Yasuomi Umetsu (梅津 泰臣, Umetsu Yasuomi, born December 19, 1960) is a Japanese animator, director, writer, and storyboard artist.
Umetsu studied at the Chiyoda Gakuen Educational Corporation and was originally not interested in pursuing a career in the anime industry, and instead wanted to pursue a career as a manga artist.[1] While in his 20s, he drew a short manga for Kodansha and decided to give up on pursuing manga due to feeling that it wasn't for him.[1] After graduating from vocational school, he had trouble finding a job, and was introduced to Tsuchida Production through the head of the department at his school,[2] but he felt that the company's style didn't suit him and did work for other companies in the industry eventually resulting in his firing after 1-2 months.[2]
Following his brief employment with Tsuchida Production, Umetsu became involved with Toei Animation where he worked as an in-between animator and 2nd key animator for projects like Arcadia of My Youth (1982) and the 1981 American Spider-Man series.[2] At the studio, he worked in the same room as Masami Suda, whom Umetsu learned much from in regard to key animation.[2] Eventually, he was promoted to animation director for Stop!! Hibari-kun! (1983);[2] however, his seniors at the company gave him a hard time since he was only 23 years old.[2] When he became too uncomfortable with the environment, he moved to Madhouse, as he had an interest in working on Harmagaddon (1983) due to the involvement of Katsuhiro Otomo as character designer and had been invited by Masao Maruyama to work with the company.[2] During his time with Madhouse, he was also influenced by director Yoshiaki Kawajiri, who taught him to consciously think about perspective and eye level.[3] He participated in Megazone 23 (1985) as an animator and storyboard artist and was subsequently asked to do the original character designs for the bikers in Part II (1986), but he ended up doing the main characters for fun as well.[2] He showed the president of AIC, Tooru Miura, and director Ichiro Itano, and the two opted to use Umetsu's designs for all of the characters.[2] Following this decision, Umetsu apologized to the character designer of the first OVA, Toshiki Hirano.[2] Umetsu was left dissatisfied with his work on the OVA as chief animation director, and didn't participate as an animation director again until 1987 when he was invited by Hiroyuki Kitakubo to participate on the Robot Carnival anthology.[2] His contribution to the Robot Carnival anthology also marked his debut as a writer and director.
Throughout the 80s and early-to-mid 90s, Umetsu continued to work on projects as an animator, animation director, and character designer. Two particular works were OVAs made at Tatsunoko Production and based on already-existing IPs from the studio, but he felt that director Yukihiro Matsushita (who was in charge of both) did not have a love for the works, so when the job for another OVA (New Hurricane Polymar, 1996) was given to him, he asked for help from J.C.Staff in producing the series and for them to lend a director.[3][4] J.C.Staff provided the project with director Akiyuki Shinbo, who himself was a fan of Tatsuo Yoshida (Tatsunoko Production's founder) and other works the studio had made.[4] Unlike the previous OVAs, Shinbo used bande dessinée as the basis of his inspiration; and despite such a change, Umetsu stated that he thought that the team succeeded in creating the atmosphere that Shinbo wanted.[5] Reminiscing on the project, Shinbo noted that near the end of its production, Umetsu had once come up to him with an uncolored cel and asked him about colors, as Umetsu intended to color it himself.[4]
In 1998, Umetsu created, wrote, designed the characters for, and directed the hentai OVA Kite produced by Arms. The film was released in several versions, but there are two prominent editions: an R-18 hentai version released in two-parts, and a single international version which removes the sexual content. Though the film has received much controversy for its sexual abuse content,[6] the film has been praised as well. A writer from Anime News Network described it as a "painful, violent beauty", with note of its "gritty realism" in style and atmosphere and "expertly told" storytelling.[7] The film has also inspired several works in the west. For example, several scenes in the music video directed by Hype Williams for the song "Ex-Girlfriend" by No Doubt are based on Kite;[8] and director-writer Quentin Tarantino recommended Kite as part of actress Chiaki Kuriyama's preparations for her role as Gogo Yubari in the first Kill Bill (2003) film.[8] While Umetsu continued to work freelance (not directly belonging to a studio through employment), he produced his most major works with Arms for the next decade: a second hentai OVA (also with a cut international version) titled Mezzo Forte (2000); a sequel television series, Mezzo DSA (2004); and a sequel to Kite, Kite Liberator (2008). He also contributed the character designs to Nakoruru: Ano Hito kara no Okurimono (2002), studio Arms' first non-hentai work.
