Shiro Sagisu

Renowned chiefly through his productions for the animation studio Gainax, famed for the Neon Genesis Evangelion anime series, the decorated Japanese composer and producer Shiro Sagisu unites the realms of imagery and music. Beyond his widely admired Evangelion scores, he has supplied music for prominent television and film properties including Bleach, Berserk, Ultraman/Gridman, and Godzilla. He also issues independent recordings, chiefly through the Shiro's Songbook series.

Born in Tokyo’s Setagaya special ward, Sagisu was immersed in music and cinema from childhood. Catholic nuns instructed him on piano and violin while his father, a celebrated manga artist and animator whose studio stood adjacent to the family home, introduced him to film. These dual influences prompted Sagisu to commit to a musical career. Early credits encompass keyboard arrangements for the jazz-fusion band Square on its 1978 release Lucky Summer Lady and his 1979 debut album EYES with the group Somethin' Special. He later produced tracks for Japanese pop vocalist Misia, R&B singer Ken Hirai, and electronic house artist Satoshi Tomiie, yet anime ultimately yielded his greatest achievements.

From the mid-1980s onward, Sagisu refined his approach through initial contributions to the Attacker You! television series and the theatrical adaptation of the Ai City manga. His arrangements for Ranma ½ carried him into the 1990s, a period that also encompassed work on Final Fantasy VI, Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, and Neon Genesis Evangelion. His enduring ties to the latter property eventually secured the Tokyo Anime Award for Best Music in 2010. Further landmark projects of the 2000s featured scores for the Berserk and Bleach franchises. In 2015 Sagisu composed the metal-opera soundtrack for the two-part Attack on Titan film; recorded with the London Studio Orchestra, the score fused distorted metal guitars, industrial synths, and drumbeats into his characteristically expansive palette. The following year he extended his résumé by another emblem of Japanese popular culture, Godzilla. For 2016’s Shin Godzilla, also known as Godzilla Resurgence, Sagisu merged original composer Akira Ifukube’s themes with his own, forging a contemporary portrait of the iconic creature. He closed the decade by issuing the solo collections Shiro's Songbook: The Hidden Wonder of Music and Shiro's Ani-Songbook.

Sagisu opened the 2020s with further Songbook installments—2022’s 11 and Bleach Bankai!—alongside continued contributions to the Gridman, Berserk, Evangelion, Ultraman, and Bleach properties.