You can do anything, you can be anything. Embrace the sparkling future. These are the words of Hana Nono, also known as Cure Yell. She taught the world that you can be whoever you want to be if you believe in yourself and you have the perseverance to carry out your dreams.
This article is not about that.
Believe it or not, buildknuckle is not actually my real name. Shocking! I didn’t get born into this world to have my mum name me after a special move of an anime series she hadn’t heard of till I told her about it. Also the series wouldn’t air for many years later so unless my mum was a time traveller, I don’t think that was going to happen. My actual name is pretty cool but even then, I don’t even go by that name usually! I made it shorter because British people can’t actually pronounce it properly. Sad, I know.
Anyway, today’s article is actually about how anime staff go by lots of different names. Sometimes, these names are by choice. Friend of the website Yuta Tanaka (田中裕太), goes by tanakarion (タナカリオン) on social media but recently started calling himself Bon Kuramu (倉無凡) to obscure himself from the devious fiends known as The Sakuga Cartel. Sad for him though, he got found out instantly because one of his old tweets got dug up that outed him instantly! Other times, these names are given to people by mistake leading to sometimes hilarious results.
Let’s take a look at some of my favourite Anime Staff aliases!
#1 – Hideaki Anno
Starting off strong, we have my good friend Hideaki Anno. He’s most well known for directing the openings and endings for Moyoco Anno’s Sugar Sugar Rune. I’m sure some of you reading this would completely disagree with that statement and that Anno is more famous for directing some other anime from the mid 90s but I haven’t seen that so it’s probably not that important.
Long time buildknuckle followers would know that one my big claims to fame was bringing the findings of one of the most notable groupwatches ever held on the Internet to the wider world of Twitter, the findings of #hisandherwatch, the KareKano groupwatch.
Maybe I’ll tell the full story again of that one another time but right now, let’s focus on the fact that Hideaki Anno was a man who felt like he had to obscure himself from the general public and most notably, the terrifying wrath of KareKano’s creator, Masami Tsuda. Now this wasn’t the first time that Anno had used pseudonyms but after Ep.15 of the show, Anno would take the drastic decision to spell his name…in a slightly different way!
Anno isn’t the only person in the industry to use hiragana or katakana to spell their names. Long time Precure director, Hideki Hiroshima has been credited as ひろしまひでき instead of 広嶋秀樹 for many years now for instance but Anno is different. He actually spelt his name using Kanji (庵野秀明), Hiragana (あんのひであき) and Katakana (アンノヒデアキ) at the same time, which is quite an achievement if I do say so myself. It tricked people so badly that large anime journalism publications and experts of Anno’s work thought he’d done a runner from the project entirely for many years!
Of course we know now, they were all wrong.
Though it turns out that wasn’t the only alias Hideaki Anno used, on Ep.34 of Nadia: Secret of Blue Water he decided to call himself Sosososo Kuubo 空母そ・そ・そ・そ. There are many theories out there as to why he decided to do this. One popular theory is that Anno was upset that he was unable to visit the Bluewater Shopping Centre, as at the time of Nadia’s production, the shopping centre was still under construction and would not open to the public until March 1999. It might also have been because it was built in a former chalk quarry and as many Anno fans would know, he’s a big fan of quarries.
I’ve personally never been to Bluewater despite the fact that it has been open for over 25 years now, though I have been to the nearby Lakeside Shopping Centre several times when I was younger. Coincidentally, that was also built in a former chalk quarry. Though I don’t think Anno was upset about that one because the series was not called Nadia: Secret of Lakeside even though Lakeside actually opened during Nadia’s production in October 1990.
#2 – Tomonori Kogawa
Tomonori Kogawa is a man of many identities to the point where despite his name being clearly displayed on Keyframe Staff List, it’s not actually certain if that’s his real name. Unless the brave and noble souls volunteering their time to bring us accurate staff lists have managed to secure his birth certificate or something.
Kogawa is best known for his work as Character Designer on various Sunrise mecha anime in the 1980s including Ideon, Xabungle and L-Gaim but he is also well known for his incredibly long list of aliases that could feasibly be the population of a small village.
Let’s take Super Dimensional Cavalry: Southern Cross (yes Robotech fans, this is a real anime!) for instance. You look at the credits for Character Designer and see this mysterious person called Miyo Sonoda 園田美世. You go take a look at this person’s other work and you’re instead greeted by Kogawa, smiling at you. On anidb this is particularly funny because you get to see Kogawa, younger and with full head of black hair about to take a puff on a cigarette.
Otokanbun 音間聞? That animator and storyboarder on a few Shaft shows in 2006-07? Yeah, that’s Kogawa. Rinka Bashika 馬巳家林果? Character Designer on Haru no Ashioto The Movie? Kogawa again. What about Nosefu Sayuri 嵯縒能世布 that Key Animator on the 20th Detective Conan film? You nose exactly who they really are Conan-kun.
This bloke is everywhere.
This year Kogawa has taken his aliases to brand new heights in Ao no Miburo: Serizawa Ansatsu-hen where he is Key Animator, Animation Director, Chief Animation Director and Storyboarder on Ep.13. Except this time, he’s decided to create a new alias for himself just for the storyboard role. You know, people always do this sort of thing, create new clones of themselves with funny names!
