We all love anime, and it’s fun as a fan to learn about the various writers, directors, artists, animators, and other professionals who make anime come to life for us. I asked J-List’s Twitter and Facebook fans to share what anime creators they love to follow, and here are 12 great names we came up with!
It’s great fun to follow a certain director through the course of his or her career, and I’ve been a lifelong fan of such directors as David Lynch and Quentin Tarantino. In the anime realm, the director I love to follow obsessively has been Hideaki Anno, who got his start as an animator while still in university and went on to create some of the most memorable anime works, from Gunbuster to Nadia to Eva.
Why is Macross: Do You Remember Love? the best anime film? Here’s a blog post with my reasons!
Another anime director J-List customers love to follow closely is Satoshi Kon, who always made films that challenged our understanding. He was sadly taken from us back in 2010.
Even before I could read a single kanji character, I was aware of Japanese illustrator Yoshitaka Amano, who did the character designs for the original Vampire Hunter D, showing us how beautifully designed animation could be. The above is from his re-imagining of the Tale of Genji story.
Ken Akamatsu was an anime creator who had a deep influence on the industry with his popular works like Love Hina and Negima! Master Negi Magi. Are you a fan?
I love girls who love motorcycles, don’t you? Anime is Golden Boy.
See J-List’s newest naughty products here https://t.co/skMFb1kryX
(This is an improved edit.) pic.twitter.com/qjRGU1Xjuw
— Peter Payne (@JListPeter) September 9, 2021
I owe a lot to manga-ka Egawa Tatsuya. Not only is he single-handedly responsible for making me aware of the potential of hentai manga to express human eros in unimaginable ways, but his penchant for using challenging kanji in his manga helped me learn Japanese.
I’ve been a fan of illustrator Kantoku for decades, and have made sure J-List always has their newest artbooks and doujinshi offerings in stock. I love his One Room POV anime a lot, too!
How long have you been into anime? It’s likely less time than the amazing career of one of my favorite anime creators, Satoshi Urushihara, who defined anime and hentai for many of us. After getting his break as mecha designer for Transformers the Movie, he went on to create many amazing works, from the sexy Plastic Little to Cream Lemon, as well as have a stellar career in the anime and game industry that’s still ongoing.
I mean, can you believe how well-animated these oppai from Plastic Little are? They’re closer to the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War than to today.
As long as we’re delving into the hentai realm, another one of the anime creators we love to follow is Shirow Masamune. After making his mark on the world as one of the first manga-ka to achieve international fame in the late 80s, he’s come to focus more on his true passion, creating hentai illustrations of his sexy characters. Which we’re totally down with.
We stock the uncensored + bilingual Ghost in the Shell manga, plus all of Shirow Masamune’s sexy artbooks, here!
Another legendary anime creator who literally changed the world with her amazing works has been Rumiko Takahashi. Without her contribution to the industry, none of us would be anime fans today.
What’s the most perfect Rumiko Takashi work? Here’s a blog post about Maison Ikkoku and her other works!
Related to my long love of everything related to Gainax, I became an early fan of illustrator Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, whose character and mecha designs helped define anime for all of us. I accidentally hit on his wife at the first Anime Expo. Sorry, Sadamoto-sensei!
Anime composer Shiro Sagisu is another anime creator I’ve been following all my life, whether I knew it or not. Although I first became aware of him in the 1990’s Secret of Blue Water, he composed all the music for Evangelion, Megazone 23, and even my beloved Kimagure Orange Road. He created the music for Hideaki Anno’s outstanding Shin Godzilla film, and there’s a great live performance of Godzilla and Evangelion here.
Are you an Evangelion fan? We’ve got the soundtrack to the final film in stock here!
Finally, we can’t possibly end this list without mentioning Hayao Miyazaki, the legendary anime director whose name has become synonymous with animation from Japan. What is your favorite Miyazaki anime work? Here’s a blog post with the ranking of all his films if you want to read!
Thanks for reading this post about the best anime creators we all follow obsessively. Did we miss your favorite name? Post them below, or tell us on Twitter!
We all love the sexy girls from Dead or Alive, and now you can lay your tired head on their soft bosoms, thanks to the Dead or Alive XTreme Venus Vacation live-sided Mashumo oppai pillows. They’re the same huge size as the giant oppai and butt mousepads from SoftGarage, but much more affordable.
