My favorite anime: Joaquim Dos Santos’ journey from Macross to Sword of the Stranger

polygon.com:

As an animator, Joaquim Dos Santos has steadily carved out a career boasting credits on some of the most influential American animated series of the past two decades. The 46-year-old animator and director has gone from directing episodes of Justice League: Unlimited and Avatar: The Last Airbender to co-directing one of the biggest animated features of last year: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.

Polygon recently had a chance to connect with Dos Santos, so we had to ask: What was your first favorite anime, and what’s your favorite anime now?

My Favorite Anime is Polygon’s column dedicated to collecting the stories of the biggest celebrity anime fans in the world, charting a path from their earliest introductions to Japanese animation, to the series and films they love today. Here’s what Joaquim Dos Santos had to say.

Premiering on Japanese TV in 1982, Super Dimension Fortress Macross was co-produced by Studio Nue and Artland and based on an original concept by Shoji Kawamori, who would go on to become one of the series’ principal mechanical designers. Inspired by Mobile Suit Gundam, Macross is a sci-fi mecha anime that follows Hikaru Ichijyo, a civilian fighter pilot, who enlists to fight in a war between humanity and a technologically advanced species known as the Zentradi. During the Human-Zentradi conflict, Hikaru meets and falls in love with Lynn Minmay, an idol singer whose music inadvertently proves to be a critical asset in humanity’s war effort.

The success of the original 36-episode series not only gave birth to the Macross anime franchise, but brought fame to three members of the show’s production staff: Kawamori, who would go on to be credited for popularizing the concept of transforming mecha in anime; Ichiro Itano, whose eponymous animation technique would become synonymous with the Macross franchise and a widely recognized trope across Japanese animation; and Mari Iijima, the Japanese voice actress for Lynn Minmay, who successfully transitioned into