Mayu Yoshioka (吉岡 茉祐, Yoshioka Mayu; born November 7, 1995) is a Japanese voice actress best known for Wake Up, Girls!…Mayu Yoshioka (吉岡 茉祐, Yoshioka Mayu; born November 7, 1995) is a Japanese voice actress best known for Wake Up, Girls!, where she played the central character. She is affiliated with 81 Produce.
Jiro Ishii (イシイジロウ, Ishii Jirō) is a Japanese video game developer and television and anime producer. He is best known…Jiro Ishii (イシイジロウ, Ishii Jirō) is a Japanese video game developer and television and anime producer. He is best known for directing the live-action visual novel 428: Shibuya Scramble, producing the adventure video game Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, and creating the original concept for the anime short Under the Dog which was funded on Kickstarter.
Kiyoshi Kurosawa (黒沢 清, Kurosawa Kiyoshi; born July 19, 1955) is a Japanese filmmaker, critic, author, actor, and a…Kiyoshi Kurosawa (黒沢 清, Kurosawa Kiyoshi; born July 19, 1955) is a Japanese filmmaker, critic, author, actor, and a former professor at Tokyo University of the Arts (2005–23). Noted for his psychological films that often focus on ambiguous narratives and on their characters' inner turmoils and quests for meaning and connections, he is best known for his contributions to psychological horror and Japanese horror, notably his acclaimed 1997 film Cure and his 2001 film Pulse, although he has also worked in a variety of other genres. While most of his work has been in Japanese, two of his films, Daguerrotype (2016) and Serpent's Path (2024; a remake of his own 1998 film of the same name), were in French. Kurosawa received the Medal with Purple Ribbon for his contributions to Japanese cinema, in 2021. The New York Times stated that Kurosawa "is to psychological fright what David Cronenberg is to body horror."
Toshio Masuda (舛田 利雄, Masuda Toshio; October 5, 1927 – August 26, 2026) was a Japanese film director, screenwriter and…Toshio Masuda (舛田 利雄, Masuda Toshio; October 5, 1927 – August 26, 2026) was a Japanese film director, screenwriter and cinematographer. He developed a reputation as a consistent box office hit-maker. Over the course of five decades, 16 of his films made the yearly top ten lists at the Japanese box office—a second place record in the industry. Between 1958 and 1968 he directed 52 films for the Nikkatsu Company. Masuda was their top director of action films and worked with the company's top stars, including Yujiro Ishihara with whom he made 25 films. After the breakdown of the studio system, he moved on to a succession of big-budget movies including the American-Japanese co-production Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) and the disaster epic Prophecies of Nostradamus (1974). He worked on such anime productions as the Space Battleship Yamato series. His corporate drama Company Funeral (1989) earned him a Japanese Academy Award nomination and wins at the Blue Ribbon Awards and Mainichi Film Awards. In Japan, his films are well-remembered by fans and called genre landmarks by critics. He remains little known abroad save for rare exceptions of his post-Nikkatsu work such as Tora! Tora! Tora!. However, a number of his films were screened in a 2005 Nikkatsu Action Cinema retrospective in Italy, and a few have since made their way to the United States. In 2009, he helped produce Space Battleship Yamato: Resurrection.
Natto Wada (和田 夏十, Wada Natto; 13 September 1920 – 18 February 1983), also known as Natsuto Wada, was a Japanese script…Natto Wada (和田 夏十, Wada Natto; 13 September 1920 – 18 February 1983), also known as Natsuto Wada, was a Japanese script writer and film columnist.