Sunghoo Park

Background

Park decided to enter the anime industry after watching Macross: Do You Remember Love? and its series; he studied at a university with an animation department in South Korea before moving to Japan to study at the Chiyoda Institute of Technology and Art. In 2004 he joined Studio Comet, working on series such as Onegai My Melody, and in 2017, under MAPPA, made his directorial debut with Garo: Vanishing Line. He worked on the opening of Zombie Land Saga and was assistant director on Banana Fish before directing The God of High School in 2020.

Later that year he directed Jujutsu Kaisen, which won Anime of the Year at the 5th Crunchyroll Anime Awards, where Park was nominated for Best Director; the second cour was nominated for Anime of the Year in 2022, with Park again up for Best Director. In December 2021 Park directed the film prequel Jujutsu Kaisen 0, wanting to make each character's facial expression carefully so they would look right when fighting. He considers the new protagonist, Yuta Okkotsu, a straightforward teenager and aimed to show the loneliness caused by Rika's curse; Megumi Ogata surprised him by giving Yuta a sensitive characterization when crying.

He added elements of Chinese movies for fans to look forward to and praised Seko's script, meant to show Okkotsu's transformation into a hero, while MAPPA aimed to make the film cooler than the series' entertaining fight scenes. Park founded the anime studio E&H Production in March 2021 and later directed Ninja Kamui.