Hello everyone, I received many complaints for my last article on this subject. It seems that limiting my scope to just seven anime staff aliases just wasn’t enough for you lot and I received a ton of new suggestions from very important people that I now have to listen to.
Magical Stage is of course a website that prides itself in being a place where anyone’s anime article ideas, no matter how silly they may be, can become reality. You could say that we are The People’s Anime Website™! This is why I must do a sequel to my epic article where I looked at Anime Staff Aliases. Hope you all don’t mind!
I once again took a plunge into the murky and otterly purple depths of KeyFrame Staff List, the best anime staff list website on the Internet, to find another seven of the best anime staff aliases for us all to have a laugh at. Some of these are very self-indulgent because I think when I’m writing an article, I should at least have a treat for myself.
In case you’re wondering how this works and you didn’t read the first article (go read it now), we’re taking a look at anime staff and what they’ve decided to call themselves. They could have an outrageous name like バリー・スコット or have so many names that they could fill up an entire copy of the Yellow Pages. It might also be that they have a perfectly normal name that for one reason or another, keeps getting misspelled in credits in increasingly silly ways.
So now that we’ve gotten all of that out of the way, let’s take a look at Another Top 7 Anime Staff Aliases.
#1 Road Sign
I told you this article was going to be self-indulgent. Road Sign is an animator who happened to be on that fateful episode that in my opinion, started the “gaigen boom” of the 2020s, Wonder Egg Priority Ep.10. Road Sign, and I’m 100% sure their first name is actually “Road” from my research, likes motor racing (the best sport) and has even namedropped ace pilot Mobius 1 in a recent tweet, so they definitely play some good video games (I’ve also pre-ordered Ace Combat 8!).
Now what is not exactly clear from my research, is exactly what kind of Road Sign they are. In Britain, we have a big variety of different road signage and street furniture. With our current road signage designed by Margaret Calvert and Jock Kinneir. Calvert, a graphics designer and font designer designed the Transport, Motorway and the Rail Alphabet which are some of the most recognised fonts used in the UK as well as the many pictograms that make up the road signs. The best road sign is of course the duck one, which warns motorists that ducks and other wild fowl could potentially be on the road due to a nearby river, lake or pond. There’s also a hedgehog one but I have sadly not seen that sign in person.
If you think about it, there probably is a community of people that go around taking pictures of road signs and catalogue maps for the entertainment of millions. A hedgehog sign would probably be like their idea of a shiny Pokémon or something. Despite the fact that satellite navigation is becoming more commonplace in cars, we’re still making use of the humble road sign to get us from A to B.
Oh yeah, this is meant to be an anime website. Ahem. Since Wonder Egg Priority, Road Sign has appeared on One Piece Film RED, Chiikawa The Movie: The Secret of Mermaid Island and LONA which will surely be exciting us as well as George Wada’s bank account, early next year.
Over the last few years, the folks doing the credits have had many different ways of attempting to depict Road Sign on credits, with our friends at Toei Animation, giving them two different spellings within 8 episodes of their appearances on One Piece. Nobody has managed to spell their name wrong yet, which is a bit of a relief! There were a couple of times they’ve been called Ichibomb which is absolutely not something to do with road signs but is in fact just another alias they call themselves. Not sure what kind of munitions an ichibomb is or whether it has been used in actual combat but I imagine it’s probably an unguided bomb that causes the enemy to get a bit of a skin rash? I’m sure someone actually has the answer to this one.
#2 Snepchan
Next up on our list today is friend of the website (mostly because we’re mutuals on Twitter) Snepchan! Now on the face of it, this is not a particularly strange inclusion on the list. We all give ourselves fun and interesting usernames on the Internet. Heck, I called myself buildknuckle because some bloke took shiningfinger before I had the chance to in 2013. Looking back, I actually think I dodged a bullet with that one.
Heck, even how Snepchan is sometimes shortened to SN isn’t exactly strange either as it’s literally the other name they give themselves on Twitter! It also reminds me of those BN biscuits I used to eat when I was a kid. You know the ones that have a funny face on them? Those ones! I actually still remember the tune they used to advertise them! I can’t really demonstrate how that works in text though, so I’ll refrain from attempting that.
The reason why Snepchan is on this list is through no fault of their own, but the fault of a hapless person working at Toei Animation, who listed them on Digimon Beatbreak Ep.35 as Snapchat.
Snapchat, an American social media and instant messaging app is known for the fact that messages are temporary and can vanish without a trace. The logo looks a bit like a ghost because they’re spirits or something. There’s just one problem, Snepchan is not Snapchat.
