Mari Okada

Mari Okada is a Japanese screenwriter, director and manga artist. She is one of the most prolific writers currently working in the anime industry. Okada has stated that she was often bullied at school and was thus truant to deal with social anxiety. She would consequently spend most of her time alone at home writing stories. She believes that it gradually helped with her anxiety and resocializing. She has also stated that no one in her life "had high hopes for her" and that, as a senior, she was repeatedly told that she "would not survive in the real world." She went on to enroll at the Tokyo Amusement Media School to study entertainment industry and game design. Through her studies, Okada developed a passion for screenwriting, but found it difficult to take it seriously as a profession due to her social anxiety. Her earliest jobs included creating scenarios for direct-to-video pornography and transcribing interviews for a magazine. It was through this latter job that she met Tetsuro Amino, who asked her to contribute some of her ideas for the plot of DT Eightron. She went on to write the script for five episodes, and the connection with Amino helped in kickstarting her career. Okada pitched an idea for her first original anime, based on her experience. The screenplay was unpublished, but several elements of it would be used in some of her works. After several years, her reputation within the industry had grown considerably, with the screenplay for numerous successful series. Okada wrote the script for her directorial debut anime film Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms. It was well received by critics and was awarded the prize for best animated film at the 21st Shanghai International Film Festival.