For most anime and tokusatsu fans, at this point, Hideaki Anno needs no introduction. Anno has been a force in both industries, creating iconic Kamen Rider and Ultraman fan films in his youth that remain celebrated to this day, before moving on and becoming a professional animator and working on some of the most celebrated fantasy/sci-fi animation properties from the 1980s, including the Macross franchise, as well as working with Hayao Miyazaki on Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984)–particularly the astonishing Giant Warrior attack and meltdown sequence. Of course, he is most famous for helping to found Gainax Studios, and then directing one of the most influential anime series of all time–Neon Genesis Evangelion starting in 1995, on which he worked with fellow animation-and-tokusatsu wunderkind Shinji Higuchi (the main character of Evangelion is named after Higuchi). That series would eventually spawn an additional six movies, as well as numerous manga and unending merchandise and events across Japan. Along with directing and working on many other series and films (I have a soft spot for His and Her Circumstances), in the tokusatsu community, Anno has become most famous for his work co-directing and writing the celebrated and wildly successful Shin Godzilla (2016) and writing Shin Ultraman (2022), as well as writing and directing Shin Kamen Rider (released in March of 2023). In celebration of his achievements, then, a traveling exhibit was put together in 2022, which started in Tokyo and worked its way around Japan.
I happened to catch the exhibit in a pretty special place—Yamaguchi City, just outside Anno’s hometown of Ube (which had a concurrent Evangelion promotion and Nadia: the Secret of Blue Water exhibit—unfortunately I didn’t make it to these additional events). The exhibit was staged in the Yamaguchi Prefectural Art Museum from July 8th, 2022, to September 4th, 2022. I managed to visit on September 3rd, and the scale and quality of the exhibit did not fail to impress.
The idea of the exhibit was to explore the cultural influences on Anno as he grew up (the things that created Anno), then the various projects that he directed or drew or animated (the things that Anno created), and then look towards the future, as well as a nod at how Anno has given back to the creative community in Japan.
Just getting into the exhibit proved a little more problematic than I had first anticipated. Certain exhibits in Japan require visitors to make reservations for a particular time in advance as a precaution against overcrowding and the spread of COVID (which at the time had gotten pretty bad lately in Japan again). The means for making a reservation in this case meant inputting a specific code at a ticket machine at any 7-11 convenience store to print out and pay for a reserved ticket—or just testing my luck and showing up and attempting to purchase a ticket at the venue, hoping that they weren’t sold out for that block of time. I didn’t trust my luck, and bought a ticket in advance… but even then, when I arrived, attendees were shepherded through regimented lines and allowed inside the exhibit only in small groups. For whatever reason, the curators asked me not to wear my own headphones even around my neck, which still baffles me. What, did they think I was going to listen to loud music and bump into the other visitors?
I also purchased the use of a guided audio tour device—basically a set of headphones and a little remote with numbered buttons that I could jab to match the section of the exhibit I was in and receive explanations, interviews, and audio clips to accompany the items on display. The audio guide was only in Japanese, with narration from a pair of famous Japanese people, who did an excellent job—enthusiastic, with authoritative delivery and careful, professional pronunciation. Plus, they had short interviews with various authorities or people related to individual productions and jobs Anno worked on. My favorite was when the audio guide included music clips, such as an Akira Ifukube theme, a clip from an Ultraman song, the theme song for Neon Genesis Evangelion, etc. Sometimes the audio clips went long, though, and I found myself dilly-dallying more than I had intended around particular displays waiting for the guide to finish.
For me, the first section of the exhibit may have been my favorite. As mentioned above, that section was about the sundry entertainment properties that had inspired Anno as a kid and formed his tastes as a creative force. As Anno grew up in the 1960s and 70s, these properties were classic Toho monster films, Tsuburaya’s early Ultra shows, P-Pro’s Spectreman, Toei’s Kamen Rider and Denziman, plus piles of manga, Western properties like Star Trek and Thunderbirds (which will surprise no one who has seen Shin Ultraman [2022]), the early Gundam anime, and Space Battleship Yamato—among many others. What made this section so memorable was that the venue was packed with costumes and props and models from the shows, as well as artwork, posters, and videos.
