庵野秀明 ANNO HIDEAKI

MAD/Booru

*One of Japan’s celebrity anime directors. Founded Studio Gainax with Takami Akai and Hiroyuki Yamaga. As someone who grew up with anime and 8mm experimental film, he brought a mindset of homage and intertextuality novel to anime at the time. He is extraordinarily well known in Japan and has branched out into live action filmmaking, acting, and voice acting in addition to his anime works.

*An effects animator of the first rate. He’s known for drawing hyperrealistic scenes of explosions and debris that sometimes resemble atomic bomb test footage. Mentored by Hayao Miyazaki while on Nausicaa, where he drew the giant insect monsters. Though he’s done excellent work elsewhere (Macross Plus, Abenobashi 12, Pop Chaser, the original DAICON intro films), his crowning masterpiece of animation is generally accepted to be the rocket launch sequence in Wings of the Honneamise.

*As a director, Anno has made a career out of subverting expectations in established anime genres and tropes. The signatures of Anno’s direction are rhythmic jump cuts, intertitles, minimal camera movement and avant garde techniques like emulsion scratches and found footage photomontage. He’s also fond of using Ozuesque cutaways of urban scenery, particularly things related to infrastructure and technology. Anno’s works are known for being dialogue-driven and for beginning with a light atmosphere before transitioning into the dire. In addition to Miyazaki, Anno lists Ichiro Itano and Yoshiyuki Tomino as artistic influences. He’s also a professed fan of Japanese New Wave director Kihachi Okamoto.

*Began his directorial career with the OVA series Aim for the Top! Gunbuster (1988), the title a reference to the series Aim for the Ace!. The six episode space opera built up a reputation as a cult classic of the late 80s OVA boom, particularly for its high-stakes monochrome final episode, and established Anno’s name as a director.

*His follow-up, Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water (1991), was a globe-trotting adventure in the vein of Jules Verne and Future Boy Conan based on an original concept by Hayao Miyazaki. Anno wasn’t involved in the project’s inception and was wary about it initially, but eventually took up the reins as chief director. Due to problems with Gainax struggling to meet production deadlines, Anno didn’t direct a chunk of episodes in the show’s final third and the show saw a precipitous drop in quality during his absence.

*Anno’s next project would be his biggest: Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995). Suffering from depression and dispirited about anime production in general, Anno was given the opportunity to have anything he wanted greenlit by Gainax head Hiroyuki Yamaga. The result was his unique take on the mecha genre, casting the lead as indecisive and ineffectual instead of the usual enthusiastic, hotblooded hero. The show became infamous for how the initial plot-driven episodes of the first half gave way to increasingly abstract character studies in the second. This reached its limit in the final two episodes which were so experimental that they received significant negative reception after their airing (including one instance of a death threat). Evangelion’s massive financial success helped spurn more interest in late night anime, causing a boom in the market. In response to the polarizing reception to Evangelion’s last two episodes, Anno directed a feature-length sequel called The End of Evangelion (1997) that, though sporting higher production values, was no less experimental than the series proper.

*After Evangelion, Anno handled the adaptation of the shoujo romance Kare Kano (1999). Though more narratively straightforward than Evangelion, Kare Kano’s visual aesthetic was highly distinctive in its use of stills and cropped framings to emulate the experience of reading a shoujo manga (in a few extreme cases, Anno just filmed pages of the manga). Anno left during the final few episodes due to a dispute between Anno and the source manga’s author about the show’s tone.

*After some experiments in live action filmmaking, Anno founded Studio Khara and began work on the Rebuild of Evangelion film series. A lavishly animated reboot of the TV series, the Rebuild films have been criticized as emotionally hollow and lacking in Anno’s touch. After the nineties Anno has been much more focused on his non-anime roles like acting in Katsuhito Ishii’s Funky Forest and playing the lead for Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises. He has done minor storyboarding gigs on occasion, including the Yamato 2199 OP, Abenobashi 13, and Diebuster 4.

*Close friends with director Kunihiko Ikuhara, which fueled rumors that Ikuhara was the model for Kaworu in Evangelion. Both share a jaundiced view of the anime market and a love for the Japanese avant garde. Anno was storyboarder and sakkan for the Sailor Uranus and Neptune henshin sequences in Ikuhara’s Sailor Moon S.