Blood type: B

Birth place: Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan

Ichirou Itano is a Japanese anime artist, director, and producer who's made his mark primarily in sci-fi and mecha anime. Fans know him best for inventing a signature style of action sequence—the "Itano circus" (also called the "Macross missile massacre")—that completely changed how anime depicts aerial combat.

The technique is instantly recognizable: ridiculously detailed, fluid shading on the mecha themselves, paired with acrobatic close-range dogfighting moves that defy physics. But the real money shot is the missile barrage. Picture a mecha or spaceship unleashing dozens of missiles at once, each with intricately animated spiraling smoke trails and wildly erratic flight paths that weave all over the screen. It's excessive, it's beautiful, and it's become iconic.

The Itano Circus became especially synonymous with the Macross series, where it became a signature visual trademark. Since then, the style has been imitated and referenced across anime for decades, cementing Itano's influence on the medium.