Shouji Saeki
Career. Saeki began working as an in-between animator with Gainax, which was a role that carrued on into the series' succeeding films "" and "The End of Evangelion". In 1998, the 25th episode of "Cyber Team in Akihabara" marked his first storyboard credit, and the following year marked his episode director debut and scriptwriting debut with "Kare Kano", where at-the-time fellow Gainax director Hiroyuki Imaishi described that the both of them had "learned our chops." 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. Following Mahoromatic, Saeki made his series directorial debut with the final Gainax/Shaft collaboration series ("This Ugly yet Beautiful World" (2004) and "He Is My Master" (2005)). 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), "Medaka Box" (2012), and "Omoi no Kakera" (2015)). 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 was hired as a series director with the studio, where he first directed "Assault Lily Bouquet" in 2020, and is directing the upcoming "Luminous Witches" series in 2022. Works. Other works. Note: Some of Saeki's series directorial works appear here due to his involvement as something other than an episode/unit director, storyboard artist, series composer, or scriptwriter, in which case his name will be highlighted in the "Director(s)" column. Shouji Saeki