Yasuo Ôtsuka

Ôtsuka is appointed chief animation director of the studio and worked in the failed pilot film of "Lupin III", the first animation movie of Monkey Punch's comic in 1971.

In 1969 he quits Toei Doga to enter in the little animation studio A Pro. [later called "Shin'Ei" (New A)] which worked as independent unit under the Tokyo Movie Studio.

"Prince of the Sun: The Great Adventure of Horus" (1968) was the first official collaboration of the team Ôtsuka-Kotabe-Takahata-Miyazaki and Ôtsuka's debut as animation director.

As an influential animator, he played an essential role when two important directors in Japanese animation, namely Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki, made their theatrical debut. In 1965, when Toei Doga chose Otsuka for animation director of their tenth feature film, he recommended the studio to pick out Takahata for director. This tenth feature film resulted in Takahata's theatrical debut Horus: Prince of the Sun (1968). Again in 1979, when Tokyo Movie Shinsha asked him to make the second "Lupin the Third" movie, he invited Miyazaki to direct it. This collaboration resulted in Miyazaki's theatrical debut Lupin the 3rd: Castle of Cagliostro (1979).

After the short film "Dream Baby" (1958), the Daikuhara team collaborate in the first colour long feature films of this company, "The White Snake Enchantress" (1958) and "Young Sasuke Sarutobi" (1959).

During these times he was very impressed by french and soviet animation films and finally enters in 1956 in an animation studio which later will be Toei Doga, the most important animation studio in Japan. He enters in a group of pioneers under the orders of legendary Akira Daikuhara, and soon will be speciallized in the animation of action secquences.

In 1951 goes to Tokyo to start a career as a cartoonist, but begins to work in the Anti-drug Department Office of Kanto Koshinetsu.