Animator Kenichiro Katsura Passes Away

Satoko Miyachi announced on Twitter (formerly X) that veteran animator Kenichiro Katsura (桂憲一郎), her husband, passed away while undergoing medical treatment on September 30, 2026. He was 59 years old.

Born in 1966, Katsura began his career in the industry in the mid-1980s. He worked at various subcontracting studios, namely Monseir Onion Production, Studio Mumin (now known as Art Office Sharaku), and Film Magic, and was more notably a part of the Gabou Miyabi animation group, which consisted of various freelance animators like Shinya Takahashi, Takahashi Hashimoto, Yoshihiro Irie, and others at various points in time.

He was quickly promoted to key animator by the late 1980s, by 1992 had received animation director jobs for shows like Ahista e Kick. In 1993, he received his first job as a character designer for the video game Yami no Ketsuzoku: Haruka Naru Kioku, and soon after debuted as a character designer for television anime with Macross 7.

Under the name Edage Katsura, he was involved with various R18 and erotic titles like the Night Walker game (1993), the Viper game series (starting with Viper V10 in 1994), and the OVA HiMeGoTo (2001).

Around the mid-2000s, Katsura commonly worked with studio Chaos Project (which had produced HiMeGoTo), where he was the character designer for Comic Party Revolution (2005), the To-Heart OVA series (2007-2012), and also made his debut as a director with the Utawarerumono OVA (2006). Although he primarily worked as an animator, Katsura from then on occasionally storyboarded or directed episodes and openings.

In 2013, Katsura drew the character designs for Walkure Romanze (2013) at studio 8bit, where he worked for the next 13 years as a freelance artist. Among his credits at the company include chief animation director for the Grisaia series (2014-2015), That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime (2018), Shy season 2 (2024), as well as character designer and chief animation director for Knights & Magic (2017), Zeondard (2019), and Synduality Noir (2024-2025).

Featured image: Synduality Noir, ©SYNDUALITY