Earlier this week Masaaki Yuasa revealed on Twitter that he stepped down as the president of Science SARU on March 25th in order to pursue other opportunities. Not many details were given in his post, but he specifically stated that he needed a break after 7 years of hard work with the company. Hard work is honestly an understatement, the man has been churning out nonstop hits for the past several years as the director on 4 different anime series and 3 full-length films. He’s not done yet either as he mentioned that he will be seeing the production of the upcoming INU-OH through to the end before going on his very well-deserved break. We also still have Japan Sinks 2020 to look forward to on Netflix later this year.
<お知らせ>
このたび
３月２５日をもちまして
株式会社サイエンスSARUの
代表取締役社長を退任いたしました
創業以来７年あまり自分がやってこれたのも、
お力添えいただいた方々のお陰と感謝しております。
ありがとうございました— 湯浅政明 (@masaakiyuasa) April 1, 2020
One day after this announcement was made public, Science SARU co-founder Eunyoung Choi took to Twitter herself to announce that she’ll be taking over management responsibilities as the CEO of the company. She mirrored Yuasa’s statement that INO-OH will continue production as it began until completion. She makes a light mention that Yuasa will still continue to work with Science SARU down the line, although no specifics are given as to what that means, either way, it’s great to see that he’s parting on good terms.
Following yuasa-san’s announcement, I’ll be taking over management responsibilities as Science SARU’s new CEO.
Yuasa-san will continue to work together for feature film “INU-OH,”. I can’t wait to share many of our new, exciting projects❤︎#ScienceSARU
— Eunyoung Choi ウニョン (@e8144) April 2, 2020
Masaaki Yuasa has for a long time been one of my favorite creators in the anime industry. Personally, he’s been responsible for some of my favorite work of the last decade in just the last 3 years and his film Night is Short, Walk on Girl was an immediate entry in my list of must-watch animated films of any kind. While it’s definitely sad to see him stepping away from things, regardless of the limited details, the man has been so consistently good that he definitely deserves to take some time off. I’m sure whenever he does come back to things, and whatever way he chooses to do so, that he’ll be right back to creating immediate classics.