He was the Assistant Animation Director for the 1984 anime film The Super Dimension Fortress Macross: Do You Remember Love?, where he met future Gainax co-founder Hideaki Anno on the film’s key animation staff.
Studio Khara announced on Wednesday that animator and director Shoichi Masuo passed away on Monday at 11:36 a.m. while under medical care for an unspecified illness.
Masuo is a noted key animator who specialized in mechanical and effects animation.
When Anno left Gainax and founded Studio Khara to work on his new Evangelion anime films, Masuo followed as a key animator as well as a special effects and action director up until the third and most recent film.