Yoshiyuki Sadamoto

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Yoshiyuki Sadamoto

Yoshiyuki Sadamoto (貞本 義行, Sadamoto Yoshiyuki^?) (Born on 29 January 1962, in Tokuyama (now Shunan), Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan) is a Japanese character designer, mangaka, and one of the founding members of the GAINAX studio. Before the studio was founded under the official name (it was originally called Daicon Film), he served as animator on the second animated project, the Daicon IV opening animation. His first assignment as character designer in GAINAX was for Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise, released in 1987. He also worked as animator on Gunbuster and Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, and he came back to this specialty for the first episode of Diebuster (also known as Gunbuster 2 or Top wo Nerae! 2). He is also the character designer of the best known GAINAX anime series, Neon Genesis Evangelion, as well as the author of its manga adaptation (which is also Sadamoto's first full-length manga work).

Sadamoto shows how to draw Shinji

In addition to his work on Evangelion, Sadamoto did character designs for Nadia, FLCL, .hack//Sign, Diebuster, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, and Summer Wars. His first artbook is entitled Alpha, and presents a collection of illustrations by Sadamoto that were made before Evangelion (including Nadia and The Wings of Honneamise).

In 2003, Viz published a collection of his works, entitled Der Mond (German for "The Moon"). Other artbooks that include some of Sadamoto's works are Die Sterne (German for "The Stars") and Groundwork of FLCL.

Sadamoto is also the author of a short manga named Route 20 that was derived from an aborted anime project. He was also author of two manga one-shots, Dirty Work and System of Romance. He is currently serving as co-creator and character designer for the .hack game franchise.

Sadamoto also worked as an artist for the cover of Eric Clapton's album Pilgrim.

According to Yasuo Otsuka, who guided Sadamoto as a newcomer, there are only three people whom he regarded as more skillful than himself that he has met during his career. One of them is Yoshiyuki Sadamoto. The other two are Sadao Tsukioka, who became a visual creator, and award-winning director Hayao Miyazaki.

When Otsuka met the three men, he seems to have felt that he was taking off his hat to them at once. However, he thinks that only Miyazaki completely mastered a genuinely superior animation technique at present. He guesses, "A too excellent person might despair in the group work".

In recent years, Sadamoto has concentrated primarily on comics and on illustration work. Since the early 1990s, his animation work has consisted primarily of character design and supervision, although this may be changing with his involvement in 2007 as key animator on episode 27 of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, and animation director and key animator on Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone.

Beside his works on the Evangelion manga and the Rebuild of Evangelion films, 2.0 and 3.0, he was in charge of the character design for Mamoru Hosoda's movie, Wolf Children^WP, as well as the drawing of the cover for Michie M's album, Greatest Idol, which features Vocaloid virtual idol Hatsune Miku. He is also credited as the designer of the vehicles for the live-action movie of Attack on Titan^WP.

On 09 August 2019, Sadamoto criticized on Twitter a statue featured in the “After Freedom of Expression" historical art exhibition at the Aichi Prefecture Museum of Art, Statue of Peace (2011), by Kim Seo-kyung and Kim Eun-sang memorializing comfort women, girls who worked in wartime brothels in World War II for the Japanese military. The statue was first installed by its creators in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul as a form of political protest. He also criticized a movie in the exhibition that showed a picture of the Emperor of Japan being burned and then stomped underfoot, he referred to it as "indistinguishable from a certain country's style of propaganda". Sadamoto said "I wanted it to be an art event with academic contemporary art at its core...Remove the crazy [propaganda]-affirming media and the exhibition could still be redeemed." he follows "I'm not going to completely reject the act of turning propaganda into art, but honestly speaking, it did not speak to me at all on an artistic level." His comments have been criticized by some Koreans and English speakers who replied to his tweet with displeasure of his views.

Later, Sadamoto claimed he merely disliked the statue's design, but liked Korean idols and even had Korean friends. According to GAINAX co-founder Toshio Okada, Sadamoto's feelings towards Koreans were already a factor of animosity during the production of Nadia, during which he blamed outsourced Korean animators for oscillations of quality during the series' "Island Arc" and would go on angry tirades disparaging their work, leaving the studio on his motorcycle. Anno believed this was part of miscommunication in the production process, and Okada attributed it to cultural differences.

After 3.0, Sadamoto has not returned to work on the final Rebuild of Evangelion film, Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon A Time, and has had a diminishing role in the tetralogy. Character design, as well as authorship of the spin-off manga EVANGELION 3.0 (-120 min.), was instead handed to Hidenori Matsubara for most of the Rebuilds, with Sadamoto being credited instead as "original character design" in 2.0, 3.0 and 3.0+1.0, with diminishing involvement in a supervisory role for 2.0 and 3.0. He is also not interviewed for the last two films. Many fans, primarily Korean ones, protested at Sadamoto's statements, and asked if he was still involved with the new Eva movie. Sadamoto denied this and stated he had completely resigned from Khara and had "no involvemnt whatsoever."

Works

Theatrical Films

• Royal Space Force - The Wings of Honnêamise (1987) - Character Design, Animation Director, Layout Design, Production Design
• R20 - Ginga Kūkō (1991) - Director, Screenplay, Character Design
• Nadia - The Secret of Blue Water: The Motion Picture (1991) - Character Design
• Evangelion: Death and Rebirth (1997) - Character Design, Animation Director, Design Director, Key Animation (Death)
• The End of Evangelion (1997) - Character Design, Design Director, Layout Coordination
• Cutie Honey (live-action movie) (2004) - Character Design
• The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006) - Character Design
• Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone (2007) - Character Design, Animation Supervisor, Key Animation
• Summer Wars (2009) - Character Design
• Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance (2009) - Original Character Design, Assistant Animation Director
• Wolf Children (2012) - Character Design
• Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo (2012) - Original Character Design, Image Board
• Attack on Titan (live-action movie) (2015) - Character Design
• Attack on Titan: End of the World (2015) - Character Design
• Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon A Time (2021) - Original Character Design

TV Anime/OVA

• Gunbuster (1988) - Animation Director (eps 5-6), Key Animation (eps 1, 4-6), Setting (eps 1-6)
• Nadia - The Secret of Blue Water (1990) - Character Design, Animation Director (8,21,39)
• Neon Genesis Evangelion (anime) (1995) - Character Design, Animation Director (ep 22)
• FLCL (2000) - Original Character Design, Key Animation (ep 4), Visual Concept
• Gunbuster 2: Diebuster (2004) - Character Design, Animation Director (OP), Character Animation Director (ep 1)
• Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann (2007) - Key Animation (ep 27)
• Great Pretender (2020) - Character Design
• Grendizer U (2024) - Character Design

Published Works

• Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995) - writer, illustrator
• Der Mond (2000) - illustrator
• Die Sterne (2003) - illustrator
• Carmine (2010) - illustrator

External links

• Yoshiyuki Sadamoto at the Anime News Network
• An interview with Sadamoto, translated in Animerica in Vol. 6, issue No. 8
• Interview in Der Mond
• Sadamoto judges in a Twilight contest
• The Rose review of Der Mond
• Yuki, Masahiro. "The Official Art of .hack//Roots". (May 2007) Newtype USA. pp. 101–107.
• Interview Part of the article from the separate appendix "Neon Genesis Evangelion DECADE" in the March issue of "Monthly Newtype" magazine (Japanese)
• Conversation between Yasuo Otsuka^WP and Yoshiyuki Sadamoto (Japanese) (Archived)