Tsutomu Nihei (弐瓶 勉, Nihei Tsutomu, born February 26, 1971) is a Japanese manga artist. Nihei has been drawing comics professionally since the mid-1990s. In 1995 he was awarded the Jiro Taniguchi Special Prize in that year's Afternoon Four Seasons Award for his submission, Blame. After working as an assistant to veteran comic artist Tsutomu Takahashi, Nihei went on to launch his debut series Blame! in Monthly Afternoon in 1997. Following the success of Blame!, he next penned Wolverine: Snikt! (published by Marvel Comics) and Biomega. In 2009, Nihei returned to Afternoon to launch what would become his most successful series, Knights of Sidonia. An architectural student, Nihei's early work were mainly wordless, relying on visuals and backgrounds to tell their stories. His cyberpunk-influenced artwork has gained a strong cult following worldwide.
Fujimoto Tatsuki (born October 10, 1992 or 1993) is a Japanese manga artist, known for his works Fire Punch and Chainsaw Man.
Fujimoto published his first major and serialized work, Fire Punch, on Shueisha's Shounen Jump+ online magazine, where it ran from April 18, 2016, to January 1, 2018. The series spawned eight tankoubon volumes. Fujimoto also published on Shounen Jump+ the one-shot Me wo Sametara Onnanoko ni Natteita Byou on April 24, 2017, and the one-shot Imouto no Ane in the June 2018 issue of Jump Square on May 2, 2018.
Fujimoto's second major serialized work, Chainsaw Man, was published in Shueisha's Weekly Shounen Jump from December 3, 2018, to December 14, 2020. The series was collected in eleven tankoubon volumes. A sequel to the series is planned to start publishing in Shounen Jump+. Chainsaw Man topped Takarajimasha's Kono Manga ga Sugoi! list of best manga of 2021 for male readers and earned Fujimoto the 66th Shogakukan Manga Award for Best Shounen Manga. In 2021, the manga won the Harvey Awards for Best Manga.
Shirahama was born on May 7. She graduated from the design program at the Tokyo University of the Arts. She works using analog tools such as pencils, pen and ink, and colored pencils rather than digital tools. Influences on her work include The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter novels, which she read in junior high school, as well as the Art Nouveau and Art Deco styles. Her art style has multiple influences, including Alphonse Mucha, Mœbius, Hayao Miyazaki, and Moto Hagio.
Her debut story was Watashi no Kuro-chan, published by Enterbrain in Fellows! in 2011. She made her multi-part story publishing debut with Eniale & Dewiela in Fellows! in 2012. The series ran for two years, ending in July 2015, and was collected in three volumes released in June 2013, June 2014, and July 2015. The series was translated into French and released by Pika Édition in 2019.
She began doing variant covers and other illustration and concept work for Marvel Comics, DC Comics, and Star Wars comics in 2015 after her art was noticed at New York Comic Con, working on titles such as Star Wars: Doctor Aphra, Deadpool, and Batgirl and the Birds of Prey. Witch Hat Atelier began serialization in Kodansha's Monthly Morning Two manga magazine in July 2016. When the first collected volume was released in January 2017, the manga was so popular it became hard to find copies in stores.