Writers

Hiro Mashima (真島 ヒロ, Mashima Hiro, born May 3, 1977) is a Japanese manga artist. He gained success with his first serial Rave Master, published in Kodansha's Weekly Shōnen Magazine from 1999 to 2005. His best-selling work, Fairy Tail, published in the same magazine from 2006 to 2017, became one of the best-selling manga series with over 72 million copies in print. Mashima began the currently ongoing Edens Zero in 2018.

Fairy Tail won the Kodansha Manga Award for shōnen manga in 2009, and Mashima was given the Harvey Awards International Spotlight award in 2017 and the Fauve Special Award at the 2018 Angoulême International Comics Festival.

Mashima stated that he knew he wanted to be a manga artist for as long as he can recall. His father was an artist that aspired to turn professional, but died when Mashima was young. Living in the mountains as a child, his grandfather would bring him discarded manga that he found. After reading them, Mashima would draw from them. In middle school, he began to rebel and get into trouble, but still drew everyday. In high school, he became guitarist in a rock band named Night Meeting, which played a show every two or three months. Mashima was eventually indefinitely suspended from school due to his delinquency and, after reflecting during this time away, decided he would try to make it as a professional manga artist. Moving to Tokyo after graduating high school, he entered a school specializing in teaching manga artists, but left without completing the studies. He stated that while it taught him the basics, he felt it would not help as a professional.

Kentaro Miura was a Japanese manga artist. He was best known for his acclaimed dark fantasy series Berserk, which began serialization in 1989 and continued until his death. As of 2021, Berserk had more than 50 million copies in circulation, making it one of the best-selling manga series of all time. In 2002, Miura received the Award for Excellence at the 6th Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prizes.

Hitoshi Iwaaki is a Japanese manga artist, whose works include the science-fiction/horror series Parasyte. The Mixx editions of Parasyte romanize his name as "Hitosi Iwaaki", while the Del Rey Manga editions use "Hitoshi Iwaaki".

Yoshitoki Ōima (大今 良時, Ōima Yoshitoki, born March 15, 1989) is a Japanese manga artist and writer, best known for her manga series A Silent Voice and To Your Eternity.

Ōima was born on March 15, 1989 in Ōgaki, Japan as the third daughter of a sign language interpreter mother and has an older sister and an older brother. Due to her mother's work as a sign language interpreter Ōima was inspired to write the A Silent Voice manga series where she got help by her mother and her sister working on the series.

Her first manga was Mardock Scramble which was an adaptation of the same-named novel written by Tow Ubukata and was released in 2009. She was also responsible for an illustration of the ending sequence of the ninth episode of Attack on Titan. After her success with A Silent Voice Yoshitoki Ōima worked alongside other manga artists on a collaboration manga called Ore no 100-wame!!. In 2016 Yoshitoki Ōima released her third full manga series under the moniker To Your Eternity.

Yoshihiro Togashi (冨樫 義博, Togashi Yoshihiro, born April 27, 1966) is a Japanese manga artist. He began drawing manga at an early age; while he attended college, the publishing company Shueisha recognized his talent. Togashi has authored numerous manga series in different genres during the past three decades. He is perhaps best known for writing and illustrating the Yu Yu Hakusho and Hunter × Hunter series, both of which have been published in the popular Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine. Togashi is married to Naoko Takeuchi, the author of Sailor Moon.

Born in Shinjō, Yamagata to a family that owned a paper shop, Togashi began drawing manga casually in his first to second year of elementary school. In high school, Togashi joined the fine-arts club; he later enrolled at Yamagata University where he studied education in the hope of becoming a teacher. During college he submitted some of his manga work to Weekly Young Jump, published by Shueisha. In 1986, at age 20, he authored a manga titled Buttobi Straight (ぶっとびストレート, Buttobi Sutorēto) for which he received the Tezuka Award, the most prestigious award for new comic artists in Japan. Another manga by Togashi titled Jura no Mizuki (ジュラのミヅキ) was an honorable mention in Shueisha's first annual Hop Step Award Selection magazine, published in 1988. After having given up his goal of becoming a teacher, Togashi was contacted by an editor of Weekly Shōnen Jump during his senior year of college, who asked him to move to Tokyo.

