Ryouji Minagawa  

Ryouji Minagawa is a renowned Japanese manga artist who was born in Sumida, Tokyo. He gained international recognition for his work on the Spriggan series, which he co-created with Hiroshi Takashige. This led to an invitation to attend a comic convention in Portugal as a guest of honor in 1996. Prior to Spriggan, Minagawa made his manga debut with HEAVEN in 1988 and later worked on the 11 volumes of Spriggan from 1991 to 1996. After Spriggan, he created Kyo in 1996 followed by ARMS with Kyoichi Nanatsuki from 1997 to 2002. In 1999, Minagawa received the 44th Shogakukan Manga Awards in the shounen category for ARMS. He later created D-Live!! and compiled five one-shots into a single volume called Tensousha Minagawa Ryouji Tanpenshuu. Recently, he finished his works Peace Maker, Adamas, and Kaiou Dante. Additionally, he collaborated with numerous manga authors on short stories for the Neo Kiseijuu collection. In an interview, Minagawa revealed that he was inspired to become a manga artist after watching films made by George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, and Steven Spielberg. Apart from his work in manga, Minagawa has also contributed as a character designer on several video game titles. He worked with other designers on the characters design for Live-A-Live in 1994, Genei Tougi Shadow Struggle and its sequel Critical Blow in 1996 and 1997 respectively, and 10,000 Bullets (Tsukiyo ni Saraba) in 2005. He also worked on some character models for Tekken 5, Tekken 6, and Tekken Tag Tournament 2.