Sugii decided to become an animator after watching the film Bambi. He joined Toei Animation at the age of 19 after taking an entrance exam in 1958. He worked as an in-betweener on Hakujaden, Legend of the White Serpent soon after joining the studio.[1] After becoming disillusioned with Toei due to complaints about production staff being unable to propose projects, he quit in 1961 and joined Mushi Pro on hearing that Osamu Tezuka was going to make anime.[2]
1961 featured an exodus of animators from Toei to Mushi Pro following crackdowns on a strike organised by the Toei animator union. Sugii joined Mushi Pro along with his close friends from Toei, Rintaro and Yusaku Sakamoto. At the time the studio was still under construction and animators worked from Tezuka's house. Sugii helped refine Tezuka's rough animation into proper keys on the Tetsuwan Atom (Astro Boy) pilot film. On the Atom TV anime, Sugii was part of the initial rotation of six episode directors, which included Sakamoto, Eiichi Yamamoto, Sugii, Motoaki Ishii, Shûji Konno and Tezuka himself.[3]
In 1964, Sugii along with Atsushi Takagi, Osamu Dezaki, Seiji Okuda and others left Mushi Pro and established studio Art Fresh. Art Fresh handled outsourced episodes of Tetsuwan Atom.[3]
In 1967, Sugii made his directorial debut with Mushi Pro’s television series Adventures of the Monkey King (Goku no Daibôken). His last work at Mushi Pro would be 1973's Belladonna of Sadness, on which he worked as animation director.[4]
After promoting Manga Nippon Mukashibanashi [ja], Sugii decided to spend some time away from the anime industry, setting off to travel the country from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s before finally returning to helm Night on the Galactic Railroad.[4] He noted, ‘‘I could make
Night on the Galactic Railroad precisely because I had traveled. My approach to
visual expression greatly expanded after these experiences.’’[2] Sugii's approach to the film was to treat "characters and landscapes as equals", exploring the main character Giovanni's emotions through shifts in the environment. While the original novel provides next to no description of the main characters' appearances, Sugii decided to depict them as anthropomorphic cats, as a means of preserving author Kenji Miyazawa's descriptive ambiguity of the characters.[4]
Awards and influence
Sugii received the 2018 Tokyo Anime Award Festival Achievement Award which honors "lifetime achievements in developing technical skills and cultivating new talent" and "invaluable contributions to the advancement of the animation industry on the whole".[5]
