Hideaki Anno

Hideaki Anno (Japanese: 庵野 秀明, Hepburn: Anno Hideaki; born May 22, 1960) is a Japanese animator, filmmaker, actor, producer, and voice actor. His most celebrated creation, the Evangelion franchise, has had a significant influence on the anime television industry and Japanese popular culture. Anno's style is defined by his postmodernist approach and the extensive portrayal of characters' thoughts and emotions. Anno began his career while attending Osaka University of Arts as an animator for the anime series The Super Dimension Fortress Macross (1982–1983), and produced the Daicon III and IV Opening Animations. He did not gain recognition until the release of his work on Hayao Miyazaki's 1984 film Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Anno went on to become one of the co-founders of Gainax in December 1984. He worked as an animation director for their first feature-length film, Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise (1987), and ultimately became Gainax's premiere anime director, leading the majority of the studio's projects, including Gunbuster (1988) and Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water (1990–1991). Anno's next project was the anime television series Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995–1996). Timing constraints at Gainax also forced Anno to replace the planned ending of Evangelion with two episodes set in the main characters' minds. In 1997, Gainax launched a project to re-adapt Evangelion's scrapped ending into a feature-length film. Budgeting issues left the film unfinished, and the completed 27 minutes of animation were included as the second act of Evangelion: Death and Rebirth. Eventually, the project culminated in The End of Evangelion, a two-act film that served as a finale to Neon Genesis Evangelion. Anno wrote and directed the Rebuild of Evangelion film series from 2007 to 2021, written to be more accessible to non-fans than the original anime series and films were. Anno's other directorial...