is a Japanese director, screenwriter, and animator affiliated with ame pippin. He is the former president of Science Saru, a Japanese animation studio which he co-founded with producer Eunyoung Choi in 2013. Yuasa previously served as president of Science Saru, but stepped down from this role in 2020. Recognized for his idiosyncratic art style and directorial voice, Yuasa began his career as an animator on the landmark television series Chibi Maruko-chan (1990–1992) and Crayon Shin-chan (1992–present), before moving into directing with the feature film Mind Game (2004) and developing a cult appeal following.
Yuasa spent much of the 2000s and early 2010s working in television directing, helming a trio of series, Kemonozume (2006), Kaiba (2008), and The Tatami Galaxy (2010), before releasing the crowdfunded short film Kick-Heart (2013). During the production of Kick-Heart, Choi proposed the establishment of Science Saru, and the resultant works created at the studio, combined with increased international distribution, led to mainstream breakout successes in the 2010s and saw Yuasa rise to prominence as one of Japan's foremost independent creators. At Science Saru, Yuasa focused on directing both television and feature film productions, starting with an episode of the American animated series Adventure Time (2014), and continuing with Ping Pong the Animation (2014), The Night Is Short, Walk On Girl (2017), Lu Over the Wall (2017), Devilman Crybaby (2018), Ride Your Wave (2019), Super Shiro (2019), Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! (2020), Japan Sinks: 2020 (2020), and Inu-Oh (2021).
Yuasa's productions have won international critical acclaim, receiving awards from Annecy, the Japan Academy Film Prize, the Mainichi Film Awards, and the Japan Media Arts Festival. In recognition of his collective career accomplishments, he has been recognized by the Japanese government and received the Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon, as well as the Agency for Cultural Affairs' Cabinet Minister Award for Media Fine Arts.
Yuasa's latest project is the musical drama feature film Inu-Oh, which premiered at the Venice International Film Festival in September 2021 and was released worldwide in August 2022. It was his first film nominated for a Golden Globe.
Early life Yuasa was born on March 16, 1965, in Fukuoka, Japan. As a child, Yuasa liked animation, and as early as his kindergarten years found he could entertain classmates with his drawings. When Yuasa was in his first year of junior high school and thinking it was time to move away from anime and manga, Space Battleship Yamato The Movie was released in 1977, triggering a huge anime boom in Japan, followed in 1979 by the simultaneous release of Hayao Miyazaki's Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro, Osamu Dezaki's Aim for the Ace! The Movie and Rintaro's Galaxy Express 999 The Movie and several other films. He decided to pursue a career in the manga/anime industry, encouraged by public opinion (whether it was true or not), including newspaper and television reports that Japanese animation can withstand adult viewing. He had no idea about the animation industry and initially thought about becoming a manga artist. However, when he saw animators being treated like stars as creators in a succession of new animation magazines, he decided he wanted to become an animator. He then studied design in high school and majored in oil painting at the art department of Kyushu Sangyo University. During his college years, Yuasa worried he would not be able to make a living as an animator, but continued to study television animation as it aired and familiarize himself with animators whose personal styles resonated with him.
Influences In his youth, Yuasa was initially drawn to the animated television series Mazinger Z (1972–1974) and Space Battleship Yamato (1974–1975). A crucial influence which led Yuasa to work in the industry was Hayao Miyazaki's landmark feature film debut Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro (1979). In the 1980s, Yuasa began to focus on the study of individual animators, namely Takashi Nakamura and his work on Golden Warrior Gold Lightan (1981–1982). He also studied international animation, with particular influences being the works of Tex Avery, the British film Yellow Submarine (1968), The King and the Mockingbird (1980) by French filmmaker Paul Grimault, and Glen Keane's animation work on the climactic fight sequence in The Fox and the Hound (1981). Some of his other favorite animations include Unico in the Island of Magic (1983), Wicked City (1987), Aim for the Ace! (1979), Galaxy Express 999 (1979), Mazinger Z vs. The Great General of Darkness (1974), Fantastic Planet (1973), Pinocchio (1940), Sing (2016), Night on the Galactic Railroad (1985), How to Train Your Dragon (2010), The Wrong Trousers (1994), Gamba no Bouken (1972), Future Boy Conan (1978), Tensai Bakabon (1970), Lupin the 3rd Part I: The Classic Adventures (1971–1972), Tom and Jerry, Heidi, Girl of the Alps (1974), Doraemon: Nobita's Great Adventure into the Underworld (1984), The Man Who Planted Trees (1987), Hedgehog in the Fog (1975), 3000 Leagues in Search of Mother (1976), Anne of Green Gables (1979), The Gutsy Frog (1972–1974), Doraemon: The Records of Nobita, Spaceblazer (1981), Kumo to Tulip (1943), and The Animal Neighborhood Community (1941). Outside of animation, Yuasa was also influenced by the art of Salvador Dalí.
