Shouji Saeki

During his days at Teikyo University, Saeki rented a room in the art club where he learned the basics of drawing on his own with the desire of making anime. After four years of collegial schooling, his motivation remained unchanged; and once he graduated, he joined studio Gainax.^[1]

He started as an in-between animator at the studio in 1996, and in 1998, the 25th episode of Cyber Team in Akihabara marked his first storyboard credit,^[2] and the following year marked his episode director debut and scriptwriting debut with Kare Kano,^[3][4] where at-the-time fellow Gainax director Hiroyuki Imaishi described that the both of them had "learned our chops."^[5] In 2002, Saeki served as assistant director under Hiroyuki Yamaga for the second season of Mahoromatic, Mahoromatic: Something More Beautiful, which marked his first work with Shaft.^[6] Following Mahoromatic, Saeki made his series directorial debut with the final Gainax/Shaft collaboration series (This Ugly yet Beautiful World (2004)^[7] and He Is My Master (2005)^[8]).

Some of the cast of Mahoromatic discussed the idea of doing another project together, and eventually This Ugly yet Beautiful World was created with some of the same cast and much of the same staff in mind.^[9] Saeki became the director of the work and he invited some staff who worked on the previous series like Shin Itagaki [ja], Toshimasa Suzuki, and Atsushi Nishigori [ja].^[10] Hiroyuki Yamaga, who was the co-series composition writer with Saeki, told him that there would be two heroines by way of a dual personality (referring to the character Hikari); and Saeki was given responsibility of deciding the setting, whether or not she and the hero would get together, and the story itself.^[11] Elements of the story were taken from a project that character designer Kazuhiro Takamura [ja] had concepted years prior while they had worked on Neon Genesis Evangelion, which Takamura had entitled Extended Definition; though, Takamura abstained from speaking on matters of the setting with Saeki and instead left the details of the work to him.^[11] Saeki had felt that his work on Mahoromatic was left unfinished due to the fact that for the second season, Yamaga had done the rough parts of the work and then handed it over to Saeki with the exception of the final part. Saeki felt like his work then remained unfinished as he was unable to complete it himself which he used as some motivation for This Ugly yet Beautiful World.^[11]

The following years saw Saeki working mainly as a storyboard artist, scriptwriter, and episode director for Shaft and Gainax series, and notably became an essential member of Hiroyuki Imaishi's team on Gurren Lagann. Between 2011 and 2016, Saeki acted as series director for three more projects with Gainax (Wish Upon the Pleiades (2011/2015),^[12][13] Medaka Box (2012),^[14] and Omoi no Kakera (2015)^[15]). Beginning in 2017, due to Gainax's minimal production output, Saeki began providing storyboards as a freelance artist. After providing storyboards for a few of Shaft's series in that time, he started freelancing as a series director with the studio, where he first directed Assault Lily Bouquet in 2020,^[16] and Luminous Witches in 2022.^[17]

According to animator Kazuya Shiotsuki, Saeki's prominence at Shaft has influenced the younger staff at the studio alongside Yasuomi Umetsu.^[18]

  In "Director(s)" column highlights Saeki's directorial works.