[13][15] After leaving Ghibli, he lived in Shanghai for four months to work on Madhouse's OVA Final Fantasy: Legend of the Crystals.
[16][17][18] He then joined in the omnibus animation film Memories (1995), for which Katsuhiro Otomo was the executive producer and general director.
He received an offer from Studio 4°C to work on props for Episode 1: Magnetic Rose, directed by Kōji Morimoto.
[22][23] He initially joined the project as an animator, but the storyline from the middle of the series onwards was largely undefined at that point.
[26][g] Iso also created the supplementary settings for episodes 13 and 15, including the design of Lilith and Seele marks, rough sketches of underground facilities, etc.
[2][j] As an animator, Iso was in charge of the shoot-out at the museum between the main character Motoko Kusanagi and the multi-legged tank.
[4] In order to draw the spider-like tank, he actually captured a live spider and placed it in a beaker to observe its complex leg movements, centre of gravity shifts and other behaviour all day.
[26][32] Iso joined Blood: The Last Vampire (2000), which marked the beginning of the trend towards digital animation production in Japan.
[23] He negotiated directly with director Hiroyuki Kitakubo and accepted the key animation on condition that he would handle the entire process, including visual effects and cinematography (digital compositing).
[1][14][23][k] Director Quentin Tarantino made a live-action film Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003), inspired by this work, and asked Production I.G to produce the animated inserts, which Iso also participated in.
[1][36] As for Digital Works, he retouched key animations and art with special effects and computer graphics.
[37] In episode 15 (The Children's Night), he wrote the script, storyboarded, and directed, and was also in charge of some of the drawing and cinematography, overseeing a cross-section of jobs that were originally divided.
[1][41] The work depicts everyday life in the near future, when wearable devices called Dennō Glasses have become widespread, and has had a profound influence on later XR technicians and artists.
The Pirates of the Reunion and the Dodos) and The Orbital Children (地球外少年少女, Chikyūgai Shōnen Shōjo, lit.
Mixing twos, threes and fours in a balanced form of timing, Iso draws every keyframe without passing his work to an in-betweener, allowing him full control to create the most detailed motion possible with a balanced and efficient number of drawings, hence the term "full limited".
[11][53][54][55] He has pioneered new expressions in animation with movements that give a sense of the mass and inertia of objects, and effects such as explosions, smoke and flames, and has influenced many creators.
[58] Under directors with varied artistic backgrounds, including Hayao Miyazaki, Isao Takahata, Yoshiyuki Tomino, Hideaki Anno, Satoshi Kon and Katsuhiro Otomo, Iso has worked not only as a key animator but also in various positions, including animation director, scriptwriter, mechanical and firearms designer, digital works, setting development and visual effects.
[65] Iso is a director who can create all the ideas for producing an animation work by himself, including visual aspects such as character, mechanic and prop design.
[1][4][47] This production style is rare in Japanese animation, especially in TV animation, and is similar to Hayao Miyazaki's Future Boy Conan in terms of consistency from script and storyboard to layout and drawing, and to Makoto Shinkai's personal work Voices of a Distant Star from his indie days in terms of comprehensiveness with the addition of cinematography.
By writing different patterns of plots and examining them all, he explores storylines he had not thought of and decides whether they are interesting enough for him as an audience.