| The director and
special effects director most famous for his special
effects work on the 90s Gamera trilogy, Shinji
Higuchi is one of only a handful of figures to
go back and forth between the worlds of anime
and tokusatsu. A huge fan of tokusatsu and anime
films as a youth, he was one of the founding members
of the anime studio Gainax and after a job at
age 18 working on The
Return of Godzilla (1984), he was special
effects director for Yamata no Orochi‘s
Counterattack, a live action special effects
film produced at Gainax which was considered so
impressive for a micro budget independent film
it managed to get a video release. After that,
Higuchi worked as a storyboard artist and animator
on such Gainax titles as Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise (1987) and Gunbuster
before handling the entire second half of 1990's
Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water under
friend Hideaki Anno (who would later name the
character Shinji in Neon Genesis Evangelion
after him). The following year he directed the
special effects for his colleague Tomoo Haraguchi's
indie horror flick Mikadroid
(1991). At the age of 28, he managed to secure
the job as special effects director on Gamera:
Guardian of the Universe (1995). Higuchi
would win immense praise for his work on the film
and worked on the two sequels Gamera
2: Advent of Legion (1996) and Gamera 3: Revenge of Iris (1999), doing
even better, more jaw-dropping FX work with each.
After doing special effects work for Sakuya,
Slayer of Demons and The Princess Blade
and some FX supervision on Godzilla,
Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out
Attack (2001) and Casshern,
he graduated to full fledged director and in 2005,
his directorial debut, Lorelei,
was released.
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