Guest of Honor

AnimeFest 2017 - Thursday, August 17th - Sunday, August 20th, in the Dallas Arts District

Masaaki Yuasa

Masaaki Yuasa is an animation director born in Fukuoka, Japan. He is known far and wide for his unique free form and fluid style of animation, which can be seen in numerous popular works he has participated in. He currently serves as President of Science SARU, an animation studio he co-founded with his business partner Eunyoung Choi.

In the 2004 Mind Game he was responsible for directing, screenplay and storyboarding. In 2006 he made his debut as a series director on Kemonozume, in which he also performed storyboarding and screenplays. In the 2008 Omnibus Genius Party he directed the Happy Machine segment. Also in 2008 he created and directed the tv series Kaiba, in which he also wrote screenplays and storyboards. In 2010 he was the series director, screenplay writer, storyboarder, and episode director for The Tatami Galaxy, an adaption of Tomihiko Morimi's comedy-drama campus novel. In 2013, Mr. Yuasa directed Kick-Heart, a story that was crowd source funded via Kickstarter.

In 2014 he adapted Taiyo Matsumoto's Ping Pong serving as the series director, and handling the screenplay, storyboards, and more. Like several other of his projects, some part of Ping Pong the Animation utilized Adobe Flash for production. Examples can be see on the Science SARU website. Also in 2014, he served as the director, writer, and storyboard artist for Adventure Time's season 6 episode Food Chain. Later still in 2014, he worked on Director Shinichiro Watanabe's Space Dandy, directing, writing, and animating episode 3 of season 2, Slow and Steady Wins the Race, Baby.

Director Yuasa's most recent works include two feature length animated films. The first is The Night is Short, Walk On Girl, another adaptation of Tomihiko Morimi's novel of the same name. This film has reunited the most of original staff from The Tatami Galaxy, including screen writer Makoto Ueda, character designer Yusuke Namamura, and with music by Asian Kung-Fu Generation. It is set to hit theaters in Japan this April 7, 2017. The second film is Mr. Yuasa's first original feature film entitled Lu Over the Wall and the story, according to Crunchyroll, “follows the encounter and relationship between a junior high school boy Kai who lives in a fishing port town and Lu, a mermaid girl comes from the sea.” It is scheduled to release to theaters in Japan on May 19, 2017.

Additionally, Mr. Yuasa will direct the upcoming Netflix exclusive series, Devilman crybaby, set to release in Spring of 2018 commemorating original creator Nagai Go's career of 50 years. Science SARU will handle the animation production in this joint production from Dynamic Planning and AniPlex.

Please join us in welcoming Mr. Masaaki Yuasa to his first AnimeFest!

Learn more about Science SARU.
Read more about Mr. Yuasa's list of works on Anime News Network, My Anime List, and AniDB.