Hisayuki Toriumi

, sometimes credited as Eikō Toriumi, was a Japanese animation director, storyboardist, screenwriter, and novelist. He is best known for directing the TV show Science Ninja Team Gatchaman and also credited for his contributions to several other anime series. He is known to Japanese fans for his TV series The Wonderful Adventures of Nils and Shima Shima Tora no Shimajirō and to international fans for his work in Area 88, Dallos, The Mysterious Cities of Gold, and Tekkaman: The Space Knight. Toriumi's direction is very smart, dramatic, and complete. Mamoru Oshii was strongly influenced by him, and Oshii professes him to be "my mentor." He always dealt with family as a theme in his work, and the relationship between father and son was especially important to him. On the other hand, he had no interested in dramas between men and women. Toriumi also authored nearly two dozen novels. In addition to anime novelizations, he wrote mainly historically-themed novels based on Otogi-zōshi and Yomihon set in Japan from ancient times to the Middle Ages. His representative work is the Kyūkei no Figurido series, which depicts the adventures and revenge of a man of Murakami Suigun who becomes a battle slave in Europe, where he arrives due to the betrayal of his comrades, set in England and France during the Hundred Years' War and in Japan during the Northern and Southern Courts. Biography Toriumi was born in Isehara, Kanagawa Pref., Japan, and graduated from the Department of Political Science, Faculty of Law, Chuo University. After attending a screenwriting institute while in college with an interest in filmmaking, he joined Tatsunoko Productions in 1966.