Yasuda, Michiyo

Michiyo Yasuda was born in Tokyo in 1939. Prompted by a job listing at her high school, she took the test for the finishing touches department at Toei Dōga (now Toei Animation) and joined the company in 1958 as part of its first class of employees. She was assigned to the finishing department in the advertisement production division. When the advertisement division was dissolved due to an economic recession, she moved to the finishing department for TV anime tracing and worked on Wolf Boy Ken (Ōkami Shōnen Ken). Through her involvement with the union’s executive committee, she became acquainted with Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki. She worked on Horus: Prince of the Sun (Taiyō no Ōji Horusu no Daibōken) as one of seven self-elected tracers and served as the chief tracer on The Wonderful World of Puss ‘n Boots (Nagagutsu o Haita Neko). In 1968, she left Toei Dōga. Although Yasuda questioned her work as a tracer and considered directing, among other roles, she joined A Production’s (now Shin-Ei Animation) finishing department in 1969. Under Takahata and Miyazaki, who joined the company later, she traced for projects such as Lupin III (Rupan Sansei) and Panda! Go, Panda! (Panda Kopanda). Afterwards, she moved to Zuiyo Eizo (later renamed Nippon Animation) where she worked on Heidi, Girl of the Alps (Arupusu no Shōjo Haiji), assisting with tracing and checking cels, again under Takahata and Miyazaki who had joined the studio earlier. Yasuda was tasked with determining the detailed color designs for the color keys of each shot, a task typically done by the art director, and from the time of 3000 Leagues in Search of Mother aka From the Apennines to the Andes (Haha o Tazunete Sanzenri) onward, she began working as a color designer in earnest. For Future Boy Conan (Mirai Shōnen Konan), she was responsible for all of the character color designs. After working on Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (Kaze no Tani no Naushika, 1984), she handled color design for the majority of Studio Ghibli’s feature films. Takahata and Miyazaki referred to her as a “comrade” and a “war buddy,” and she worked on both Grave of the Fireflies (Hotaru no Haka) and My Neighbor Totoro (Tonari no Totoro). Yasuda introduced a new method of using brown carbon paper and created new original colors that went beyond the pre-existing inks. Her original colors can be found in the Grave of the Fireflies, in which eighty percent of the colors used film, such as those used to depict the film’s spectral brother and sister, were newly developed. For Princess Mononoke (Mononoke-hime), she utilized 546 colors in total and worked to advance the digitalization of the animation painting process. Although she retired after 2008’s Ponyo (Gake no Ue no Ponyo), she returned for 2013’s The Wind Rises (Kaze Tachinu), which would be her last project. She passed away in 2016 at the age of seventy-seven. In 2018, the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka held a special exhibition titled “Painting the Colors of Our Films,” showcasing Yasuda’s expertise.