Yoshiko Watanabe

Yoshiko Watanabe was born in Tsingtao, China in 1943. He attended Musashino Art University in Tokyo, graduating from the School of Theatre Design. In 1965 she joined the animation studio Mushi Production, founded by Osamu Tezuka. From this moment until 1972 she had the opportunity to work as an animator on the famous TV series "Astroboy", "Princess Sapphire", "Kimba - The White Lion", "Monkey", "Rocky Joe" and many more. Next to the master Tezuka works on the animated feature films "The Thousand and One Night" and "Cleopatra". He then devoted himself to experimental animation works such as "The Birth of Japan", "The Gentle Lion" and "The Paintings of the Exhibition". In 1978 he joined the Tezuka Productions studio, where he worked on animations for the feature film "La Fenice - l'Alba". Having moved to Italy in the 1970s, in the following decade she drew the comic series "Tiramolla", "Masters of the Universe", "Poochie" and "Pistillo" for the magazine "Più" (Editoriale Domus) and at the same time illustrates fairy tales for both the Italian and Japanese markets. For Mondo Tv collaborates on the RAI animated series "Robin Hood" and "The Black Corsair". From the 1990s onwards he participated in the making of the Italian feature films "La Freccia Azzurra", "La Gabbianella e il Gatto" and "Opopomoz" by Enzo D'Alò, "Aida degli Alberi" by Guido Manuli and "Johan Padan e la Discoverta of the Americas” by Giulio Cingoli. He made the short film "Kitty, the Zombie", winner of the Panorama Award at the 1994 Hiroshima Cartoon Festival. In the same period he began teaching the Manga course at the Roman School of Comics. In parallel with teaching, he dedicated himself to the production of the graphic novels "La Storia di Sayo" (Kappa Edizioni, "Best Japanese School Book" award at the 10th edition of Romics) and "Donran" (GP Publishing), written with Giovanni Masi and then of "Sute - The Son of the Spirits" (GP Publishing) and "NoraNeko - Vagabond Cats" (Editoriale Cosmo). In 2003 he made the storyboards of the animated series "Winx" (Rainbow Productions). In 2010 he published the educational manual "Corso Manga" (Dino Audino Editore), written with Marco Vignati. In 2016 he won the "Best Japanese School Book" award at the 15th edition of Romics for "Come un Balletto di Musica Rock" (Edizioni Star Comics), written with Stefano Simeone. In 2020 the illustrated fairy tale "Il Foglio d'Oro" (Tora Edizioni) was released. The comic book adaptation of George Orwell's novel "The Animal Farm" (Fanucci Comics), written by Alessandro Ruggieri and with the colors of Mirko Milone, is soon to be published.