About the Author
Naoki Urasawa (born 1960) is widely regarded as one of the greatest manga artists of all time. A native of Tokyo, he began his professional career in the 1980s and has since produced a body of work spanning multiple genres — from sports drama to psychological thriller to science fiction mystery. What unites all his output is an extraordinary command of long-form storytelling: dense, layered narratives driven by deeply human characters, meticulous pacing, and a cinematic eye for tension and composition.
Urasawa is best known internationally for the Monster-Pluto-20th Century Boys trilogy of complex thriller series, each of which won multiple prestigious awards and earned him devoted readerships across the United States, Europe, and Asia. He has won the Eisner Award — the highest honour in American comics — multiple times, and his works are frequently cited as essential entry points for adults new to manga.
His approach to manga is rooted in a love of mystery and moral complexity. His protagonists are rarely action heroes; they are doctors, musicians, detectives, and engineers who find themselves at the centre of vast, slow-burning conspiracies. The result is a style unlike anything else in the medium — urgent and cerebral, novelistic in scope, and utterly compulsive to read.