Mitsutoshi Kubota

Kubota began his career in the anime industry as a cel painter in the 1980s as a sub-contractor with painting studio Shaft, which had been founded in 1975 by Hiroshi Wakao.^[3] The next year, he did his first job as color designer on Hitotsuboshi-ke no Ultra Baasan (1982–1983). From then until 1995, Kubota mainly served as a cel painter, color coordinator, and coloring inspector. In 1995, Kubota moved up to production management, which began with Shaft's first original series: Juuni Senshi Bakuretsu Eto Ranger.^[4] He was promoted to managing director of the studio that year.^[5] The year after, Kubota and Shaft were approached by Triangle Staff and Ryūtarō Nakamura to produce the second episode of their Legend of Crystania: The Chaos Ring OVA series, which the studio and Kubota accepted the offer to.^[6] In 2004, Shaft's founder, Hiroshi Wakao, retired as president of the company and Kubota was chosen to succeed him, with the former staying as a chairman with the studio.

After watching several Akiyuki Shinbo's works as a director, namely The SoulTaker and Le Portrait de Petit Cossette, Kubota invited the former to become a director and mentor with the studio for the purpose of creating a uniquely identifiable brand. Shinbo brought many talents to the studio, such as directors Shin Ōnuma, Tatsuya Oishi, Naoyuki Tatsuwa, and Tomoyuki Itamura, and the studio has since achieved fame for having "arthouse" productions and "striking" visuals throughout the studio's works.^[7][8][9] In the mid-2000s, following several instances of Triangle Staff and Nakmaura outsourcing episodes of their series to Shaft, Kubota asked Nakamura to direct REC at the studio, which Nakamura agreed to.^[6] During production of the series, Kubota was approached to produce a film version of Kino's Journey, which Nakamura had previously directed at Triangle Staff, to which Kubota and Shaft obliged their services.^[6]

Kubota remains relatively active in the creative process to Shaft's series. For The Quintessential Quintuplets∽, Kazuya Shiotsuki mentioned that Kubota directly supervised the creation of the key visuals for the work and gave much of his opinion on the colors.^[10] Doroinu also mentioned that Kubota came up with the idea of expressing a theme of "connectivity" in the Magia Record anime adaptation.^[11] It was also Kubota's idea to change Nagisa Momoe's hair color from blonde to white in Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Rebellion according to Shinbo.^[12]