Person: Oohira Shin`ya 282432

- Relentless pursuer of true movement
- One of the most easily identifiable animators of recent years, as witness the jarring contrast of his scenes in FLCL #2, Animatrix, Spirited Away, etc
- Called a "genius" by Inoue Toshiyuki
- Started out influenced by Yamashita and Umetsu Yasuomi
- Next moved to maniacally detailed special effects phase culminating in the masterful animation of smoke and clouds in Akira and Angel Cop
- Drew a record-breaking 1000 drawings for a single cut in A-Ko, with as many as 14 layers, which was rejected as impossible to film
- Spent 1 month drawing 300 KA for one 3-second shot of a lazer beam (KA! not inbetweens!)
- Next moved towards animating people after participating in Utsunomiya Satoru's Gosenzosama Banbanzai!
- His first major breakthrough was the realistic but richly evocative graphic style of Hakkenden #1, in which most of the animators' work went unmodified straight into the film, thus preserving the personality of their drawings
- He then spent six months creating 3 minutes of animation for the pilot of the Junkers movie, and was consequently fired
- The pilot is a masterpiece full of revolutionary realistic movement and devoid of any trace of anime conventions
- The epoch-making Hakkenden #10 took this further, totally ignoring the original character designs and opting for the first-ever totally realistic designs in anime, and preserving the style of individual animators to such an extent that characters look completely different from one animator's scene to the next
- Hakkenden #10 is singled out by many in the industry as one of the most important anime films of the 1990s
- Currently Ohira appears to be in an expressionistic realism phase in which the body is animated as a special effect, the visceral power of animation being the goal rather than realism, as witness the dance scene in Ghiblies 2 and the skateboard chase in Kid's Story
- Generally speaking, Ohira focuses on creating fluid and realistic movement full of superfluous action to the point of relegating shape and character design to jagged, wildly undulating lines
- Strongly influenced by early Disney, Ohira is a living contradiction: a full animator in a country of limited animation
- He is the most iconoclastic incarnation of the new realism in anime, creating a gritty, sensual realism as opposed to the clean and restrained realism of Omohide Poroporo or Jin-Roh
- Close associate of Hashimoto Shinji on many projects
- Works from home in the country since 1995

From: http://www.pelleas.net/animators/
Courtesy of Ben Ettinger