# Midori Yoshizawa

Midori Yoshizawa (Japanese: 吉澤 翠, Hepburn: Yoshizawa Midori) is a Japanese animator, storyboard artist, and director.

## Career

Yoshizawa studied at Tama Art University before getting her first job in the anime industry as an animator at Studio Luna around 2012. She worked at the studio for a year or two and then joined Toei Animation as an apprentice director working on One Piece. Around 2014, she left Toei and began freelancing for Shaft. Initially, she took on animation and assistant episode direction roles like her previous jobs but was being given episode direction duties across all of the studio's productions by 2015. She participated in several more from 2016 through 2018, and in 2019 was one of the episode directors and storyboard artists for Zoku Owarimonogatari. Longtime series and studio chief director Akiyuki Shinbo highlighted the first episode, which she directed, as being particularly interesting to him.
In 2019, she was involved with the studio's adaptation of the Magia Record mobile game, in the first season serving as a "director" (equivalent to a series director for a specific set of episodes) due to chief director Doroinu having no prior experience with directing a television anime. As such, Yoshizawa, Kenjirou Okada, and Yukihiro Miyamoto were chosen to supervise sets of episodes, with Miyamoto presiding as assistant director. The depiction in the 9th episode of the series, in which an AI gradually becomes more human, was broadly influenced by Yoshizawa herself. For the second and third seasons of the work, Miyamoto was promoted to series director under Doroinu, and Yoshizawa was promoted to assistant director. In the second episode of the second season, both Yoshizawa and Miyamoto were in charge of storyboarding the episode; but rather than splitting the content between the A and B-parts of the episode (the first and second halves), they split the content based on what they felt like depicting, such as Miyamoto taking charge of the action sequences.
Following the end of production on Magia Record, Yoshizawa took a break from directing duties and only contributed storyboards through 2022 and 2023, with the exception of supervising animator and first-time director Hiroto Nagata's opening for The Quintessential Quintuplets~. As Yoshizawa had directed the eleventh episode of the first season outsourced to Shaft in 2019, animation producer Yuuya Matsukawa appointed Yoshizawa to storyboard the second episode of the special; and Shaft was chosen to produce the special due to the popularity of Yoshizawa and Shaft's episode in the first season.
In the fall of 2022, Aniplex producer Tatsuya Ishikawa approached Shaft to continue the Monogatari series, and studio president Mitsutoshi Kubota selected Yoshizawa to be the new series director under Shinbo's chief direction, replacing prior series director Tomoyuki Itamura. Shinbo relied on Yoshizawa for her art design sensibilities and instilled changes to the series from her predecessors. In particular, he wanted Yoshizawa to use eyecatches with more freedom, and asked for one arc (Nademonogatari) to have eyecatches like the Dragon Ball book spines, and for another arc (Shinobumonogatari) to be like a tour of famous places in Japan. Although her directing debut, Yoshizawa said that because it was the first Monogatari series in several years, she didn't consciously direct the series especially "acrobatically" (アクロバティック).

### Style

Yoshizawa's style, having started directing at Shaft almost immediately after her work on One Piece at Toei Animation, has been characterized as being largely based on Shaft's stylistic identity with attention given to the composition of "attractive shots" using animation, backgrounds, CG, and live-action elements, and her prior work as an animator has been described as leading to "troublesome" and ambitious sensibilities in regard to layouts. Yoshizawa has also prominently made use of unconventional materials not often used in televised anime such as paper cutouts, analog drawings, and hand-made puppets. Kevin Cirugeda differentiated Yoshizawa from other directors at the studio by considering her to be a more emotionally expressive storyteller, as opposed to the more logical- or abstraction-oriented directors. Specifically through her work on Monogatari Series & Off and Monster Season, her debut work as a director, her work has harkened back to the stylistic characteristics of her predecessors (Oishi and Itamura) while also invigorating the series with her own personality. Christopher Farris of Anime News Network considered her to have given the series a "fresh", new, and "active" look from Itamura's long directorial reign.

## Works
### Teleivison series

In "Director(s)" column highlights Yoshizawa's directorial works.
| Year | Title | Director(s) | Studio | SB | ED | Other roles and notes |
| 2012 | Toriko | Akifumi Zako | Toei Animation | No | No | Key animator |
| 2012 | Aesthetica of a Rogue Hero | Rion Kujou | Arms | No | No | 2nd key animator |
| 2012 | Little Busters! | Yoshiki Yamakawa | J.C.Staff | No | No | 2nd key animator |
| 2012 | Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal II | Satoshi Kuwabara | Gallop | No | No | 2nd key animator |
| 2013 | One Piece | Hiroaki Miyamoto | Toei Animation | No | No | Episode director's assistant |
| 2014 | Mekakucity Actors | Akiyuki Shinbo Yuki Yase | Shaft | No | No | 2nd key animator |
| 2014 | Hanamonogatari | Akiyuki Shinbo Tomoyuki Itamura | Shaft | No | No | 2nd key animator |
| 2014 | Tsukimonogatari | Akiyuki Shinbo Tomoyuki Itamura | Shaft | No | No | Episode director's assistant |
| 2015 | Gourmet Girl Graffiti | Akiyuki Shinbo Naoyuki Tatsuwa | Shaft | No | Yes | |
| 2015 | Nisekoi: | Akiyuki Shinbo Yukihiro Miyamoto | Shaft | No | Yes | |
| 2015 | Owarimonogatari | Akiyuki Shinbo Tomoyuki Itamura | Shaft | No | Yes | |
| 2016 | March Comes In like a Lion | Akiyuki Shinbo Kenjirou Okada | Shaft | Yes | Yes | |
| 2017 | March Comes In like a Lion 2nd Season | Akiyuki Shinbo Kenjirou Okada | Shaft | Yes | Yes | 2nd key animator |
| 2018 | Fate/Extra: Last Encore | Akiyuki Shinbo Yukihiro Miyamoto | Shaft | No | Yes | 2nd key animator Background artist |
| 2019 | Zoku Owarimonogatari | Akiyuki Shinbo | Shaft | Yes | Yes | |
| 2019 | The Quintessential Quintuplets | Satoshi Kuwabara | Tezuka Productions | No | Yes | |
| 2020 | Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story | Doroinu Yukihiro Miyamoto Kenjirou Okada Midori Yoshizawa | Shaft | Yes | Yes | Opening director Ending director |
| 2021 | Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story - The Eve of Awakening | Doroinu Yukihiro Miyamoto | Shaft | Yes | Yes | Assistant director Transformation scene storyboard Opening director |
| 2022 | Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story - Dawn of a Shallow Dream | Doroinu Yukihiro Miyamoto | Shaft | Yes | Yes | Assistant director Opening director |
| 2022 | RWBY: Ice Queendom | Toshimasa Suzuki Kenjirou Okada | Shaft | Yes | No | |
| 2023 | Yohane the Parhelion: Sunshine in the Mirror | Asami Nakatani | Sunrise | Yes | No | |
| 2023 | The Quintessential Quintuplets~ | Yukihiro Miyamoto | Shaft | Yes | No | Opening supervisor |

### OVAs/ONAs

| Year | Title | Director(s) | Studio | SB | ED | Other roles and notes | Ref(s) |
| 2016 | Koyomimonogatari | Akiyuki Shinbo Tomoyuki Itamura | Shaft | No | No | 2nd key animator | |
| 2024 | Monogatari Series Off & Monster Season | Akiyuki Shinbo Midori Yoshizawa | Shaft | Yes | Yes | | |