Looking for all the character designers?

Hooder

Hooder

Pronouns
he/him
Would anyone be willing to give me a list of all the people who have drawn up the lupin gang over the years?

The names I can only be certain of are..

Hirotaka Marufuji (who I think is the current?)

Hayao Miyazaki

Hisao Yokobori

Like does anyone have any info on Part 2 or Part 3?

I just like to have these sort things listed and to keep up with, like who did that recent design for the small cameo in the latest City Hunter film? was that Hisao Yokobori?
 
lastflunky

lastflunky

Pronouns
She/Her
I got a bit of info from the Magnetic Press art book.
Pilot: At first it was done by Monkey Punch and Tsutomu Shibayama adjusted them into their final animation designs.
When the pilot was being animated by TMS and Yomiuri telecasting, Shibayama had left the studio. Yasuo Otsuka took over. At first he stayed faithful to the designs he was given to make the pilot, but then.........

Part 1: Ostuka refined Shibayama's pilot designs to better fit his own style and used those for Part 1.

Part 2: Takeo Kitahara did the initial designs but as we know many cooks were in the kitchen for this series. We can add Hayao Miyazaki (for his two episodes) and Yasuo Otsuka (for the telecom animated episodes) to the list. Maybe look into OH! production they animated a few episodes.

Part 3: Yuzo Aoki did the initial designs. He made three distinct Lupins "a soft one, a hard one and a comical one". He was the designer for the whole run but he did allow animators to draw in a way that was comfortable to them. You can credit him and whoever did whatever episode.

TWCFM, Kokie specials and a pachinko machine: They were done by Takeshi Koike.

Part 4 and 5: Hisao Yokobori did both of these parts. You can still tell the two shows apart. Part 5's were Yokobori streamlined his designs and it has a different colour design. Should be noted his designs were used for Part 6's episode zero.

Part 6, Goodbye Partner and Prison of the past: There were done by Hirotaka Marufuji. According to the book, his part 6 designs were tweaked from Yokobori's designs but turned into a different direction. Makes sense we did change genres, from action crime drama to glacial-paced crime drama you would see in Ireland and the UK. This is what happens when you hire a mystery novelist with little anime experience to run the show.

The Magnetic press book ends at Part 6 and has no character design info for the movies. So the info below is from Anime News Network
Lupin Zero: Asami Taguchi. He was a character design assistant for part 4.
  • Mystery of Mamo: Yushio Kabashima & Yuzo Aoki
  • Cagliostro: Miyazaki & Yasuo Otsuka
  • Gold of babylon: Yuzo Aoki, Hidetoshi Owashi & Tatsuo Yanagino
  • Nostradamus: Kenji Hachizaki
  • Dead or Alive: Marisuke Eguchi
  • Detective Cohan (movie & TV special): Satoshi Hirayama (Lupin) Masatomo Sudo (Cohan)
  • Fuma: Kazuhide Tomonaga
  • Return of Pycal, First Contact, Sallowtail tatto, Angel's tactics, Seven days rhapsody, Elusivness of the fog, Sweet lost night, the last job & Tokyo Crisis: Satoshi Hirayama
  • Green vs red: Takayo Nishimura
  • Bye Bye Lady Liberty: Noboru Furuse
  • Hemmingway papers: Noboru Furuse & Yuzo Aoki
  • Napoleon's dictionary: Noboru Furuse & Masaaki Kudo
  • From Serbia with love: Yasuchika Nagaoka
  • Voyage to danger: Hisashi Eguchi (he suggested Lupin wearing yellow jacket and was rejected)
  • Dragon of doom, Another page & Harimao's treasure: Masatomo Sudo
  • Twilight Gemini: Minoru Maeda
  • Island of assassins: Fuminori Kizaki
  • Missed by a dollar: Ryo Tanaka
  • Alcatraz: Toshimitsu Kobayashi
  • Return the treasure: Satoshi Hirayama & Toshimitsu Kobayashi
  • Blood seal Mermaid: Yoshiharu Sato
  • Princess of the breeze: Takahiro Kagami
  • Cats eye: Junko Yamanaka & Haruhisa Nakata
ANN did not list the character designer for Fujiko's unlucky days or The First.
City Hunter: Angel dust has Kumiko Nagasaki & Seigo Kitazawa credited as character designers.
I hope this helps and I guess I'll add to the thread when new stuff gets announced
GBFujiR
 