I’m sure it is very obvious to our readers here that a person who works on anime is not an example of a social media application. I’d be a bit worried otherwise. Though this could mean that others, either intentionally or otherwise could be a social media app on an anime one day. Could you imagine Whatsapp doing Key Animation or LINE doing Clean-up? I can.
#3 NC
NC is a bit of a weird case for several reasons. Firstly, they only have a singular credit to their name for Fate/Grand Order Absolute Demonic Front: Babylonia Ep.18 (ain’t that a mouthful?). Secondly, they’re just known as NC and nobody truly knows what it means or who they truly are.
Usually in anime crediting, NC is an abbreviation for “Not Credited”, in that a staff member wasn’t included in the credits either accidentally or deliberately. We don’t want to make people think here that some unscrupulous person writing the credits this week is deliberately hiding people’s names as if dougaman Tanaka-kun took your parking space immediately outside the studio building. It being deliberate is more likely the staff members themselves are deciding not to be credited for the episode, through silly broadcasting standards (looking at you NHK) or Toei Animation being butts and not updating the way they list staff credits.
The thing is, even NC standing for “Not Credited” in this case is an assumption! Personally, I wager it’s actually a reference to the 3rd generation Mazda MX-5 (NC). I’ve always had a soft spot for the MX-5 and maybe NC does as well. Could they, like me, have picked the MX-5 (NA) as their first car in their first Gran Turismo 3 playthrough? The MX-5 (NC) is the third generation of Mazda’s super affordable and cool sports car built between 2005 and 2015. It was revolutionary due to its retractable hard top roof which only weighed about 35kg more than the soft top roof!
Honestly, thinking about it. I’m 100% sure that it’s none of those and NC is just a resident of North Carolina.
#4 Roland Claros
Another mysterious person with a single credit to their name as they were a Key Animator on Ep.2 of Wonderful Precure. I actually remember good ol’ Roland very well because this was back in the day when I still had time to collate anime staff credits on a regular basis (salute to all the brave souls doing that every day, you are legends!).
Friend of the website, loic, suggested that Roland could be someone from Toei Phils, Toei Animation’s Filipino subdivision which has been on countless Toei productions over the last 25 years. Though I have other ideas…
See Roland Claros sounds awfully similar to one of the names given to The French Open, a yearly tennis tournament held in the Stade Roland Garros. This tournament is one of the most prestigious in the tennis calendar alongside The Championships at Wimbledon. The stadium is named after legendary aviator and fighter pilot Roland Garros, who scored several confirmed kills during World War I. Curiously, none of Teekyuus ever expressed a desire to go to Roland Garros, bit sad that.
Anyway, Roland Claros never returned to working on anime after that episode of Precure. Perhaps they went on to pursue a career in tennis, maybe they enlisted in the French Air Force. We may never know.
#5 Junichi Sato
Junichi Sato, or SatoJun to his friends, is the king of kids anime. One of Toei Animation’s greatest directorial prodigies of the 1980s, he directed some of the most beloved and impactful anime to have ever graced the medium. ARIA The Animation, Sailor Moon, Ojamajo Doremi and of course Junkers Come Here. The amount of anime he has directed that ended up being the best ever is only matched by the amount of names he decided to give himself over the years. He even used multiple names on the same anime!
His first pseudonym was Kiichi Hadame 甚目喜一 which was used for when SatoJun was sneaking out of Toei Animation and onto other anime productions in the 80s. One could say that Toei didn’t take too kindly to people working for them working on other things with their name, so people working for them had to be a bit more creative! One of the easiest ways to spot this one is by watching Zeta Gundam as SatoJun boarded two episodes of that, Ep.19 and 33! A lot of the time, Kiichi Hadame would appear on mecha anime, though sometimes SatoJun would forget to use it, like with Gundam 0080 where he accidentally goes under his real name on Ep.2.
Hajime Misoto ミソトハジメ only appeared on one series, Macross 7 (and its OVA) under Series Composition Assistance. SatoJun recalled back in 2014, that he wasn’t sure why he didn’t use the Kiichi Hadame name for it but Yuuichirou Oguro (Anime-sama) gave the lovely idea that it’s because it’s a musical anime and not a robot anime! SatoJun was basically in an advisory role to the script meetings during the series.
Sakura Hikawa ひかわさくら appears on Ojamajo Doremi Dokkan as a lyricist. Now SatoJun had written lyrics for anime before this, on Slayers Premium under his real name but for some reason, he decided to change his name when doing the same job for Doremi. In fact, even for Goldfish Warning, he decided to go under the name Ranchuu Hoshino 星野らんちゅう for its songs. Once again, not sure why he did that either. Seriously, SatoJun is a bit of an enigma for these names.
