Yoichi Kotabe Information

Animation Director / Character Designer
Japan

Biography:
Yoichi Kotabe was born in Taipei, Taiwan in 1936. After graduating from Tokyo University of the Arts, Mr. Kotabe joined Toei Animation Studio in 1959. Mr. Kotabe played a main role in masterpieces of the studio like "Little Prince and the Eight Headed Dragon" (1963), "Puss 'n Boots" (1969) and more.

He left Toei Animation Studio and transferred to A Production with Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki. He was an animation director in "Panda! Go! Panda!" (1972) and "Red-Armored Suzunosuke" (1972). After that, he joined Zuiyo and then moved to Nippon Animation. With Takahata, Miyazaki and Okuyama, Mr. Kotabe worked as a character designer and an animation director of "Heidi" (1974) and "From Apennines to the Andes" (1976). He worked on "Taro the Dragon Boy" (1979) with Toei Animation Studio, "Chie the Brat" (1981) with Tokyo Movie, "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind" (1984) and "The Grave of the Fireflies" (1988).

Since 1985, he had worked for Nintendo Co., Ltd. and joined the project of "Super Mario Brothers". He left Nintendo, however he still continues supervising "Pokémon" (movies and TV series). His book "The art book of Yoichi Kotabe" is published by ANIDO Film.