There were a few models from Toho, such as spaceships from Gorath (1962) and the flying model used for Jet Jaguar. But they also had original Ultraman costumes; masks for Mirror Man, Kamen Rider, and Spectreman; tons of jets and spaceships and cars from properties such as Mighty Jack and a whole list of Ultra series. The array of manga on display, and the list of those which had especially made an impression on Anno, included some titles that I already own, which was snazzy. And a massive screen was broken into dozens of smaller images showing clips from the animated and tokusatsu programs from Japan and the USA that struck Anno as especially memorable, in constant loop. Plus an individual screen showing Ultraman shows, and another showing Kamen Rider. Taking pictures was awkward and confusing in this room, as we were allowed to shoot most of the props except the Toei ones, and we had to angle our shots so as not to include the videos in the background for some reason.
The next section of the exhibition covered Anno’s early art, from oil paintings he did as a youth, to his first tokusatsu fan films. These fan films included an early film in which he played a version of Kamen Rider, as well as his well-known outings as Ultraman—his “Return of Ultraman” piece garnering special attention, projected on a large screen, and with the props and costumes displayed under glass. That short film retains its power, and I found myself inspired by it and wanting to work on my own creative projects—to really excel in the field of creative work, the creator must persist, obstinately, or risk failure and obscurity.
Next was Anno’s college work, including several animated shorts he made—again, which attendees could watch. The animated shorts were black-and-white, no sound, mostly gags. My favorite featured a car wildly driving around and smashing into things before crunching against a wall—and driving up it. The title was something like “Tough Tires.” Others featured cute girls drinking coffee or waiting at the bus stop before having heavy machinery falling on them, or a gag about increasingly sophisticated guns trying and failing to shoot a target. These displays featured original sketches along with the short films. I was disappointed, though, that the exhibit did not include the Daicon short films—a large section of the exhibit included many of the drawings he made when preparing the short films, and incomplete short clips, but not the completed short films. Finally, before his real professional work as an animator was put on display, we got a glimpse at the intricate drawings he made while working at a hobby shop for a time.
Most fans will probably be most interested in the original drawings and sketches and paintings he did for the many animated features he worked on. The exhibit had looped animations and sketches from many of his projects, from Macross: Do You Remember Love? (1984) to Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise (1987) and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984), and many others. Of course special attention was paid to Neon Genesis Evangelion the series, and then later a massive room was dedicated to the Evangelion movies, with numerous enormous images and models depicting places from the films. I’m not a huge fan of Evangelion, but even for me, I enjoyed getting glimpses at the development of the designs of the Evas.
Anno’s live-action films received attention, too. Love & Pop (1998), Shiki-Jitsu (2000), and Cutie-Honey (2004) all had exhibits with videos playing of scenes or trailers from each film. I haven’t seen Shiki-Jitsu, but I was especially interested in it, as Anno used the movie as a means to depict his hometown of Ube—a city I also have at least a minor connection to. My first flight inside Japan was from Ube airport to Tokyo, and I have vivid memories of the experience, of losing my hat on the flight out and reclaiming it on the way back, and of waiting for the bus home and how the bus driver doted on me way back in 2005.
Naturally Shin Godzilla (2016) and Shin Ultraman (2022) also had some attention, with conceptual models for Godzilla on display and clips running, as well as artwork for the Ultra-Kaiju and models depicting the new version of Ultraman, as well as clips and some information about each, and a model from Anno’s work on the “Giant God Monster Appears in Tokyo” short he worked on (and which I viewed at the Tokusatsu Archives in Sukagawa in 2021). Shin Kamen Rider (2023) received an exhibit, too, with a model of the new Kamen Rider’s helmet, concept artwork, and the trailers on loop, plus posters and a statue.
As with any of these exhibits worth their salt, the Hideaki Anno Exhibit included a store space where fans could buy exclusive goods related to the display… and I think of all the exhibits I have attended in Japan, Hideaki Anno’s might have had the most goods for sale. There was just SO MUCH, with endless clear files, posters, t-shirts, snacks, tape, and more. I was tempted to get a t-shirt of one of Anno’s more obscure works, but I didn’t want to shell out forty bucks, so… I just got a package of snacks promoting Ube’s best sweet shops.
Overall, I was really impressed with the Hideaki Anno Exhibition. The pieces on display were plentiful, and it was really impressive to see what a wide variety of entertainment he has put his considerable talents to. And dang he can draw! His design work is intricate and lovely. A minor complaint, though, was that the exhibits generally didn’t have English translations, unlike the amazing Yasuyuki Inoue exhibit I saw in Tokyo back in March of 2022. Still, for fans, the Hideaki Anno Exhibition is surely a dream come true, and it was worth it for me even as a casual consumer of his works.
