Portfolio. Animation Staff
Yuji Yatabe 矢田部 雄二 · やたべ ゆうじ
The Rankin/Bass mainstay who never stopped
Joined PAC at its founding and stayed through everything. Credited on every season of ThunderCats, every Rankin/Bass show that followed, and the M.A.S.K. service work too.
- Born
- Active in animation from the mid-1970s
- Role on ThunderCats
- Animation Staff (all four seasons)
- Season involvement
- Season 1, episodes 067 and 068, Seasons 3 and 4. The only animator credited on every season of the run.
Biography
Yuji Yatabe came up in Japanese animation in the mid-1970s working on Tatsunoko-school TV anime including Dokaben and Manga Nihonshi. He moved to Pacific Animation Corporation at the studio's founding in the mid-80s and became one of the small core of animators who stayed at PAC through its entire existence.
His credit history on ThunderCats is unusual: he is one of the only Japanese animators credited across all four seasons of the show. The credits indicate "Season 1" and then specific late-Season-2 episodes (067, 068) and then "Season 3, Season 4", the pattern of a senior PAC staffer who took the steady episode rotation rather than coming in as a guest from another studio.
After ThunderCats wrapped, Yatabe stayed at PAC for SilverHawks and The Comic Strip, the two Rankin/Bass productions that followed, and was also credited as production assistant on the M.A.S.K. animated series.
On ThunderCats
Animation staff across all four seasons, the workhorse who held the run together over its four-year production.
Selected works around and after ThunderCats
- SilverHawks 1986
Rankin/Bass sister production at PAC.
- The Comic Strip 1987
PAC contribution to the Rankin/Bass anthology block.
- M.A.S.K. 1985-86
Production assistant on the DiC-Kennen animated series.
Why this credit matters
Yatabe is the unsung backbone. He didn't go on to found a studio or co-direct an Evangelion film, but he showed up at PAC for shift after shift for years, and the show would have collapsed without animators like him.
Sources
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.