The writer of Noir

I've been becoming one of those who thinks that for both American movies and Anime we perhaps sometimes give directors too much credit (or blame) and the writers not enough credit (or blame).  And I have brought this subject up before, but I figure the best way to properly introduce this idea to my blog would be by looking at the writer of my absolute favorite Anime, Noir.

Noir is a good example for this subject not just because it's my personal favorite of an entire medium.  You see while I like every aspect of Noir considering how it was handled perfect for what Noir is, I would have guessed even before checking the credits that the writing is the chief thing that sets it significantly apart from other Bee Train shows.  And the credits verified that, it has the same director as several other Bee Train shows, and Yuki Kajiura does the music for most of them, but this is the only Bee Train show written by Ryoe Tsukimura.

And Tsukimura is the only writer, a lot of other shows I've looked at there is usually one writer who does the most but still some separate writers for individual episodes.  But as far as ANN is aware Tsukimura single handedly scripted all 26 episodes and has the Original Concept credit.

Looking at his other work, of what I've seen already it's all stuff I also like, but mostly not stuff I would have guessed had the same writer.  He was the head writer for Tenchi Universe (and worked on two other Tenchi projects), and while I'd observed before it kind of being similar to Noir in how it is structured as a 26 episode show, the nature and genre of the story in question is different.  Tenchi and El-Hazard get dramatic but they also have a lot of Otaku style humor that is absent from Noir.

What does perhaps anticipate the nature of Noir more is that he scripted 6 episodes of Revolutionary Girl Utena.  Two of them are two of the key Juri and Shiori episodes, (their Black Rose episode and the first Ruka episode).  What perhaps shows the level of trust he had was that he's the only person besides Utena's head writer (who may be the subject of a future post) to write any of the final Apocalypse Arc, the two prater about the final Duel with Touga.

So in the future I want to watch some of his stuff I haven't seen yet.  Perhaps UFO Princess Valkyrie would be a good introduction for me to the Magical Girlfriend genre.

Update:  Well before that I decided to watch one mid 90s Hentai OVA he's credited as writing.  And there is a character in it who is absolutely the prototype of Shaoli from episodes 15 and 16 of Noir.

2022 Update: If you do want to learn more about Noir's Director check out this cool video from Trixie The Golden Witch called The Anime Director I Admire The Most.