Genius Party

Shinichirō Watanabe is a Japanese anime filmmaker, screenwriter, and producer. He is known for directing the critically and commercially successful anime series Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo. Watanabe is known for blending together multiple genres in his anime creations. In Cowboy Bebop,... for example, Watanabe mixes classic cowboy western with 1940s/1950s New York City film noir, Jazz music and Hong Kong action movies, and sets the entire series in space. In his later work, Samurai Champloo, Watanabe mixes the cultures of Okinawa, hip-hop, modern-day Japan, and chanbara. After joining the Japanese animation studio Sunrise, Watanabe supervised the episode direction and storyboards of numerous Sunrise anime, and soon made his directorial debut as co-director of the well-received Macross update, Macross Plus. His next effort, and first full directorial venture, was the 1998 television series Cowboy Bebop. It was followed by the 2001 film, Knockin' on Heaven's Door.
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Koji Morimoto , born December 26, 1959 is an animator and one of Japan’s premier anime directors. Born in Wakayama, Japan, he graduated from the Osaka School of Design in 1979 and a couple years later joined the studio Annapuru as an animator for the TV series “Tomorrow's Joe”.... While working there, he saw some animation by Takashi Nakamura in ‘Gold Lightan’, an otherwise standard mecha TV series by a rival studio. He was impressed, and it inspired him to quit his job and become a freelance animator. Morimoto often collaborated with Nakamura, most notably in Katsuhiro Otomo’s 'The Order to Stop Construction’ segment of the anthology film ‘Neo-Tokyo’. This opened many doors for him, from working as animation director on Otomo’s landmark feature ‘Akira’ and a chance to direct a short for the ‘Robot Carnival’ anthology. Around this time he founded Studio 4°C with producer Eiko Tanaka and fellow animator Yoshiharu Sato. Since then, Morimoto has focused almost exclusively on his directing work. His work became increasingly unusual with time.
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Kazuto Nakazawa is a Japanese character designer and director of numerous anime series and video games who also goes by the pseudonym Takeshi Tsuji . His directorial work includes Parasite Dolls, the anime sequence in Kill Bill volume 1, and the Moondrive segment of Genius Party Beyond. He has... designed characters for many anime, such as Ashita no Nadja and Samurai Champloo, for which he also served as animation director. In addition to his work with anime, he designed the characters of Tales of Legendia and was the animation director of Devil Kings. Throughout his career, he has worked also as an animator, providing key animations to anime such as The Animatrix's "Kid's Story" and "A Detective Story". He has made two appearances at anime conventions in the United States: at Otakon in 1999 and 2006. He also animated the Joe Hahn-directed music video for the Linkin Park song "Breaking the Habit.
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Masaaki Yuasa is an anime television and film director, screenwriter, storyboard artist and animator known for his wild free form style. He was born on March 16, 1965 in Fukuoka, Japan. His most recent works as of August 2010 are the television series The Tatami Galaxy and the opening title... sequence of the feature film Welcome to the Space Show. For a presentation in February 2009 on the eve of that years Image par image animation festival in Val-d'Oise, France, for which he also illustrated the poster, Yuasa selected and commented on some examples of animated works that have been an influence on his. These were a film by Tex Avery, another by Ladislas Starevich, extracts from Yellow Submarine, Fantastic Planet, The Fox and the Hound, The Wrong Trousers, a Batman pilot from Lightbox Animation, the 1971 Tōei Dōga film Ali Baba to Yonjuppiki no Tōzoku a Masaaki Ōsumi-directed episode of the first Lupin III television series and part 4 of The Hakkenden: Shinshō and the Tiger Mask and Mrs. Pepper Pot opening and ending titles respectively.
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Mahiro Maeda is one of the most prominent Japanese anime creators working today, having worked as director, character designer, and animator for many of Japan's top series. He has been one of the top contributors at the anime studio GONZO for many years, having directed Blue Submarine No. 6, Final... Fantasy: Unlimited and Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo. His design work ranges from 2 of the "Angels" in Neon Genesis Evangelion to production and mechanical design for such series as Magic User's Club , The Vision of Escaflowne and Last Exile. He was also the designer of the invaders in Gatekeepers 21. His earlier years were spent mostly at the famed Studio Ghibli, where he helped animate classics such as Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Castle in the Sky, and Porco Rosso. Maeda is also one of the select Japanese directors to actively collaborate with the international film media on various projects. He provided key animation for the animation sequence in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill Vol. 1.
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Shōji Kawamori is a Japanese anime creator, screenwriter and mechanical designer. Shoji Kawamori was born in Toyama Japan in 1960. He attended Keio University in the same years as Macross screenwriter Hiroshi Ōnogi and character designer Haruhiko Mikimoto, where they had a Mobile Suit... Gundam fan club called "Gunsight One", a name they would use years later as part of the Macross series. Shoji Kawamori occasionally used the alias Eiji Kurokawa early in his anime career when he started as a teenager intern member of Studio Nue and worked as assistant artist and animator there during the late seventies and early eighties. Later on his career Kawamori created or co-created the concepts which served as basis for such notable anime series as The Super Dimension Fortress Macross, The Vision of Escaflowne, Earth Maiden Arjuna, Genesis of Aquarion, Macross 7, and Macross Frontier. His projects are usually noted to contain strong themes of love, war, spirituality or mysticism, and ecological concern. Kawamori is currently executive director at the animation studio Satelight.
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