Gen Urobuchi

Gen Urobuchi is a Japanese screenwriter, novelist, and visual novel writer born in Tokyo on December 20, 1972. He joined Nitroplus in 2000, becoming a central writer for the company’s adult oriented games. His early work there included Phantom of Inferno, a 2000 visual novel about a Japanese man abducted in the United States and trained as an assassin called Zwei by the criminal organization Inferno. He also wrote Saya no Uta, released in 2003, whose protagonist Fuminori Sakisaka sees the world as decayed flesh after brain surgery. Both titles were later adapted into animation or comics outside their original games. Urobuchi reached a much wider television audience as the main writer of Puella Magi Madoka Magica, the 2011 television anime produced by Shaft and directed by Akiyuki Shinbo. The series begins with schoolgirls offered magical powers by Kyubey, but reveals that their contracts impose cruel costs and that magical girls eventually become witches. Urobuchi supplied the series composition and scripts for all twelve episodes. His story continued in Puella Magi Madoka Magica the Movie: Rebellion, for which he wrote the screenplay. A sequel film, Walpurgisnacht Rising, was announced in 2021, with Urobuchi returning as screenwriter for the forthcoming theatrical continuation. In 2012, Urobuchi created Psycho Pass, a television anime directed by Naoyoshi Shiotani and produced by Production I.G. Set in a future Japan, it follows Inspector Akane Tsunemori and Enforcer Shinya Kogami under the Sibyl System, which measures citizens’ psychological states as Psycho Passes. The first season’s plot pits them against Shogo Makishima, a man whom Sibyl cannot classify as a latent criminal. Urobuchi was credited with the original story and series composition for that season. He also wrote the novel Fate Zero, a prequel to Type Moon’s Fate stay night. It depicts Fuyuki’s Fourth Holy Grail War, set earlier. The Fate Zero novels appeared from 2006 to 2007, and Urobuchi later wrote scripts for Ufotable’s 2011 anime adaptation. He wrote the original story and series composition for the 2013 anime Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet, about soldier Ledo and the machine chamber pilot Amy on an ocean covered Earth. His further anime credits include Aldnoah Zero, for which he supplied the original story, and the 2016 film Kamen Rider Ghost: The 100 Eyecons and Takeru’s Fated Moment. In 2016, he became the writer for Thunderbolt Fantasy, a Taiwanese Japanese glove puppet series produced with Pili International Multimedia in Taiwan.