Ani.Me Feature – A Look Into Some Popular Manga Artists

You have to admit that without the creations of these talented individuals, we wouldn’t be able to become die hard anime fans or followers of the otaku culture.

If you noticed, a vast majority of the anime series that we have grown to love over the years are actually based from popular manga series. These titles were huge hits for Japanese manga readers that it paved way to expand their horizons to anime adaptations in which made its fame to spread internationally. If it weren’t for these popular manga artists, we wouldn’t be able to have a fandom or a series to love. In this Ani.Me feature, we are going to look at some of Japan’s popular manga artists.

Naoko Takeuchi

Naoko Takeuchi is born on March 15, 1967 in Kofu, Yamanashi in Japan. When she was in high school, it was really her life-long dream to become a manga artist. The high school that Takeuchi attended wore sailor suit uniforms or seifuku which is one of the influences of her manga works. Even as a kid, she was an active member in her school’s astronomy and manga club. As much as she wanted to pursue a full-pledged carrer as a manga artist, her parents recommended that she should get another career. So she went to college and graduated with a degree of chemistry. She then became a licensed pharmacist.

At age 19, the first manga she submitted to Kondansha was Love Call in which she received an award. While working on another manga, she was interested in making a manga series that had something to do with girl fighters and outer space. She created Codename: Sailor V which then become the basis for her now successful manga and media franchise, Sailor Moon. She is married to Yoshihiro Togashi, the manga artist of Hunter x Hunter.

Yoshihiro Togashi

Yoshihiro Togashi is born in Shinjo, Yamagata, Japan on April 27, 1966. Like Takeuchi, he began drawing his own manga at an early age. He started drawing manga in his high school years and is very active in his school’s fine-arts club. He then studied education in Yamagata University to become a teacher.

Even while studying to complete college, he slowly submitted some his manga work to Weekly Young Jump. He was able to publish his first manga at age 20 titled Buttobi Straight which received the prestigious Tezuka Award. He was then contacted by an editor of the Weekly Shonen Jump in which his internationally popular manga works like Yu Yu Hakusho and Hunter X Hunter were published.

Masashi Kishimoto

Kishimoto is born in Nagi, Okayama on November 8, 1974. He created the most popular ninja manga series Naruto which is now a very popular international franchise. The first chapter of Naruto was published in 1999 and the series successfully ended in 2015. Since then, his work has sold over more than 220 copies around the world. When he was young, his inspirations for creating his own manga were from Akira Toriyama (creator of Dragon Ball) and Katsuhiro Otomo. He was such a fan for the works published in the Weekly Shonen Jump.
More features only here at Ani.Me!