Background and career
Rumiko Takahashi (高橋 留美子, Takahashi Rumiko; born October 10, 1957) is a Japanese manga artist. With a career of several commercially successful works, beginning with Urusei Yatsura in 1978, she is one of Japan's best-known and wealthiest manga artists. Her works are known worldwide, where they have been translated into a variety of languages, with over 230 million copies in circulation; making Takahashi one of the best-selling authors of all time. She has won the Shogakukan Manga Award twice, once in 1980 for Urusei Yatsura and again in 2001 for Inuyasha, and the Seiun Award twice, once in 1987 for Urusei Yatsura and again in 1989 for Mermaid Saga. She also received the Grand Prix de la ville d'Angoulême in 2019, becoming the second woman and second Japanese to win the prize. In 2020, the Japanese government awarded Takahashi the Medal with Purple Ribbon for her contributions to the arts.
Takahashi was born in Niigata, Japan. Although she showed little interest in manga as a child, she was said to occasionally doodle in the margins of her papers while attending Niigata Chūō High School. She co-founded a manga club at high school together with Yōko Kondō, who also became a manga artist. Takahashi's interest in drawing manga herself did not start until later. In an interview in 2000, Takahashi said that she had always wanted to become a professional comic author since she was a child.
During her university years, Takahashi enrolled in Gekiga Sonjuku, a manga school founded by Kazuo Koike, author of Crying Freeman and Lone Wolf and Cub. Under his guidance, Takahashi began to publish her first dōjinshi creations in 1975, such as Bye-Bye Road and Star of Futile Dust. Koike often urged his students to create well-thought out, interesting characters, and this influence would greatly impact Takahashi's works throughout her career. Takahashi worked as an assistant for horror manga artist and Makoto-chan series creator Kazuo Umezu.
Takahashi's professional career began in 1978. Her first published work was the one-shot Katte na Yatsura (Those Selfish Aliens), which garnered her an honorable mention at that year's Shogakukan New Comics Contest. Later that same year, she began her first serialized story in Weekly Shōnen Sunday; Urusei Yatsura, a comedic science fiction story. Takahashi initially had difficulty meeting deadlines, so chapters were published sporadically until 1980. During the run of the series, she shared a small apartment with two assistants, and often slept in a closet due to a lack of space. During the same year, Takahashi published Time Warp Trouble, Shake Your Buddha, and the Golden Gods of Poverty in Weekly Shōnen Sunday magazine, a publication which would remain the home to most of her major works for the next twenty years.
In 1980, Takahashi started her second major series, Maison Ikkoku, in Big Comic Spirits magazine, which had an older target audience than her previous work. Because of the influence of the New Wave movement of manga in the late 1970s, seinen manga, or comics marketed toward young men, became more open to including shōjo manga aesthetics, or the aesthetics of comics marketed toward young women, and to hiring female manga artists. Maison Ikkoku is a romantic comedy, and Takahashi used her own experience living in an apartment complex to create the series. Takahashi managed to work on the series on and off simultaneously with Urusei Yatsura. She concluded both series in 1987, with Urusei Yatsura ending at 34 volumes, and Maison Ikkoku at 15. During the 1980s, Takahashi became a prolific writer of short story manga. Her stories Laughing Target, Maris the Chojo, and Fire Tripper were all adapted into original video animations (OVAs). In 1984, during the writing of Urusei Yatsura and Maison Ikkoku, Takahashi began a series published sporadically in Weekly Shōnen Sunday called Mermaid Saga which ran for 10 years, until 1994. The series was partially released in two wide-ban volumes, with the complete story released as a set of shinsoban, or special edition, in 2003. Another short work of Takahashi's to be published sporadically was One-Pound Gospel. Takahashi concluded the series in 2007 after publishing chapters in 1998, 2001, and 2006. One-Pound Gospel was adapted into a live-action TV drama.
In 1987, Takahashi began her third major series, Ranma ½. Following the late 1980s and early 1990s trend of shōnen martial arts manga, Ranma ½ features a gender-bending twist. The series continued for nearly a decade until 1996, when it ended at 38 volumes. Ranma ½ and its anime adaptation are cited as some of the first of their mediums to have become popular in the United States. During the latter half of the 1990s, Rumiko Takahashi continued with short stories and her installments of Mermaid Saga and One-Pound Gospel until beginning her fourth major work, Inuyasha. Unlike the majority of her works, Inuyasha has a darker tone more akin to Mermaid Saga and, having been serialized in Weekly Shōnen Sunday from 1996 to 2008, is her longest to date. On March 5, 2009, Rumiko Takahashi released her one-shot Unmei No Tori. On March 16, 2009, she collaborated with Mitsuru Adachi, creator of Touch and Cross Game, to release a one-shot called My Sweet Sunday. Her next manga series, Kyōkai no Rinne started on April 22, 2009. This was Rumiko Takahashi's first new manga series since her previous manga series Inuyasha ended in June 2008. She concluded it on December 13, 2017, with a total of 398 chapters, collected in 40 volumes. Urusei Yatsura, Maison Ikkoku, Ranma ½, Inuyasha, and RIN-NE are all published in English in the United States by Viz Comics. The 1989 re-release of Urusei Yatsura was halted after only a few volumes were translated, but a reprint in a 2-in-1 omnibus format began in 2019. Rumiko Takahashi started a new manga series entitled Mao in Weekly Shōnen Sunday issue #23 released on May 8, 2019.
