Veteran animator and director behind Doraemon and Ranma ½, Tsutomu Shibayama breathed his last on March 6 following a battle with lung cancer. He was 84.
Born in 1940, the animator began his career in manga and then moved into animation when the industry itself was still finding its footing. He would go on to co-found Ajia-do Animation Works, contributing to a production culture that prized consistency.
For over two decades, he directed Doraemon films and contributed to the long-running TV series, helping define a tone that’s harder to pull off than it looks. Under his watch, robot cat Doraemon from the future and the hapless boy he’s assigned to help was loved by everyone. The jokes were good, but the bad test scores, bruised egos, the small, familiar panic of being a kid who can’t quite keep up were equally noticeable. Under his direction, Doraemon never talked down to its audience; it trusted children to recognise themselves in Nobita’s flaws, and to sit with the consequences.
With Ranma ½, adapted from Rumiko Takahashi’s famously chaotic manga, Shibayama built it on absurdity like martial arts duels, instant transformations, jokes. What his direction did was keep it from flying apart. The pacing is tight, the timing precise. Even at its most ridiculous, you always know where the scene is going—and why it’s funny.
What tied these seemingly disparate works together was a sensibility that resisted excess. Shibayama’s style was not about visual flamboyance or auteurist signatures. It was about timing, tone, and trust in the material, and in the audience.
There is a particular kind of loss that comes with the passing of artists like Shibayama. The shows remain, endlessly replayable, their colours undimmed. But the hands that shaped them are gone.
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