By Brian Camp
Hideaki Anno (b. 1960) An anime fan who became a director, Anno uses the favorite genres of his youth to address the contemporary problems of young people in Japan, from the space-combat-meets-sports satire of Gunbuster to the freewheeling avant-garde antics used to chart a high school romance in His and Her Circumstances, and the sci-fi allegory of Neon Genesis Evangelion, which puts its troubled adolescent leads in specially built giant robots to combat a mysterious invading force. Anno pushes artistic license to the breaking point, defying expectations and stirring up the wrath of the most inflexible (and least adventurous) among his fans.
Osamu Dezaki (b. 1943) Dezaki may be the most baroque stylist in anime, awash as his Golgo 13 and Black Jack films are in cutaways, close-ups, and telling details; frequent birds in flight; waves hitting shore; and suns setting on the horizon. When it comes to graphic sex and violence—and medical procedures—Dezaki makes viewers feel every touch and caress, every thrust, every cut, and every burst of blood or other fluids. The stories may be wild and far-fetched, but no one ever comes away feeling like they weren’t there in the thick of it.
Yoshiaki Kawajiri (b. 1950) More than any other anime director, Kawajiri brought a hard edge to mainstream anime, amplifying the sex, violence, and bloodshed but employing a sharp visual imagination and bold sense of graphic style that made his works as beautiful as they were rough. He brought with him a strong grounding in classic film genres, whether drawing on the police thriller for Wicked City, the private eye in Midnight Eye Goku, the samurai and ninja motifs of Ninja Scroll or mixing the western and traditional horror tales in Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust. His characters brought 20th-century tough-guy posturing and that characteristic sense of movie style into play against increasingly otherworldly antagonists.
Satoshi Kon (b. 1963) Alone among anime directors, Kon chooses contemporary urban Japan as his subject and tells dramatic stories set in the real world, but with a bold intrusion of characters’ fantasies, dreams, or past lives into their present reality, from the actress who is taunted by her pop-idol past-self in Perfect Blue, to the retired Japanese star whose reminiscences unfold to tell the historical and cinematic past of Japan in Millennium Actress, to the characters whose dreams intrude into real life in Paprika, to the homeless trio in Tokyo Godfathers, who are forced to confront their pasts amidst a series of increasingly improbable (and comical) coincidences.
Leiji Matsumoto (b. 1938) Another pioneering manga creator who, like Tezuka, gets only rare directorial credit, Matsumoto’s science fiction fables mix classic American comic book graphics with flourishes of storybook illustration to create a unique look and mood that infuse every adaptation of his work. Romantic 19th-century-style heroes and heroines fly incongruous sailing ships (Captain Harlock) and passenger trains (Galaxy Express 999) to the ends of the galaxy as they stand on deck draped in black cloaks, cowboy hats, or pirate insignia, long hair blowing in the (nonexistent) breeze, and stopping along the way anywhere a battered soul, grieving for lost humanity or homesick for a place to which they can’t return, needs help.
Hayao Miyazaki (b. 1941) If Tezuka is the manga no kami-sama (God of Manga), then Miyazaki must be the anime no kami-sama (God of Anime). He is responsible for the entire top tier of anime’s undisputed masterworks and has brought the pleasures of Japanese animation to a worldwide audience as no anime director before or since has done. With Nausicaä, Castle in the Sky, My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Porco Rosso, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, and Howl’s Moving Castle, he has proven himself not just a great animator, but a master Japanese filmmaker as well, infusing timeless stories with bold imagination, epic flourish, wry humor, and a love of humanity.
Mamoru Oshii (b. 1951) The most intellectually curious of anime filmmakers, Oshii fills his Patlabor and Ghost in the Shell films with long philosophical exchanges and complex questions about humanity’s relationship to technology, man’s compulsion to replicate and re-create humanity, and the nature of humanity and identity. Oshii puts a lot of emphasis on technical detail and the visual fabric of a cybernetic, wireless, Web-infused social and political structure, while also nursing a respect for the quickly fading past, whether in the old neighborhoods of Tokyo or “Newport City,” where humanity still bustles, or the classical decor of a remote Chinese mansion.
