Yuuji Moriyama

森山雄治

Yuuji Moriyama is a director, animator and character designer.

Moriyama started helping out with in-between animation when he was a student at Kanto Daiichi High School. After graduating from high school, he joined Studio Musashi, which was recruiting staff through newspaper ads. His first work as an official in-betweener was for Wakusei Robo Danguard Ace. He then moved to Studio Cockpit, where he worked on Galaxy Express 999, before moving on to NeoMedia. There he worked on Trider G7, Doraemon, and Belle and Sebastian. With Trider G7, he was promoted from in-between to key animation. He left NeoMedia in 1982 to work as a freelancer, starting with Combat Mecha Xabungle and Makyou Densetsu Acrobunch.

The popular anime Urusei Yatsura, in which he participated from the same year, was Moriyama's breakthrough work. With this series, he made his debut as an animation director and storyboard artist, and was in charge of the opening animation for the first time, joining a group of popular animators overnight. Chief director Mamoru Oshii, who was responsible for Urusei Yatsura, expected him to become a partner, so Moriyama tried his hand at manga as well by illustrating a manga written by Oshii that was serialized in the Animage magazine in 1984 called Todo no Tsumari. After the end of Urusei Yatsura, he was selected as a character designer for the later series Maison Ikkoku, and has since been in charge of character design for many other works. In 1987, he won the 4th Japan Anime Awards in the Animation Director category. After that, he shifted from animating to directing.
After that he participated in many works, mainly Chaos Project , Studio Pierrot , and Studio Hibari and then has seated at Studio Hibari's Lerche.

Moriyama often works under one of his many pen-names.