Manga artist Katsuhiro Otomo was born on April 14, 1954, in Miyagi Prefecture. He is the son of illustrator Shohei.
Growing up on the works of Osamu Tezuka from a young age, he made his debut as a manga artist in 1973. In 1979, he published his self-selected works collection, "Short Piece." His works often feature successive frames featuring close-ups of landscapes, a technique not seen in manga before. Furthermore, Otomo's drawing skills and expressive style, influenced by photography and film, had a major impact on the manga world.
In 1982, he began serializing "AKIRA," a sci-fi work set in a near-future Japan in which a boy with supernatural powers becomes violent and plunges Tokyo into chaos. In 1988, the work was adapted into a film with a budget of 1 billion yen. The work, which featured meticulous sound and musical direction, including the use of "pre-recording" (voice recording) and the contemporary music group Geinoh Yamashirogumi, became a global hit and pioneered the Japanese anime movement. He subsequently released a string of popular anime films, including "Memories" (1995) and "Steamboy" (2004), and in 2007, he adapted Yuki Urushibara's "Mushishi" into a live-action film. Incidentally, in 2005, he was awarded the Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government. Last year, marking the 40th anniversary of his debut as a manga artist, his latest film, "Short Peace," was released, and he was also awarded the Medal with Purple Ribbon. He also made waves when he was appointed as a DM artist for COMME des GARÇONS. In February of this year, a collection of all the posters that Otomo has been involved in was published, titled "POSTERS OTOMO KATSUHIRO x GRAPHIC DESIGN."