Revolutionary Boy - The career of Kunihiko Ikuhara

Written by A. H. on 06 May 2013

When it comes to anime directors, we often talk about some of the industry's big names in terms of their prolific nature. However, in some cases we're better served falling back on the old adage of "quality over quantity", and it's in these terms that it's far easier to talk about the work of Kunihiko Ikuhara.

With this flamboyent and outspoken character having not worked on a full series since Revolutionary Girl Utena, the UK release of another show helmed by Ikuhara is a noteworthy one, and thus to celebrate the release of Mawaru Penguindrum we've decided to take a brief look back over the career of Kunihiko Ikuhara to highlight just how important a figure he is within anime as a whole.

Sailor Moon

After gratuating from a graphic design course, Ikuhara started work at Toei Animation, where he worked as an assistant director on a number of series, bore rising to prominence as first an episode director on Sailor Moon before taking on the role of outright director during its second season, Sailor Moon R.

Even at this early point in his career, there were some clear hallmarks of Ikuhara's work to come in the episodes of Sailor Moon which he directed. In particular, and in spite of the target audience of Sailor Moon, there were some distinctly dark thematic undertones to be found in some of the episodes under his directorial control, while other instalments exhibited the kind of goofy, oddball humour that can also be found making an appearance in his later works.

Come the Sailor Moon R movie, even some of Ikuhara's more unique visual traits were being to come into evidence - of course, it goes without saying that merely the presence as an important player in Sailor Moon's stratospheric success did much to mark him out as "one to watch" within the industry.