Yōichi Kotabe


Yōichi Kotabe is a Japanese animator and character designer, best known for his work on classic anime of the 1960s and 1970s, the Super Mario video game series, and the Pokémon franchise in television and film. He was an employee at Nintendo for two decades doing illustrations, character designs, and supervision from 1985 to 2007. After that, he began to work as a freelancer for the anime and video game industry, including for Nintendo again.

Biography

Kotabe became interested in animation after watching the short film Momotarō no Umiwashi as a child. He was fascinated with how the fighter moved in the film. His father, who was an oil painter, also influenced his decision to work as an artist. Kotabe found oil painting to be difficult, so he instead worked in watercolor painting.
In order to continue working with watercolors, he adopted the nihonga, or Japanese-style, of painting, and began studying at the Tokyo University of the Arts in the Japanese-style painting department. While attending, he was impressed by the film The Tale of the White Serpent and the animator Yasuji Mori, and immediately applied to work at Toei Animation.
His first project there was The Great Adventure of Horus, Prince of the Sun where he met Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata. He left Toei amid a labor dispute along with Miyazaki and Takahata in order to work at A Pro, where they began work on an adaptation of Pippi Longstocking. The project was eventually canceled, and work began on the two-film series Panda! Go, Panda!.
Kotabe then worked as character designer on two anime television series from Nippon Animation: Heidi, Girl of the Alps, and 3000 Leagues in Search of Mother, with Miyazaki working on scene design and layout and Takahata working as series director and storyboard artist.
In 1985, he was scouted by Nintendo and assumed the position of game development advisor, where he created package illustrations for Super Mario Bros., which was his introduction to video games. He continued working as a character designer and illustrator on the Super Mario series, contributing to the design of Yoshi by drawing inspiration from a chameleon sticking out its tongue, which was adapted into Yoshi's character. He would also work on games in The Legend of Zelda and Pokémon franchises. His work on the Kuru Kuru Kururin series was his last role as a character designer at Nintendo. He left the company in 2007, although he had originally only intended to stay at the company for one or two years at most.

Works

Film and television

Video games

Awards and nominations