Takehiko Inoue

Takehiko Inoue (井上 雄彦 Inoue Takehiko) is a manga artist born in Kyushu on January 12, 1967. His most famous work is Slam Dunk, with a basketball theme.

Biography

During his student life he played basketball, which would later become one of the main themes of his work. His work is characterized by the great clarity and realism of his drawing, which faithfully reflects the proportions of the body. His first success as an author was the conquest of the prestigious Tezuka Show, thanks to his work Kaede Purple , focused on basketball. He also worked for a few months as an assistant to cartoonist Tsukasa Hōjō, author of City Hunter .

His first big success came with the publication of Slam Dunk, from 1990. It was a work of great graphic quality that combined an emotional and realistic treatment of basketball with an overflowing sense of humor that made it very popular, in the same anime of Slam Dunk Inoue has appeared in some chapters of the series explaining the basic rules of basketball under the name "Dr T".

After 31 volumes of Slam Dunk, Inoue made a work also focused on basketball, but with a futuristic cut, called Buzzer Beater. He also made several short works, among which Piercing stands out. However, he did not achieve another great success until he began publishing Vagabond, a story based on the life of Musashi Miyamoto, a warrior Japanese legend, who is still publishing today. He alternates the publication of this work with Real , focused on the world of wheelchair basketball.Inoue is currently one of the most important and respected manga artists in the industry.

He has also designed the characters for the video game Lost Odyssey, an RPG by Mistwalker, a company founded by the "father" from the prestigious Final Fantasy saga, Hironobu Sakaguchi.

His presence in Spain has not been exactly scarce, the most notable being his trip to Barcelona to create the travelogue Pepita: In the footsteps of Antoni Gaudí and his presence as a guest at the XX Barcelona Manga Salon in 2014.

Jobs

Manga

• Kaede Purple (1988)
• Chameleon Jail (1989 - 1990)
• Slam Dunk (1990 - 1996)
• Buzzer Beater (1997 - 1998)
• Vagabond (1998 - paused)
• Piercing (2001)
• Real (1999 - present)

Video Games

• Character Designer Lost Odyssey(2007)

Movies

• The First Slam Dunk (2022, address)

Others

• Pepita (2012)
• Pepita 2 (2013)
• Pepita 3 (2014)
• Enku (2015)