Kazuki Takahashi

Kazuo Takahashi (高橋 一雅), known professionally as Kazuki Takahashi (高橋 和希), was a Japanese manga artist.

Kazuo Takahashi was born in Tokyo on October 4, 1961.

Suffering from poor physical health, his interest in drawings had been cultivated from childhood.

Until his adolescence, he drew artwork of many manga he enjoyed such as Tiger Mask, Ultraman, Space Battleship Yamato, Mazinger Z, Devilman, and Kamen Rider.

Uninterested in his studies, Takahashi was shamed by his homeroom teacher as "the poop machine that knows nothing except eating, sleeping and pooping" in front of other students.

Angered by the humiliation, Takahashi made up his mind to become a manga artist.

While he was a second-year high-schooler, he also aimed to be a background animator of Tezuka Productions and decided to quit the school if he passed the recruitment exam, but he ultimately failed, claiming that his art skill was still undesirable.

Takahashi gave up on his dream of becoming an animator and instead became a designer of corporate logos and banners, which included making designs for pachislot panels,.

It was at this time he started submitting his manga to publishers.

In 1981, at the age of 20, Takahashi's one-shot manga ''Ing!

Love Ball, submitted under the pen name "Hajime Miyabi (雅はじめ)", won the Shogakukan New Comic Award and was published in Weekly Shōnen Sunday'' in the same year.

He made his serial manga debut in 1986, and is best known as the author of Yu-Gi-Oh!, published in Weekly Shōnen Jump from 1996 to 2004.

The manga spawned a trading card game of the same name, which holds the Guinness World Record for the best-selling trading card game of all time.

His serial debut was in 1986 with Gō-Q-Chōji Ikkiman, an adaptation of the TV sports anime of the same name, published in Kodansha's Weekly Shōnen Magazine.

In the meantime, Takahashi experienced extreme poverty as he self-stated that he had a "comfortable life" with the absence of electricity with phone calls, and also made thirty six times of credit card installments in the magazine.

George Morikawa, author of Hajime no Ippo, also described his living place from that time as "dilapidated Showa era wooden apartment that people immediately thought of".

After noticing those previous works were unprofitable, Takahashi altered his direction to Shueisha and devoted his efforts.

In 1990, his one-shot Tokiō no Taka was published in Weekly Shōnen Jump.

Another manga, Tennenshoku Danji Buray, was published in the magazine from 1991 to 1992.

In 1996, Takahashi launched Yu-Gi-Oh! under the pen name "Kazuki Takahashi" in Weekly Shōnen Jump, where it was serialized until 2004.

The series became a huge success and has sold more than 40 million copies.

In 2001 Time and 2002 Time for Kids interview, Takahashi called much of his early works a "total flop".

The series has also received several media adaptations, notably an anime television series and a trading card game developed by Konami, which holds the Guinness World Record for the best-selling trading card game in history, with more than 25.1 billion cards sold as of 2011.

Takahashi continued to supervise the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise following the end of the original manga's run by passing down the legacy to his previous manga assistants that also become manga artists in later days, such as Akira Itō (Yu-Gi-Oh! R), Naoyuki Kageyama (Yu-Gi-Oh! GX) and Masashi Sato (Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's).

Takahashi also retrieved his animation dream by giving several attempts on self-creating personal short animations, and also involving in animation productions of Yu-Gi-Oh! Bonds Beyond Time and Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions.

In 2013, his one-shot manga Drump was released in Weekly Shōnen Jump.

In 2015, Takahashi received the Inkpot Award from Comic-Con International for his outstanding contributions to comics.

In 2018, Takahashi published the limited series The Comiq in Weekly Shōnen Jump.

Takahashi also wrote a two-part manga, titled Secret Reverse, for the Marvel × Shōnen Jump+ Super Collaboration, which was released on Shōnen Jump+ in September 2019.

Before Takahashi sought out his final art style, he had given several attempts for comical, gekiga and anime styles.

There were some notable illustrators such as Drew Struzan, Alphonse Mucha, and Norman Rockwell had given tremendous impacts on Takahashi's later art style, and Yu-Gi-Oh! was the one that showed all of the unique characteristics.

He was skilled in both traditional and digital illustrations.

His choices of traditional art tools were g-pen, watercolors and Copic markers, whereas Adobe Photoshop and Painter were the art programs he used during post manga serialization.

Takahashi liked to play games such as shogi, mahjong, card games, and tabletop role-playing games.

In an interview with Shonen Jump, Takahashi stated that his favorite manga from other authors included Akira by Katsuhiro Otomo, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure by Hirohiko Araki, and Dragon Ball by Akira Toriyama.

He also enjoyed reading American comics, with Hellboy being his favorite American comic book character.

His pet dog, a shiba inu named Taro (タロ), was the basis for the Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game monster card Shiba-Warrior Taro (タロ); the card's artwork was personally drawn by Takahashi.

Takahashi also loved to go sea diving and visited Okinawa seaside each July.

Takahashi occasionally expressed political opinions with his art.

For instance, he once posted a drawing on Instagram of Yu-Gi-Oh! characters criticizing the Shinzo Abe government and asking his followers to "vote for justice" in the 2019 House of Councillors election, for which he later apologized.