Takehiko Inoue

Takehiko Inoue (Japanese井上 雄 彦, Inoue Takehiko, born January 12, 1967 in Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan) is a Japanese manga artist.

At the university he was in the basketball club, which should exert on his later work. Before starting his career, he worked as an assistant to Tsukasa Hojo, the illustrator of City Hunter and Cat's Eye. In 1988 he received the 35th Osamu Tezuka Award for Kaede Purple. The manga was also his debut as a professional manga artist, and was published in the manga magazine Shōnen Jump. A year later, with Chameleon Jail his first series, but he had his breakthrough in 1990 with Slam Dunk, a manga about basketball. Slam Dunk was a huge success and was next to Yuu Yuu Hakusho and Dragonball reason for the great era of the magazine Shōnen Jump in the 1990s. In 1995 he received the 50th Shogakukan for Slam Dunk Manga Award in the shōnen category.

He is currently working on samurai epic Vagabond and another basketball manga Real. For both works, he received awards, for the fourth Vagabond Media Arts Award, the 25th Kodansha Manga Award and the sixth Osamu Tezuka Cultural Prize -. Real won the fifth Media Arts Award and was twice nominated for the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize -.

Works

• Kaede Purple ( 1988)
• Chameleon Jail (1989 )
• Slam Dunk ( 1990)
• Buzzer Beater (1997)
• Inoue Takehiko Irasuto Shuu (1997, Artbook to Slam Dunk )
• Vagabond (1998)
• Real ( 1999)