Michiru Shimada

Career overview

Michiru Shimada was a Japanese screenwriter born in Tokyo on May 19, 1959. She was a member of the Writers Guild of Japan and graduated from the Department of Japanese Studies at Waseda University. In 1981, during her third year at university, she learned that Toei Animation was hiring new recruits for the first time in ten years and took the exam to become a trainee director. Although she passed with high marks, the studio's policy at the time was not to hire women as directors, and she was instead encouraged to write a script.

Following this encouragement, Shimada wrote the script for episode 42 of the television anime series Dr. Slump, which was also known as Dr. Slump: Arale-chan. Over the course of her career, she accumulated forty-two known credits in writing. Her work as a screenwriter is associated with titles such as Rurouni Kenshin, Mezon Ikkoku, and Little Witch Academia.

Shimada passed away on December 15, 2017, at the age of fifty-eight. Her contributions to Japanese animation as a screenwriter are preserved through her extensive credits and her work across multiple television and film projects throughout her career.