Hideaki Sorachi  

Hideaki Sorachi is a Japanese manga artist known for his work on the popular series Gintama. Although he was interested in manga during his childhood, his father laughed at his drawings when he showed them to him at grade 4. This led Sorachi to temporarily abandon his dreams of becoming a manga artist. After graduation, he struggled to find employment and turned to drawing manga as a way to make ends meet. His first successful work was Dandylion, which gained recognition and helped him progress in his career. In 2003, Sorachi's editor tried to convince him to create a new series based on the upcoming Shinsengumi television program airing on Japanese TV the next year. However, Sorachi had originally planned to ride on the popularity of the Harry Potter franchise with a series about a school for demon dispellers. After several arguments and an attempt to write the Shinsengumi series, Sorachi ultimately gave up and used what he had of the script to create the pseudo-historical science fiction series Gintama. Sorachi holds a degree in commercial advertising.