Shūzō Oshimi (押見 修造, Oshimi Shūzō, born 1981) is a Japanese manga artist who publishes works primarily for Kodansha. He made his debut with Superfly in Kodansha's Monthly Shōnen Magazine. He is best known for his manga Drifting Net Cafe, The Flowers of Evil and Happiness. His works have been adapted into many different media including television drama, anime, and live action film. In 2001, he won the Tetsuya Chiba Award.

Oshimi's hometown is in the countryside of Kiryu, Gunma, which also served as the setting of his manga The Flowers of Evil. While growing up there, the main places he would visit were the riverbank, the stairs of his junior high school, and the bookstore. Oshimi currently resides in Tokyo.

Kōhei Horikoshi (堀越 耕平, Horikoshi Kōhei, born November 20, 1986) is a Japanese manga artist known for creating the manga series Ōmagadoki Dōbutsuen, Barrage and My Hero Academia, all of which have been serialized in Shueisha's shōnen manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Jump. Horikoshi is a graduate of Toho High School and Nagoya University of Arts and is a native of Aichi Prefecture. He was a former assistant for Yasuki Tanaka, creator of the manga series Summer Time Rendering, Hitomi no Catoblepas and Kagijin.

Horikoshi stated that his favorite manga series as a child were Dragon Ball, One Piece and Naruto. He was also influenced by manga artist Yuko Osada (Toto!: The Wonderful Adventure). Horikoshi is also a fan of American superhero comic books, particularly Marvel Comics.

Eiichiro Oda is a Japanese manga artist and the creator of the series One Piece (1997–present). With more than 516.6 million tankōbon copies in circulation worldwide, One Piece is both the best-selling manga in history and the best-selling comic series printed in volume, in turn making Oda one of the best-selling fiction authors. The series' popularity resulted in Oda being named one of the manga artists that changed the history of manga.

Tsugumi Ohba is the pen name of a Japanese manga writer, best known for authoring the Death Note manga series with illustrator Takeshi Obata from 2003 to 2006, which has 30 million collected volumes in circulation. The duo's second series, Bakuman. (2008–2012), was also successful with 15 million in circulation. In 2014, Ohba collaborated with My Little Monster creator Robico for the one-shot "Skip! Yamada-kun". Another series with Obata, Platinum End, was serialized in the monthly Jump SQ from November 4, 2015, to January 4, 2021.

Makoto Yukimura (Japanese: 幸村 誠, Hepburn: Yukimura Makoto, born May 8, 1976) is a Japanese manga artist.

Yukimura considered himself a laidback child at school. His first manga was Akira Toriyama's Dr. Slump at 5 and was particularly impressed by the cover. He then watched the anime much to his surprise because he did not see the need of a story being repeated. When Yukimura became 16, he had the idea of becoming a manga author. During his early life, Yukimura was nearly killed in two car accidents. This made him reconsider his way of thinking. He believes he had no social life and barely paid attention to classes in his childhood. The only thing he wrote in his notebook was manga. He graduated from Chuo University and Suginami High School. In contrast to other students, Yukimura faced no hardships in graduating and recalls having brief anxiety. Yukimura's crisis with school and lack of interest with his growth and jobs worried his parents. However, Yukimura's school life changed when being taught by a literature teacher who used Michael Ende famous for The Never Ending Story in a class.

Kaiu Shirai is the pen name of a Japanese manga artist and writer whose real name and date of birth are unknown. He is best known for his manga series The Promised Neverland.

Noriaki Kubo (Japanese: 久保 宣章, Hepburn: Kubo Noriaki, born June 26, 1977), known professionally as Tite Kubo (久保 帯人, Kubo Taito), is a Japanese manga artist and character designer. He is best known for his manga series Bleach (2001–2016), which had over 120 million copies in circulation as of 2018.

Kubo was born on June 26, 1977, in Hiroshima Prefecture, where his father worked as a town council member. In elementary school, he had already decided to become a manga artist, due to reading the manga Saint Seiya. His first one-shot was "Ultra Unholy Hearted Machine", written for the Weekly Shōnen Jump in 1996. He wrote his first manga Zombiepowder, which was also published in Weekly Shōnen Jump in 1999. It ran a short 27 chapters before being canceled in 2000. According to the author's commentary, Kubo was in a state of severe emotional trauma when he wrote it. Kubo later stated that he was not used to the magazine weekly serialization and used to pay more attention to his editor's comments rather than his own ideas.

