Junichi Fujisaku

Birth place: Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan

Junichi Fujisaku is an anime director, scriptwriter, game designer, and novelist who's best known for his work expanding major franchises like Blood and Ghost in the Shell.

He started at Production I.G in the Game Production Department, where he quickly became integral to Team Oshii's projects. The iconic image of Blood: The Last Vampire—a girl in a sailor suit wielding a katana against supernatural enemies—was actually Fujisaku's concept. He didn't just work on that 2000 theatrical film with Kamiyama Kenji either; he also directed the game adaptation and wrote the novelization, essentially shepherding the franchise across multiple media.

His contributions to Ghost in the Shell were similarly extensive. He scripted numerous Stand Alone Complex episodes, produced and directed the PS2 game, and authored three tie-in novels. It's the kind of deep-dive involvement that made him a go-to creative force within the I.G ecosystem.

Fujisaku made his TV directorial debut in 2005 with Blood+, which kicked off what became a steady stream of work across different formats. More recent projects have included the mobile manga XX, the TV series Real Drive, and serving as story supervisor on Erin, the Beast Player.