Yasuyuki Ueda

Yasuyuki Ueda (上田 耕行, Ueda Yasuyuki) is a Japanese producer, who works predominantly in anime tv series. He produced and created the concept for the anime series Serial Experiments Lain where he was credited as "Production 2nd".

He first hired Yoshitoshi ABe, who would become a regular collaborator in the future on many other anime projects.

Biography
He was a director for the Noel video game, worked on the Lain video game, and also on Wachenröder for the Sega Saturn.

He is also the person who discover Yoshitoshi ABe giving him the opportunity to gain the spotlight.

During the promotion of the anime tv series Serial Experiments Lain, which he created the concept in 1998, Yasuyuki made a controversial statement saying that Lain was "a sort of cultural war against American culture and the American sense of values we [Japan] adopted after World War II". He explained he created Lain with a set of values he took as distinctly Japanese; he hoped Americans would not understand the series as the Japanese would. This would lead to a "war of ideas" over the meaning of the anime, hopefully culminating in new communication between the two cultures. Later, when he discovered that the American audience held the same views on the series as the Japanese, he was disappointed.

Links

 * Ueda's Lain Blog (archived)
 * Interview focusing on Serial Experiments Lain