Hideaki Anno

This article is about a director in Shin Kamen Rider.

Hideaki Anno
Anno at the premiere of Shin Godzilla in 2016.
Born	May 22, 1960 Ube, Yamaguchi, Japan
Role(s)	Shin Kamen Rider (Writer and director)

Hideaki Anno (庵野 秀明, Anno Hideaki) is a Japanese director, screenwriter, and director, who wrote and directed Shin Kamen Rider, as part of the 50th Anniversary of Kamen Rider.

Anno is best known for creating the famous anime Neon Genesis Evangelion, which he later rebooted into the Rebuild of Evangelion animated film series. He had also wrote, produced, and directed other Tokusatsu films such as Cutie Honey, Shin Godzilla, and Shin Ultraman.

Biography

Anno began his career as an animator for Macross while still in college, which he dropped out of from being busy in producing his own self-financed works with other classmates. He gained national recognition after he responded to a recruitment poster from Studio Ghibli and impressed Hayao Miyazaki with his illustrations, becoming one of the key animators for the film Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.

Shortly after, he became a premiere animator for Gainax, leading several of the studio's major projects such as Gunbuster and Nadia. Afterwards, he fell into a four-year long depression, which he later recovered from and created the acclaimed series Neon Genesis Evangelion, which was heavily inspired by trials and tribulations of his time with the condition. Anno rebooted Evangelion with the Rebuild of Evangelion film series throughout the 2000s, with the fourth and final film having released in 2021.

After the release of Shin Kamen Rider. Anno announced during a press briefing on April 11, 2023 that he would be taking a break from working for the first time in 30 years to relax. He reassured that this wasn’t retirement, just personal time off as he was creatively exhausted.

Personal Life

Hideaki cosplaying as Kamen Rider 1

• Anno is a fan of Tokusatsu, having featured Ultraman in a student film in college, and cosplayed as Kamen Rider 1 at conventions during the 1980s. According to his wife Moyoco, Anno had developed his own unit of measurement based on the standard size of a Kamen Rider toy for their furniture and wore his Rider costume in the moments leading up to their wedding.

Filmography

Television

• Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995-1996)
• Re: Cutie Honey (2004)

Film

• Evangelion: Death and Rebirth (1997)
• The End of Evangelion (1997)
• Cutie Honey (2004)
• Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone. (2007)
• Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance. (2009)
• Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo. (2012)
• Shin Godzilla (2016)
• Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time (2021)
• Shin Ultraman (2022)
• Shin Kamen Rider (2023)

Notes

• A Hideaki Anno art exhibition was held on October 1, 2021 to December 19, 2021 at the National Art Center in Tokyo. The Kamen Rider 1 Suit from his feature film was displayed alongside statues of Shin Ultraman and Shin Godzilla in a tokusatsu exhibit.
• Anno announced at the exhibition his nonprofit organization to work on preserving Japan’s anime and tokusatsu culture for future generations, ATAC (Anime Tokusatsu Archive Organization).