He decided to call himself Tomoyamayama Kogawa 湖川友山山 (even though he was credited with his real name for every other role) giving himself a name with not one, but two whole mountains! Just picture it now, the second season of Yama no Susume being announced and instead of calling it Yama no Susume: Second Season ヤマノススメ セカンドシーズン, they called it Yamayama no Susume ヤマヤマノススメ. Whenever they would come out with a new season of the show, just add another mountain to it. It’ll work itself out!
#3 – Roccia
We now get to an actual proper friend of the website here! Poor Roccia has not only suffered culinary mishaps but also naming mishaps, because seemingly through no fault of their own, production assistants on shows keep giving them new and increasingly unhinged names.
Just taking a look at Roccia’s page on Keyframe Staff List reveals the extent of the issue here. Nobody actually knows how exactly to refer to them. Are we using their full legal name as if we’re sending them a cheque? Are we on a first name basis? Do we stick an exclamation mark at the end because we’re so happy they’re here? The truth is unknown at this time.
The worst of this happened on Boukyaku Battery Ep.6 where Roccia was one of seven Assistant Animation Directors and one of the legion of Key Animators on the episode. Through no fault of their own, Roccia was credited in two different ways, both with and without a space! I don’t think you’re going to say your full name without taking a short breath between your names are you? Luckily by Ep.10, whoever was handling the credits kept everything consistent.
#4 – ArtistUnknown
Now this one seems pretty innocuous on the surface. Obviously the Key Animator in question just didn’t want to reveal their name on Ep.162 of Black Clover. Now I didn’t watch Black Clover so I haven’t got a clue if the episode was seen as good or bad but I’m sure it wasn’t that bad that you’d hide your name! Especially when you’re appearing alongside folks like Gem, Chris and Lzyboost!
So why would someone make themselves unknown? Well the answer lies in the name itself “ArtistUnknown”. If you head on over to sakugabooru, you’ll notice that if an animator contributing to a cut is not known, they’re simply referred to as artist_unknown (with an underscore). It’s very likely that the animator on that episode of Black Clover just wanted to pull a little prank and impress the twenty or so people that thought the joke was funny.
Since then, nobody else has called themselves a variation of Artist Unknown in the credits of an anime (to my knowledge). Though that doesn’t mean that in all other episodes of anime that the artist is known! In fact it’s quite the opposite, more often than not, you’ll see bits and pieces of anime not credited to anybody at all! Again, this can be by choice, negligence or you’re watching a show broadcast on NHK in which case, most of the show isn’t credited properly and you’ll have to wait for Blu-rays to come out to confirm anything.
#5 Nek
This whole being credited in different ways thing without you realising is a bit of a pain in the neck am I right? Anyway, Nek is an animator, who like Roccia earlier is one of those animators who I might bump into on one of those Discord servers I hang around in. The first thing they worked on was idol English Gen 2: Endless (debut PV) as part of Mochi Kaeri, a studio which is still active to this day handling promotional videos for vtubers with them first participating on an anime in 2022 with Jujutsu Kaisen 2nd Season Ep.21.
Anyway, that’s just the preamble, the reason why Nek is here to begin with is that they’re credited as Nek in three different ways. The first way being the way I’ve been referring to them, Nek. But then they’ve also been credited with lil letters “nek” all the way up to the big letters “NEK”. They’ve also been credited with their full name but that’s not nearly as interesting.
Thankfully so far, nobody has misspelled Nek’s name in any way. You’re all expecting me to make another pun at this point but I’m going to restrain myself from doing any more for this section. Don’t think I’m not thinking of all of you readers as I’m writing this!
#6 Whoami
I started out as a 2nd Key Animator on Tokyo Revengers and Mushoku Tensei Part 2. I then became a Key Animator and later an Animation Director. Who am I?
Whoami (or whoami).
Yeah, that’s their name. Whoami. Not Who Ami. Whoami. Unlike our friend ArtistUnknown from earlier, Whoami actually wants to be called that for everything they work on. They recently worked on Needy Girl Overdose’s opening so if you’re watching that series and you see their name in the credits, you do in fact know who they are. Because I’ve just told you.
You know who I am right?
#7 Zodiak and Rei Lynn
Zodiak is another one of those Key Animators that you might have seen posting about their exploits on Twitter, same with Rei Lynn actually which is where we get to their problems.
On Boruto Ep.275, both of them got credited by their names on Twitter! Which you know would work well in most cases. I’m sure if you’re still posting on Twitter (what’s wrong with you?) or on BlueSky (it’s still bad but at least it ain’t Twitter) you have a respectable name that isn’t something like “Char Aznable can eat my dog” or “I wish that one bloke from Jujutsu Kaisen can sit on my face”.
Well Zodiac and Rei Lynn changed their names to reflect their current status, which some people do mind you. Sometimes you want to tell people that you’re at a convention or going to Lidl for grocery shopping. Rei Lynn decided to let her followers know that their commissions were open by changing their name to ReiLynn COMMS OPEN!. Likewise, Zodiac said they were currently training (to be an animator probably) by calling themselves zodiac. (training arc).
They were both credited with those names, punctuation and all. It’s probably the most notoriety that a negligent credits cock-up has ever had on social media and they both had about a couple of days of fame before they continued their respective animation careers. Both Zodiac and Rei Lynn work on anime as animators to this day!
#8 You
No, not you. No, not that You. This You. You was one of the Character Designers on The Legend of Hei 2. That’s their only known credit though so they haven’t been credited incorrectly somewhere else as far as we know.
But maybe you have! If you’ve been credited in a strange way on an anime do let me know, it’s always a good laugh at these things! I might make a sequel to this if I get some more suggestions from people! Bye-been!
