Kazunori Itô

Kazunori Ito is a Japanese screenwriter and artist. He is a founding member of the artist group Headgear, which created the manga and anime franchise Mobile Police Patlabor. Ito grew up watching kaiju movies at his local theater, and became a lifelong kaiju fan, often inserting references to kaiju movies into the anime on which he worked. Ito served as a screenwriter on numerous anime beginning in the 1980's with his work on Urusei Yatsura. He became most well known for writing the screenplay for the 1995 anime adaptation of Ghost in the Shell, and later for the anime adaptations of the .hack franchise. Outside of anime, Ito wrote the screenplays for all three entries of Shusuke Kaneko's Gamera trilogy. Ito has won awards for his work on Patlabor: The Movie 2, Ghost in the Shell, and Gamera the Guardian of the Universe.