Hideaki Anno
Dick Thomas Johnson from Tokyo, Japan, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
Hideaki Anno is an animator, filmmaker, and actor. His most celebrated creation, the Evangelion franchise: Neon Genesis Evangelion, has had a significant influence on the anime television industry and Japanese popular culture. Neon Genesis Evangelion is also known by the names of Eva or Evangelion for short. It is hailed as one of the influential anime for the Mecha anime genre, like the Gundam series, and is known for its postmodernist themes, psychoanalytic accounts of human behavior, and theological questioning. Other Anno works include Shin Godzilla (2016) and Shin Kamen Rider (2023). Fun Fact: In 1994, the astroid 9081 Hideakianno was named after him by his old friend Akimasa Nakamura, a famous Japanese astronomer.