Guillermo del Toro Shares His Massive Anime, Manga Collection

Guillermo del Toro is a popular director and creator in the film industry because he wears his love of his pop culture influences on his sleeve, and weaves them into his projects when he can.

Anime and manga fans are particularly drawn to the Academy Award Winning director because of his open love of anime and manga, and del Toro took to Twitter to show off just how much he loves it by showing his giant collection of works.

del Toro shared some impressive photos of his manga and anime cabin, and the collection has taken fans by surprise. Not only is he a fan of major landmark artists like Osamu Tezuka of Astro Boy (and many other prolific works), and Katsuhiro Otomo of Akira, there are many other deep cuts such as Naoki Urasawa’s Monster, which del Toro has been trying to get an adaptation off the ground for years.

Del Toro has gone on record about his love of anime and manga in the past stating that he was introduced to anime as a child along with monster movies, and other horror he could get his hands on because it was easily accessible, “Funnily enough, the anime I watched in Mexico absolutely matches with the anime any kid in the same era would have watched in Japan. It think it’s because it was cheap. And there was also very obscure Japanese live action sci-fi series (on television),” del Toro said.

When asked whether or not he kept up with current anime series, but Del Toro sadly can’t keep up with the growing amount of new premieres each season, “I try. Anime is too big. It’s thousands of titles.” But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have full knowledge of his favorites, “I stay with the artists I love, Katsuhiro Otomo, Hideshi Hino, Naoki Urasawa. I’m not aware of super-new manga. Even the ‘new’ stuff I like, like Gantz, or Blame!, is a few years old.”

Although del Toro has yet to fully be able to bring his anime and manga loves to the screen himself, his work has carried its undeniable influence throughout. The biggest example was the worldwide success of Pacific Rim, which wore its various mecha anime, kaiju, and tokusatsu influences on its geeky sleeve.