Yōichi Kotabe

Who is Yōichi Kotabe?

Yōichi Kotabe, is a Japanese manga artist and animator who has worked with Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki. He is a lecturer at Tokyo Designer Academy in their cartoon film course.

He was married to Reiko Okuyama, who is an animator and engraver, and they jointly founded the studio Atelier Rei. Kotabe sometimes works with his wife under the nom de plume Antelope. They worked together on Hols: Prince of the Sun and Panda! Go, Panda!. He was character designer for Heidi, Girl of the Alps and 3000 Leagues in Search of Mother, both of which are part of the World Masterpiece Theater series.

He works for Nintendo designing, supervising, and illustrating for the Super Mario series since the original Super Mario Bros.. He has also done design work for The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, BS Zelda no Densetsu, and Mole Mania. He also did finish design work on the Pokémon animated series—he refined the design of Pikachu—and other video games as a design and animation supervisor.

In 2003, he participated in the collaborative project Winter Days.