Takashi Yamazaki

Takashi Yamazaki Born June 12, 1964 Matsumoto, Nagano, Japan Occupation Director, screenwriter, visual effects supervisor First work A Taxing Woman's Return (1988) Notable work Always: Sunset on Third Street (2005)

“	My childhood dreams are coming true one after another… If I could tell my younger self, I would definitely cry tears of joy from the overwhelming happiness.	„
	— Takashi Yamazaki, on getting to work on both Godzilla and Ultraman projects

Takashi Yamazaki (山崎 貴,   Yamazaki Takashi) is a Japanese film director, writer, and visual effects artist. Inspired to enter the movie business after seeing Encounter with the Unknown (1972) and Star Wars (1977) at the age of 13, Yamazaki began his career in the late 1980s, working in the special effects department at Shirogumi. His earliest jobs included Juzo Itami's A Taxing Woman's Return (1988) and Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Sweet Home (1989). He made his directorial debut in 2000 with the science fiction film Juvenile.

Yamazaki's third film, Always: Sunset on Third Street (2005), won the Japanese Academy Award for Best Picture and was followed by two sequels. The first of them, released in 2007, featured Godzilla in an imaginary sequence. In 2021, he directed the short film Godzilla the Ride: Giant Monsters Ultimate Battle for a motion simulator ride at the Seibuen amusement park. Yamazaki was finally selected to helm a mainline Godzilla film with Godzilla Minus One, due for release in 2023. He also wrote and directed the 2022 fantasy film yokaipedia.

Yamazaki is the VFX supervisor of all of his own movies, continuing to work through Shirogumi to this day. He also works frequently with production company ROBOT COMMUNICATIONS, which has been involved with shooting/animating all but one of his films, and Toho, which has (co-)financed all but one of his films and distributed all of them. Yamazaki is married to fellow filmmaker Shimako Sato, with whom he had previously collaborated on K-20: Legend of the Mask (2008) and Space Battleship Yamato (2010).

Selected filmography

Director

• Returner (2002)
• Always: Sunset on Third Street 2 (2007)
• Space Battleship Yamato (2010)
• Godzilla the Ride: Giant Monsters Ultimate Battle (2021)
• yokaipedia (2022)
• Godzilla Minus One (2023)

Screenwriter

• Returner (2002)
• Always: Sunset on Third Street 2 (2007) [with Ryota Kosawa]
• yokaipedia (2022)
• Godzilla Minus One (2023)

VFX supervisor

• Returner (2002)
• Always: Sunset on Third Street 2 (2007)
• Space Battleship Yamato (2010)
• yokaipedia (2022)
• Godzilla Minus One (2023)

Miscellaneous

• K-20: Legend of the Mask (2008) - Associate writer / VFX associate
• Godzilla the Ride: Giant Monsters Ultimate Battle (2021) - Storywriter / designer
• yokaipedia (2022) - Storywriter / character designer
• Ultraman the Ride: The Great Duel of the Century (2023)

Selected bibliography

• Novel: yokaipedia (2022) - Author

Trivia

• In 2008, Yamazaki told Kadokawa Shoten that he intended to direct a remake of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, though the project has yet to come to fruition.

References

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