Masaaki Yuasa

Twitterhttps://twitter.com/masaakiyuasa An acclaimed anime director known for his wild freeform style. After graduating from the Kyushu Sangyo Universitys Faculty of Arts in 1987 he joined studio Ajiadohttps://anilist.co/studio/30/Ajiado initially as inbetweener but rapidly moving to key animation. In the first part of his career Yuasa established himself as an idiosynchratic creator while working on several child friendly anime such as Chibi Marukochanhttps://anilist.co/anime/951/ChibiMarukochan/ and Doraemonhttps://anilist.co/anime/2677/DoraemonNobitasAnimalPlanet/ but especially on Crayon Shinchanhttps://anilist.co/anime/966/ShinChan/ a project he was involved with for most of the 90s. One of his breakthrough roles in this period was his participation on the second part of The Hakkendenhttps://anilist.co/anime/12715/TheHakkendenLegendoftheDogWarriorsPart2/ working as animation director under Shinya Oohirahttps://anilist.co/staff/103893/ShinyaOohiras direction. This OVA was an important outing of the 90s uniting many veteran artists and talented newcomers. He debuted as director on Mind Gamehttps://anilist.co/anime/875/MindGame/ an abstract piece combining animation and liveaction footage winning the 2004 Japan Media Arts Festival overcoming even Hayao Miyazakis Howls Moving Castlehttps://anilist.co/anime/431/HowlsMovingCastle/ and earning Yoshiyuki Tominohttps://anilist.co/staff/97337/YoshiyukiTominos praise who acted as the chief judge. After Mind Game Yuasa spent several years at MADHOUSEhttps://anilist.co/studio/11/MADHOUSE working on various projects. In 2013 he founded Science SARUhttps://anilist.co/studio/6145/ScienceSARU alongside his close affiliate EunYeong Choihttps://anilist.co/staff/115088/EunYeongChoi. On March 25 2020 it was announced Yuasa stepped down as the CEO of Science SARU. He would work there as director until the completion of his latest Movie InuOhhttps://anilist.co/anime/109928/InuOh/ and would later cease any affiliation with the studio.