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- Anime Director and Nihonga Artist Gisaburo Sugii, 1940
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Gisaburō Sugii (杉井ギサブロー or 杉井儀三郎, Sugii Gisaburō, born August 20, 1940) is a Japanese anime director and Nihonga artist. He is best known for his work as director of the Touch series, the movie adaptation of the Arashi no Yoru ni children's book series, and the movie Night on the Galactic Railroad. He is a member of the Directors Guild of Japan and the Japanese Animation Creators Association.
Sugii decided to become an animator after watching the film Bambi. He joined Toei Animation at the age of 19 after taking an entrance exam in 1958. He worked as an in-betweener on Hakujaden, Legend of the White Serpent soon after joining the studio. After becoming disillusioned with Toei due to complaints about production staff being unable to propose projects, he quit in 1961 and joined Mushi Pro on hearing that Osamu Tezuka was going to make anime.
1961 featured an exodus of animators from Toei to Mushi Pro following crackdowns on a strike organized by the Toei animator union. Sugii joined Mushi Pro along with his close friends from Toei, Rintaro and Yusaku Sakamoto. At the time the studio was still under construction and animators worked from Tezuka's house. Sugii helped refine Tezuka's rough animation into proper keys on the Tetsuwan Atom (Astro Boy) pilot film. On the Atom TV anime, Sugii was part of the initial rotation of six episode directors, which included Sakamoto, Eiichi Yamamoto, Sugii, Motoaki Ishii, Shûji Konno and Tezuka himself.
In 1964, Sugii along with Atsushi Takagi, Osamu Dezaki, Seiji Okuda and others left Mushi Pro and established studio Art Fresh. Art Fresh handled outsourced episodes of Tetsuwan Atom.
In 1967, Sugii made his directorial debut with Mushi Pro’s television series Adventures of the Monkey King (Goku no Daibôken). His last work at Mushi Pro would be 1973's Belladonna of Sadness, on which he worked as animation director.
After promoting Manga Nippon
Mukashibanashi, Sugii decided to spend some
time away from the anime industry, setting off to travel
the country from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s before
finally returning to helm Night on the Galactic
Railroad. He noted, ‘‘I could make
Night on the Galactic Railroad precisely because I had
traveled. My approach to
visual expression greatly expanded after these
experiences.’’
Sugii's approach to the film was to treat "characters and
landscapes as equals", exploring the main character
Giovanni's emotions through shifts in the environment.
While the original novel provides next to no description
of the main characters' appearances, Sugii decided to
depict them as anthropomorphic cats, as a means of
preserving author Kenji Miyazawa's descriptive ambiguity
of the characters.
Sugii received the 2018 Tokyo Anime Award Festival Achievement Award which honors "lifetime achievements in developing technical skills and cultivating new talent" and "invaluable contributions to the advancement of the animation industry on the whole".
Director Hiroyasu Ishida was his student at Kyoto Seika University.