Tag: obits

August 20, 2021 · 0 comments

Shinichi “Sonny” Chiba, who died yesterday from COVID-derived pneumonia, was one of Japan’s foremost action stars, with an influence extending way beyond his native country.

August 18, 2021 · 0 comments

Masami Suda, who died of cancer on 1st August, had a career that spanned everything from the sci-fi of Space Knight Tekkaman to the basketball action of Slam Dunk. “I didn’t go into animation because I loved it, but because I really wanted to draw, I aspired to become a graphic designer,” he once admitted […]

August 15, 2021 · 2 comments

Fred Ladd, who died on 3rd August at the age of 94, met anime in 1963, when he was phoned by a New York company asking if there was potential in a foreign TV cartoon. The company was NBC Enterprises, a small outfit that rather hoped people would confuse it with the better known NBC […]

June 14, 2021 · 0 comments

Asei Kobayashi, who died on 30th May from a heart attack, was an unlikely candidate for musical composer, or actor, or game-show champion…. Pushed by his parents into studying to be a doctor, he transferred without telling them to the department of economics at Keio University, where his classmates included another future composer, Isao Tomita. […]

May 20, 2021 · 5 comments

“When you’re a cartoonist and working at home you sit at your desk pretty much all day,” Kentaro Miura once said in an interview. “You get most of your information about the world from the news on TV. I think that’s how most cartoonists spend their days. And then I start to see the whole […]