Takeshi Honda (本田 雄) is a Japanese animator, designer, and animation director. Honda is one of Japan's outstanding animators. He is best known for his character design and animation directing work on Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo, The Boy and the Heron, Millennium Actress and Den-noh Coil. While Honda is an animator who draws realistic, theatrical characters, he also specializes in catchy "Bishōjo" characters. He was nicknamed Shisho (師匠) from the early days of his career. Honda made his debut as an animator with the inbetweening for the 1987 OVA Relic Armor Legaciam and debuted as character designer on the series Metal Fighter Miku in 1994.

Career

Honda moved to Tokyo from Ishikawa Prefecture to work in the animation industry after graduating from high school. After a brief stint at small studios such as Atelier Giga, he joined Gainax, where Hideaki Anno and Yoshiyuki Sadamoto worked. He debuted as an animation director in 1990 with Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water at the tender age of 22, but then quit and moved to Studio AIC. However, Gainax soon recalled him to work on Uru in Blue. When the project fell through, he joined Neon Genesis Evangelion. He left Gainax again after the two Evangelion movies released in 1997. After leaving Gainax, Honda began to work with other famous directors in the animation industry besides Anno, such as Satoshi Kon (Perfect Blue, Tokyo Godfathers, Millennium Actress), Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, The Sky Crawlers), Hiroyuki Okiura (Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade) and Kōji Morimoto (The Animatrix: Beyond). In 2007, he worked as character designer and chief animation director on Den-noh Coil, the directorial debut of Mitsuo Iso, with whom he worked on Neon Genesis Evangelion. However, he quarreled with Iso and dropped out after the first half of the series. Honda soon afterwards joined Khara, which was newly established by Anno after he left Gainax, and worked with him again on the Rebuild of Evangelion film series. After working mainly as mechanical animation director on Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone (2007) and Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance (2009), he finally took over as supervising animation director on Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo (2012) with Honda at the centre of the production. Honda moved to Studio Ghibli in 2017 to accept the post of animation director for Hayao Miyazaki's The Boy and the Heron. He had already been offered a position on the final film in the Rebuild of Evangelion series, Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time, but Studio Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki approached director Anno directly, resulting in his transfer to Ghibli. It all started in the summer of 2016. He was approached by Hayao Miyazaki himself, who had long held him in high esteem, about taking part in his new film. When Honda withheld an answer, he was summoned by Toshio Suzuki at the end of the year to discuss the matter. Honda concluded that he would work on both films, but he tried to arrange a meeting with Anno, believing that he should speak to him directly. However, six months passed with Anno avoiding him, and when he met with Anno in June 2017, perhaps having already had discussions with Suzuki, Anno gave him a curt attitude, as if to say he could do as he liked. After meeting with Anno, Honda was excluded from all meetings on Evangelion, so he decided to concentrate on Miyazaki's work and began actual production in July.

Works

Anime television series

Anime films

Independent films

OVA

ONA

Games

Music video