Osamu Dezaki was a Japanese anime director born in Shinagawa, Tokyo. He started drawing manga as a high school student before joining Mushi Production in 1963—the studio founded by Osamu Tezuka himself. His directorial debut came in 1970 with Ashita no Joe, and from there he became one of anime's most distinctive visual stylists.

Dezaki's signature tricks are pretty hard to miss: split screens, dramatic lighting, tilted camera angles, and what he called "postcard memories"—those gorgeous pastel freeze frames where the animation fades into a detailed painted still. That last technique especially became iconic and influenced how people think about anime cinematography overall. His methods got adopted across the industry and shaped what Japanese animation could do visually. Directors like Akiyuki Shinbo, Kunihiko Ikuhara, Yoshiyuki Tomino, and others clearly learned from his playbook.

He was a heavy smoker throughout his life, which eventually caught up with him. He died of lung cancer on April 17, 2011, at 67.