Three years after being acquired by Nippon TV, there’s a shakeup at the top levels of Ghibli’s leadership.

Between its unparalleled commitment to anime artistry and larger-than-life creative keymen, it can be easy to forget that Studio Ghibli still is a company. So while the animators and designers play crucial roles in producing what we see on screen, they’re not the ones running the place. Studio Ghibli does have a president, and the current one is going to step down next month.

Studio Ghibli announced through its official website that Hiroyuki Fukuda will be leaving his position as president as of the Ghibli shareholders meeting next month. The 64-year-old Fukuda has been the president and representative director of Studio Ghibli since 2023, and currently concurrently holds the position of president and representative director of Nippon Television Holdings, the Japanese TV broadcaster who acquired Ghibli as a subsidiary the same year that Fukuda became the studio’s president.

Stepping in to replace Fukuda will be 51-year-old Kenichi Yoda. Like Fukuda, Yoda simultaneously is simultaneously a high-ranking executive in both Studio Ghibli and Nippon TV, having a seat on Ghibli’s board of directors since 2023 and also listed as a “general specialist” within Nippon TV’s Content Strategy Division, a combination that’s kept him heavily involved in planning and coordinating events such as exhibitions, concerts, and stage play adaptations for Ghibli’s anime works.

Aside from Fukuda’s departure from Ghibli and Yoda’s promotion within it, the studio is not planning any other changes to its upper leadership structure, meaning that co-founder and anime director Hayao Miyazaki will continue as honorary chairman of the board, veteran producer Toshio Suzuki as representative director and chairman of the board, and Goro Miyazaki as managing director. As such, Ghibli’s philosophy towards animation production and storytelling is unlikely to drastically change as a result of it getting a new president, and the more likely effect would be increased attention given to events and collaborations of the sort Yoda has been handling, which would be in keeping with Ghibli’s recent shift towards showcasing its legacy as opposed to producing new feature-length anime movies.

Yoda is scheduled to become Studio Ghibli’s president on June 22.

Source: Studio Ghibli
Top image: Studio Ghibli
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