Yokouchi, Naoki

Twitter: @kur0nana
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Naoki Yokouchi is a Japanese manga artist. He is from Hokkaido and debuted his career in 1989 with the one-shot drama "Protect Moore!" (ムーアを守れ!), published in Afternoon magazine and winning the Shiki Award.

In 1995 he published the one-shot "Woody Ken" (ウッディケーン) in the children's magazine Comic BomBom, and in 1997 his most successful work "Cyborg Kuro-chan" debuted in the same magazine, which was initially just another one-shot, but due to its popularity ended up being serialized, and resulted in an anime adaptation, spin-offs, crossovers with other franchises, trading card games, toys and videogames for the Game Boy Color and Playstation platforms. The character Kuro-chan was also used as a mascot in the magazine's commercials.

Even though it was published in a children's magazine, Cyborg Kuro-chan features some scenes of violence, and also addresses social issues such as child abuse, bullying and oyajigari (a Japanese term used for street violence against middle-aged men). Some of this contents was changed for its anime adaptation.

In 2002 Naoki Yokouchi began serializing his one-shot Woody Ken, but it ended with only three volumes due to the shutdown of Comic BomBom magazine.

In 2012, Kodansha began reprinting many of Comic BomBom's main series in shinsoban editions, and Naoki, as well as other authors, contributed by illustrating new covers and adding new contents to Cyborg Kuro-chan's editions. Taking advantage of this opportunity, in 2016 Naoki was finally able to finish Woody Ken, compiling the series into two shinsoban editions. His most recent work is the webcomic "Uchuu no Gazou", which was later published by Kodansha in a single volume.