Legendary sakuga animator critical to the development of Japanese TV animation. No less than Yoshinori Kanada and Masaaki Yuasa have cited him as an influence.
Didn’t fit the nerdy animator stereotype in his youth. Growing up Kimura was known as a tough guy, bulky and confrontational. However, he loved painting as a hobby and when he couldn’t get into his art college of choice he joined Toei as an animator. Mentored by Yasuo Otsuka. Even in his earliest drawings, Kimura was extremely idiosyncratic: his lineart was rough and sketchy, but at the same time he paid more attention to human anatomy than all of his peers. Kimura’s cuts stood out for their rawness and epitomized the tendency in early TV anime towards highly stylized individual drawings in lieu of full animation.
A staple of Toei’s early experiments in TV animation. He was animation director and character designer for both the television and film incarnations of Cyborg 009 and animated the OP. He served a similar role on Rainbow Sentai Robin. Kimura’s masterpiece was his character designs and animation direction on Toei’s breakthrough wrestling series Tiger Mask. Kimura personally animated the OP and was AD on a number of episodes (1, 7, 11, 21, 27, 36, 49, 51, 58, 64, 71, 82). His drawings were inspired by the bold, expressionistic movie poster illustrations of Bob Peak.
Following Tiger Mask, Kimura animated for a number of major 70s anime. He was often typecasted for OPs, like those he did for Atack No. 1 and Gatchaman. He was also a regular animator on the first Lupin III TV anime. After leaving Toei he formed his own subcontracting studio Neo Media and spent most of his career from the 80s onward training younger animators, though he still animates from time to time.
Recently participated in a kickstarter, Go Samurai, which intends to make a short film out of Kimura’s uncorrected B&W pencil drawings.
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