Animation studio Zero-G announced on their X (formerly Twitter) account that animator and character designer Toshinari Yamashita (山下 敏成) passed away on October 1, 2024. No further details were given.
Yamashita joined the industry in the late 1980s when he joined studio Zero G Room, the first studio opened by director and producer Hiroshi Negishi. Yamashita stuck with Zero G Room and its affiliates throughout his career even after Zero G Room itself went defunct. The studio was merged with RADIX in 2001. Yamashita left the company around 2007 after it had been renamed Radix Ace Entertainment and most of its staff split following a merger with Mob Animation. He joined ex-RADIX producer Yutaka Nagaushi’s Digital Network Animation before eventually settling at the current Zero-G studio founded by Negishi.
He was a skilled animator who had a strong and uniquely identifiable style characterized by sharp drawings and the oftentimes voluptuous breasts found in his character designs. He debuted as a character designer in 1995 with the original Shadow Skill OVA and gained notice doing the character designs for Burn-Up W (1996), Amazing Nurse Nanako (1999), and Divergence Eve (2003). Yamashita also animated openings and endings to various works on his own. Examples include the Tenchi Universe (1995) opening, the Kämpfer (2009) ending, and the opening for B Gata H Kei: Yamada’s First Time (2010). Most recently, he key animated the ending for Bartender: Glass of God (2024).
Featured image:
Hyper GranDoll, ©1997 Katsumi Hasegawa / Akahori Satoru Office • Bandai Visual
Amazing Nurse Nanako, ©Save our Nurse Project
Divergence Eve, ©2003 RADIX/Operation EVE