Rintaro

A titan of the Japanese anime industry, Rintaro has helped usher the genre into a global force ever since he got his start in animation at the age of 17. Born in Tokyo as Shigeyuki Hayashi, Rintaro was first hired by the Toei Doga animation studio as an in-between animator on the 1958 feature "Hakujaden." After moving over to Mushi Productions in 1963, Rintaro had a chance to work with his hero, Osamu Tezuka, Japan's equivalent to Walt Disney. During the eight years he was employed at Mushi, he worked on two of the most influential anime series, 1963's "Astro Boy" and 1965's "Kimba the White Lion." After becoming a freelancer in 1971, Rintaro was better able to incorporate his love of American westerns, gangster films, and noir, mixed with his well-established affinity for science fiction, into a number of seminal features, including 1979's "Galaxy Express 999: The Signature Edition," 1986's "Firebird: Karma Chapter" and most notably a 2001 critically-acclaimed adaptation of Tezuka's legendary manga "Metropolis."