I decided to start this series on the development of the Kanada school with Urusei Yatsura, arguably the moment when its members really became prominent and their style began to spread. But that doesn’t mean it was the starting point where everything began. On the contrary, a complete history of the Kanada school would start before that, in 1977, when Kanada created his Studio Z2. The problem is, many shows that Z2 and then Z3 worked on at the time have become quite obscure and forgotten except for hardcore super robot fans, making them hard to find; there’re also many minor animators whose names haven’t really been remembered. To exemplify these, I’ll focus on the early career of just one figure from that early period: Kazuhiro Ochi.