Tatsuya Oishi

is a Japanese director, animator, and storyboard artist. Oishi began his career at Studio Junio as an animator, but gained fame for his work with fellow directors Akiyuki Shinbo and Shin Oonuma at studio Shaft, where he directed the Bakemonogatari television series and its prequel film trilogy Kizumonogatari.

Career Oishi began working for sub-contracting company Studio Junio in 1991, where he mostly acted as an in-between animator and key animator. Within at least two years, however, he moved to Gainax, Oishi and Oonuma were given important tasks early on, with the former directing many of the opening animations to their series including several for both Pani Poni Dash! and Negima!? (Oonuma's debut as series director under Shinbo). In 2007, Oishi got involved with Shinbo and Ryouki Kamitsubo's adaptation of Hidamari Sketch as both an episode director and storyboard artist, as well as one of the art designers. Through Shinbo's orders, Oishi was responsible for coming up with designs such as the exterior of the Hidamari apartments (including the door coloring style) and the layout designs for its interior. In the second season, Shinbo wanted Oishi more involved with the series, so he took on the role of "production director" and became involved with checking episodes that he wasn't in charge of storyboarding or directing. Although Oishi was only involved with the first two seasons, Shinbo considered Oishi, Kamitsubo, and series art director Hisaharu Iijima to be responsible for the core foundations of the style of Hidamari Sketch.

When Oishi was asked to do the opening for Maria Holic (2009), he expected a solemn tone akin to Maria-sama ga Miteru (2004), but was surprised by its fun beat and had the idea of portraying Mariya teasing Kanako;however, Shinbo told Oishi not to include Kanako herself in the opening, which resulted in Oishi instead using a mannequin as a representation of Kanako. Before making the opening, Oishi saw Gekidan Inu Curry's ending animation for the series beforehand and decided that his desire to not "lose" would act as his motivation in making it. He was interested in directing an episode of the series itself but was unable to, and humorously envied series director Yukihiro Miyamoto and the team for being able to work on the series with Kanako as a character rather than a mannequin.

Later that year, Oishi debuted as a series director with Nisio Isin's Bakemonogatari under Shinbo. Oishi described making Bakemonogatari with the stylism of Jean-Luc Godard and with the intent of showing off his ability. In doing so, he directed it in a way that he felt was "logical", rather than chaotic, and removed things that he personally didn't like or things that didn't meet his sense of beauty; and to that end, the unique images of real-life photography and myriads of lined up or stacked desks were often used as part of the mise-en-scène. and it was announced in 2011 to be a film. Production of the film suffered, however, as four years passed without any updates on the progress of its completion, and it wasn't until 2015 that it was announced that the film would instead be a film trilogy released in 2016 and 2017. Oishi mentioned that one of the problems he had in making the film was his inability to draw storyboards while sitting at his desk at the studio, so he instead wandered around the town with the film scenario and a pencil in hand and he would write down frames and ideas as they came to mind, before eventually returning to the studio to draw the storyboards themselves. Prior to the trilogy's production beginning, in 2011, Japan experienced the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. Oishi was inspired by the disaster and started to incorporate ideas of "living in Japan" and a focus on Japan itself, such as culturally specific iconography and the architectural work of Kenzō Tange. and he called the second film a "one of a kind." Kizumonogatari chief animation directors Hideyuki Morioka and Hiroki Yamamura, and unit directors Toshimasa Suzuki and Yukihiro Miyamoto, all commented on Oishi's ability to create unique and thoroughly drawn-out storyboards, which Suzuki commented on the particular aspect of Oishi's sense of pacing and its contrast between Kizumonogatari and the earlier Bakemonogatari.

Following the end of Kizumonogataris production, Oishi directed the opening animation to the 2018 video game Crystar. The film's conception came from Aniplex CEO and former Monogatari series producer Atsuhiro Iwakami, who had proposed to Oishi that he condense the three films into a single movie, but approach it with a different mindset. Iwakami believed it would be interesting to make Kizumonogatari into a "serious vampire story" that cut out some of the comedic and sexual aspects of the trilogy; Oishi, in turn, believed it to be an interesting idea, so he took on the project. Oishi places a particular emphasis on making images that he believes are the best that he can make.

Oishi experimented with coloring in Hidamari Sketch, which he did art design work for across the series alongside Shaft animator Yoshiaki Itou. According to Oishi, Shinbo's orders for the style of the work included limited range of camera "angles" and positioning for the Hidamari apartments and the individual rooms of the main characters. He at first struggled in creating a style that met Shinbo's orders, but eventually decided upon bright colors and ensuring that photographs could be inserted with ease and that light objects could be shown with light lines. In designing the color schemes for each of the character's rooms and their motifs, he paid most attention to the color balance.

Oishi has also become particularly well-known for his use of on-screen text, a style that Oishi overall contributed to the house "Shaft style" originating in the Pani Poni Dash openings. In the midst of episodes themselves, however, the initial appearance of on-screen text as it appears in Shaft series aside from episodes or series directed by Oishi comes from Hidamari Sketch episode 2, in which he used Kanji to punctuate or emphasize lines of dialogue for comedic purposes, for puns, and so forth. Later, Shinbo asked Oishi to be the series director for Bakemonogatari with the intent of visualizing words themselves, which Oishi had proven himself to be good at doing. However, as Oishi experimented more with on-screen text, and its usage was incorporated by the other Shaft directors, so too did its incorporation by Oishi himself.

Discussing the differences between Oishi and Itamura as the series directors of Monogatari, sound director opined that Oishi was an "intuitive" director in contrast to Itamura's "logical" approach.

Works Television series In "Director(s)" column highlights Oishi's directorial works.

OVAs

Films

Other Highlights roles with series directorial duties.

Awards and nominations