Yoji Enokido

Yōji Enokido is a Japanese screenwriter whose television and original-video anime credits connect several influential productions from the 1990s onward. He wrote episodes for the 1992–1997 television adaptation of Naoko Takeuchi’s Sailor Moon, a franchise that gave him an early major series credit. His work became especially associated with director Kunihiko Ikuhara, beginning with Revolutionary Girl Utena. For that 1997 television series, Enokido was credited with series composition and scripts, helping shape the episodic structure of Ohtori Academy and Utena Tenjou’s challenge to its hierarchical “duel” system. The project was developed by collective Be-Papas; Chiho Saito’s manga adaptation ran concurrently. Enokido also co-wrote the screenplay for Adolescence of Utena, Ikuhara’s 1999 feature-film reinterpretation of the television series. The film condenses and radically recasts Utena’s story, placing Utena and Anthy Himemiya in a Academy setting dominated by automobile imagery and an escape from Ohtori. Enokido then wrote the scripts for FLCL, the six-episode 2000–2001 original video animation directed by Kazuya Tsurumaki and produced by Gainax with Production I.G. FLCL follows twelve-year-old Naota Nandaba after Haruko Haruhara arrives on her Vespa, and its script combines suburban adolescence, absurd action, and recurring imagery of medical and industrial machinery. The pillows supplied music. After FLCL, Enokido served as series composer and scriptwriter on several television adaptations and originals. He handled series composition for Ouran High School Host Club (2006), director Takuya Igarashi’s animated adaptation of Bisco Hatori’s manga about Haruhi Fujioka and the school’s host club. He was also series composer for Star Driver: Kagayaki no Takuto (2010–2011), an original Bones series directed by Takuya Igarashi. Its protagonist, Takuto Tsunashi, enters Southern Cross Isle and confronts the Glittering Crux organization and its giant Cybodies. Enokido later wrote Captain Earth (2014), another Bones original directed by Igarashi, about Daichi Manatsu’s encounter with Planetary Gears. Enokido has remained a central writer for the anime version of Kafka Asagiri and Sango Harukawa’s Bungo Stray Dogs. He is credited with series composition and scripts on the Bones adaptation, which began in 2016 and centers on Atsushi Nakajima, the Armed Detective Agency, and their conflicts with the Port Mafia and other gifted organizations. The franchise also includes the 2018 film Bungo Stray Dogs: Dead Apple, for which Enokido wrote the screenplay. Across these credits, his roles range from individual episode scripts to series composition and film screenwriting, including collaborations with Ikuhara and Igarashi and repeated work with Bones.