Tatsuma Minamikawa

Tatsuma Minamikawa is credited as director of several recent television anime with sharply different source material and premises. In David Production’s Fire Force, he directed the first television adaptation of Atsushi Ohkubo’s manga. The 24-episode first season aired from July through December 2019, following Special Fire Force Company 8, including third-generation pyrokinetic Shinra Kusakabe, as it investigates human combustion and Infernal incidents. Minamikawa also directed the 24-episode second season, broadcast from July to December 2020. That production continued the Company 8 story and brought the series further into its conflict with the Evangelist and the White-Clad. His 2020 work also included Wave, Listen to Me!, Sunrise’s 12-episode adaptation of Hiroaki Samura’s manga Nami yo Kiitekure. The show ran from April to June 2020. Its protagonist, Minare Koda, is not an aspiring conventional radio star: after a drunken breakup conversation is recorded, radio director Kanetsugu Matō offers her a chance to speak on air. The series uses Minare’s volatile broadcasts and day-job life in Sapporo rather than the firefighting fantasy of Fire Force. In The Vexations of a Shut-In Vampire Princess, Minamikawa directed Project No.9’s television adaptation of Kotei Kobayashi’s light novel series, illustrated by riichu. The twelve episodes aired between October and December 2023. The title character, Terakomari Gandesblood, has spent three years shut in her room and cannot drink blood; nevertheless, she is appointed commander of the Mulnite Imperial Army’s Seventh Unit. The premise makes her forced public role and the protection of her maid Vill central to the adaptation. Minamikawa directed Pon no Michi, an original television anime produced by OLM. It aired from January to March 2024, and its setting is Onomichi, Hiroshima. The project credits IIS-P for the original work and Negi Haruba, creator of The Quintessential Quintuplets, for original character designs. Pon no Michi begins when Nashiko Jippensha loses access to a place to spend time with friends; she and her companions make use of her father’s former mahjong parlor. Mahjong is consequently built into the show’s friendship story, rather than appearing only as decoration. Pon no Michi’s main group also includes Pai Kawahigashi, Izumi Tokutomi, Riche Hayashi, and Chonbo. Its title uses pon, a mahjong call. The production followed Minamikawa’s 2023 vampire series by one year. Fire Force, meanwhile, was based on the manga by the same creator who made Soul Eater. Ohkubo’s earlier manga was originally serialized in Square Enix’s Monthly Shonen Gangan magazine.