Sunao Katabuchi (片渕 須直, Katabuchi Sunao, born 1960) is a Japanese animation director, screenwriter, and storyboard artist.
He is director of Contrail Co. Ltd.[1]
He has been a part-time lecturer at Nihon University College of Art since 2006, and a Project Professor at the college of Art of at the same university since 2018.[2][3] He has also served as a part-time lecturer at the Graduate School of Tokyo University of the Arts since 2013.[2]
He is married to a fellow director of anime Chie Uratani.
He traveled to the U.S. several times to work on Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland, a Japan-U.S. co-production of an animated film produced by Telecom, but decided to leave the company after becoming fed up with the project going astray as it was being pushed around by the American side.[5][6]
Then he started working at Mushi Production.
He was seconded to Studio Ghibli from Mushi Productions to work as an assistant director for Hayao Miyazaki on Kiki's Delivery Service in 1989.[1][2]
Katabuchi was originally going to direct the film, but when the sponsoring company made it clear that they had no intention of investing in anything other than a film directed by Hayao Miyazaki, Katabuchi stepped aside.[7]
Katabuchi joined Studio 4°C in 1992. Around this time, he was asked to train new directors and animators for Studio Ghibli, which had changed from a system of recruiting freelance staff for each production to a proper company structure and began hiring new employees.[8][9]
When he finished his work at Ghibli, they wanted him to stay on, but he refused.[10]
He made his directorial debut with the Nippon Animation TV series Famous Dog Lassie in 1996.[1]
He made his feature film directorial debut with Princess Arete.[1] A fter working on various outside projects, he returned to Studio 4 °C and began work on Princess Arete in 1998. The film was released in 2001 and won Excellent Works of the Year in the Domestic Feature Film Category at Tokyo International Anime Fair in 2002.[citation needed]
He directed, composed and wrote the screenplay for Black Lagoon series since 2006.[1]
In 2016, Katabuchi directed In This Corner of the World produced by MAPPA, which was released on November 12, 2016 in Japan, and planned to be released in fifteen countries including UK, France, Germany, Mexico and US.[11]
In This Corner of the World - 59th Culture of Child Welfare Award - Film/Media category (2017)[24]
In This Corner of the World - 67th The Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology's Art Encouragement Prize - Film category (2017)[25]
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