Yoshiyuki Sadamoto

Sadamoto is smiling!

Yoshiyuki Sadamoto (貞本 義行) is best known as the character designer for Neon Genesis Evangelion, of course, but he has a long list of accomplishments as an artist.

He also, with Hideaki Anno, Takami Akai, Shinji Higuchi, Hiroyuki Yamaga, Toshio Okado and Yasuhiro Takeda, co-founded the Gainax anime studio in the early 1980s. Before it was officially named Gainax (it was originally called Daicon Film), Sadamoto worked as an animator on the the Daicon III and IV short films featuring a girl fighting monsters and robots, and even a daikon radish that turns into a spaceship. These two shorts were re-used as opening animations in the Gainax OVA Otaku no Video (1991). His first work as a character designer with Gainax was in Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise in 1987. He worked as an animator on Gainax projects Gunbuster (1988), Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water (1990), and Diebuster (2004). Sadamoto designed characters for many projects, both with Gainax and others: from Nadia, Diebuster, FLCL (2000), (all Gainax projects), to .hack//Sign (2002), The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2005), and Summer Wars (2009), to films like Wolf Children (2012) and the Rebuild of Evangelion series. In 2007 he was key animator for episode 27 of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, and was both animation director and key animator for Evangelion 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone.

Sadamoto is the creator of the Neon Genesis Evangelion-based manga series, his first full manga work, which is an alternate continuity to that of the original series. He is also the author of the shorter 60-page manga Route 20 (1991), as well as the author of 2 short novels, Dirty Work and System of Romance. When he was 19, his manga work was published in the Akita Shoten weekly Shonen Champion. He decided to become a manga artist, he said, "[r]ight about the time I was in elementary school and middle school, Mazinger Z by Go Nagai, and Leiji Matsumoto's Battlefield manga series were just coming out. About that time I thought it might be nice to become a manga artist."

In 2003, Viz published a collection of his works, titled Der Mond ("The Moon"). Other artbooks like Die Sterne ("The Stars") and Groundwork of FLCL showcase his talent. He also did the artwork for the cover of Eric Clapton's album Pilgrim.

In an interview published in Der Mond, Sadamoto describes some of the brainstorming sessions between him and Hideaki Anno during the early development of the Evangelion project. Some of Sadamoto's ideas that ended up being used include: suggesting that Anno change the protagonist from a girl to a boy, favoring the name "Evangelion" over "Alcion," proposing the concept that "the dead mother is inside the robot ... operated by mental/psychical bonding with the child" after learning about the A10 nerve from a program on NHK, and making the show a TV series instead of an OVA.

In 2008, he produced a two-part manga called Archaic Smile with his mangaka wife, Mako Takaha, that appeared in Monthly Shonen Ace. At the 2013 Tokyo Anime Fair, Gainax announced that they would be reviving their Blue Uru film project, with Yoshiyuki Sadamoto as the character designer. 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', 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.

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."

Notes

• Sadamoto came up with the idea of Pen Pen being a hot springs penguin.

External links

• Wikipedia entry
• Anime News Network entry
• Alpha artbook
• Gainax Pages on Route 20

Staff

Hideaki Anno | Kazuya Tsurumaki | Masayuki | Shinji Higuchi | Mahiro Maeda | Yoshiyuki Sadamoto | Ikuto Yamashita | Akio Satsukawa | Ikki Todoroki | Mitsuo Iso | Takeshi Honda | Yoji Enokido | Hidenori Matsubara | Shiro Sagisu | Atsushi Nishigori | Yoshitoh Asari | Hidetoshi Sato | Hiroshi Yamaguchi | Akira Takamura | Hiroyuki Ishido | Keiichi Sugiyama | Ken Ando | Masahiko Otsuka | Minoru Ohara | Naoyasu Habu | Seiji Mizushima | Tensai Okamura | Tetsuya Watanabe | Tomoki Kyoda | Tsuyoshi Kaga | Takami Akai | Yo Yoshinari | Carl Horn | Dan Kanemitsu