Person: Kotabe Youichi

Kotabe Youichi, born September 15, 1936 in Taipei, Taiwan, is a Japanese mangaka and animator, who has worked with Takahata Isao and Miyazaki Hayao. He is one of the most imporant animators and character designers throughout the 60, 70s and 80s, having contributed the designs to the World Masterpiece Theater anime television series Heidi and 3000 Leagues in Search of Mother as well as the Taro the Dragon Boy film.

He belongs currently to Nintendo Co., Ltd., and is a lecturer at Tokyo Designer Academy's Cartoon Film Course. His wife was Okuyama Reiko also an animator and character designer. They worked together on Horus: Prince of the Sun, and started together "Atelier Rei" (アトリエ玲), a company in which they made a new style of anime. "Panda! Go, Panda!" was their first production, directed by Takahata. This new style imprinted the later Ghibli style, with Kotabe's designs serving as influence for Miyazaki's Nausicaa and Kondou's later designs.

The reason why he came to be interested in animation was that he watched the short film Momotaro's Sea Eagle (桃太郎の海鷲) in his childhood, 1942. It was interesting to him that a fighter moved that well in the movie. Afterwards, he came to draw pictures by the influence of his father, whose hobby was oil painting. However, since Kotabe was poor at oil painting, he began with watercolour painting, which was much more suited to him. Thinking that watercolour painting could be continued if he drew in Nihonga (Japanese Style Painting), he entered the "Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music" where a Japanese Style Painting Department existed. He was tempted to stay at the university after finishing study in 1958. But, he was shocked to see "Madame White Snake (白蛇伝) in those days, and decided to take the test for employment at Toei Animation which was the studio that made this movie.

His first big work that had been given him already only after he joined Toei was "Horus: Prince of the Sun", on which he worked with Takahata Isao and Miyazaki Hayao. Especially, he often worked with Miyazaki as animation director on the same episodes, which Miyazaki directed.

He left Toei Animation with Takahata Isao and Miyazaki Hayao to make "Pippi Longstocking" an animated cartoon, for which he transferred to "A Production". However, the plan was called off because they were rejected by the original writer. Then, they produced the "Panda! Go, Panda!" by misappropriating the plot they had in their mind for Pippi into this film. Afterwards Kotabe continued to work with Takahata and Miyazaki. For their next work it was again Takahata who directed, Miyazaki who designed the setting, and Kotabe who was animation director, they continued with "3000 Leagues in Search of Mother". Takahata Isao who had worked with Kotabe in "Heidi, Girl of the Alps" and "3000 Leagues in Search of Mother" made for Kotabe the staff notation "Character Design", which had not existed in a staff roll till then in Japan. Afterwards, Kotabe became free-lance, and continued working together with them from time to time.

In 1985, he was scouted by Nintendo, and assumed the position of the game development adviser. When Kotabe was scouted, he knew nothing about video games. However, he was shown "Super Mario Brothers" for which he was requested to design the package illustration. He felt that the game industry was livelier than the animated cartoon industry in Japan at that time. He left Nintendo in 2007.