Yoshiyuki TOMINO

Yoshiyuki Tomino is a Japanese director, anime writer, author, and songwriter. He was born on November 5, 1941, in Odawara, Kanagawa Prefecture, and attended the Nihon University College of Art.

On March 2, 1964, Tomino joined animation studio Mushi Production as a production assistant, where he was taught by his senior of three months, Hiroshi Wakao, how to talk to animators, fill cut bags, and so forth while working on Astro Boy (1963). Later during its production, Tomino received the opportunity to direct, write, and storyboard episodes. He stayed with Mushi Pro up until around its dissolution in the early 70s.

Afterwards, he moved his base of operations to Sunrise (then known as Nippon Sunrise). He avidly pursued productions in the Super Robot genre, starting with Yuusha Raideen in 1975, before having a hand in creating the basis for the Real Robot genre in 1979 with Mobile Suit Gundam, which has since become a global franchise. Though Gundam has become somewhat associated with Tomino's name, he has only been directly involved with a few of the series since the original "Universal Century" series. Aside from Gundam, he continued to direct various other works throughout the years like Space Runaway Ideon (1980), Brain Powerd (1998), and Overman King Gainer (2002).

In 2021, Tomino revealed he was suffering from health complications due to his age, and that he would likely stop working in the anime industry within the next three years. As such, the Gundam pentalogy Reconguista in G may be his final directorial work.

Tomino has two daughters, Akari and Yukio Tomino, the latter of whom is a dancer and choreographer who has worked on one of her father's series.

Employment:

• Mushi Productions (March 2, 1964 ~ 1971)
• Freelance (1971 ~ 2023)