Throughout the years, Umetsu regularly directed openings and endings to various TV anime including his own, which he gained prominence for.[9] He often contributed to other Arms works or affiliated studios Pierrot and Pierrot Plus (High School Girls ED, Tegami Bachi Reverse ED); but he freelanced for various sites.
An issue that Umetsu noticed in his own works was that he often took on too much of the work himself, and in a talk with Shinbo references to Kite Liberator, which he says he directed, wrote, and designed the characters for (as well as further unmentioned work), which often leads to him overworking himself.[10] He described Kite Liberator as "hell" to work on because of the workload, saying that he spent an entire year without taking any Sundays off and sometimes sleeping at the studio for five days straight.[11] In spite of the overwork, Kite Liberator is distinct in that it was Umetsu's first attempt to utilize 3DCG animation and a more contemporary style of work.[10] For the 3DCG in the film, the team collaborated with Digital Frontier, whom Umetsu was aware of due to their work on the 2006 Death Note live-action films.[10]
Due to the overwork problems, Umetsu tried to allocate the labor more evenly among his collaborators in his next project, Galilei Donna (2013), which was produced at A-1 Pictures.[11] Though he created and directed the series, and was personally involved with other aspects of it, the character designs were instead done by Shingo Adachi, and the screenplay was split to four writers. In 2014, he also directed his last work with studio Arms, Wizard Barristers. Arms stopped producing series in 2017, and most of its staff seemingly left the company or joined its sister studio at Pierrot Plus (now Studio Signpost), with the company itself changed its name to Common Sense (keeping Arms as a trade name);[12] and in 2020, the company officially filed for bankruptcy.[12][13] Umetsu had also planned a film with Arms a decade prior titled Kiss and Cry; however, for unknown reasons, the film never premiered and was never officially cancelled.[14]
After his last major work in 2014, Umetsu continued to contribute mainly to openings and endings to various series and occacsionally participating as a key animator for some works. In 2015, for example, Umetsu directed the opening to Gourmet Girl Graffiti.[15] He also designed the characters for Pierrot's Dynamic Chord (2017) and made the character design drafts for Kokkoku (2018).[16]
Since 2018, Umetsu has based his work out of studio Shaft, where he has been working on another project for several years.[17] He did key animation for some episodes of Magia Record (2020–2022) and was directly named by series assistant director Midori Yoshizawa as one of the contributing artists to the final episode.[18] In 2021, he directed the opening to Pretty Boy Detective Club, which Shinbo said he was proud of despite the shorter production period he described it having.[19] He participated in the Shaft-outsourced episode of The Café Terrace and its Goddesses in 2023 to support episode director Kouji Matsumura, a friend of his who was formerly at Pierrot Plus and Arms and had moved to Shaft in the mid-2010s.[20] That year, he also contributed to The Quintessential Quintuplets∽ due to Matsumura directing an episode.[21] Alongside Shouji Saeki, Umetsu has also had a strong influence on the younger staff according to animator Kazuya Shiotsuki.[17]
Umetsu's lengthy production was finally unveiled in 2024 as a film series titled Virgin Punk with its first part slated for a summer 2025 release.[22] According to Umetsu, the project started pre-production at the end of 2014.[23]
Describing his own philosophies in his work, Umetsu has said that he avoids being too self-satisfying or too self-indulgent, but that he also is conscious of not making something that he's dissatisfied otherwise the "customers" (audience) to his "restaurant" (works) will be unhappy.[24] He also feels that his works have been limited due to the state of the industry. In particular, he states that there are few animators who are good at action sequences, and Umetsu's works tend to have many action sequences in them.[24] With an oversaturation of works being made and too little resources to cover them all, resources in general can be hard to come by;[24] and in response to this, Umetsu has considered relying more on 3DCG animation and consciously making the decision to have less action scenes to make up for the lack of action animators.[24]
Director Akiyuki Shinbo, himself regarded for his color style by Umetsu, has noted Umetsu's particular use of color as well.[4]
Highlights main staff roles.
Highlights OP/ED animation work.