Yuasa described his process of inspiration:
I get inspired with a lot of things I see, hear, smell, and touch in everyday life... I often derive inspiration even from really modest visuals; a commercial, a cut from a movie, a movement from an anime as well as nameless flowers and grasses blooming on the road, clouds, stars, and moons in the sky. I’m also inspired with what I’m currently interested in and feeling. My humble wish for creating anime is to have common images, conversations, and scenes sublimed into art works.
Career Beginnings as an animator Upon graduation, Yuasa sought work by consulting recruitment advertisements published in the animation magazine Animage. After answering an advertisement posted by Ajia-do, he was hired by the studio as an in between animator. Yuasa initially struggled and came to believe he lacked talent and therefore had no future in the business. After an illness, he contemplated quitting, but lacking a good opportunity to actually do so, he continued on. A key turning point in his perception of his artistic skills came during his transition from drawing in between animation, which requires clean, uniform lifework that is consistent from artist to artist, to drawing key animation, which establishes the key poses of motion and are more reflective of the individual sensibilities of movement of each artist. Yuasa's natural drawing style was fast, intuitive, and rough; it lacked the fine lines emphasized for inbetweening. As a result, when Yuasa became a key animator, he was able to utilize his rougher line style for greater personal expression and began to make a name for himself. During this time, Yuasa also received encouragement and advice from Ajia-do's co-founder Osamu Kobayashi, a veteran animator with decades of experience. Kobayashi told Yuasa that he could not consider himself a master of animation unless he utilized abstract drawings as part of his movement; though these individual frames are not distinguishable in the blur of completed motion, they subconsciously influence viewer perception of the motion and the scene as a whole. The advice synchronized with Yuasa's own study of international animation techniques, and increasingly, he integrated them into his work. Yuasa was also advised by another co-founder of Ajia-do, animator and director Tsutomu Shibayama, who served as a mentor and gave him formative artistic guidance.
Yuasa earned his first significant credits as a key animator in 1990 on the landmark television series Chibi Maruko-chan (1990–1992), which Ajia-do worked on as a subcontractor studio. Based on a popular manga, Chibi Maruko-chan was a major hit and provided opportunities for Yuasa to refine his skills. His next breakthrough came with the film Chibi Maruko-chan: My Favorite Song (1992), on which he was entrusted with two musical sequences. Yuasa storyboarded the sequences, the first time he'd taken on this responsibility, and was able to animate them in his own characteristic style; he later identified these segments as the first time that appreciation of his work by fellow artists led him to view his own work as good.
In 1992, the next major step in Yuasa's animation career occurred when he joined the production team of the long-running and immensely popular series Crayon Shin-chan (1992–present). Consisting of a television series, numerous television specials, and annual theatrical film releases, the Crayon Shin-chan franchise quickly became a massive undertaking with continuous work and production opportunities. Working under the guidance of supervising director Mitsuru Hongo, Yuasa took on a variety of roles within the franchise's many television and film productions, including key animation, storyboarding, set and background design, prop and vehicle design, and contribution of story concepts and ideas. Yuasa quickly became a specialist at imagining, designing, and animating the inventive visual climaxes of the annual Crayon Shin-chan films, a practice he continued for nearly a decade. It was during his work on Crayon Shin-chan that Yuasa at last found enjoyment in his artistic work, as well as his first desire to become a director. That same year, Yuasa had his first chance to direct with an episode of the original video animation (OVA) series Anime Rakugo Kan (1992). Yuasa directed the third episode of the series, entitled The Squash Seller. Stylistically, the episode reflected Yuasa's admiration for the animation created by Kobayashi and Shimoyama earlier in their careers, and thus had a different visual aesthetic than Yuasa's later works. More than just an homage, the episode reflected a continuation of Yuasa's personal artistry; though he initially thought he would develop a completely different style, in the end, he incorporated elements of Kobayashi and Shimoyama's animation into his own.
1994 saw two significant developments in Yuasa's animation career: leaving Ajia-do to become a freelance animator, and participating as an animation director on the fourth episode of the landmark OVA series The Hakkenden: A New Saga (1993–1995). Based on the epic historical novel Nansō Satomi Hakkenden (1814–1842) and animated in a serious, realistic style, The Hakkenden was a unique challenge to Yuasa, who until that point had worked on comedic works with a loose, free-flowing visual aesthetic. This resulted in initial mistrust of Yuasa by the production team at AIC, the studio responsible for the series. However, Yuasa had been invited to join the production by episode director and maverick animator Shinya Ohira, who after seeing his work on Crayon Shin-chan sought him out and placed him in a position of responsibility for overseeing the animation on his episode of the series, entitled Hamaji’s Resurrection. Although the production was chaotic due to a compressed schedule which did not allow sufficient time for ensuring the visual coherence traditionally prized in animation, the result was a distinctive episode with an emphasis on realism, moving camera techniques, and expressive attention to small character acting details. As a result of this work, Ohira collaborated with Yuasa on subsequent productions. Hamaji's Resurrection generated considerable conversation within Japan's animation industry, was cited as one of the most important Japanese animated productions of the 1990s, and described as a masterpiece of Japanese animation.