Ask John: Do Women Create Anime?

Question:
I was wondering if Japanese find it acceptable for a woman to work in an animation team.

Answer:
It’s not at all uncommon for females to draw manga and work as professionals in the manga industry, but employ in the anime industry is somewhat less common. Yuu Watase, Rumiko Takahashi, Naoko Takeuchi and CLAMP are commonly known and highly respected professional female manga artists, but these creators generally don’t work with animation. That’s not to say that there aren’t females that have significant roles in anime production. Some of the most famous anime character designers, including Akemi Takada, who provided the character designs for the Orange Road and Patlabor TV series, and Mutusumi Inomata, who provided the character designs for all of Namco’s “Tales” RPGs and the Tales of Eternia TV series, Windaria, Leda: Fantastic Adventure of Yohko, and Brain Powerd [sic], are female. From what I’ve seen from documentary clips and interviews, including the news article about Studio Ghibli from today’s AnimeNation news, which quotes Michiyo Yasuda, a color checker who’s been working at Studio Ghibli for over 15 years, the Japanese anime industry is seemingly a bit more relaxed about male and female employment roles than the traditional Japanese corporate business. Females do seem to be accepted into the Japanese anime industry as equals to men. And consider also that Golden Boy lesson 6, Otaku no Video (which is loosely based on the real-life history of Gainax Studio), and the Kuromi-chan OAV series all feature female anime characters that work in anime production studios. The frequency of female animators in anime about the production of anime is probably not entirely based on fiction.