The last recorded time he went under a pseudonym was well after he had left Toei Animation, in 2006’s Ouran High School Host Club, doing some storyboard work for his old mate and protoge Takuya Igarashi. He went under the name Ichi Sato 佐藤イチ for that one. Though I’m not sure if that’s him being silly or whether the person at Bones accidentally left out one of his kanji.
SatoJun may have been one of the best to ever do it, but he was also the best to ever come up with loads of names for himself for legitimate and unknown reasons. I think he’s pretty neat to be honest.
Also before I end this section, I must mention that he created and directed Tamayura. I had to say that, because the Momoneko Brigade will probably be outside my door tomorrow morning otherwise
#6 Tatsuya Yoshihara
Tatsuya Yoshihara, Director of Chainsaw Man The Movie: Reze Arc is a bit of an oddball because to my knowledge, he’s the only person in the anime industry who had this bright spark idea one day: “I’m going to be a limited company today.”.
He decided in 2011, for the 74th episode of Sket Dance to become Yoshio Quality Limited Company Ltd. or 有限会社よしおクォリティ. Little did he know, if Yoshihara did actually found an actual business enterprise on that day, he would be in big trouble.
On the 1st May 2006, the Companies Act of Japan was implemented which stopped the foundation of new Yuugen Gaisha 有限会社 and instead only allowed the brand new Goudou Gaisha 合同会社 to be created. Now if you look very closely at the kanji in Yoshihara’s pseudonym, he accidentally founded a Yuugen Gaisha instead of the new Goudou Gaisha, leading to him inadvertently breaking Japanese law.
It also transpired that Wistoria: Wand and Sword Director Hideaki Nakano, was an accomplice to Yoshihara’s crimes. He also worked with him on the fated Ep.74 of Sket Dance where the crime took place and in a recent tweet, alluded to “Yoshio Quality”, a sign that he was potentially in on the crime under his own pseudonym of Jiroo Ooshima 大島ジロー.
Now, Yoshihara could argue in a court (probably with some bum defending him) that he didn’t actually found the company in 2011 when the episode aired and that because it’s a pseudonym of himself, he could argue that the company was in fact founded when he was born on the 9th December 1988.
A skilled prosecutor would then have to ask Yoshihara for any records of the Yuugen Gaisha being founded on the day of his birth. You know, just in case his parents were immediately thinking of starting a company there and then in the hospital. I’m sure the medical staff on hand would probably be a bit confused, but you never know with these things! I’m sure Yoshihara hasn’t really broken Japanese law with the foundation of his business.
Honestly, we haven’t even gotten to his other pseudonyms yet. Eh, I’m sure they’re not that interesting lol.
#7 Shwari
From one potential criminal to…Shwari. You’re probably thinking that this isn’t particularly interesting. Shwari is listed either with a capital S or no capital S. But don’t worry everyone, this animator is absolutely Smile, Sweet, Sister, Sadistic, Surprise and Service because they’re actually better known as “Boogie”.
And no, they’re not the beagle from Flying Beagle. They’re actually a Key Animator who I watched Earth Maiden Arjuna with five years ago.
They’re known by other names as well, and you should bear these in mind if you ever venture onto a Discord server with them in it. They’re also known as “Marketani”, probably because they like going to the local market to buy their fruit and veg. Terrifying! They’re also known as “mis1nfo” because of their terrible habit of misinforming the public! Another heinous crime! Finally, they’re known as ٴٴٴ which is a diacritic symbol used at the start of words in Arabic. If you’re seeing them online, this is actually what they’re usually known as!
Thankfully the world has been spared further instances of them coming up with silly names for themselves (as far as we know) and they’ve not appeared as Shwari since 2022’s A Couple of Cuckoos.
Though if you see this individual out there (and potentially Tatsuya Yoshimura too, he’s a wrongun), please call BBC Crimewatch right now and they’ll pass on the information to a team of anime police officers to apprehend them. I hear they got some bloke called Zenigata to help out this time round. Apparently he’s a pretty talented police officer!
Final thoughts
People do be coming up with funny names for themselves huh. If you have been negatively affected by the criminals (and non-criminals) in this list, please do not worry as they’re not actually criminals and this is a satirical article designed to make you laugh.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you! Please do not actually phone up BBC Crimewatch saying that you finally nailed Tatsuya Yoshihara for business fraud. They’ll probably think you’ve gone bonkers.
All I can say to you all now is this. Don’t have nightmares, do sleep well.
