Takeshi Obata

Takeshi Obata is a Manga Artist which means that most of the time he is working in collaboration with a writer. He first worked with famous mangaka like Kentaro Yabuki (author of Black Cat and To-LOVE-Ru), Nobuhiro Watsuki ( Rurouni Kenshin) as well as Murata Yusuke ( Eyeshield 21). In 1985 he became known in winning a prize in the Tezuka Award for his one shot 500 Kōnen no Kaiwa. Then he joinedthe Weekly Shonen Jump staff, he mentored under Makoto Niwano before starting his first major series, writing and drawing Cyborg Jii-chan G in 1989. He finally began the series that established his name when he teamed with Yumi Hotta on Hikaru no Go starting in 1998. He is most well-known as the artist of Hikaru no Go, for which he received the Shogakukan Manga Award in 2000 and the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize in 2003, and Death Note. Obata is rare among shōnen artists not only for the detail of his drawings, but in his penchant for fashion; the characters he draws often wear stylish clothes and trendy items like the latest fashionable scarf, tie or handbag. He has served as the artist of Blue Dragon Ral Grad, a manga adaptation of the fantasy video game, Blue Dragon from December 2006 to July 2007.

He is now currently working on a new series with Tsugumi Ohba, Bakuman, which began in August, 2008. In addition to his manga work, he has also done character design work for the video game Castlevania Judgment.