Obata Takeshi is the amazing artist of Death Note, Hikaru no Go, Bakuman and many other great series.
If you appreciate his works, join us!
Takeshi Obata (小畑 健 Obata Takeshi), born February 11, 1969, is a Japanese manga artist.
He generally works as the artist in collaboration with a writer. He has also mentored several mangaka, including
Kentaro Yabuki of Black Cat fame,
Nobuhiro Watsuki of Rurouni Kenshin and Yusuke Murata of Eyeshield 21.
He originally became noticed in 1985 when he took a prize in the Tezuka Award for his one shot 500 Kōnen no Kaiwa. Joining the Weekly Shonen Jump staff, he mentored under Makoto Niwano before starting his first major series, Cyborg Jii-chan G in 1989. Having difficulty for several years in finding a hit, Obata began collaborating with other writers on their stories. 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.
In the fall of 2007, he drew a short story, Hello Baby, with writer Masanori Morita, which appeared in Jump Square. This was followed by a one-shot manga with Nisio Isin. He has recently completed his latest series with
Tsugumi Ohba, Bakuman, which ran from August 2008 to April 2012.
