Sato has been active since the 1980s and is a hit maker who, as series director of children's TV animation during his time at Toei Dōga, brought out the first series of long-running popular titles such as Sailor Moon and Ojamajo Doremi.[2]
After leaving Toei, he has continued to demonstrate his skills by working on popular series such as Sgt. Frog and Pretty Cure.[3]
Sato was born in Nagoya and moved to Ama, when he entered junior high school, where he stayed until he moved to Tokyo for university.[5]
Career
Sato passed Toei Dōga's trainee recruitment exam while still a student in the animation course of the film department of Nihon UniversityCollege of Art, and dropped out of university to join the company in 1981.[2][6]
Shortly before this, he had received an honorable mention for a manga he submitted to Shogakukan's call for new manga artists, and was discussing his subsequent work with the editorial department.[7]
After working as a production assistant, he passed the director's selection test around 1983.[8]
In 1986, he was selected as the youngest series director in Toei Dōga's history for Maple Town Stories.[8]
After a minor misunderstanding, he got into trouble with the producer and was demoted to episode director of the sequel, New Maple Town Stories.[9]
He was to have directed Studio Ghibli's 1989 film Kiki's Delivery Service, produced by Hayao Miyazaki, but left the project before it started.[10]
Negotiations between Toei and Ghibli were difficult, and Sato himself was the point of contact for the trainees in labor-management negotiations between Toei and the trainees, so it was difficult for him to announce that he would quit Toei.[11]
Ghibli's Toshio Suzuki told him he could come to Ghibli in the form of a secondment, but in the final stages Toei Dōga came to the conclusion that they would not second someone who had been brought up in-house, and he was forced to give up directing the film.[11]
Next in line to direct the film was Sunao Katabuchi, who had been involved with Hayao Miyazaki's films since his student days, but the main sponsor balked at this, and Miyazaki ended up directing the film.[12]
Sato acted as series director on Sailor Moon since 1992.[8]
He participated in the work from the planning stage and provided input on character settings and changes from the original manga.[13]
Sato directed the film Junkers Come Here (1995).[14]
The film was made outside Toei, but the head of the production departmen had changed from the time of Kiki's Delivery Service, so he was able to direct the film while still working for Toei.[15]
Sato was asked by junior colleague Kunihiko Ikuhara to storyboards his first post-independent work, Revolutionary Girl Utena, he drew it under his real name despite it being a non-Toei film, as a pseudonym would not be celebratory.[17]
Sato directed his first original work, Magic User's Club, after Triangle Staff offered his the chance to make an OVA.[3]
Because the previous head of the production department had returned, he could not be paid for his work outside the company via Toei. Moreover, out of consideration for Toei, he was nominally the general manager, even though his actual job was a director.[15]
Sato worked with Takuya Igarashi as series director on Ojamajo Doremi.[18]
He was involved from the very beginning of the project,[a] when it was only decided to do a magical girl story. So he was able to be involved from the stage of deciding what kind of story it would be.[19][20]
He requested a double-headed system with two directors, as he was too busy to concentrate on Ojamajo Doremi and thought that if it was an original production, it would be better to have as many brains, especially young ones, to come up with ideas as possible.[21]
He left Toei in 1998.[2][3]
When he approached the production department to produce a TV series of Magic User's Club, they asked him to do it after he had resigned and was no longer officially affiliated with Toei, so he replied 'Okay'.[17]
He then worked as a freelancer for about a year until the show ended, and then also stepped down from his position as series director of Ojamajo Doremi.[21]
He started working for Hull Filmmaker in 2000.[21]
Sato directed Sgt. Frog in response to Sunrise's offer to make the original manga less manic and sexy and more family-friendly.[22]
The film A Whisker Away (co-directed with Tomotaka Shibayama), whose release had been postponed due to the covid-19 pandemic, was cancelled for theatrical release and distributed worldwide on Netflix from 18 June 2020. The film Looking for Magical Doremi (co-directed with Halka Kamatani) was released in theatres on 13 November of the same year.[2]
Style
Sato has directed and supervised a wide range of works for children and adults, many of which have become long-term series.[3]
He is also active in the production of original works and is actively involved from the planning stage.[1]
During his experience at Toei, he learnt a lot about how to make commercial-based animations and the know-how of children's productions. Generally in Japan, not much marketing is done in the production of animation, but in the toy business for children, it is done thoroughly. As a series director, he went to toy manufacturers with producers to discuss and decide on the design and content of the animation, including with people from the manufacturers' planning department.[3]
On the other hand, Sato has carefully depicted the struggles children face and their family problems. He has always taken his own approach to what he cares about regarding children, as in his film Junkers Come Here, about a schoolgirl struggling with her parents' divorce.[24]
He is a master of animation storytelling, and in robot anime[b] he is more often asked to storyboard the everyday scenes that are the key to the drama than the battle scenes.[17][25]
He is skilled at training and mentoring newcomers, and once the popularity of the series stabilised, he often steps down as director and passes the baton to his successor. During his time at Toei Dōga, many talents studied directing under him, including Kunihiko Ikuhara, Kōnosuke Uda, Takuya Igarashi and Mamoru Hosoda.[4]
He recognised Kunihiko Ikuhara's potential from a young age, and promoted him to anime magazines and other publications.[26]
Sato considers himself more suited to TV series than films.[9][14]
Although tacitly permitted, Toei Dōga basically did not allow its staff to work for other studios, so Sato used a pseudonym like the rest of the staff when participating without going through the company.[27]
^At Toei, the director was usually selected after the outline of the work had been decided by producer, writer, plus TV station producer and a toy manufacturer's representative, but for Ojamajo Doremi, Sato was invited from the very beginning.
^In robot anime, he works mainly under the pseudonym 'Kiichi Hadame'.
^Oguro, Yuichiro (15 June 2006). "第54回 エヴァ雑記「第弐拾壱話 ネルフ、誕生」". WEB anime style (in Japanese). Open. Archived from the original on 20 October 2019. Retrieved 3 December 2023.
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