89 Facts About Akiyuki Shinbo

Akiyuki Shinbo is a Japanese animator, director, compositional writer, and storyboard artist.

In 2004, Akiyuki Shinbo was invited by newly appointed Shaft president Mitsutoshi Kubota to collaborate with the studio as a director.

Akiyuki Shinbo was born on September 27,1961, in Koori, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan.

Akiyuki Shinbo was a fan of Go Nagai's manga, and volume 3 of Nagai's Devilman was the first manga tankobon that he ever bought himself.

Kazuki Takahashi, whom Akiyuki Shinbo befriended soon after his move to Tokyo, exemplified the kind of person Akiyuki Shinbo saw as professional manga artist.

Akiyuki Shinbo thought it might be interesting to direct "strange" works, but to become a director at the time usually meant becoming a production assistant, a job he had no interest in, so he thought becoming a director was impossible.

Akiyuki Shinbo joined the group sometime during their rebranding to the name Studio One Pattern.

Akiyuki Shinbo's earliest known given credit in the industry is GeGeGe no Kitaro 3rd Series episode 3.

Akiyuki Shinbo joined the production early in its run, and initially served as director Akira Shigino's assistant for the first episode.

Akiyuki Shinbo debuted as a full-fledged episode director himself on the fourth episode of the series.

Akiyuki Shinbo directed 19 episodes of the series and storyboarded 13 under the series direction of Noriyuki Abe, a colleague from Musashi, the Samurai Lord.

Akiyuki Shinbo's motivation was lowered by the fact that he was making so many storyboard corrections, and he said that during production he thought he might have been better off processing all of the episodes at the episode directing stage instead.

From 1995 to 1999, Akiyuki Shinbo participated in a number of OVA productions with various studios and varying success.

Staff to produce Galaxy Fraulein Yuna Returns, a sequel series to the 1995 OVA directed by Yorifusa Yamaguchi, which Akiyuki Shinbo had served as storyboard artist for.

The OVAs had character designs by Kazuto Nakazawa, but Akiyuki Shinbo wanted the characters to feel more realistic while keeping their "cute" qualities.

Staff producer Yuuji Matsukura to offer Watanabe the role of character designer, and since Watanabe had already known about Akiyuki Shinbo and was a fan of Metal Fighter Miku, he accepted the job.

Akiyuki Shinbo was a fan of Tatsuo Yoshida, a director and the founder of Tatsunoko Production, and was happy to be able to participate in one of the company's works.

Akiyuki Shinbo wanted to use American comics as the basis for the OVA's style, but he said that American comics weren't readily available in Japan at the time, so instead bande dessinee was used for inspiration.

The OVA only produced two episodes and Akiyuki Shinbo regretted being unable to make more.

Akiyuki Shinbo lauded both, stating that Kyoto Animation did a great job and that he was impressed with the quality of Shaft's episode.

Around the same time, SME Visual Works producer Masatoshi Fujimoto was looking for an "auteur"-like director with whom he could make a series with; and after viewing the Yamamoto Yohko OVAs and Metal Fighter Miku, thought that Akiyuki Shinbo would be a fitting director.

The series marked the first time Akiyuki Shinbo worked with composer Yuki Kajiura.

Akiyuki Shinbo described his previous works as self-centered, but he wanted Cossette to be accessible to the public and engage with the world.

Akiyuki Shinbo liked the studio's work on The SoulTaker, so he recommended Shaft and attempted to get a hold of Kubota through the studio's phone line, but was given the answering machine on several occasions.

Kubota, now the studio's president, wanted to transform Shaft into a studio with recognizable characteristics and visual flair that made its productions distinct from the works of others in the industry; and Akiyuki Shinbo, whom Kubota had seen several works of, was a director capable of leading that transformation.

Akiyuki Shinbo chief directed Tsukuyomi: Moon Phase that year.

Akiyuki Shinbo believed he shouldn't add much of his signature style to the series due to the change in genre from his previous works, and that he should instead focus on "making things properly", but was asked by the series' sponsors to add some of his aesthetics anyway.

The series, which Akiyuki Shinbo described as "moe", was challenging due to the fact that he didn't understand "moe" at the time, so he took great care in receiving help from staff members more experienced with the aesthetics of moe.

Akiyuki Shinbo wanted the visual aspect of the series to have a solid foundation, and he specifically wanted someone with strong art setting sensibilities to do the work; however, he didn't want someone from a background art studio to take on the role, and instead wanted an associate of Shaft to handle the work.

Oishi previously worked with Shaft as an animator on several works, as well as with Akiyuki Shinbo on an episode of Yu Yu Hakusho, so his connections with both converged into his work as an episode director on Tsukuyomi, which was a new experience for him.

Akiyuki Shinbo attributed Tsukuyomi as the foundation for his experimentalism with Shaft, and that without the work's out-of-the-ordinary approach, it would not have been possible to collaborate with other like-minded people; and it was because of that approach that they gained recognition, thus allowing for such creators to come together.

Akiyuki Shinbo later found out that Shinbo was directing Tsukuyomi at the same time as Nanoha, and watched the first episode, which he though was closer to Shinbo's style than Nanoha.