Hajime Isayama (諫山 創, Isayama Hajime, born August 29, 1986) is a Japanese manga artist. His first and currently ongoing series, Attack on Titan, has become one of the best-selling manga series of all time with 100 million copies in circulation as of December 2019.

Isayama was born in Ōyama, Ōita Prefecture, Japan, which is now part of Hita. It was in high school, Hita Rinko Senior High School, that he began submitting manga works to contests. After graduating, he matriculated in the manga design program of the arts department at Kyushu Designer Gakuen. In 2006, he applied for the Magazine Grand Prix known as MGP promoted by Kodansha Ltd. and a short version of Attack on Titan (Shingeki no Kyojin) was given the "Fine Work" award. At age twenty, he moved to Tokyo and worked at an Internet café in order to pursue a career in writing manga. This one-shot would later be included in the series' guidebook and included with the first Blu-ray of the anime adaptation.

Atsushi Ōkubo (Japanese: 大久保 篤, Hepburn: Ōkubo Atsushi, born September 20, 1979), also romanized as Atsushi Ohkubo, is a Japanese manga author and fantasy artist known for his work on the manga series Soul Eater and Fire Force, both of which have been adapted into anime. Okubo worked as an assistant under Rando Ayamine, on the manga series GetBackers. He also created some artworks for the video game TCG Lord of Vermilion, as well as some character designs in Bravely Default and Bravely Second: End Layer.

Ōkubo was not a model student and was more attracted to drawing than to learning. At the age of 20, after finishing studies at a manga school where he met Rando Ayamine, the artist of GetBackers, he became Ayamine's assistant for two years. Finally, he won a competition at Square Enix's Gangan magazine with his first manga series B. Ichi and it was published in four volumes. After the end of his last manga, he created Soul Eater, still for Gangan, which brought him worldwide success. After that, he explored a little bit more of Soul Eater's world in Soul Eater Not!, a side-story to the main series that ended in 5 volumes. In 2015, he started working on Fire Force, published in Weekly Shōnen Magazine, making it the first weekly manga Ōkubo has done. In May 2020, Ōkubo announced that Fire Force will be his final manga.

One or Tomohiro is the pseudonym of a Japanese manga artist, who is best known for his web manga series One-Punch Man, which was later remade into a digital manga illustrated by Yusuke Murata. One serializes the One-Punch Man webcomic on his own website under no official publisher, while the manga remake is serialized in the web version of Weekly Young Jump. His other well-known series, Mob Psycho 100, was serialized in the online version of Weekly Shōnen Sunday, Ura Sunday.

Hiroya Oku is a Japanese manga artist, who is the creator of Gantz, Gigant, Hen and Inuyashiki, the first two of which have been serialized in Weekly Young Jump. Originally influenced by Katsuhiro Otomo and Ryoichi Ikegami, his manga often contain explicit violence, sexual depictions, and matters that are considered taboo by the public, and he is known as a pioneer in the use of digital processing for manga backgrounds.

Naoki Urasawa (Japanese: 浦沢 直樹, Hepburn: Urasawa Naoki, born January 2, 1960) is a Japanese manga artist and musician. He has been drawing manga since he was four years old, and for most of his professional career has created two series simultaneously. The stories to many of these were co-written in collaboration with his former editor, Takashi Nagasaki. Urasawa has been called one of the artists that changed the history of manga and has won numerous awards, including the Shogakukan Manga Award three times, the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize twice, and the Kodansha Manga Award once. By December 2021, his various works had over 140 million copies in circulation worldwide.

Urasawa's first major work was illustrating the action series Pineapple Army (1985–1988), which was written by Kazuya Kudo. The first serial that he wrote and illustrated himself, and his first major success, was the sports manga Yawara! (1986–1993). He then illustrated the adventure series Master Keaton (1988–1994), which was written by Hokusei Katsushika and Nagasaki, and created the sports manga Happy! (1993–1999). The thriller Monster (1994–2001) was his first to receive international acclaim and success, which continued with the science fiction mystery 20th Century Boys (1999–2006). Following the acclaimed Pluto (2003–2009), which is a re-imagining of Astro Boy by Osamu Tezuka, one of Urasawa's biggest influences, he and Nagasaki created the mystery series Billy Bat (2008–2016). After two short series, a sequel to Master Keaton with Nagasaki and Mujirushi: The Sign of Dreams, Urasawa began his currently ongoing Asadora! in 2018.