Sōji Yoshikawa

Sōji Yoshikawa (吉川 惣司 , Yoshikawa Sōji , February 22, 1947 in Tokyo) is a Japanese anime director, scriptwriter, animator, character designer, as well as a stage director and novelist. He has occasionally worked under the aliases Kazumi Takahashi (高橋 和美 , Takahashi Kazumi ) , Kyōdō Oda (小田 経堂 , Oda Kyōdō ) , and Haruka Kyō (京 春香 , Kyō Haruka ) .

His best known works as a director are Lupin the 3rd: The Mystery of Mamo and Kirby: Right Back at Ya!, as a scriptwriter are Future Boy Conan and Armored Trooper Votoms, and as a character designer is Fang of the Sun Dougram.

He has played most of the roles in anime production, from animator, episode director, storyboard artist, scriptwriter to director, and has directed each production process. In addition to anime, he also created the original story, wrote the script, directed the play, and served as general director for the Theater Company Hikōsen. This began when Masaaki Ōsumi, the director of the 1969 anime TV series Moomin, asked him to help out with the troupe. He also worked as a novelist, mainly on novelizations and spin-offs of animation works.

In an interview with Yasuo Ōtsuka for the Lupin III Perfect Book: Complete Collector's Edition, he cites Yoshikawa as a representative member of the Japanese anime world, along with Hayao Miyazaki, Isao Takahata, and Osamu Dezaki.

He was a big anime fan from the beginning, making animation with an 8mm camera. He was also a fan of manga artist Osamu Tezuka. He has been a fan of science fiction since he read Shōnen Shōjo Sekai Kagaku Bōken Zenshū by Kodansha when he was a kid.

A fan of Osamu Tezuka's works, when Yoshikawa was a sophomore in high school, he saw a "Mushi Production's first batch of animators wanted" news article and applied for the job, which led him to enter the anime industry. He originally planned to go to art school, but dropped out of high school to join Mushi Productions. He then worked as an animator on Japan's first anime television series Astro Boy.

In 1964, he participated in the founding of Art Fresh with Gisaburō Sugii and Osamu Dezaki. After becoming independent, he continued to participate as an animator in Mushi Production's Works, which Art Fresh was involved in, such as Gokū no Daibōken. After that, he began to participate not only in works produced by Mushi Productions, but also in works produced by Tokyo Movie and A Production, where Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata worked. He has worked as an episode director and storyboard artist on works directed by Tadao Nagahama, Masaaki Ōsumi, Osamu Dezaki, Hayao Miyazaki, etc., including Star of the Giants, Moomin, Ashita no Joe, Lupin the 3rd Part I, and Future Boy Conan, and made his directorial debut with Tensai Bakabon.

In 1978, at the age of 31, he directed the first Lupin III film, The Mystery of Mamo. While Hayao Miyazaki's second Lupin film, The Castle of Cagliostro suffered at the box office when it was released, while this film was a huge hit with distribution revenue[a] of 900 million yen. However, due to the low social status of animation in Japan at the time, this hit did not lead to an increase in his subsequent work. Later, with the rise in popularity of Hayao Miyazaki and his The Castle of Cagliostro, this film became neglected. However, with the spread of the Internet, the film began to be reevaluated through word-of-mouth and gained a reputation equal to that of The Castle of Cagliostro.

He participated in and provided scripts for many Sunrise robot animations directed by Yoshiyuki Tomino and Ryōsuke Takahashi in the late 1970s and 1980s. He was initially scheduled to take over as director for Combat Mecha Xabungle. However, he requested to step down due to his busy schedule, and only participated in writing the script, with Tomino taking his place as director. He was deeply involved in the story as the main writer for Armored Trooper Votoms. In an interview, Yoshikawa said that he wanted to do what he left undone in The Mystery of Mamo. According to Ryosuke Takahashi, the main character, Chirico Cuvie, reflects quite a bit of Yoshikawa's personality.

He was the general director of Kirby: Right Back at Ya!, an anime version of the game Kirby series, which aired from 2001 to 2003. The anime was produced by A-Un Entertainment (later renamed Dyna-Method Inc.), a CG studio where Yoshikawa was a senior director and board member.. One of the reasons that the 100th episode of the Kirby: Right Back at Ya! anime contained some problems, inconsistencies, and heavy-handedness in the plot and development is that Yoshikawa, who wrote the final episode, learned that his wife was in critical condition at the time and had to rush through the script and leave it in incomplete form in order to be present for her dying moments.