Hooder

Hooder

Pronouns
he/him
lastflunky said:
I got a bit of info from the Magnetic Press art book.
Pilot: At first it was done by Monkey Punch and Tsutomu Shibayama adjusted them into their final animation designs.
When the pilot was being animated by TMS and Yomiuri telecasting, Shibayama had left the studio. Yasuo Otsuka took over. At first he stayed faithful to the designs he was given to make the pilot, but then.........

Part 1: Ostuka refined Shibayama's pilot designs to better fit his own style and used those for Part 1.

Part 2: Takeo Kitahara did the initial designs but as we know many cooks were in the kitchen for this series. We can add Hayao Miyazaki (for his two episodes) and Yasuo Otsuka (for the telecom animated episodes) to the list. Maybe look into OH! production they animated a few episodes.

Part 3: Yuzo Aoki did the initial designs. He made three distinct Lupins "a soft one, a hard one and a comical one". He was the designer for the whole run but he did allow animators to draw in a way that was comfortable to them. You can credit him and whoever did whatever episode.

TWCFM, Kokie specials and a pachinko machine: They were done by Takeshi Koike.

Part 4 and 5: Hisao Yokobori did both of these parts. You can still tell the two shows apart. Part 5's were Yokobori streamlined his designs and it has a different colour design. Should be noted his designs were used for Part 6's episode zero.

Part 6, Goodbye Partner and Prison of the past: There were done by Hirotaka Marufuji. According to the book, his part 6 designs were tweaked from Yokobori's designs but turned into a different direction. Makes sense we did change genres, from action crime drama to glacial-paced crime drama you would see in Ireland and the UK. This is what happens when you hire a mystery novelist with little anime experience to run the show.

The Magnetic press book ends at Part 6 and has no character design info for the movies. So the info below is from Anime News Network
Lupin Zero: Asami Taguchi. He was a character design assistant for part 4.
  • Mystery of Mamo: Yushio Kabashima & Yuzo Aoki
  • Cagliostro: Miyazaki & Yasuo Otsuka
  • Gold of babylon: Yuzo Aoki, Hidetoshi Owashi & Tatsuo Yanagino
  • Nostradamus: Kenji Hachizaki
  • Dead or Alive: Marisuke Eguchi
  • Detective Cohan (movie & TV special): Satoshi Hirayama (Lupin) Masatomo Sudo (Cohan)
  • Fuma: Kazuhide Tomonaga
  • Return of Pycal, First Contact, Sallowtail tatto, Angel's tactics, Seven days rhapsody, Elusivness of the fog, Sweet lost night, the last job & Tokyo Crisis: Satoshi Hirayama
  • Green vs red: Takayo Nishimura
  • Bye Bye Lady Liberty: Noboru Furuse
  • Hemmingway papers: Noboru Furuse & Yuzo Aoki
  • Napoleon's dictionary: Noboru Furuse & Masaaki Kudo
  • From Serbia with love: Yasuchika Nagaoka
  • Voyage to danger: Hisashi Eguchi (he suggested Lupin wearing yellow jacket and was rejected)
  • Dragon of doom, Another page & Harimao's treasure: Masatomo Sudo
  • Twilight Gemini: Minoru Maeda
  • Island of assassins: Fuminori Kizaki
  • Missed by a dollar: Ryo Tanaka
  • Alcatraz: Toshimitsu Kobayashi
  • Return the treasure: Satoshi Hirayama & Toshimitsu Kobayashi
  • Blood seal Mermaid: Yoshiharu Sato
  • Princess of the breeze: Takahiro Kagami
  • Cats eye: Junko Yamanaka & Haruhisa Nakata
ANN did not list the character designer for Fujiko's unlucky days or The First.
City Hunter: Angel dust has Kumiko Nagasaki & Seigo Kitazawa credited as character designers.
I hope this helps and I guess I'll add to the thread when new stuff gets announced
GBFujiR
Click to expand...
Thank you sm!
 
