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Shinichirō Watanabe (渡辺 信一郎, Watanabe Shin'ichirō, born May 24, 1965) is a Japanese anime television and film director, best known for directing the critically acclaimed and commercially successful anime series Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo. An auteur of the industry, Watanabe's work is characterized by evocative uses of music, mature themes, and the incorporation of multiple genres.
Watanabe was born in Kyoto. After joining the Japanese animation studio Sunrise, he supervised the episode direction and storyboards of numerous Sunrise anime, and soon made his directorial debut as co-director of the well-received Macross update, Macross Plus. His next effort, and first full directorial venture, was the 1998 series Cowboy Bebop, which received universal praise and is considered by many to be one of the greatest anime series of all time. It was followed by the 2001 film Knockin' on Heaven's Door. In 2003, Watanabe directed his first American-produced anime, the short films Kid's Story and A Detective Story, both part of The Wachowskis' The Animatrix, an anthology of animated short stories from The Matrix. His next directorial effort was the critically acclaimed 2004 anime series Samurai Champloo which began broadcasting on Fuji Television in Japan on May 19, 2004.