Akiyuki Shinbo found out that an acquaintance of his worked at Shaft, and got their phone number to join the Tsukuyomi team and Shaft.

At that point, Akiyuki Shinbo was already aware of Oota and praised his work on Nanoha as being some of the best outsourced episodes he had seen while working on TV anime, and was surprised that Oota wanted to join Shaft to work on Tsukuyomi with him.

Akiyuki Shinbo wanted to expand on the visual cross-cutting techniques Nobuyuki Takeuchi used in Tsukuyomi while expanding on other experimentalist ideas from the series.

Akiyuki Shinbo wanted the staff members to showcase their own abilities while keeping consistent direction, a philosophy he compared to Time Bokan.

Between 2006 and 2009, Akiyuki Shinbo directed several more television series and OVAs with various in-house and freelance directors.

When he received the offer to direct the adaptation of Ume Aoki's Hidamari Sketch, Akiyuki Shinbo was initially worried that the viewer would change the channel if it was too boring as a slice of life work.

Character designer Yoshiaki Itou and Oishi were in charge of the series' general art design of the series, and Akiyuki Shinbo's orders consisted of each of the girl's rooms shown only at selective angles with few "cameras".

Iijima was no longer employed by Studio Easter and had started his own company, Ryuubidou, which Akiyuki Shinbo found the website for decided to ask him to work on the show.

For Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei, Akiyuki Shinbo wanted to make something unique but in line with the manga.

Akiyuki Shinbo told Oishi, who was in charge of the opening, to not make something too offensive; and he decided to work with Tatsuwa as the assistant director and Hiroki Yamamura from Studio Pastoral as the chief animation director alongside character designer Hideyuki Morioka.

Tatsuwa and Yamamura were both fans of the source material's author, Koji Kumeta, and Akiyuki Shinbo believed that they could help him to understand the parts that he didn't get.

Akiyuki Shinbo thought that Yamamura's drawings tended to appeal to women which he wanted in order to appeal to a broader audience.

Oishi was already involved with the first season as an episode director, storyboard artist, and one of the art designers, and Akiyuki Shinbo wanted Oishi to have more input in the second series, so he became involved as the "production director" and had a hand in checking episodes that he wasn't otherwise involved in.

Akiyuki Shinbo felt that one of the most particular aspects of the series was its portrayal of summer, so he asked Oonuma to come up with a way of emphasizing the summer heat.

Akiyuki Shinbo himself contributed to the look of the lighting itself, which takes the form of linear and geometric shapes, a style that art director Yuuji Ikeda influenced him with when they worked together on Marude Dameo.

Akiyuki Shinbo suggested early on in pre-production that the screenwriters should add more monologues than what the original manga contained, which posed a problem as the runtime for episodes would often go over the limit.

Akiyuki Shinbo was originally the only director, but he requested that Tatsuya Oishi work with him as series director.

Akiyuki Shinbo had received the call from Mitsutoshi Kubota for the work, but was called sometime later to say that they had changed their mind and would adapt Bakemonogatari instead.

Akiyuki Shinbo initially thought that adapting such a work, in which characters speak for a large portion of the runtime, would be difficult.

Akiyuki Shinbo had chosen Tatsuya Oishi to act as series director due to the latter's stylistic affinity for interesting colors and his ability to use cool lettering and Kanji in the animated medium, which he thought were beneficial in adapting such a unique novel series.

Akiyuki Shinbo wanted to keep the dialogue more-or-less the same, despite the amount of dialogue in the work, which would be interesting as an anime; though, this philosophy in making the work proved to be somewhat problematic, as Aniplex producer Atsuhiro Iwakami planned the series as a 13-episode work.

Akiyuki Shinbo said that he expressed his desire to produce another magical girl series in various casual conversations because he thought there were improvements to be made in the genre from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha.

Atsuhiro Iwakami heard about Akiyuki Shinbo wanting to produce a magical girl series around Bakemonogataris production, which spawned the initial development of Puella Magi Madoka Magica.

Akiyuki Shinbo didn't have an idea for who would compose the series' music, but Iwakami suggested Cossette composer Yuki Kajiura; and after listening to a sample she provided, Akiyuki Shinbo believed she was a perfect match for the series.

Akiyuki Shinbo watched Hidamari Sketch, directed by Shinbo and based on original character designer Aoki's manga, to try and grasp what kind of characters to write.

Akiyuki Shinbo attributed his success with the series to the culmination of projects that he had been involved with up until that point, especially with Shaft.

Akiyuki Shinbo won the best director awards at the 11th Tokyo Anime Award, and the 2011 Newtype Anime Award for his work on Madoka Magica.

In 2017, Akiyuki Shinbo was chosen by Japanese critics as one of the greatest anime directors of all time for his work on Madoka Magica.

Retrospectively, anime director Tatsuyuki Nagai considered Madoka to be the culmination of Akiyuki Shinbo's directing works throughout the years, especially in regard to Nanoha and Hidamari, which he believed were essential to its success.

The success of the series allowed for it to become a larger franchise, and the following two years a trilogy film series consisting of two recap films with updated animation and a third sequel film, with Akiyuki Shinbo chief directing and Miyamoto directing.

