Yasuhiro Irie

Yasuhiro Irie is a Japanese anime director and animator whose best-known television work is Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, the 2009–2010 Bones adaptation of Hiromu Arakawa’s manga. Irie directed all 64 episodes of Brotherhood, which was made after Bones’s earlier Fullmetal Alchemist television series had ended with an original conclusion. Brotherhood therefore begins with the Elric brothers’ search for the Philosopher’s Stone and proceeds through manga material unavailable to the first adaptation, culminating in the conflict with Father and the nationwide transmutation circle. The series centres on Edward and Alphonse Elric, who lose parts of their bodies after attempting human transmutation; its production was broadcast in Japan by MBS and TBS. Before Brotherhood, Irie directed Kurau Phantom Memory, a 24-episode original science-fiction series produced by Bones and broadcast in 2004. Its setting is a future in which scientist Amami discovers the energy form called Rynax during an experiment on the Moon. The encounter gives his daughter Kurau unusual powers, and she later lives with Christmas, a girl connected to the same phenomenon. Irie subsequently directed the 2012 television adaptation of Akimine Kamijyo’s Code:Breaker manga. Produced by Kinema Citrus, it follows Sakura Sakurakouji, who witnesses Rei Ogami killing criminals with blue flames and discovers that he is a “Code:Breaker,” an operative who punishes people judged beyond the reach of law. His later directing credits include Scorching Ping-Pong Girls (2016), a television adaptation of Yagura Asano’s manga. In 2023, Irie directed Heavenly Delusion, Production I.G’s 13-episode adaptation of Masakazu Ishiguro’s manga. The series alternates between Maru and Kiruko’s journey across a monster-ridden Japan and children living inside an isolated facility. Maru has been told that someone behind the facility’s walls may have “the same face as him,” while Kiruko agrees to escort him toward a place called Heaven. It premiered in Japan in April 2023 and concluded in June; Disney distributed the series internationally through its streaming services. The adaptation retains Ishiguro’s deliberately separate narrative strands initially. As a director, Irie’s record spans original television animation and manga adaptations with sharply different premises: space-age paranormal science fiction, action fantasy, school table tennis, and post-apocalyptic travel. Brotherhood remains especially prominent because its complete 64-episode run gave Arakawa’s central manga narrative an animated ending, rather than requiring a separate continuation to resolve Edward and Alphonse’s story. His work on these projects identifies a career closely associated with studio television productions and carefully defined source material.