Kōji Masunari

Kōji Masunari is a Japanese animation director whose television work includes the 2003–2004 series R.O.D -THE TV-, an expansion of Hideyuki Kurata’s Read or Die world. Rather than retelling the original OVA, the series puts the “Paper Sisters”—Anita, Michelle, and Maggie—at the center of a story involving books, memory manipulation, and the return of bibliophile agent Yomiko Readman. Nenene Sumiregawa, a novelist introduced in the OVA, becomes the sisters’ employer and a crucial link to Yomiko. Masunari’s credit on this J.C.Staff production therefore connects him to a franchise with a continuing cast and mythology, rather than a detached adaptation. Masunari directed Kamichu!, the 2005 original television anime made by Brain’s Base and written by Hideyuki Kurata. Its protagonist, middle-school student Yurie Hitotsubashi, suddenly learns that she has become a kami, or deity. The premise begins with a recognizable personal problem: Yurie must tell her crush, Kenji Nonomiya, why she has missed school. She turns to her friend Matsuri Saegusa, a shrine maiden, for help. Kamichu! places Yurie’s divine status within an 1980s Japanese seaside town, where local shrines, festivals, and gods inform its episodes. The series does not derive from a pre-existing manga or novel; its story was created. Masunari later directed Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic, A-1 Pictures’ 2012 television adaptation of Shinobu Ohtaka’s manga. The first series follows Aladdin, a young magician carrying a flute containing the djinn Ugo, and Alibaba Saluja, who seeks the wealth of a dungeon. Their travels bring them into contact with Morgiana, a former enslaved member of the Fanalis people. Masunari also directed Magi: The Kingdom of Magic, the 2013 sequel series that continues the adaptation after the events of the first television season. Both productions use Ohtaka’s setting, in which dungeon exploration, metal vessels, and the rivalry among kingdoms drive the plot. Masunari was credited as chief director on the four-film Persona 3 The Movie project, which adapted Atlus’s Persona 3 role-playing game. The films are Spring of Birth, Midsummer Knight’s Dream, Falling Down, and Winter of Rebirth. Their protagonist, Makoto Yuki, transfers to Gekkoukan High School and joins the Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad, or SEES. At midnight, the group confronts the Dark Hour and enters Tartarus, a tower inhabited by Shadows. The movies preserve key elements of the game, including Personas and the Evoker, a device used to summon one. This franchise assignment shows Masunari working in a game-derived animation project.