Eiji Kikuchi

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Eiji Kikuchi is the series director of the Tales of RPG game series and owns 6% of Namco Tales Studio.

Kikuchi was originally a graphic artist for Telenet Japan in their Riot subsidiary. He rose through the ranks and eventually became a director. In 1993, as Telenet Japan was going through changes and restructuring, they closed Riot. At this time, Kikuchi was transferred to the Wolfteam subsidiary.

When he was assigned as director to the Tales of Phantasia project, this assignment met with protest from the development staff involved in the game. The conflict pushed the game's release back by about one year from its original scheduled release, and resulted in most of the development staff quitting Wolfteam and forming Tri-Ace.

Kikuchi stayed with Telenet Japan, and became the director of all of their games since then. In 2003, he became the head of the newly formed Namco Tales Studio, which continues to produce the Tales series.