as nameless flowers and grasses blooming on the road, clouds, stars, and moons in the sky. I’m also inspired with what I’m currently interested in and feeling. My humble wish for creating anime is to have common images, conversations, and scenes sublimed into art works. Career Beginnings as an animator Upon graduation, Yuasa sought work by consulting recruitment advertisements published in the animation magazine Animage. After answering an advertisement posted by Ajia-do, he was hired by the studio as an inbetween animator. Yuasa initially struggled and came to believe he lacked talent and therefore had no future in the business. After an illness, he contemplated quitting, but lacking a good opportunity to actually do so, he continued on. A key turning point in his perception of his artistic skills came during his transition from drawing inbetween animation, which requires clean, uniform lifework that is consistent from artist to artist, to drawing key animation, which establishes the key poses of motion and are more reflective of the individual sensibilities of movement of each artist. Yuasa's natural drawing style was fast, intuitive, and rough; it lacked the fine lines emphasized for inbetweening. As a result, when Yuasa became a key animator, he was able to utilize his rougher line style for greater personal expression and began to make a name for himself. During this time, Yuasa also received encouragement and advice from Ajia-do's co-founder Osamu Kobayashi, a veteran animator with decades of experience. Kobayashi told Yuasa that he could not consider himself a master of animation unless he utilized abstract drawings as part of his movement; though these individual frames are not distinguishable in the blur of completed motion, they subconsciously influence viewer perception of the motion and the scene as a whole. The advice synchronized with Yuasa's own study of international animation techniques, and increasingly, he integrated them into his work. Yuasa was also advised by another co-founder of Ajia-do, animator and director Tsutomu Shibayama, who served as a mentor and gave him formative artistic guidance. Yuasa earned his first significant credits as a key animator in 1990 on the landmark television series Chibi Maruko-chan (1990–1992), which Ajia-do worked on as a subcontractor studio. Based on a popular manga, Chibi Maruko-chan was a major hit and provided opportunities for Yuasa to refine his skills. His next breakthrough came with the film Chibi Maruko-chan: My Favorite Song (1992), on which he was