Animator and Director Shigeki Awai Passes Away

Animator Tsutomu Ohno posted on X (formerly Twitter) that animator and director Shigeki Awai 粟井重紀 has passed away.

Awai joined the industry in the late 1970s as a douga (in-between and trace) animator. Within two years, he was promoted to key animator and working on shows like Urusei Yatsura (1981), Heavy Metal L-Gaim (1984), and Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam (1985). In the late 1980s, he started to take on the role of animation director on episodes of Miracle Giants Doumu-kun (1989) and debuted as an episode director in 1990 on the 25th episode of Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water. The following year, he also designed the characters for The Abashiri Family. During much of this time, he was affiliated with Studio Musashi, which Oono had joined under advice from staff at Studio Comet.

Animator Hideaki Matsuoka on X (formerly Twitter) reminisced on the two working in the '80s and '90s, saying that they had been lively chatters due to both being from Kyushu Prefecture and often working on many of the same projects together. Around the time that the two were working on Ys (around ~1990), Matsuoka asked animator Kazuto Nakazawa if he would join a 3-person band with him and Awai. The three played at a studio in Nishiogi with Nakazawa on keyboards and Awai on the bass guitar.

In 1996, Awai made his directorial debut with the second episode of the adult erotic OVA Gakkou no Yuurei. Alongside his work on commercial television animation, he continued to direct and design characters for a number of adult erotic anime up until the mid-2010s, such as Discipline (2003), Boin (2005), and finally Enbi (2014).

According to one user on X (formerly Twitter), Awai was credited for directing a total of 35 full-length (30-minute timeslot) episodes in 2024 alone, with the second most episodes directed by Masahiko Watanabe at 22 episodes. On top of that work, Awai also contributed key animation and animation direction services to about 9 different series that year (some of which he was involved with as an episode director).

In the past year, Awai participated in works as an episode director and animator like The Misfit of Demon King Academy Season 2, Uzumaki, and Terminator Zero.

Note: Awai's name is often romanized as "Shigenori", such as in the credits for Meiji Gekken: 1874 (episode 1) and Uzumaki (episode 3), but it should be read as "Shigeki" at least according to his Oricon database page.

Featured image: The Misfit of Demon King Academy, © 2023 Shu, Kadokawa Corporation / Demon King Academy II