Portfolio. Animation Staff
Kazufumi Nomura 野村 和史 · のむら かずふみ
Founded A.P.P.P. one year before ThunderCats started
Came up as a production manager on Yamato in the 70s. Started his own studio in June 1984. A year later it was contributing to ThunderCats. A year after that it made Project A-Ko. He stayed at the head of A.P.P.P. until his death in 2021.
- Born
- Active from mid-1970s. Came up via Office Academy on Space Battleship Yamato.
- Died
- 10 June 2021
- Role on ThunderCats
- Animation Staff (Season 1)
- Season involvement
- Season 1, contributing through his own studio A.P.P.P. which had been founded the previous year.
Biography
Kazufumi Nomura's name appears on the production-management credits of the original Space Battleship Yamato TV series in 1974, one of his earliest documented anime credits, where he handled production on multiple episodes alongside Yasuji Mori. He worked through the late 70s and early 80s as a production manager in the Office Academy and Tatsunoko orbits, picking up credits across Urusei Yatsura and other late-70s shows. (Note: a different person. Mamoru Oshii, used "野村和史" as one of his pen names on early Urusei Yatsura episodes; that's a separate identity from this Nomura.)
On 22 June 1984 Nomura founded Another Push Pin Planning. A.P.P.P., in Suginami, Tokyo, the heart of the post-war anime industry. The studio existed to take on the kind of mid-tier outsourced and original work that the larger studios couldn't schedule but that smaller crews could execute well.
ThunderCats started production not long after, and Nomura is credited on the show's Season 1 animation staff, almost certainly through A.P.P.P. taking episode-level commissions from PAC. He was simultaneously running the studio that would, in 1986, make Project A-Ko, the parody-OVA that defined a slice of late-80s anime weirdness.
From there A.P.P.P.'s catalogue read like a who's-who of OVA-era anime: Roujin Z in 1991, Katsuhiro Otomo's post-Akira film about a robotic hospital bed. The first Vampire Princess Miyu OVA cycle. Golden Boy in 1995, the comedy series that became cult-canonical. The original JoJo's Bizarre Adventure OVA series (1993-2002). The Street Fighter Alpha: Generations OVA. Nomura produced most of these directly.
He died on 10 June 2021 in Japan. He had been president of A.P.P.P. for thirty-seven years.
On ThunderCats
Animation work on Season 1 episodes, brought in via A.P.P.P. in the studio's first full year of operation.
Selected works around and after ThunderCats
- Project A-Ko 1986
A.P.P.P. produced this defining late-80s parody-OVA the year ThunderCats Season 2 was in production.
- Roujin Z 1991
Katsuhiro Otomo's post-Akira theatrical feature, produced by A.P.P.P.
- Vampire Princess Miyu 1988 onwards
A.P.P.P. OVA cycle that ran into the 90s.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure OVAs 1993-2002
A.P.P.P. made the original OVA series.
- Golden Boy 1995
Cult OVA series, produced by A.P.P.P.
- Street Fighter Alpha: Generations 2005
A.P.P.P. production.
Why this credit matters
Nomura is the studio-founder example. He was inside Pacific Animation's ThunderCats pipeline while simultaneously building one of the great boutique anime studios of the OVA era. A.P.P.P. is still in business. He held it together for nearly four decades.
Sources
- ThunderCats-Ho Wiki. Kazufumi Nomura
- Anime News Network. Kazufumi Nomura
- Yamato Wiki (日本語). Nomura\'s production credits on the original 1974 series
Cover artwork and portrait images here are reproduced under fair use for editorial commentary. Image sources: Wikipedia / Wikimedia Commons (work cover art); Rick Goldschmidt, "Masaki Iizuka remembered" (2020) for the Iizuka portrait; Z&G Animelab (zganimelabo.co.jp) for the Akiyama 2024 photographs. Japanese-language biographical sources cited per page above.