Hiroki Hayashi

Hiroki Hayashi (林宏樹) is a director and animator affiliated with AIC. He is one of the co-creators of Tenchi Muyo! alongside Masaki Kajishima.

Before the creation of Tenchi Muyo!, Hayashi's first work was as an animator for the American series ThunderCats and SilverHawks. He later joined AIC, where his first credit was as the assistant director of Gall Force 2: Destruction in 1987, working alongside Katsuhito Akiyama (the future director of Magical Project S and Dual! Parallel Trouble Adventure). His first sole directoral work was the fourth episode of Bubblegum Crisis, "Revenge Road" in 1988, which he worked on alongside Kajishima.

Speaking in a 1994 interview with Animerica, Hayashi said that the idea for Tenchi Muyo! was inspired by both Gall Force and Bubblegum Crisis, and that he originally visioned it as a kind of parody of them and other previous works by AIC, which were very action-heavy. Tenchi Muyo!, by contrast, would be instead be a comedy focusing on characters living their normal, daily lives.^[1]

In a separate 2001 Interview, Hayashi said that he and Kajishima had submitted a project based on their ideas for a comedy-centric Bubblegum Crisis, but were rejected.^[2] Instead, they developed an idea for a new anime after thinking about Mackie, one of the characters from Bubblegum Crisis and the younger brother of protagonist Sylia Stingray, and how they could create a story focusing on him instead of the Knight Sabers. This would serve as the basis for the creation of Tenchi Muyo!^[3]

Between himself and Kajishima, Hayashi was responsible for writing down all of their ideas for Tenchi Muyo!.^[4] In addition to directing, Hayashi also personally selected the anime's entire voice cast, including choosing Norio Wakamoto to voice Kagato because he was an easy actor to work with.^[5]

Hayashi also mentioned that Tenchi Muyo!'s story was intended to go on indefinitely, but that didn't sit well with the sponsors and he had to conclude the story after six episodes.^[6] Consequently, Hayashi believed he tried putting too many story ideas into just six episodes and noted that he rectified this mistake when creating El-Hazard. ^[7]

While Tenchi Muyo! would continue with sequel OVA series and spin-offs, Hayashi chose not to continue directing and left the series to Kajishima. Hayashi explained that the reasons that he left were twofold. First, he didn't expect that Tenchi Muyo! would become so popular, and he was unprepared to continue directing the series while wanting to work on other projects.^[8] Second, Kajishima wasn't satisfied with how the personalities of the characters turned out and how they were different than what he envisioned. Thus, before the production of the second OVA series commenced, Hayashi backed out of the project, deciding it would better to let Kajishima continue with Tenchi Muyo! on his own.^[9]

After directing the first Tenchi Muyo! OVA, Hayashi would go on to work on several other anime produced by AIC, including as the the director and co-creator of El-Hazard, the director of Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040 and Battle Programmer Shirase, and the creator of Black Heaven.

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References

↑ "What I'd had [sic] in mind orginally was more like a parody of Bubblegum Crisis and Gall Force. You know, characters going about their daily lives—eating at the dinner table, taking baths—a side-story sort of thing. So many of A.I.C.'s vidoes were really nothing more than combat stories with characterization tacked on. I wanted to do a show where the characters themselves would be the core of the story. I wanted to do something that had never been seen before" (1994).
"Bubble Gum Crisis" is a pretty gloomy anime. Serious fighting, complicated human relationships, and dark Mega Tokyo. Kajishima and me just thought it will be fun to put some comedy portions in "B.G.C", like, girls WITHOUT Knight-Saber suits go to hot spring tour, and Boomer show up suddenly while they are taking a bath in hot spring bathtub with no cloths [sic] on...something like that" (2001).
↑ "We made up something that resembled a side story to Bubblegum or Gall Force and took it straight to Artmic. Unfortunately, they weren't interested. At all. [LAUGHS]" (1994).
↑ "10 something years ago, it's sort of the "trend" that bunch of female characters or bunches of male characters with one female character, just like "Gall Force", "Bubble Gum Crisis" and many classic robot anime. We were working in that "trend" and asked ourselves: "What about Macky (-Syria's [sic] brother in Bubble Gum Crisis)? What is his story?" We thought it would be interesting to use a Macky as a main character and make a reverse version "Bubble Gum Crisis". That thought was the trigger for us to start writing "Tenchi" story. Fortunately, we got budget this time to make 6 episodes and that is how "Tenchi Muyo! Ryohki" OVA series started.." (2001).
↑ "I was the one responsible for writing down all our ideas. It was Kajishima's job to draw up the image boards and submit them as a proposal to a production company" (1994).
↑ "There were several candidates for Kagato's voice, for example, but one important consideration was purely practical—we needed somone who would be easy to work with. And that's how we ended up with Norio Wakamoto" (1994).
↑ "...The intention was to create a story which could go on indefinintely. It was more like a six-episode block from a thirteen-episode television series. That didn't mesh with what the sponsors had in mind, though, and so it ended up having a conclusion at the sixth volume" (1994).
↑ "It is essential to a creator to learn how to compromise. Take Tenchi for example, there are too many ideas we wanted to put in the 1st OVA series but we only had 6 episodes budget back then, we had to give up many things. And that "Tenchi Muyo! Ryohki" is the result of what we had. I learned a lot when I CO-produced "Tenchi" OVA and I reflected it to my work next to "Tenchi Muyo!"--"El Hazard" 1st OVA series" (2001).
↑ "First, None of us would have thought Tenchi would become so popular after the first 6 episodes came out. In business world, just like Pokemon, businessmen will like to remain its popularity and of course, make more money. You can't deny that as long as you live in capitalism world. Hence, fans or sponsors asked us came out more Tenchi as quick as we could back then. But I had other works on my hands that I couldn't handle that much works in a short time. So they just name other producers to take over our jobs. Second, I was interesting in other stories that I wanted to create and eventually, quitted the director position of Tenchi" (2001).
↑ "Its not that complicated as people thought. The CO-producer [Kajishima] were not satisfied what the 1st Tenchi OVA came out and declined that the personalities of character (i.e.:animation acting and voice acting and such thing) are completely different from his idea. When there were proposal of produce 2nd Tenchi OVA, I thought if he was not satisfied our CO-production, it's better to let him to do it alone. So, I just hand the producer position to him and wish him luck. There is no any negative meaning of my intention of doing so. I just gave up, simple as that" (2001).

