Takayuki Hamana

Takayuki Hamana is a Japanese anime director whose credited work includes long-running television series, films, original video animations, and adaptations of novels and manga. His most sustained franchise association is with Takeshi Konomi's The Prince of Tennis. Hamana directed the television adaptation broadcast from 2001 to 2005, centered on Ryoma Echizen and Seishun Academy's tennis club. He also directed the 2005 feature The Prince of Tennis: The Two Samurai, The First Game, whose story sends Ryoma and the Seishun players to a match against an American team. Hamana subsequently directed the National Tournament original video animation installments of the franchise. In 2008, Hamana directed Library War, Production I.G's television adaptation of Hiro Arikawa's novel. The series imagines a Japan in which armed Library Defense Force personnel resist government censorship, and places rookie librarian Iku Kasahara in the force's Kanto Library Defense Force. In 2009, he directed the television anime adaptation of Nahoko Uehashi's The Beast Player Erin. Its protagonist, Erin, grows up among the Toda beast keepers and later studies the royal army's flying beasts, the Ohju. These projects moved Hamana beyond tennis while retaining a focus on serialized television storytelling and literary source material in two different settings. Hamana directed Arte, a 2020 television adaptation of Kei Ohkubo's manga for Seven Arcs. Set in sixteenth-century Florence, it follows Arte, a noblewoman training as a painter after her father dies and she rejects marriage as her prescribed future. He directed The Kingdoms of Ruin, the 2023 adaptation of Yoruhashi's manga. The series begins after the Redia Empire eradicates witches and centers on Adonis, apprentice of the witch Chloe, seeking revenge. In 2024, Hamana directed The Witch and the Beast, adapted from Kousuke Satake's manga. It pairs curse-afflicted Guideau with mage Ashaf, two agents of the Order of Magical Resonance. He also directed the 2007 fantasy series Sisters of Wellber and its 2008 sequel, Sisters of Wellber Zwei. The first follows Princess Rita, fleeing after she shoots Prince Gernia on their wedding day, alongside thief Tina Lotter. In 2020, he directed Sorcerous Stabber Orphen: The Reckless Journey, a short-form comedic spin-off based on the light-novel series by Yoshinobu Akita. Across this record, his credit is explicitly director rather than a writing credit: the source authors named above created the underlying manga, novels, or sports series. His work therefore links studios and formats, from Production I.G's Library War to Seven Arcs' Arte.