Yoshihiko Umakoshi

馬越嘉彦

A highly prolific and respected character designer.

Originating from Monsieur Onion, where he spent his in-betweening days studying under Hirotoshi Takaya and Junichi Hayama. In 1991, he moved to Studio Cockpit with Hisashi Kagawa and Tatsufumi Tamakawa. A few years later he debuted as a character designer on Grappler Baki in 1994.

He is said to be a very fast and efficient worker, and according to himself, he much rather participates in TV productions than theatrical ones. Close friends with Hiroshi Nagahama whom he often works with. They first worked together on Juubei-chan 2, for which Umakoshi provided the designs for and served as the chief animation director on all 13 episodes. The following year, the duo teamed up again for Mushishi, which's production quality was unusually high for a TV production. Umakoshi designed the characters and worked as the chief animation director on all 26 episodes of the series and hit a burn-out. After this he took a step back on major roles for a few years. Both him and Nagahama reprised their roles on Mushishi's revival in 2014.

In 2016, Umakoshi was appointed as the character designer on My Hero Academia, and has since been highly involved with the series' production as both an animation director and animator.