Alma Mater: Yamaguchi Prefectural Ube High School
Introduction: Hideaki Anno is known as one of Japan's celebrity anime directors. In 1984 he founded Studio Gainax along with Takami Akai and Hiroyuki Yamaga. As Anno grew up with anime and 8mm experimental film, he brought a mindset of homage and intertextuality novel to anime at the time. He is well known in Japan and has branched out into live action film making, acting, and voice acting in addition to his anime works.
Style: Anno is a first-rate effects animator, known for drawing very realistic scenes of explosions and debris that bears resemblance to atomic bomb test footage. He was mentored by Hayao Miyazaki during the making of Nausicaä, where he drew the giant insect monsters. Though he's done excellent work on a wide variety of shows, his crowning masterpiece of animation is generally accepted to be the rocket launch sequence in Wings of the Honneamise. Another great showcase of his skills are the legendary explosions of DAICON IV.
As a director, Anno has made a career out of subverting expectations in established genres and tropes. The signatures to his direction are rhythmic jump cuts, intertitles, minimal camera movement and avant-garde techniques like emulsion scratches and found footage photomontage. He's also fond of using cutaways of urban scenery, particularly things related to infrastructure and technology, such as . Anno's works are known for being dialogue-driven and for beginning with a light atmosphere before transitioning into the dire.