Hideaki Anno
Hideaki Anno (庵野秀明
An'no Hideaki, born
22 May 1960 in
Ube,
Japan) is a Japanese animation and video
director. Having a distinctively vivid and precise visual style, Anno is best known for his work on the influential
anime series
Neon Genesis Evangelion. He married
mangaka Moyoco Anno in
2002.
Early work
Anno began his career as an
animator for the anime series
The Super Dimension Fortress Macross (
1982â€"
1983), but wasn't a recognized talent until the release of his work on
Hayao Miyazaki's
1984 film
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Running short on animators, the film's production studio posted an ad in the famous Japanese animation magazine
Animage, announcing that they were in desperate need of more animators. Anno, in his early twenties at the time, read the ad and headed down to the film's studio, where he met with Miyazaki and showed him some of his drawings. Impressed with Anno's work, Miyazaki hired him to draw some of the most complicated scenes near the end of the movie.
Miyazaki and his crew were very happy with Anno's final product, and he went on to become one of the co-founders of
Gainax. He worked as an
animation director for their first feature-length film,
Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise (
1987), and ultimately became Gainax's premiere anime director, helming the majority of the studio's projects such as
Gunbuster (
1988) and
Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water (
1990â€"
1991). However, Anno fell into a four-year
depression following
Nadiaâ€"the series was handed down to him from
NHK as a partial remake of Hayao Miyazaki's
Castle in the Sky, and he was given very little creative control.
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Anno's next project was the anime TV series
Shin Seiki Evangelion (Japanese:新世紀エヴァンゲリオン known in the US as
Neon Genesis Evangelion), (
1995â€"
1996), which has ultimately gone on to be one of the most influential anime works ever, championing a return to traditional anime drawing styles and themes and taking them to new heights of precision and depth. Many believe that Anno's four-year period of depression was the main source for many of the psychological elements of the series and its characters, as he wrote down on paper many of the trials and tribulations of his illness. During the show's production, Anno rejected the hermetic
otaku lifestyle he had been living, considering it a form of forced
autism. For this and other reasons,
Evangelion's plot became increasingly dark and psychological as the series progressed, despite being broadcast in children's television timeslot. Anno felt that people should be exposed to the realities of life at as young an age as possible, and by the end of the series all attempts at traditional
narrative logic were abandoned, the final two episodes being a kind of
bad trip taking place inside the main character's mind. The show did not garner high ratings at its initial time slot, though it was soon moved to a later, more adult-oriented venue and became exceptionally popular throughout Japan.
After the ending of Shin Seiki Evangelion
(Neon Genesis Evangelion), Anno received numerous letters and emails from fans, both congratulating him on the series and criticizing the last two episodes. Among these were
death threats and letters of disappointment from fans who thought Anno had ruined the series for them. Partially in response to this outcry, a project was launched to create a movie with a "proper" ending for the series in
1997, eventually culminating in the controversial
The End of Evangelion.
Recent work
After
Evangelion, Anno directed a significant portion of the
1998 anime series
Kareshi Kanojo no Jijou (known in English as
His and Her Circumstances or
Kare Kano for short) — the first
Gainax work to be directly adapted from previously-written material — until disputes with both the show's sponsors and the original
manga author ended in the director's departure, leaving the show in the hands of his protegé,
Kazuya Tsurumaki (see also
FLCL). Since that dispute, Anno has gone on to work with
Hayao Miyazaki and
Studio Ghibli on several short animated films which have been shown at the
Ghibli Museum.
The director has also made forays into live-action films, beginning with
Love & Pop (
1998), a
cinéma vérité-style film about
enjo kosai ("compensated dating", a form of teenage
prostitution) in
Japan, of which a major portion was shot on miniature digital cameras with constantly shifting
aspect ratios. His second live-action film,
Shiki-Jitsu (
2000) (translated
"Ritual Day" or
"Ceremonial Day"), is the story of a burnt-out former anime director (played by popular
indie director
Shunji Iwai) who falls in love with a woman disconnected from reality. Though like
Love and Pop it was an experimental work, the film was shot using a more traditional
2.35:1 aspect ratio and has a more polished presentation, eschewing the
cinéma vérité grittiness of Anno's first live-action film.
Anno's third live-action film, released in the summer of
2004, was a
tokusatsu adaptation of the comic book
Cutie Honey. A stark contrast to his earlier more realist live-action works,
Cutie Honey is a lighthearted fantasy/superhero movie. Later in 2004, Anno supervised but did not direct the three-part OVA,
Re: Cutie Honey. The directors are actually
Hiroyuki Imaishi (part one),
Takamichi Ito (part two), and Masayuki (part three).
On August 1, 2006, Hideaki Anno's official website was updated with job listings for key animators and production staff at a studio called
Khara.[
1] Meanwhile,
Newtype Japan has advertised about an "extra large scoop" on Evangelion in the October issue of the magazine. [
2]
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984)
Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise (1987)
Gunbuster (1988)
Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water (1990–1991)
Shin Seiki Evangelion (Neon Genesis Evangelion) (1995â€"1996)
The End of Evangelion (1997)
Kare Kano (His and Her Circumstances) (1998)
Love & Pop (1998)
Shiki-Jitsu (2000)
Cutie Honey (2004)
*
Hideaki Anno Official site (in Japanese)
*
Anno Hideaki's IMDb Listing*
Anno Hideaki's JMDb Listing (in Japanese)
