Takeshi Koike

小池健

Koike aspired to become an animator after having seeing Yoshinori Kanada's work on Galaxy Express 999. During his third year of high school Koike came to Tokyo and quickly got a job at Madhouse, and got thrown straight into Yoshiaki Kawajiri's projects. He made his debut as an in-betweener on Phoenix: Karma Chapter and as a key animator on Goku: Midnight Eye.

His first venture into directing was in year 2000, when he got to direct the opening of Party 7, a film directed by Katsuhito Ishii. Koike also acted as the character designer and animation director on the film, getting to fully display his influences from above-mentioned legendary animator Yoshinori Kanada as well as Mike Mignola, an American comic artist of Hellboy fame.

Some time after this began the notoriously lengthy seven year production of Redline. The film was eventually released in August 2009. Despite the positive critical response, with particular praise for its animation, Redline didn't have a successful run at the box office. It did however see a much greater success after its home release and has since been recognized as a cult film.