Shiro Sagisu & Akira Ifukube

Award-winning producer, arranger, keyboardist, and composer Shirō Sagisu was born in Setagaya-ku, Japan on August 29, 1957. He first came to prominence in 1977 as a member of Japanese jazz fusion band The Square (later known as T-Square) but left the group in 1979 to focus on a solo career. His musical journey led him from his own band Somethin’ Special – who released the albums Eyes (1979) and Pole Position 2 (1980) – to production work for artists such as Ken Hirai, Misia, and others. In the mid-1980s, his career path was changed when he began composing music for anime TV series and films as well as advertising jingles. His projects include Mobile Suit Gundam III (1982), Attacker You! (1984), Leda: The Fantastic War (1985), and Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water (1990), but he is best known for his music for the Neon Genesis Evangelion franchise which began in 1995. Within the first two decades of his career, he had composed over 2,000 songs and continued to build a catalog that also included the score for the Attack on Titan films. In 2010, he was honored with a Tokyo Anime Award for Best Music. In 2016, he composed the score to Shin Godzilla, a film that rejuvenated the big screen career of the original version of the legendary monster. Shirō Sagisu’s work on anime TV series include Bleach, which included the beloved “Number One”, and many others. For the 2020 Summer Olympics, he re-arranged the Japanese national anthem “Kimigayo”, which was performed by Misia.