Meikyû Monogatari

Yoshiaki Kawajiri is a critically acclaimed writer and director of Japanese animation. He is the creator of titles such as Wicked City, Ninja Scroll, and Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust. Kawajiri was born on November 18, 1950 and grew up in Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. After he graduated from... Yokohama High School in 1968 he began working for a few years as an animator at Mushi Production Animation until it closed in 1972. He then joined Madhouse Studio and in the 1970s was promoted to animation director and finally debuted as a film director with 1984's Lensman, directing jointly with the more experienced Kazuyuki Hirokawa . Gaining an interest in darker animation, he next directed The Running Man. Afterwards, he was instructed to make a 35 minute short based on Hideyuki Kikuchi's novels, which was released as Wicked City. After completing it, however, his producers were so impressed, he was asked to make it feature length. Kawajiri enjoyed the dark tone so much he agreed and managed to complete the entire film in under a year.
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Rintaro is the pseudonym of Shigeyuki Hayashi , a well-known director of anime. He works frequently with the animation studio Madhouse , though he is a freelance director not employed directly by any one studio. He began working in the animation industry—at age 17—as an in-between... animator on the 1958 film Hakujaden. His works have won and been nominated for multiple awards, including a nomination for Best Film at the 2001 Festival de Cine de Sitges. Rintaro is a fan of science fiction, and has been influenced by American westerns, gangster films, film noir, and French films. Additionally, he was influenced by Osamu Tezuka, and worked with him on Kimba the White Lion and Astro Boy. He said that when he was making Metropolis, which was based on Tezuka's manga of the same name, he "wanted to communicate Tezuka's spirit". Rintaro personally introduced the film at the Big Apple Anime Fest in 2001, where it was screened before its theatrical release by TriStar Pictures.
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Katsuhiro Otomo is a Japanese comic book creator, screenwriter and film director. He is best known as the creator of the manga Akira and its animated film adaptation. Otomo has also directed several live-action films, such as the 2006 feature film adaptation of the manga Mushishi. Katsuhiro Otomo... was born in Miyagi Prefecture and grew up in Tome-gun. While he was in high school he was fascinated with movies, often taking a three-hour train during school holidays just to see them. In 1973 he graduated high school and left Miyagi, heading to Tokyo with the hopes of becoming a manga artist. On October 4, 1973, he published his first work, a manga adaptation of Prosper Merimee's short novel Mateo Falcone, titled A Gun Report. In 1979, after writing multiple short-stories for the magazine Action, Otomo created his first science-fiction work, titled Fireball. Although the manga was never completed, it is regarded as a milestone in Otomo's career as it contained many of the same themes he would explore in his later, more successful manga such as Dōmu. Dōmu began serialization in January 1980 and ran for two years until completed.
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