Interview #02The Man Who Created 3,000 Evangelion Products

Yasuda likes anime, but he wasn’t buried in it.
And that is what links to his present self.

By the way, although you entered Movic as a fresh graduate and have been making anime goods for 30 years, it looks like you weren’t a genuine anime otaku before college.
“In my last years of elementary school, I came in touch with the hard rock genre of Western music, and I played guitar in a band beginning in junior high. At the time when folk songs were in style, I enthusiastically listened to Zeppelin and Deep Purple; I was quite mature (laughs). We played instrumental progressive rock. We were pretty serious actually, and we made it through the local preliminaries of a TV station contest. But an instrumental band can’t win the final round. All of us members tasted frustration. Later one of them made a major debut in another band. 
“However, my father passed away while I was in college and I honestly thought I should find a job, and since my university was in Ikebukuro, I was aware of Animate’s existence to a degree, which was on the same road. At the time, music took up the bigger half of my life, but I watched a few of the leading anime and I’ve loved sci-fi translations ever since I was little. It was only after entering Movic that I really felt the amazingness of anime fans. Then, I absorbed all the history on Japanese otaku (laughs), and here I am now.”

So to you, the world of anime wasn’t as close as music, but you felt something in common deep down in your heart.
“As a maniac sci-fi reader, after starting this job, Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise and Neon Genesis Evangelion were the only works I could call amazing without complaining about anything. Especially Eva, it came exactly in my 10th year of working at Movic. To be honest, that was the first time that I felt I was working with something I really loved. It was a very precious experience. Even now I sometimes think about how it would’ve turned out if I took music as my job. 
“Occasionally, there are people in this industry who entered because they love anime, but as they work they become overloaded and end up hating anime altogether. Although I like anime, I wasn’t the type who was immersed in it. I’m the type who watches the parts that feel good over and over again, just like with music. I think there are many Evangelion fans similar to me, actually.”

You still have your guitar and are playing in a band. Also, some time ago, the runner in you awakened, and you’ve been participating in the Tokyo Marathon every year lately. You have a personality that can’t be crippled inside the single phrase “anime person.”
“I easily get tired by nature. That is why I was super lucky to have encountered Eva, something I love at my workplace. Even after the old movies were concluded, I couldn’t get myself to stop producing Eva goods. Anyway, I kept on doing it persistently (laughs). Even planning a shop such as the Eva Store or making fashion collaboration items with SuperGroupies at present might be the results of influence of such a personality.”