---
name: "Tetsurō Araki"
canonical: "https://film.one/person/tetsuro-araki"
roles: ["Series director","Director"]
born: "5 November 1976"
reviewed_on_fi1m: 1
average_over: 0
updated: "2026-09-17T22:07:59.110239+00:00"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Tetsurō Araki

Series director and director. Born 5 November 1976 in Sayama, Saitama, Japan.

## Details

- **Work:** Series director, Director
- **Born:** 5 November 1976, Sayama, Saitama, Japan
- **Also known as:** Tetsuro Araki, Араки Тэцуро, Tetsuroh Araki, Tetsurou Araki, あらき てつろう, Saburou Mochizuki, 望月三郎, 荒木哲朗, تتسورو آراکی
- **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetsur%C5%8D_Araki, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1101038, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2013928/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/1148353

## Streaming the US now

- **Crunchyroll:** [*Attack on Titan*](https://film.one/tv/attack-on-titan.md) (83)

For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country.

## Fi1m on Tetsurō Araki

> Tetsurō Araki makes people fly: soldiers on wires through a city, drawn so that the eye keeps pace. On *Attack on Titan* it produced action that anime rarely matches. Away from a fight, in a meeting or a corridor, he is a less certain hand.

A body leaves a rooftop on a cable, the ground drops away, and the picture goes with it. That is the Araki shot, and once you have seen it you find it everywhere in his work: the soldiers of *Attack on Titan* (2013) swinging between buildings on their gear, the runners of *Bubble* (2022) crossing a city by parkour. He draws the movement flat, in the old hand-animated way, and sets it against machine-built depth, so the figure stays a drawing while the world it moves through has weight. He storyboards a great deal of it himself, which is why a series with dozens of credited directors can still look like one person's.

He came up at Madhouse, which he joined in 1999, and made his television debut there with *Death Note* (2006–2007), a series that has almost no action in it and lives on people thinking in rooms. He left around 2011, made *Guilty Crown* (2011), and then went to Wit Studio for *Attack on Titan*, directing the first season and serving as chief director on the second and third. *Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress* (2016) kept the partnership with Wit and kept the fighting. He has worked freelance since the middle of that decade. Hiroyuki Sawano has scored three of his projects and Arifumi Imai has directed action on two, and the loud, propulsive thing people mean when they say an Araki show has a look is at least partly theirs.

*Attack on Titan* is the case for him. We scored it 83 and called most of its run superb, and the part that is superb is the part he built: the soldiers in the air, the giants on the ground, the drawing holding together at speeds where it ought to fall apart. We forgot, for whole stretches of the first season, that we were watching a drawing at all, and it took a giant's hand closing on somebody to remind us. The case against him is in the same review. When the fighting stops the series sits down, and the tribunals and corridors of late season one are a slog under his direction, not somebody else's. The look changes in the Final Season, with giants built by computer and Yuichiro Hayashi in charge, and we noticed the join; but by then Araki had gone, and that is worth saying in his favour.

*Bubble* set out to do something quieter. He has said of it, "This time around, we wanted to tell a very beautiful and ephemeral story, that is a love story," and the story is told, once again, through people running and leaping across a city. We have not reviewed it and will not judge it here. But it tells you what he trusts. Araki has spent twenty years making bodies fly beautifully, and he has not yet shown that he can make one stand still.

## Biography

Tetsurō Araki is a Japanese animator, storyboard artist and director. Born on 5 November 1976 in Sayama, Saitama, he graduated from Senshu University and began his career at the Madhouse studio.

He made his directorial debut with the 2005 OVA *Otogi-Jūshi Akazukin*. Araki is best known for directing the anime adaptations of *Death Note* (2006–2007) and the first three seasons of *Attack on Titan* (2013–2019). Other notable works include *Highschool of the Dead* (2010), *Guilty Crown* (2011–2012), *Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress* (2016) and the film *Bubble* (2022).

He is married to editor Aya Hida. Araki has received Best Director awards at the Newtype Anime Awards in 2013 and the Tokyo Anime Award Festival in 2014.

*Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com.*

## On Fi1m (1)

- *Attack on Titan* (2013), Fi1m 83, Director, Series Director — [page](https://film.one/tv/attack-on-titan.md)

## Complete filmography (29)

Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page.

- *Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress: Mumei Ranman* (2026), Director
- *Moonrise* (2025), series, Storyboard Artist
- *Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX* (2025), series, Director, Storyboard Artist
- *COLORs* (2023), Director, Second Unit Director
- *Bubble* (2022), Storyboard Artist, Director, Second Unit Director
- *Attack on Titan: Chronicle* (2020), Director
- *Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress: The Battle of Unato* (2019), Screenplay, Director
- *Attack on Titan: The Roar of Awakening* (2018), Director
- *Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress: Life That Burns* (2017), Director, Screenplay
- *Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress: Light That Gathers* (2016), Director
- *Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress* (2016), series, Series Director, Director, Storyboard Artist
- *Attack on Titan: Wings of Freedom* (2015), Director
- *Attack on Titan: Crimson Bow and Arrow* (2014), Director
- *Attack on Titan* (2013), series, Director, Opening/Ending Animation, Series Director, Storyboard Artist — Fi1m 83, [page](https://film.one/tv/attack-on-titan.md)
- *Guilty Crown* (2011), series, Director, Storyboard Artist, Key Animation, Series Director
- *High School of the Dead: Drifters of the Dead* (2011), Director
- *High School of the Dead* (2010), series, Series Director, Director, Storyboard Artist, Key Animation
- *Aoi Bungaku Series* (2009), series, Storyboard Artist, Director, Key Animation
- *Death Note Relight 2: L's Successors* (2009), Screenplay, Director
- *Michiko & Hatchin* (2008), series, Storyboard Artist
- *Kurozuka* (2008), series, Series Director, Director
- *The Garden of Sinners: Paradox Spiral* (2008), Key Animation
- *Death Note Relight 1: Visions of a God* (2007), Director
- *Death Note* (2006), series, Director, Series Director, Storyboard Artist
- *Le Chevalier D'Eon* (2006), series, Storyboard Artist
- *Black Lagoon* (2006), series, Storyboard Artist, Director
- *Futakoi Alternative* (2005), series, Key Animation
- *Otogi-Juushi Akazukin* (2005), Director
- *Gungrave* (2003), series, Director, Storyboard Artist, Assistant Director

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© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/tetsuro-araki