Akiyuki Shinbo didn't intend to make the scenario itself longer, but requested additions such as the action scene at the beginning of the film.

Unlike previous works Akiyuki Shinbo had been involved with, the compilation movies would update the visuals but keep the existing footage otherwise the same, which Akiyuki Shinbo proclaimed he was not good at doing and would rather rethink the storyboards or add new cuts from scratch.

In 2013, Akiyuki Shinbo returned with Itamura for Monogatari Series Second Season, featuring Yase and Tatsuwa as series directors for the Kabukimonogatari and Onimonogatari arcs.

Akiyuki Shinbo had been aware of Itamura's work at Shaft since he had joined 3 years prior, and he believed that the second episode of Bakemonogatari was very good.

Akiyuki Shinbo interpreted the source material for And Yet the Town Moves as being inspired by and written like an older manga series.

Akiyuki Shinbo noted that both himself and the original author to Ground Control to Psychoelectric Girl, Hitoma Iruma, were male, so he thought the series would've been more interesting if the series composition was instead written from the perspective of a woman.

In 2014, Akiyuki Shinbo directed Nisekoi with Tatsuwa, Mekakucity Actors with Yase, the final arc to Monogatari Series Second Season, Hanamonogatari, with Itamura, and the first arc in Monogatari Series Final Season, Tsukimonogatari with Itamura.

Umino had originally wanted the series to have a similar aesthetic to Bakemonogatari, which she was a fan of, but Akiyuki Shinbo said that it wasn't a good idea; instead of the Bakemonogatari-esque background art Umino had in mind, for example, the series was made with a watercolor-style.

Akiyuki Shinbo struggled to decide on whether the characters should be more comedic or realistic, but after reading One's screenplay, decided that it would be okay to have a little of both, especially since he felt that the character designs suited such a mixture.

Akiyuki Shinbo mentioned that many of the staff members by this point had been with the series since its beginnings, but that many had joined partway through; nonetheless, he believed that the episode directors were able to show their individuality and expressions more strongly than in previous installments in the series.

In 2016, Akiyuki Shinbo expanded his work outside of Shaft alongside light novel author Reki Kawahara and novelist and scriptwriter Ichiro Okouchi as shareholders and collaborators to the then newly-established Egg Firm production studio.

Akiyuki Shinbo took a step back from acting as a director on the series for the purpose of separating the original Madoka Magica and Magia Record in order to clearly express that Magia Record is a spin-off series, rather than a continuation of the original series.

In 2024, an adaptation of the Off Season and Monster Season series of novels of Nisio Isin's Monogatari series was announced, with Akiyuki Shinbo, Shaft, and Akio Watanabe returning to their respective roles; and with the debut of Midori Yoshizawa as series director, who was an assistant director on Magia Record.

Akiyuki Shinbo relied on Yoshizawa for her art design sensibilities and decided to make changes to some of the formats from her predecessors.

For Wazamonogatari, Akiyuki Shinbo was not originally in charge of storyboarding the arc, but ultimately revised the storyboards to the point that he received co-credit for both episodes under Shaft's collective pseudonym of Fuyashi Tou.

Akiyuki Shinbo listed Hiroshi Motomiya, Ikki Kajiwara, Go Nagai, and Shotaro Ishinomori among the manga authors that he liked whose works, such as Kajiwara's Tomorrow's Joe, were big influences on him.

Mystery elements found in The SoulTaker and Le Portrait de Petit Cossette were broadly influenced by the written works of Edogawa Ranpo, whom Akiyuki Shinbo started reading the works of while in elementary school.

Akiyuki Shinbo has made the conscious decision of directing using techniques headed by Dezaki, such as Dezaki's "three pan" shots, on works like Maria Holic.

Akiyuki Shinbo cited Yoshimitsu Oohashi, whom he worked with several times between 1995 and 1997, as the reason for the realistic qualities in his characters.

Akiyuki Shinbo referenced Mike Mignola as one American comic artist he likes.

Artistic motifs unique to Akiyuki Shinbo include chess-like designed columns and colored backgrounds; and he commonly uses uncolored or desaturated foreground characters over oversaturated and brighter-colored backgrounds.

Akiyuki Shinbo prominently uses stained glass and other gothic facets for effect in both serious and psychological sequences, and comedy-orientated scenes.

Akiyuki Shinbo stated that he felt it to be unnecessary to add "mob" characters and tends to avoid adding them at all in his series.

However, Akiyuki Shinbo said he had stopped using such abstract colors in his works, part of which was due to his trust in Hitoshi Hibino, a veteran color designer at Shaft, who disliked when Akiyuki Shinbo colored bishojo characters abstractly.

Akio Watanabe said that Akiyuki Shinbo was always peculiar about making works with bishojo characters, but that his style in doing so changed when he went to Shaft.

Akiyuki Shinbo emphasizes his reliance on others to do things that he cannot and the input of other creators who understand the kind of "film" he wants to make who bring in their own ideas.

Akiyuki Shinbo was an avid smoker for part of his life, but one day got a cold and stopped smoking for about two weeks.