Much like his colleague and contemporary, Masao Maruyama, Gisaburo Sugii was in the room when anime as we know it today was born. The legendary director kicked off his career as an in-betweener at Toei Animation in the late 1950s, and proceeded to hop over to Mushi Productions a few years later. While at the latter studio, Sugii served as animation director on the original Astro Boy series and a few other shows before making his directorial debut with 1969’s Dororo. Amid the fall of Mushi Productions in the early 70s, Sugii served as Belladonna of Sadness’s animation director before fully leaving the company. In the decades that followed, audiences fell in love with his adaptations of Mitsuru Adachi’s Touch and Street Fighter II. Still active today, Sugii is currently directing the upcoming MFINDA.