Celebrity Biographies
Hiroyuki Okiura
With a long career in the world of animation, carrying out multitasking work, Hiroyuki Okiura has excelled, and for good reason, with two films as a director, “Jin-Roh” and “A letter to Momo”.
Hiroyuki Okiura was born on October 13, 1966 in Katano, in Osaka Prefecture, Japan. At the young age of 16, with no academic background in animation but undoubtedly talented, he dropped out of school and was recruited as an apprentice at Osaka’s Anime R studio, working under the watchful eye and mentorship of Moriyasu Taniguchi.
In 1984 he made his debut as an animation supervisor in an episode of the Saber Rider television series . From there he collaborated on various tasks in essential anime titles such as Akira (1988), Patlabor: The Movie (1989) and Patlabor 2 (1993), Memories (1995), Ghost in the Shell (1995), Cowboy Bebob The Movie : Knockin on Heaven’s Door (2001), Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (2004) and Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo (2012), where he progressively acquired tasks of greater responsibility.
As a director, Okiura made his debut in 1999 with Jin-Roh , based on a script by Mamoru Oshii , where a member of the elite police force falls madly in love with the sister of a terrorist. A Letter to Momo is her second and multi-award winning film, and it describes with great sensitivity the coming of age of an orphaned girl, hurt for not having properly said goodbye to her father before he died. The fantastic elements of her with her three elves lead to very imaginative sequences, which have nothing to envy to the cinema of her prestigious compatriot Hayao Miyazaki .
Hiroyuki Okiura is married to animated film voice actress Shumi Mutoh, and worked with her on Jin-Roh .