Takeshi Obata

About Takeshi Obata

Takeshi Obata (born 1969) is a Japanese manga artist best known for drawing Death Note (2003 to 2006), written by Tsugumi Ohba, and for the go-playing series Hikaru no Go with Yumi Hotta.

Obata was born on 11 February 1969 in Niigata, Japan. In 1985 a one-shot story won him the Tezuka Award, and he went on to work for Weekly Shonen Jump, where his first major series, Cyborg Jii-chan G, began in 1989. Like most of his work, his breakthrough came as the artist on another writer's story: Hikaru no Go (1998 to 2003) won the Shogakukan Manga Award and the 2003 Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize, and was his first work released in North America.

Death Note became his biggest success and was adapted as an anime, live-action films and a musical. It won the 2008 Eagle Award for favourite manga and was nominated for an Eisner Award and selected for the Angouleme festival. He reunited with Ohba for Bakuman (2008 to 2012) and Platinum End (2015 to 2021), drew the manga adaptation of the novel All You Need Is Kill (2014) with writer Ryosuke Takeuchi, and illustrated Show-ha Shoten! (2021 to 2025) with Akinari Asakura. Lambiek credits him with teaching later manga artists including Nobuhiro Watsuki and Yusuke Murata.

For collectors

Viz Media publishes Death Note in English, crediting the series to Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata. Viz also issued his 2006 art book Blanc et Noir in North America in May 2016.