Yawackhary

Yawackhary

A few more to add to the list:

Fujiko's Unlucky Days (got the credits from here) and Lupin Family Line-up OVA - Satoshi Hirayama
Italian Game - Hisao Yokobori with assistance from Haruka Inade and Asami Taguchi. Koji Morimoto had done the opening (one of the few new things for the TV Special) and since it's a different style, that counts too.
Is Lupin Still Burning? - Hisao Yokobori and Satoshi Hirayama (Makes sense for Yokobori to be involved as it looks a bit like Part 4 design wise)
Lupin Shanshei - FROGMAN
Mankatsu - Toshihiko Masuda
Lupin VIII - Shingo Araki and Michi Himeno* (Monkey Punch did do the original illustrations though)

* - I think there is at least another character designer for the series who did Episodes 3 and 5 but there are no credits at all due to its completion status. Apparently Satoshi Hirayama did the drawings for the Animage issue as well...

Part 2 does indeed have a melting pot due to its various styles, animation studios (TMS, Telecom, Oh! Production, Top Craft, Artland, Studio Korumi, Yamashita Production and others), etc. Yuzo Aoki did a few character designs in directed episodes and can easily tell. The Mystery of Mamo character design popped up partially in episodes 78 and 91, Yoshio Kabashima was credited as animator. Still finding who did the Artland episodes where the characters look like knockoffs from Cagliostro including said Count (135, 142, 152, 144 also uses a bit of this design but was not done by Artland) and Episode 62 (oval head, large eared Lupin), the latter is from an unknown outsourced studio. Part 2's credits are a bit of a mess.

Also doubt that we will know the character designer of Episode 21/22 from Part 4 since that had a completely different design for Lupin for the English/Italian versions and that had to be fixed for the Japanese version. (If there are any credits for Part 4, they seem to be from the Japanese version as TMS tend to go for basic credits for International versions up to a certain point...)

There was an artist that TMS or VAP used for many of the box arts but cannot remember the name... It looked a bit similar to Yasuo Otsuka but was not him. Ami Tomobuki (who did some animation for Part 2) had done the CD cover of Tokyo Transit, one of the last things that Yasuo Yamada had worked on.

Game wise we have:
Treasure of the Sorcerer King - Toshimitsu Kobayashi and Satoshi Hirayama
The Inheritance of Columbus is Dyed by Blood and The Greatest Battle of Minds in History (DS) - Satoshi Hirayama
Lupin is Dead, Zenigata is in Love - Satoshi Hirayama and Eisuke Sato (credited as Guest Character Design)

All of the above had some involvement with TMS and/or Telecom. Also didn't realise that Satoshi Hirayama worked on so many projects. If not character designing then some animation.

Mikio Onda and Fumiko Shīya did the drawings for Hong Kong no Mashu, there is no character designer credited as to be expected for an early game but some of the artwork does look "traced" from Part 2. There are no character designer credits for Sage of the Pyramid (only Monkey Punch is credited but obviously not his style) but does have a strange "Jacket Design" credit Ryo Fukushima, the same for Master File and Chronicles. The rest either don't have any credits at all or not easy to get them...

Then there are the other manga artists since the OP did say about people drawing the gang:
Eiichi Saito (Lupin VIII)
Shusay (Lupin S)
Masatsuki Yamakami (Lupin Y)
Yukio Miyama (Lupin M)
Naoya Hayakawa (Lupin H, Lupin Italiano)
togekinoko (Lupin T and an eye catch for Part 6)
Tamio Baba (Lupin B)
Okada Tai (Zenigata)
Kazumi Hoshi (Goemon)
Izo Suzuki (Fujiko Mine Company)
Keyaki Uchiuchi (Neighbor World Princess)

I think a few of these also did covers for Lupin III: Official Magazine as well. Some other mangaka had done Lupin drawings such as Gosho Aoyama and Tsukasa Hojo but mainly for promotion.
 
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