She is recognized as one of the most influential women in Japan. Her manga and stories have enjoyed unflagging popularity among generations of fans to this day.
Rumiko Takahashi was born on October 10, 1957 in Niigata, Japan. She loved manga all her life and when she attended Niigata Chuo High School she founded the school’s manga lovers association. In middle school, she decided to make manga her profession. Two years later, she debuted the short story Katte Na Yatsura in Shonen Sunday, which she called home for the rest of her career. She studied comic art at a Japanese college with Kazuo Koike and also worked as an assistant with Kazuo Umezu of Makoto-chan.
In 1978, her manga Urusei Yatsura was released , which lasted until 1987. Urusei Yatsura tells the story of a young man named Ataru Moroboshi who was chosen to play tag with an alien name Lum, and the fate of the world is at stake. Ataru manages to win, but inadvertently asks Lum to marry him in the process.
After Urusei, Yatsura created another very successful manga. Maison Ikkoku was written with young adults in mind. It was released on Big Comic Spirits for a change, not Shonen Sunday. This series began in 1982 and ran parallel to Urusei Yatsura . Maison Ikkoku focuses on the adventures of a young student, Yusaku Godai, who fell in love with the owner of the apartment, Kyoko Otonashi.
1987 was an important year in Takahashi’s career as it was then that she completed her two famous manga. Urusei Yatsura and Maison Ikkoku have finished in 34 and 15 volumes respectively. Both series did very well and improved Takahashi’s writing and artistic skills over the years.
With both series over, Takahashi began work on Ranma 1/2 , a show about a teenage martial artist named Ranma Saotome who was cursed and turned into a girl when splashed with cold water. Ranma 1/2 turned out to be the longest series. It consists of 38 volumes and ended in early 1996.
Takahashi just months after the end of Ranma 1/2 launched her next series, Inu-Yasha Sengoku Otogi Zoushi (Inu-Yasha A Feudal Fairytale). The story focuses on a young girl named Kagome Higurashi who falls from a well and ends up in feudal Japan. There, he meets a half-demon, half-human named Inu-Yasha, and they begin their search for fragments of Shikon’s lost Gem.
Takahashi has also had several short stories over the years, such as One or W, Maris the Chojo, and Firetripper (which were collected at Rumic World and Rumic Theater ), as well as longer short works from the Mermaid Saga that deal with elements of immortality and One-Pound Gospel a love story focusing on a Catholic nun and a young boxer.
Shonen Sunday, a manga magazine that almost exclusively features Ms. Takahashi’s work, usually features the author’s comments on a weekly basis. Ms. Takahashi often talks about her favorite baseball team (Hanshin Tigers), her favorite music group (Shazna) from childhood memories.
In over 20 years of career, Takahashi was considered the first great woman to work on comic books for boys and won the title of “Manga Princess”. She won the Shogakukan “New Comic Artist Award” in 1978 and the 1994 Inkpot Award in the USA.
To this day, he is friends with another great mangaka creator, including the cult Dragon Ball series Akira Toriyama.
