- Born
- Katsuhiro Ôtomo is a Japanese manga artist, screenwriter and film director. He is best known as the creator of the manga Akira and its animated film adaptation.
In 1979, after writing multiple short-stories for the magazine Action, Otomo created his first science-fiction work, titled Fireball. Although the manga was never completed, it is regarded as a milestone in Otomo's career as it contained many of the same themes he would explore in his later. In 1982, Otomo made his anime debut, working as character designer for the animated film Harmagedon. The next year, Otomo began work on a manga which would become his most acclaimed and famous work: Akira. It took eight years to complete and would eventually culminate in 2000 pages of artwork. While the serialization of Akira was taking place, Otomo decided to animate it into a feature film, although the manga was yet to be finished. In 1988, the animated film Akira was released.
Otomo became the fourth manga artist ever inducted into the American Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 2012, and was awarded the Purple Medal of Honor from the Japanese government in 2013.
- IMDb mini biography by: Pedro Borges
- SpouseYoko(? - present) (2 children)
- ParentsShohei Otomo
- Very unorthodox use of red and green colours in backgrounds and characters.
- Narrative style often deals with man vs technology, supercomputers, psychic powers, man-made disasters and future post-nuclear totalitarian states.
- Hyper realistic art style adhering to technical perspective and detailed character movements.
- Has been criticised for portraying women in an inferior or less flattering way to men.
- Strong directorial style influenced by the American 'New Wave' of cinema during the sixties and seventies.
- A fan of James Dean's "Rebel Without a Cause" and Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey".
- Was quoted as saying the Vietnam era "rebel" movies Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and Five Easy Pieces (1970) (among others) were his chief inspiration for his writing work and subsequently, Domu and Akira (1988).
- He was inducted into the Will Eisner Comics Hall of Fame in 2012.
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