Hiroyuki Morita is a Japanese animator and director. He is best known for working as director on the Studio Ghibli film The Cat Returns.
History
Morita was born in Fukuoka Prefecture and graduated from Fukuoka Kenritsu Chikushikoto School. During his high school days, he produced an independent animated film called Glass-wari Shōnen, which won a prize in an animation magazine contest at the time. One of the production staff members for the film was Katsuyuki Toda, who later became a manga artist. After graduating from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering at Fukuoka University, he joined the animation production companyShaft. His first work as an animator was Hiatari Ryōkō!. Afterwards, he became a freelancer and worked as an inbetweener on movies such as Akira and Kiki's Delivery Service, a key animator for Roujin Z, Hashire Melos!, Memories, Perfect Blue and many others, and an episode director for the OVAGolden Boy. Being an animator who cares about fundamentals, Morita even danced the choreography for the idols in Perfect Blue. Other Studio Ghibli productions he has worked on include My Neighbors the Yamadas and Koro no Daisanpo, a short film for the Ghibli Museum. This led to him being selected to direct The Cat Returns. In 2007, he directed his first TV series, . On February 27, 2011, he was elected as director for the Japanese Animation Creators Association. He retired in June 2015 after serving on the board of directors for approximately four years. Until mid-2017, he worked at Polygon Pictures, a digital animation production company, and was involved in the management of ACTF, a forum themed around digital animation. He is currently working as a freelancer.
Controversy
During the production of the anime adaptation of Bokurano, Morita posted progress reports and held Q&A sessions about the aired episodes on his blog. There were various comments from the viewers such as criticism, support and inquiries. On the same blog, Morita stated, "I dislike the original work, and I admit that I made some malicious changes to the original when making it into an animation." In response to this, not only did viewers criticize the adaptation of Bokurano, but many also criticized Morita himself. Later, Morita explained, "The word 'dislike' that I used towards the original work was misleading so I'll correct myself. The original manga is good and full of mysteries, and I think it was worth adapting. I wrote that I 'disliked' the original story simply because there was so much mystery there, and because of the hardships involved. I was wrong to easily blame my personal 'dislike' and 'malice' for the criticisms written about the quality of my work. There is no escaping the fact that we have our own interpretation of the greatest mystery of all: why do the children die." In a Monthly Ikki magazine interview with the original author Mohiro Kitoh, Morita said, "I was half-forced to say ," to which Kitoh replied, "I'm sure you were " and "On the contrary, you've shown some good stuff."
