Thread by @ProjectTomcat

Alright, so let's talk a little about Manabu Ōhashi (@MaoCloudさん) , the Character Designer and Animation Director of "Tomcat's Big Adventure".

It's barely exaggerating to say that Manabu Ōhashi has been active since the birth of the TV anime industry. He started for working at Toei in 1964 at age 15 (!) with his first job coming as an inbetweener on Kaze no Fujimaru.

He's said the OP is what made him choose the show.

His first works as a full time Key Animator would come on the TV series Rainbow Sentai Robin and the Cyborg 009 films.

He would continue to work at Toei until going freelance in 1968.

From 1968 until around 1972 he was working as a freelancer on a variety of projects such as Tiger Mask, Moomin, or Attack No. 1.

He also contributed to Belladonna of Sadness making him one of the few animators to have a foot in both Toei and their rival Mushi Pro.

Starting in 1972 Ōhashi began working with Madhouse, and even more importantly, with Osamu Dezaki.

This clip is from a public safety film designed and Directed by Dezaki, “The Fire G-Men”.

for clarity, he didn't animate this entire op

He would continue to work with Dezaki throughout his career on classic shows like Ashita no Joe, Takarajima, Nobody's Boy Remi, and Gamba no Bōken.

A lesser known show from this period was "Manga Sekai Mukashi Banashi".

This was a stylistically diverse anthology of fable adaptations. The loose nature of the series gave Ōhashi room to wear a variety of hats from animator, to designer, or even director.

In 1979 he published his personal artbook, “Kumo to Shonen”. Pay special attention to the character in the last two pictures because they will be coming up again.

It's a lovely book and actually still for sale:

maocloud.net/shop/%E9%9B%B2…

In the early 80s Ōhashi also got a chance to work on 3 Sanrio films, Unico, Unico and the Island of Magic, and Sirius no Densetsu.

There is some real range in his work in this era often providing both the most cartoony and the most serious scenes in the same film.

Sirius no Densetsu in particular also let Ōhashi show off the fact he’s not just an animator, the film's title sequence actually opens on his sculpture.

A project that deserves special mention is 1987’s “Kin no Tori”. As in “Tomcat’s Big Adventure” for this film Manabu Ōhashi worked as Character Designer and Animation Director.

You can see more model sheets via @catsuka.

catsuka.com/gengal/artwork…

While film was completed in 1984 it was shelved and not released until 1987. It was released on VHS but has still never had a modern home release.

It's hard to fathom the logic that leads to locking art like this or Tomcat’s away.

Maybe his most personal animation, “Cloud”, came as part of Robot Carnival in 1987.

This short was conceived, directed and animated by Manabu Ōhashi. The film was even inbetweened by his children, Hatsune and Shiho Ohashi.

As “Tomcat’s Big Adventure” began production in 1988 this would have been roughly the point where Ōhashi would have joined the project.

You can see more art from Tomcat via @catsuka.

ca-tsuka.tumblr.com/post/121101150…

As I imagine is clear by now Manabu Ōhashi has had a very long career that defies a simple summarization and he’s still active to this day.

He even did a Sailor Moon ED you probably all know already!

If you want to dig deeper he has a very detailed list of his work posted (in japanese) on his official site.

I also strongly recommend this episode of Toco Toco featuring Manabu Ōhashi.

maocloud.net/works/

A brief and gentle reminder that if you run or work at a convention and you are seeing this you are not a passive agent.

Please reach out to the rights holders at chibinekotom.com/about/ and they would love to work out the details of a screening.