Yuki Yase

Yuki Yase is a Japanese animation director whose most visible television work has moved from SHAFT’s stylized productions to David Production action series. He served as director of Mekakucity Actors, the 2014 television anime built around Jin’s Kagerou Project, a multimedia story line that had grown from the songs featuring the Vocaloid character IA. The series follows the Mekakushi Dan, a group of young people with unusual eye-related powers, and connects Shintaro Kisaragi’s encounter with Ene to the group’s larger time-loop mystery.

In 2016, Yase directed the original-video-animation adaptation of Nisio Isin’s Zaregoto novel, Kubikiri Cycle: The Blue Savant and the Nonsense Bearer. Its first case takes place on an isolated island, where protagonist Ii and the genius investigator Tomo Kunagisa confront a locked-room-style succession of murders after a body is found decapitated. The production was released in eight episodes, rather than as a weekly television broadcast, and its title preserves the novel’s combination of detective-fiction procedure, elaborate dialogue, and self-conscious narration.

Yase then directed Fire Force’s first two television seasons. The 2019 debut introduces Shinra Kusakabe, a third-generation pyrokinetic who joins Special Fire Force Company 8 while seeking the truth about the fire that killed his family. Its world is threatened by spontaneous human combustion, which turns victims into Infernals, and Company 8 investigates both those incidents and the Evangelist’s conspiracy. The second season, Fire Force: Season 2, aired in 2020 and advances the conflict over Adolla, Adolla Bursts, and the Pillars. Yase’s credit therefore covers the adaptation’s establishment of Company 8’s roster, including Arthur Boyle, Maki Oze, Takehisa Hinawa, and Captain Akitaru Ōbi, as well as its later expansion of the Evangelist plot.

In 2023, Yase directed Undead Unluck, David Production’s adaptation of Yoshifumi Tozuka’s manga. The opening premise pairs Fuuko Izumo, whose “Unluck” brings catastrophe to people she touches, with Andy, an immortal man pursuing a death that his regeneration prevents. Their alliance draws them into the Union, an organization of Negators who oppose God and confront UMA entities representing rules of the world. The series uses its central powers as plot mechanisms: Fuuko’s ability is dangerous precisely because contact can harm others, while Andy repeatedly exploits his own Undead condition in combat. Across these projects, Yase’s director credits attach him to adaptations with highly distinct specific source identities: Jin’s song-based Kagerou Project, Nisio Isin’s Zaregoto, Atsushi Ōkubo’s Fire Force manga, and Tozuka’s Undead Unluck.