External Links

[1] "What I'd had [sic] in mind orginally was more like a parody of Bubblegum Crisis and Gall Force. You know, characters going about their daily lives—eating at the dinner table, taking baths—a side-story sort of thing. So many of A.I.C.'s vidoes were really nothing more than combat stories with characterization tacked on. I wanted to do a show where the characters themselves would be the core of the story. I wanted to do something that had never been seen before" (1994).
"Bubble Gum Crisis" is a pretty gloomy anime. Serious fighting, complicated human relationships, and dark Mega Tokyo. Kajishima and me just thought it will be fun to put some comedy portions in "B.G.C", like, girls WITHOUT Knight-Saber suits go to hot spring tour, and Boomer show up suddenly while they are taking a bath in hot spring bathtub with no cloths [sic] on...something like that" (2001).

[2] "We made up something that resembled a side story to Bubblegum or Gall Force and took it straight to Artmic. Unfortunately, they weren't interested. At all. [LAUGHS]" (1994).

[3] "10 something years ago, it's sort of the "trend" that bunch of female characters or bunches of male characters with one female character, just like "Gall Force", "Bubble Gum Crisis" and many classic robot anime. We were working in that "trend" and asked ourselves: "What about Macky (-Syria's [sic] brother in Bubble Gum Crisis)? What is his story?" We thought it would be interesting to use a Macky as a main character and make a reverse version "Bubble Gum Crisis". That thought was the trigger for us to start writing "Tenchi" story. Fortunately, we got budget this time to make 6 episodes and that is how "Tenchi Muyo! Ryohki" OVA series started.." (2001).

[4] "I was the one responsible for writing down all our ideas. It was Kajishima's job to draw up the image boards and submit them as a proposal to a production company" (1994).

[5] "There were several candidates for Kagato's voice, for example, but one important consideration was purely practical—we needed somone who would be easy to work with. And that's how we ended up with Norio Wakamoto" (1994).

[6] "...The intention was to create a story which could go on indefinintely. It was more like a six-episode block from a thirteen-episode television series. That didn't mesh with what the sponsors had in mind, though, and so it ended up having a conclusion at the sixth volume" (1994).

[7] "It is essential to a creator to learn how to compromise. Take Tenchi for example, there are too many ideas we wanted to put in the 1st OVA series but we only had 6 episodes budget back then, we had to give up many things. And that "Tenchi Muyo! Ryohki" is the result of what we had. I learned a lot when I CO-produced "Tenchi" OVA and I reflected it to my work next to "Tenchi Muyo!"--"El Hazard" 1st OVA series" (2001).

[8] "First, None of us would have thought Tenchi would become so popular after the first 6 episodes came out. In business world, just like Pokemon, businessmen will like to remain its popularity and of course, make more money. You can't deny that as long as you live in capitalism world. Hence, fans or sponsors asked us came out more Tenchi as quick as we could back then. But I had other works on my hands that I couldn't handle that much works in a short time. So they just name other producers to take over our jobs. Second, I was interesting in other stories that I wanted to create and eventually, quitted the director position of Tenchi" (2001).

[9] "Its not that complicated as people thought. The CO-producer [Kajishima] were not satisfied what the 1st Tenchi OVA came out and declined that the personalities of character (i.e.:animation acting and voice acting and such thing) are completely different from his idea. When there were proposal of produce 2nd Tenchi OVA, I thought if he was not satisfied our CO-production, it's better to let him to do it alone. So, I just hand the producer position to him and wish him luck. There is no any negative meaning of my intention of doing so. I just gave up, simple as that" (2001).

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