Kouichi Mashimo

Kouichi Mashimo is a wellknown Japanese anime director and the founder of the animation studio Bee Train. Since the creation of the studio Mashimo directed or otherwise participated in nearly all its works for example as a member of art or sound department. Mashimo was born in Tokyo Japan and from his early years showed interest in photography admittedly under the influence of his father. Mashimo studied jurisprudence at Sophia University and during his fourth university year he participated in the making of several television commercials. However this was a rather disappointing experience and on November 6 1975 he applied for a position of Hiroshi Sasagawas assistant director in Tatsunoko Production. The first anime series he worked on was Time Bokan 197576. In the mid1980s while still working for Tatsunoko Mashimo survived a severe alpine skiing accident. During his stay in an intensive care unit he came up with an idea of a hospital for animators an animation studio whose primary goal would be fostering and selfactualization of talented artists rather than commercial success and money. Some time after that he founded a small freelance studio called Mashimo Jimusho that was mainly producing inbetween animation for larger companies. In 1997 Mashimo presented his studioashospital concept to Mitsuhisa Ishikawa the president of Production I.G who was so impressed with it that he immediately agreed to sponsor Mashimo. The new subsidiary has become known as Bee Train and in February 2006 it ended its relationship with I.G and became independent. Source: Wikipedia