Hideaki Anno (Japanese: 庵野 秀明, Hepburn: Anno Hideaki; born May 22, 1960) is a Japanese animator, filmmaker, actor, producer, and voice actor. His most celebrated creation, the Evangelion franchise, has had a significant influence on the anime television industry and Japanese popular culture. Anno's style is defined by his postmodernist approach and the extensive portrayal of characters' thoughts and emotions. Anno began his career while attending Osaka University of Arts as an animator for the anime series The Super Dimension Fortress Macross (1982–1983), and produced the Daicon III and IV Opening Animations. He did not gain recognition until the release of his work on Hayao Miyazaki's 1984 film Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Anno went on to become one of the co-founders of Gainax in December 1984. He worked as an animation director for their first feature-length film, Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise (1987), and ultimately became Gainax's premiere anime director, leading the majority of the studio's projects, including Gunbuster (1988) and Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water (1990–1991). Anno's next project was the anime television series Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995–1996). Timing constraints at Gainax also forced Anno to replace the planned ending of Evangelion with two episodes set in the main characters' minds. In 1997, Gainax launched a project to re-adapt Evangelion's scrapped ending into a feature-length film. Budgeting issues left the film unfinished, and the completed 27 minutes of animation were included as the second act of Evangelion: Death and Rebirth. Eventually, the project culminated in The End of Evangelion, a three-act film that served as a finale to Neon Genesis Evangelion. Anno wrote and directed the Rebuild of Evangelion film series from 2007 to 2021, written to be more accessible to non-fans than the original anime series and films were. Anno's other directorial works include Daicon Film's Return of Ultraman (1983), Gunbuster (1988), Kare Kano (1998), Love & Pop (1998), Shiki-Jitsu (2000), Cutie Honey (2004), Re: Cutie Honey (2004), and Shin Godzilla (2016), with the latter film marking the beginning of the Shin trilogy of tokusatsu franchise reboots, followed by Shin Ultraman (2022) and Shin Kamen Rider (2023). Several of Anno's anime have won the Animage Anime Grand Prix award, including Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water in 1990, Neon Genesis Evangelion in 1995 and 1996, and The End of Evangelion in 1997.
Biography
Childhood and early education The son of Fumiko and Takuya Anno, Anno was born in Ube, Yamaguchi; he attended Wakō Kindergarten, Unoshima Municipal Elementary School, Fujiyama Municipal Junior High School, and Yamaguchi Prefectural Ube High School where he was noted for his interest in artwork and making short films for Japanese Cultural Festivals.
Early work Anno began his career while attending Osaka University of Arts as an animator for the anime series The Super Dimension Fortress Macross (1982–1983). Wrapped up in producing the DAICON III and IV Opening Animations with his fellow students, and busy making self-financed films, Anno stopped paying his tuition, eventually getting expelled from Osaka University of Arts. He did not gain recognition 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 his ability, Miyazaki hired him to draw some of the most complicated scenes near the end of the movie, and valued his work highly. Anno went on to become one of the co-founders of Gainax in December 1984. He worked as an animation director for their first feature-length film, Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise (1987), and ultimately became Gainax's premiere anime director, leading the majority of the studio's projects, including Gunbuster (1988) and Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water (1990–1991). However, Anno fell into a four-year depression following Nadia — the series was handed down to him from NHK from an original concept by Hayao Miyazaki (upon which Castle in the Sky also is partly based) and he was given little creative control. In 1994, the minor planet 9081 Hideakianno was named after him by his old friend Akimasa Nakamura.
Neon Genesis Evangelion
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