Tsutomu Nihei

Tsutomu Nihei is a mangaka whot was born in 1971. He had a love of architecture and studied that going up and into his early twenties. He then went to New York City in the United States to work in architecture, but found himself upset with the way the American working system worked, and headed back to Japan. It is then that he decided to start working as a mangaka, and his love of architecture if very evident in his work. When he returned to Japan, he went to work for Kodansha Magazine. He trained under Tsutomu Takashi and it was there that he was first given the inspiration to create his most famous work, Blame!.

Blame!

Blame! Is Nihei’s most famous work. It is about a loner named Killy. Killy has control of a powerful weapon that is called the gravitational beam emitter. This emitter is able to destroy things quickly and neatly. Killy is on a search for a strange genetic marker known as the Net Terminal Gene. This gene would allow all people to have access to a place known as the Netsphere. In The City, where Killy lives, cyborgs and humans live together, but not in harmony. Cyborgs are hostile and are called Silicon Creatures. A group known as Safeguard is trying to destroy The City, and Killy is on a mission to stop them.

Killy gets help in the form of Cibo. Cibo is the head scientist of a corporation that is in the capitol of the area known as the Megastructure. She goes along with Killy in an order to help undo the mistake she made when she tried to artificially create a version of the Net Terminal Genes. She is a strange creature, who is not fully human anymore. She winds up going through more than one body metamorphosis throughout the series.

Other Work

Noise was the next manga that Nihei made, and it was a prequel to Blame! It was created in 2001 and shows a different side of Killy and other popular characters. It also gives the reader an understanding of how the Metastructure came to be. Fans received this work with mixed feelings, some loving it and wishing there were more, others not caring for it much.

In 2003, Nihei was given the opportunity that every serious manga or comic book artist dreams of. He was asked to work on a project about an already well-established and loved superhero. C.B. Cebulski, an associate editor for Marvel Comics, asked him if he would be involved with a project starring Wolverine, one of the most loved characters from the X-Men series. Nihei agreed and later that year, Wolverine Snikt! Was released. The fans seemed to be happy with his work, and four months later, the fifth planned comic book was released. It was in America that Nihei realized the vast differences between Japanese manga and American comics. He has stated that he prefers Japanese manga to the American comic schedule.

Manga created in Japan or by Japanese mangaka.