Farewell to Yasuo Ōtsuka, director and designer known above all for being the animator of cult series such as Lupine III and Conan the boy of the future.
His death at the age of 89, reported by the world's best-known media outlets, was announced in the past few hours, during the Tokyo Anime Awards 2021 awards ceremony.
The great Japanese director and master of animation, collaborator of Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki, is known for having worked on many of the early Japanese animated films of the 1950s and 1960s, including "The Legend of the White Snake", "The Great Adventure of Prince Valiant", "Robin and the two and a half musketeers "," The Little Prince and the Eight-Headed Dragon "," Puss in Boots ".
Born in Tsuwano, in the Japanese prefecture of Shiname, on 11 July 1931, Ōtsuka was struck since childhood by the first experiments in animation, which at the time came from the Soviet Union, so much so that he decides to move to Tokyo to pursue this career even if in the 1950s, to move to the city, he had to get hired by the Ministry of Health as part of the fight against drug addiction.
After recovering from severe tuberculosis two years later, he decides to pursue a career in drawing at full capacity.
Otsuka was then animator, animation director and designer of "Lupine III", of which he edited the first two TV series and various films and specials (he was responsible for choosing the colors of the jackets and the famous yellow 500).
Joining the staff of Nippon Animation, Otsuka directed the animation of the series "Conan the Boy of the Future" and the daring action scenes of "The sense of Sherlock Holmes".
Among the other works of which he directed the animation, the two films of "Panda! Go Panda1" and other feature films of "Lupine III", such as "Lupine III - The conspiracy of the Fuma" in 1987 and "Lupine III - The prophecies. of Nostradamus "in 1995. After leaving his profession, he devoted himself to teaching animation techniques.