Tag: obits

March 18, 2024 · 1 comment

The artist Mutsumi Inomata, who died on 10th March, has been a ubiquitous presence in the anime world for the last forty years, even though she distanced herself from actual animation in the late 1980s. When interviewed about her character designs on Weathering Continent in 1993, she admitted that she already had left much of […]

March 9, 2024 · 0 comments

“Tarako” Isono, who died on 4th March, would often contend against the media’s assessment of her. Repeatedly in interviews, she would assert that she identified as a “singer-songwriter”, in spite of constant descriptions of her as a “voice actress”. But her career as a performer and lyricist, while manifold and long-running, was destined to be […]

March 8, 2024 · 0 comments

The manga creator Akira Toriyama, who died on 1st March, was cited by the editor-in-chief of Weekly Shonen Jump as being the prime catalyst in driving the magazine to its six-million circulation in the 1980s. The antic humour of his Doctor Slump (1980-84) and the sprawling, brawling sci-fi saga Dragon Ball (original series 1984-95) made […]

September 12, 2023 · 0 comments

The manga artist Buichi Terasawa, who died on 8th September, enjoyed a meteoric rise to fame in the 1980s, becoming popular just as his particular brand of lurid, violent sci-fi formed the fuel for the early 1990s boom in adult anime. He was born plain Takeichi Terasawa in Hokkaido – he would use the alternate […]

August 20, 2023 · 0 comments

The background artist Nizo Yamamoto, who died on 19th August, spent his whole life working in the Japanese animation sector. Born on the Goto islands in Nagasaki Prefecture, he developed an interest in painting and architecture at school before studying at the Tokyo Designer Gakuin. He was not yet out of college when he found […]