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, where he mainly worked as a sub-contractor for studios like Sunrise. Starting in 1996, he mostly did sub-contracting animation work with Shaft and Toei Animation. In 2002, he did his first episode director and storyboard jobs on Cyborg 009: The Cyborg Soldier. In 2004, Oishi, Shin Oonuma, and Akiyuki Shinbo became known as "Team Shinbo" for their work with Shaft after Shinbo had invited the two to the company. "Team Shinbo" defined the unique visual artistry and storytelling methods that the studio became known for. He debuted as a series director with Nisio Isin's Bakemonogatari in 2009, which he co-directed with Shinbo. Oishi joined the project on request by Shinbo, who believed that Oishi's style of colors and inserts of lettering/Kanji would be stylistically beneficial to the series. Oishi joined the production somewhat late, and described that by the time he was on board, the first 5 episodes had their storyboard orders already completed. Upon its release, the series was immediately met with cult fame, and has been described as the series that pushed Shaft "into fame." With the success of Bakemonogatari, it was announced that the succeeding novel in Isin's Monogatari series, Kizumonogatari, would be adapted by the studio, and that Oishi and Shinbo would return to direct., 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 seitting 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.