Birth Place: Numazu, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan

Sugii Gisaburou is an anime director and Nihonga artist who's worked across pretty much every corner of the Japanese animation industry. His résumé spans wildly different projects—from the literary sophistication of Ginga Tetsudou no Yowa and Murasaki Shikibu's Genji Monogatari to the over-the-top martial arts of Street Fighter II, plus children's shows like Jack to Mame no Ki and Super Doll Licca-chan, and the hugely popular TV series Glass no Kamen and Touch.

Born August 20, 1940 in Numazu, he started as an inbetweener at Toei Doga when he was nineteen. By the early sixties he'd landed at Osamu Tezuka's Mushi Productions, where he stayed until Tezuka sold the studio in 1973. After that he bounced around a bit but settled mostly with Group Tac. Since 2006 he's been teaching at Kyoto Seika University. His older brother 杉井興治 was an animator at Tatsunoko Production, and Sugii himself is a member of the Japan Animation Creators Association (JAniCA).