Seiji Mizushima

is a Japanese anime director who is known for such series as Shaman King, Fullmetal Alchemist, Mobile Suit Gundam 00, Un-Go, Concrete Revolutio, and Beatless. His first directorial film project, Fullmetal Alchemist the Movie: Conqueror of Shamballa, won the 60th Mainichi Film Award for Best Animation Film. In 2015, he won the Individual Award at the 20th Animation Kobe Awards. His name is occasionally rendered in full katakana when he is in charge of episode directing or storyboarding. He is not related to Tsutomu Mizushima, who is also an anime director and shares his surname, but they often jokingly call each other "brother" on Twitter. Career and style After graduating from Tokyo Designer Gakuin College (now Tokyo Net Wave), Mizushima joined Tokyo Animation Film. While being involved in the photography of Doraemon and Obocchama-kun, he studied under director of photography Masahiro Kumagai, and then went to work for Sunrise as a production assistant, aiming to become a full-fledged director. After leaving the company, he worked on video game cutscenes, and then moved on to animation. For most of his directorial projects, Masafumi Mima serves as the sound director. In addition to Katsuyuki Konishi, who appears in most of his productions, he also actively uses voice actors he first used for his earlier projects in later works. A fan of Puffy AmiYumi, when he asked them to sing a theme song for an anime, they gladly agreed to it, which led them to sing the theme song of Oh! Edo Rocket. In addition, the August 2007 issue of Newtype featured a photo of Mizushima with a big smile on his face surrounded by Puffy.