Noriaki Yuasa (湯浅 憲明, Yuasa Noriaki) was a Japanese film and television director best known for his works of tokusatsu. The son of actor Hikaru Hoshi, he began his career with a brief stint as a child actor before becoming an assistant director as a young man. He then made his debut as a director with the 1964musicalIf You're Happy, Clap Your Hands, while working for Daiei. Though the film performed poorly, Daiei hired Yuasa the next year to direct its first major kaiju film, Gamera the Giant Monster, after it had been passed up by several other directors.[1] Uncommon for kaiju films of the time, Yuasa maintained a great deal of influence over the monster scenes in addition to the human ones, working alongside special effects director Yonesaburo Tsukiji.
While Gamera was produced as a B movie, it proved successful enough to justify a higher-budget sequel, Gamera vs. Barugon (1966). As Daiei did not trust an inexperienced director like Yuasa with an A movie, Barugon was given to Shigeo Tanaka, although Yuasa was retained as a special effects director.[1] The Gamera series would ultimately continue for another five films before Daiei declared bankruptcy in 1972, all of which were wholly directed by Yuasa (including special effects). After Daiei's assets were purchased by Tokuma Shoten, a new Daiei was established in 1976 and eventually moved forward with a revival of the Gamera series, Gamera Super Monster (1980), for which Yuasa was brought back as director. Due to the film's near-exclusive use of stock footage from previous films to portray the monsters, Yuasa's duties were compromised mostly of human drama, with only a handful of new FX shots. This would prove to be Yuasa's final Gamera film, with Shusuke Kaneko inheriting the reins on the eventual Heisei Gamera Trilogy (1995-1999), although Yuasa supervised the direct-to-video short Gamera vs. Garasharp (1991).
This is a list of references for Noriaki Yuasa. These citations are used to identify the reliable sources on which this article is based. These references appear inside articles in the form of superscript numbers, which look like this: [1]
Showing 9 comments. When commenting, please remain respectful of other users, stay on topic, and avoid role-playing and excessive punctuation. Comments which violate these guidelines may be removed by administrators.
