenwriter.
His work mainly includes animating and key animating on series starting in the late 1980s. He also did some design work and worked on visual effects for Blood: The Last Vampire and RahXephon. Iso has co-written an episode of Neon Genesis Evangelion ("Liliputian Hitcher") and wrote, directed, and largely animated the RahXephon episode "The Children's Night ("Child Hood's End"). He wrote and directed the upcoming TV series Denno Coil.
Week 10
Hayao Miyazaki (宮崎 駿, Miyazaki Hayao), born January 5, 1941 in Tokyo, is a director of Japanese animated films. He is a co-founder of Studio Ghibli.
Miyazaki is the creator of many popular anime feature films, as well as manga. Although largely unknown in the West outside of animation circles until Miramax released his film Princess Mononoke in 1999, his films have enjoyed commercial and critical success in Japan and East Asia. Miyazaki's Spirited Away is the highest-grossing film of all time in Japan; Princess Mononoke held the same title for a short period until the release of Titanic later in the same year.
Miyazaki's films are distinguished by recurring themes such as humanity's relationship to nature and technology, and the difficulty of maintaining a pacifist ethic. The protagonists of his movies are often strong, independent girls or young women; the "villains" are often ambiguous characters with redeeming qualities.
Week 11
Yoshiyuki Sadamoto (貞本 義行 Sadamoto Yoshiyuki) (born 29 Jan 1962, in Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan) is one of the founding members of the Gainax anime studio. The first work as character designer of Sadamoto in Gainax was Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise, released in 1987. He also worked as animator in Gunbuster and Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, and he came back to this work for the first episode of Diebuster (also known as "Gunbuster 2" or "Top wo Nerae! 2").
He is also the character designer for the anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion, as well as the author of the Neon Genesis Evangelion manga series, which is also Sadamoto's first full manga work.
In addition to his work on Evangelion, Sadamoto did character designs for Nadia, FLCL, .hack//SIGN and Diebuster. His first artbook is entitled Alpha, and it shows a collection of works of Sadamoto that were made before Evangelion (including Nadia and The Wings of Honneamise). In 2003, Viz published a collection of his works, entitled Der Mond (german for "The Moon"). Other artbooks that include some of Sadamoto's works are Die Sterne (german for "The Stars") and Groundwork of FLCL.
Week 12
Akira Toriyama (鳥山 明 Toriyama Akira, born on April 5, 1955 in Kiyosu, Aichi Prefecture) is a Japanese manga artist.
He debuted in 1978 with the story Wonder Island, published in Weekly Shonen Jump magazine, and gained fame for Dr. Slump, serialized weekly in Shonen Jump from 1980 to 1984. In 1984, he was responsible for developing Dragon Ball that became serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump. In Japan, it became a record-breaking best seller with over 120 million copies sold. Aside from the Japanese success the show was equally successfull in the U.S. as well.
He is mostly known for his series Dragon Ball. This work was one of the linchpins for what is known as the Golden Age of Jump. Its success "forced" Toriyama to work on Dragon Ball from 1984 to 1995. During that eleven-year period, he produced 519 chapters, collected into 42 volumes. He has also served as the character designer for the Dragon Quest series, Super Famicom/SNES RPG Chrono Trigger and the fighting game Tobal No. 1 for the PlayStation (as well as its sequel, Tobal 2, released only in Japan), and continues to produce the occasional manga story.
Week 13
Katsuhiro Ōtomo (大友克洋 Ōtomo Katsuhiro) (born April 14, 1954) is a Japanese manga artist and director. He is perhaps best known for being the creator of the manga Akira and its anime adaptation, which are extremely famous and influential. Otomo has also directed several live action films, such as the recent 2006 feature film adaptation of the Mushishi manga.
As a teenager growing up in the turbulent 1960s, he was surrounded by the demonstrations of both students and workers against the Japanese government. The riots, demonstrations, and overall chaotic conditions of this time would serve as the inspiration for his best known work, Akira. The animation from this period would help push Ōtomo toward a career in animation. However, it was the films coming out of America that were driving his rebellious nature.
Ōtomo has recently worked extensively with noted studio Sunrise with the studio animating and producing his two most recent projects, the 2004 feature film Steamboy and 2006's Freedom Project.
Week 14
Ken Akamatsu (赤松健 Akamatsu Ken) is a manga artist, born in Kanagawa prefecture, Japan, on July 5, 1968. Most of his works involve ecchi, often having a male protagonist being surrounded by numerous girls.
In his teenage years, Akamatsu failed the entrance exam to Tokyo University, and applied for Film Study instead (it is speculated that this is where he got the idea for Love Hina). Eventually, he became famous as an illustrator featured in Comiket (short for Comic Market, a comic convention bi-annually held in Japan). He used the pen name Awa Mizuno (水野亜和 Mizuno Awa). Akamatsu, still in college, then proceeded to win the Weekly Shonen Magazine award twice. His "A Kid's Game for One Summer" was awarded the coveted 50th Shonen Magazine Newcomer's Award soon after he graduated.
After a big hit with A.I. Love You, he finally made a grand success with his new manga, Love Hina.
Week 15
Yutaka Izubuchi (出渕 裕, Izubuchi Yutaka, born 12 August 1958 in Tokyo, Japan) is an illustrator, anime designer and director. Izubuchi is credited for designing costumes, characters and creatures, but most of his designs are mechanical (both robots and other vehicles). He created and directed the RahXephon anime series and also created a manga story called Rune Masquer.
Among Izubuchi's design credits are various Gundam and Patlabor shows. He also created the Protect-Gear armor used in the Kerberos saga (Jin-Roh, etc.). Izubuchi designed the costume for one of the characters of the Cutie Honey live action movie (2004), directed by Hideaki Anno of Neon Genesis Evangelion fame; earlier, Anno and Izubuchi (called "Bu-chan" by Anno) both had their mecha designs appear on Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack (1988).
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