is a Japanese anime director and artist. He primarily works alongside his friend Koichi Mashimo

Koichi Mashimo

is a well-known Japanese anime director and the founder of the animation studio Bee Train. Since the creation of the studio, Mashimo directed or otherwise participated in all its works, for example, as a member of art or sound department...

 and studio Bee Train

Bee Train

, commonly referred simply as Bee Train, is a Japanese animation studio founded by Kōichi Mashimo in 1997. Since their involvement with Noir, .hack//Sign, and Madlax they have a strong following in the yuri fandom for being involved in series portraying strong female leads with speculatively...

 but has also done work for other studios.

Biography

Koji Sawai was born on September 14, 1955, in Tokyo Japan. While attending Tokyo University, Sawai had ambitions to become a manga artist

Mangaka

is the Japanese word for a comic artist or cartoonist. Outside of Japan, manga usually refers to a Japanese comic book and mangaka refers to the author of the manga, who is usually Japanese...

 and would later join Tatsunoko Productions as an artist and director, which would include working with Koichi Mashimo on The Irresponsible Captain Tylor

The Irresponsible Captain Tylor

is an anime series based on light novel series by Hitoshi Yoshioka. It was produced by some of Japan's larger studios, including Big West, Tatsunoko Production, King Records and VAP....

, as well as other projects. After serving two years he left Tatsunoko to become a freelance director and has been working since.

Filmography

Year	Anime	Job
1980s
1985	Shōwa Ahōzoshi Akanuke Ichiban!	director
1986	Maison Ikkoku Maison Ikkoku is a Japanese seinen manga written and illustrated by Rumiko Takahashi and serialized in the manga magazine Big Comic Spirits from 1980 through 1987. Maison Ikkoku is a bitter-sweet comedic romance involving a group of madcap people who live in a boarding house in 1980s Tokyo...	storyboard artist Storyboard artist Storyboard artist is a profession specialized in creating storyboards for advertising agencies and film productions.A storyboard artist is able to visualize any stories using quick sketches on paper at any moment...
1987	The Real Ghost Busters	storyboard artist
1988	F	director, script
1989	Mobile Police Patlabor	animation director
1990s
1990	Ranma 1/2	episode director, script, storyboard
1993	The Irresponsible Captain Tylor The Irresponsible Captain Tylor is an anime series based on light novel series by Hitoshi Yoshioka. It was produced by some of Japan's larger studios, including Big West, Tatsunoko Production, King Records and VAP....	episode director, storyboard
1994	The Irresponsible Captain Tylor (OAV) The Irresponsible Captain Tylor is an anime series based on light novel series by Hitoshi Yoshioka. It was produced by some of Japan's larger studios, including Big West, Tatsunoko Production, King Records and VAP....	episode director, storyboard (co-director Koichi Mashimo)
2000s
2002	.hack//Sign .hack//SIGN .hack//Sign is an anime television series directed by Kōichi Mashimo and produced by studio Bee Train and Bandai Visual, that makes up one of the four original storylines of the .hack franchise...	episode director, storyboards
2003	Avenger Avenger (anime) - External links :*...	episode director, storyboard
	.hack//Legend of the Twilight .hack//Legend of the Twilight is a science fiction manga series written by Tatsuya Hamazaki and drawn by Rei Izumi. The twenty-two chapters of .hack//Legend of the Twilight appeared as a serial in the Japanese magazine Comptiq, and published in three tankōbon by Kadokawa Shoten from July 2002 to April 2004...	director, sound director, storyboards
	Trigun Trigun is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Yasuhiro Nightow, published from 1996 to 2008 and spanning 17 collected volumes....	Artist management
	Wolf's Rain Wolf's Rain is an anime series created by writer and story editor Keiko Nobumoto and produced by Bones Studio. The series was directed by Tensai Okamura and featured character designs by Toshihiro Kawamoto with a soundtrack produced and arranged by Yoko Kanno. It focuses on the journey of four lone wolves...	episode director
	Immortal Grand Prix Immortal Grand Prix refers to two anime series co-produced simultaneously by Cartoon Network and Production I.G. The first is a "microseries" consisting of five 5-minute episodes, and the second is a 26-episode animated series loosely related to the first....	storyboard
2004	Madlax MADLAX is a 26-episode Japanese anime television series produced in 2004 by the Bee Train animation studio. Kōichi Mashimo directed Madlax and the soundtrack was composed by Yuki Kajiura...	episode director, storyboards
	Trigun Trigun is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Yasuhiro Nightow, published from 1996 to 2008 and spanning 17 collected volumes....	artist management
2005	Tsubasa Chronicle (first season)	episode director, storyboards
2006	.hack//Roots .hack//Roots is a 26-episode anime series, animated by studio Bee Train, that sets as a prologue for the .hack//G.U. video games. It is the first .hack TV series broadcast in HDTV . It is set seven years after the events of the first two anime series and games...	episode director, storyboards
	Spider Riders Spider Riders is a series of science fiction novels first published in December 2004, published by Newmarket Press written by Tedd Anasti, Patsy Cameron-Anasti and Stephen D. Sullivan . The stories became the basis of the animated television series produced by Cookie Jar Entertainment of Canada and Bee Train of...	episode director, storyboards
	Tsubasa Chronicle (second season)	storyboards
2007	El Cazador de la Bruja El Cazador de la Bruja , is an anime television series directed by Kōichi Mashimo and animated by Bee Train studio. It is a spiritual successor of Noir and Madlax and the final installment of Bee Train's "girls-with-guns" trilogy. The series was aired on TV Tokyo from April to September in 2007...	episode director, storyboards
	Spider Riders: Yomigaeru Taiyou Spider Riders is a series of science fiction novels first published in December 2004, published by Newmarket Press written by Tedd Anasti, Patsy Cameron-Anasti and Stephen D. Sullivan . The stories became the basis of the animated television series produced by Cookie Jar Entertainment of Canada and Bee Train of...	director
2008	.hack//G.U. Returner	storyboard
	Blade of the Immortal Blade of the Immortal is a Japanese manga series by Hiroaki Samura. The series won an Excellence Prize at the 1997 Japan Media Arts Festival and the Will Eisner Comic Industry Award in 2000 for Best U.S. Edition of Foreign Material...	episode director, storyboard artist
2009	Phantom ~Requiem for the Phantom~	episode director, storyboards
2010	Halo Legends Halo Legends Halo Legends is a collection of seven short anime films set in the Halo science-fiction universe. Financed by Halo franchise overseer 343 Industries, the stories were created by six Japanese production houses: Bones, Casio Entertainment, Production I.G., Studio 4°C, and Toei Animation...	segment director and storyboard artist: "Homecoming" (co-director Koichi Mashimo)

External links