Trivia

One of the co-founders of Studio Ghibli along with Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata but left over creative differences. Despite their differences, Toshio Suzuki and Studio Ghibli would later help Oshii with his production of Kôkaku kidôtai: Stand Alone Complex (2002).Oshii maintains skeptical, but respectful, views of each of Takahata and Miyazaki's films; he has been critical of Miyazaki's attitude towards his workers, but also claims that he would feel "strangely empty" and "it would be boring" if both Miyazaki and Takahata stopped making films.

Always includes a basset hound whenever possible in each of his movies. He owns a Basset himself, and is a fan of the breed.

According to Oshii, "Kenji Kawai's music is responsible for 50 percent of [his] films' successes" and he "can't do anything without [Kenji Kawai].".

He is a member of "Headgear," a group of anime/manga writers and artists. The group was set up so that all the creators could retain full copyright to their work, achieve greater publicity for their work and sell their manga to anime sponsors for film production., it comprises of Oshii, Masami Yûki, Yutaka Izubuchi, Kazunori Ito, Akemi Takada, Kenji Kawai, Naoyuki Yoshinaga, Fumihiko Takayama, Kenji Kamiyama, and Miki Tori.

He has worked on three animes: Urusei Yatsura, Patlabor and Ghost in the Shell; the former was an outright comedy and the latter two were drama shows but were fairly comedic. Oshii adapted these into films; he strayed from the source material by removing their comedy and giving them a darker atmosphere, which was a point of controversy for some fans ("Urusei Yatsura" creator Rumiko Takahashi was particularly upset with what he'd done with her story).

Oshii has stated his approach to directing is regarding the visuals as the most important aspect, followed by the story and the characters afterwards.