Katsuhiro Otomo (b. 1954) Otomo specializes in exquisite dystopian spectacles that climax with technological experiments spiraling wildly out of control, as in the monstrous transformation of Tetsuo in Akira and the mad ride of the Steam Tower over Victorian London in Steamboy. Even in the short segment Otomo contributed to Neo-Tokyo, “The Order to Stop Construction,” and the Otomo-scripted Roujin Z, relentless machines with minds of their own cause havoc with no human check in sight. While Oshii probes the philosophical questions posed by technological advancement, Otomo races headfirst into the front lines of the war between man and machine—with man generally the sore loser.
Rintaro (b. 1941) An anime veteran who began his career at the very start of Japan’s animation industry (Panda and the Magic Serpent, Astro Boy), Rintaro is one of the master stylists of anime, directing in a wide range of genres, from the auto-racing series Arrow Emblem Grand Prix no Taka to the CGI-enhanced Tezuka adaptation, Metropolis. He often brought a dreamlike flourish to his images, using characters’ subjective, often altered points-of-view and employing elaborate hallucinatory visuals in such works as the Galaxy Express 999 movies, Captain Harlock, Harmagedon, Dagger of Kamui, Doomed Megalopolis, Spirit Warrior, and X: The Movie, among many others.
Gisaburo Sugii (b. 1940) Sugii is another anime veteran who began at the start of the industry and has worked in a wide range of genres, establishing himself in the 1980s as a master of human drama series, including Mask of Glass, about a girl who aspires to be an actress, and Touch, a popular romance involving a star high school baseball player. Sugii directed two elegant and prestigious adaptations of Japanese literary works, Night on the Galactic Railroad and Tale of Genji, while achieving international success in the 1990s with his movie and TV adaptations of the Street Fighter II video game.
Isao Takahata (b. 1935) Miyazaki’s mentor and longtime partner, Takahata entered the industry in 1961 (The Littlest Warrior) and as a director went on to specialize in high-profile literary adaptations (Heidi, Girl of the Alps, 3000 Miles in Search of Mother, Anne of Green Gables). He proved a master of strong dramatic works rooted firmly in the real world, such as Grave of the Fireflies, a tragic wartime tale of two children orphaned in Tokyo in 1945, and Only Yesterday, about a young Tokyo woman’s remembrance of childhood as she ponders a series of adult decisions. Yet he also boasted enough whimsy and imagination to craft the hilarious environmental fantasy Pom Poko.
Osamu Tezuka (1928–89) While only occasionally credited with the direction of animated adaptations of his work, Tezuka, the manga no kami-sama (God of Manga), was actively involved with the oversight of every work made in his lifetime that bore his name, from the first, Saiyuki (Alakazam the Great), right up to The New Adventures of Kimba the White Lion, released after his death in 1989. Tezuka’s soaring vision, overpowering imagination, humanist sensibility, and love of wildlife infused all of his works and left a mark on every animator who worked with him and on many who came afterwards.
Yoshiyuki Tomino (b. 1941) Tomino took the giant-robot genre into outer space and added a complex political and social structure to create a plausible and persuasive future world with a component of intense human drama in Mobile Suit Gundam, an anime perennial since 1979. Tomino has created other alternate worlds (Aura Battle Dunbine, Overman King Gainer, Brain Powered) to varying degrees of success, but his accomplishments with Gundam and the high-powered series and movies he contributed during its long run have cemented Tomino’s place in the pantheon of anime directors, thanks to his compelling theme of youthful characters torn between loyalty to home and the underlying desire for peace and stability.
Shinichiro Watanabe (b. 1965) With Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo, Watanabe changed the way anime looks at both the future and the historical past. Bebop takes the cultural signposts of late 20th-century America (especially the 1970s) and spreads them throughout the solar system as bounty hunter Spike Spiegel plays an interplanetary tough guy (and perennial loser) against a backdrop of jazz, blues, folk, rock, and country music tunes. Samurai Champloo takes a couple of slackers with hip-hop on their brains, and puts them back in Tokugawa-era Japan where their encounters with various artistic types, free thinkers, and other innovators have far-reaching ramifications for future cultural movements that Watanabe is only too eager to illustrate.