Masami Gotou

A renown mechanical animator and animation director.

He is often considered a mechanical animator because of his reputation together with Hideaki Anno and Yasushi Muraki, as "one of the three approved by Ichirou Itano." Gotou came to prominence on Macross Plus, where aforementioned Itano took a liking to his skills and appointed him as the mechanical animation director of the fourth episode. A few years later the director of Macross Plus, Shinichirou Watanabe, invited him to join Cowboy Bebop as a mechanical animation director, which brought him to the limelight even more.

Suffered from severe overwork during the production of Origin: Spirits of the Past, and left the industry for a while.