Yasuhiro Irie

Yasuhiro Irie directed Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, the 2009 to 2010 Studio Bones series that adapted Hiromu Arakawa's manga past the point where the original 2003 anime had diverged into its own ending. The series ran 64 episodes and is widely regarded as one of the strongest anime adaptations of its era.

Irie is best known for directing Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, with manga creator Hiromu Arakawa attending early planning meetings and reviewing storyboards and scripts throughout production. Irie has spoken about the pressure of adapting a character as popular as Roy Mustang faithfully, given how attached fans already were to the role.

Before directing Brotherhood, Irie worked as a key animator on titles including The Vision of Escaflowne, Cowboy Bebop, and Tekkonkinkreet, and he contributed to the opening sequence of the original 2003 Fullmetal Alchemist anime and the 2005 film Conqueror of Shamballa. That experience is part of why Studio Bones later entrusted him with the Brotherhood adaptation.

Irie made his directorial debut on volumes of the OVA Alien 9 and the 2004 television series Kurau Phantom Memory. That experience led directly to Studio Bones giving him the director's chair on Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood a few years later.

Yasuhiro Irie, born in 1971, is a Japanese director, animator, and character designer who began his career as a teenage key animator. He has continued working across Japanese animation in both directing and character design roles since Brotherhood.