Toshiyuki Inoue

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An irreplaceable member of the Japanese animation industry.

Inoue is an animator of the realist school whose skills are among the best in the world. He is known to often handle immense amounts of work in the titles he partakes in. Famous examples being the film Maquia, where he is responsible for a third of the film's animation, and The Deer King, in which he was in charge of over 400 layout cuts and 200 key animation cuts at the age of 60.

Inoue aspired to become an animator after having seen Future Boy Conan in 1978 as a high school student, a television series directed by Hayao Miyazaki. After graduation, Inoue took and failed the entrance exam for Telecom Animation Film, an animation studio where Miyazaki was working at the time. He then joined Studio Junio and debuted as an in-betweener in 1982.

During his time at Junio he was heavily inspired by the likes of Takashi Nakamura and Satoru Utsunomiya. A mere two years after his debut, Inoue started attracting attention with his work on Gu-Gu Ganmo as a character designer and animation director, and was soon thereafter invited to join the productions of the high profile feature films; The Wings of Honneamise, Akira as well as Kiki's Delivery Service, the fifth film of Hayao Miyazaki's. Ever since then he has been in high demand for feature films.

Mamoru Oshii has praised him as "the perfect animator," who has "no need for a director." Adding that if you had five of him you could make a whole film. Keiichi Hara has called him a "treasure of the anime industry," who "isn't only good, but also fast."

Inoue also devotes himself to teaching animation to the younger generation. In the early 2000s he presided over a cram school in his name for young animators at Production I.G, a studio which Inoue still often works with to this day.