

When Lucky Star began airing, the show's director was Yamamoto Yutaka
("Yamakan", as he is often referred to). However, after 4 episodes, he was
taken off the project and replaced by Takemoto Yasuhiro (one of Kyoto
Animation's longer-time directors), who went on to direct the remainder of the
show.

What happened? This is the only time in KyoAni's history (since they started
being a main production studio in 2003, anyway) that a show's director has
been changed midway. Kind of weird, huh?

I'm aware of the general belief - that Yamakan's direction of the first four
episodes was so bad that they had no choice but to get rid of him - but I'm
looking for specifics, preferably from the mouths of the people involved.


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anime-production lucky-star kyoto-animation
Why was Yamakan replaced by Takemoto as director of Lucky Star?


Here's [an official press
release](http://web.archive.org/web/20070501034516/http://www.kyotoanimation.co.jp/info.html)
about him being replaced from KyoAni. The reason for it is described in it as
follows (emphasis mine):

> [...] 「らき☆すた」監督の山本寛は、監督において、まだ、 **その域に達していない** [...]

It's hard to translate this since it's in (probably intentionally) vague
words, but it says something along the lines of "he has not yet reached a
level required of a director."

The phrase (in bold) used to condemn him is well known among fans. Yamamoto
himself often quoted the phrase in his works, including _Kannagi_.


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The official reason given has been a very vague "He has not yet reached a
level required of a director."

> 「らき☆すた」監督の山本寛は、監督において、まだ、その域に達していない

Because of that, people assume because the 4 episodes he produced for _Lucky
Star_ were of such poor quality, he was sacked. That said, no one else has
been fired from KyoAni or AniDo in this manner ever since, so the situation
left many puzzled.

Shortly after his firing, people speculated he was fired for sexual harassment
instead, especially after an anonymous person claiming to be staff posted that
he had stalked her several times. Nothing was directly confirmed, but his
behavior after getting fired didn't help in this either. During production for
_Wake Up, Girls!_ , he harassed the female seiyuu (who were of high-school age
at the time) to the point she had to tell him to cut it out. He's also
criticized the #MeToo movement, claiming he would proudly continue to
tease/harass women.

Just recently, an anime adaption of a light novel got canceled for racism
against Chinese being prominent in the story. Yamakan complained it was the
end of anime and stated in his blog that he also has racist views.

Generally, bad director or not, he's consistently proven himself to not be a
good person, and it's highly likely that him "not being ready to be a
director" was just the nicest way KyoAni could put it as their reason for
firing him.


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